7 ms·

"...following revelations of how its platform was used to manipulate black voters in the 2016 presidential election." This seems somewhat misguided... I know F

by tres 8y ago

"...following revelations of how its platform was used to manipulate black voters in the 2016 presidential election." This seems somewhat misguided... I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour, but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this. All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally years after events occurred and after they've been working to rectify the issues is curious. After all the bad press that was hammering Tesla for an extended period of time quickly dried up (after Elon Musk showed just how far he was willing to go to shake the short-sellers), Facebook suddenly took its place. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it really feels like someone with a lot of power has organized and weaponized information for the sake of manipulating stock prices. That doesn't have much to do with the NAACP itself, but these information campaigns have a side-effect of modifying public opinion and sentiment. I really kind of feel ashamed of posting this -- it seems like such a low-value conspiracy theory, but it just seems strange to me how all this is playing out.

Tyrek 8y ago
If you commit a crime, and only get caught years later after reforming yourself (off the profits of your crime?), can you truly be a victim? Now, I understand that the analogy does not map precisely, but at what point in this equation did fb face consequences for its initial misdeeds?
- ryanlol 8y ago
  It's extremely important to note that facebook has not reformed itself.
  - news_hacker 8y ago
    I am not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but this is a low value comment in furthering healthy discussion. Consider tacking on some further qualifiers to support your claim. * In what actionable ways do you think they are missing the mark on reformation? * What in your opinion is the bar for reformation for a social media corporation? Otherwise, Twitter-esque call-to-panic statements like these diminish the signal to noise quality of discussion here. Just a friendly suggestion.
    - akiselev 8y ago
      I don't have time (or the thumbs) to make a comprehensive list but Facebook has been repeatedly caught doing the absolute bare minimum for PR reasons with little real effect (which theyd be aware of). For example, earlier this year Facebook announced after public pressure that it would require labeling of all political ads [1]. Right before the midterms, Vice publishes the result of their investigation: they posed as all 100 senators and every single ad got through, labeled as an ad by a sitting senator [2]. You'd imagine a system for identity verification is the first thing they'd have set up before announcing new rules for identifying the source of political advertising. This is a pattern with facebook and the other social media companies. When they're put under a microscope, they pay lip service to legislators and the public, then continue business as usual. [1] https://www.facebook.com/business/news/requiring-authorization-and-labeling-for-ads-with-political-content https://www.facebook.com/business/news/requiring-authorizati... [2] https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/xw9n3q/we-posed-as-100-senators-to-run-ads-on-facebook-facebook-approved-all-of-them https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/xw9n3q/we-posed-as-100-s...
      - SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
        That Vice headline is simply not true. They note at the very bottom of their article that no ads "got through" because they never bought any in the first place.
        jonnismash 8y ago
        The only thing I see that didn't get through was "There was one “Paid for” disclosure that Facebook didn’t approve in our latest test. They denied, just a couple minutes after we submitted it: Mark Zuckerberg." Where do you see that?
        SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
        Oh, I guess it was the last paragraph of the snippet and not the full article. > What’s more, all of these approvals were granted to be shared from pages for fake political groups such as “Cookies for Political Transparency” and “Ninja Turtles PAC.” VICE News did not buy any Facebook ads as part of the test; rather, we received approval to include "Paid for by" disclosures for potential ads.
- ars 8y ago
  Maybe you know - what were Facebook's misdeeds? The article only mentions Russia doing stuff, but nothing about what Facebook did wrong.
  - hug 8y ago
    Are you trying to use this question as a rhetorical device, or are you genuinely asking what Facebook has done wrong? If you're being genuine, the answer is: * They allowed for advertising campaigns using their tools which were flat out illegal (e.g.: Real-estate advertising targeted based on race.) * They have failed to meaningfully control over illegal uses of their platform in any way. (See: The current Rohingya issue) * They were far too liberal with access to user data, in a way that is currently driving a debate around the legality of doing so. (Cambridge Analytica, etc.) * They have built tools that are ideal for doing things like illegally swaying elections. ("Russia doing stuff".) I can only assume there are many other things that Facebook have made possible which are illegal and completely unnoticed. It's hard to try to build any sort of exhausted list of unknown unknowns, though, so I'll leave it at a prominent four. - If you're using rhetoric, the thing you'll probably say next is "but that's not Facebook being bad, that's people using Facebook! You can't blame a tool for how it's used!", but the problem with that is that Facebook exerted editorial control over the platform in numerous ways over the time period in which these things happened, both in advertising and in news-feed sorts of ways. Any person doing any of these things would be punished. Any person aiding and abetting any person doing any of these things would be punished. Why not Facebook?
    - hackinthebochs 8y ago
      There is a moral difference between doing and not doing that you seem to be glossing over. Facebook didn't do enough to stop all sorts of things. But the question is what moral responsibility do they have for not recognizing issues soon enough, or not committing enough resources to responding, etc. It's not obvious that they have the backwards-looking responsibility that your argument requires.
      - hug 8y ago
kodablah 8y ago
> I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it really feels like someone with a lot of power has organized and weaponized information for the sake of manipulating stock prices. Be able to recognize the narratives is a very valuable level of awareness. Doesn't mean all news/opinion gets dismissed, but it's important to remain grounded in reality about real harms vs perceived harms. Depending on who you ask these days, FB is inarguably a bad thing and terribly harmful to everyone. It's easy for most to think so single-sidedly when the narrative is as well. I'm searching for how it helps people connect, makes people happy, gives them an outlet, etc at [0]. Of course I won't find it, 100% bad, 0% good. 0 - https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=facebook https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=facebook
- jcbrand 8y ago
  Various studies have actually shown that FB usage makes people unhappy.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    All people at all times?
fossuser 8y ago
I think it's actually just a simpler thing - people like to hate popular things and doing so sets them apart or makes them feel special (and can signal this specialness to others). Since everyone knows what Facebook is, it's a good candidate. I don't think there's much depth to the thought behind it.
- lurkertroll 8y ago
  Or people hate that they can't control their facebooking
- inciampati 8y ago
  I think you are wrong. Often popular things become popular due to deceit. Take tobacco for an example. It's (past?) popularity does not make hating on it a fad. People were told it was good. You can make friends over a smoke. It does have some beneficial effects, physical and social. Then it is likely to kill you after ten, twenty, or thirty years. It will destroy your family bonds and make your children ill. It is bad for society and people on so many levels. Facebook is different only in form. People who have been hating on it forever aren't doing this to be special, despite how convenient an explanation that might be. They get it. Facebook is social cancer.
npunt 8y ago
FB is getting bad press because: a) historically it's done a lot of shady stuff and gotten a pass on that, b) it really screwed up around election time, with major / unprecedented geopolitical and economic consequence, c) it doesn't seem to have fully understood let alone fixed the problems, d) it's business model is interfering with fixing these problems, and e) it's managed this situation from a PR perspective very poorly. All of those are facts on the ground that would suggest FB is operationally not as solid as people previously assumed, and that it has many (possibly inherent) vulnerabilities that are not easily fixed that add risk to the business - risk of people abandoning it, risk of regulation, risk of being manipulated for political purposes. Certainly FB was used by those looking to manipulate public perceptions during the election (and since), and that makes it in a certain light a 'victim'. But they were also the creators and popularizers of this new way of being manipulated, and thus an excuse of being ignorant of the implications is a bit weak, especially because of how they've handled things since. Just practically, it's extremely unlikely that independent news & research orgs are all conspiring to manipulate FB's stock price. At some point people stop giving companies or individuals benefit of the doubt, which is what's now happened to FB. This pattern of bad press you're seeing with FB is going to happen a lot in the future with our 24/7 news cycle and rumor mill. Something will come out about a company or individual about them doing something bad that will get a lot of visibility. In that process a lot of their past transgressions will come out, or be re-evaluated in a new light, and it will happen through a slow drip of new discoveries that will keep them in the press for a while. This will break into mainstream discourse, and it may permanently damage their reputation. This is a pattern inherent in the mix of people/companies royally screwing up, the existence of deep digital info trails, social media giving a voice to every person to share juicy info, and the instantaneous social media news cycle.
- mmmmmmmmm 8y ago
  Facebook is getting bad press because it allows people to get their news from a source other than the press, and the press hates that they're being made obsolete.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    Yes, Facebook lets people skip US corporate media and mainline disinformation straight from Russian military intelligence agents posing as Americans. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/17/677390345/new-reports-detail-expansive-russia-disinformation-scheme-targeting-u-s https://www.npr.org/2018/12/17/677390345/new-reports-detail-...
bogomipz 8y ago
>"All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally years after events occurred" Details of the targeting of African-Americans by Russian operatives is actually a fresh news story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-russia-bought-anti-black-lives-matter-facebook-ads https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-russia-bought-anti-blac... The fact is that the extent and the specifics of the tactics used are still forthcoming. There is nothing about that that make the news reporting on it "curious." >"I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour, but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this" What an incredibly absurd statement. The biggest victims in this were the American electorate. What has FB suffered? How has their business had to change as a result? It hasn't changed one bit. They had months to get out in front of this story. Instead of doing so their CEO at the time dismissed Russian election interference "a pretty crazy idea." >"I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but ..." Spoken like a true conspiracy theorist. Trying to sow doubt about the existence of a disinformation campaign - how very meta.
starbeast 8y ago
>it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this. Looking at all the fallout from this, I'd love to know how you reached that conclusion. Even if Facebook was an entirely innocent victim of this (seemingly highly successful) attempt to sabotage and seed mistrust in US elections, then any effect on Facebook would be minor collateral damage at most.
- briandear 8y ago
  A side note, but the media itself has sabatoged and seeded mistrust in US elections as well. But we give the media a pass apparently.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    Seriously the psychology behind that is so human, doing a thing you think is bad, being ashamed, then calling it out in others. Like the stories of gay senators being the most hardline anti-gay people, or coloreds being the most viciously racist ethnic group in South Africa (being a bit black themselves).
  - starbeast 8y ago
    Ahh yes, that homogeneous block known only as 'Themedia'.
pesmhey 8y ago
I don’t even think you need a wild conspiracy theory. It seems like this is an east vs. west coast power struggle. Old money vs. new.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
> This seems somewhat misguided... I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour, but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this. All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally years after events occurred and after they've been working to rectify the issues is curious. They helped throw an election. This is not the sort of thing you forgive and forget after a couple of years and some apologies.
- chillacy 8y ago
  “Throw an election” implies illegitimacy, that’s a dangerous idea in a democracy where legitimacy is derived from the people. It is just as wrong as if trump were to not accept the results because of “election fraud” or what have you. Can we accept that people that’s what people wanted? And if we want to change that, then talk to voters instead of blaming the news: people share articles they are inclined to agree with anyways, and confirmation bias means nobody will fact check their own opinions.
  - cf141q5325 8y ago
    This always rubbed me the wrong way. To say that the election was hacked implies that people were manipulated to do the "wrong thing" instead of the "right thing". To debate on that level seems extremely anti democratic, as it inadvertently leads to either the assertion, that people are to stupid and irresponsible to have a say in their future or to have the access to information restricted, to make sure people dont respond to the information by doing the "wrong thing". In both cases you have a higher authority decide what is best for people as they are to irresponsible to decide for themselves.
jahewson 8y ago
You think that because it’s taken the senate several years to publish a report that this is in some way unusual? Really?
a3n 8y ago
Facebook is an "attractive nuisance" that they have failed to sufficiently secure and monitor, the same as if they left their hot tub uncovered and unlocked, and a neighbor kid climbed the fence and drowned. Victim? No, neighborhood menace.
news_hacker 8y ago
Reneé Girard has some interesting things to say about scapegoating. > "Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them." Seeing the overwhelming vitriol towards Facebook (justified to a certain extent, but certainly over-indexed), I can't help but join you in this low-value conspiracy indulgence... If Girard's prescription is true here, what really is the media so rampantly enraged about that they are seeking to continually beat the downed (arguably) dead horse that is Facebook's PR image? * Is it an old-money / new-money thing? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-threatened-mark-zuckerberg-in-2016-with-a-war.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-thre... * Is it related to an increasing coastal elite / tech / income-inequality distrust with the rest of America? * Is it a trendy common-enemy for young intellectuals to frame as the next trope for "misused, oppressive power"? * Is it anger and bargaining from the 2016 election fallout where the unhappy masses are working through the Stages of Grief and are searching for an object where to fixate the blame to move on?
- apatters 8y ago
  FB is a direct competitor to media brands -- eyeball time that would have gone to CNN or WashPo or MTV now go to FB. FB then resells those eyeballs to said media brands, and it's big enough to command market power--it can control prices and terms and it's so huge you can't easily take your budget to a competing service. (It has in fact done this, before the wave of "FB is evil" stories, there was a wave of "FB is raising the price of impressions" stories. So many media brands perceive it as an existential threat. FB did some fairly dirty things to obtain its huge market share and it's too powerful. So I don't really see a problem with all its competitors piling up on it, but that's definitely what's going on.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
I watched Apple stock for years and it definitely went through periods where it couldn’t get a lucky break to save it’s life despite being the most profitable company.
lithos 8y ago
"Move fast and break stuff" can be reworded to "do whatever and deal with the consequences later". All the dirt now isn't people grouping up and coordinating. It's literally just people doing their jobs, and having an easy time of it. Because Facebook has decided to never deal with the consequences of their actions, so every time a reporter/regulator needs to look at them and verify facts they of course find something new
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Theranos was founded 15 years ago

by tres 8y ago

Tyrek 8y ago

If you commit a crime, and only get caught years later after reforming yourself (off the profits of your crime?), can you truly be a victim? Now, I understand that the analogy does not map precisely, but at what point in this equation did fb face consequences for its initial misdeeds?

ryanlol 8y ago
It's extremely important to note that facebook has not reformed itself.
- news_hacker 8y ago
  I am not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but this is a low value comment in furthering healthy discussion. Consider tacking on some further qualifiers to support your claim. * In what actionable ways do you think they are missing the mark on reformation? * What in your opinion is the bar for reformation for a social media corporation? Otherwise, Twitter-esque call-to-panic statements like these diminish the signal to noise quality of discussion here. Just a friendly suggestion.
  - akiselev 8y ago
    I don't have time (or the thumbs) to make a comprehensive list but Facebook has been repeatedly caught doing the absolute bare minimum for PR reasons with little real effect (which theyd be aware of). For example, earlier this year Facebook announced after public pressure that it would require labeling of all political ads [1]. Right before the midterms, Vice publishes the result of their investigation: they posed as all 100 senators and every single ad got through, labeled as an ad by a sitting senator [2]. You'd imagine a system for identity verification is the first thing they'd have set up before announcing new rules for identifying the source of political advertising. This is a pattern with facebook and the other social media companies. When they're put under a microscope, they pay lip service to legislators and the public, then continue business as usual. [1] https://www.facebook.com/business/news/requiring-authorization-and-labeling-for-ads-with-political-content https://www.facebook.com/business/news/requiring-authorizati... [2] https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/xw9n3q/we-posed-as-100-senators-to-run-ads-on-facebook-facebook-approved-all-of-them https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/xw9n3q/we-posed-as-100-s...
    - SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
      That Vice headline is simply not true. They note at the very bottom of their article that no ads "got through" because they never bought any in the first place.
      - jonnismash 8y ago
        The only thing I see that didn't get through was "There was one “Paid for” disclosure that Facebook didn’t approve in our latest test. They denied, just a couple minutes after we submitted it: Mark Zuckerberg." Where do you see that?
        SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
        Oh, I guess it was the last paragraph of the snippet and not the full article. > What’s more, all of these approvals were granted to be shared from pages for fake political groups such as “Cookies for Political Transparency” and “Ninja Turtles PAC.” VICE News did not buy any Facebook ads as part of the test; rather, we received approval to include "Paid for by" disclosures for potential ads.
ars 8y ago
Maybe you know - what were Facebook's misdeeds? The article only mentions Russia doing stuff, but nothing about what Facebook did wrong.
- hug 8y ago
  Are you trying to use this question as a rhetorical device, or are you genuinely asking what Facebook has done wrong? If you're being genuine, the answer is: * They allowed for advertising campaigns using their tools which were flat out illegal (e.g.: Real-estate advertising targeted based on race.) * They have failed to meaningfully control over illegal uses of their platform in any way. (See: The current Rohingya issue) * They were far too liberal with access to user data, in a way that is currently driving a debate around the legality of doing so. (Cambridge Analytica, etc.) * They have built tools that are ideal for doing things like illegally swaying elections. ("Russia doing stuff".) I can only assume there are many other things that Facebook have made possible which are illegal and completely unnoticed. It's hard to try to build any sort of exhausted list of unknown unknowns, though, so I'll leave it at a prominent four. - If you're using rhetoric, the thing you'll probably say next is "but that's not Facebook being bad, that's people using Facebook! You can't blame a tool for how it's used!", but the problem with that is that Facebook exerted editorial control over the platform in numerous ways over the time period in which these things happened, both in advertising and in news-feed sorts of ways. Any person doing any of these things would be punished. Any person aiding and abetting any person doing any of these things would be punished. Why not Facebook?
  - hackinthebochs 8y ago
    There is a moral difference between doing and not doing that you seem to be glossing over. Facebook didn't do enough to stop all sorts of things. But the question is what moral responsibility do they have for not recognizing issues soon enough, or not committing enough resources to responding, etc. It's not obvious that they have the backwards-looking responsibility that your argument requires.
    - hug 8y ago

kodablah 8y ago

> I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it really feels like someone with a lot of power has organized and weaponized information for the sake of manipulating stock prices. Be able to recognize the narratives is a very valuable level of awareness. Doesn't mean all news/opinion gets dismissed, but it's important to remain grounded in reality about real harms vs perceived harms. Depending on who you ask these days, FB is inarguably a bad thing and terribly harmful to everyone. It's easy for most to think so single-sidedly when the narrative is as well. I'm searching for how it helps people connect, makes people happy, gives them an outlet, etc at [0]. Of course I won't find it, 100% bad, 0% good. 0 - https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=facebook https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=facebook

jcbrand 8y ago
Various studies have actually shown that FB usage makes people unhappy.
- kodablah 8y ago
  All people at all times?

fossuser 8y ago

I think it's actually just a simpler thing - people like to hate popular things and doing so sets them apart or makes them feel special (and can signal this specialness to others). Since everyone knows what Facebook is, it's a good candidate. I don't think there's much depth to the thought behind it.

lurkertroll 8y ago
Or people hate that they can't control their facebooking
inciampati 8y ago
I think you are wrong. Often popular things become popular due to deceit. Take tobacco for an example. It's (past?) popularity does not make hating on it a fad. People were told it was good. You can make friends over a smoke. It does have some beneficial effects, physical and social. Then it is likely to kill you after ten, twenty, or thirty years. It will destroy your family bonds and make your children ill. It is bad for society and people on so many levels. Facebook is different only in form. People who have been hating on it forever aren't doing this to be special, despite how convenient an explanation that might be. They get it. Facebook is social cancer.

npunt 8y ago

FB is getting bad press because: a) historically it's done a lot of shady stuff and gotten a pass on that, b) it really screwed up around election time, with major / unprecedented geopolitical and economic consequence, c) it doesn't seem to have fully understood let alone fixed the problems, d) it's business model is interfering with fixing these problems, and e) it's managed this situation from a PR perspective very poorly. All of those are facts on the ground that would suggest FB is operationally not as solid as people previously assumed, and that it has many (possibly inherent) vulnerabilities that are not easily fixed that add risk to the business - risk of people abandoning it, risk of regulation, risk of being manipulated for political purposes. Certainly FB was used by those looking to manipulate public perceptions during the election (and since), and that makes it in a certain light a 'victim'. But they were also the creators and popularizers of this new way of being manipulated, and thus an excuse of being ignorant of the implications is a bit weak, especially because of how they've handled things since. Just practically, it's extremely unlikely that independent news & research orgs are all conspiring to manipulate FB's stock price. At some point people stop giving companies or individuals benefit of the doubt, which is what's now happened to FB. This pattern of bad press you're seeing with FB is going to happen a lot in the future with our 24/7 news cycle and rumor mill. Something will come out about a company or individual about them doing something bad that will get a lot of visibility. In that process a lot of their past transgressions will come out, or be re-evaluated in a new light, and it will happen through a slow drip of new discoveries that will keep them in the press for a while. This will break into mainstream discourse, and it may permanently damage their reputation. This is a pattern inherent in the mix of people/companies royally screwing up, the existence of deep digital info trails, social media giving a voice to every person to share juicy info, and the instantaneous social media news cycle.

mmmmmmmmm 8y ago
Facebook is getting bad press because it allows people to get their news from a source other than the press, and the press hates that they're being made obsolete.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Yes, Facebook lets people skip US corporate media and mainline disinformation straight from Russian military intelligence agents posing as Americans. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/17/677390345/new-reports-detail-expansive-russia-disinformation-scheme-targeting-u-s https://www.npr.org/2018/12/17/677390345/new-reports-detail-...

bogomipz 8y ago

>"All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally years after events occurred" Details of the targeting of African-Americans by Russian operatives is actually a fresh news story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-russia-bought-anti-black-lives-matter-facebook-ads https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-russia-bought-anti-blac... The fact is that the extent and the specifics of the tactics used are still forthcoming. There is nothing about that that make the news reporting on it "curious." >"I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour, but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this" What an incredibly absurd statement. The biggest victims in this were the American electorate. What has FB suffered? How has their business had to change as a result? It hasn't changed one bit. They had months to get out in front of this story. Instead of doing so their CEO at the time dismissed Russian election interference "a pretty crazy idea." >"I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but ..." Spoken like a true conspiracy theorist. Trying to sow doubt about the existence of a disinformation campaign - how very meta.

starbeast 8y ago

>it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this. Looking at all the fallout from this, I'd love to know how you reached that conclusion. Even if Facebook was an entirely innocent victim of this (seemingly highly successful) attempt to sabotage and seed mistrust in US elections, then any effect on Facebook would be minor collateral damage at most.

briandear 8y ago
A side note, but the media itself has sabatoged and seeded mistrust in US elections as well. But we give the media a pass apparently.
- chillacy 8y ago
  Seriously the psychology behind that is so human, doing a thing you think is bad, being ashamed, then calling it out in others. Like the stories of gay senators being the most hardline anti-gay people, or coloreds being the most viciously racist ethnic group in South Africa (being a bit black themselves).
- starbeast 8y ago
  Ahh yes, that homogeneous block known only as 'Themedia'.

pesmhey 8y ago

I don’t even think you need a wild conspiracy theory. It seems like this is an east vs. west coast power struggle. Old money vs. new.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

> This seems somewhat misguided... I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour, but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this. All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally years after events occurred and after they've been working to rectify the issues is curious. They helped throw an election. This is not the sort of thing you forgive and forget after a couple of years and some apologies.

chillacy 8y ago
“Throw an election” implies illegitimacy, that’s a dangerous idea in a democracy where legitimacy is derived from the people. It is just as wrong as if trump were to not accept the results because of “election fraud” or what have you. Can we accept that people that’s what people wanted? And if we want to change that, then talk to voters instead of blaming the news: people share articles they are inclined to agree with anyways, and confirmation bias means nobody will fact check their own opinions.
- cf141q5325 8y ago
  This always rubbed me the wrong way. To say that the election was hacked implies that people were manipulated to do the "wrong thing" instead of the "right thing". To debate on that level seems extremely anti democratic, as it inadvertently leads to either the assertion, that people are to stupid and irresponsible to have a say in their future or to have the access to information restricted, to make sure people dont respond to the information by doing the "wrong thing". In both cases you have a higher authority decide what is best for people as they are to irresponsible to decide for themselves.

jahewson 8y ago

You think that because it’s taken the senate several years to publish a report that this is in some way unusual? Really?

a3n 8y ago

Facebook is an "attractive nuisance" that they have failed to sufficiently secure and monitor, the same as if they left their hot tub uncovered and unlocked, and a neighbor kid climbed the fence and drowned. Victim? No, neighborhood menace.

news_hacker 8y ago

Reneé Girard has some interesting things to say about scapegoating. > "Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them." Seeing the overwhelming vitriol towards Facebook (justified to a certain extent, but certainly over-indexed), I can't help but join you in this low-value conspiracy indulgence... If Girard's prescription is true here, what really is the media so rampantly enraged about that they are seeking to continually beat the downed (arguably) dead horse that is Facebook's PR image? * Is it an old-money / new-money thing? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-threatened-mark-zuckerberg-in-2016-with-a-war.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-thre... * Is it related to an increasing coastal elite / tech / income-inequality distrust with the rest of America? * Is it a trendy common-enemy for young intellectuals to frame as the next trope for "misused, oppressive power"? * Is it anger and bargaining from the 2016 election fallout where the unhappy masses are working through the Stages of Grief and are searching for an object where to fixate the blame to move on?

apatters 8y ago
FB is a direct competitor to media brands -- eyeball time that would have gone to CNN or WashPo or MTV now go to FB. FB then resells those eyeballs to said media brands, and it's big enough to command market power--it can control prices and terms and it's so huge you can't easily take your budget to a competing service. (It has in fact done this, before the wave of "FB is evil" stories, there was a wave of "FB is raising the price of impressions" stories. So many media brands perceive it as an existential threat. FB did some fairly dirty things to obtain its huge market share and it's too powerful. So I don't really see a problem with all its competitors piling up on it, but that's definitely what's going on.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

I watched Apple stock for years and it definitely went through periods where it couldn’t get a lucky break to save it’s life despite being the most profitable company.

lithos 8y ago

"Move fast and break stuff" can be reworded to "do whatever and deal with the consequences later". All the dirt now isn't people grouping up and coordinating. It's literally just people doing their jobs, and having an easy time of it. Because Facebook has decided to never deal with the consequences of their actions, so every time a reporter/regulator needs to look at them and verify facts they of course find something new

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

Theranos was founded 15 years ago