14 ms·

Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

177 points by TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

olivermarks 9y ago
'In Myanmar today, Facebook is the internet' That can't be good...
- knolan 9y ago
  This is also true for a lot of older people new to the internet. My mother doesn’t understand that her laptop can do more than browse Facebook and buy things on Amazon. Her bookmarks are the random pages of her friends. Her primary source of news is fast becoming whatever click bait she sees there. I tell her not to trust Facebook, I explain how she is their product and they exploit her but she doesn’t listen.
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    To be honest, I think I got lucky that I first became a frequent web user pre-Facebook, as I can see that I might have ended up a similar way. A decent sized chunk of my early web usage had some form of social element, but chat rooms, web forums and news aggregators don't have the same stigma as social media, perhaps because the discussions revolve around subjects someone is interested in, rather than discussions surrounding the people using that service. HN is a continuation of that early online behaviour, for me at least. However, if I'd grown up in the post-Facebook era, would my Internet activity gravitate towards social media for online discussions? I don't know for sure, but it seems plausible. I'd say the larger question is, how do we let people know there's online communities outside Facebook that they might enjoy just as much or even more? Perhaps Reddit is a useful gateway out of the social media bubble, there's a huge range of communities on Reddit, it'd be hard not to find something someone was interested in.
  - soneca 9y ago
    People with less formal education also equals Facebook and Internet. I had a startup that sold B2B2C products to restaurants. I had to train wiaters and cashiers to use their product on their phone (as the customers would). Most of the times when I asked them to open the internet they would open Facebook app directly. They wouldn't understand "browser" or "chrome" either. When I clicked on the chrome icon for them, they would say "Oh, you mean Google??". And then I had to go on and explain that you could go to the URL field and type an specific address you of a site.
    - raverbashing 9y ago
      B2b2c? Could you explain?
      - soneca 9y ago
        A product that is "Business to Business to Consumer". It was a loyalty program for restaurants. I had to sell to the restaurants (B2B), but the main user was their customers (B2C).
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
        Never seen the term used before, but pretty sure it means Business to Business to Consumer i.e. they are a business that sells consumer facing software to other businesses. Example would be a POS (Point of Sale) system which I am guessing based on above anecdote is the family of software grandparent was referring to.
      - BayesStreet 9y ago
        With respect to the supply chain; business to business to consumer.
      - anewhnaccount2 9y ago
        I guess this is something like a CRM, where you're primary customers are another business, but you're building something that's visible to their customers, so you're also trying to satisfy these end users.
    - heymijo 9y ago
      This is a good point and one that is recognized often here: there's a good chunk of internet users that are mobile only. That's an entirely different way to come up and learn technology than those of us who went through any variation of DOS > MS or Apple Desktops > Smartphones. Conjecture: the browser, if thought about at all by mobile users, is an afterthought to apps like FB, messaging, Youtube, etc.
  - bshimmin 9y ago
    I can see a few problems with this. The concept of "you are their product" is not an easy one to understand if people don't have any relevant background or experience in thinking critically about the problem. It requires thinking through several non-obvious layers: for example, it's easy for people to get stuck at "yes, I don't pay for Facebook, that's why it has advertising" without making the leap to "most businesses cannot just support themselves on advertising, they actually sell something to you too - so how does Facebook do it? By making their advertising more effective. How do they make their advertising more effective? By building up a detailed profile of everything about you without your knowledge or consent"... and even then people will get stuck at why their knowing so much about you is bad. Secondly, exploitation sounds very scary and bad, but it makes people think of slaves and working in coal pits and blood diamonds, not looking at pictures of babies from the comfort of their sofa. Do I have a solution? No, of course not. Many people just don't want to hear it, they want to carry on blithely communicating with their friends in real-time for free and looking at pictures of babies.
    - spunker540 9y ago
      The “Facebook sells your data” myth is too often rehashed. Facebook has done studies and actually found that your personal info is not all that valuable in and of itself. Your likes, statuses, friends and photos do not provide meaningful targeting data. (Age and geography are meaningful, but those are already available with traditional media). Facebook’s huge money maker is its ability to let other companies target their own customers on the Facebook platform. If Nordstrom keeps track of its website customers and what products they look at, and can then target those same users directly on Facebook with related products, they’re willing to pay way more for that kind of targeting than they are “women in their 40s who ‘like’ shopping”. Facebook supports both, but facebooks real success comes from letting companies leverage their own data on the Facebook platform. That and the fact that they have a billion users log in per day. If any other site had that kind of traffic they’d be killing it regardless of the personal data they possessed.
      - bigger_cheese 9y ago
        What killed Facebook for me was their creepy targeted advertising. About a year ago I saw an ad buried in my facebook feed to "buy Gallium and Bismuth metal in Australia" I thought it was an oddly specific ad so I made a joking post about it - turned out several of my friends were seeing the same ad. A common friend we all shared who is a high school science teacher spoke up. He explained his class was studying the periodic table and he had purchased samples of Bismuth and Gallium online to show to the class. That was the eye opening moment for me if my friends and I can see ads based on another friend's online purchases what can my friends see about me? I've rarely used the site since then.
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    That's true. It's like AOL all over again.
- ramshanker 9y ago
  Lately I have forwarded obviously wrong WhatsApp messages to my closest ones, just to impart in then that every forwarded messages is NOT true or happening in real world.
amelius 9y ago
I don't want to read about how bad the situation is, because I already know. I want to read about how we are going to find a solution.
- oDot 9y ago
  Stop using Facebook
  - __s 9y ago
    Okay, did that, next?
    - slouch 9y ago
      Start a local news & culture Twitter account that's better for young people than your newspaper.
    - castle-bravo 9y ago
      So begins the slow descent into Luddism. Seriously now: I think there needs to be a grassroots push for a vety selective approach to technology adoption as described by Kevin Kelly in his book What Technology Wants. If people generally treated new apps and devices with a skeptical 'what does this do for me?' attitude, there might be more herd immunity against abuses of power by large tech firms (Google's stealing location data from users, Intel's engineering backdoors into their products, and Facebook's cynical propaganda profiteering) and resulting social disruption. In Canada, engineers in training are asked to swear an oath that they will serve the public good and only work for honest enterprises. I think that if those values were more widely taught and accepted, toleration of abuses within large tech companies would evaporate. It's a cultural change that needs to happen, and the way to effect cultural change is to practice what you believe, "be the change" as Ghandi said, and to share your ideas with others in your workplace and community.
      - Sytten 9y ago
        Though we have to say many Eng. don't respect that oath and are not held responsible... For example civil eng. firms giving money to political parties to have contracts.
john2x 9y ago
My idea for a quick fix is to remove likes/dislikes/emoji reactions. If people can't see how others feel about a post/article in an instant, they might have to read and decide for themselves how to feel.
- wybiral 9y ago
  I upvoted this comment and then immediately felt dirty.
  - feikname 9y ago
    To be fair, HN hides a comment score until the user decides to see it.
    - frik 9y ago
      How can one see the HN comment score? (except own comments) I think it was there some years ago, but vanished incl karma-ratio info when PG stept back.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        You can't. And they were hidden before pg stepped back; in fact, he made a poll asking what people thought of the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605
        feikname 9y ago
        I was under the impression that you could see it when clicking the "[-]" at the right side of the comment metadata. But it seems it's just the number of child comments, my mistake.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  It's clickbait, it doesn't matter if they click like it not
lithos 9y ago
It's gotta feel bad for the local reporters that are literally risking their lives reporting news in Cambodia, to then have their views go down 80%. Because Facebook decided to experiment and implement the Timeline feature. Facebook is barely even tied to the fate or all that concerned, since it's only 18million users.
- tryingagainbro 9y ago
  >>because Facebook decided to experiment and implement the Timeline feature That's to increase ad revenue, make no mistake about it. Like Google's algorithm and display changes...buy ads to be on top of the page
- 3131s 9y ago
  This article was published three weeks ago, so it doesn't mention the recent forced dissolution of the main opposition party in Cambodia, the CNRP. That has pretty much landed Cambodia unequivocally in the category of dictatorship, though most younger Cambodians would tell you it was never anything else. I also believe I know who the unnamed Cambodian blogger quoted in the article is. She is known for discussing progressive issues and has well-deserved popularity among young Cambodian people, but apparently circulation of her posts and videos took a huge hit after these changes in the algorithm. It is a little ironic that the Cambodia Daily is having its "second life" online -- they were so embittered by the impact of online journalism on traditional print journalism that there was an editorial policy against even posting links or URLs in any article on their website. Of course, I'm not cheering for their demise, given the need for a free press here. I know a number of people who work at the Phnom Penh Post, the other big Cambodian newspaper, who have plainly said in recent weeks that they can't / won't write anything critical of the government. The political climate is feeling more and more volatile here by the moment. In the days before the CNRP was dissolved, we even had military police going through every stairwell of every tiny alley, including my own, on some made-up pretense but really as a cheap intimidation tactic. As the election approaches there will be squads of heavily armed military police posted on nearly every corner of many districts in Phnom Penh.
- dqpb 9y ago
  So do you think that once a service has a certain number of users it should cease all changes?
richardknop 9y ago
Facebook has to be broken down to pieces. I think it has reached a state where it cannot be allowed to continue as a single company being able to observe/monitor public and private communication / social interaction of so many people and not being regulated and controlled by the government.
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  I'm afraid it won't work well without extra regulation laws. Even if Facebook is broken, it has shown the way. Before, it was MySpace (although it was never so popular). If someone breaks FB, the strongest competitor living in its shadow will step up. I think it is the nature of certain services to centralize. Search engines, social networks. Unless someone forces them to inter-operate, it's winner takes all.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    > Unless someone forces them to inter-operate, it's winner takes all. So you mandate inter-operation at the same time you break up the biggest, just like we've done with every other natural monopoly.
    - saas_co_de 9y ago
      I find it interesting that phone number portability was introduced long ago but no email or social profile portability.
      - saagarjha 9y ago
        While social media profile portability is generally impossible, almost all email providers will let you export email as a MBOX that you can then import into your new account.
        saas_co_de 9y ago
        Moving your existing emails is not equivalent to phone number portability. Equivalency would be allowing me to take my gmail address and have it point to Proton Mail instead of Gmail. On the social network side full portability would mean being able to take your profile off of facebook but still having full interoperability with facebook so that users could still see your new posts and vice-versa.
osrec 9y ago
Facebook itself seems to be quite comfortable with the world it has created; a place where every vulnerable (and even perhaps, not so vulnerable) mind can be influenced by information regardless of factual accuracy!
- knowThySelfx 9y ago
  They've only added to the comfort by acquiring Whatsapp.
- ehnto 9y ago
  Only directly if you are on Facebook. I can't really tell if any particular influence floats from FB to me through my friends, most of my friends don't use FB either or their not really the type to care about things Facebook tends to influence. If you're not one for consumerism in the first place, it's not hard to fight away advertising influence, and if you're not that active politically (although you should be!) then again, FB can't really influence you that much. You could argue that what FB doesn't show you is also a form of influence, but if you weren't on FB at all then that argument wouldn't hold. I guess the world it's created definitely has affected me though. If it could be argued that political leaders are elected based on influence fostered on social media, I can't avoid being affected by that. Social conversation is how you spread influence, and that's not really a bad thing in itself. What's clearly not great about Facebook however, is how you can pay for that same influence to be injected into normal social conversation.
tryingagainbro 9y ago
That's what keeps Zuck awake, I'm sure (sarcasm.) Buy ads if you want to get your point across. The fact that "everyone" uses FB is a badge of honor, a goal everyone tries to reach.
wybiral 9y ago
Seeing the recent wave of discourse surrounding social media platforms has been interesting. We had similar problems before them. Tabloids, conspiracy theory subculture, clickbait, etc, are nothing new. And we had "feed readers" that functioned to aggregate news sources that we subscribed/followed/liked. Which, in theory, should have catered to us in the way that people now label an "echo chamber". But there are a few differences that stick out to me: - More people producing content (back in the day anyone could create a blog or personal site, but the barrier of entry is lowered by social media platforms) - These platforms are promoting some content above other content (which goes beyond aggregation) - There's more data being collected and the tech to analyze it is increasing (targeting segments is easier) - Bots
stabbles 9y ago
I'm curious how many HN people still use Facebook. The overall sentiment here seems to be to just quit it.
- colmvp 9y ago
  I quit a little less than a year ago but honestly it’s a drop in the bucket as compared to the rest of the people in my social circle. I’m resigned to the fact that millions of people don’t care about whatever Facebook does, that Facebook not only won the social network wars but they are astoundingly profitable and lucrative, and that it kind of doesn’t matter what Facebook does people will still use them.
- sz4kerto 9y ago
  Those are people who are vocal about their choices. Based on what you're reading here, the average HNer uses Fastmail, has no Facebook account, writes code in Rust, exercises a lot, wants a self-driving car and works at or owns a start-up. While most people reading this site are most likely Java, JS or .Net programmers; work at a large enterprise, use Gmail and Facebook.
beautifulfreak 9y ago
>Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it. That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for. Is this a call to regulate posts so there's no fake news, or more, to prevent all speech that can incite bad actions? In perilous regions of the world, sometimes people are arrested for their posts, and can be seen to be connected with others on Facebook, so that they also fall under suspicion. Is Facebook supposed to keep those users safe somehow? I mean, what's the author's gripe? A better article would have mentioned that free speech, a "good thing," albeit sometimes dangerous, is powerfully fostered by Facebook. Give it some credit. It would also have been fairer if it had mentioned how difficult it is to detect and thwart bad actors who find ways to abuse any platform. (Removing trolls from small forums is hard enough.) Instead, it insinuates that Facebook is willfully indifferent. At least it isn't accused of colluding with the bad actors, as sometimes happens when US companies do business overseas.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  Yes, it is interesting that the author sees no place in the modern world for the kind of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. They are happy with a giant global monopolist controlling all speech, as long as they use that power to enforce their political agenda. That is an incredibly dangerous mindset and one that seems to be becoming more pervasive in respectable circles.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    Free speech is a dangerous idea by itself, and without democracy and solid institutions, it can easily be the tool of populists and demagogues. It's not an absolute value all on its own.
    - chroem- 9y ago
      Please elaborate on how populism and democracy are two separate entities, when, by definition, both are characterized by majority rule. Are you sure you aren't confusing democracy with republicanism?
ThomPete 9y ago
I am still unconvinced Facebook played any role in the outcome of the 2016 election. It played a role in the the form of the discussion but the actual outcome it didn't. Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook no matter how many times they like it.
- ethbro 9y ago
  > Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook [...] I'd say exactly the opposite. The politically empassioned folks I meet lately (on both sides) are always quicker to talk about a meme than a concrete issue. E.g. Koch brothers, Shariah Law
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    So arent you saying the same as me?
    - ethbro 9y ago
      I'd say that's the opposite. The borderline conspiracy theories that seem popular are pretty different than "the garbage needs to be picked up on time" locally important issues that I thought you were talking about.
      - ThomPete 9y ago
        Not sure what you are commenting on
- herbst 9y ago
  Even if it's Facebooks fault somehow. It's still the peoples fault who think Facebook is news. Nobody ever said that still people assume it (appearantly. My social circle never did)
- chiaro 9y ago
  There is no escaping it played a significant role, when it's where a significant portion of people got their news. http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-campaign-a-news-event-thats-hard-to-miss/pj_2016-02-04_election-news_0-02/ http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-c...
ivix 9y ago
It's quite eye opening the way that this article paints Facebook as a clueless giant, unknowingly enabling revolutions, swinging elections and upending societies. I don't think there's any precedent for this.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  I'd very strongly suggest you read media theory. The role of media -- the press, cheap paper, high-speed printing, widespread literacy, pamphlets, telegraph, radio, cinema, audio tape, public address systems, mass media, advertising, television, cable, talk radio, BBS systems, Usenet, the Internet, the WWW (versions 1.0, 2.0, and mobile), etc., in political and social matters is absolutely profound. And often quite unexpected at least by the initial creators. Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is one introduction to this, though there are many others. I'm going through Robert W. McChesney's work presently.
  - clydethefrog 9y ago
    It's a depressing field if you go to deep I feel, especially if you read the most critical and pessimistic critical theorists in the field. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Benjamin and The Society of the Spectacle by Debord forever changed my vision on society. "My thoughts have been replaced by moving images..."
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Thanks for the suggestions. /me glances at the reading pile^Wstack^Wmountain^Wsingularity. Um. Maybe ;-) Actually, a friend has previously strongly recommended Guy Dubord, and I keep running across references. I do have ... something by him. Dense.
sunseb 9y ago
I prefer reading bullshit on FB than having some kind of free speech censorship. It's like bombing countries for world peace, there is a mismatch doing that.
sunseb 9y ago
I feel FB is kind of dying anyway. All the trendy/cool/geek people have left FB. Users don't share much stuff anymore. There is this ego fatigue too: people are tired of playing this game of making their life looks cool on FB. It's no coincidence that FB buy WhatsApp, Instagram, Occulus: they have the metrics and they need to move on to something else.
- brudgers 9y ago
  Facebook vectored away from trendy/cool/geek when it stopped requiring an email with .edu. It just took awhile for people to get used to the internet. Old people use it to see photos of their grandkids. It's a bigger and more sustainable user base than young people. Young people turn over. The first person I knew with Facebook is 33 with three children and a mortgage.
nerdponx 9y ago
On an earnings call earlier last week, Zuckerberg told investors and reporters “how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust,” adding that he was “dead serious” about findings ways to tackle the problem. BS. He is only upset that he got caught.
- hellos123 9y ago
  I am more concern with the power he is wielding. He doesn't seem to think things through from other perspectives. The fact he dismissed the possibility of social hacking Facebook to influence others make me think he is surround by yes-men that only whistle to the tune he likes. Unfortunately, I have seen that too many times in startups.
dasil003 9y ago
I have no love for Facebook, but it's important to recognize that Facebook role in these problems is only incidental. If there was no Facebook, we'd have the same growing fake news, astroturfing and bot problem—these are inherent to social media and widespread internet access. I'm not against regulation of Facebook per se, but the broader question of how we contend with online misinformation and propaganda in an online world is much more important.
- cryptoz 9y ago
  > Facebook role in these problems is only incidental. If there was no Facebook, we'd have the same growing fake news, astroturfing and bot problem You don't know this. A major flaw of Facebook is that the CEO thinks his users are "dumb fucks", and who is hell-bent on growth without checks, who is a morality that does not include personal privacy or seemingly any human emotion for his users who made him rich. He has refused to acknowledge the problems on his platform that led to the issues with fake news today. Perhaps a different company, run by a different person or group of people, will be less intentionally vile and evil.
dgudkov 9y ago
Facebook didn't create that world -- it has always existed. Facebook only exposed some previously underrated features of the human society. It's very naive to expect that it can fix it. A social network (or any other technology) can't fix humans just like telephone or television couldn't. Like any massive technology shift it requires new social education. For instance, be very mindful about what you post and who can read/see it, beware of social bubbles and bots, employ critical thinking. The process of education will take time but eventually new online social norms will be formed and the early adopter problems will fade away.
paradite 9y ago
I know this comment might attract a lot of hate, but I will put it here anyway. The main reason why Facebook is not in China is that Chinese government wishes to regulate Facebook while Facebook (like Google) refuses to obey. In some ways, Chinese government was right in the judgement that unfiltered and unregulated freedom of speech bring its own problems. And now the Western free world is starting to see these problems and impose regulations. Disclaimer: I'm Chinese.
- libertyEQ 9y ago
  >And now the Western free world is starting to see these problems and impose regulations. This has not happened in the US, and it is only the authoritarian types that you are hearing from even discussing the idea. In fact, the current administration is dismantling the somewhat light-handed regulation imposed by the previous admin.
- InternetOfStuff 9y ago
  Interesting take, thank you. There's still a big difference: for us, privately owned companies with whose publications we struggle have been with us for a very long time. Germany, where I'm from, has a more nuanced concept of free speech than the US, legally banning a greater (but overall still very small) number of topics or expressions. However, outright banning of a media company is essentially impossible: prosecutors can only go after individual publications. They are using the same regulations to go after Facebook posts as they use to go after newspaper articles, As you might imagine it's not working out, because of sheer volume among other factors. So they've recently created a new law to simplify oversight over social media. However this is not really a surprising new development. We're not "starting to see these problems", we've struggled with these problems throughout the existence of the German Republic. Technology is currently changing their shape, as it has before (e.g with the advent of private TV), and we're changing our approach to match. Nothing to see here, really.
herbst 9y ago
As much as I dislike Facebook. We have to stop to tell them they are responsible for anything. It's fully our fault whatever one can say is Facebooks. Everything else is just censorship and just as bad. There is no such thing as responsible censorship. One side will always get pissed and who are we or Facebook to decide what's right.
- ashleyn 9y ago
  If it's a fully private entity like Facebook, is it truly "censorship" in the derisive sense that we associate with it? If a user on Facebook posts aggressive and distasteful white identity propaganda which begins alienating other users, do Facebook and its advertisers not have the right to use the platform they created to exclude such content should they desire to do so? Does a fictitious "right to be heard" from a privately-administered entity supersede Facebook's actual right to property and self-determination over that property? If "censorship" is truly a problem here, only another free-market alternative to Facebook is the correct solution. Gab did it with Twitter. Now, whether or not Gab will ever be as successful as Twitter because of the userbase it curates is an entirely different story. One is not entitled to a specific outcome, and if rejecting racism is what makes big business big, there's not much left that the other side of this debate can complain about.
  - herbst 9y ago
    This is exactly censorship. If people want to listen They listen. If not than not. Pretty selecting based on YOUR opinion is and always will be censorship
- yequalsx 9y ago
  I strongly disagree that there is no such thing as responsible censorship. Furthermore censorship is not always, "...just as bad." As an extreme example of good censorship look at child pornography. We have laws that prohibit speech in the form of harassment. Some countries prohibit anti-abortion protestors from harassing women trying to get an abortion. There are lots of cases where censorship is good.
makecheck 9y ago
I think it would be interesting if online personas worked a little bit like video game characters. For instance, in an RPG, no one would believe a character could be equally effective at wielding heavy weapons and casting spells, or other tasks: you generally have to pick one or two key areas of expertise and be “OK at best” when anything else comes along. Yet somehow, in the world of online discourse, everyone’s an equal expert on everything? What are the odds that a person really has good knowledge of both nuclear physics and farming? If you could only post or upvote things that were considered relevant to a few limited areas of expertise in your profile, we would see a very different online world. Suddenly, seeing an article on the front page on a certain topic might actually mean that it got there due to “likes” from people with relevant experience, and not just whatever random definitely-not-statistically-valid sample of “friends” put it there.
- csa 9y ago
  That's an interesting idea, but it's also probably one that would be impossible to implement effectively. For example: 1. Who would determine any given person's area of expertise. This is a difficult and potentially difficult thing to do. 2. People who are ostensibly experts in a topic, even if they have a lot of experience with it, often have incredibly uninformed opinions. As a simple example, most people I know have a lot of experience with dating/relationships, parenting, and politics, but their knowledge of these topics is based on a bizarre and woefully incomplete combination of old wives'tales, anecdotes, and just-so stories. They fully believe they are experts and often have some paper evidence to back this up. Somethin similar can be said of programmers. There are plenty of people who can write a program that works, but are they experts? To a non-technologist, maybe (and maybe not). To the grande dame or grand homme of a field of programming, probably not. The range of defining an "expert" is huge. Do you have any ideas to address this?
  - andromaton 9y ago
    ELO ratings.
  - makecheck 9y ago
    The first issue is how to make sure that people aren’t creating 100 profiles each (something that’s a real problem on sites today). This is where I expect data breaches to “help”; as it becomes more and more ridiculous that our current identity schemes aren’t working, something better can be developed and act as a basis for a unique-by-birth profile that is as anonymous as you need it to be. Part of the problem of expertise would be solved by the natural upper limit on how much expertise is reasonable for one person to have. No one should be able to claim strong experience in more areas than they could have conceivably spent time learning/practicing. Therefore, if you’re going to make your profile claim expertise in something you know nothing about, you’d definitely be wasting your limited opportunity to comment and you wouldn’t be able to do that for everything. Also, if comments/votes/etc. on something are only permitted for people in related fields, an uninformed person’s ramblings might still be drowned out by the only other people commenting. Determining how to limit a profile is tricky. Some restrictions would be easy, e.g. a 14-year-old can’t claim 30 years experience in an industry. Some would be harder, perhaps enabled by webs of trust (e.g. as a side effect of employment, your employer adds credibility to your profile somehow in a particular area of expertise).
zerostar07 9y ago
If it wouldn't be facebook it would be something else. The bigger issue here is that the completely-decentralized or completely-centralized civil society of the earth that the internet creates is incompatible with the way the world is run for the past 2 centuries.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Whilst true, the fact remains that it is Facebook, for now, and it's Facebook's place to admit, understand, and address this fact.
  - zerostar07 9y ago
    what i meant is that it is not possible to address this fact. this is the new world order.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Fair enough. Though I'd be interested in your expanding on what you see the consequences / results being. I'm tending toward "unfavourable".
FeepingCreature 9y ago
> For a long time, Silicon Valley espoused a dogma of information neutrality — claiming, falsely, that search engines and social networks were only impartial tools. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

'In Myanmar today, Facebook is the internet' That can't be good...

knolan 9y ago
This is also true for a lot of older people new to the internet. My mother doesn’t understand that her laptop can do more than browse Facebook and buy things on Amazon. Her bookmarks are the random pages of her friends. Her primary source of news is fast becoming whatever click bait she sees there. I tell her not to trust Facebook, I explain how she is their product and they exploit her but she doesn’t listen.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  To be honest, I think I got lucky that I first became a frequent web user pre-Facebook, as I can see that I might have ended up a similar way. A decent sized chunk of my early web usage had some form of social element, but chat rooms, web forums and news aggregators don't have the same stigma as social media, perhaps because the discussions revolve around subjects someone is interested in, rather than discussions surrounding the people using that service. HN is a continuation of that early online behaviour, for me at least. However, if I'd grown up in the post-Facebook era, would my Internet activity gravitate towards social media for online discussions? I don't know for sure, but it seems plausible. I'd say the larger question is, how do we let people know there's online communities outside Facebook that they might enjoy just as much or even more? Perhaps Reddit is a useful gateway out of the social media bubble, there's a huge range of communities on Reddit, it'd be hard not to find something someone was interested in.
- soneca 9y ago
  People with less formal education also equals Facebook and Internet. I had a startup that sold B2B2C products to restaurants. I had to train wiaters and cashiers to use their product on their phone (as the customers would). Most of the times when I asked them to open the internet they would open Facebook app directly. They wouldn't understand "browser" or "chrome" either. When I clicked on the chrome icon for them, they would say "Oh, you mean Google??". And then I had to go on and explain that you could go to the URL field and type an specific address you of a site.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    B2b2c? Could you explain?
    - soneca 9y ago
      A product that is "Business to Business to Consumer". It was a loyalty program for restaurants. I had to sell to the restaurants (B2B), but the main user was their customers (B2C).
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
      Never seen the term used before, but pretty sure it means Business to Business to Consumer i.e. they are a business that sells consumer facing software to other businesses. Example would be a POS (Point of Sale) system which I am guessing based on above anecdote is the family of software grandparent was referring to.
    - BayesStreet 9y ago
      With respect to the supply chain; business to business to consumer.
    - anewhnaccount2 9y ago
      I guess this is something like a CRM, where you're primary customers are another business, but you're building something that's visible to their customers, so you're also trying to satisfy these end users.
  - heymijo 9y ago
    This is a good point and one that is recognized often here: there's a good chunk of internet users that are mobile only. That's an entirely different way to come up and learn technology than those of us who went through any variation of DOS > MS or Apple Desktops > Smartphones. Conjecture: the browser, if thought about at all by mobile users, is an afterthought to apps like FB, messaging, Youtube, etc.
- bshimmin 9y ago
  I can see a few problems with this. The concept of "you are their product" is not an easy one to understand if people don't have any relevant background or experience in thinking critically about the problem. It requires thinking through several non-obvious layers: for example, it's easy for people to get stuck at "yes, I don't pay for Facebook, that's why it has advertising" without making the leap to "most businesses cannot just support themselves on advertising, they actually sell something to you too - so how does Facebook do it? By making their advertising more effective. How do they make their advertising more effective? By building up a detailed profile of everything about you without your knowledge or consent"... and even then people will get stuck at why their knowing so much about you is bad. Secondly, exploitation sounds very scary and bad, but it makes people think of slaves and working in coal pits and blood diamonds, not looking at pictures of babies from the comfort of their sofa. Do I have a solution? No, of course not. Many people just don't want to hear it, they want to carry on blithely communicating with their friends in real-time for free and looking at pictures of babies.
  - spunker540 9y ago
    The “Facebook sells your data” myth is too often rehashed. Facebook has done studies and actually found that your personal info is not all that valuable in and of itself. Your likes, statuses, friends and photos do not provide meaningful targeting data. (Age and geography are meaningful, but those are already available with traditional media). Facebook’s huge money maker is its ability to let other companies target their own customers on the Facebook platform. If Nordstrom keeps track of its website customers and what products they look at, and can then target those same users directly on Facebook with related products, they’re willing to pay way more for that kind of targeting than they are “women in their 40s who ‘like’ shopping”. Facebook supports both, but facebooks real success comes from letting companies leverage their own data on the Facebook platform. That and the fact that they have a billion users log in per day. If any other site had that kind of traffic they’d be killing it regardless of the personal data they possessed.
    - bigger_cheese 9y ago
      What killed Facebook for me was their creepy targeted advertising. About a year ago I saw an ad buried in my facebook feed to "buy Gallium and Bismuth metal in Australia" I thought it was an oddly specific ad so I made a joking post about it - turned out several of my friends were seeing the same ad. A common friend we all shared who is a high school science teacher spoke up. He explained his class was studying the periodic table and he had purchased samples of Bismuth and Gallium online to show to the class. That was the eye opening moment for me if my friends and I can see ads based on another friend's online purchases what can my friends see about me? I've rarely used the site since then.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  That's true. It's like AOL all over again.
ramshanker 9y ago
Lately I have forwarded obviously wrong WhatsApp messages to my closest ones, just to impart in then that every forwarded messages is NOT true or happening in real world.

I don't want to read about how bad the situation is, because I already know. I want to read about how we are going to find a solution.

oDot 9y ago
Stop using Facebook
- __s 9y ago
  Okay, did that, next?
  - slouch 9y ago
    Start a local news & culture Twitter account that's better for young people than your newspaper.
  - castle-bravo 9y ago
    So begins the slow descent into Luddism. Seriously now: I think there needs to be a grassroots push for a vety selective approach to technology adoption as described by Kevin Kelly in his book What Technology Wants. If people generally treated new apps and devices with a skeptical 'what does this do for me?' attitude, there might be more herd immunity against abuses of power by large tech firms (Google's stealing location data from users, Intel's engineering backdoors into their products, and Facebook's cynical propaganda profiteering) and resulting social disruption. In Canada, engineers in training are asked to swear an oath that they will serve the public good and only work for honest enterprises. I think that if those values were more widely taught and accepted, toleration of abuses within large tech companies would evaporate. It's a cultural change that needs to happen, and the way to effect cultural change is to practice what you believe, "be the change" as Ghandi said, and to share your ideas with others in your workplace and community.
    - Sytten 9y ago
      Though we have to say many Eng. don't respect that oath and are not held responsible... For example civil eng. firms giving money to political parties to have contracts.

john2x 9y ago

My idea for a quick fix is to remove likes/dislikes/emoji reactions. If people can't see how others feel about a post/article in an instant, they might have to read and decide for themselves how to feel.

wybiral 9y ago
I upvoted this comment and then immediately felt dirty.
- feikname 9y ago
  To be fair, HN hides a comment score until the user decides to see it.
  - frik 9y ago
    How can one see the HN comment score? (except own comments) I think it was there some years ago, but vanished incl karma-ratio info when PG stept back.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      You can't. And they were hidden before pg stepped back; in fact, he made a poll asking what people thought of the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605
      - feikname 9y ago
        I was under the impression that you could see it when clicking the "[-]" at the right side of the comment metadata. But it seems it's just the number of child comments, my mistake.
raverbashing 9y ago
It's clickbait, it doesn't matter if they click like it not

lithos 9y ago

It's gotta feel bad for the local reporters that are literally risking their lives reporting news in Cambodia, to then have their views go down 80%. Because Facebook decided to experiment and implement the Timeline feature. Facebook is barely even tied to the fate or all that concerned, since it's only 18million users.

tryingagainbro 9y ago
>>because Facebook decided to experiment and implement the Timeline feature That's to increase ad revenue, make no mistake about it. Like Google's algorithm and display changes...buy ads to be on top of the page
3131s 9y ago
This article was published three weeks ago, so it doesn't mention the recent forced dissolution of the main opposition party in Cambodia, the CNRP. That has pretty much landed Cambodia unequivocally in the category of dictatorship, though most younger Cambodians would tell you it was never anything else. I also believe I know who the unnamed Cambodian blogger quoted in the article is. She is known for discussing progressive issues and has well-deserved popularity among young Cambodian people, but apparently circulation of her posts and videos took a huge hit after these changes in the algorithm. It is a little ironic that the Cambodia Daily is having its "second life" online -- they were so embittered by the impact of online journalism on traditional print journalism that there was an editorial policy against even posting links or URLs in any article on their website. Of course, I'm not cheering for their demise, given the need for a free press here. I know a number of people who work at the Phnom Penh Post, the other big Cambodian newspaper, who have plainly said in recent weeks that they can't / won't write anything critical of the government. The political climate is feeling more and more volatile here by the moment. In the days before the CNRP was dissolved, we even had military police going through every stairwell of every tiny alley, including my own, on some made-up pretense but really as a cheap intimidation tactic. As the election approaches there will be squads of heavily armed military police posted on nearly every corner of many districts in Phnom Penh.
dqpb 9y ago
So do you think that once a service has a certain number of users it should cease all changes?

richardknop 9y ago

Facebook has to be broken down to pieces. I think it has reached a state where it cannot be allowed to continue as a single company being able to observe/monitor public and private communication / social interaction of so many people and not being regulated and controlled by the government.

b0rsuk 9y ago
I'm afraid it won't work well without extra regulation laws. Even if Facebook is broken, it has shown the way. Before, it was MySpace (although it was never so popular). If someone breaks FB, the strongest competitor living in its shadow will step up. I think it is the nature of certain services to centralize. Search engines, social networks. Unless someone forces them to inter-operate, it's winner takes all.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  > Unless someone forces them to inter-operate, it's winner takes all. So you mandate inter-operation at the same time you break up the biggest, just like we've done with every other natural monopoly.
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    I find it interesting that phone number portability was introduced long ago but no email or social profile portability.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      While social media profile portability is generally impossible, almost all email providers will let you export email as a MBOX that you can then import into your new account.
      - saas_co_de 9y ago
        Moving your existing emails is not equivalent to phone number portability. Equivalency would be allowing me to take my gmail address and have it point to Proton Mail instead of Gmail. On the social network side full portability would mean being able to take your profile off of facebook but still having full interoperability with facebook so that users could still see your new posts and vice-versa.

osrec 9y ago

Facebook itself seems to be quite comfortable with the world it has created; a place where every vulnerable (and even perhaps, not so vulnerable) mind can be influenced by information regardless of factual accuracy!

knowThySelfx 9y ago
They've only added to the comfort by acquiring Whatsapp.
ehnto 9y ago
Only directly if you are on Facebook. I can't really tell if any particular influence floats from FB to me through my friends, most of my friends don't use FB either or their not really the type to care about things Facebook tends to influence. If you're not one for consumerism in the first place, it's not hard to fight away advertising influence, and if you're not that active politically (although you should be!) then again, FB can't really influence you that much. You could argue that what FB doesn't show you is also a form of influence, but if you weren't on FB at all then that argument wouldn't hold. I guess the world it's created definitely has affected me though. If it could be argued that political leaders are elected based on influence fostered on social media, I can't avoid being affected by that. Social conversation is how you spread influence, and that's not really a bad thing in itself. What's clearly not great about Facebook however, is how you can pay for that same influence to be injected into normal social conversation.

tryingagainbro 9y ago

That's what keeps Zuck awake, I'm sure (sarcasm.) Buy ads if you want to get your point across. The fact that "everyone" uses FB is a badge of honor, a goal everyone tries to reach.

wybiral 9y ago

Seeing the recent wave of discourse surrounding social media platforms has been interesting. We had similar problems before them. Tabloids, conspiracy theory subculture, clickbait, etc, are nothing new. And we had "feed readers" that functioned to aggregate news sources that we subscribed/followed/liked. Which, in theory, should have catered to us in the way that people now label an "echo chamber". But there are a few differences that stick out to me: - More people producing content (back in the day anyone could create a blog or personal site, but the barrier of entry is lowered by social media platforms) - These platforms are promoting some content above other content (which goes beyond aggregation) - There's more data being collected and the tech to analyze it is increasing (targeting segments is easier) - Bots

stabbles 9y ago

I'm curious how many HN people still use Facebook. The overall sentiment here seems to be to just quit it.

colmvp 9y ago
I quit a little less than a year ago but honestly it’s a drop in the bucket as compared to the rest of the people in my social circle. I’m resigned to the fact that millions of people don’t care about whatever Facebook does, that Facebook not only won the social network wars but they are astoundingly profitable and lucrative, and that it kind of doesn’t matter what Facebook does people will still use them.
sz4kerto 9y ago
Those are people who are vocal about their choices. Based on what you're reading here, the average HNer uses Fastmail, has no Facebook account, writes code in Rust, exercises a lot, wants a self-driving car and works at or owns a start-up. While most people reading this site are most likely Java, JS or .Net programmers; work at a large enterprise, use Gmail and Facebook.

beautifulfreak 9y ago

>Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it. That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for. Is this a call to regulate posts so there's no fake news, or more, to prevent all speech that can incite bad actions? In perilous regions of the world, sometimes people are arrested for their posts, and can be seen to be connected with others on Facebook, so that they also fall under suspicion. Is Facebook supposed to keep those users safe somehow? I mean, what's the author's gripe? A better article would have mentioned that free speech, a "good thing," albeit sometimes dangerous, is powerfully fostered by Facebook. Give it some credit. It would also have been fairer if it had mentioned how difficult it is to detect and thwart bad actors who find ways to abuse any platform. (Removing trolls from small forums is hard enough.) Instead, it insinuates that Facebook is willfully indifferent. At least it isn't accused of colluding with the bad actors, as sometimes happens when US companies do business overseas.

saas_co_de 9y ago
Yes, it is interesting that the author sees no place in the modern world for the kind of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. They are happy with a giant global monopolist controlling all speech, as long as they use that power to enforce their political agenda. That is an incredibly dangerous mindset and one that seems to be becoming more pervasive in respectable circles.
- barrkel 9y ago
  Free speech is a dangerous idea by itself, and without democracy and solid institutions, it can easily be the tool of populists and demagogues. It's not an absolute value all on its own.
  - chroem- 9y ago
    Please elaborate on how populism and democracy are two separate entities, when, by definition, both are characterized by majority rule. Are you sure you aren't confusing democracy with republicanism?

ThomPete 9y ago

I am still unconvinced Facebook played any role in the outcome of the 2016 election. It played a role in the the form of the discussion but the actual outcome it didn't. Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook no matter how many times they like it.

ethbro 9y ago
> Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook [...] I'd say exactly the opposite. The politically empassioned folks I meet lately (on both sides) are always quicker to talk about a meme than a concrete issue. E.g. Koch brothers, Shariah Law
- ThomPete 9y ago
  So arent you saying the same as me?
  - ethbro 9y ago
    I'd say that's the opposite. The borderline conspiracy theories that seem popular are pretty different than "the garbage needs to be picked up on time" locally important issues that I thought you were talking about.
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      Not sure what you are commenting on
herbst 9y ago
Even if it's Facebooks fault somehow. It's still the peoples fault who think Facebook is news. Nobody ever said that still people assume it (appearantly. My social circle never did)
chiaro 9y ago
There is no escaping it played a significant role, when it's where a significant portion of people got their news. http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-campaign-a-news-event-thats-hard-to-miss/pj_2016-02-04_election-news_0-02/ http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-c...

ivix 9y ago

It's quite eye opening the way that this article paints Facebook as a clueless giant, unknowingly enabling revolutions, swinging elections and upending societies. I don't think there's any precedent for this.

dredmorbius 9y ago
I'd very strongly suggest you read media theory. The role of media -- the press, cheap paper, high-speed printing, widespread literacy, pamphlets, telegraph, radio, cinema, audio tape, public address systems, mass media, advertising, television, cable, talk radio, BBS systems, Usenet, the Internet, the WWW (versions 1.0, 2.0, and mobile), etc., in political and social matters is absolutely profound. And often quite unexpected at least by the initial creators. Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is one introduction to this, though there are many others. I'm going through Robert W. McChesney's work presently.
- clydethefrog 9y ago
  It's a depressing field if you go to deep I feel, especially if you read the most critical and pessimistic critical theorists in the field. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Benjamin and The Society of the Spectacle by Debord forever changed my vision on society. "My thoughts have been replaced by moving images..."
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Thanks for the suggestions. /me glances at the reading pile^Wstack^Wmountain^Wsingularity. Um. Maybe ;-) Actually, a friend has previously strongly recommended Guy Dubord, and I keep running across references. I do have ... something by him. Dense.

sunseb 9y ago

I prefer reading bullshit on FB than having some kind of free speech censorship. It's like bombing countries for world peace, there is a mismatch doing that.

sunseb 9y ago

I feel FB is kind of dying anyway. All the trendy/cool/geek people have left FB. Users don't share much stuff anymore. There is this ego fatigue too: people are tired of playing this game of making their life looks cool on FB. It's no coincidence that FB buy WhatsApp, Instagram, Occulus: they have the metrics and they need to move on to something else.

brudgers 9y ago
Facebook vectored away from trendy/cool/geek when it stopped requiring an email with .edu. It just took awhile for people to get used to the internet. Old people use it to see photos of their grandkids. It's a bigger and more sustainable user base than young people. Young people turn over. The first person I knew with Facebook is 33 with three children and a mortgage.

nerdponx 9y ago

On an earnings call earlier last week, Zuckerberg told investors and reporters “how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust,” adding that he was “dead serious” about findings ways to tackle the problem. BS. He is only upset that he got caught.

hellos123 9y ago
I am more concern with the power he is wielding. He doesn't seem to think things through from other perspectives. The fact he dismissed the possibility of social hacking Facebook to influence others make me think he is surround by yes-men that only whistle to the tune he likes. Unfortunately, I have seen that too many times in startups.

dasil003 9y ago

I have no love for Facebook, but it's important to recognize that Facebook role in these problems is only incidental. If there was no Facebook, we'd have the same growing fake news, astroturfing and bot problem—these are inherent to social media and widespread internet access. I'm not against regulation of Facebook per se, but the broader question of how we contend with online misinformation and propaganda in an online world is much more important.

cryptoz 9y ago
> Facebook role in these problems is only incidental. If there was no Facebook, we'd have the same growing fake news, astroturfing and bot problem You don't know this. A major flaw of Facebook is that the CEO thinks his users are "dumb fucks", and who is hell-bent on growth without checks, who is a morality that does not include personal privacy or seemingly any human emotion for his users who made him rich. He has refused to acknowledge the problems on his platform that led to the issues with fake news today. Perhaps a different company, run by a different person or group of people, will be less intentionally vile and evil.

dgudkov 9y ago

Facebook didn't create that world -- it has always existed. Facebook only exposed some previously underrated features of the human society. It's very naive to expect that it can fix it. A social network (or any other technology) can't fix humans just like telephone or television couldn't. Like any massive technology shift it requires new social education. For instance, be very mindful about what you post and who can read/see it, beware of social bubbles and bots, employ critical thinking. The process of education will take time but eventually new online social norms will be formed and the early adopter problems will fade away.

paradite 9y ago

I know this comment might attract a lot of hate, but I will put it here anyway. The main reason why Facebook is not in China is that Chinese government wishes to regulate Facebook while Facebook (like Google) refuses to obey. In some ways, Chinese government was right in the judgement that unfiltered and unregulated freedom of speech bring its own problems. And now the Western free world is starting to see these problems and impose regulations. Disclaimer: I'm Chinese.

libertyEQ 9y ago
>And now the Western free world is starting to see these problems and impose regulations. This has not happened in the US, and it is only the authoritarian types that you are hearing from even discussing the idea. In fact, the current administration is dismantling the somewhat light-handed regulation imposed by the previous admin.
InternetOfStuff 9y ago
Interesting take, thank you. There's still a big difference: for us, privately owned companies with whose publications we struggle have been with us for a very long time. Germany, where I'm from, has a more nuanced concept of free speech than the US, legally banning a greater (but overall still very small) number of topics or expressions. However, outright banning of a media company is essentially impossible: prosecutors can only go after individual publications. They are using the same regulations to go after Facebook posts as they use to go after newspaper articles, As you might imagine it's not working out, because of sheer volume among other factors. So they've recently created a new law to simplify oversight over social media. However this is not really a surprising new development. We're not "starting to see these problems", we've struggled with these problems throughout the existence of the German Republic. Technology is currently changing their shape, as it has before (e.g with the advent of private TV), and we're changing our approach to match. Nothing to see here, really.

herbst 9y ago

As much as I dislike Facebook. We have to stop to tell them they are responsible for anything. It's fully our fault whatever one can say is Facebooks. Everything else is just censorship and just as bad. There is no such thing as responsible censorship. One side will always get pissed and who are we or Facebook to decide what's right.

ashleyn 9y ago
If it's a fully private entity like Facebook, is it truly "censorship" in the derisive sense that we associate with it? If a user on Facebook posts aggressive and distasteful white identity propaganda which begins alienating other users, do Facebook and its advertisers not have the right to use the platform they created to exclude such content should they desire to do so? Does a fictitious "right to be heard" from a privately-administered entity supersede Facebook's actual right to property and self-determination over that property? If "censorship" is truly a problem here, only another free-market alternative to Facebook is the correct solution. Gab did it with Twitter. Now, whether or not Gab will ever be as successful as Twitter because of the userbase it curates is an entirely different story. One is not entitled to a specific outcome, and if rejecting racism is what makes big business big, there's not much left that the other side of this debate can complain about.
- herbst 9y ago
  This is exactly censorship. If people want to listen They listen. If not than not. Pretty selecting based on YOUR opinion is and always will be censorship
yequalsx 9y ago
I strongly disagree that there is no such thing as responsible censorship. Furthermore censorship is not always, "...just as bad." As an extreme example of good censorship look at child pornography. We have laws that prohibit speech in the form of harassment. Some countries prohibit anti-abortion protestors from harassing women trying to get an abortion. There are lots of cases where censorship is good.

makecheck 9y ago

I think it would be interesting if online personas worked a little bit like video game characters. For instance, in an RPG, no one would believe a character could be equally effective at wielding heavy weapons and casting spells, or other tasks: you generally have to pick one or two key areas of expertise and be “OK at best” when anything else comes along. Yet somehow, in the world of online discourse, everyone’s an equal expert on everything? What are the odds that a person really has good knowledge of both nuclear physics and farming? If you could only post or upvote things that were considered relevant to a few limited areas of expertise in your profile, we would see a very different online world. Suddenly, seeing an article on the front page on a certain topic might actually mean that it got there due to “likes” from people with relevant experience, and not just whatever random definitely-not-statistically-valid sample of “friends” put it there.

csa 9y ago
That's an interesting idea, but it's also probably one that would be impossible to implement effectively. For example: 1. Who would determine any given person's area of expertise. This is a difficult and potentially difficult thing to do. 2. People who are ostensibly experts in a topic, even if they have a lot of experience with it, often have incredibly uninformed opinions. As a simple example, most people I know have a lot of experience with dating/relationships, parenting, and politics, but their knowledge of these topics is based on a bizarre and woefully incomplete combination of old wives'tales, anecdotes, and just-so stories. They fully believe they are experts and often have some paper evidence to back this up. Somethin similar can be said of programmers. There are plenty of people who can write a program that works, but are they experts? To a non-technologist, maybe (and maybe not). To the grande dame or grand homme of a field of programming, probably not. The range of defining an "expert" is huge. Do you have any ideas to address this?
- andromaton 9y ago
  ELO ratings.
- makecheck 9y ago
  The first issue is how to make sure that people aren’t creating 100 profiles each (something that’s a real problem on sites today). This is where I expect data breaches to “help”; as it becomes more and more ridiculous that our current identity schemes aren’t working, something better can be developed and act as a basis for a unique-by-birth profile that is as anonymous as you need it to be. Part of the problem of expertise would be solved by the natural upper limit on how much expertise is reasonable for one person to have. No one should be able to claim strong experience in more areas than they could have conceivably spent time learning/practicing. Therefore, if you’re going to make your profile claim expertise in something you know nothing about, you’d definitely be wasting your limited opportunity to comment and you wouldn’t be able to do that for everything. Also, if comments/votes/etc. on something are only permitted for people in related fields, an uninformed person’s ramblings might still be drowned out by the only other people commenting. Determining how to limit a profile is tricky. Some restrictions would be easy, e.g. a 14-year-old can’t claim 30 years experience in an industry. Some would be harder, perhaps enabled by webs of trust (e.g. as a side effect of employment, your employer adds credibility to your profile somehow in a particular area of expertise).

zerostar07 9y ago

If it wouldn't be facebook it would be something else. The bigger issue here is that the completely-decentralized or completely-centralized civil society of the earth that the internet creates is incompatible with the way the world is run for the past 2 centuries.

dredmorbius 9y ago
Whilst true, the fact remains that it is Facebook, for now, and it's Facebook's place to admit, understand, and address this fact.
- zerostar07 9y ago
  what i meant is that it is not possible to address this fact. this is the new world order.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Fair enough. Though I'd be interested in your expanding on what you see the consequences / results being. I'm tending toward "unfavourable".

FeepingCreature 9y ago

> For a long time, Silicon Valley espoused a dogma of information neutrality — claiming, falsely, that search engines and social networks were only impartial tools. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty."

deleted 9y ago

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