More decentralization is a recipe to spiral further and further into fragmented echo chambers with their own self-reinforcing ideologies and their own alternative facts.

The sad part of it, to my mind, is those who critisize Facebook for this want to be exposed for opposing viewpoints to be able to fight opposing viewpoints. I do not want my viewpoints were exposed to those who oppose it. Opposition is too way ready to fight, I'm not. I'm happy to discuss them, but not to fight for them. Even your comment hints the same: you want exposure to make some viewpoints impossible, to fight them to death.

These critics are declaring openness and freedom but they are authoritarian by their nature, they want to one (their) viewpoint to win all others. It is irremovable contradiction between declared goals and real ones that cannot be fixed by Facebook.

The story from Bangladesh shows it in some sense. Authoritarian reign wants to be exposed to opposing views to fight them. Students do not want to be exposed to opposed views, they want to expose to their views only those who is ready to accept them.

SJW want to be exposed to opposing views to be able to scream "fire him". They also want to expose others to their views to hurt them.

Trolls of different colors and sizes want their shit to be exposed to a fan of public opinion and to make fun of hurting others.

I do not want my views to be exposed for general public because the goals of that public are under doubt, they do not want to learn my viewpoint to shift their beliefs close to mine, they want to learn my viewpoint to fight my viewpoint.

The trouble is not a degree of exposure, the trouble is people thinking that contradicting viewpoints should fight to death. And too many people looking not for viewpoints but for a fight of viewpoints. Of course it leads viewpoints to guard theirselves in a fragmented echo chambers, to self-reinforcing ideologies.

Students do not want to be exposed to arrest and torture either. There's the problem with your analysis.

When we differ, there are many options besides deathmatch politics fueled by righteous indignation.

Seek understanding of others. Be secure in that, and who you are.

Celebrate differences and gain perspective.

Amplify good, talk through and maybe past bad.

I no longer judge much for past votes and difficult politics. I am most interested in votes and politics to come.

A whole lot is possible. Getting along better is the root of the possible.

We need more of the possible and line in the sand type conflict gets in the way.

Though maybe humanity not that bad and hopeless, maybe it was my English is that bad and hopeless?

The way I see it, there is an asymmetry of power. Governments are able to harm individuals far more than individuals can harm governments. This needs to be taken into account when we talk about "freedom" online.

What is "fight for them"? You want to discuss your views but not be criticized for them? Are you surprised people fighting for social justice have a strong reaction against viewports they feel are attacking their very personhood?

Yes, that is how civilized discussion works. You criticize the idea, not the person who disagrees with you. Ad hominem attacks that escalate into trying to get people fired are not a debating tactic, they're an attack on the mechanism of open discussion itself.

Also people often take criticism of their ideas as personal attacks so framing criticism as an ad hominem attack is often used to silence the criticism.

No. Facebook critics want centralization so that people exposed to viewpoints within the narrow, mainstream window of acceptable opinion and completely isolated from anything outside that window.

But as an aside, free speech is the biggest thing keeping the press alive. The “mainstream media” has much more to fear from authorities than from fringe alt-politics. This has been true through history and it’s true now.

As early as the 18th century, it was obvious that in any elected democracy, the concern wasn't top-down repression from "the authorities", but rather either the tyranny of the majority, or the risk of some repressive demagogue rising to power on an explicit platform of crushing the rights of some unpopular minority.

Mainstream media outlets within a democracy are not going to be shut down or silenced. Nobody would ever stand for such a thing, and such a move would be so unpopular as to end the career of anyone who attempted it. If something is popular enough to be labelled "mainstream", it is too popular to ban or censor, and is at no real risk from the authorities. (Outside of a democracy, of course, whatever "mainstream media" exists only exists at the bidding of the authorities in the first place.)

There may be more of a risk if there truly is no mainstream, but this only increases the incentive for the mainstream media to protect their oligopoly which is what they are doing when they attack Facebook.

What people have and do stand for is for silencing "fringe alt-politics" by any means necessary. It wasn't that long ago that people were driven away from their careers and livelihoods for being real or suspected communists. These days, people are driven away from their careers and livelihoods for other real or suspected ideological heresies.

Frankly, having marginally less free speech actually benefits the mainstream media the same way that all forms of regulation and government interference benefit established incumbents and hurt the little guy. CNN and the Washington Post have the resources to comply with complicated and ever-changing sets of rules and regulations. Individual commentators do not, unless they can get a lot of money, which is kind of hard when your primary sources of money are companies like YouTube and Patreon with a history of silencing people in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons that Facebook's critics want Facebook to silence people.

Seems like they are cutting off their nose to spite their face by calling for increased censorship. Do they honestly think that people who hold fringe views will stop holding them if they can't express them on Facebook?

The question is whether Facebook either is or should be putting their thumb on the scale based on the ideas being presented. The idea of a naive engagement algorithm that, in a roundabout fashion, shows people what they want to see might be shitty, but only because most people actually want the shit. The idea of a "truthiness algorithm" or a "hate algorithm" that de-ranks content that Facebook finds "false" or "problematic" is fucking dystopian, and yet it's exactly what Facebook's critics are calling for.

Surely it is not radical to expect Facebook's editorial algorithms, which by the way, are already changing the rank of material based on the effect it will have on readers, to draw some sort of line between "typical well sourced stuff from a well established and respected paper" and "some anonymous dude on the internet spins a tale of how the Democratic Party is actually a sex trafficking ring operating out of a pizza parlor".

Every other media company is held responsible for the material they spread, and are expected to curate it with editors. Facebook thought they could let an algorithm be their editor, and it didn't work out so well. They fired their editorial staff for "breaking news" in August 2016, and the very next day, a fake story about "Ann Coulter outed as a socialist traitor!" was at the top of the list.

The news media does a damn fine job of that all by themselves: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/media-contag...

Also, I mentioned candy bars for a reason. The leading cause of preventable death isn't mass shootings, it's obesity. And, while Facebook doesn't really have an incentive in inspiring mass shootings (unlike the mainstream media!), 7/11 has an incentive in inspiring you to drink a soda and eat a candy bar, and you're orders of magnitude more likely to eventually die from doing too much of that.

> Surely it is not radical to expect Facebook's editorial algorithms, which by the way, are already changing the rank of material based on the effect it will have on readers, to draw some sort of line between "typical well sourced stuff from a well established and respected paper" and "some anonymous dude on the internet spins a tale of how the Democratic Party is actually a sex trafficking ring operating out of a pizza parlor".

Anonymous dudes spinning tales on the internet make for engaging content that a lot of people want to read. Conspiracy theories are a time-honored tradition ever since the CIA had Kennedy assassinated because he was going to reveal the truth about the alien spacecraft that crashed at Roswell and was being held at Area 51. Everyone knows that.

Setting aside the obvious nutjobs, you're literally calling for Facebook to enforce an oligopoly of "well established and respected papers" by making it harder for independent journalists and bloggers to get their message out. Or, at the very least, you're expressing an unwarranted level of faith in Facebook's ability to distinguish normal bloggers from nutjobs. Especially when you and I both know that the words "nutjob" and "conspiracy theorist" will be defined and used in ways that are equivalent in meaning to the words "dissident" and "whistleblower".

> Every other media company is held responsible for the material they spread, and are expected to curate it with editors.

When I go to Facebook, the only "material" I see is from other Facebook users whom I follow and from advertisers. It's bad enough that Facebook ranks this stuff with their "special sauce", but if they "curate" my feed by making "editorial decisions", they have stepped out of their lane. If I want to follow someone on Facebook, I want to see what they post. I don't want Facebook hiding it from me because they don't agree with who I follow, or with what the people I follow choose to share.

Except the problem possibly isn't decentralized, separate echo chambers, it's centralized, connected echo chambers. Facebook was a single source through which you could easily find your echo chamber of choice, with a standard interface, no need to login or commit to anything, but you could easily find and follow the type of content you like.

If instead each echo chamber needed to set up its own site, with its own sign up and follow process, you weed out a lot of the fast and easy paths to disseminating bad information.

I think the problem is that these huge social network companies actively push people into narrower and more radical subcommunities because those subcommunities probably perform better on whatever trendy metrics they’re focusing on this quarter.

You certainly see that with YouTube. If you watch a short clip criticizing or discussing some radical politician or online personality, for weeks you’ll see a ton of video recommendations for that personality’s actual videos or from his supporters.

Yes. One thing holding back competition is network effects, i.e. if I create a new social network, it isn't very useful until a significant number of people are on board. Fortunately now we have the federated social networking with the Fediverse, so a new network can piggyback on all the users in the Fediverse (and the new network in turn helps grow the Fediverse).

> A decentralized protocol/system like Mastodon allows this kind of partitioning of the social space.

Nitpick: Mastodon is a system, the protocol is ActivityPub.

That's a common misconception. As a social network creator, your job is to create a substantial amount of single player value in addition to multiplayer value, precisely to avoid this sort of chicken and egg problem. If your social network isn't both useful and differentiated (i.e. doing something completely different than FB) even when no other people are using it, then you have a real problem.

That's why when Facebook launched it was basically just a prettier skin over the Harvard student directory, so that way it was valuable even if there were no other people using it.

> That's why when Facebook launched it was basically just a prettier skin over the Harvard student directory, so that way it was valuable even if there were no other people using it.

Facebook also launched in small, elite communities first, which allowed it to exploit network effects in communities that were more manageable than the global internet.

I think that many people make the mistake of thinking of the "social" network as global-level vat filled with a solution of essentially identical nodes, and the "network effect" as a power caused by a product having a high concentration in that solution. In reality, the global "social" network is more like a warehouse full of jars, and smaller players start by building up their product's concentration in a fraction of those jars, instead of all the jars at once.

Far-right tried to do exactly that with gab.ai. Turned out, there are another central authorities besides facebook..

Same goes for YouTube and its algorithmic recommendation system, which subjectively seems much worse to me.

If you program a computer to select social content to drive engagement, you are pretty much programming it to push negativity. Negative, controversial, and divisive content always gets the most attention. The media and entertainment industry have always known this and used it, but never before had the feedback loop been so tight and efficient.

The other side of this pendulum are affects worth mentioning as well-when we talk about the 'algorithmic platform', not long ago there was a discussion about Tumblr and it's recent decision to remove certain types of material: is the very nature of "optimizing for engagement" itself.

Someone came along and shared a tale of how his pre-teen daughter got addicted to blogs and content that promoted and encouraged anorexia on the platform targeted at her because of her likes, follows and interactions and eventually developed an eating disorder and serious anxiety issues. More than one person came along and commented along of how they've seen friends go into similar communities and come out a different person, often times for the worse, with several longstanding and previously healthy relationships irreparably damaged and in some cases wholesale destroyed when the platform optimized for engagement and sends innocent people down destructive rabbit holes.

The other side of the negative, controversial and divisive are the isolating, unhealthy, and dangerous to individuals susceptible to manipulation through plain jane ignorance/not knowing better when presented with material that might not be divisive because of trolls, bullies or agents of political avarice, but encourages destructive tendencies to the uninitiated or ill-equipped. All facilitated because 'the platform' rewards you for likes and shares.

I remember following rabbit holes as a teen but for some reason my natural tendency toward skepticism defended me from the crazier stuff. If anything contact with nutty sorts of conspiracy theories and cult ideologies just made me more of a skeptic. It seems that some people are more prone to getting sucked in.

Obligatory cautionary/curiousity-laden counterpoint to inquire if people are more prone to it now or if we as observers are exposed to more examples of the phenomenon taking place-thanks to social networks and the one-to-many nature of broadcasting our every thought out to the aether?

Maybe it would limit the meddling/damage that can be done. Not that this is very elegant, but it seems better then the suggestion often aired in media and politics which discriminate against free speech ...

This sounds silly (probably because it is) but would be interested what the rest of you thinks. Personally I'd have no problem with totally regulating ad-tech in a way that prohibits targeting users in other countries/jurisdictions. Also facebook should be held responsible in that country so that when a genocide like with the Rohinga happens then the CEO of that entity can answer questions in The Hague

At a certain point, the welfare of society outweighs the freedom of the individual. And you agree with me. Hence the phrase "nearly unlimited".

That's one of the supporting principles of all totalitarian regimes. The problem is who defines what's the "welfare of society" (Normally is "the Party" or "the Leader").

Individual freedom is an inalienable right, and should not be curtailed, unless you're physically hurting others or infringing on their own freedom.

How about if you're planning to hurt others? That's "conspiracy" in most "totalitarian regimes" (that is, societies with laws). Is it a crime to point a loaded gun at someone, or only to pull the trigger?

How about incitement? Also a crime for any government. If someone encourages a murder, are they at least partly responsible for the murder?

Your definitions of freedom and oppression here are trivial mental exercises that fail in real-world application. Who defines what's the "welfare of society"? Depends on the society. You're confusing who defines it with how it is enforced. Governments have a monopoly on violence in the ideal case. Who controls the government? If it's a representative democracy, then it's more or less the will of the people.

I've seen this bullshit argument before, rather a lot. I saw it made when I asked if it was okay for the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville to surround a synagogue, torches in hand (which they did). And people with similarly shallow, trivialized senses of freedom and society argued that such behavior was fine, as long as they stayed on the public sidewalk.

Is enabling fascism a form of fascism? That's a good question for the theorists. As a friend of mine put it, "If you have to ask what the definition of fascism is in order to argue that you're not a fascist, you're a fascist".

The rule of thumb that I go by is "we should allow whatever it is that the United States Supreme Court allows".

The thorny edge cases that you are talking about have been explored in depth by the Supreme Court, and I think that they have made good decisions.

(IE, the good decisions that they have made is to almost always side in favor of free speech).

Further The USA SC is an unrealistic expectation and pointless bar of value when talking about Facebook and international speech.

I am not talking about the time that it would take to decide a case. I am instead using the Supreme Court as a general example of where on the scale of freedom/ censorship that platforms should take.

The location on that scale should be "What would the supreme court do?" I think that they have chosen a good balance, is why.

Actually that's one of the supporting principles of all regimes, period.

If YouTube's algorithm recommends a hateful propaganda video to me, I shouldn't be angry at Pepsi for the preroll ad, they obviously don't specifically endorse that content. But the acceptance of targeted ads implies that endorsement. I just wish we could entirely abolish targeted advertising, it would make the internet overall a better place. And it wouldn't even make the ads less relevant, considering that Amazon and Google apparently can't recommend products I'm interested in even with all the data they've collected.

We essentially need a Google (the framework which they use to algorithmically understand web content) for social networks with a front-end UI for topical mapping.

--

Also to add to your idea, I'd be very interested in a social network that can do that, but also requires real ID's and has some sort of public display of the topics that any user talks about and engages with often.

That way if I'm talking to someone I can gauge if they're really someone I want to be talking to about a particular topic. (can also be used to better map taste to reviews of products/services/companies/etc)

What prevents the separate entities from forging close partnerships?

I don't see how breaking up FB would work in practice. Maybe someone more knowledgeable could clue me in.

Nothing would stop close partnerships but GDPR-style regulation would hopefully stop the most egregiously invasive kinds of data brokerage.

The truth is that regulation is always and everywhere a game of whack a mole, and as long as capitalism exists someone will have to wave the comedy mallet around.

Normally when businesses are split up, they are broken into multiple pieces that each have their own revenue and are viable standalone businesses.

In this case, the ad-selling part of Facebook is the entire business as far as financials are concerned. It's the only material source of revenue for Facebook. If you were to split the ad-selling wing from Facebook, then the "remaining part" would have no revenue. A regulator action along these lines is tantamount to crippling or shutting down the business.

Source: Facebook Q3 2018 earnings show that the only material revenue is advertising at $13.5 billion (Q3 2018): https://investor.fb.com/investor-events/event-details/2018/F...

For comparison, Microsoft reports earnings from many separate lines of business including Windows OEM, Office, Office 365, Enterprise Services, LinkedIn, Azure, server products, Gaming, etc. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2018-Q3...

SO I can agree with this comment.

Heck, FB sucks. Or rather, seeing my supposedly libertarian friends support Tariffs and Wall spending has sucked.

I've been somewhat active on Mastodon for about a fortnight and I'm finding the experience much better. I'm peered up with people with similar interests and it doesn't feel like I'm screaming into the void as is the case on Twitter.

The only authoritarianism here is your call to forcibly break up Facebook to silence speech you don’t like.

This is half a trillion company, after all. The cascade of margin calls will remind you about bear sterns in 2008.

Once whatsapp becomes an independent company, I will probably start getting personal messages from Ford, Nike and KFC.

It will be a great company to invest to and make money from, I agree.

There was a plan in place to split them up, which was only scuttled because Pres. Bush won the election.

Try it now though, when FB is already what, 30% down from ATH.