5 ms·

I don't like Facebook more than anyone else, but at this point aren't we just blaming them for enabling communication? By all means, criticize Facebook for pri

I don't like Facebook more than anyone else, but at this point aren't we just blaming them for enabling communication? By all means, criticize Facebook for privacy issues, but not for stuff like this, unless you actually want censorship on the largest scale ever in history.

dao- 8y ago
It's not just plain communication. Facebook controls what you see and their algorithms encourage rage because it gets users engaged.
- easytiger 8y ago
  It's monetisation of the little rush of chemicals your body injects when you feel outraged. Apparently its quite addictive!
  - dboreham 8y ago
    See also: Fox News.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Well if you're gonna go that route then you might as well toss in CNN, NBC, ABC, etc, etc. CSPAN and arguably PBS are probably the only TV "news" networks that don't use every trick in the book to try and keep you watching so they can make more money by showing you more ads.
    - beasteurope 8y ago
      See also: Any international conglomerate that own a piece of the mainstream media apparatus.
- Wellshit 8y ago
  Agree, show users stuff they don't care about, that's how you win the market
- EGreg 8y ago
  And the media does the same.
XCabbage 8y ago
Hasn't the majority of the criticism of Facebook been about enabling communication? Indeed, hasn't that been the cause of most of the Left's pearl-clutching about social media's influence on politics over the last few years? Many, if not most, of the complaints about Russian "interference" in the US election and Brexit that I've seen the Left being so distressed about consisted primarily of Russians saying things about politics on Twitter. Advocating for outright bans on voicing disfavoured viewpoints is so obviously illiberal and thuggish as to be politically unpopular, which is why it is always platforms targeted rather than individual speakers, and why there is always some rationalisation for the complaint other than the viewpoint being expressed (Russian bots! Fake news! Algorithms optimising for rage! Harassment!) but in the end the root cause of the complaint is always that someone said something that progressives didn't like.
- pjc50 8y ago
  No, a key part of this is misrepresentation: Russians saying things about politics as themselves would be one thing, but Russians pretending to be Americans en masse with thousands of fake accounts and promoting obviously false rumours and driven by audience-targeting ad technology starts to become a problem. (This is not an argument against anonymity; I don't need to know where these accounts really live. I do need to know where political advertising is funded from, because there are laws about that.)
  - asianthrowaway 8y ago
    I'm still really unconvinced by this whole "Russians influenced the election" narrative. I doubt a few articles written in poor English about how Hillary runs pedophile sex rings would have had a greater influence on the electorate than Hillary being actively endorsed by nearly every respectable establishment media outlet.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      People really wanted to hate Hillary, and to some extent this was because she was endorsed so heavily by the media. So they latched onto every little thing that could be used against her. There's really two parts to the populist wave: "establishment politics isn't delivering what we need" and "we must turn to what seems like a Man of the People". The first has some extremely valid points, the second has (mostly) been a total disaster.
mc32 8y ago
It’s odd because they pick and choose which “violence” is right and wrong. When Arab spring (in the end a very destabilizing movement) was facilitated by FB and Twitter it was great. When it facilitates caravan protests it’s great. When it facilitates anti-tax movements that threaten viability of an unpopular (vis a vis locals) but popular internationally (ie elites) then it’s seen as facilitating “bad” protests. Obviously media like to pick their narrative and winners and losers, deserving of freedom and those who don’t rather than let the masses decide for themselves. That’s manipulation by traditional media upset their worldview and power to project it is slipping away from them.
- beasteurope 8y ago
  This also extends to which incidents of police violence are approved and covered or not. If circumstances were different we might see cries of authoritarianism and calls for regime change!
  - mc32 8y ago
    Exactly, they'd be decrying the use of “chemicals weapons” by police (i.e. tear gas/pepper spray) and ask if it violates treaties against its use on civilians, etc. It’s all so blatantly political and partisan by a group which sets itself up as paragon of impartiality, truth, etc., but it’s all about world view, power and exerting that power to project that world view. Now of course editorials and editorializing _is_ understandably different but unfortunately that wall has been completely breached and demolished.
- duality 8y ago
  This may be my reading only, but "populist" seeems to carry a negative connotation. I wonder, what is the opposite of populist? Is it "elitist?"
  - danharaj 8y ago
    The bad kind of populism is when an elite says they speak for the masses without actually consulting them. The public at large in such populism is a passive entity. The masses become a strawman used to pretend a majority support the autocrat's actions even if you cant find any particular person who does. The sort of "populism" without a leader discussed in this article is nothing like that. But there are political powers that wish to ignore that a lot of people can be legitimately angry at the same time.
snaky 8y ago
Yes. How The Paper And Writing Is Fueling the French Populist Rage How The Ability To Speak Is Fueling the French Populist Rage
ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
I think it is fair to criticize unedited internet communication in general, as we have just recently learned that this form of communication did not result in the improvement of public discourse that everyone might have hoped. Facebook just happens to be the largest platform offering that. I don't think it is fair to consider large-scale censorship as the only other alternative. Having some kind of neutral editorial process to filter out the unsubstantiated, hateful opinions and leave room for a more nuanced discussion raises the level of discourse, and is the model that have been offered by traditional media for a long time.
- AlexB138 8y ago
  > I don't think it is fair to consider large-scale censorship as the only other alternative. Having some kind of neutral editorial process to filter out the unsubstantiated, hateful opinions and leave room for a more nuanced discussion raises the level of discourse, and is the model that have been offered by traditional media for a long time. The problem with this view is that one person's hateful opinion is another person's oppressed minority opinion. There aren't many objective truths, moderators just end up enforcing their own world view (which we've already seen Facebook do).
  - ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
    I did not claim that it was a perfect system, but it is better at avoiding devolving into the hateful rage-soup that unedited online forums often do. It is virtually impossible to have a system that is "perfectly balanced" (can we even define what that means?), so rejecting alternatives on those grounds is holding them to unrealistically high standards.
- snaky 8y ago
  > I think it is fair to criticize unedited internet communication in general, as we have just recently learned that this form of communication did not result in the improvement of public discourse It depends on how exactly you define 'improvement'. Millions of people, speaking freely to each other, finding new friends sharing common interests would disagree with you.
AlexB138 8y ago
I'm with you. I haven't used Facebook for years because I think it's unhealthy and disagree with their business practices. I believe that that is the correct response when you have a problem with a service that isn't necessary. I'm of the view point that censorship is exactly the point of articles like this. They want Facebook to enforce a very bias view of what is acceptable speech, and intentionally conflate being a communication platform with being responsible for the outcomes of that communication.
beginningguava 8y ago
>unless you actually want censorship on the largest scale ever in history that's what they want. The media and many government officials have been implying that the citizens are simply too stupid to be trusted with filtering their information so the glorious government must restrict what they're allowed to see. At what point will they decide the common man is simply too dumb to vote and get rid of democracy as well? All this talk is demeaning and shows what our cultured elites really think about us, that we're a bunch of dumb cattle that need to be controlled
- snaky 8y ago
  > the common man is simply too dumb to vote This is foundation of American democracy actually. In the early history of the U.S., most states allowed only male adult property owners to vote (about 6% of the population).
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    And even then, there's an additional escape hatch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

dao- 8y ago

It's not just plain communication. Facebook controls what you see and their algorithms encourage rage because it gets users engaged.

easytiger 8y ago
It's monetisation of the little rush of chemicals your body injects when you feel outraged. Apparently its quite addictive!
- dboreham 8y ago
  See also: Fox News.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Well if you're gonna go that route then you might as well toss in CNN, NBC, ABC, etc, etc. CSPAN and arguably PBS are probably the only TV "news" networks that don't use every trick in the book to try and keep you watching so they can make more money by showing you more ads.
  - beasteurope 8y ago
    See also: Any international conglomerate that own a piece of the mainstream media apparatus.
Wellshit 8y ago
Agree, show users stuff they don't care about, that's how you win the market
EGreg 8y ago
And the media does the same.

XCabbage 8y ago

Hasn't the majority of the criticism of Facebook been about enabling communication? Indeed, hasn't that been the cause of most of the Left's pearl-clutching about social media's influence on politics over the last few years? Many, if not most, of the complaints about Russian "interference" in the US election and Brexit that I've seen the Left being so distressed about consisted primarily of Russians saying things about politics on Twitter. Advocating for outright bans on voicing disfavoured viewpoints is so obviously illiberal and thuggish as to be politically unpopular, which is why it is always platforms targeted rather than individual speakers, and why there is always some rationalisation for the complaint other than the viewpoint being expressed (Russian bots! Fake news! Algorithms optimising for rage! Harassment!) but in the end the root cause of the complaint is always that someone said something that progressives didn't like.

pjc50 8y ago
No, a key part of this is misrepresentation: Russians saying things about politics as themselves would be one thing, but Russians pretending to be Americans en masse with thousands of fake accounts and promoting obviously false rumours and driven by audience-targeting ad technology starts to become a problem. (This is not an argument against anonymity; I don't need to know where these accounts really live. I do need to know where political advertising is funded from, because there are laws about that.)
- asianthrowaway 8y ago
  I'm still really unconvinced by this whole "Russians influenced the election" narrative. I doubt a few articles written in poor English about how Hillary runs pedophile sex rings would have had a greater influence on the electorate than Hillary being actively endorsed by nearly every respectable establishment media outlet.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    People really wanted to hate Hillary, and to some extent this was because she was endorsed so heavily by the media. So they latched onto every little thing that could be used against her. There's really two parts to the populist wave: "establishment politics isn't delivering what we need" and "we must turn to what seems like a Man of the People". The first has some extremely valid points, the second has (mostly) been a total disaster.

mc32 8y ago

It’s odd because they pick and choose which “violence” is right and wrong. When Arab spring (in the end a very destabilizing movement) was facilitated by FB and Twitter it was great. When it facilitates caravan protests it’s great. When it facilitates anti-tax movements that threaten viability of an unpopular (vis a vis locals) but popular internationally (ie elites) then it’s seen as facilitating “bad” protests. Obviously media like to pick their narrative and winners and losers, deserving of freedom and those who don’t rather than let the masses decide for themselves. That’s manipulation by traditional media upset their worldview and power to project it is slipping away from them.

beasteurope 8y ago
This also extends to which incidents of police violence are approved and covered or not. If circumstances were different we might see cries of authoritarianism and calls for regime change!
- mc32 8y ago
  Exactly, they'd be decrying the use of “chemicals weapons” by police (i.e. tear gas/pepper spray) and ask if it violates treaties against its use on civilians, etc. It’s all so blatantly political and partisan by a group which sets itself up as paragon of impartiality, truth, etc., but it’s all about world view, power and exerting that power to project that world view. Now of course editorials and editorializing _is_ understandably different but unfortunately that wall has been completely breached and demolished.
duality 8y ago
This may be my reading only, but "populist" seeems to carry a negative connotation. I wonder, what is the opposite of populist? Is it "elitist?"
- danharaj 8y ago
  The bad kind of populism is when an elite says they speak for the masses without actually consulting them. The public at large in such populism is a passive entity. The masses become a strawman used to pretend a majority support the autocrat's actions even if you cant find any particular person who does. The sort of "populism" without a leader discussed in this article is nothing like that. But there are political powers that wish to ignore that a lot of people can be legitimately angry at the same time.

snaky 8y ago

Yes. How The Paper And Writing Is Fueling the French Populist Rage How The Ability To Speak Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

ulrikrasmussen 8y ago

I think it is fair to criticize unedited internet communication in general, as we have just recently learned that this form of communication did not result in the improvement of public discourse that everyone might have hoped. Facebook just happens to be the largest platform offering that. I don't think it is fair to consider large-scale censorship as the only other alternative. Having some kind of neutral editorial process to filter out the unsubstantiated, hateful opinions and leave room for a more nuanced discussion raises the level of discourse, and is the model that have been offered by traditional media for a long time.

AlexB138 8y ago
> I don't think it is fair to consider large-scale censorship as the only other alternative. Having some kind of neutral editorial process to filter out the unsubstantiated, hateful opinions and leave room for a more nuanced discussion raises the level of discourse, and is the model that have been offered by traditional media for a long time. The problem with this view is that one person's hateful opinion is another person's oppressed minority opinion. There aren't many objective truths, moderators just end up enforcing their own world view (which we've already seen Facebook do).
- ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
  I did not claim that it was a perfect system, but it is better at avoiding devolving into the hateful rage-soup that unedited online forums often do. It is virtually impossible to have a system that is "perfectly balanced" (can we even define what that means?), so rejecting alternatives on those grounds is holding them to unrealistically high standards.
snaky 8y ago
> I think it is fair to criticize unedited internet communication in general, as we have just recently learned that this form of communication did not result in the improvement of public discourse It depends on how exactly you define 'improvement'. Millions of people, speaking freely to each other, finding new friends sharing common interests would disagree with you.

AlexB138 8y ago

I'm with you. I haven't used Facebook for years because I think it's unhealthy and disagree with their business practices. I believe that that is the correct response when you have a problem with a service that isn't necessary. I'm of the view point that censorship is exactly the point of articles like this. They want Facebook to enforce a very bias view of what is acceptable speech, and intentionally conflate being a communication platform with being responsible for the outcomes of that communication.

beginningguava 8y ago

>unless you actually want censorship on the largest scale ever in history that's what they want. The media and many government officials have been implying that the citizens are simply too stupid to be trusted with filtering their information so the glorious government must restrict what they're allowed to see. At what point will they decide the common man is simply too dumb to vote and get rid of democracy as well? All this talk is demeaning and shows what our cultured elites really think about us, that we're a bunch of dumb cattle that need to be controlled

snaky 8y ago
> the common man is simply too dumb to vote This is foundation of American democracy actually. In the early history of the U.S., most states allowed only male adult property owners to vote (about 6% of the population).
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  And even then, there's an additional escape hatch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector