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.