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> 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 wi

> 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.
    - andrewvijay 10y ago
      I follow him but i have never seen his tweets though. They are big but not as big as facebook especially in the emerging markets. My mum uses FB everyday but she has no idea about reddit whatsoever. She has heard about the name twitter from some news channel. Do you understand the difference?
      - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
        > My mum uses FB everyday Facebook has 1.7 billion users; that is more than Twitter's 313 million and Reddit'a tens of millions [1]. I am agreeing with your point, in this limited case, albeit not with how you're making it. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
        andrewvijay 10y ago
        Yo I'm from India.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      I've read quite a lot about that and I have yet to see anyone advocating for violence. This guy would appear to be a lone nutcase.
- cmurf 10y ago
  Hardly any different than fanatic religions. Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. I think the problem with digital walled gardens is when the filter totally prevents critical thinking and sometimes even the ensuing cognitive dissonance. Most will resolve the dissonance via withdrawal, not changing their minds. But even withdrawal is better than escalation. If the walled garden makes it easy for people to confuse belief and knowledge, it's a problem. If people with kooky beliefs are repressed, it's also a problem.
  - aaronbrethorst 10y ago
    > Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. Yes, but their freedoms stop well before lynching people.
  - usrusr 10y ago
    I think that the key difference between the human filter bubbles of old (in Germany we call that “Stammtisch“, after the table where the village pub's regulars meet to mutually confirm their shared beliefs) and the new filter bubble in social media is that the latter gives more of the appearance of professional journalism, with all the expectations we associate with that. And even if what we see in the social media bubble actually is professional, balanced journalism, it's still a much narrower selection compared to what we saw in the age of mainstream mass media. When we watched TV news or skimmed a newspaper, we would also selectively focus on our favorite topics. But other topics at least momentarily grazed or attention while we mentally tuned out or skimmed for more interesting headlines. With highly personalized online media (and yes, the social media filter bubble is just one method to achieve that) we are losing that weak connection to out-of-focus topics. The worst part is that we do not even notice, because when our personalized digest contains a certain amount of content that would be on general news we feel our desire stay up to date already satiated. If real news (as in what would have made it into mainstream mass media) would somehow disappear from our personalized feeds (leaving them with only the necessarily personalized stuff like niche hobbies, friends and very local content), we would go back to consuming more mainstream news channels again, making us less vulnerable to viral fakes and the like. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a solution since there is no way Facebook could do this (and they would not want anyway).
- camillomiller 10y ago
  Well, what's dangerous is that those sites operate in country where getting a gun is so damn easy
  - pjc50 10y ago
    I'm kind of surprised that the interaction between bonkers US conspiracy politics and actual shootings is so _low_. It's as if the beliefs have a sort of ritual status that "everybody knows" they're not expected to act on.
    - omegaham 10y ago
      The biggest reason is that most of the Dale Gribbles of the world, just like the local college's Revolutionary Socialist club, are all talk. It takes a lot of commitment to actually carry out a shooting or bombing or whatever, and most people are happy to say "This is really bad. Someone oughta do something, and it's good thing that I'm aware of this unlike the rest of the sheeple" while doing absolutely nothing to effect that agenda. The people who actually manage to commit these acts are on an entirely different level of nuts. Pedestrian example: How many gung-ho teenagers talk about joining the military? How many of them actually go through with talking to a recruiter, going to MEPS, and signing on the dotted line? And that's for a cause that is widely accepted by society and confers actual benefits rather than guaranteed violent death or lifelong incarceration in an elaborate concrete box in rural Colorado.
  - philovivero 10y ago
    Did you know in France they allow people to rent trucks? A lot of people don't share your irrational fear of guns.
    - jamespo 10y ago
      What's the primary function of a truck?
      - throwanem 10y ago
- briandear 10y ago
  Any proof it was a "Republican?" The WaPo story made no mention of political party. Do we say "Democrat guy" when referring to the Orlando shooter? He actually was a Democrat. James Holmes who shot up the Colorado movie theater -- also a registered Democrat and even volunteered for the Obama campaign. Andrew Stack who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building -- was a supporter of communism. John Patrick Bedell who shot police officers outside the Pentagon in 2008 -- registered Democrat and subscriber to the 9-11 "Truth" conspiracy, not to mention an extreme hater of Bush/Cheney. My point is that assuming facts not in evidence is exactly the problem. Now everyone who tends to agree with anti-Republican sentiment has their view reinforced by your own fake news. It works both ways. Fake news isn't a 'Republican' thing any more than it's a 'Democrat' thing. Plenty of fake stories circulate in places like Marin County about the 'vaccine conspiracies' or how this political or that has secret deals with "big oil" or whomever. Promoting an unproven narrative of a "Republican" shooter IS fake news unless there is actual evidence otherwise.
  - mozumder 10y ago
    > Any proof it was a "Republican?" Yes. His party registration. https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch
grzm 10y ago
I understand your frustration, though I find statements like Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit frustrating as well. Facebook is attempting to police the community they provide. Online communities, while they've been around in some form since the usenet days, are still a relatively new phenomenon, especially at the scale of billions, and there's a lot of stuff to figure out. What concrete steps would you have Facebook take? What should Facebook's goals be? What tradeoffs are worthwhile that ensure an overall positive experience? And still be a profitable business? Lots of things to balance, in my opinion. I think it's a very interesting and important challenge, but I'm not envious at all of doing it in public under the level of scrutiny that Facebook faces.
- andrewvijay 10y ago
  One concrete step would be to accept that they easily bring war/peace in any country they are allowed to operate. The moral responsibility of such a huge platform where people interact needs to be very high. Pointing fingers or giving sugar coated answers is not acceptable. Facebook's motto should be changed from 'connecting people' to 'connecting people to show only what they like'. See we both are arguing something here that is simply avoided so many times in facebook. That is the whole point. The tradeoff they should be allowing is to allow people to see/confront contradictions. Else its not a debate. Nobody gains knowledge or new thoughts. No one progresses apart from facebook.
  - zdkl 10y ago
    So the bigger question as far as I've come to think of it: is a for profit company compatible with the role facebook is filling?
    - grzm 10y ago
      And if it's not for profit, it will still need income. Where will that income come from?
      - andrewvijay 10y ago
aikah 10y ago
> Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit. Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business. Now to anybody who thinks he can control the internet and what people read/think/discuss I say good luck with that. What kills democracy is people incapable of convincing others that they are being mislead/wrong without insulting them with all possible -ism . What kills democracy is people on both side being so extreme they just can't talk to each other anymore. Facebook isn't responsible for that. The lack of moderation on both political sides is, your politicians are. People need to stop blaming Facebook for everything. Nobody is forced to use their platform , I don't have a Facebook and never go on Facebook.
- zoul 10y ago
  Nobody is forced to use Facebook, but the fact is that for a vast number of people it represents the main source of news. Which, if this source can be easily gamed, is a problem. Since how do you “convince others that they are being misled” if the “alternative” media, plenty represented in their news feeds, discredit the traditional, trustworthy media first? There is a great Guardian Long Read about this very topic: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology...
  - fleitz 10y ago
    Isn't it up to the viewer not the publisher to decide what is trustworthy? Perhaps when major media get so many real stories about democracy wrong and the alt media get them right it's time to stop trusting the people getting things wrong and start trusting the people getting things right. Fuck, even the NYT had to recommit itself to journalism their reporting this year was so bad. 'As we reflect on the momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.' When you publish articles saying that the support of a candidate is more important than reporting the truth... well... people stop trusting you as someone who tells the truth no matter how politically unpopular it is, and start thinking of you as the political hacks that they are, and openly admit to being. 'In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues.'
elorant 10y ago
Ignorance is killing democracy. And that’s not Facebook’s problem. It’s an educational problem. Our education system is failing to instill critical thinking into young people. So they go out in the world and become adults who are easily duped into this idea or that because they lack the skills and the mindset to evaluate opposing viewpoints. Sure the Internet has made things worse, and that’s a bit shocking for those of us who a couple of decades ago hoped that free information would help the world move forward, but it’s hardly the root of the problem.
- blowski 10y ago
  Ignorance has always been a problem. But today it gets much more exposure, and is being manipulated along with anger to screw up democracy.
- amelius 10y ago
  > Ignorance is killing democracy. No it is worse. Misinformation is killing democracy. And that's exactly where Facebook is a problem.
  - mbrock 10y ago
    Basically you might as well say that's why the internet is a "problem".
    - jacobush 10y ago
      Yes, but internet is still decentralised and a pretty NEUTRAL technology. Facebook has a board of directors.
    - grive 10y ago
      Not Internet, the Web. And not the web, but the way we have started using it. We sell analytics and data about people. This data is more valuable the more people there are to sell. This popularity metric will thus foster popularity contests, where inane content and disinformation is put forward. This is the problem.
- 10y ago
Juliate 10y ago
> Simply incredible. It is, but not only for the reason you provide. FB is "inclusive of all perspectives and view points", only when it matches its own US-culture-centered-policy (breast-feeding, nudity is just a very obvious hint).
- raverbashing 10y ago
  This. The US-centric bias (which, even worse, seems to reflect the bias of Mark Z.) of FB is ridiculous
welanes 10y ago
> They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional influencers...The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is very powerful. The same could be said of TV networks, Spotify, Twitter, Google photos. We are the catalyst that turn stories, music, photos into emotional reactions. We control the dials. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to step outside our bubbles. Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it. If we're not seeing it, it's probably because we don't want to. My online shopping recommends groceries for me based on my past purchases. If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible? Facebook is not a window to the world. It's a mirror of ourselves. Perhaps there should be guidelines on how to consume information - and I thought school served that purpose - but to expect a social network (a blank slate that you populate with your interests) to provide one a healthy dose of diverse opinion is to deny ones agency and responsibility.
- caconym_ 10y ago
  People aren't rational. We're riddled with cognitive biases and bugs, and prone to addictive/self-destructive behavior. This is true whether or not you think people are "responsible" for these flaws, whatever that means to you. We should be talking about how our media, including the social kind, can best convey useful, accurate information and stimulate critical thinking. Throwing up our hands and blaming people for being manipulated by algorithms that are basically designed to put them in "bubbles" simply isn't constructive.
- Angostura 10y ago
  > My online shopping recommends groceries for me based on my past purchases. If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible? If your online shopping kept erroneously labelling the donuts as 'low fat and sugar and high in vitamin C' who would be responsible?
  - welanes 10y ago
    Yes, in that case I have been deceived. The equivalent of this concept of 'fake news'. That raises more questions still: - were those donuts in the health aisle or the bakery? - was I able to easily test the vitamin C content by comparing with other products? - why was I trusting this unknown brand of malformed donuts with cheap packaging and flavors like 'purple' for my source of nutrients? Or is the truth that I just wanted to eat donuts and so sought out the brand that made me feel good about doing so?
k-mcgrady 10y ago
>> "Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit." No, people and politicians are killing democracy. People choose to get their news from unreliable sources. They act like they care about an issue yet only know the headline. But they can sign an online petition and post it on social media so they look and feel good. Politicians can openly lie on the largest of stages. When called out on it (which rarely happens) they can stick to their lie despite opposing evidence. And they win because of it. A good example of this was the claim during Brexit that £350m per week would go to the NHS if we left the EU. After the referendum was over one of the leading figures admitted on TV that the claim was BS. When you can win by openly lying to the people, why wouldn't you? I think in situations like this elections/votes should be re-run. My point is that Facebook has nothing to do with democracy. There are plenty of alternative news sources, some that are even reliable, and people instead get their news on Facebook because they don't actually care.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Indeed. Fake news sarts at the top. From today's Mail: "Now for Italexit! Italian Prime Minister resigns after EU referendum loss" https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/805670033875726336 https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/805670033875726336 .. except that the referendum has nothing to do with the EU, it was about internal constitutional change, and Italy is no closer to leaving the EU. People read the Mail and Express because they don't care about whether their news is reliable, reasonable or democratic.
  - TheGirondin 10y ago
    They read the Mail and Express because their counterparts are biased and devoted to pushing narratives, and have little interest in informing anyone when it's inconvenient to their worldview.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      They read the Mail and Express because those papers are biased and devoted to pushing narratives, surely?
ohstopitu 10y ago
funny enough, I have extended family in India that went through the entire process and had lots of issues, but even then, I only heard praises of the govt's efforts, nothing against it. After you mentioned, I decided to look up news against the effort and I realized there was a lot of news against it but it not only didn't appear on my Facebook, but also on Twitter and Reddit (one of the few places where I expected to see opposing view points).
- nileshtrivedi 10y ago
  On the other hand, news (both TV and online) can often be sensationalist. This is from today (regarding Jayalalitha's death): https://twitter.com/krishashok/status/805686249927241728 https://twitter.com/krishashok/status/805686249927241728 Media is going through a severe credibility crisis.
mememachine 10y ago
>openly calling for censorship appalling, you are.
baby 10y ago
> The bubbles are getting incredibly smaller that its very worrying. I'd argue that most people did that before Facebook, and still do that outside of Facebook. It is your responsibility to get surrounded by different kind of people. It's not easy, and most people won't be able to do it, but if you're living in an echo chamber it has always been your fault. (I'll admit that geography sometimes doesn't help. For example I live in Chicago and it's not the best place to meet Trump supporters.)
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
no, all of you idiots CHOOSING to use facebook simply kills democracy for the benefits of yourselves. you're all completely pathetic.
pramit 10y ago
I agree, totally. The echo chambers are killing humanity, one small bubble at a time.

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.
  - andrewvijay 10y ago
    I follow him but i have never seen his tweets though. They are big but not as big as facebook especially in the emerging markets. My mum uses FB everyday but she has no idea about reddit whatsoever. She has heard about the name twitter from some news channel. Do you understand the difference?
    - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
      > My mum uses FB everyday Facebook has 1.7 billion users; that is more than Twitter's 313 million and Reddit'a tens of millions [1]. I am agreeing with your point, in this limited case, albeit not with how you're making it. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
      - andrewvijay 10y ago
        Yo I'm from India.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    I've read quite a lot about that and I have yet to see anyone advocating for violence. This guy would appear to be a lone nutcase.
cmurf 10y ago
Hardly any different than fanatic religions. Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. I think the problem with digital walled gardens is when the filter totally prevents critical thinking and sometimes even the ensuing cognitive dissonance. Most will resolve the dissonance via withdrawal, not changing their minds. But even withdrawal is better than escalation. If the walled garden makes it easy for people to confuse belief and knowledge, it's a problem. If people with kooky beliefs are repressed, it's also a problem.
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  > Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. Yes, but their freedoms stop well before lynching people.
- usrusr 10y ago
  I think that the key difference between the human filter bubbles of old (in Germany we call that “Stammtisch“, after the table where the village pub's regulars meet to mutually confirm their shared beliefs) and the new filter bubble in social media is that the latter gives more of the appearance of professional journalism, with all the expectations we associate with that. And even if what we see in the social media bubble actually is professional, balanced journalism, it's still a much narrower selection compared to what we saw in the age of mainstream mass media. When we watched TV news or skimmed a newspaper, we would also selectively focus on our favorite topics. But other topics at least momentarily grazed or attention while we mentally tuned out or skimmed for more interesting headlines. With highly personalized online media (and yes, the social media filter bubble is just one method to achieve that) we are losing that weak connection to out-of-focus topics. The worst part is that we do not even notice, because when our personalized digest contains a certain amount of content that would be on general news we feel our desire stay up to date already satiated. If real news (as in what would have made it into mainstream mass media) would somehow disappear from our personalized feeds (leaving them with only the necessarily personalized stuff like niche hobbies, friends and very local content), we would go back to consuming more mainstream news channels again, making us less vulnerable to viral fakes and the like. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a solution since there is no way Facebook could do this (and they would not want anyway).
camillomiller 10y ago
Well, what's dangerous is that those sites operate in country where getting a gun is so damn easy
- pjc50 10y ago
  I'm kind of surprised that the interaction between bonkers US conspiracy politics and actual shootings is so _low_. It's as if the beliefs have a sort of ritual status that "everybody knows" they're not expected to act on.
  - omegaham 10y ago
    The biggest reason is that most of the Dale Gribbles of the world, just like the local college's Revolutionary Socialist club, are all talk. It takes a lot of commitment to actually carry out a shooting or bombing or whatever, and most people are happy to say "This is really bad. Someone oughta do something, and it's good thing that I'm aware of this unlike the rest of the sheeple" while doing absolutely nothing to effect that agenda. The people who actually manage to commit these acts are on an entirely different level of nuts. Pedestrian example: How many gung-ho teenagers talk about joining the military? How many of them actually go through with talking to a recruiter, going to MEPS, and signing on the dotted line? And that's for a cause that is widely accepted by society and confers actual benefits rather than guaranteed violent death or lifelong incarceration in an elaborate concrete box in rural Colorado.
- philovivero 10y ago
  Did you know in France they allow people to rent trucks? A lot of people don't share your irrational fear of guns.
  - jamespo 10y ago
    What's the primary function of a truck?
    - throwanem 10y ago
briandear 10y ago
Any proof it was a "Republican?" The WaPo story made no mention of political party. Do we say "Democrat guy" when referring to the Orlando shooter? He actually was a Democrat. James Holmes who shot up the Colorado movie theater -- also a registered Democrat and even volunteered for the Obama campaign. Andrew Stack who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building -- was a supporter of communism. John Patrick Bedell who shot police officers outside the Pentagon in 2008 -- registered Democrat and subscriber to the 9-11 "Truth" conspiracy, not to mention an extreme hater of Bush/Cheney. My point is that assuming facts not in evidence is exactly the problem. Now everyone who tends to agree with anti-Republican sentiment has their view reinforced by your own fake news. It works both ways. Fake news isn't a 'Republican' thing any more than it's a 'Democrat' thing. Plenty of fake stories circulate in places like Marin County about the 'vaccine conspiracies' or how this political or that has secret deals with "big oil" or whomever. Promoting an unproven narrative of a "Republican" shooter IS fake news unless there is actual evidence otherwise.
- mozumder 10y ago
  > Any proof it was a "Republican?" Yes. His party registration. https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch

grzm 10y ago

I understand your frustration, though I find statements like Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit frustrating as well. Facebook is attempting to police the community they provide. Online communities, while they've been around in some form since the usenet days, are still a relatively new phenomenon, especially at the scale of billions, and there's a lot of stuff to figure out. What concrete steps would you have Facebook take? What should Facebook's goals be? What tradeoffs are worthwhile that ensure an overall positive experience? And still be a profitable business? Lots of things to balance, in my opinion. I think it's a very interesting and important challenge, but I'm not envious at all of doing it in public under the level of scrutiny that Facebook faces.

andrewvijay 10y ago
One concrete step would be to accept that they easily bring war/peace in any country they are allowed to operate. The moral responsibility of such a huge platform where people interact needs to be very high. Pointing fingers or giving sugar coated answers is not acceptable. Facebook's motto should be changed from 'connecting people' to 'connecting people to show only what they like'. See we both are arguing something here that is simply avoided so many times in facebook. That is the whole point. The tradeoff they should be allowing is to allow people to see/confront contradictions. Else its not a debate. Nobody gains knowledge or new thoughts. No one progresses apart from facebook.
- zdkl 10y ago
  So the bigger question as far as I've come to think of it: is a for profit company compatible with the role facebook is filling?
  - grzm 10y ago
    And if it's not for profit, it will still need income. Where will that income come from?
    - andrewvijay 10y ago

aikah 10y ago

> Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit. Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business. Now to anybody who thinks he can control the internet and what people read/think/discuss I say good luck with that. What kills democracy is people incapable of convincing others that they are being mislead/wrong without insulting them with all possible -ism . What kills democracy is people on both side being so extreme they just can't talk to each other anymore. Facebook isn't responsible for that. The lack of moderation on both political sides is, your politicians are. People need to stop blaming Facebook for everything. Nobody is forced to use their platform , I don't have a Facebook and never go on Facebook.

zoul 10y ago
Nobody is forced to use Facebook, but the fact is that for a vast number of people it represents the main source of news. Which, if this source can be easily gamed, is a problem. Since how do you “convince others that they are being misled” if the “alternative” media, plenty represented in their news feeds, discredit the traditional, trustworthy media first? There is a great Guardian Long Read about this very topic: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology...
- fleitz 10y ago
  Isn't it up to the viewer not the publisher to decide what is trustworthy? Perhaps when major media get so many real stories about democracy wrong and the alt media get them right it's time to stop trusting the people getting things wrong and start trusting the people getting things right. Fuck, even the NYT had to recommit itself to journalism their reporting this year was so bad. 'As we reflect on the momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.' When you publish articles saying that the support of a candidate is more important than reporting the truth... well... people stop trusting you as someone who tells the truth no matter how politically unpopular it is, and start thinking of you as the political hacks that they are, and openly admit to being. 'In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues.'

elorant 10y ago

Ignorance is killing democracy. And that’s not Facebook’s problem. It’s an educational problem. Our education system is failing to instill critical thinking into young people. So they go out in the world and become adults who are easily duped into this idea or that because they lack the skills and the mindset to evaluate opposing viewpoints. Sure the Internet has made things worse, and that’s a bit shocking for those of us who a couple of decades ago hoped that free information would help the world move forward, but it’s hardly the root of the problem.

blowski 10y ago
Ignorance has always been a problem. But today it gets much more exposure, and is being manipulated along with anger to screw up democracy.
amelius 10y ago
> Ignorance is killing democracy. No it is worse. Misinformation is killing democracy. And that's exactly where Facebook is a problem.
- mbrock 10y ago
  Basically you might as well say that's why the internet is a "problem".
  - jacobush 10y ago
    Yes, but internet is still decentralised and a pretty NEUTRAL technology. Facebook has a board of directors.
  - grive 10y ago
    Not Internet, the Web. And not the web, but the way we have started using it. We sell analytics and data about people. This data is more valuable the more people there are to sell. This popularity metric will thus foster popularity contests, where inane content and disinformation is put forward. This is the problem.
10y ago

Juliate 10y ago

> Simply incredible. It is, but not only for the reason you provide. FB is "inclusive of all perspectives and view points", only when it matches its own US-culture-centered-policy (breast-feeding, nudity is just a very obvious hint).

raverbashing 10y ago
This. The US-centric bias (which, even worse, seems to reflect the bias of Mark Z.) of FB is ridiculous

welanes 10y ago

> They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional influencers...The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is very powerful. The same could be said of TV networks, Spotify, Twitter, Google photos. We are the catalyst that turn stories, music, photos into emotional reactions. We control the dials. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to step outside our bubbles. Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it. If we're not seeing it, it's probably because we don't want to. My online shopping recommends groceries for me based on my past purchases. If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible? Facebook is not a window to the world. It's a mirror of ourselves. Perhaps there should be guidelines on how to consume information - and I thought school served that purpose - but to expect a social network (a blank slate that you populate with your interests) to provide one a healthy dose of diverse opinion is to deny ones agency and responsibility.

caconym_ 10y ago
People aren't rational. We're riddled with cognitive biases and bugs, and prone to addictive/self-destructive behavior. This is true whether or not you think people are "responsible" for these flaws, whatever that means to you. We should be talking about how our media, including the social kind, can best convey useful, accurate information and stimulate critical thinking. Throwing up our hands and blaming people for being manipulated by algorithms that are basically designed to put them in "bubbles" simply isn't constructive.
Angostura 10y ago
> My online shopping recommends groceries for me based on my past purchases. If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible? If your online shopping kept erroneously labelling the donuts as 'low fat and sugar and high in vitamin C' who would be responsible?
- welanes 10y ago
  Yes, in that case I have been deceived. The equivalent of this concept of 'fake news'. That raises more questions still: - were those donuts in the health aisle or the bakery? - was I able to easily test the vitamin C content by comparing with other products? - why was I trusting this unknown brand of malformed donuts with cheap packaging and flavors like 'purple' for my source of nutrients? Or is the truth that I just wanted to eat donuts and so sought out the brand that made me feel good about doing so?

k-mcgrady 10y ago

>> "Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit." No, people and politicians are killing democracy. People choose to get their news from unreliable sources. They act like they care about an issue yet only know the headline. But they can sign an online petition and post it on social media so they look and feel good. Politicians can openly lie on the largest of stages. When called out on it (which rarely happens) they can stick to their lie despite opposing evidence. And they win because of it. A good example of this was the claim during Brexit that £350m per week would go to the NHS if we left the EU. After the referendum was over one of the leading figures admitted on TV that the claim was BS. When you can win by openly lying to the people, why wouldn't you? I think in situations like this elections/votes should be re-run. My point is that Facebook has nothing to do with democracy. There are plenty of alternative news sources, some that are even reliable, and people instead get their news on Facebook because they don't actually care.

pjc50 10y ago
Indeed. Fake news sarts at the top. From today's Mail: "Now for Italexit! Italian Prime Minister resigns after EU referendum loss" https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/805670033875726336 https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/805670033875726336 .. except that the referendum has nothing to do with the EU, it was about internal constitutional change, and Italy is no closer to leaving the EU. People read the Mail and Express because they don't care about whether their news is reliable, reasonable or democratic.
- TheGirondin 10y ago
  They read the Mail and Express because their counterparts are biased and devoted to pushing narratives, and have little interest in informing anyone when it's inconvenient to their worldview.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    They read the Mail and Express because those papers are biased and devoted to pushing narratives, surely?

ohstopitu 10y ago

funny enough, I have extended family in India that went through the entire process and had lots of issues, but even then, I only heard praises of the govt's efforts, nothing against it. After you mentioned, I decided to look up news against the effort and I realized there was a lot of news against it but it not only didn't appear on my Facebook, but also on Twitter and Reddit (one of the few places where I expected to see opposing view points).

nileshtrivedi 10y ago
On the other hand, news (both TV and online) can often be sensationalist. This is from today (regarding Jayalalitha's death): https://twitter.com/krishashok/status/805686249927241728 https://twitter.com/krishashok/status/805686249927241728 Media is going through a severe credibility crisis.

mememachine 10y ago

>openly calling for censorship appalling, you are.

baby 10y ago

> The bubbles are getting incredibly smaller that its very worrying. I'd argue that most people did that before Facebook, and still do that outside of Facebook. It is your responsibility to get surrounded by different kind of people. It's not easy, and most people won't be able to do it, but if you're living in an echo chamber it has always been your fault. (I'll admit that geography sometimes doesn't help. For example I live in Chicago and it's not the best place to meet Trump supporters.)

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

no, all of you idiots CHOOSING to use facebook simply kills democracy for the benefits of yourselves. you're all completely pathetic.

pramit 10y ago

I agree, totally. The echo chambers are killing humanity, one small bubble at a time.