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It is both amazing and deeply concerning that one corporation has influence over 1/4 of the world's population. It is even more concerning when you consider the
by ProfessorLayton 9y ago
It is both amazing and deeply concerning that one corporation has influence over 1/4 of the world's population. It is even more concerning when you consider the outsized voting power of 1 person at that company.
- jgalt212 9y agodo they though? I consume Coca Cola, and so do approx 2B other earthing. Does Coca Cola have influence over me?
- sidlls 9y agoWhat makes you think the comparison is valid?
- pageandrew 9y agoDo you share your life, connect with your friends, and get your news from Coca Cola?
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoIsn't that what ShareACoke.com is about?
- pageandrew 9y agoDoes ShareACoke.com have 2 billion users?
- jgalt212 9y agoI don't do any of that on facebook. The only FB product I use is WhatsApp and Instagram (view only).
- rrrryhffyhg 9y agoCoca cola reaches your stomach, Facebook reaches your social circle
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYou are what you eat, as they say, so...
- deelowe 9y agoI think we should be more concerned with ykk zippers. I mean, they have a near monopoly.
- frebord 9y agoCoca-cola doesn't petabytes of data on your intimate thoughts and conversations.
- simonsarris 9y agoWhen you buy a coke, is there an email from coke in your inbox the next day? When you interact with coke does it gently tailor what you see and what you do not see, month after month? If you cannot understand how people are influenced, maybe you'll never see the influencing happening. That doesn't make you immune, on the contrary...
- sg47 9y agoNo, but it does make me want to drink a coke the next day and maybe more than one a day. I don't have the same problem with broccoli.
- bussierem 9y agoHis point is not that Coca-cola has _no_effect on you, but their effect on you is pretty much limited to getting you to drink Coke, because that's their goal. Facebook can, has, and certainly will continue to monitor and influence MOST aspects of peoples lives - social, political, religious, economic, etc. Just ads and subtle filtering of walls and ads alone is provably HUGE impact-wise.
- jgalt212 9y agoHow does an automated email from FB that gets filtered into my FB folder that I never read actually influence me?
- ionised 9y agoThat's you. You do not represent everyone who uses Facebook.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- loeg 9y agoFacebook is a platform. They don't do a lot of attempting to influence, as far as I can tell. Consider Google as well, which probably reaches even more of the world's population. Or Microsoft. Apple might be getting close, too. Or plenty of non-tech companies, as the sibling commenter points out. Coke, Samsung, Frito-Lay, etc.
- chrischen 9y agoFacebook censors content, such as nipples. Facebook put a giant banner across their site for Indian users to promote a specific public policy matter.
- justboxing 9y ago> Facebook censors content, such as nipples But leaked documents from their internal policy allows for displaying the Female nipple under certain circumstances. See => https://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/fb-art-policy-guardian2-720x509.jpg https://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/fb-art-... Source: Leaked Document Lays Out Facebook’s Policy on Sex and Nudity in Art => https://hyperallergic.com/380911/leaked-document-lays-out-facebooks-policy-on-sex-and-nudity-in-art/ https://hyperallergic.com/380911/leaked-document-lays-out-fa... How do they / their algorithm decide if the nudity is "only contours visible" but not "sufficiently detailed"
- bpicolo 9y agoAlgorithm is certainly mostly machine learning.
- louithethrid 9y agoAlgorithm is presorting, cheap third world labour is final sorting. Cheap third world labour radicalizes with this impression of a corrupt west. Cheap thirld word labour joins terrorists and produces horrifying pictures/videos - posted to facebook. Thus the circle is closed.
- 9y ago
- forinti 9y agoI'm more concerned that 2B is only 1/4 of the world's population.
- coldtea 9y agoAnd even more concerning when you consider its a single-country owned corporation.
- slantaclaus 9y agobow bow bowwww
- jondubois 9y agoWhen Microsoft was monopolizing the world, the government stepped in. Now the EU is going after Google. What is the government doing about Facebook? Imagine if the government hadn't stepped in to limit Microsoft's monopoly; today there would be no Facebook; everyone in the tech industry would be a Microsoft employee and everyone in the world would be using Microsoft's "Human Social Monitoring System"... and we would chant praises to our dear leader Bill Gates.
- imgabe 9y agoMicrosoft abused its position as the dominant OS maker to shut competitors out of a different market (web browsers). I agree the pervasiveness of Facebook is a problem (one of many). But from a legal standpoint, what have they done that can bring a viable antitrust complaint?
- jondubois 9y agoFacebook monopolized social advertising. Facebook makes your friends want things that they don't need and in doing so is distorting society's values and encouraging mindless consumerism.
- omg_ketchup 9y agoThat's not a monopoly, that's just advertising.
- fitchjo 9y agoSo you want to make all advertising illegal?
- syshum 9y agoA world free of ads.... what a wonderful dream A better dream is a world free of marketing of any type
- booleandilemma 9y ago
- ChuckMcM 9y agoI think it is an overreach to go from 'access to' to 'influence over'. Facebook has access to 1/4 of the worlds population but having access does not imply influence. Only that you can reach them. It is remarkable that one corporation owns the infrastructure on which 1/4 of the world's population communicates. That makes it an exceptionally good platform for surveillance because even people who are good at keeping their activities hidden now have to make sure that everyone they know is as good as they are. No doubt because of that risk, any good operational security training will include an example involving leakage through Facebook.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago> I think it is an overreach to go from 'access to' to 'influence over' Facebook is a lot of people's primary source of news or even communication. Humans are a social species and massively influenced by what they hear from others.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoI don't disagree, but I don't think Facebook is responsible for 'fake news' or even 'hate news'. As with any community there are actors within it which self select to group together and communicate. Now what it does do is allow what might be a dispersed group to become a 'local community' but Facebook's role in that is providing the access, not in influencing what those people do or say. One need only step between rabidly conservative and rabidly liberal enclaves on Facebook to see different groups surrounding themselves with their own messaging. To date I don't see Facebook exerting an editorial influence that is swaying meaningful sized groups. Sure there are groups that use Facebook to do that, but it isn't something you can buy or arrange for from the company.
- TheRealDunkirk 9y agoSee the comments below regarding Facebook's algorithms about what gets presented in people's feeds. Facebook is absolutely a principle player in what people see, by virtue that their algorithms can be gamed in particular ways, and their promotion of news and products can be bought. To think that Facebook isn't selling outsized influence over people's feeds for obscene amounts of money would be naive. EDIT: I believe this is also the secret to Reddit's success...
- formula_ninguna 9y agoit doesn't have influence of 1/4 of the world's population. first of all, 2 billions might be pure humans but some of them are bots. second of all, I have facebook, so what? how does it influence me? I spent 5 minutes per week if not per month chatting in facebook, use adblock, have no posts, no photo.