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> 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

> 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.
  - enimodas 9y ago
    Revolutions have a really bad track record. For example http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/104346397009003004 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1043463970090030...
- lulmerchant 9y ago
  >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? So when the users don't conform to the world view of the platform operators, the answer is platform sponsored propaganda? That is incredibly dystopian.
  - jnbiche 9y ago
    > So when the users don't conform to the world view of the platform operators, the answer is platform sponsored propaganda? Facebook sponsors propaganda all the time. Its algorithms favor certain posts and messages over others, based on a long list of attributes, including ad dollars. But apparently that's OK, while suggest that Facebook display some positive third-party post about Muslims in Myanmar - while a genocide is underway - is suddenly "platform-sponsored propaganda"?
    - lulmerchant 9y ago
      I don't support any of the propaganda that Facebook pushes. This also doesn't have anything to do with ads. The issues is that when these mega-platforms decide that they are going to promote one side of a political issue, and suppress another (as they have been doing more and more), this comes at the cost of freedom of expression, and all you're left with is corporate approved discourse. Of course this is much easier to rationalize in this situation. However that's how you end up giving away liberty. You give it up in little pieces in response to extreme situations, then when you go back about your life you don't get it back. The real issue here is that this gets the whole problem backwards. We shouldn't be looking at a state-sponsored genocide and then claiming that "if only Facebook had more control over public discourse then we'd be able to solve this problem". The "problem" in that statement can be anything from this genocide taking place, to your preferred candidate losing an election. "We need more propaganda" isn't going to solve any of that, and in reality it's just a veiled power grab by companies that wish to control public discourse more effectively.
      - jnbiche 9y ago

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.
- enimodas 9y ago
  Revolutions have a really bad track record. For example http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/104346397009003004 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1043463970090030...
lulmerchant 9y ago
>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? So when the users don't conform to the world view of the platform operators, the answer is platform sponsored propaganda? That is incredibly dystopian.
- jnbiche 9y ago
  > So when the users don't conform to the world view of the platform operators, the answer is platform sponsored propaganda? Facebook sponsors propaganda all the time. Its algorithms favor certain posts and messages over others, based on a long list of attributes, including ad dollars. But apparently that's OK, while suggest that Facebook display some positive third-party post about Muslims in Myanmar - while a genocide is underway - is suddenly "platform-sponsored propaganda"?
  - lulmerchant 9y ago
    I don't support any of the propaganda that Facebook pushes. This also doesn't have anything to do with ads. The issues is that when these mega-platforms decide that they are going to promote one side of a political issue, and suppress another (as they have been doing more and more), this comes at the cost of freedom of expression, and all you're left with is corporate approved discourse. Of course this is much easier to rationalize in this situation. However that's how you end up giving away liberty. You give it up in little pieces in response to extreme situations, then when you go back about your life you don't get it back. The real issue here is that this gets the whole problem backwards. We shouldn't be looking at a state-sponsored genocide and then claiming that "if only Facebook had more control over public discourse then we'd be able to solve this problem". The "problem" in that statement can be anything from this genocide taking place, to your preferred candidate losing an election. "We need more propaganda" isn't going to solve any of that, and in reality it's just a veiled power grab by companies that wish to control public discourse more effectively.
    - jnbiche 9y ago