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It's disappointing that tech journalists don't go a bit harder at the founders when writing pieces like these. Sure, it's interesting to find out about Instagr

It's disappointing that tech journalists don't go a bit harder at the founders when writing pieces like these. Sure, it's interesting to find out about Instagram's internal processes and their projections, but Facebook is becoming increasingly regarded as being the main contributor to a new kind of social malaise. Therefore, if Instagram is aspiring to that level of adoption, how can questions like this not be put to the founders? Maybe it's just me, but for once I'd love to see a journalist be a bit more frank with these siloed cyber-utopionists and ask some hard questions about what social value they're actually creating - rather than chewing over sign-up metrics and scaling strategies. Anecdotally, I've never seen one interview with Zuckerberg where a journalist actually calls him out on his "we're just connecting people" poppycock.

olewhalehunter 9y ago
When you are interviewing the entity that can throttle visits to your articles, it's a bit more complicated than that. Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook.
- teej 9y ago
  > Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook. Citation needed.
  - olewhalehunter 9y ago
    https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to-infowars-com/ https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to...
    - ArtDev 9y ago
      The gold standard of fake news. As fake as it gets.
      - olewhalehunter 9y ago
        They are also one of the only big news organizations that regularly criticizes Facebook, so I guess the answer to the original question of why more people don't criticize Facebook is that the only demographic that are interested in that kind of thing are conspiracy theorists.
        objclxt 9y ago
        > They are also one of the only big news organizations Infowars is to legitimate news organizations as Mackeeper is to virus scanners.
        nafizh 9y ago
        "big news organizations" - usually I don't do this on hacker news. But, LOL.
        henrikschroder 9y ago
        Infowars isn't a news organization, Alex Jones is a self-professed performance artist, and the performance pieces he publishes are created solely to incite outrage in a certain demographic, not to spread actual facts.
      - arianvanp 9y ago
        Perhaps. But using it in a discussion about fake news is good. I don't want to live in a world where info wars gets censored just because I despise the guy. I want to live in a world where Internet is used to its full potential where I can easily find sources to articles and weed out the fake news myself... Perhaps the solution is technical. Tweak page rank to not only consider hyperlinks but also their credibility (by means of Web of trust). Buy it is probably also a social problem. We need to educate our children how to read an digest news. And how to think critically. Censoring The Independent, breitbart and info wars isn't gonna help us. Just fuel the problem. Instead, we need to find a way to reward credibility. We need to fix journalism or it will die soon.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      That articles doesn't even make the claim you're making (that Facebook is blocking articles that criticize them), let alone provide evidence of that.
      - olewhalehunter 9y ago
        I didn't claim that, what I claimed was that coincidentally, the same sites that criticize Facebook were also being labeled as fake news.
        icebraining 9y ago
        But it's not "coincidentally", they are criticizing Facebook because they were knocked down, and after they were knocked down.
        olewhalehunter 9y ago
        Infowars and Alex Jones regularly criticized organizations such as Google and Facebook that collect massive amounts of information capital from people well before the elections and the fake news headlines.
        icebraining 9y ago
        And you expected us to know that? I certainly wouldn't have assumed it, considering the three "share on Facebook" buttons on that page, plus the fact that the article author linked to his FB page at the end. In any case, Infowars is just one site, and the article only claimed they blocked three mere links.
    - nebabyte 9y ago
      ...The conflict of interest is apparent even in the URL you linked, but in case that doesn't do it for you: > The social networking giant recently launched a new feature in which users could flag content as “spam” or “fake news” – a system that allows huge numbers of organized users to flag content simply because they disagree with it or it offends them They cite this, then go on to make the completely unsubstantiated claim that that's somehow 'proof' of FB censoring them - and with such obvious slipshod "reporting" I honestly don't see what the problem is with FB blocking them as a "news" source and relegating them to being an opinion blog.
      - olewhalehunter 9y ago
        You make it sound as if facebook didn't know exactly who the kinds of sites that would end up being flagged would turn out to be, and the only claim that I made was that, coincidentally, they also happen to be sites that criticize Facebook.
        ubernostrum 9y ago
        As far as I can tell there's equal opportunity for abuse; flagging systems have been used to shut down accounts of of people on all parts of the political spectrum, since there's always a large enough mob of people incensed at someone else's views and willing to click whatever button they've been told will silence that person.
RandomInteger4 9y ago
The social value they're creating is that people like me are able to have a common medium through which I can maintain at least some semblance of socialization with a multitude of people who don't all share common interest other than being people I've communicated with at some point.
- asquabventured 9y ago
  I guess Email or text messages are no longer cool?
  - olewhalehunter 9y ago
    No but giving away massive amounts of monetizable information capital to private corporations for free sure is.
  - arjie 9y ago
    You're here on HN and not on some mailing list or phpBB forum. Clearly you derive value from this rather different medium. Well, Instagram users derive value from that other medium. Email and text message have a different feel and offer different features.
    - thisacctforreal 9y ago
      I agree with this post: features like realtime chats, comments, posts, etc are various ways of interacting people on different platforms. Facebook has done a good job at becoming a nearly ubiquitous hub for people to reach out and connect on, without having to feel shy. (of course we were perhaps less shy to ask for numbers when they were given out more often) I totally disagree with the things parts of Facebook is doing, and I wish they gave half a damn about where they are driving us.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - thedickensian 9y ago
    Well, not exactly. While email and text messages are great at helping you keep in contact with people you know, I find Facebook is best at keeping me in contact with people I once knew or don't know very well. For example, just last week I had an acquaintance who was potentially taking an internship in the city I moved to after I graduated college. This is an acquaintance that I haven't seen in over five years, and was never close with. The kind of person you'd be 100% never seeing again, since we had basically lost touch, minus the whole "we're Facebook friends" aspect. Granted, I know one of the major gripes about Facebook on HN is that having a lot of friends on Facebook facilitates a lot of useless spam about people you don't quite care about. I totally understand this view. But on the other hand, I learned that this acquaintance of mine might be stopping in the city I'm in, so far away from our hometown, and being the adult that I am and getting older and older by the minute, knowing just how hard it is to make and maintain friendships as you get older, I decided to give this acquaintance a call (on Facebook of course!) to see if they were free to meetup.
hkmurakami 9y ago
You know the scene in The Big Short where the WSJ guy isn't willing to go ask the hard questions to the bank contacts he has because he spent years building those relationships? That's what it reminds me of.
Kiro 9y ago
> ask some hard questions about what social value they're actually creating What does this mean exactly? Facebook is providing tremendous value to me personally as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends but I guess you're asking from a higher perspective.
- svantana 9y ago
  That is probably the best aspect of facebook, and what they should have stuck with IMO. The "let's be the place where people can see only news & opinions that they agree with" is more questionable.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    OK. Find a way to make money on a social network to keep in touch with friends and family, without charging to use it. Then retire as a billionaire.
    - svantana 9y ago
      Yeah, as too often is the case, good-for-business and good-for-society are at odds here.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Yes, I agree. I would love a Facebook focusing just on friends and family. No link sharing, no non-sense. One part I do like that is outside of that though is the different artists (music) I follow. What's interesting however is that even though artists are the only pages I like, posts from them get magically filtered out to leave room for links, funny videos and opinions. Or at least that's how it feels.
jansho 9y ago
> Anecdotally, I've never seen one interview with Zuckerberg where a journalist actually calls him out on his "we're just connecting people" poppycock. I have no doubt that intentions can be good. But I find it very hard to believe that tech founders never consider both good and bad consequences of a more connected world. Fake news is one, but then there are others like the rapid decrease of our attention span, higher appetite for instant gratification, higher addiction to the net, lower self-esteem (or the opposite!) and so on. All of this has a profound effect on us as individuals and as a society. I'm glad that we now can have a conversation like this without the risk of being labelled "Luddite". (And yes, HN was also like this a while back.)
- kristianc 9y ago
  You'll need citations on those (there is a study for self-esteem, but IIRC it was on quite a small test group.) Attention span (as in the idea we have one, not just Facebook's connection to it), at the very least, is a myth: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/07/25/another-modern-myth-shrinking-attention-spans/ https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/07/25/another-mo...
  - jansho 9y ago
    Technology is a special case; it's changing so rapidly that there isn't time to academically study its full-scale impact. But the impact of social media on self esteem, especially on vulnerable people, is well-studied. https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=social+media+self+esteem&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix_Jq_gNvTAhUjJMAKHQU2BJoQgQMIGjAA https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=social+media+self+est... Facebook isn't the only player of course. Regarding attention span - sorry I defined it as the amount of quality attention spent on something - I draw my experiences as an educator.
ismail 9y ago
I attended a conference where a speaker was someone from FB. One of the slides that stood out for me was a pic of 3 teens sitting in the most picturesque environment on a picnic blanket. All of them with their noses stuck in phones. This is what FB and instagram is about, getting you on the mouse wheel of usage so they can sell your attention.
- ohstopitu 9y ago
  and is that so bad? As in, this is like how our parents used to say "you are glued to the TV" and that's exactly what TV channels wanted...to sell your attention.
  - ruminasean 9y ago
    Well sure, but eventually you'd get kicked out of the house and have to go outside, away from TV. Now TV is in your pocket, wherever you go. They can kick today's kids out of the house, they go to the nearest spot out of sight and....watch ads all day.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

olewhalehunter 9y ago

When you are interviewing the entity that can throttle visits to your articles, it's a bit more complicated than that. Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook.

teej 9y ago
> Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook. Citation needed.
- olewhalehunter 9y ago
  https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to-infowars-com/ https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to...
  - ArtDev 9y ago
    The gold standard of fake news. As fake as it gets.
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      They are also one of the only big news organizations that regularly criticizes Facebook, so I guess the answer to the original question of why more people don't criticize Facebook is that the only demographic that are interested in that kind of thing are conspiracy theorists.
      - objclxt 9y ago
        > They are also one of the only big news organizations Infowars is to legitimate news organizations as Mackeeper is to virus scanners.
      - nafizh 9y ago
        "big news organizations" - usually I don't do this on hacker news. But, LOL.
      - henrikschroder 9y ago
        Infowars isn't a news organization, Alex Jones is a self-professed performance artist, and the performance pieces he publishes are created solely to incite outrage in a certain demographic, not to spread actual facts.
    - arianvanp 9y ago
      Perhaps. But using it in a discussion about fake news is good. I don't want to live in a world where info wars gets censored just because I despise the guy. I want to live in a world where Internet is used to its full potential where I can easily find sources to articles and weed out the fake news myself... Perhaps the solution is technical. Tweak page rank to not only consider hyperlinks but also their credibility (by means of Web of trust). Buy it is probably also a social problem. We need to educate our children how to read an digest news. And how to think critically. Censoring The Independent, breitbart and info wars isn't gonna help us. Just fuel the problem. Instead, we need to find a way to reward credibility. We need to fix journalism or it will die soon.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    That articles doesn't even make the claim you're making (that Facebook is blocking articles that criticize them), let alone provide evidence of that.
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      I didn't claim that, what I claimed was that coincidentally, the same sites that criticize Facebook were also being labeled as fake news.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        But it's not "coincidentally", they are criticizing Facebook because they were knocked down, and after they were knocked down.
        olewhalehunter 9y ago
        Infowars and Alex Jones regularly criticized organizations such as Google and Facebook that collect massive amounts of information capital from people well before the elections and the fake news headlines.
        icebraining 9y ago
        And you expected us to know that? I certainly wouldn't have assumed it, considering the three "share on Facebook" buttons on that page, plus the fact that the article author linked to his FB page at the end. In any case, Infowars is just one site, and the article only claimed they blocked three mere links.
  - nebabyte 9y ago
    ...The conflict of interest is apparent even in the URL you linked, but in case that doesn't do it for you: > The social networking giant recently launched a new feature in which users could flag content as “spam” or “fake news” – a system that allows huge numbers of organized users to flag content simply because they disagree with it or it offends them They cite this, then go on to make the completely unsubstantiated claim that that's somehow 'proof' of FB censoring them - and with such obvious slipshod "reporting" I honestly don't see what the problem is with FB blocking them as a "news" source and relegating them to being an opinion blog.
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      You make it sound as if facebook didn't know exactly who the kinds of sites that would end up being flagged would turn out to be, and the only claim that I made was that, coincidentally, they also happen to be sites that criticize Facebook.
      - ubernostrum 9y ago
        As far as I can tell there's equal opportunity for abuse; flagging systems have been used to shut down accounts of of people on all parts of the political spectrum, since there's always a large enough mob of people incensed at someone else's views and willing to click whatever button they've been told will silence that person.

RandomInteger4 9y ago

The social value they're creating is that people like me are able to have a common medium through which I can maintain at least some semblance of socialization with a multitude of people who don't all share common interest other than being people I've communicated with at some point.

asquabventured 9y ago
I guess Email or text messages are no longer cool?
- olewhalehunter 9y ago
  No but giving away massive amounts of monetizable information capital to private corporations for free sure is.
- arjie 9y ago
  You're here on HN and not on some mailing list or phpBB forum. Clearly you derive value from this rather different medium. Well, Instagram users derive value from that other medium. Email and text message have a different feel and offer different features.
  - thisacctforreal 9y ago
    I agree with this post: features like realtime chats, comments, posts, etc are various ways of interacting people on different platforms. Facebook has done a good job at becoming a nearly ubiquitous hub for people to reach out and connect on, without having to feel shy. (of course we were perhaps less shy to ask for numbers when they were given out more often) I totally disagree with the things parts of Facebook is doing, and I wish they gave half a damn about where they are driving us.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thedickensian 9y ago
  Well, not exactly. While email and text messages are great at helping you keep in contact with people you know, I find Facebook is best at keeping me in contact with people I once knew or don't know very well. For example, just last week I had an acquaintance who was potentially taking an internship in the city I moved to after I graduated college. This is an acquaintance that I haven't seen in over five years, and was never close with. The kind of person you'd be 100% never seeing again, since we had basically lost touch, minus the whole "we're Facebook friends" aspect. Granted, I know one of the major gripes about Facebook on HN is that having a lot of friends on Facebook facilitates a lot of useless spam about people you don't quite care about. I totally understand this view. But on the other hand, I learned that this acquaintance of mine might be stopping in the city I'm in, so far away from our hometown, and being the adult that I am and getting older and older by the minute, knowing just how hard it is to make and maintain friendships as you get older, I decided to give this acquaintance a call (on Facebook of course!) to see if they were free to meetup.

hkmurakami 9y ago

You know the scene in The Big Short where the WSJ guy isn't willing to go ask the hard questions to the bank contacts he has because he spent years building those relationships? That's what it reminds me of.

Kiro 9y ago

> ask some hard questions about what social value they're actually creating What does this mean exactly? Facebook is providing tremendous value to me personally as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends but I guess you're asking from a higher perspective.

svantana 9y ago
That is probably the best aspect of facebook, and what they should have stuck with IMO. The "let's be the place where people can see only news & opinions that they agree with" is more questionable.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  OK. Find a way to make money on a social network to keep in touch with friends and family, without charging to use it. Then retire as a billionaire.
  - svantana 9y ago
    Yeah, as too often is the case, good-for-business and good-for-society are at odds here.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Yes, I agree. I would love a Facebook focusing just on friends and family. No link sharing, no non-sense. One part I do like that is outside of that though is the different artists (music) I follow. What's interesting however is that even though artists are the only pages I like, posts from them get magically filtered out to leave room for links, funny videos and opinions. Or at least that's how it feels.

jansho 9y ago

> Anecdotally, I've never seen one interview with Zuckerberg where a journalist actually calls him out on his "we're just connecting people" poppycock. I have no doubt that intentions can be good. But I find it very hard to believe that tech founders never consider both good and bad consequences of a more connected world. Fake news is one, but then there are others like the rapid decrease of our attention span, higher appetite for instant gratification, higher addiction to the net, lower self-esteem (or the opposite!) and so on. All of this has a profound effect on us as individuals and as a society. I'm glad that we now can have a conversation like this without the risk of being labelled "Luddite". (And yes, HN was also like this a while back.)

kristianc 9y ago
You'll need citations on those (there is a study for self-esteem, but IIRC it was on quite a small test group.) Attention span (as in the idea we have one, not just Facebook's connection to it), at the very least, is a myth: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/07/25/another-modern-myth-shrinking-attention-spans/ https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/07/25/another-mo...
- jansho 9y ago
  Technology is a special case; it's changing so rapidly that there isn't time to academically study its full-scale impact. But the impact of social media on self esteem, especially on vulnerable people, is well-studied. https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=social+media+self+esteem&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix_Jq_gNvTAhUjJMAKHQU2BJoQgQMIGjAA https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=social+media+self+est... Facebook isn't the only player of course. Regarding attention span - sorry I defined it as the amount of quality attention spent on something - I draw my experiences as an educator.

ismail 9y ago

I attended a conference where a speaker was someone from FB. One of the slides that stood out for me was a pic of 3 teens sitting in the most picturesque environment on a picnic blanket. All of them with their noses stuck in phones. This is what FB and instagram is about, getting you on the mouse wheel of usage so they can sell your attention.

ohstopitu 9y ago
and is that so bad? As in, this is like how our parents used to say "you are glued to the TV" and that's exactly what TV channels wanted...to sell your attention.
- ruminasean 9y ago
  Well sure, but eventually you'd get kicked out of the house and have to go outside, away from TV. Now TV is in your pocket, wherever you go. They can kick today's kids out of the house, they go to the nearest spot out of sight and....watch ads all day.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]