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A comment on Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus group. Parent comment

Re:Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus g... by Retric on Tuesday February 21, 2017 @02:52PM (#13699178)
Avoiding WWIII is in both companies and the publication intrest. Small companies tend to align closely with public interests except a few unique areas per business. It's really only large companies that have lots of points of divergence.

The major difference is a tiny company interacts with other companies largely the same way individuals do. Large companies have far more complex relationships.

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Re:Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus g... by oever on Tuesday February 21, 2017 @04:03PM (#13699948)
> Avoiding WWIII is in both companies and the publication intrest.

So is avoiding ecological collapse e.g. by depleting all natural resources. Yet, for each actor individually, person or company, there are higher incentives to harvest from the commons. This is a called 'tragedy of the commons'. Most popular economic strategies and certainly most corporations act in their own interest.

In the case of Facebook and fake news, that means doing whatever yields more advertising revenue.

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