I am distrustful of "undercover" investigations in general now, mainly due to the activities of James O'Keefe and Project Veritas. It's very, very easy to cut a

I am distrustful of "undercover" investigations in general now, mainly due to the activities of James O'Keefe and Project Veritas. It's very, very easy to cut a "bad guy edit," especially when people don't know they're the subject of an interview. > In one instance, the undercover moderator asks the advice of his colleague regarding a video that shows two underage girls, one of them being beaten by the other. “Unless it has a condemning caption, it’s a delete,” says the colleague, referring to the text accompanying the video. > In other words, if the caption were promoting the violence or poking fun, it would come down. But in this case, since the caption condemns the fighting, the moderator is told to leave it up with a “mark as disturbing” warning. This seems like a reasonable balance to strike. Context is extremely important; a video of Nazis marching down an American street can mean two very different things depending on who is posting it, and why. > [Early Facebook investor Roger] McNamee describes how the platform’s business model actually relies on extreme content, as it keeps users on the platform longer, feeding them more ads and increasing revenue. “This is essentially the crack cocaine of their product. It’s the really extreme, really dangerous form of content that attracts the most highly engaged people on the platform,” he says. This gets to a more salient underlying issue; Facebook, and pretty much every other app on your phone, makes money from your attention, and they're designed to be addictive. This is true with Facebook notifications, Reddit karma, games ... the art and science of triggering compulsive behavior has been weaponized by advertisers and is being used against us. The fact that some people's compulsive behavior is triggered by fake videos of Nancy Pelosi doesn't matter to Facebook. There is no political angle there, only financial.