10 ms·

How to Fix Facebook

47 points by gk1 9y ago

rdlecler1 9y ago
I’m still surprised that anyone uses Facebook with any kind of regularity. Anyone I know who used to use it has uninstalled the app. We also tried Facebook advertising a couple of years ago and all we got were clicks from India and the Philippines. Maybe it works for some people but it doesn’t work in my sandbox.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  That can happen with Facebook advertising, but it takes less than 5 mins to set up the parameters to avoid that. Facebook allows for an incredible amount of control in targeting who you want to send ads to, but it's on you to set that up. You can hate on them for a lot, but lack of effectiveness as an advertising tool..... that's not really fair. Until they blocked me, I used to run advertising campaigns targeted at SINGLE INDIVIDUALS. Ie... "Hey Bill Gates, is it time to invest in Startup X?"
  - simonpure 9y ago
    Curious why you got blocked for spending money with them. Care to elaborate?
    - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
      It's against their Terms and Conditions to target a single specific individual with an advertising campaign. There are still some tricks you can do to get around it... which they also don't like, and that is what got my account pulled. This story is embarrassing and stupid... I know. I wouldn't do this again. The ad that got me in trouble was for a real estate agent. He showed a high net worth individual a home that cost ~ 10 million. We made an ad that said "Hey Jeff, could you see your family living here? - and it had a picture of the house." They wanted me to Photoshop pictures of his kids playing in the yard, but I drew the line there. Still Jeff submitted a complaint which got me banned because it wasn't the first violation. Everyone talks about how "creepy" ad tracking technology is, but both Facebook and Google are stopping marketers like me from doing the "really creepy" stuff we would like to be doing.
      - Multicomp 9y ago
        This is cool to read. Any other TalesFromMarketing that you'd care to share? Always nice to hear about the activities on the other side of the (advert) curtain.
- nasalgoat 9y ago
  My entire company runs on Facebook ads because they are incredibly effective in reaching quality users (ie. US 18-24 with disposable income). Every other ad platform is a distant second.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
billysielu 9y ago
delete it. /thread
- mrarjonny 9y ago
  I am not going to lie, I still use facebook for its ubiquitous nature. It is kind of a glorified email to stay in touch with some family and friends who have made it a primary form of communication. I really do think it has become too big for its britches though, and is expanding to the point of not being able to support its own weight. It is a mess, and I wouldn't miss it ever so slightly if we just went back to having photos of my nieces and nephews Halloween costumes emailed directly to me rather than posted on facebook.
amelius 9y ago
Probably the easiest and quickest fix is to change its monetization scheme. The dependence on ad-income creates perverse incentives, such as collecting data, tracking users all over the web, making users addicted, and promoting click-bait posts.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I agree. As long as they are ad supported their incentives are just wrong. Add to that the need for growth every year and they pretty much have to do shadier and shadier things. Same for Google.
- vog 9y ago
  Wait, what?! How could changing the income stream of a corporation ever be the "quickest fix"? Almost from the very beginning their business model was designed to sell ads. How could anyone change that with reasonable effort, in such a large corporation? And how could that ever be "quick"? Moreover, considering that Facebook is profitable and developes exactly into the direction their founders and investors envisioned, I don't see what to "fix" here. Facebook is working exactly as intended. In that regard, "fixing" Facebook is like "fixing" the rm tool to not delete files.
  - amelius 9y ago
    My use of the words "quickest fix" is sarcastic. I don't think anyone can fix Facebook by making small changes, hence the radical suggestion.
- mseebach 9y ago
  That's only half of the analysis, and suffers for it. Compare pre-internet print news; also almost entirely dependent on ads, and yet having delivered immense societal value. The other half of the analysis is that Facebook can only make money on ads if they have users on the site, and can keep them there. They need to provide persistent value to users to keep them on the site long term, and that aligns their incentives with users (not exclusively, but significantly).
tyingq 9y ago
I don't know if this is just my unique bubble, but I don't know many young people that use Facebook. They may have an account, but it's largely dormant. Curious if they will come back to FB when they are older, or if something else fills the void then. That is, once they've "grown up", FB might be more attractive to find their old friends from school that have since scattered, or older relatives they know are there.
- joshcam 9y ago
  Good observation. Perhaps the flood of advertising (my fb wall is a swamp of over 50% adds). Or maybe it's the meteoric rise in other more media heavy outlets such as insta. For whatever reason, I believe you are at least partially correct, there is not a heavy draw for younger people to actually USE fb. I mean all we really want is to share our pic and talk about them. FB is too cluttered.
- nradov 9y ago
  Some of those young people will come back when they want to share baby pictures with distant relatives. Other than "fake news", that seems to be the primary use case.
- basch 9y ago
  facebook has always been targeted towards older people. when you go off to college and meet strangers. when youre away from your old friends and want to stay in touch. when you work on a desktop and want your chat app to work in a browser and your phone.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
twsted 9y ago
I'm afraid it can not be fixed.
pdog 9y ago
From the article, suggestions include: * Requiring verification of real names for people. (Kevin Kelly) * Firing at least half of the leadership team and replacing them with people of color. (Ellen Pao) * Becoming a public benefit corporation. (Tim Wu)
- prostoalex 9y ago
  > Requiring verification of real names for people. The only scalable solution to this involves uploading a scanned ID, which can be easily doctored and forged. Moreover, as the author mentions, this is bad news for political dissidents, survivors of domestic/spousal/etc abuse, victims of stalking or bullying, celebrities (and semi-celebrities), LGBT activists http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-apologizes-for-real-name-policy-2014-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-apologizes-for-real-... and some edge cases where people change countries and adapt their original name to something recognizable in other language https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=869237283099242 https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=8692372...
  - distantsounds 9y ago
    Korea has worked around this by providing SMS verification, PIN numbers that are generated through the government's website, or even a locally-stored public key cert. There are ways to do it, you just need the backing infrastructure to make it happen. The American SSN system is a joke nowadays and needs to be overhauled, it could go hand-in-hand with online verifications. Mind you Facebook is a global company, and tailoring these solutions to every country would be nigh impossible.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  I can't believe the Ellen Pao suggestion is serious. Why can't we work on diversity without picking someone with so much baggage? Characterizing her tenure at Reddit as successful is beyond strange.
- judah 9y ago
  >> "Facebook needs to replace its focus on engagement quantity with interaction quality. To really do that means replacing at least half of the leadership team and board with underrepresented people of color who are informed and value diversity and inclusion" This seems to suggest that only people of color are able to focus on interaction quality. She is suggesting that people should be fired based on the color of their skin. That is racism.
zghst 9y ago
Only one person had a solid answer, Ro Khanna.
joshcam 9y ago
Many issues needing improvement or rebuilding can be traced to a common root concern... transparency!
notyourday 9y ago
Oh that's easy. Buy enough shares to have operational control of facebook and you can do whatever you want with it. Otherwise, until facebook cannot make money doing what it is doing it will continue to do what it is doing. No politico/journalista whining would change that.
- jonknee 9y ago
  > Buy enough shares to have operational control of facebook and you can do whatever you want with it. That's impossible thanks to the dual-class share structure that gives Zuckerberg complete control of the company.
  - notyourday 9y ago
    Of course it is possible. It just involves getting one's hands on the shares of Zuck's class. The point is that all of the whining coming from journalistas/political class/guides/policy wonks etc is nothing other than whining of the former jocks who got de-throned.
    - jonknee 9y ago
      > The point is that all of the whining coming from journalistas/political class/guides/policy wonks etc is nothing other than whining of the former jocks who got de-throned. Or that it might be a serious problem to have a global scale company that has perfected shoveling content to people so well that it can be hijacked to shovel lies into whole countries. It's probably worth talking about. The fact that it's controlled entirely by one person is just another wrinkle.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        Sure, except that NYT and Co had the microphone for over one hundred and fifty years during which it went from "All the news that fit to print" to "All the news that fit, we print" with observably disastrous results. So pardon people who aren't quite interested in hearing its whining.
tyu100 9y ago
Not on Facebook personally but the NY Times jihad against them (and the 'Fearsome Four' (yuck)) is getting a little bit tiresome, especially when a large part of the root of the Times' disdain is that they are direct competitors for ad dollars. Their moral high ground on Soviet and Russian influence on the news isn't that impressive either given that they still haven't renounced the Pulitzer given to Walter Duranty for his explicit lying about the Holodomor so as to not impede the Communist movement.
- IBM 9y ago
  There's no "jihad" against tech companies from the NYT. What you're seeing is called critical coverage. The NYT's business model is also clearly focused on subscriptions and it has been for a few years. Trump being elected has done more for the NYT's bottom line than any ad could.
- MPetitt 9y ago
  Thats an extremely oversimplified if not revisionist accusation against Duranty and the NYT. https://www.nytco.com/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pulitzer-prize-awarded-to-walter-duranty/ https://www.nytco.com/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pu...
- exodust 9y ago
  Surely the article doesn't amount to jihad. They get opinion contributors who suggest ways to improve FB. Like this one... "refocus the experience of using Facebook on the people using it, and their intentions for communication and interaction." (That was a quote from the "vintage facebook" idea.)
- woodandsteel 9y ago
  So what is your position on Russian influence on the 2016 election? That it didn't try, or did but was a good thing because Russia is good, or what?
myf01d 9y ago
Let's keep talking more about this big nothing burger "Russia's intervention" and ignore that Facebook is now actually all about injecting irrelevant posts into users' timelines that are sponsored while burying stories and links of pages that don't pay. Facebook now doesn't let you reach even 5% of your fans until you pay. Facebook's business is all about injecting posts by those who pay, even if the Russians did that (I believe they didn't), they just did the only thing upong which Facebook model exists aka pay to reach the target.
- wootness 9y ago
  What you "believe" is irrelevant. The facts are facts. Get over it.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  > pay to reach the target. Isn't that how ads work? Why is this any more controversial than Google's paid, targeted ads?
  - Spivak 9y ago
    I think the parent is claiming that FB has blurred the line between organic and sponsored results and is pushing paying customers higher in a user's organic timeline higher than those that don't.
    - myf01d 9y ago
      Yes, I am sorry if that wasn't clear, I am not talking about sponsored ads, I am talking about ordinary posts, Facebook now doesn't let you reach more than 5% of your fans unless you pay, then they show a little by little depending on your spending. I used to have many active popular pages myself and I felt the difference over the past 3 years, what's happening in Facebook now is disgusting to say the least
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
Interesting, this article has been shared to Facebook 514 times so far.
imartin2k 9y ago
Everyone asked seems to assume that Facebook is fixable. Is there a law of nature that guarantees fix-ability?
notacoward 9y ago
Waiting for the companion piece: How to Fix the New York Times. Also, maybe, How to Fix Ignorant Pundits. Before you fix something, you have to identify what "fix" means. What's fixing, and what's breaking? How do you make a distinction of evil awful manipulation that must be stopped at all costs, that doesn't also include socially positive activism, journalism, or other legitimate kinds of speech? That's the issue the pundits should be grappling with, before they offer laughable suggestions like "make it a public benefit corporation". I happen to believe that a return to corporate charters that actually meant something, that required some public benefit to balance the public harm of limited liability, would be fantastic. However, saying we should only do that for one company is like a bill of attainder. We haven't done it for financial companies, where it more clearly makes sense. We haven't done it for oil companies. We haven't done it for the media companies like the one that owns NYT. What's a coherent argument for making this one exception to a long-held principle of leaving the market alone?
basch 9y ago
Eli Pariser has the best answer in this article. >what if Facebook optimized for how much value an article or video or game gave us weeks or months afterward? Facebook needs a second page that isnt the newsfeed or trending. That isnt "give the people what they want" as much as "this is good for you." It needs strong editorial discretion. It could still be algorithmic, just one that prefers a certain type of voter. If I look at the sites below, its obvious that a focused team of more like minded people can output something MUCH more coherent than the "everybody gets what everybody wants" style newsfeed. https://redef.com/charts/shared/total https://redef.com/charts/shared/total https://www.aldaily.com/ https://www.aldaily.com/ http://www.drudgereport.com/ http://www.drudgereport.com/ https://www.techmeme.com/river https://www.techmeme.com/river Facebook needs a "Front Page" that you can toggle to that isnt the Custom Newsfeed. It should be the same for everyone, it should be important stuff, it should be beneficial to society. Maybe teams of people should be allowed to compete with it. I have said it before, they should combine Groups and Interest Lists. Groups should be able to subscribe to sources, have their own ingestion queue, and teams of voters should be able to determine what shows up in the group page feed. (people might wonder why I single out drudge as a good example. It is a water cooler. It is the same for every viewer on the planet. It gets people TALKING about the same things, it creates dialog within the community. Sure its also a filter bubble, I understand the dissonance.)
kensey 9y ago
Disappointing to see a co-founder of Wired pushing the "real names fix things" meme. We had that discussion with G+ how many years ago? It did nothing but generate negative press for Google until they quietly half-buried it long after it was possible to salvage any goodwill from doing so. Facebook actually has a real-names policy, but they enforce it very spottily, and there's a reason why. The only truly workable real-name policy is the jwz one: "1. Stop deleting peoples' accounts when you suspect that the name they are using is not their legal name. 2. There is no step 2."
etiam 9y ago
Personally I have long considered Facebook a deceptive, manipulative, evil company and inherently an enemy to liberty and human dignity. But, that should be at least broadly clear to anyone who bothers to look at what Facebook does. Maybe we should instead be asking, what is wrong with a society that places this much reliance on an entity whose interests are clearly at odds with the interests of the public, and how do we fix that.

47 points by gk1 9y ago

I’m still surprised that anyone uses Facebook with any kind of regularity. Anyone I know who used to use it has uninstalled the app. We also tried Facebook advertising a couple of years ago and all we got were clicks from India and the Philippines. Maybe it works for some people but it doesn’t work in my sandbox.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
That can happen with Facebook advertising, but it takes less than 5 mins to set up the parameters to avoid that. Facebook allows for an incredible amount of control in targeting who you want to send ads to, but it's on you to set that up. You can hate on them for a lot, but lack of effectiveness as an advertising tool..... that's not really fair. Until they blocked me, I used to run advertising campaigns targeted at SINGLE INDIVIDUALS. Ie... "Hey Bill Gates, is it time to invest in Startup X?"
- simonpure 9y ago
  Curious why you got blocked for spending money with them. Care to elaborate?
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    It's against their Terms and Conditions to target a single specific individual with an advertising campaign. There are still some tricks you can do to get around it... which they also don't like, and that is what got my account pulled. This story is embarrassing and stupid... I know. I wouldn't do this again. The ad that got me in trouble was for a real estate agent. He showed a high net worth individual a home that cost ~ 10 million. We made an ad that said "Hey Jeff, could you see your family living here? - and it had a picture of the house." They wanted me to Photoshop pictures of his kids playing in the yard, but I drew the line there. Still Jeff submitted a complaint which got me banned because it wasn't the first violation. Everyone talks about how "creepy" ad tracking technology is, but both Facebook and Google are stopping marketers like me from doing the "really creepy" stuff we would like to be doing.
    - Multicomp 9y ago
      This is cool to read. Any other TalesFromMarketing that you'd care to share? Always nice to hear about the activities on the other side of the (advert) curtain.
nasalgoat 9y ago
My entire company runs on Facebook ads because they are incredibly effective in reaching quality users (ie. US 18-24 with disposable income). Every other ad platform is a distant second.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

billysielu 9y ago

delete it. /thread

mrarjonny 9y ago
I am not going to lie, I still use facebook for its ubiquitous nature. It is kind of a glorified email to stay in touch with some family and friends who have made it a primary form of communication. I really do think it has become too big for its britches though, and is expanding to the point of not being able to support its own weight. It is a mess, and I wouldn't miss it ever so slightly if we just went back to having photos of my nieces and nephews Halloween costumes emailed directly to me rather than posted on facebook.

amelius 9y ago

Probably the easiest and quickest fix is to change its monetization scheme. The dependence on ad-income creates perverse incentives, such as collecting data, tracking users all over the web, making users addicted, and promoting click-bait posts.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I agree. As long as they are ad supported their incentives are just wrong. Add to that the need for growth every year and they pretty much have to do shadier and shadier things. Same for Google.
vog 9y ago
Wait, what?! How could changing the income stream of a corporation ever be the "quickest fix"? Almost from the very beginning their business model was designed to sell ads. How could anyone change that with reasonable effort, in such a large corporation? And how could that ever be "quick"? Moreover, considering that Facebook is profitable and developes exactly into the direction their founders and investors envisioned, I don't see what to "fix" here. Facebook is working exactly as intended. In that regard, "fixing" Facebook is like "fixing" the rm tool to not delete files.
- amelius 9y ago
  My use of the words "quickest fix" is sarcastic. I don't think anyone can fix Facebook by making small changes, hence the radical suggestion.
mseebach 9y ago
That's only half of the analysis, and suffers for it. Compare pre-internet print news; also almost entirely dependent on ads, and yet having delivered immense societal value. The other half of the analysis is that Facebook can only make money on ads if they have users on the site, and can keep them there. They need to provide persistent value to users to keep them on the site long term, and that aligns their incentives with users (not exclusively, but significantly).

tyingq 9y ago

I don't know if this is just my unique bubble, but I don't know many young people that use Facebook. They may have an account, but it's largely dormant. Curious if they will come back to FB when they are older, or if something else fills the void then. That is, once they've "grown up", FB might be more attractive to find their old friends from school that have since scattered, or older relatives they know are there.

joshcam 9y ago
Good observation. Perhaps the flood of advertising (my fb wall is a swamp of over 50% adds). Or maybe it's the meteoric rise in other more media heavy outlets such as insta. For whatever reason, I believe you are at least partially correct, there is not a heavy draw for younger people to actually USE fb. I mean all we really want is to share our pic and talk about them. FB is too cluttered.
nradov 9y ago
Some of those young people will come back when they want to share baby pictures with distant relatives. Other than "fake news", that seems to be the primary use case.
basch 9y ago
facebook has always been targeted towards older people. when you go off to college and meet strangers. when youre away from your old friends and want to stay in touch. when you work on a desktop and want your chat app to work in a browser and your phone.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

twsted 9y ago

I'm afraid it can not be fixed.

pdog 9y ago

From the article, suggestions include: * Requiring verification of real names for people. (Kevin Kelly) * Firing at least half of the leadership team and replacing them with people of color. (Ellen Pao) * Becoming a public benefit corporation. (Tim Wu)

prostoalex 9y ago
> Requiring verification of real names for people. The only scalable solution to this involves uploading a scanned ID, which can be easily doctored and forged. Moreover, as the author mentions, this is bad news for political dissidents, survivors of domestic/spousal/etc abuse, victims of stalking or bullying, celebrities (and semi-celebrities), LGBT activists http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-apologizes-for-real-name-policy-2014-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-apologizes-for-real-... and some edge cases where people change countries and adapt their original name to something recognizable in other language https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=869237283099242 https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=8692372...
- distantsounds 9y ago
  Korea has worked around this by providing SMS verification, PIN numbers that are generated through the government's website, or even a locally-stored public key cert. There are ways to do it, you just need the backing infrastructure to make it happen. The American SSN system is a joke nowadays and needs to be overhauled, it could go hand-in-hand with online verifications. Mind you Facebook is a global company, and tailoring these solutions to every country would be nigh impossible.
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
I can't believe the Ellen Pao suggestion is serious. Why can't we work on diversity without picking someone with so much baggage? Characterizing her tenure at Reddit as successful is beyond strange.
judah 9y ago
>> "Facebook needs to replace its focus on engagement quantity with interaction quality. To really do that means replacing at least half of the leadership team and board with underrepresented people of color who are informed and value diversity and inclusion" This seems to suggest that only people of color are able to focus on interaction quality. She is suggesting that people should be fired based on the color of their skin. That is racism.

zghst 9y ago

Only one person had a solid answer, Ro Khanna.

joshcam 9y ago

Many issues needing improvement or rebuilding can be traced to a common root concern... transparency!

notyourday 9y ago

Oh that's easy. Buy enough shares to have operational control of facebook and you can do whatever you want with it. Otherwise, until facebook cannot make money doing what it is doing it will continue to do what it is doing. No politico/journalista whining would change that.

jonknee 9y ago
> Buy enough shares to have operational control of facebook and you can do whatever you want with it. That's impossible thanks to the dual-class share structure that gives Zuckerberg complete control of the company.
- notyourday 9y ago
  Of course it is possible. It just involves getting one's hands on the shares of Zuck's class. The point is that all of the whining coming from journalistas/political class/guides/policy wonks etc is nothing other than whining of the former jocks who got de-throned.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    > The point is that all of the whining coming from journalistas/political class/guides/policy wonks etc is nothing other than whining of the former jocks who got de-throned. Or that it might be a serious problem to have a global scale company that has perfected shoveling content to people so well that it can be hijacked to shovel lies into whole countries. It's probably worth talking about. The fact that it's controlled entirely by one person is just another wrinkle.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      Sure, except that NYT and Co had the microphone for over one hundred and fifty years during which it went from "All the news that fit to print" to "All the news that fit, we print" with observably disastrous results. So pardon people who aren't quite interested in hearing its whining.

tyu100 9y ago

Not on Facebook personally but the NY Times jihad against them (and the 'Fearsome Four' (yuck)) is getting a little bit tiresome, especially when a large part of the root of the Times' disdain is that they are direct competitors for ad dollars. Their moral high ground on Soviet and Russian influence on the news isn't that impressive either given that they still haven't renounced the Pulitzer given to Walter Duranty for his explicit lying about the Holodomor so as to not impede the Communist movement.

IBM 9y ago
There's no "jihad" against tech companies from the NYT. What you're seeing is called critical coverage. The NYT's business model is also clearly focused on subscriptions and it has been for a few years. Trump being elected has done more for the NYT's bottom line than any ad could.
MPetitt 9y ago
Thats an extremely oversimplified if not revisionist accusation against Duranty and the NYT. https://www.nytco.com/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pulitzer-prize-awarded-to-walter-duranty/ https://www.nytco.com/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pu...
exodust 9y ago
Surely the article doesn't amount to jihad. They get opinion contributors who suggest ways to improve FB. Like this one... "refocus the experience of using Facebook on the people using it, and their intentions for communication and interaction." (That was a quote from the "vintage facebook" idea.)
woodandsteel 9y ago
So what is your position on Russian influence on the 2016 election? That it didn't try, or did but was a good thing because Russia is good, or what?

myf01d 9y ago

Let's keep talking more about this big nothing burger "Russia's intervention" and ignore that Facebook is now actually all about injecting irrelevant posts into users' timelines that are sponsored while burying stories and links of pages that don't pay. Facebook now doesn't let you reach even 5% of your fans until you pay. Facebook's business is all about injecting posts by those who pay, even if the Russians did that (I believe they didn't), they just did the only thing upong which Facebook model exists aka pay to reach the target.

wootness 9y ago
What you "believe" is irrelevant. The facts are facts. Get over it.
ForHackernews 9y ago
> pay to reach the target. Isn't that how ads work? Why is this any more controversial than Google's paid, targeted ads?
- Spivak 9y ago
  I think the parent is claiming that FB has blurred the line between organic and sponsored results and is pushing paying customers higher in a user's organic timeline higher than those that don't.
  - myf01d 9y ago
    Yes, I am sorry if that wasn't clear, I am not talking about sponsored ads, I am talking about ordinary posts, Facebook now doesn't let you reach more than 5% of your fans unless you pay, then they show a little by little depending on your spending. I used to have many active popular pages myself and I felt the difference over the past 3 years, what's happening in Facebook now is disgusting to say the least
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 9y ago

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago

Interesting, this article has been shared to Facebook 514 times so far.

imartin2k 9y ago

Everyone asked seems to assume that Facebook is fixable. Is there a law of nature that guarantees fix-ability?

notacoward 9y ago

Waiting for the companion piece: How to Fix the New York Times. Also, maybe, How to Fix Ignorant Pundits. Before you fix something, you have to identify what "fix" means. What's fixing, and what's breaking? How do you make a distinction of evil awful manipulation that must be stopped at all costs, that doesn't also include socially positive activism, journalism, or other legitimate kinds of speech? That's the issue the pundits should be grappling with, before they offer laughable suggestions like "make it a public benefit corporation". I happen to believe that a return to corporate charters that actually meant something, that required some public benefit to balance the public harm of limited liability, would be fantastic. However, saying we should only do that for one company is like a bill of attainder. We haven't done it for financial companies, where it more clearly makes sense. We haven't done it for oil companies. We haven't done it for the media companies like the one that owns NYT. What's a coherent argument for making this one exception to a long-held principle of leaving the market alone?

basch 9y ago

Eli Pariser has the best answer in this article. >what if Facebook optimized for how much value an article or video or game gave us weeks or months afterward? Facebook needs a second page that isnt the newsfeed or trending. That isnt "give the people what they want" as much as "this is good for you." It needs strong editorial discretion. It could still be algorithmic, just one that prefers a certain type of voter. If I look at the sites below, its obvious that a focused team of more like minded people can output something MUCH more coherent than the "everybody gets what everybody wants" style newsfeed. https://redef.com/charts/shared/total https://redef.com/charts/shared/total https://www.aldaily.com/ https://www.aldaily.com/ http://www.drudgereport.com/ http://www.drudgereport.com/ https://www.techmeme.com/river https://www.techmeme.com/river Facebook needs a "Front Page" that you can toggle to that isnt the Custom Newsfeed. It should be the same for everyone, it should be important stuff, it should be beneficial to society. Maybe teams of people should be allowed to compete with it. I have said it before, they should combine Groups and Interest Lists. Groups should be able to subscribe to sources, have their own ingestion queue, and teams of voters should be able to determine what shows up in the group page feed. (people might wonder why I single out drudge as a good example. It is a water cooler. It is the same for every viewer on the planet. It gets people TALKING about the same things, it creates dialog within the community. Sure its also a filter bubble, I understand the dissonance.)

kensey 9y ago

Disappointing to see a co-founder of Wired pushing the "real names fix things" meme. We had that discussion with G+ how many years ago? It did nothing but generate negative press for Google until they quietly half-buried it long after it was possible to salvage any goodwill from doing so. Facebook actually has a real-names policy, but they enforce it very spottily, and there's a reason why. The only truly workable real-name policy is the jwz one: "1. Stop deleting peoples' accounts when you suspect that the name they are using is not their legal name. 2. There is no step 2."

etiam 9y ago

Personally I have long considered Facebook a deceptive, manipulative, evil company and inherently an enemy to liberty and human dignity. But, that should be at least broadly clear to anyone who bothers to look at what Facebook does. Maybe we should instead be asking, what is wrong with a society that places this much reliance on an entity whose interests are clearly at odds with the interests of the public, and how do we fix that.