4 ms·

Not sure if you’re just trolling but to say that press is attacking FB for it being used in a presidential campaign is a straw man. The issue is very specific

Not sure if you’re just trolling but to say that press is attacking FB for it being used in a presidential campaign is a straw man. The issue is very specific to targeting unknowing users with fake news in order to influence the outcome of a election and how much FB was aware of this. Obama did not do this. Did nothing like this. It’s completely false equivalency to compare social media usage as intended with this shady business

dexen 8y ago
Seems I was unclear when presenting my thesis. My impression is the journalists used to give Facebook a pass on many, many well-known bad behaviors. Atrocious behaviors, even. And then it changed, and they would go to great lengths to point out all the faults of Facebook. I experienced the change as a rather abrupt flip, right around the times of the Cambridge Analytica kerfuffle. I gauge it as journalists at first considering Facebook a friend that stumbles and is worth covering, but then feeling betrayed and instead perceiving Facebook as a dangerous enemy that needs to be taken down. Just like user gerbilly in the other post you use whataboutism of assigning blame to presidential candidates. . While interesting point, that detracts us from considering when and why the journalists changed their perception of Facebook. edit: Just to wrap up the very specific "targeting unknowing users with fake news in order to influence the outcome of a election", that's one of the points Facebook raised themselves around that time, were very adamant they are working on fixing it and will fix it. They deployed various mechanisms, including flagging certain news and linking to factcheckers (IIRC). Long story short, that was one of the very few things where Facebook and the journalists (and to large extent the political class) are in agreement, and working together to sort out.

dexen 8y ago

Seems I was unclear when presenting my thesis. My impression is the journalists used to give Facebook a pass on many, many well-known bad behaviors. Atrocious behaviors, even. And then it changed, and they would go to great lengths to point out all the faults of Facebook. I experienced the change as a rather abrupt flip, right around the times of the Cambridge Analytica kerfuffle. I gauge it as journalists at first considering Facebook a friend that stumbles and is worth covering, but then feeling betrayed and instead perceiving Facebook as a dangerous enemy that needs to be taken down. Just like user gerbilly in the other post you use whataboutism of assigning blame to presidential candidates. . While interesting point, that detracts us from considering when and why the journalists changed their perception of Facebook. edit: Just to wrap up the very specific "targeting unknowing users with fake news in order to influence the outcome of a election", that's one of the points Facebook raised themselves around that time, were very adamant they are working on fixing it and will fix it. They deployed various mechanisms, including flagging certain news and linking to factcheckers (IIRC). Long story short, that was one of the very few things where Facebook and the journalists (and to large extent the political class) are in agreement, and working together to sort out.