I'm no fan of Facebook, and I think they've made a lot of unethical decisions, but I also feel like they're becoming this massive scapegoat for the social discomfort caused by the giant mirror that information technology has held up to human nature. Yes, the algorithms have had some horrifying effects, and yes, they have intentionally engineered their products to be addictive, and they deserve to be criticized and punished for those behaviors, but we also need to take a hard look at ourselves and admit that some of this is a consequence of the darker corners of the human heart. It's not like we didn't have holy wars and genocide before Facebook. To some degree we are all complicit in this problem. I'm not trying to be a defeatist and say that we shouldn't try to improve things, but if we adopt this attitude of "let's just abolish the tech giants and everything will be great," we're letting ourselves off the hook and I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.

The counterpoint to this is that ‘human nature’ never had to deal with the addictive algorithms designed to keep people viewing Ads. Obviously this applies to Youtube and others too.

It doesn’t take a long hard look at ourselves to acknowledge that we are quite vulnerable to manipulation or addiction.

Those vulnerabilities are not going anywhere.

I suggest that there is no value in somehow blaming ourselves for them and that what we need to do is make good decisions about how we shape our world to support humans as we are rather than to maximize exploitation of our weaknesses.

It’s quite straightforward to acknowledge that things like holy wars based on ideology have been with us for a long time.

It’s a straw man to suggest that anyone is saying “let’s abolish the tech giants and everything will be great”.

You say: “I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.”

Can you articulate what this deeper problem actually is?

I'm not suggesting "blaming" ourselves, per se. Sitting around and wallowing in our own guilt won't accomplish anything. But I do think we should accept that our own nature is part of what has led to this and be honest about the problem. I couldn't have put it better than you did: we should think about how to support humans as they are.

I'm not sure what I said is a straw man. I was being a little flip, but I think it's a normal human impulse to blame "that thing" or "those people" and to feel that a problem can be fixed by just eliminating whatever that is. Maybe nobody is explicitly saying "if we eliminate Facebook the problem will go away," but I do think some people implicitly feel that way.

The deeper problem, in my view, is that network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it).

I agree with almost everything you say here.

What I’m not sure about is how we are not being honest about the problem?

I agree with this: “network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it)”

Except that it seems over-general. I think this is feature of some social network designs, but I don’t see how we can say it applies to all ‘network technogies’.

To me that just leads back to there being a problem with how Facebook is designed.

It is designed to maximize engagement so they can sell ads - I.e. they profit from this disinhibition.

I think we largely agree on what’s happening, but what I don’t yet understand is how you conclude that Facebook is a scapegoat.

I consider them a scapegoat in the sense that they're sort of a catchall target for negative feelings about these problems. I also think they're not a scapegoat insofar as they're responsible for their actual bad practices. It's not really either-or for me: they're blamed for things they really are responsible for, but I also think they catch a lot of flak in general for things that are largely beyond their control. I'd like them to be accountable for the bad things they actually do while keeping our eye on the broader problem, which I'm not as convinced as you are that everyone is doing already.

Hmm,

Honestly that doesn’t really clarify it for me.

If the broader problem is:

“network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition”

Then Facebook is by far the most significant manifestation of that, followed by YouTube and Twitter who are also criticized a great deal.

What would it look like to address this broader problem without actually focussing on where it is manifest?

I think I might be able to see more easily what you are getting at if you could give an example of something you see as beyond Facebook’s control, but for which they are catching flak?

Is there anything unique to the tools that Facebook provides?

It seems like most of the stuff they do has been provided by competitors at one time or another, or could be done better outside of the constraints of facebook’s ‘engagement’ model.

The network effect is unique to Facebook. No competitor is going to beat it until they get the same number of users.

Most people have no issue going through FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc on a regular basis.

But when you say we should start using alternative tools in parallel to FB so that we contribute to grow these networks and reduce our dependence, then it's suddenly a huge cumbersome task.

Let's admit that the vast majority of users is actually ok with what FB does with their data. Showing concerns about privacy without actually doing anything is a cheap way of looking good.

Sure, but we aren’t talking about ‘beating’ Facebook. We’re talking about why people work there.

Perhaps some of the things Facebook does can be done better by other companies.

They don’t need to ‘beat’ Facebook as a whole, and if the engineers motivations are the features they work on, perhaps they can get more satisfaction elsewhere.

Anecdata but "substantial amounts of $$$" can be found at a number of companies that are not Facebook. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/