Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

Re:Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia by mtgx on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @04:19AM (#15702514)

I understand why the media is frustrated about this. Zuckerberg basically promised them all of this traffic if they just "go all in" with Facebook. And now he's pulling the blanket from under them - just like the media was warned he would do, and they didn't listen.

That said, from an objective point of view, first off the media is not entitled to the user's home page in a random social network. They should have never believed that they were.

Second, to be honest, I think it's better for democracy if stories aren't fed by Facebook through its black-box algorithm. I suppose the a small government like the Serbian one couldn't do much to get Facebook to spread their propaganda through it, but if say the U.S. government were to do that, or even say the Indian government - oh boy. It would be such a propaganda machine, better than TV ever was.

The second part to this is that even if governments don't directly control the feeds to spread propaganda, they can exploit Facebook's algorithm, just like Russia supposedly did in the U.S. election, so the end result is the same.

This is why I'd rather people do their own research and they do the job of looking for posts, rather than "being served" those posts by a black magic algorithm that may have all sorts of biases embedded in it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia by werewolf on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @07:49AM (#15703362)

Don't turn this into "media fighting against Facebook" thingy or whatever you just tried. It's not only about them. Yes, they have the strength/influence and they used it. But what about every other Page? What about small businesses and communities that are now losing their viewers? They have no chance to get noticed if they want to speak up against those changes. And yes you can say that they should expect it, but maybe not? I think you shouldn't because FB is just using its strength and is negatively affecting freedom of the internet. Why freedom of the internet? Because of the size of the mass that they can reach.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia by watwut on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @09:50AM (#15704096)

> What about small businesses and communities that are now losing their viewers?

There is no duty whatsoever for Facebook or reddit or twitter or any other company to provide viewers for small businesses and communities for free. As far as I know, facebook never even promised to not change this functionality. If you claim to be search engine or use your power to damage competitors, absolutely. If you selectively hide content to damage opposition, sure.

Maybe facebook should think about timing when there are election around or something similarly important. But still, just like it was ok to separate games from feed, it is ok to separate news from feed.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia by rplnt on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @08:58AM (#15703716)

Is Google limiting freedom because it automatically hides "spam" in mail? Spam in quotes because it's spam that the user has subscribed for. It's absolutely the same concept.

It's beneficial to the users and Facebook owes the pages absolutely nothing. It has to cater to the users if it wants to sell ads, and this is beneficial to the users (or at least how Facebook sees its users).

And while I agree it's not solely a media issue, they were extremely loud about it. Following many pages in the country that is already affected, the media cried out the most (for an individual user, me, they have the same voice as smaller pages).

[ Parent | on HN ]