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Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

369 points by drallison 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
earthly10x 10y ago
That's yet another reason why it's the next AOL.
- jacobush 10y ago
  How I hope this will come to be
anabis 10y ago
I think people are being unreasonably demanding of FaceBook. Fake-news, I can see the problem. However snobbishly trolling with risque art and historical pictures, and slamming FB because the overworked mods were not sophisticated enough to recognize them seems like bullying to me.
- jerluc 10y ago
  How can you find yourself at all sympathetic toward Facebook in this context? This is not about saying Facebook's moderators are doing terribly, the whole point here is to point out the fact that Facebook has a major conflict of interest when it comes to the issue of fake news, and they've avoided admitting that fact entirely.
  - anabis 10y ago
    As I said, I agree with stomping out fake-news. But its like death with thousand cuts. I think the users should drop the demand for art and historical stuff.
- fsloth 10y ago
  "I think people are being unreasonably demanding of FaceBook." Considering the amount of influence Facebook imposes on it's users I don't think so. It's very difficult even for the best of men to be constantly aware of ones cognitive biases. If facebook only shared friend's posts, I would have to agree. But the fact that it intertwines this reality based, emotionally meaningful data with effectively biased noise it gives that biased noise a terrible force. That noise will start to bounce around in ones social circles like in an echo chamber, thus giving it even more credibility. "However snobbishly trolling with risque art and historical pictures, and slamming FB because the overworked mods were not sophisticated enough to recognize them seems like bullying to me." FB feeds false signals from unvetted third parties, while censoring input from trusted parties. Once again, if Facebook was a bulletin board, I would agree. But it's something far more insidious. The problem is that the whole point of Facebook is to convince users that any data they see from third party sources is meaningful and important - to create add based revenue. It creates this effect by utilizing ones friend network. Thus it twists something precious and important into a cognitive attack vector. The problem is - this is not made explicit - and the more ignorant users are of this effect the better it is for their business. I'm not saying they are evil geniuses. They just want to sell adds. It's probably the way it is through constant application of A/B testing. The metrics drive the interface to be ever more convincing. It's a system to create ever more convincing messages from unsolicited third parties. The censoring then actively intercepts messages from vetted parties, adding insult to injury.
NeutronBoy 10y ago
Facebook censor news! Facebook removes human censors Facebook allow fake news on their platform! One a serious note: Fake news is a different problem to news 'bubbles' designed to create positive emotions. Sure they're closely linked, but you can have either without the other. I read this article and it seems to switch between them both. I appreciate the viewpoint but I found it hard to follow.
- rtpg 10y ago
  I feel like this isn't talked about enough. Facebook was curating trending topics! It had dealt with fake news! And we complained, and let the floodgates open. I wonder what fake news traffic looks like when comparing to the date where FB stopped curating.
  - fullshark 10y ago
    Not everyone complained, just conservatives who thought they were being censored.
andrewvijay 10y ago
> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging. Simply incredible. They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional influencers. The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is very powerful. I have seen so many of my friends just vanishing from my feed and almost all of my feed is filled with a couple of pages that I see/interact often. The bubbles are getting incredibly smaller that its very worrying. A very good example that I saw is the `demonetisation of higher denominations` in India. I was shocked to see the amount of ignorance my close friends showed on how the poor people of our country were left to suffer. So many never read any sort of arguments against the govt's move. They read only pro posts. They were quite visibly upset when being told about how 70+ people have died because of this and all that. I saw a bubble being burst with my own eyes. When there is no way to argue then its not a democracy at all. It favors fanatics because hate/fear spreads faster than love/acceptance. Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit.
- mozumder 10y ago
  It's not just Facebook, but also Twitter and Reddit. The Republican guy that shot the pizza place in DC today was driven by a conspiracy theory marketed on Reddit. These social-media sites are literally dangerous.
  - andrewvijay 10y ago
    I dont see this kind of influence from twitter and reddit. The personal feeling in facebook is far far higher than twitter and reddit. I have never used reddit. The active user share is no where close to facebook. Their reactions buttons are very much reflective of people's views.
    - mozumder 10y ago
      Trump tweets lies to 16 million people at a time. The Pizza shop conspiracy was heavily marketed on Reddit, and I'll bet the shooter today got all his info from there. These platforms have a HUGE problem.
mozumder 10y ago
Social media sites always end up turning toxic. The problem is that they give a voice to all the mindless idiots of society. These people should never be given a voice. There is no justification for that. Voices should always be edited and filtered by higher powers. The common opinion is worth nothing, since we already know what it is, so why repeat it?
- jerluc 10y ago
  I think the ultimate issue specifically with Facebook is not that you shouldn't give people voices online, but rather that when the voices form small, tight-knit echo chambers with zero outside challenge, the outcome can be disastrous. I believe this is why the author calls it a "walled wonderland".
  - intoverflow2 10y ago
    To me this is actually an argument against extensive moderation mozumder is suggesting. Echo chamber is still an echo chamber even if you like the sound of the echoes.
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  Chill
- stale2002 10y ago
  Whoa bro, send your authoritarianism elsewhere please. The people with power who try to screw over society for their own benefit always go with the same argument. I know best, so please give me all the power so I can use it to enrich myself.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    You could make an argument that the elites of the past didn't do the worst job. The media was surprisingly independent (i. e.Watergate), and even the candidates for President were – for the most part – quite respectable even when they were decided on in smoke-filled back rooms. I know it's fundamentally undemocratic. But pragmatically it wasn't the worst. Another example would be the trust people (used to) have in the Supreme Court. For most of the 20th century, it was the most rigorous intellectual and moral institution, even though it's the least democratic.
moomin 10y ago
The broader point is that this analysis applies not just to Facebook, but Twitter and Reddit as well. Engagement is a revenue driver and veracity isn't. What's worse, the same applies to regular news as well as aggregators. It always has to a certain extent, but improving technology, changing social attitudes and razor-thin margins have weaponised this. But we're not even finished there: the US and the UK are geographically sorting their populations by political affiliation. Want to see a political bubble? Look outside.
- pjc50 10y ago
  > geographically sorting their populations by political affiliation Gerrymandering doesn't help; but the idea that "all politics is local" is very old, and the reason we have geographical representatives rather than national PR in the first place.
  - moomin 10y ago
    Yes, but it's getting much, much worse. Republicans simply don't want to live in Democrat areas and vice versa. They don't explicitly think that, they just see that certain areas make them feel comfortable and stay there. It's heading to the point where these groups won't even meet.
ivanhoe 10y ago
How is this different from news sites? They also earn the most of money from advertisers and the main criteria for those advertisers are page views. We still completely lack a viable internet business model that would strongly encourage the quality and not quantity...
- tmalsburg2 10y ago
  > How is this different from news sites? I thought that was very clear from reading the article. FB tailors the feed to each user making sure that they don't see things that they may not like. In contrast to that, news sites cater to large segments of the population and they have to in order to be economically successful. The result is that news sites will always present us with some amount of material that is contrary to our personal world view.
  - douche 10y ago
    > FB tailors the feed to each user making sure that they don't see things that they may not like To be honest, they do a really terrible job at this. No matter how many times I flag the Kardashian-story-of-the-week as offensive or inappropriate, they keep showing up in the news feed.
    - jacobush 10y ago
      Maybe it's paid for. Who the heck knows?
  - ivanhoe 10y ago
    Only if you actively dislike the stories that you "don't like". I for instance often comment & discuss on news that I totally disagree with, and I keep seeing them regularly in my newsfeed. Also it depends very much on people that you follow. I follow many people with whom I don't share political views at all exactly because they share different stories with a different perspective than mine. That gives you a better understanding and also works very good to filter faux news, as one side will always approach it sceptically and debunk them quickly...
  - 10y ago
Ygg2 10y ago
I have a huge problem with this article. I don't think anything it says cannot be applied to people using Internet without Facebook or Google. Internet is the filter bubble. Facebook is just its latest upgrade.
- thatfrenchguy 10y ago
  Media is the filter bubble :-)
tmptmp 10y ago
I am not a fan of FB but it must be understood that FB is not a news agency. Another thing to consider here is: FB may be wallgardened, but what about the mainstream news organizations that are sold out to various parties? (e.g. Saudi Islamists have many huge investments/shares in many mainstream news organizations) Many mainstream news organizations are worse than FB when it comes to spread lies and propaganda in the name of news. We can already feel the influence of Saudi money in the US mainstream media. The mainstream US media is suppressing any criticism of Islam under the flimsy arguments like racism and islamophobia. This is already creating a suffocating atmosphere for true liberals. A factor to note here is even though the mainstream news organizations claim that they are liberal and left-leaning, they act like barbaric people when it comes to Islam. I do not see any criticism of Islam (e.g. horrendous treatment of women, homosexuals in Islam) in the mainstream media. Not even the discussion of problematic aspects of Islamic scriptures has any place in the mainstream media. Why should a common man trust the mainstream media news media? Then you see that it's the social media (FB, whatsapp, twitter, reddit etc) that gives the people what they think is needed to be reported/argued/discussed. e.g. FB (along with many other social media sites) has helped lot of people to learn the dangers posed by Islamism. How and why someone as lowly as Trump got elected? This may be very complex topic to analyze as there are many contributing factors but one factor played very important role in his win is the "outright dishonest approach by mainstream news media towards the issue of dangers posed by Islam". Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1] I have learnt over the years to not trust many of the pseudo-liberal news organizations like NY times, Guardian etc. e.g. When Charlie Hebdo people were killed by the Islamists, most of these left-leaning pseudo-liberal news agencies were/are very much partial and acted like outright sold-out to Islamists (Saudi funders) when it comes to deal with news related to the vicious and barbaric aspects of Islam and various Islamic cultures. We must also understand that it's finally the reader's responsibility to filter all news, whether it's from FB or from other established news agencies/organizations. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 10y ago
bionsuba 10y ago
Hideo Kojima keeps getting proved right: But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second. Preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths. You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth."
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
It's interesting when Zuck says that "...We’ve gone from a world of isolated communities to one global community, and we’re all better off for it..." he's exactly wrong. FB has created much more stronger community segmentation. Were you that weird guy in your village who believe aliens built the pyramids? Before, you'd have to interact with those villagers. They'd have to interact with you. Neither of you would like it, but they might be reminded to be more compassionate to others. You might be reminded that the vast majority of people think you're a nut. Both of these effects are socially worthwhile, yet unpleasant. But not anymore. Now you can log into Facebook from the comfort of your house and instantly be in a community of ten thousand other people who think aliens built the pyramids. You can share videos, pictures, links, theories, and generally rant about how stupid most people are. The villagers? Dude. You don't exist anymore. After a few years of that, most of the villagers probably wouldn't even believe people like you exist. After a decade or two the next generation would think of you as being sick, dangerous, and in need of societal intervention. This is a really, really bad thing we're creating. Yes, you can make a cute and useful app that lets people communicate. But don't rationalize and bullshit your way into thinking that somehow you are changing the world. What you're doing is ignoring centuries of mankind learning how the species gets better over time in favor of making a few bucks with advertising. Dressing it up and trying to sell it like it's nirvana is evil.
- Insanity 10y ago
  > bullshit your way into thinking that somehow you are changing the world. Yet in the paragraphs before that you are speaking about how facebook _is_ changing the world. Apart from that minor (mistake?) thing, I do agree with you fully. Using facebook is a good way to surround yourself with people who think and do exactly as you do, which is not beneficial. Same goes for other types of social media, but you can break it easier with for example twitter. You can follow people with different ideas than yourself and be challenged by their view, which is a healthy thing to do. I feel like the treshold to that is lower on twitter than on facebook. But then again, I am not a facebook user myself since a couple of years ago, and that experience might have changed. Though on the flipside, it can also be used for good. Not because you are into some kind of weird belief that will be reinforced by others, but for example imagine that you want to learn esperanto, there might be facebook groups full of people doing the same and it might help you learn it with greater ease.
herbst 10y ago
This is just getting more stupid everday. Facebook is no and never was a news platform. It is a crappy social network and only reflects your inner friend circle. Why anyone and especially facebook should care about fake news is beyond me.
- Pigo 10y ago
  I think people who are so concerned about Facebook policies and practices are way too invested in it, and should focus on spending less time on it. It's just a platform for showing grandma pictures of the kids, providing ex's a means to stalk you, and check out the latest virtue signaling. Anyone using it as a primary news source is doing everything else wrong too. I don't expect Facebook to start restructuring just because people are still looking for a scapegoat.
  - herbst 10y ago
    Exactly. Lets assume the onion is suddenly the main news source for a majority even thought they are open about beeing fake. Where is the problem? If people choose to live in their bubble its their choice.
    - pg314 10y ago
      It becomes a problem if these people following the onion would affect the outcome of an election. Even a democratically elected leader can be a problem (e.g. Mussolini was democratically elected). To function a democracy requires citizens to be well-informed and critical.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - herbst 10y ago
        Half of the U.S. didnt even vote, the majority did not vote for Trump ether. Hitler was democratically elected too btw (at least in austria), but that means nothing because people actually wanted him. I dont see how facebook is to blame here, there are obviously other things going wrong.
SuperPaintMan 10y ago
Just as a curiosity, the feeds shown through FBs various channels are different. I've switched to the mobile site after using the dedicated app and noticed much less random things-tangentially-interesting in my feed but with more of a focus on my immediate friends. It's surprisingly made FB a much more enjoyable medium for me as I can keep tabs on the personal lives of a few close members in a fairly chronological view. Anyone know possibly why there is these differences or can explain exactly what's going on here?
Super_Jambo 10y ago
My personal view is that low regulation advertising is simply not compatible with Western Democracy. If you don't regulate away emotive and brand advertising you're corrupting all the systems that are supposed to regulate our societies (for brevity "advertising" refers to brand and emotive advertising in the below). The basic idea of how information flows & control works in western market driven democratic republics: People -> Government -> Markets <- People The People Elect their Government. The Government controls the rules of "The Market". The People decide what they want in their day to day lives, demand it from actors in "The Market". Those who fulfill these needs are rewarded and copied. Information moves from consumers to market actors rapidly, this information is hard to fake. This is very much how markets that don't have much advertising work, take rice, wheat, logistics. Success demands you provide a better product at lower cost. People can easily compare products so you _must_ compete on price, the companies get very efficient they make stuff people want cheaply. What does advertising do to the above system? Firstly your market starts rewarding the best liars and cheats. Make cheap crappy sewing machines whilst buying out previously good sewing machine brands and running their name into the dirt? FANTASTIC! HUGE REWARD! DO MORE OF THIS. Make soft drinks of dubious health value but persuade people that their consumption is necessary to their social lives? FANTASTIC! HUGE REWARD! If this wasn't bad enough the advertisers are able to give away entertainment and news content for free. Most people do not want to pay for things and aren't aware how subtle and pervasive the lies are. So most people lap this free information up, so now the advertisers hold the purse strings on every media channel out there. The advertisers control the people, the advertisers control the market. Adverts -> Government -> Market <- Adverts. The final negative impact is the huge swaths of people who are working incredibly hard at a net loss for society at large. People who aren't working making things other people want. People who are working at making other people want things they otherwise wouldn't. Wonder why we aren't working 15 hour weeks as predicted by Keynes? Blame all the people making adverts and everyone who's making content funded by those adverts. Fake news & Facebook are the latest and worst examples of this corruption. But really it's just a symptom of the underlying disease. After we've perfected mechanization and economies of scale large profits require you fool people into making bad decisions. Doing this is lucrative and since our markets are evolutionary optimizing machines we are going to see it get worse unless we take action to stop it.
- 10y ago
edblarney 10y ago
I do not accept the author's premise that 'personalized curation' inherently implies 'false news'.
rimantas 10y ago
The urge to flag any post that has "Walled X" in it gets stronger every day.
- oska 10y ago
  Because the premise is invalid or because the ensuing discussion is low quality?
twhb 10y ago
Going on a tangent for a moment, please don't take it as a comment on Facebook, Facebook's culpability, what Facebook should do, etc. Say we have a Facebook alternative X which implements no filter, makes no effort to garner views and shares (let's elide financials for now). Say X, like Facebook, has news published on it, which users may subscribe to and receive. Is it not true that most users will more often follow news sources they're interested in, effectively self-filtering? Is it not true that news sources are financially motivated to appeal to said users by self-filtering, or even manifesting as multiple brands with different biases? And finally, say there's no X, and each news source has its own separate channel to its users - like websites or newspapers. Are both of the above effects not still true? Back to Facebook, we need to figure out what a solution looks like before we tell Facebook which direction to turn.
- fullshark 10y ago
  Sounds like Twitter. We've seen this thought experiment play out!
dpandey 10y ago
A huge part of the story seems to be around confirmation bias (people like reading stuff that supports what they already believe). While confirmation bias is a fact of life, reading fake stories to confirm your bias is not something that anybody wants to do, regardless of how irrational the bias is. Facebook obviously doesn't want to be seen as having influenced the election so they're unwilling to say anything that admits responsibility. But Zuckerberg has shown boldness and maturity as one of the best CEOs time and again, and I'd expect them to start filtering out fake news before the next presidential election. This is not an issue that's going to go away because it's going to get worse and it's going to get a lot more attention now that everyone knows about it. A core part of Facebooks stand is that they don't want to be seen as taking editorial responsibility (they can't afford to). Part of the problem there is precisely defining 'fake news'. For example, if I am a conspiracy theorist and I write a blog about how NASA never landed a rover on Mars, should Facebook delete it? At what point does irrational writing turn to fake news? Anecdotally we know that the article that claimed an informer who reported on clintons emails was murdered was obviously false. Or that the pope didn't endorse trump. The key is to build a framework that allows a company like Facebook to flag these without being seen as editors. It doesn't sound like a problem Facebook can't solve. And it has to. There's no escaping it now because political and public opinion are both going to pressure them. And it'd be unwise to ignore them. UI wise, a clean way to do this might be to put a red banner on a corner of the article with the words 'possibly false'. So Facebook doesn't delete the article, but labels it and you can challenge it if you want. It's going to be hugely discouraging to fakers.
- pyrophane 10y ago
  > But Zuckerberg has shown boldness and maturity as one of the best CEOs time and again In what respect?
  - dpandey 10y ago
    Facebook is the only social network (if you discount Linkedin) from 2005 that's not just existing, but thriving today. All the other social networks that succeeded (except for SnapChat - which also has an incredible CEO) are owned by Facebook. And he made bold bets by acquiring them for unbelievable amounts ($1B Instagram, $18B Whatsapp). While companies like Twitter and Pinterest have essentially stagnated, Facebook keeps growing and growing, and so do all their acquisitions. And they have incredible product momentum despite their size. They have incredible revenue momentum. This is not accidental. Zuck has shown amazing maturity and judgement in not just making the right decisions but convincing those founders to accept his offer. He turned down a billion $ acquisition offer early on, and bought Whatsapp and Instagram in bold bets and tried really hard to buy SnapChat. = boldness in making the right big move = maturity/good judgement in making good decisions
john_mac 10y ago
There really is an alternative - crowd curated news by Virwire - https://virwire.com https://virwire.com - bypasses the whole media bias thing with good old wisdom of the crowds. (shameless plug, I'm the developer)
794CD01 10y ago
Another article that avoids talking about the root cause because it's too unpalatable. Blaming facebook is misguided. Free speech is inherently incompatible with news.
- fullshark 10y ago
  Care to elaborate? I'm willing to accept the idea that market forces / consumer demand is inherently incompatible with the news but free speech?
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    Most people have preferences for belief that prioritize other factors above truth. They are served by false or misleading news. Any attempt to distinguish this "fake news" from real news is contradictory to free speech. In short, people don't want news. News has to be forced on them, which is anti-freedom. In theory, you could also address this by making sure reality aligns with the ideal state of every person who consumes news, but come on.
    - fullshark 10y ago
      Yeah I agree with this. The problem is people want their biases confirmed and don't actually want news. One solution is the gov't "regulating" the news to make sure the people get their informational vegetables which is clearly a violation of freedom of the press/speech.
hanso 10y ago
Arguments occur to be weak. Some reasons are given, but cannot be said to appear to be complete. Verdict: arbitrary gossip.
Poorboyrise 10y ago
Anecdotal : Already ignored the zeitgeist today ? (Person B: reads loud) "Driven by the rise of the so called social media as a source of income and on the opposite, the - for this "use" - offered facts...." B: "That is like eating meat followed by to pee standing up!" A: "Would somebody be able to name it biological programmed ?" B: "Untenable!" (-;
exwebtina 10y ago
"Trump campaign made use of fake news" NPR tracked down one of them - Democrat. http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...
- jwtadvice 10y ago
  The sickening thing this election, and elections prior, was the use of fake news by the Democrats and by the Republicans, in a media industry that gets paid by political campaigns to mass-influence audiences with pre-strategized series of stories. The entire information industry is sick. It's extremely efficient at serving it's customers. It's customers are a maelstrom/cacaphony of interests trying to make broad base emotional and misrepresentative appeals to purposefully uninformed audiences. The information industry does NOT provide a paid service to customers seeking to understand the world. The information industry provides a paid service to industries and parties seeking to influence the world. Trying to run a partisan political line, blaming one political party (who spend incredibly SMALL amounts compared to the other strategically politicizing news) is looking perpendicular to the problem, and falling prey to its continuance. Fake news? The Iraq War justifications. The Jessica Lynch stories. The fake army letters sent by Bush Administration PR firms. The echo chamber from the Obama Administration on the Iran Deal that they've BRAGGED about. The horribly inaccurate coverage of the Syria proxy war. The whitewashing of politically sensitive topics, like the genocide by our allies in Bahrain. Conspiracy theories about Putin and hogwash misinformation like "Putin and Trump are best friends." US coverage of the Chinese economy ("Will China fall?!") while they were slated, instead, to be welcomed into the Special Economic Basket at the IMF. The fake news coverage about the Snowden Documents. It's just... so frustrating to see people promulgate on HN one-sided, politicized and irresponsible finger-pointing, as though propaganda and mass-media disinformation were a partisan issue.
vivekd 10y ago
To be fair, if an individual's primary source of news is facebook, it doesn't seem like such an individual would be all that informed about the world around them with or without facebook.
- ibejoeb 10y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if facebook is a more or less effective force-feeder of perspective than traditional media. The instantaneous, self-affirming discourse that goes on, I think, is probably more compelling.
norea-armozel 10y ago
I think the biggest issue I have with fake/spun news isn't the election but the fact that many fake news articles are used as an excuse by those who believe them for their actions. For example, I've seen all kinds of people buy into the transgender women being sexual predators in public restrooms thing. And every time a spun or fake news article alluding to such shows up they just use it as a bludgeon to say, "see your kind are sick perverts that need help." What's worse is when it's a representative or some other government official that can submit legislation or regulation on such matters. I wish there was a legal obligation for all legislators to provide evidence for their suggested laws the same way police and DAs have to do the same for their actions. Maybe then this wouldn't be a concern for me but the fact that this isn't the case means either I or someone else like me has to constantly take the role as activist to talk these idiots out of the most insane laws they can cook up on such matters. Hell, the same happens to some extent with liberals who are scared of guns, looking for any excuse to submit total bans on firearms. Anyways, this is the real problem with fake/spun news and not the current excuse of Trump's win (dude won because he pulled a smart gamble on the Rust Belt, I just wish the DNC would admit it and move to fix their strategy there).

369 points by drallison 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

earthly10x 10y ago

That's yet another reason why it's the next AOL.

jacobush 10y ago
How I hope this will come to be

anabis 10y ago

I think people are being unreasonably demanding of FaceBook. Fake-news, I can see the problem. However snobbishly trolling with risque art and historical pictures, and slamming FB because the overworked mods were not sophisticated enough to recognize them seems like bullying to me.

jerluc 10y ago
How can you find yourself at all sympathetic toward Facebook in this context? This is not about saying Facebook's moderators are doing terribly, the whole point here is to point out the fact that Facebook has a major conflict of interest when it comes to the issue of fake news, and they've avoided admitting that fact entirely.
- anabis 10y ago
  As I said, I agree with stomping out fake-news. But its like death with thousand cuts. I think the users should drop the demand for art and historical stuff.
fsloth 10y ago
"I think people are being unreasonably demanding of FaceBook." Considering the amount of influence Facebook imposes on it's users I don't think so. It's very difficult even for the best of men to be constantly aware of ones cognitive biases. If facebook only shared friend's posts, I would have to agree. But the fact that it intertwines this reality based, emotionally meaningful data with effectively biased noise it gives that biased noise a terrible force. That noise will start to bounce around in ones social circles like in an echo chamber, thus giving it even more credibility. "However snobbishly trolling with risque art and historical pictures, and slamming FB because the overworked mods were not sophisticated enough to recognize them seems like bullying to me." FB feeds false signals from unvetted third parties, while censoring input from trusted parties. Once again, if Facebook was a bulletin board, I would agree. But it's something far more insidious. The problem is that the whole point of Facebook is to convince users that any data they see from third party sources is meaningful and important - to create add based revenue. It creates this effect by utilizing ones friend network. Thus it twists something precious and important into a cognitive attack vector. The problem is - this is not made explicit - and the more ignorant users are of this effect the better it is for their business. I'm not saying they are evil geniuses. They just want to sell adds. It's probably the way it is through constant application of A/B testing. The metrics drive the interface to be ever more convincing. It's a system to create ever more convincing messages from unsolicited third parties. The censoring then actively intercepts messages from vetted parties, adding insult to injury.

NeutronBoy 10y ago

Facebook censor news! Facebook removes human censors Facebook allow fake news on their platform! One a serious note: Fake news is a different problem to news 'bubbles' designed to create positive emotions. Sure they're closely linked, but you can have either without the other. I read this article and it seems to switch between them both. I appreciate the viewpoint but I found it hard to follow.

rtpg 10y ago
I feel like this isn't talked about enough. Facebook was curating trending topics! It had dealt with fake news! And we complained, and let the floodgates open. I wonder what fake news traffic looks like when comparing to the date where FB stopped curating.
- fullshark 10y ago
  Not everyone complained, just conservatives who thought they were being censored.

andrewvijay 10y ago

> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging. Simply incredible. They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional influencers. The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is very powerful. I have seen so many of my friends just vanishing from my feed and almost all of my feed is filled with a couple of pages that I see/interact often. The bubbles are getting incredibly smaller that its very worrying. A very good example that I saw is the `demonetisation of higher denominations` in India. I was shocked to see the amount of ignorance my close friends showed on how the poor people of our country were left to suffer. So many never read any sort of arguments against the govt's move. They read only pro posts. They were quite visibly upset when being told about how 70+ people have died because of this and all that. I saw a bubble being burst with my own eyes. When there is no way to argue then its not a democracy at all. It favors fanatics because hate/fear spreads faster than love/acceptance. Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit.

mozumder 10y ago
It's not just Facebook, but also Twitter and Reddit. The Republican guy that shot the pizza place in DC today was driven by a conspiracy theory marketed on Reddit. These social-media sites are literally dangerous.
- andrewvijay 10y ago
  I dont see this kind of influence from twitter and reddit. The personal feeling in facebook is far far higher than twitter and reddit. I have never used reddit. The active user share is no where close to facebook. Their reactions buttons are very much reflective of people's views.
  - mozumder 10y ago
    Trump tweets lies to 16 million people at a time. The Pizza shop conspiracy was heavily marketed on Reddit, and I'll bet the shooter today got all his info from there. These platforms have a HUGE problem.

mozumder 10y ago

Social media sites always end up turning toxic. The problem is that they give a voice to all the mindless idiots of society. These people should never be given a voice. There is no justification for that. Voices should always be edited and filtered by higher powers. The common opinion is worth nothing, since we already know what it is, so why repeat it?

jerluc 10y ago
I think the ultimate issue specifically with Facebook is not that you shouldn't give people voices online, but rather that when the voices form small, tight-knit echo chambers with zero outside challenge, the outcome can be disastrous. I believe this is why the author calls it a "walled wonderland".
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  To me this is actually an argument against extensive moderation mozumder is suggesting. Echo chamber is still an echo chamber even if you like the sound of the echoes.
pmyjavec 10y ago
Chill
stale2002 10y ago
Whoa bro, send your authoritarianism elsewhere please. The people with power who try to screw over society for their own benefit always go with the same argument. I know best, so please give me all the power so I can use it to enrich myself.
- matt4077 10y ago
  You could make an argument that the elites of the past didn't do the worst job. The media was surprisingly independent (i. e.Watergate), and even the candidates for President were – for the most part – quite respectable even when they were decided on in smoke-filled back rooms. I know it's fundamentally undemocratic. But pragmatically it wasn't the worst. Another example would be the trust people (used to) have in the Supreme Court. For most of the 20th century, it was the most rigorous intellectual and moral institution, even though it's the least democratic.

moomin 10y ago

The broader point is that this analysis applies not just to Facebook, but Twitter and Reddit as well. Engagement is a revenue driver and veracity isn't. What's worse, the same applies to regular news as well as aggregators. It always has to a certain extent, but improving technology, changing social attitudes and razor-thin margins have weaponised this. But we're not even finished there: the US and the UK are geographically sorting their populations by political affiliation. Want to see a political bubble? Look outside.

pjc50 10y ago
> geographically sorting their populations by political affiliation Gerrymandering doesn't help; but the idea that "all politics is local" is very old, and the reason we have geographical representatives rather than national PR in the first place.
- moomin 10y ago
  Yes, but it's getting much, much worse. Republicans simply don't want to live in Democrat areas and vice versa. They don't explicitly think that, they just see that certain areas make them feel comfortable and stay there. It's heading to the point where these groups won't even meet.

ivanhoe 10y ago

How is this different from news sites? They also earn the most of money from advertisers and the main criteria for those advertisers are page views. We still completely lack a viable internet business model that would strongly encourage the quality and not quantity...

tmalsburg2 10y ago
> How is this different from news sites? I thought that was very clear from reading the article. FB tailors the feed to each user making sure that they don't see things that they may not like. In contrast to that, news sites cater to large segments of the population and they have to in order to be economically successful. The result is that news sites will always present us with some amount of material that is contrary to our personal world view.
- douche 10y ago
  > FB tailors the feed to each user making sure that they don't see things that they may not like To be honest, they do a really terrible job at this. No matter how many times I flag the Kardashian-story-of-the-week as offensive or inappropriate, they keep showing up in the news feed.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    Maybe it's paid for. Who the heck knows?
- ivanhoe 10y ago
  Only if you actively dislike the stories that you "don't like". I for instance often comment & discuss on news that I totally disagree with, and I keep seeing them regularly in my newsfeed. Also it depends very much on people that you follow. I follow many people with whom I don't share political views at all exactly because they share different stories with a different perspective than mine. That gives you a better understanding and also works very good to filter faux news, as one side will always approach it sceptically and debunk them quickly...
- 10y ago

Ygg2 10y ago

I have a huge problem with this article. I don't think anything it says cannot be applied to people using Internet without Facebook or Google. Internet is the filter bubble. Facebook is just its latest upgrade.

thatfrenchguy 10y ago
Media is the filter bubble :-)

tmptmp 10y ago

I am not a fan of FB but it must be understood that FB is not a news agency. Another thing to consider here is: FB may be wallgardened, but what about the mainstream news organizations that are sold out to various parties? (e.g. Saudi Islamists have many huge investments/shares in many mainstream news organizations) Many mainstream news organizations are worse than FB when it comes to spread lies and propaganda in the name of news. We can already feel the influence of Saudi money in the US mainstream media. The mainstream US media is suppressing any criticism of Islam under the flimsy arguments like racism and islamophobia. This is already creating a suffocating atmosphere for true liberals. A factor to note here is even though the mainstream news organizations claim that they are liberal and left-leaning, they act like barbaric people when it comes to Islam. I do not see any criticism of Islam (e.g. horrendous treatment of women, homosexuals in Islam) in the mainstream media. Not even the discussion of problematic aspects of Islamic scriptures has any place in the mainstream media. Why should a common man trust the mainstream media news media? Then you see that it's the social media (FB, whatsapp, twitter, reddit etc) that gives the people what they think is needed to be reported/argued/discussed. e.g. FB (along with many other social media sites) has helped lot of people to learn the dangers posed by Islamism. How and why someone as lowly as Trump got elected? This may be very complex topic to analyze as there are many contributing factors but one factor played very important role in his win is the "outright dishonest approach by mainstream news media towards the issue of dangers posed by Islam". Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1] I have learnt over the years to not trust many of the pseudo-liberal news organizations like NY times, Guardian etc. e.g. When Charlie Hebdo people were killed by the Islamists, most of these left-leaning pseudo-liberal news agencies were/are very much partial and acted like outright sold-out to Islamists (Saudi funders) when it comes to deal with news related to the vicious and barbaric aspects of Islam and various Islamic cultures. We must also understand that it's finally the reader's responsibility to filter all news, whether it's from FB or from other established news agencies/organizations. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M

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bionsuba 10y ago

Hideo Kojima keeps getting proved right: But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second. Preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths. You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth."

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

It's interesting when Zuck says that "...We’ve gone from a world of isolated communities to one global community, and we’re all better off for it..." he's exactly wrong. FB has created much more stronger community segmentation. Were you that weird guy in your village who believe aliens built the pyramids? Before, you'd have to interact with those villagers. They'd have to interact with you. Neither of you would like it, but they might be reminded to be more compassionate to others. You might be reminded that the vast majority of people think you're a nut. Both of these effects are socially worthwhile, yet unpleasant. But not anymore. Now you can log into Facebook from the comfort of your house and instantly be in a community of ten thousand other people who think aliens built the pyramids. You can share videos, pictures, links, theories, and generally rant about how stupid most people are. The villagers? Dude. You don't exist anymore. After a few years of that, most of the villagers probably wouldn't even believe people like you exist. After a decade or two the next generation would think of you as being sick, dangerous, and in need of societal intervention. This is a really, really bad thing we're creating. Yes, you can make a cute and useful app that lets people communicate. But don't rationalize and bullshit your way into thinking that somehow you are changing the world. What you're doing is ignoring centuries of mankind learning how the species gets better over time in favor of making a few bucks with advertising. Dressing it up and trying to sell it like it's nirvana is evil.

Insanity 10y ago
> bullshit your way into thinking that somehow you are changing the world. Yet in the paragraphs before that you are speaking about how facebook _is_ changing the world. Apart from that minor (mistake?) thing, I do agree with you fully. Using facebook is a good way to surround yourself with people who think and do exactly as you do, which is not beneficial. Same goes for other types of social media, but you can break it easier with for example twitter. You can follow people with different ideas than yourself and be challenged by their view, which is a healthy thing to do. I feel like the treshold to that is lower on twitter than on facebook. But then again, I am not a facebook user myself since a couple of years ago, and that experience might have changed. Though on the flipside, it can also be used for good. Not because you are into some kind of weird belief that will be reinforced by others, but for example imagine that you want to learn esperanto, there might be facebook groups full of people doing the same and it might help you learn it with greater ease.

herbst 10y ago

This is just getting more stupid everday. Facebook is no and never was a news platform. It is a crappy social network and only reflects your inner friend circle. Why anyone and especially facebook should care about fake news is beyond me.

Pigo 10y ago
I think people who are so concerned about Facebook policies and practices are way too invested in it, and should focus on spending less time on it. It's just a platform for showing grandma pictures of the kids, providing ex's a means to stalk you, and check out the latest virtue signaling. Anyone using it as a primary news source is doing everything else wrong too. I don't expect Facebook to start restructuring just because people are still looking for a scapegoat.
- herbst 10y ago
  Exactly. Lets assume the onion is suddenly the main news source for a majority even thought they are open about beeing fake. Where is the problem? If people choose to live in their bubble its their choice.
  - pg314 10y ago
    It becomes a problem if these people following the onion would affect the outcome of an election. Even a democratically elected leader can be a problem (e.g. Mussolini was democratically elected). To function a democracy requires citizens to be well-informed and critical.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - herbst 10y ago
      Half of the U.S. didnt even vote, the majority did not vote for Trump ether. Hitler was democratically elected too btw (at least in austria), but that means nothing because people actually wanted him. I dont see how facebook is to blame here, there are obviously other things going wrong.

SuperPaintMan 10y ago

Just as a curiosity, the feeds shown through FBs various channels are different. I've switched to the mobile site after using the dedicated app and noticed much less random things-tangentially-interesting in my feed but with more of a focus on my immediate friends. It's surprisingly made FB a much more enjoyable medium for me as I can keep tabs on the personal lives of a few close members in a fairly chronological view. Anyone know possibly why there is these differences or can explain exactly what's going on here?

Super_Jambo 10y ago

My personal view is that low regulation advertising is simply not compatible with Western Democracy. If you don't regulate away emotive and brand advertising you're corrupting all the systems that are supposed to regulate our societies (for brevity "advertising" refers to brand and emotive advertising in the below). The basic idea of how information flows & control works in western market driven democratic republics: People -> Government -> Markets <- People The People Elect their Government. The Government controls the rules of "The Market". The People decide what they want in their day to day lives, demand it from actors in "The Market". Those who fulfill these needs are rewarded and copied. Information moves from consumers to market actors rapidly, this information is hard to fake. This is very much how markets that don't have much advertising work, take rice, wheat, logistics. Success demands you provide a better product at lower cost. People can easily compare products so you _must_ compete on price, the companies get very efficient they make stuff people want cheaply. What does advertising do to the above system? Firstly your market starts rewarding the best liars and cheats. Make cheap crappy sewing machines whilst buying out previously good sewing machine brands and running their name into the dirt? FANTASTIC! HUGE REWARD! DO MORE OF THIS. Make soft drinks of dubious health value but persuade people that their consumption is necessary to their social lives? FANTASTIC! HUGE REWARD! If this wasn't bad enough the advertisers are able to give away entertainment and news content for free. Most people do not want to pay for things and aren't aware how subtle and pervasive the lies are. So most people lap this free information up, so now the advertisers hold the purse strings on every media channel out there. The advertisers control the people, the advertisers control the market. Adverts -> Government -> Market <- Adverts. The final negative impact is the huge swaths of people who are working incredibly hard at a net loss for society at large. People who aren't working making things other people want. People who are working at making other people want things they otherwise wouldn't. Wonder why we aren't working 15 hour weeks as predicted by Keynes? Blame all the people making adverts and everyone who's making content funded by those adverts. Fake news & Facebook are the latest and worst examples of this corruption. But really it's just a symptom of the underlying disease. After we've perfected mechanization and economies of scale large profits require you fool people into making bad decisions. Doing this is lucrative and since our markets are evolutionary optimizing machines we are going to see it get worse unless we take action to stop it.

10y ago

edblarney 10y ago

I do not accept the author's premise that 'personalized curation' inherently implies 'false news'.

rimantas 10y ago

The urge to flag any post that has "Walled X" in it gets stronger every day.

oska 10y ago
Because the premise is invalid or because the ensuing discussion is low quality?

twhb 10y ago

Going on a tangent for a moment, please don't take it as a comment on Facebook, Facebook's culpability, what Facebook should do, etc. Say we have a Facebook alternative X which implements no filter, makes no effort to garner views and shares (let's elide financials for now). Say X, like Facebook, has news published on it, which users may subscribe to and receive. Is it not true that most users will more often follow news sources they're interested in, effectively self-filtering? Is it not true that news sources are financially motivated to appeal to said users by self-filtering, or even manifesting as multiple brands with different biases? And finally, say there's no X, and each news source has its own separate channel to its users - like websites or newspapers. Are both of the above effects not still true? Back to Facebook, we need to figure out what a solution looks like before we tell Facebook which direction to turn.

fullshark 10y ago
Sounds like Twitter. We've seen this thought experiment play out!

dpandey 10y ago

A huge part of the story seems to be around confirmation bias (people like reading stuff that supports what they already believe). While confirmation bias is a fact of life, reading fake stories to confirm your bias is not something that anybody wants to do, regardless of how irrational the bias is. Facebook obviously doesn't want to be seen as having influenced the election so they're unwilling to say anything that admits responsibility. But Zuckerberg has shown boldness and maturity as one of the best CEOs time and again, and I'd expect them to start filtering out fake news before the next presidential election. This is not an issue that's going to go away because it's going to get worse and it's going to get a lot more attention now that everyone knows about it. A core part of Facebooks stand is that they don't want to be seen as taking editorial responsibility (they can't afford to). Part of the problem there is precisely defining 'fake news'. For example, if I am a conspiracy theorist and I write a blog about how NASA never landed a rover on Mars, should Facebook delete it? At what point does irrational writing turn to fake news? Anecdotally we know that the article that claimed an informer who reported on clintons emails was murdered was obviously false. Or that the pope didn't endorse trump. The key is to build a framework that allows a company like Facebook to flag these without being seen as editors. It doesn't sound like a problem Facebook can't solve. And it has to. There's no escaping it now because political and public opinion are both going to pressure them. And it'd be unwise to ignore them. UI wise, a clean way to do this might be to put a red banner on a corner of the article with the words 'possibly false'. So Facebook doesn't delete the article, but labels it and you can challenge it if you want. It's going to be hugely discouraging to fakers.

pyrophane 10y ago
> But Zuckerberg has shown boldness and maturity as one of the best CEOs time and again In what respect?
- dpandey 10y ago
  Facebook is the only social network (if you discount Linkedin) from 2005 that's not just existing, but thriving today. All the other social networks that succeeded (except for SnapChat - which also has an incredible CEO) are owned by Facebook. And he made bold bets by acquiring them for unbelievable amounts ($1B Instagram, $18B Whatsapp). While companies like Twitter and Pinterest have essentially stagnated, Facebook keeps growing and growing, and so do all their acquisitions. And they have incredible product momentum despite their size. They have incredible revenue momentum. This is not accidental. Zuck has shown amazing maturity and judgement in not just making the right decisions but convincing those founders to accept his offer. He turned down a billion $ acquisition offer early on, and bought Whatsapp and Instagram in bold bets and tried really hard to buy SnapChat. = boldness in making the right big move = maturity/good judgement in making good decisions

john_mac 10y ago

There really is an alternative - crowd curated news by Virwire - https://virwire.com https://virwire.com - bypasses the whole media bias thing with good old wisdom of the crowds. (shameless plug, I'm the developer)

794CD01 10y ago

Another article that avoids talking about the root cause because it's too unpalatable. Blaming facebook is misguided. Free speech is inherently incompatible with news.

fullshark 10y ago
Care to elaborate? I'm willing to accept the idea that market forces / consumer demand is inherently incompatible with the news but free speech?
- 794CD01 10y ago
  Most people have preferences for belief that prioritize other factors above truth. They are served by false or misleading news. Any attempt to distinguish this "fake news" from real news is contradictory to free speech. In short, people don't want news. News has to be forced on them, which is anti-freedom. In theory, you could also address this by making sure reality aligns with the ideal state of every person who consumes news, but come on.
  - fullshark 10y ago
    Yeah I agree with this. The problem is people want their biases confirmed and don't actually want news. One solution is the gov't "regulating" the news to make sure the people get their informational vegetables which is clearly a violation of freedom of the press/speech.

hanso 10y ago

Arguments occur to be weak. Some reasons are given, but cannot be said to appear to be complete. Verdict: arbitrary gossip.

Poorboyrise 10y ago

Anecdotal : Already ignored the zeitgeist today ? (Person B: reads loud) "Driven by the rise of the so called social media as a source of income and on the opposite, the - for this "use" - offered facts...." B: "That is like eating meat followed by to pee standing up!" A: "Would somebody be able to name it biological programmed ?" B: "Untenable!" (-;

exwebtina 10y ago

"Trump campaign made use of fake news" NPR tracked down one of them - Democrat. http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...

jwtadvice 10y ago
The sickening thing this election, and elections prior, was the use of fake news by the Democrats and by the Republicans, in a media industry that gets paid by political campaigns to mass-influence audiences with pre-strategized series of stories. The entire information industry is sick. It's extremely efficient at serving it's customers. It's customers are a maelstrom/cacaphony of interests trying to make broad base emotional and misrepresentative appeals to purposefully uninformed audiences. The information industry does NOT provide a paid service to customers seeking to understand the world. The information industry provides a paid service to industries and parties seeking to influence the world. Trying to run a partisan political line, blaming one political party (who spend incredibly SMALL amounts compared to the other strategically politicizing news) is looking perpendicular to the problem, and falling prey to its continuance. Fake news? The Iraq War justifications. The Jessica Lynch stories. The fake army letters sent by Bush Administration PR firms. The echo chamber from the Obama Administration on the Iran Deal that they've BRAGGED about. The horribly inaccurate coverage of the Syria proxy war. The whitewashing of politically sensitive topics, like the genocide by our allies in Bahrain. Conspiracy theories about Putin and hogwash misinformation like "Putin and Trump are best friends." US coverage of the Chinese economy ("Will China fall?!") while they were slated, instead, to be welcomed into the Special Economic Basket at the IMF. The fake news coverage about the Snowden Documents. It's just... so frustrating to see people promulgate on HN one-sided, politicized and irresponsible finger-pointing, as though propaganda and mass-media disinformation were a partisan issue.

vivekd 10y ago

To be fair, if an individual's primary source of news is facebook, it doesn't seem like such an individual would be all that informed about the world around them with or without facebook.

ibejoeb 10y ago
That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if facebook is a more or less effective force-feeder of perspective than traditional media. The instantaneous, self-affirming discourse that goes on, I think, is probably more compelling.

norea-armozel 10y ago

I think the biggest issue I have with fake/spun news isn't the election but the fact that many fake news articles are used as an excuse by those who believe them for their actions. For example, I've seen all kinds of people buy into the transgender women being sexual predators in public restrooms thing. And every time a spun or fake news article alluding to such shows up they just use it as a bludgeon to say, "see your kind are sick perverts that need help." What's worse is when it's a representative or some other government official that can submit legislation or regulation on such matters. I wish there was a legal obligation for all legislators to provide evidence for their suggested laws the same way police and DAs have to do the same for their actions. Maybe then this wouldn't be a concern for me but the fact that this isn't the case means either I or someone else like me has to constantly take the role as activist to talk these idiots out of the most insane laws they can cook up on such matters. Hell, the same happens to some extent with liberals who are scared of guns, looking for any excuse to submit total bans on firearms. Anyways, this is the real problem with fake/spun news and not the current excuse of Trump's win (dude won because he pulled a smart gamble on the Rust Belt, I just wish the DNC would admit it and move to fix their strategy there).