5 ms·

What, specifically, is Facebook doing wrong today? How could they improve?

loceng 8y ago
No ads = no potential to manipulate people simply with enough money; I don't care for the arguments that this can have oversight to prevent this, there will be ways around it.
- pmorici 8y ago
  I don't understand why you think ads has anything to do with it. Much of the content on Facebook is user generated or at least posted by users from a third party source. Removing ads doesn't change that.
  - loceng 8y ago
    Ads is an easy and cheap method of adding fuel to the fire. I also wasn't trying to argue that removing ads exclusively solves the problems.
    - KMag 8y ago
      In that case, "no potential" was poor phrasing. Ads aren't the only mechanism of social influence for sale on the open market to anyone with enough money.
      - loceng 8y ago
        Yes, you're right. I need to stop commenting for now, I'm not in a good place - not analyzing as deeply as I normally would or like to. Commenting is a distraction from the chronic pain I have, though it also at times will break my thought processes. It's a tough place to be. Some days are better than others.
        KMag 8y ago
        I'm sorry to hear of your pain and hope you find some relief.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Ads provide some of the capability, but by no means all of it. The engagement objectives of the ad seller (Facebook, here) means that highly-divisive or inflammetory content, which generates pageviews, or increases time-on-site, may be promoted over more socially beneficial material.
- KMag 8y ago
  I think "no potential" is way over-selling the case. For these purposes, I think targeted astroturfing is probably more cost-effective than ads, and wouldn't be prevented by Facebook dropping ads altogether. I enjoy the thought of an alternate universe where the most common social network is a p2p federated open-source system without ads, just running on alternative firmware in people's WiFi routers. However, that universe would still have astroturfing, and it would likely be harder to detect.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
rhizome 8y ago
What, specifically, is Facebook doing wrong today? They make it easy to do bad things to a lot of people at once.
- bigdubs 8y ago
  It's not just that they have a lot of influence and a lot of people on their platform, it's that they've shown zero interest in responsibility, especially if showing responsibility would reduce usage or advertising dollars.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fvdessen 8y ago
  They make it easy to communicate to a lot of people at once. Whether those communications are good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. Expecting our communication channels to sort out the good from the bad is how we get to Chinese levels of censorship.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    It's also why you don't make it that easy. What if there was a device that could beam Facebook directly into a person's head, would you agree there should be some access control on that?
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> What, specifically, is Facebook doing wrong today? They rank content by the degree to which it captures users’ attentions and prompts sharing. This ranking incentive is fundamentally driven by their advertising business model, where attention from eyeballs and shares generates revenue. Things that make us angry get shared more; numerous studies show this. An ad-driven social media service is this fundamentally driven to show us content that pisses us off. > How could they improve? By facing consequences for the violence they cause and profit from.
- methodover 8y ago
  Do you think that they should make no attempt to rank content at all in the news feed? That is, the feed becomes just a dumb list of posts from friends ordered by creation date, descending? Would that satisfy your concern?
  - dawhizkid 8y ago
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/how-i-cracked-facebooks-new-algorithm-and-tortured-my https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/how-i-cracked-faceb...
- Zak 8y ago
  > By facing consequences for the violence they cause and profit from. That's a way Facebook could be incentivized to improve, but the question was "how could they improve?". I imagine in a lot of cases Facebook could correctly identify the sort of posts that people get angry enough about to lead to physical violence if it put anywhere near the level of effort into researching that problem that it does into maximizing its share of the user's attention. Such posts could then be given a low rank in Facebook's algorithm.

No ads = no potential to manipulate people simply with enough money; I don't care for the arguments that this can have oversight to prevent this, there will be ways around it.

pmorici 8y ago
I don't understand why you think ads has anything to do with it. Much of the content on Facebook is user generated or at least posted by users from a third party source. Removing ads doesn't change that.
- loceng 8y ago
  Ads is an easy and cheap method of adding fuel to the fire. I also wasn't trying to argue that removing ads exclusively solves the problems.
  - KMag 8y ago
    In that case, "no potential" was poor phrasing. Ads aren't the only mechanism of social influence for sale on the open market to anyone with enough money.
    - loceng 8y ago
      Yes, you're right. I need to stop commenting for now, I'm not in a good place - not analyzing as deeply as I normally would or like to. Commenting is a distraction from the chronic pain I have, though it also at times will break my thought processes. It's a tough place to be. Some days are better than others.
      - KMag 8y ago
        I'm sorry to hear of your pain and hope you find some relief.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Ads provide some of the capability, but by no means all of it. The engagement objectives of the ad seller (Facebook, here) means that highly-divisive or inflammetory content, which generates pageviews, or increases time-on-site, may be promoted over more socially beneficial material.
KMag 8y ago
I think "no potential" is way over-selling the case. For these purposes, I think targeted astroturfing is probably more cost-effective than ads, and wouldn't be prevented by Facebook dropping ads altogether. I enjoy the thought of an alternate universe where the most common social network is a p2p federated open-source system without ads, just running on alternative firmware in people's WiFi routers. However, that universe would still have astroturfing, and it would likely be harder to detect.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

rhizome 8y ago

What, specifically, is Facebook doing wrong today? They make it easy to do bad things to a lot of people at once.

bigdubs 8y ago
It's not just that they have a lot of influence and a lot of people on their platform, it's that they've shown zero interest in responsibility, especially if showing responsibility would reduce usage or advertising dollars.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fvdessen 8y ago
They make it easy to communicate to a lot of people at once. Whether those communications are good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. Expecting our communication channels to sort out the good from the bad is how we get to Chinese levels of censorship.
- rhizome 8y ago
  It's also why you don't make it that easy. What if there was a device that could beam Facebook directly into a person's head, would you agree there should be some access control on that?

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> What, specifically, is Facebook doing wrong today? They rank content by the degree to which it captures users’ attentions and prompts sharing. This ranking incentive is fundamentally driven by their advertising business model, where attention from eyeballs and shares generates revenue. Things that make us angry get shared more; numerous studies show this. An ad-driven social media service is this fundamentally driven to show us content that pisses us off. > How could they improve? By facing consequences for the violence they cause and profit from.

methodover 8y ago
Do you think that they should make no attempt to rank content at all in the news feed? That is, the feed becomes just a dumb list of posts from friends ordered by creation date, descending? Would that satisfy your concern?
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/how-i-cracked-facebooks-new-algorithm-and-tortured-my https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/how-i-cracked-faceb...
Zak 8y ago
> By facing consequences for the violence they cause and profit from. That's a way Facebook could be incentivized to improve, but the question was "how could they improve?". I imagine in a lot of cases Facebook could correctly identify the sort of posts that people get angry enough about to lead to physical violence if it put anywhere near the level of effort into researching that problem that it does into maximizing its share of the user's attention. Such posts could then be given a low rank in Facebook's algorithm.