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I was with you until recently. Don't like it, don't use it. I log in once a month. Never felt strongly about FB one way or another. But lately, I flipped. I th

I was with you until recently. Don't like it, don't use it. I log in once a month. Never felt strongly about FB one way or another. But lately, I flipped. I think responsibility needs to correlate to some extent with power, to be useful. FB have power now, big power. They are not some site, they're a core social and political institution of society. In some circles, FB's just a very common way to conduct part of your social life. In that context, complaining about FB is like complaining about your local town square. It's noisy and filthy and making our social time suck. I consider this an appropriate complaint, considering what FB is and does. "Go start your own social network" is a red herring. It's like saying "if you don't like this country, leave". At least, I consider these similar. On the news point, I consider this a seperate point and a bigger deal. This is what flipped me. FB is the world's most important news outlet. I think this is undeniable in 2017. They have tremendous power (and responsibility) in this role. News/journalism is an institution of democracy and political life generally. FB decide who sees what news, and this is a huge deal. If they peddle crap quality news, the overall quality of journalism in society deteriorates. The quality of news (taken as a whole, including the news bubbles and everything else) on FB is terrible. It's a valid complaint and we should be louder about it.

Retric 9y ago
FB is very much falling into a local not global optimum. Social networks are optimizing for the derivative of peoples actions. A/B testing to see what causes more clicks etc. However, people are complex enough that they notice patterns and change how they approach things. Some of the most frequent users suddenly chose to quit. I remember seeing a slightly different discussion on HN ~5 years ago with almost the same arguments and thinking it was Déjà Vu because it was so similar to another HN post. Which get's a very different response than the first time around, because people change. Yesterday FB may have been the worlds most important news source, today less so, and long term people will treat it as just another tabloid. In that context, starting your own 'social network' will eventually be good advice, because trust is much easier to lose than gain.
zupreme 9y ago
I love your comment but disagree on one point. I don't think Facebook has ANY obligation to improve the quality of the "news" shared on it. I favor freedom of speech and freedom of association. If I have a friend who keeps posting BS articles from shady sources (and I do) then I just block them from my feed or simply ignore their posts about current events and conspiracy theories. I think asking FB, or any other platform, to start policing the quality of what we post is dangerous. What happens is if a story breaks that official authorities deny, but which is actually true. Would you want FB being the arbiter of truth, in such a case, or would you prefer for individuals (preferably alot of them) to be free to do their own research and to come to their own conclusions?
- jpk 9y ago
  The trouble with this, of course, is that you build an echo chamber for both yourself and your friend. You no longer see the posts you think are BS, and you preclude yourself from challenging your friend's BS in comments. I agree that delegating to Facebook judgement of what speech is acceptable or not isn't a good idea, but the flip side of that is you have to take a slightly more active role in cultural discourse if you have any desire to see society converge on good ideas, and eschew harmful ones.
  - personjerry 9y ago
    Whose responsibility is it to ensure you don't have an echo chamber? Yours, or Facebook's?
    - jpk 9y ago
      A little from column A, a little from column B. We're all in this together.
  - taysic 9y ago
    So policing FB creates less of an echo chamber? Huh? It’s perpetuating the echo chamber of whoever gets appointed by the gov.
philwelch 9y ago
> FB is the world's most important news outlet. I think this is undeniable in 2017. They have tremendous power (and responsibility) in this role. Do they have more power and responsibility than the grocery store newsstand that has the National Enquirer next to Time Magazine, or the cable TV company that delivers Fox News and RT alongside more reliable news sources, or the email services that people used to forward everyone nutty right-wing newsletters before sharing them on Facebook became popular? Most people don't want news. They want outrage porn and confirmation bias. They want junk food. Facebook optimizes for what people want to see, just like your corner store optimizes for what people want to buy. It's not 7/11's fault that people want to drink 64 oz sodas and eat gummy bears and it's not Facebook's fault that people want to read Breitbart. If 7/11 stopped selling Big Gulps and gummy bears, people would stop going to 7/11 and they would go broke. If Facebook stopped letting people share outrage porn and confirmation bias with each other, people would stop using Facebook and it would go out of business. So those of us who just want a nice place to buy batteries or keep in touch with distant friends and family members just have to accept that people will use those same venues and mechanisms for things we disapprove of. P.S.: "Journalism is an institution of democracy"? Well, sometimes. And if you do a good enough job of it, you get a prize named after someone who made a fortune by selling terrible quality newspapers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer. News has been a cynical business of propaganda for profit far more often than it has ever been an institution of democracy.

Retric 9y ago

FB is very much falling into a local not global optimum. Social networks are optimizing for the derivative of peoples actions. A/B testing to see what causes more clicks etc. However, people are complex enough that they notice patterns and change how they approach things. Some of the most frequent users suddenly chose to quit. I remember seeing a slightly different discussion on HN ~5 years ago with almost the same arguments and thinking it was Déjà Vu because it was so similar to another HN post. Which get's a very different response than the first time around, because people change. Yesterday FB may have been the worlds most important news source, today less so, and long term people will treat it as just another tabloid. In that context, starting your own 'social network' will eventually be good advice, because trust is much easier to lose than gain.

zupreme 9y ago

I love your comment but disagree on one point. I don't think Facebook has ANY obligation to improve the quality of the "news" shared on it. I favor freedom of speech and freedom of association. If I have a friend who keeps posting BS articles from shady sources (and I do) then I just block them from my feed or simply ignore their posts about current events and conspiracy theories. I think asking FB, or any other platform, to start policing the quality of what we post is dangerous. What happens is if a story breaks that official authorities deny, but which is actually true. Would you want FB being the arbiter of truth, in such a case, or would you prefer for individuals (preferably alot of them) to be free to do their own research and to come to their own conclusions?

jpk 9y ago
The trouble with this, of course, is that you build an echo chamber for both yourself and your friend. You no longer see the posts you think are BS, and you preclude yourself from challenging your friend's BS in comments. I agree that delegating to Facebook judgement of what speech is acceptable or not isn't a good idea, but the flip side of that is you have to take a slightly more active role in cultural discourse if you have any desire to see society converge on good ideas, and eschew harmful ones.
- personjerry 9y ago
  Whose responsibility is it to ensure you don't have an echo chamber? Yours, or Facebook's?
  - jpk 9y ago
    A little from column A, a little from column B. We're all in this together.
- taysic 9y ago
  So policing FB creates less of an echo chamber? Huh? It’s perpetuating the echo chamber of whoever gets appointed by the gov.

philwelch 9y ago

> FB is the world's most important news outlet. I think this is undeniable in 2017. They have tremendous power (and responsibility) in this role. Do they have more power and responsibility than the grocery store newsstand that has the National Enquirer next to Time Magazine, or the cable TV company that delivers Fox News and RT alongside more reliable news sources, or the email services that people used to forward everyone nutty right-wing newsletters before sharing them on Facebook became popular? Most people don't want news. They want outrage porn and confirmation bias. They want junk food. Facebook optimizes for what people want to see, just like your corner store optimizes for what people want to buy. It's not 7/11's fault that people want to drink 64 oz sodas and eat gummy bears and it's not Facebook's fault that people want to read Breitbart. If 7/11 stopped selling Big Gulps and gummy bears, people would stop going to 7/11 and they would go broke. If Facebook stopped letting people share outrage porn and confirmation bias with each other, people would stop using Facebook and it would go out of business. So those of us who just want a nice place to buy batteries or keep in touch with distant friends and family members just have to accept that people will use those same venues and mechanisms for things we disapprove of. P.S.: "Journalism is an institution of democracy"? Well, sometimes. And if you do a good enough job of it, you get a prize named after someone who made a fortune by selling terrible quality newspapers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer. News has been a cynical business of propaganda for profit far more often than it has ever been an institution of democracy.