If they keep trying not to pick sides, they're going to continue to accidentaly pick the wrong side sometimes. "we have to be willing to pick sides" is not the same thing as "we have to start picking sides"
Let's be realistic. They're picking a side based on commercial motivations.
The big problem is not that Facebook the company is picking sides, the big problem is that Facebook the company built a machine to pick sides, and told the machine to base its decisions solely on how much reaction content gets from people. So of course it over-prioritizes the worst, most shocking, most manipulative, most extreme content--because that's what gets the biggest reactions.
And the really big problem is that Facebook either doesn't understand, or wants to pretend it doesn't understand, why that is bad.
Understanding, accepting the implications, and doing something--that's what Facebook needs to do.
it's pretty hard to find a business decision that can be reduced down to "should we make money, or not make money?"
You can't simplify the issue down to there being one action that is more profitable and one that is less so. the world is more complicated than that. Forgoing some profit in the short term in order to gain some trust from the userbase may be more profitable in the long run. Or maybe it won't be. It's a decision that facebook's leadership has to make, and it's not as simple as "we'll take the option that makes more money".
Burning down my house would net me a nice payout from the insurance company, but it's probably not a good financial decision in the longer term. when looking at corporate motivations, it's easy to say they're going to pick the most evil choice if it's the profitable one, but business leaders aren't all stupid, and picking the evil choice is often stupid.
Sure, but Facebook doesn’t look any further into the future than “the next click”.
It is very noble to attempt to adjudicate based on impartial rules rather than picking one of the many possible moralities and enforcing it with an iron fist.
Despite not being a fan of Facebook as a product, I'm impressed that they've been principled enough to not go the route of petite totalitarians like Twitter.
So, with infinitely long supply chains and very complicated products of unclear provenance, and people who care more about looking moral than being it… not well.
Information asymmetry is not a problem well handled by default in a standard free market, I think. But all you need is certification! If only companies that don't make things in sweatshops are allowed to brand with Not Made In A Sweatshop stickers, the consumer can naturally prefer those. Of course if anyone can make up their own certification and stick it on a product, consumers get confused and can't tell what's legit.
As an example, consider the success of nutrition labelling (nutrition facts). It's much harder to make and sell food that only LOOKS healthy, calorie-wise, when anyone can check pretty easily.
(Disclaimer, the actual Nutritional Facts on the back are more useful, but as the endless debate about "what is actually good vs not good" might indicate, it's far from a Source Of Truth, and in many cases can likely be gamed as well. Similarly to how even if a news article lists all their funding sources, an average person probably doesn't care/might still not get much information from it/might still be mislead by crafting of that fact. I don't say this to encourage gatekeepers, but to call out that I'm not sure the current approaches are effectual)
Post-factum-edit: To the downvoters, before this post disappears, at least tell me where I'm wrong. US Obesity rate is through the roof[0]; and while this absolutely has socioeconomic roots, that's the crux of my statement: we're not addressing root causes, and are thus lacking many of the outcomes we'd want.
Have you read the back of a package recently? This is directly from some nuttella in the pantry:
"Energy 332KJ Daily Intake 4%"
in one point font gray on white "Per 15 gram serve."
Average adult diet of 8700KJ.
On other side of the package: 220g net.
So the actual energy in the package is 4869KJ. This is by far not the worst. I have seen chocolates where the "serving size" was two squares.
You can count on any regulation that is bad for business to be subverted to the point of uselessness.
> Serving Size: 2 Tbsp unpopped (makes about 4.5 cups popped)
> Servings Per Bag: about 2.5
> Calories (2 Tbsp unpopped): 170
> Calories (1 Cup popped): 35
How many calories per bag?
The worst thing is, it fooled me. I wouldn't've bought it if I'd realized the answer was about 400.
Can you name a more moral economic system than that?
Actually, they're a media company. They want you think they're a publisher so they can skirt the laws as long as they can. Media companies are regulated.
Facebook crafts thousands of tiny narratives using their many millions of users as the writers/editors/publishers through posted links, status updates, and media such as live video and photos. Currently, those narratives are algorithmically determined using advertisers and eventually those narratives will trend towards Facebook's nebulous definition of being deemed culturally acceptable, non-threatening, and, most important, the age-old advertiser friendly.
It's a slightly democratically-controlled but primarily advertiser-driven narrative creation machine with each narrative crafted by algorithms that are guided by a set of heuristics augmented after each public incident. It's the same as TV, but because 100's of millions of people/advertisers are involved it still looks like it's something else entirely.
But it's not, it's just another media company.
It's not like suddenly they're going to switch from being a bulletin board to a publisher. They're already a publisher. They're the first and only worldwide newspaper-tv-town-crier. They pick sides everyday. The only thing left to decide is how honest and open to be about it. The more honest and open they are, the more the jig is up and everybody says "What the hell? Why do we want one publishing company controlling the information stream for billions of people? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?"
And of course they don't want to have that conversation. So more and more of this silliness of being one thing while pretending to be something else.