Re:Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site le...
by munificent on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @12:30PM
(#23325749)
> I sure am tired of hearing about "the fundamental flaw" in empowering people.
I'm all for empowering people. But adding personally controlled user agents to Facebook is a fundamentally flawed solution. There is no path for that to succeed because the primary content users will want to filter is ads, and the primary content Facebook needs people to see is ads. Thus user agents are an existential threat to Facebook and since Facebook controls all the content, they will ensure user agents are not allowed.
The core business model does not align Facebook's incentives with user's incentives. You can't fix that at the content level.
I'm all for empowering people. But adding personally controlled user agents to Facebook is a fundamentally flawed solution. There is no path for that to succeed because the primary content users will want to filter is ads, and the primary content Facebook needs people to see is ads. Thus user agents are an existential threat to Facebook and since Facebook controls all the content, they will ensure user agents are not allowed.
The core business model does not align Facebook's incentives with user's incentives. You can't fix that at the content level.