9 ms·

Facebook is a publicly traded corporation, therefore its goal is to maximize shareholder revenue. Facebook generates revenue by selling ad space on its website

• mkaziz 10y ago
  Great for someone like you or me who know not to trust everything you read on facebook. Not so great for my 60yo dad who still believes pretty much everything he sees online, and doubly so when he reads it on facebook because it was a "forward" from someone he trusts. This is a complex question and there are no easy answers.
  • rafiki6 10y ago
    answer is actually easy, execution is complicated...clearly too many people don't have the required IQ to participate in their own governance, as such maybe it's time to prevent them from doing so
    • wu-ikkyu 10y ago
      >too many people don't have the required IQ to participate in their own governance, as such maybe it's time to prevent them from doing so ^The mantra of every authoritarian dictatorship. If the people lack the information to manage their own well-being, it is our job to inform them, not subjugate them.
      • zardo 10y ago
        Of course, one man's school is another man's government re-education camp.
      • rafiki6 10y ago
        I'm not sure why you jumped to conclusion of subjugating them. Have you heard of epistocracy? Give people a chance to participate but make them earn it. I don't believe voting is a right. When my decisions affect the lives of others I should be held to a standard.
        • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
          Makes sense, except in practice. It results in rigged tests, poll taxes, and generally racist bigoted systems that keep some classes down. We don't have a 'one man - one vote' system in America by accident, but in response to a wide understanding of how prevalent such rigging was back then.
          • rafiki6 10y ago
            With all due respect I don't even think America has a "one man one vote system" in practice. The idea of super pacs and an easily manipulated populace combined with a bipartisan political system seems to me like America is living the illusion of democracy. The current system already keeps certain classes down. Blacks and Hispanics don't tend to have the same voter turn out as wealthy white folks do. Besides, does the current system even address their needs? It seems biased towards helping the wealthy. So I'm not sure in practice democracy is doing a great job.
        • wu-ikkyu 10y ago
          >many people don't have the required IQ to participate in their own governance, as such maybe it's time to prevent them from doing so Subjugate: to make someone or something subordinate. Does your statement not fit the definition? Forcing someone out of their inalienable rights because they don't pass an arbitrarily dictated exam is to make them subordinates or untermensch. Epistocracy was a common method used to prevent blacks from voting in the southern United States.
    • mulletbum 10y ago
      I think there is another option you might have missed.
      • rafiki6 10y ago
        What's that?
    • eddiecalzone 10y ago
      Yeah... perhaps something like an electoral college, except functional?
      • rafiki6 10y ago
        I think the electoral college is probably the worst approach. The original intention behind the electoral college was basically to overturn the decision of the people if the wealthy elite didn't like it. That's translated into "preventing mob rule". Why not just make sure the mob is actually capable of picking their own leader, or even better teaching them to lead themselves?
  • wu-ikkyu 10y ago
    >This is a complex questions and there are no easy answers. What precisely is the question?
    • mkaziz 10y ago
      How should we handle the phenomenon of fake news being virally circulated in social media
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • logfromblammo 10y ago
        The vaccination that provides herd immunity from viral nonsense is instruction in critical thinking skills. The treatment for misinformation and disinformation is genuine, accurate information. Censorship and regulation of information is absolutely the wrong way to handle it. If you ever grant any government the power to be final arbiter over what truth is, you deserve what will surely happen to you next.
    • derefr 10y ago
      I believe the question is whether "news" is similar-enough in kind to "food" or "drugs" that it would make sense for the state to regulate it a bit, with the goal (like the "food" and "drugs" categories) of protecting people from their own mistakes. In the "food" and "drug" cases, the state does this because large corporations have far more resources available to be applied to the goal of fooling people into consuming something that might be harmful to them, than people have available to figure out they were fooled. The "news" case, though sometimes being similar to that, is also often very different: private individuals can be sources of news, news is often delivered without cost to the reader, and even news that is sourced from commercial institutions often reaches the majority of its readers through redistribution, without attribution, by private individuals (e.g. word of mouth; posting paraphrases on Facebook; etc.) So, leaving alone whether the same principle could apply to "news" (or whether it's consistently trumped by free speech concerns, etc.), the implementation of such a policy would be quite different, perhaps different enough as to make it unfeasible. That is a complex question.
  • booleandilemma 10y ago
    As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Don't believe everything you read online."
  • probablybanned 10y ago
    This is different from what 60 year olds were doing with e-mail a decade ago in what way, exactly? As someone who grew up around AM radio and gun show culture, the sudden pearl-clutching is amusing, but also disturbing since it's so coordinated and with clear political motivations. The question is this: Do you support fake news or do you support the construction of a censorship apparatus? For me, there is a very easy answer.
    • mkaziz 10y ago
      False dichotomy. You can have a censorship apparatus that allows only fake news. At the same time, it's also clear that fake news is being used to justify all sorts of political things that are leading to intensified divisions and hatred (on /both/ ends of the spectrum) which is leading society down a different slippery slope, but one that's slippery all the same.
      • probablybanned 10y ago
        I expected the cry of false dichotomy. Here's the thing: all simplifications are inaccurate because they involve a loss of fidelity. Simplifications that are tolerably inaccurate but useful are the basis of clear thinking. When you resist simplification, ask yourself whether you are seeking to avoid inaccuracy or seeking to avoid clear thinking. People tend to resist clear thinking when it leads to difficult decisions. I'm not sure what you mean by bringing up a hypothetical "censorship apparatus that allows only fake news" -- my contention is that you cannot "beat" fake news without a censorship apparatus. Of course you can have a "good" censorship apparatus that only allows things you believe are good and true or you could have a "bad" one that only allows fake news. I'm sure yours would be very, very good indeed. But I think it's much better not to play that game at all.
        • mkaziz 10y ago
          Upvoted you for the civil response. I think you are viewing censorship apparatus as on a good -> bad spectrum. There is also the spectrum of the scale of censorship. For example: HRC's "sex ring" (obviously false facts misrepresented as the truth) is fake news that should be suppressed. But on the flip side, we obviously don't want a USSR-style control of the press, where the wrong word/opinion can land you in the gulag. You seem to think that because any kind of censorship apparatus can be subverted for nefarious means, you should have no censorship apparatus at all. But I'll counter that that in itself is a form of intellectual laziness: Should we not explore the possibility of building a decentralized apparatus with appropriate checks and balances, that keeps the bare minimum of "fake news" out of general circulation? The answer may be no, but we should at least explore it.
• digi_owl 10y ago
  > Facebook is a publicly traded corporation, therefore its goal is to maximize shareholder revenue. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/myth-maximizing-shareholder-value.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/myth-maximizing-share...
  • oever 10y ago
    The article you site claims the maximizing shareholder revenue is not a legal obligation of corporation. It further observes that "we evolved from a society in which corporate interests were largely aligned with those of broader public purpose into a state where crony capitalism, accounting fraud, and corporate predation are predominant characteristics". So the article you link to strengthens the point of the parent that facebook is not in business for the public good but for private interests that are strongly at odds with public interests.
  • csallen 10y ago
    Interesting quote from your link: > Lazonick discusses how we evolved from a society in which corporate interests were largely aligned with those of broader public purpose into a state where crony capitalism, accounting fraud, and corporate predation are predominant characteristics. On the contrary, aligning anyone's interests with those of the broader public is often against the natural state of things. There are many ways for groups of people, whether they're corporations or marauding bands of knights, to benefit at the expense of the broader public. In fact, straightforward theft, fraud, violence, oppression, slavery, monopolization, deception, sabotage, and other anti-competitive practices are historically among the easiest and most common ways to profit. "Businesses thriving by creating value for everyone" is not a natural system. The only reason capitalism works at all is because we have a strong government that enforces laws and regulations to make most alternative forms of profit illegal. So of course we should expect an arms race, where businesses attempt to find loopholes where they can profit without creating value. The monetary incentives are too high for people not to try.
    • M_Grey 10y ago
      Lets not forget that in the natural state of things, I get to kill you and your family for the stuff you have, because I'm stronger and meaner than you. Then someone else does the same to be. Nature doesn't love us, that's why we've spent so long killing it and getting away from it.
• coffeemug 10y ago
  > Facebook has no incentive to remove or alter this content in any way, other than to avoid illegal content that could produce lawsuits. In the short term, you're right. In the long term, you aren't. The long view is that people will get tired of reactionary content, and as that happens the credibility and utility of Facebook as a platform will drop, as will its profits. Since Mark has control of Facebook, he has the advantage of being able to operate on long time horizons (and has demonstrated his ability and willingness to do that). So he (and Facebook) have every incentive to fix this issue, and it seems like they're working hard to try and get it done.
• mattferderer 10y ago
  Hijacking your post to ask if you have a suggested news service that posts multiple sides to every story & avoids persuasive opinion pieces. I don't want late breaking news. I want well researched news that tries to understand multiple viewpoints. I also don't want to have to filter through articles to find the good ones. I would pay for this.
  • criley2 10y ago
    That requires a subscription, and your subscription to a service which produces long form journalism will be inherently biased. I am unaware of a service which really aggregates multiple view points in a fair way because such a thing is impossible. I can link you to a few longer form journalism papers/magazines, but any conservative would decry them as biased. We could link to some traditionally conservative outlets, but they'd be decried as neo-conservative, out of date and biased. As offensive as it might be to you, in society and news, opinion is all there is. "But facts MATTER" you might retort, but no, they don't. Only opinions about facts matter. Because what power does a fact have if it's not accepted as true? None. What power does a falsehood have if it's accepted as true? All of it. There is no fair and rational way to separate opinion and fact. After a fifteen years of using news aggregators, RSS aggregators, aggreagtors like memeorandum.com and polurls.com, and social aggregators like digg, then reddit, and social media services, I have not found what you want. I have thought about making it, and I have ideas on how liberals and conservatives can use a single website to organize the news into strands and voice their opinions on the validity of that organization WITHOUT the normal animosity and viciousness that is normal, but I've never sat down to really create it.
    • rubicon33 10y ago
      If you're able to categorize news sources as conservative, or liberal, then couldn't you aggregate news by grouping the conservative and liberal articles about a specific topic together, and presenting them side by side? For instance, lets say Trump creates an executive order demanding that a wall between Mexico and the US be built by 2018. Both the right, and the left, will write thousands upon thousands of articles about how this will be great for the country, and terrible for the country. The truth like most things, may lie somewhere in between the extremes. Your news aggregator would allow you to read articles about the wall, as written by both conservatives, and liberals. Then, you'd at LEAST be reading the differing opinions. The problem is, I doubt many people would want a service like this. Like it or not, human beings seem to enjoy the comfort of their solidified beliefs. It's far easier to digest your right wing, or left wing news, rather than digesting BOTH. People don't really want to change.
• I_am_neo 10y ago
  Don't use face book don't watch tv don't listen to radio don't use the internet - there's your safe space right there If the only way to remain objective about the populace is to remove one's self from public, that includes making a living off others. Those (other) people who are to become your cattle, your cash crop, your money tree. Then MarkZ has become the anti-theses of objectionable and to top it off I really don't follow his line of thought, except as far to see it's all about his little cash crop of humans. And then the real fun begins for us
  • patrick_haply 10y ago
    > If the only way to remain objective about the populace is to remove one's self from public Well, the opposite is true as well, and more likely I think: By removing yourself from public, you lose any true bearing on what it's like to be a member of the populace. How can you be objective about something you don't understand? How can you be objective about a society you have no real understanding of?
• pikzen 10y ago
  >Fake news is not illegal. a) Depends on your country b) Even if it's not, it's highly immoral.