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At the root principle of the article, I agree that a platform which spreads erroneous information should be held accountable in some fashion - but it's the foll
by 6stringmerc 10y ago
At the root principle of the article, I agree that a platform which spreads erroneous information should be held accountable in some fashion - but it's the following kind of set up that is troublesome:
>In addition to doing more to weed out lies and false propaganda, Facebook could tweak its algorithm so that it does less to reinforce users’ existing beliefs, and more to present factual information. This may seem difficult, but perhaps the Silicon Valley billionaires who helped create this problem should take it on before setting out to colonize Mars.
Right, in principle Facebook should do this for the benefit of society, but on a practical consideration, would becoming a highly-involved arbiter of content be good for making money? Facebook isn't under any legal mandate to act as a referee - consider it unfortunate if you like, but I kind of shrug it off. Individual user responsibility should be a noteworthy counter-point, because as trite as it might sound, if Facebook is rife with issues and rot, then going there is probably not a good idea. If they happen to make more money by allowing junk in their system, then that's their decision to make. Eventually will it cost them users?
>The company’s business model, algorithms and policies entrench echo chambers and fuel the spread of misinformation.
If they want to serve up a garbage buffet and make a profit from it, I can't sit back and scold them too hard, I just have to excuse myself. It's not just on Facebook - commenting communities of any sort tend to generate clusters of like-minded folk. "Right" thinking or "wrong" thinking. Personally I don't walk around downtown digging through the trash for my lunch, and I don't get my worldview from Facebook. I do keep up with some people, but can count my weekly minutes on the site with two hands pretty much. Just my approach, YMMV.
- heurist 10y agoFacebook can do whatever it wants. Personally, if facebook does not stop the spread of false information I will stop using their services and will do my best to convince my friends to stop using their services. If they want to create harmful social bubbles for profit that's their prerogative, but I won't be part of it.
- randomgyatwork 10y agoIf you use facebook, you've been in a harmful social bubble since the beginning.... you are only realizing it now
- Veen 10y agoHardly anyone does this, but it's certainly possible to follow a varied set of people on Facebook. Left, right, non-political, religious, irreligious, American, European, Trump-loving, Hillary-venerating, and so on. Nothing stops a person from creating a set of signals that Facebook will use to generate a mixed content feed that's representative of a broad range of views. The problem is that almost no one uses Facebook like that.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoIn my experience, Facebook in 2016 is akin to what AOL was in 1994 - to a large swath of people, Facebook is essentially "the internet" they use. Kind of subscribing to cable TV but only watching one station. It's not too far out of the realm of thought that bubbles exist because people seek them out and like having a bubble (notions of bubbles being good/bad outside the scope of this). For a while early on, I recall enjoying Facebook when it was .edu email addresses only, because it was a good way to keep tabs on people I went to upper education with and parted ways with shortly after. It was a nice contact resource in that regard. Now the platform is a behemoth, the AOL thing.
- heurist 10y agoI had a feeling Trump was going to win due to the viewpoints I was seeing on Facebook... but I trusted the polls, which were in their own bubble that I didn't recognize.
- Pokepokalypse 10y agoHow will you even know about the spread of false information if you're in your own bubble of what you believe to be "non-false information"?