15 ms·

> They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional influencers...The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is very powerful. Th

by 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?
- pjc50 10y ago
  Nutritional information is one of those areas dominated by "fake news", or at least overhyped dietary advice in the popular press. See e.g. http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ I wouldn't blame people for giving up trying to make sense of what foods are currently considered beneficial or harmful.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Um, we are talking about the nutrition facts label printed by the manufacturer, not the various stories the media hypes up about the nutrients themselves. Even when the manufacturer posts the claim on the packaging, they have to use specific language indicating the claims haven't been verified by the FDA.
flueedo 10y ago
I've been off of facebook for years now, but I doubt nowadays most people see the "like" buttons as an instrument for teaching the website algorithms to help keep themselves open minded. (Assuming this stratategy indeed works, since it's known this isn't the only variable they consider) And I don't think this isn't the purpose of feed 'customization' either. It's about making money by assuring advertisers that their ads will be paid some attention to. In order to do that, they need to try and keep people's eyeballs glued to the screen as much as possible.
- GotAnyMegadeth 10y ago
  As a relatively heavy FB user, I use the like button as a "I've read this" button for my friend's comments and statuses, and not at all otherwise.
  - paulryanrogers 10y ago
    Perhaps FB would benefit from a check or looks-interesting reaction
    - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      It's a trap! Instead of reevaluating how our simplified models damage discourse and complex thinking, further simplifying human interaction to better fit over-simplified models only further skews us from the complex reality that our fake world obscures from us. Ex: many journalists "favorite" tweets to refer back to later for their stories, but an uninformed observer might draw the wrong conclusions from seeing a New York Times journalist's twitter profile "favoriting" incendiary tweets by white supremacists or ISIS propaganda outlets.
  - pimlottc 10y ago
    So basically you "Like" everything you read? I've heard this is overwhelming common behavior in some southeast Asian companies, like Thailand, if I remember correctly.
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
Like Uncle Ben once said: "with great power comes great responsibility."
- SuperPaintMan 10y ago
  Thank god for Health Canada enforcing accurate nutrition labels on his products
zeroer 10y ago
> If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible? You? Your doctors? Jesus. What kind of world devoid of personal responsibility do you live in?
- elgenie 10y ago
  Congratulations, you have successfully answered a rhetorical question in the way that its author intended, thereby making the intended point. Well done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
- steenreem 10y ago
  Himself, that's exactly what he's saying.
pjc50 10y ago
> Page that challenges your beliefs .. and doesn't insult the reader or insult their intelligence. That's the hard bit. The stuff that goes round on facebook is often both hyper-partisan and low quality, because people are sharing it for group-belonging purposes not for use as facts. I'm having this trouble with some of the causes that I agree with; how do I say "I see what you're trying to do and we're on the same side, but this junk is not helping?"
- noxToken 10y ago
  > The stuff that goes round on facebook is often both hyper-partisan and low quality, because people are sharing it for group-belonging purposes not for use as facts. This is only tangentially related. This is why the pieces lambasting Tomi Lahran saying that views like here don't deserve a platform are, in my opinion, wrong.[0] It was the 2nd second result after searching for that interview, and I've seen it shared around the Internet. When opposing views that aren't inciting riots, violence, etc. aren't allowed to speak, all you get in an echo chamber of things you want to hear[1]. If everyone agrees, there is no incentive for you to examine your beliefs[2]. [0]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trevor-noahs-interview-with-tomi-lahren-is-a-perfect_us_58425f75e4b0b93e10f8e231 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trevor-noahs-interview-w... [1]: https://t.co/6lqMSTJNuj https://t.co/6lqMSTJNuj [2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/#JohStuMilHarPri https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/#JohStuMil...
  - pjc50 10y ago
    > inciting violence I don't think there's actually a clear dividing line for this, especially when we consider "dog whistle politics" and things like the notorious "blood libel", Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc; there's definitely a category of material which is both false/misleading and intended to incite prejudice against a particular group - but stops short of mentioning actual violence.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      What about material that's true but is also hateful? The thing I've discovered is that a lot of "racist" and "hateful" blogs tend to be reasonably accurate - often more so than the mainstream media on their topics of interest. Typical facts they like to discuss: - Black on white crime is far more common than the reverse, and far more common than police shootings. - Black people underperform whites educationally and this is probably NOT due to things like poverty (e.g. on the SAT, blacks with $200k/year family income perform about the same as whites with $20k income). - Muslim immigrants in Europe seem to commit a lot of sexual violence against white women, and European police often play it down to avoid seeming racist. These are all true facts (I can cite sources if you like, but we shouldn't derail the discussion for it), but sites that spread this stuff are very often quite hateful. It would be great if the "bad guys" were all liars and the "good guys" were completely truthful. But in reality that's just not the case. See also: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-conspiracy-culture-and-the-alt-right/ http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co...
Spooky23 10y ago
Facebook wants to be a window on the world. But it's delivery is a takeout window that delivers Big Macs and potato chips.
- vixen99 10y ago
  its delivery
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    That's not a bad thing, but they've chosen to become a delivery truck for the id. That's fine, but will ultimately kill the brand. Good riddance.
    - wccrawford 10y ago
      They're correcting your grammar.
grive 10y ago
> Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it. That's precisely the problem with it. I'd like to read more on extremists groups and see how and why they exists, what kind of people they are, why do they think the way they do, what their fight is in our society. This is the first step to build a dialog. However, "liking" their pages is out of question. I will not support them, I will not help them further their propaganda, their hateful rhetoric. I would like to understand them, but in no way do I want to support them. In that sense, Facebook actively discourage dialog and openness to other ideas, because the only way to receive these ideas is also to make them more relevant than they ought to be. There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population, other ways of life within our own society. In that regard, Facebook is useless because it is not interesting for their business. Reddit can work, but Reddit also has unpenetrable walls sometimes. However, it is already much better than Facebook or Google.
- supergarfield 10y ago
  If liking is the problem, you can usually follow pages without liking them. You can also make your following list private. However I think it's unclear what you will get from following a real extremist group, except if you like to see repetitive propaganda. Following a somewhat-reputable news source that's usually opposed to your views may be a better solution.
  - icantdrive55 10y ago
    Or just get into the habit of deactivating. I really thought FB would be gone by now. What have I gotten out of Facebook? I'm just more cynical of people, and the world. People can claim that about a lot of sites, but FB brings the worst out of me. I don't think I'm alone. It just takes 10 clicks to deactivate. (As a developer, I despise websites that use a FB login.)
- welanes 10y ago
  > There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population Twitter is the app for that. Set up lists of different individuals so you can switch between different viewpoints in two clicks. No need to follow anybody on your list. It's actually fascinating to do so. Watch 'the reality' of a current or political event contort as you switch from 'Liberal', 'Conservative', 'Regressive Left', 'Alt-Right' streams of thought. In fact, that would make an interesting website. A Twitter version of http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed .
summerdown2 10y ago
> If we're not seeing it, it's probably because we don't want to. This is the big problem for me. I have struggled with Facebook for years because I really do want my friend's unfiltered feeds. In the end it just became impossible. I would have conversation after conversation where people told me they had posted something but I just never got to see it.
bdrool 10y ago
> Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it. Yeah ... not gonna happen. I already use private browsing windows to read anything even remotely controversial. Not going to start building a publicly visible history of 'liking' things that could be seen negatively. Call me paranoid, but I can see that happening some day in a job interview or something similar. I love my freedom, and that includes being able to read whatever I want without being accused of wrongthink at some point in the future. Facebook isn't getting any data from me on that front.
tripzilch 10y ago
> Facebook makes it incredibly easy to step outside our bubbles. pfft. only if you don't compare it to any other non-walled-garden online communities. it's places like HN (and many similar tiny islands of interest), I come for the comp.science news, and because of that it does NOT actively select for other criteria (just inherent bias) and I meet people with wildly different views than my own, and I can even expect to have a decent dialogue. i don't even need to "like" their political values, but i can still upvote their tech expertise. [ edit: LOL, I hadn't read dang's announcement about HN's political detox week, which pretty much runs exactly counter to what I just said, haha :) though I welcome the experiment and appreciate the irony of circumstance :-) ] check out the "general discussion" subforum on any random webforum community on a topic that interests you. it's all already intersecting by default! and it's Facebook (Google too) taking a very active role crystallising the bubbles into walls. Don't just try to step outside your personal Facebook-bubble, for it's actively working against you. Step outside the big bubble of Facebook itself.

by welanes 10y ago

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?
pjc50 10y ago
Nutritional information is one of those areas dominated by "fake news", or at least overhyped dietary advice in the popular press. See e.g. http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ I wouldn't blame people for giving up trying to make sense of what foods are currently considered beneficial or harmful.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Um, we are talking about the nutrition facts label printed by the manufacturer, not the various stories the media hypes up about the nutrients themselves. Even when the manufacturer posts the claim on the packaging, they have to use specific language indicating the claims haven't been verified by the FDA.

flueedo 10y ago

I've been off of facebook for years now, but I doubt nowadays most people see the "like" buttons as an instrument for teaching the website algorithms to help keep themselves open minded. (Assuming this stratategy indeed works, since it's known this isn't the only variable they consider) And I don't think this isn't the purpose of feed 'customization' either. It's about making money by assuring advertisers that their ads will be paid some attention to. In order to do that, they need to try and keep people's eyeballs glued to the screen as much as possible.

GotAnyMegadeth 10y ago
As a relatively heavy FB user, I use the like button as a "I've read this" button for my friend's comments and statuses, and not at all otherwise.
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  Perhaps FB would benefit from a check or looks-interesting reaction
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    It's a trap! Instead of reevaluating how our simplified models damage discourse and complex thinking, further simplifying human interaction to better fit over-simplified models only further skews us from the complex reality that our fake world obscures from us. Ex: many journalists "favorite" tweets to refer back to later for their stories, but an uninformed observer might draw the wrong conclusions from seeing a New York Times journalist's twitter profile "favoriting" incendiary tweets by white supremacists or ISIS propaganda outlets.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  So basically you "Like" everything you read? I've heard this is overwhelming common behavior in some southeast Asian companies, like Thailand, if I remember correctly.

aaronbrethorst 10y ago

Like Uncle Ben once said: "with great power comes great responsibility."

SuperPaintMan 10y ago
Thank god for Health Canada enforcing accurate nutrition labels on his products

zeroer 10y ago

> If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible? You? Your doctors? Jesus. What kind of world devoid of personal responsibility do you live in?

elgenie 10y ago
Congratulations, you have successfully answered a rhetorical question in the way that its author intended, thereby making the intended point. Well done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
steenreem 10y ago
Himself, that's exactly what he's saying.

pjc50 10y ago

> Page that challenges your beliefs .. and doesn't insult the reader or insult their intelligence. That's the hard bit. The stuff that goes round on facebook is often both hyper-partisan and low quality, because people are sharing it for group-belonging purposes not for use as facts. I'm having this trouble with some of the causes that I agree with; how do I say "I see what you're trying to do and we're on the same side, but this junk is not helping?"

noxToken 10y ago
> The stuff that goes round on facebook is often both hyper-partisan and low quality, because people are sharing it for group-belonging purposes not for use as facts. This is only tangentially related. This is why the pieces lambasting Tomi Lahran saying that views like here don't deserve a platform are, in my opinion, wrong.[0] It was the 2nd second result after searching for that interview, and I've seen it shared around the Internet. When opposing views that aren't inciting riots, violence, etc. aren't allowed to speak, all you get in an echo chamber of things you want to hear[1]. If everyone agrees, there is no incentive for you to examine your beliefs[2]. [0]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trevor-noahs-interview-with-tomi-lahren-is-a-perfect_us_58425f75e4b0b93e10f8e231 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trevor-noahs-interview-w... [1]: https://t.co/6lqMSTJNuj https://t.co/6lqMSTJNuj [2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/#JohStuMilHarPri https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/#JohStuMil...
- pjc50 10y ago
  > inciting violence I don't think there's actually a clear dividing line for this, especially when we consider "dog whistle politics" and things like the notorious "blood libel", Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc; there's definitely a category of material which is both false/misleading and intended to incite prejudice against a particular group - but stops short of mentioning actual violence.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    What about material that's true but is also hateful? The thing I've discovered is that a lot of "racist" and "hateful" blogs tend to be reasonably accurate - often more so than the mainstream media on their topics of interest. Typical facts they like to discuss: - Black on white crime is far more common than the reverse, and far more common than police shootings. - Black people underperform whites educationally and this is probably NOT due to things like poverty (e.g. on the SAT, blacks with $200k/year family income perform about the same as whites with $20k income). - Muslim immigrants in Europe seem to commit a lot of sexual violence against white women, and European police often play it down to avoid seeming racist. These are all true facts (I can cite sources if you like, but we shouldn't derail the discussion for it), but sites that spread this stuff are very often quite hateful. It would be great if the "bad guys" were all liars and the "good guys" were completely truthful. But in reality that's just not the case. See also: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-conspiracy-culture-and-the-alt-right/ http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co...

Spooky23 10y ago

Facebook wants to be a window on the world. But it's delivery is a takeout window that delivers Big Macs and potato chips.

vixen99 10y ago
its delivery
- Spooky23 10y ago
  That's not a bad thing, but they've chosen to become a delivery truck for the id. That's fine, but will ultimately kill the brand. Good riddance.
  - wccrawford 10y ago
    They're correcting your grammar.

grive 10y ago

> Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it. That's precisely the problem with it. I'd like to read more on extremists groups and see how and why they exists, what kind of people they are, why do they think the way they do, what their fight is in our society. This is the first step to build a dialog. However, "liking" their pages is out of question. I will not support them, I will not help them further their propaganda, their hateful rhetoric. I would like to understand them, but in no way do I want to support them. In that sense, Facebook actively discourage dialog and openness to other ideas, because the only way to receive these ideas is also to make them more relevant than they ought to be. There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population, other ways of life within our own society. In that regard, Facebook is useless because it is not interesting for their business. Reddit can work, but Reddit also has unpenetrable walls sometimes. However, it is already much better than Facebook or Google.

supergarfield 10y ago
If liking is the problem, you can usually follow pages without liking them. You can also make your following list private. However I think it's unclear what you will get from following a real extremist group, except if you like to see repetitive propaganda. Following a somewhat-reputable news source that's usually opposed to your views may be a better solution.
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  Or just get into the habit of deactivating. I really thought FB would be gone by now. What have I gotten out of Facebook? I'm just more cynical of people, and the world. People can claim that about a lot of sites, but FB brings the worst out of me. I don't think I'm alone. It just takes 10 clicks to deactivate. (As a developer, I despise websites that use a FB login.)
welanes 10y ago
> There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population Twitter is the app for that. Set up lists of different individuals so you can switch between different viewpoints in two clicks. No need to follow anybody on your list. It's actually fascinating to do so. Watch 'the reality' of a current or political event contort as you switch from 'Liberal', 'Conservative', 'Regressive Left', 'Alt-Right' streams of thought. In fact, that would make an interesting website. A Twitter version of http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed .

summerdown2 10y ago

> If we're not seeing it, it's probably because we don't want to. This is the big problem for me. I have struggled with Facebook for years because I really do want my friend's unfiltered feeds. In the end it just became impossible. I would have conversation after conversation where people told me they had posted something but I just never got to see it.

bdrool 10y ago

> Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it. Yeah ... not gonna happen. I already use private browsing windows to read anything even remotely controversial. Not going to start building a publicly visible history of 'liking' things that could be seen negatively. Call me paranoid, but I can see that happening some day in a job interview or something similar. I love my freedom, and that includes being able to read whatever I want without being accused of wrongthink at some point in the future. Facebook isn't getting any data from me on that front.

tripzilch 10y ago

> Facebook makes it incredibly easy to step outside our bubbles. pfft. only if you don't compare it to any other non-walled-garden online communities. it's places like HN (and many similar tiny islands of interest), I come for the comp.science news, and because of that it does NOT actively select for other criteria (just inherent bias) and I meet people with wildly different views than my own, and I can even expect to have a decent dialogue. i don't even need to "like" their political values, but i can still upvote their tech expertise. [ edit: LOL, I hadn't read dang's announcement about HN's political detox week, which pretty much runs exactly counter to what I just said, haha :) though I welcome the experiment and appreciate the irony of circumstance :-) ] check out the "general discussion" subforum on any random webforum community on a topic that interests you. it's all already intersecting by default! and it's Facebook (Google too) taking a very active role crystallising the bubbles into walls. Don't just try to step outside your personal Facebook-bubble, for it's actively working against you. Step outside the big bubble of Facebook itself.