4 ms·

> This opening line is just all wrong. News isn't about 'what you want to see', writing news to garner clicks is basically another way of saying 'our news repor

by darawk 8y ago

> This opening line is just all wrong. News isn't about 'what you want to see', writing news to garner clicks is basically another way of saying 'our news reporting is fundamentally biased'. There are multiple meanings of the word 'want'. There is 'want' in the sense of what people will click on, which we have learned is not always good. But that doesn't mean that what people say that they want is similarly toxic. For instance, if you ask me what i'd like to have for lunch today, i'll say "a nice healthy salad". But if you put a delicious burrito in front of me, I will eat that burrito instead. Does that mean I didn't want the salad? No. It means that preference is not a unitary thing. Assuming that Facebook investigated the question of "what do our users want" with this nuanced understanding of preference, and interrogated their users "higher wants" (articulated preference) rather than their "lower wants" (revealed preference), I think that line is ok.

monkeynotes 8y ago
I believe FB would give you whatever you are most likely to click (the cheese filled burrito), to think that FB has any integrity beyond that feels naive in the face of their investor's interests. FaceBook makes money from advertising, whatever it takes to get you to stick around and look at ads is going to be the 'news' they are most motivated to present. Do we have any other reason to believe otherwise?
- darawk 8y ago
  That depends on what you think their investors interests are. Facebook is losing a lot of social capital by pursuing the path that it has. I am an investor in Facebook (not one that matters, just have a few shares), and I, out of pure self interest, want them to reform themselves in this regard. Yes, there is a path to short term profits that aggressively exploits clickbait. However, as is becoming apparent, that path is going to lead to heavy handed regulation and/or a mass exodus from their platforms. Either of those things would be disastrous for future profits, so I don't think, even from a purely self-interested perspective, that it's true that they don't want to solve this problem.

by darawk 8y ago

monkeynotes 8y ago

I believe FB would give you whatever you are most likely to click (the cheese filled burrito), to think that FB has any integrity beyond that feels naive in the face of their investor's interests. FaceBook makes money from advertising, whatever it takes to get you to stick around and look at ads is going to be the 'news' they are most motivated to present. Do we have any other reason to believe otherwise?

darawk 8y ago
That depends on what you think their investors interests are. Facebook is losing a lot of social capital by pursuing the path that it has. I am an investor in Facebook (not one that matters, just have a few shares), and I, out of pure self interest, want them to reform themselves in this regard. Yes, there is a path to short term profits that aggressively exploits clickbait. However, as is becoming apparent, that path is going to lead to heavy handed regulation and/or a mass exodus from their platforms. Either of those things would be disastrous for future profits, so I don't think, even from a purely self-interested perspective, that it's true that they don't want to solve this problem.