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It's incredible how fast the sentiment has changed regarding Facebook. Back in 2010/2011 Facebook was being praised for fueling the Arab Spring, which toppled d

by dmihal 9y ago

It's incredible how fast the sentiment has changed regarding Facebook. Back in 2010/2011 Facebook was being praised for fueling the Arab Spring, which toppled dictators and spread democracy (also lead to the horrific war in Syria). Today, stories bounce from fake news, to Russian propaganda, to user data mishandling, to fueling genocide in Myanmar.

haldean 9y ago
...except it didn't really spread democracy, at least not in a particularly long lasting way. Maybe what we've learned is that fueling populist uprisings isn't something that is particularly good, and that seems to be what Facebook is good for, politically.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  I had to look up populism to make sure: >A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite. The idea that the government is going to go after Facebook because it is used to fuel the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite is very scary.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    You need to read the rest of the Wikipedia article you quoted withoit attribution, and he recognize that a frequent use of “populism” without qualifiers is to refer more specifically to authoritarian populism, particularly emergent authoritarian populism built around a mythologized virtuous people opposed by an equally mythologized evil “elite” (which often is not an actual elite, just a recognizable group around whom a conspiracy theory of behind-the-scenes power has been constructed.)
    - ihsw2 9y ago
      Indeed, while it is in vogue to label "Caucasians" and "males" as oppressors in modern Marxist parlance, the same mechanism is used to justify genocide in other parts of the world. Judging people for what they are rather than what they do is the stuff only the likes of Hitler and Stalin can dream up.
      - dang 9y ago
        We've already asked you to stop using HN for ideological battle. It's not what this site is for! Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended from now on?
    - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      How is that different from a democracy that was founded in opposition to monarch or dictator like the USA? From the wiki on Populism: >Populism is most common in democratic nations and political scientist Cas Mudde wrote: "Many observers have noted that populism is inherent to representative democracy; after all, do populists not juxtapose 'the pure people' against 'the corrupt elite'?".[6]
      - notahacker 9y ago
        The populist rhetorical device of directing mass public hatred against a particular target is used at least as easily by dictators - aspirant or actual - as against them, particularly when it relies on open communication to flourish. Sure, populist upheaval can lead to American Revolutions. But it can just as easily lead to pogroms, and one of those patterns is repeated far more often throughout history than the others.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      That's funny, I use DDG and when I searched "define populism" that's the result that came up from DDG itself, which they say came from Wordnik. https://www.wordnik.com/words/populism https://www.wordnik.com/words/populism I disagree with your sense of unqualified populism implies authoritarian populism. In my experience it's used without qualifiers to describe both Trump and Bernie. I suppose whether you think those two are authoritarian probably depends a lot on your own political leanings. But generally it means "fight the power." Or in Trump's case, "drain the swamp [0]." Here's a NYT article that, having skimmed, seems reasonable to me. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/how-can-donald-trump-and-bernie-sanders-both-be-populist.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/how-can-donald-t... [0]: This comment is not intended to confer any positive feelings towards Trump or imply that he did anything other than make the swamp even swampier. It was only in reference to his rhetoric
      - jnbiche 9y ago
        > I suppose whether you think those two are authoritarian probably depends a lot on your own political leanings. I think both the Trump and Bernie movements have some frightening populist characteristics. But between the two leaders, only Trump has been broadcasting blatant authoritarian messaging. That's not to say that Bernie would never engage in any authoritarian action if he were elected, but he's not made overt any authoritarian tendencies like Trump has.
      - denom 9y ago
        Perhaps a simpler definition of populism is to acquire power outside of traditional state institutions. What makes this a bit frightening is that those institutions cannot regulate the worse excesses of that leader.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  Empathy and self-control have been the internal enforcers of the civilizing process, a process of which many peoples across the world are constantly struggling with, and the nature of Facebook is such that those internal enforcers are broken down with such swiftness that our current situation is inevitable. The mantra of "move fast and break things" has driven us off a cliff, where our moral backbone is what has been broken.
- nostalgeek 9y ago
  It did make Tunisia a bit more democratic since Ben Ali left, which is where everything started. But Egypt, where all the US reporters rushed to witness the "revolution", is back to a US backed dictatorship, Syria is in shambles, Libya is in chaos, Nothing changed in Morocco or Algeria. And curiously nobody on Facebook or Twitter was talking about the violent revolts inside the gulf monarchies that were harshly repressed by their respective governments.
  - castle-bravo 9y ago
    The way you describe it, it's as though American social media companies were used as tools to further the geopolitical objectives of the United States and its allies.
FilterSweep 9y ago
> Back in 2010/2011 Facebook was being praised for fueling the Arab Spring, which toppled dictators and spread democracy (also lead to the horrific war in Syria). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was Twitter as the major player RE: Arab Spring. I think 8 years is a more than long enough time for backend changes in a platform to change sentiment. Also, the platform may not have been used for as many nefarious purposes in the past.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  I visited Facebook during this period, and the whole company was celebrating their role in the Arab Spring, which was large as well. The rhetoric around this has shifted, not because Facebook has done anything different. Or because subsequent uprisings have been any different. But those mini revolutions of the Arab Spring were not what we thought they were. "The People" taking power from the dictators, created the society they want, but it is LESS in line with liberal values than the previous one. This is what we failed to realize at the time. Facebook has done an amazing job empowering the will of the people. Which we are still inclined to view as positive. But when the majority of people WANT a government that is less tolerant of other religions than a dictator would be, what should we do? Should we blame Facebook? Or should we try to use Facebook to counter the hateful ideas that are being spread? How trivial would it be to make sure this leader in the article who 'never met a Muslim', was forced to scroll through a feed with positive messages about Muslims and religious tolerance? If Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today could they sway our elections with a billion dollar ad budget? We can't force any other group to live by our values. But we can promote what are values and ideas are, in a way that might be help them spread. Maybe we should ask Facebook to help with this, instead of trying to take down the whole network just because some groups are using the platform in a way that we don't like.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > But those mini revolutions of the Arab Spring were not what we thought they were. "The People" taking power from the dictators, created the society they want, but it is LESS in line with liberal values than the previous one. This is what we failed to realize at the time. This is tragically true. A revolution is a re-spin of the the roulette wheel when it comes to outcomes, the result is absolutely not guaranteed. In the case of Egypt, the semi-secular military dictatorship was overthrown and became .. an Islamic theocracy, which was actually worse for the average woman on non-devout Muslim, and the ensuing counter-revolution back to military dictatorship was reluctantly acquiesced to.
tclancy 9y ago
Wasn't that Twitter to the point the State Department contacted them about moving a planned service outage?
vikiomega9 9y ago
I think a lot of that praise in American media was an extension of neoconservatism that permeated the administrations around that time

by dmihal 9y ago

haldean 9y ago

...except it didn't really spread democracy, at least not in a particularly long lasting way. Maybe what we've learned is that fueling populist uprisings isn't something that is particularly good, and that seems to be what Facebook is good for, politically.

Consultant32452 9y ago
I had to look up populism to make sure: >A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite. The idea that the government is going to go after Facebook because it is used to fuel the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite is very scary.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  You need to read the rest of the Wikipedia article you quoted withoit attribution, and he recognize that a frequent use of “populism” without qualifiers is to refer more specifically to authoritarian populism, particularly emergent authoritarian populism built around a mythologized virtuous people opposed by an equally mythologized evil “elite” (which often is not an actual elite, just a recognizable group around whom a conspiracy theory of behind-the-scenes power has been constructed.)
  - ihsw2 9y ago
    Indeed, while it is in vogue to label "Caucasians" and "males" as oppressors in modern Marxist parlance, the same mechanism is used to justify genocide in other parts of the world. Judging people for what they are rather than what they do is the stuff only the likes of Hitler and Stalin can dream up.
    - dang 9y ago
      We've already asked you to stop using HN for ideological battle. It's not what this site is for! Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended from now on?
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    How is that different from a democracy that was founded in opposition to monarch or dictator like the USA? From the wiki on Populism: >Populism is most common in democratic nations and political scientist Cas Mudde wrote: "Many observers have noted that populism is inherent to representative democracy; after all, do populists not juxtapose 'the pure people' against 'the corrupt elite'?".[6]
    - notahacker 9y ago
      The populist rhetorical device of directing mass public hatred against a particular target is used at least as easily by dictators - aspirant or actual - as against them, particularly when it relies on open communication to flourish. Sure, populist upheaval can lead to American Revolutions. But it can just as easily lead to pogroms, and one of those patterns is repeated far more often throughout history than the others.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    That's funny, I use DDG and when I searched "define populism" that's the result that came up from DDG itself, which they say came from Wordnik. https://www.wordnik.com/words/populism https://www.wordnik.com/words/populism I disagree with your sense of unqualified populism implies authoritarian populism. In my experience it's used without qualifiers to describe both Trump and Bernie. I suppose whether you think those two are authoritarian probably depends a lot on your own political leanings. But generally it means "fight the power." Or in Trump's case, "drain the swamp [0]." Here's a NYT article that, having skimmed, seems reasonable to me. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/how-can-donald-trump-and-bernie-sanders-both-be-populist.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/how-can-donald-t... [0]: This comment is not intended to confer any positive feelings towards Trump or imply that he did anything other than make the swamp even swampier. It was only in reference to his rhetoric
    - jnbiche 9y ago
      > I suppose whether you think those two are authoritarian probably depends a lot on your own political leanings. I think both the Trump and Bernie movements have some frightening populist characteristics. But between the two leaders, only Trump has been broadcasting blatant authoritarian messaging. That's not to say that Bernie would never engage in any authoritarian action if he were elected, but he's not made overt any authoritarian tendencies like Trump has.
    - denom 9y ago
      Perhaps a simpler definition of populism is to acquire power outside of traditional state institutions. What makes this a bit frightening is that those institutions cannot regulate the worse excesses of that leader.
ihsw2 9y ago
Empathy and self-control have been the internal enforcers of the civilizing process, a process of which many peoples across the world are constantly struggling with, and the nature of Facebook is such that those internal enforcers are broken down with such swiftness that our current situation is inevitable. The mantra of "move fast and break things" has driven us off a cliff, where our moral backbone is what has been broken.
nostalgeek 9y ago
It did make Tunisia a bit more democratic since Ben Ali left, which is where everything started. But Egypt, where all the US reporters rushed to witness the "revolution", is back to a US backed dictatorship, Syria is in shambles, Libya is in chaos, Nothing changed in Morocco or Algeria. And curiously nobody on Facebook or Twitter was talking about the violent revolts inside the gulf monarchies that were harshly repressed by their respective governments.
- castle-bravo 9y ago
  The way you describe it, it's as though American social media companies were used as tools to further the geopolitical objectives of the United States and its allies.

FilterSweep 9y ago

> Back in 2010/2011 Facebook was being praised for fueling the Arab Spring, which toppled dictators and spread democracy (also lead to the horrific war in Syria). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was Twitter as the major player RE: Arab Spring. I think 8 years is a more than long enough time for backend changes in a platform to change sentiment. Also, the platform may not have been used for as many nefarious purposes in the past.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
I visited Facebook during this period, and the whole company was celebrating their role in the Arab Spring, which was large as well. The rhetoric around this has shifted, not because Facebook has done anything different. Or because subsequent uprisings have been any different. But those mini revolutions of the Arab Spring were not what we thought they were. "The People" taking power from the dictators, created the society they want, but it is LESS in line with liberal values than the previous one. This is what we failed to realize at the time. Facebook has done an amazing job empowering the will of the people. Which we are still inclined to view as positive. But when the majority of people WANT a government that is less tolerant of other religions than a dictator would be, what should we do? Should we blame Facebook? Or should we try to use Facebook to counter the hateful ideas that are being spread? How trivial would it be to make sure this leader in the article who 'never met a Muslim', was forced to scroll through a feed with positive messages about Muslims and religious tolerance? If Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today could they sway our elections with a billion dollar ad budget? We can't force any other group to live by our values. But we can promote what are values and ideas are, in a way that might be help them spread. Maybe we should ask Facebook to help with this, instead of trying to take down the whole network just because some groups are using the platform in a way that we don't like.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > But those mini revolutions of the Arab Spring were not what we thought they were. "The People" taking power from the dictators, created the society they want, but it is LESS in line with liberal values than the previous one. This is what we failed to realize at the time. This is tragically true. A revolution is a re-spin of the the roulette wheel when it comes to outcomes, the result is absolutely not guaranteed. In the case of Egypt, the semi-secular military dictatorship was overthrown and became .. an Islamic theocracy, which was actually worse for the average woman on non-devout Muslim, and the ensuing counter-revolution back to military dictatorship was reluctantly acquiesced to.

tclancy 9y ago

Wasn't that Twitter to the point the State Department contacted them about moving a planned service outage?

vikiomega9 9y ago

I think a lot of that praise in American media was an extension of neoconservatism that permeated the administrations around that time