6 ms·

The degree to which “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is in effect here is remarkable. If Facebook literally removes anything, then HN is outraged because

by knzhou 6y ago

The degree to which “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is in effect here is remarkable. If Facebook literally removes anything, then HN is outraged because it’s censorship, paternalism, all that. But if Facebook does not adopt an actively paternalistic attitude where it shows people content that they deem is “good for them”, then that’s outrageous too. Both complaints predictably rocket to the top of HN. Which is it, guys? How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? There’s an amusing comment from a Facebook employee downthread asking: if division is caused by showing people opposing political opinions, should we try to stop that to reduce division, or should we do nothing, to avoid forming filter bubbles? Predictably, every single reply condemns him as evil for not realizing one of the options is obviously right, but they’re split exactly 50/50 on what that right course of action is.

throwlaplace 6y ago
you know what i don't understand? how many people chafe at the idea that violent video games create violent people? when i was a kid that was the hot-button tech issue. no one puts any stock in that right? because it's an inversion of causality - violent people gravitate towards violent video games. and before video games we had parental advisory on rap albums. no one put any stock in that either. how is fb different? why isn't the onus on the consumer?
starpilot 6y ago
You people want less government, but you also want more. Which is it, guys? You could say this about any divisive issue if you lump all sides together.
- icelancer 6y ago
  I want more government when it helps me and less when it doesn't. What's so hard about that? Everyone agrees with me, I'm sure.
cityzen 6y ago
The right course of action is to stop using Facebook. That's it, very simple. people here being polarized is exactly what Facebook wants. Current facebook users are akin to opioid addicts... probably found some relief from whatever social pain they were feeling that now they have accepted selling their privacy for their fix. I would say I can't wait for the day that Facebook is gone but it will be a long time considering the amount of insecure and unintelligent people that need a platform like that to avoid ever being challenged in the real world.
- dctoedt 6y ago
  > The right course of action is to stop using Facebook. That'd give rise to something akin to a Gresham's Law problem [0]. I think we have a civic duty to engage patiently — and politely — with our friends who hold views we disagree with, because (A) they get to vote; (B) angry invective isn't persuasive; and (C) social proof is a thing, and sometimes people can be persuaded to come around to their friends' point of view, eventually. It's a long shot, but worth a shot. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law
  - cityzen 6y ago
    So stay on Facebook. Keep in mind that while you're trying to patiently and politely engage, Facebook continues to build a profile about who you are and how to manipulate you. The more you feed it, the more it learns and knows how to use yourself against yourself. In terms of civic duty, this definition of American civic duty made me laugh: Citizenship connects Americans in a nation bound by shared values of liberty, equality, and freedom. Being a citizen comes with both rights and responsibilities. Civic duty embodies these responsibilities. Such civic duties help uphold the democratic values of the United States. The problem with civic duty is that I feel mine is to tell people to stop using Facebook... but others... well, they are going to show up at a state capital carrying military grade weapons because they don't want to wear facemasks in a pandemic. Would you like to patiently and politely engage with them? I sure as hell wouldn't because they focus more on their perception of "rights" while ignoring their responsibilities. My point is that civic duty in America is a pretty romanticized concept that is certainly not based in any reality in 2020. When I did use Facebook briefly back before 2012, I found it disappointing that my "christian" extended family members would send me incredibly hateful memes about how Obama was a muslim terrorist or satan in a tan suit. If that is civic discourse, no thanks. The one upside is that I haven't spoken to them in almost a decade and never plan to again.
DenisM 6y ago
> How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? There is a simple answer to that - HN is not a homogeneous set of people; different users have different opinions and express them at different times with different intensity.
- knzhou 6y ago
  True, but I would have expected at least a little visible disagreement. You never see anybody saying “wait a second, I think making the filter bubble effect a bit worse is actually worth it!” Each individual submission’s comments is just full throated, unanimous condemnation —- even when adjacent comments are directly contradictory. They just don’t engage with the possibility that deciding what to do might actually be hard.
  - elicash 6y ago
    People speak up more when they disagree than when they agree. Which is why I'm commenting right now.
  - prawn 6y ago
    For 15+ years, I've run a sports forum and it is inevitable that societal/political debates emerge in many threads. In recent years, they've become increasingly as you describe. There's almost never a calm, reasonable comment. People get at each other's throats and slinging left-right insults immediately. I think a lot about how @PG almost never posts on HN any more. Might be wrong, but I suspect he's come to resent some of the discourse/attitudes and time-wasting here.
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  If this were true you'd have the average opinion filter out - naysayers would downvote supporters and vice versa. The truth is in fact that hn is hypocritical and becomes outraged for the sake of outrage just like every other opinionated group (where the raison d etre is to express an opinion rather than discourse). Edit: think hn isn't just about getting attention? Then explain to me why responses are ranked? Or even ranked without requiring a response? Even Amazon reviews in principle require leaving ratings only in good faith (ie having engaged with the product). It's obvious and dang and whomever could make that a perquisite of voting. That they haven't proves my point.
neilk 6y ago
Facebook is sometimes in a difficult position. But, with respect, I don't think it's correct to say that it's the fault of their critics for putting them in a dilemma. Facebook does not face outrage for "literally remov[ing] anything". In the real world, Facebook is removing thousands of items every day, maybe tens of thousands. Most of them are totally justified. Is HN outraged about that? Also, keep vs. remove is a false dilemma. Facebook has many more options than keeping or removing items. Most of the time, it's about what they choose to boost or reward in other ways. https://twitter.com/BKCHarvard/status/1263891198068039680 https://twitter.com/BKCHarvard/status/1263891198068039680 That said, I think you're right that being an effective arbiter on planetary speech is a difficult place to be, even for people with the best intentions, and FB didn't get where they are today by having the best intentions all the time. But personally, I think that calls into question whether Facebook or anything like them should even exist.
- root_axis 6y ago
  > Most of them are totally justified. Is HN outraged about that? Well that's the crux of the issue isn't it? Obviously there would be no controversy if everyone agreed on which removals are justified. Every censorship article that reaches the front-page of HN includes a litigation over the specifics of the removal, including those who are quite clear that in an ideal world all large social media websites would be prohibited from filtering out content based on the site operator's judgements about content acceptability. > Also, keep vs. remove is a false dilemma. Facebook has many more options than keeping or removing items. Most of the time, it's about what they choose to boost or reward in other ways A distinction without much difference for the sake of this discussion; if the system is hiding the content it's as good as deleted or perhaps even worse than deleted in the same way that shadowbans are often perceived as more hostile than explicit bans. > But personally, I think that calls into question whether Facebook or anything like them should even exist. I share that perspective. I believe that social media is a net negative to society despite the nice things its given us like a stream of friend and family photos, but the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. Ultimately this is a cultural problem, it costs a user nothing to have the Facebook app sitting on their phone even if they only open it once a year. Literally billions of Facebook users don't care at all about what Facebook removes from the site, most users know what they want out of the internet and know which places to go to get the things they want.
StanislavPetrov 6y ago
Personally I don't think Facebook should censor anything except spam and posts that break the law like direct threats of violence and child abuse. However, I do think they have a responsibility when it comes to paid content and the algorithms they use to push content on people. Its one thing to have an uncensored forum where people might be exposed to things they seek out, and entirely another thing for Facebook to choose and collate what people are seeing. Once they do that, they share responsibility for the content people see, rather than just being a platform.
closeparen 6y ago
If Facebook followed some deterministic algorithm like "show all content from friends, in chronological order" then I don't think there would be such loud voices calling for it to also solve $social_problem. But Facebook does exercise editorial control, in the service of engagement. It's fair to ask that this curation consider other objectives as well, or at least counterbalance the side-effects it's known to have (divisive content is more engaging and so is amplified; at least correct it back down to neutral).
- ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
  If facebook was following a deterministic algorithm, people would complain too.
  - deadwing0 6y ago
    Is that reason enough not to try? Because people will complain? You know very well that people will complain no matter what happens, yet we still must seek to work towards truth and a better way, even though "better" is in opinion word, and sometimes so is "truth."
    - ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
      good luck filtering human content via deterministic algorithms, and if people can reverse engineer these then they'll get gamed... it's just a stupid idea.
  - irishcoffee 6y ago
    Back in the day this is how it worked. They changed it. Nobody that I can recall was complaining for it to change at the time. Circa 2006 I think. edit: grammar
    - canjobear 6y ago
      It was much smaller and less influential back then.
pessimizer 6y ago
All of HN other than you isn't actually one person arguing with themselves. There are a variety of people here with a range of opinions, each with different degrees of internal consistency. This smacks of the "everybody says all kinds of things, so you should just ignore everybody" or the "they're yelling at me from the left and from the right, so that's proof I'm doing everything correctly" defenses. The second is the moderation fallacy; the first might be called the "Argument From Sociopathy."
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
This 100%, this reminds me of PG's haters post[1]. [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html
haukilup 6y ago
There is no single voice here on HN. It is a divisive, complex issue. Not only are (some) individuals uncertain on where they stand, but the community itself does not entirely agree. I know personally that I draw the line somewhere, though where exactly isn't clear. I suspect that to fully articulate my opinion on this, I would have to spend about a week doing research and forming a truly educated opinion.
kelnos 6y ago
> Which is it, guys? How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? Perhaps because it's not the same people in the two different cases? HN is a pretty diverse bunch at this point; I'm sure there are a lot of people here who want FB to be a disinterested publisher, and others who want FB to curate like mad.
mrfusion 6y ago
Show all things posted in chronological order. Let users filter out things they don’t want. Done.
- throwaway93132 6y ago
  I don't think this would be a good idea. There's a lot of content created on Facebook at any given moment. If you show things only in chronological order, it would take an incredible amount of filtering (that the vast majority of users won't do) to get to anything reasonable.
  - dimator 6y ago
    But this is how Reddit works. And HN actually.
    - nikanj 6y ago
      Reddit and HN front pages are both driven by an algorithm sampling both popularity and time. I think HN also has a chronological view, but that's not considered the front page.
phlakaton 6y ago
I liked the idea of tweaking the newsfeed based on the frequency of activity of the producers, and bumping down the influence of bots and chain accounts. It would probably make for a higher quality newsfeed, and it wouldn't play favorites. The problem is, as the article suggests, it might decrease the only metrics Facebook cares about, and there's no guarantee it would look fair to the outside world. I am not at all outraged that Facebook would impose "restrictions" on speech, nor I think are people in my social circles. You can't have a working newsfeed without a significant amount of filtering, for example. So I suspect that's a straw man. All that being said, I have left Facebook because I prefer to exercise my freedom _not_ to hear the kinds of speech Facebook has made their stock in trade. So, as far as I'm concerned, Facebook can do as they like.
dang 6y ago
Neither of the top two subthreads matches this description. (I meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23315216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23315216 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23314507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23314507)
- knzhou 6y ago
  That’s true, but it wasn’t when I posted my comment. It looks like comments just naturally get more reasonable over time... similarly, about half my comments get to negative score instantly, but most then slowly climb back up to positive over the next 24 hours.
  - dang 6y ago
    I'm glad to hear that! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=corrective%20upvote&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

by knzhou 6y ago

throwlaplace 6y ago

you know what i don't understand? how many people chafe at the idea that violent video games create violent people? when i was a kid that was the hot-button tech issue. no one puts any stock in that right? because it's an inversion of causality - violent people gravitate towards violent video games. and before video games we had parental advisory on rap albums. no one put any stock in that either. how is fb different? why isn't the onus on the consumer?

starpilot 6y ago

You people want less government, but you also want more. Which is it, guys? You could say this about any divisive issue if you lump all sides together.

icelancer 6y ago
I want more government when it helps me and less when it doesn't. What's so hard about that? Everyone agrees with me, I'm sure.

cityzen 6y ago

The right course of action is to stop using Facebook. That's it, very simple. people here being polarized is exactly what Facebook wants. Current facebook users are akin to opioid addicts... probably found some relief from whatever social pain they were feeling that now they have accepted selling their privacy for their fix. I would say I can't wait for the day that Facebook is gone but it will be a long time considering the amount of insecure and unintelligent people that need a platform like that to avoid ever being challenged in the real world.

dctoedt 6y ago
> The right course of action is to stop using Facebook. That'd give rise to something akin to a Gresham's Law problem [0]. I think we have a civic duty to engage patiently — and politely — with our friends who hold views we disagree with, because (A) they get to vote; (B) angry invective isn't persuasive; and (C) social proof is a thing, and sometimes people can be persuaded to come around to their friends' point of view, eventually. It's a long shot, but worth a shot. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law
- cityzen 6y ago
  So stay on Facebook. Keep in mind that while you're trying to patiently and politely engage, Facebook continues to build a profile about who you are and how to manipulate you. The more you feed it, the more it learns and knows how to use yourself against yourself. In terms of civic duty, this definition of American civic duty made me laugh: Citizenship connects Americans in a nation bound by shared values of liberty, equality, and freedom. Being a citizen comes with both rights and responsibilities. Civic duty embodies these responsibilities. Such civic duties help uphold the democratic values of the United States. The problem with civic duty is that I feel mine is to tell people to stop using Facebook... but others... well, they are going to show up at a state capital carrying military grade weapons because they don't want to wear facemasks in a pandemic. Would you like to patiently and politely engage with them? I sure as hell wouldn't because they focus more on their perception of "rights" while ignoring their responsibilities. My point is that civic duty in America is a pretty romanticized concept that is certainly not based in any reality in 2020. When I did use Facebook briefly back before 2012, I found it disappointing that my "christian" extended family members would send me incredibly hateful memes about how Obama was a muslim terrorist or satan in a tan suit. If that is civic discourse, no thanks. The one upside is that I haven't spoken to them in almost a decade and never plan to again.

DenisM 6y ago

> How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? There is a simple answer to that - HN is not a homogeneous set of people; different users have different opinions and express them at different times with different intensity.

knzhou 6y ago
True, but I would have expected at least a little visible disagreement. You never see anybody saying “wait a second, I think making the filter bubble effect a bit worse is actually worth it!” Each individual submission’s comments is just full throated, unanimous condemnation —- even when adjacent comments are directly contradictory. They just don’t engage with the possibility that deciding what to do might actually be hard.
- elicash 6y ago
  People speak up more when they disagree than when they agree. Which is why I'm commenting right now.
- prawn 6y ago
  For 15+ years, I've run a sports forum and it is inevitable that societal/political debates emerge in many threads. In recent years, they've become increasingly as you describe. There's almost never a calm, reasonable comment. People get at each other's throats and slinging left-right insults immediately. I think a lot about how @PG almost never posts on HN any more. Might be wrong, but I suspect he's come to resent some of the discourse/attitudes and time-wasting here.
throwlaplace 6y ago
If this were true you'd have the average opinion filter out - naysayers would downvote supporters and vice versa. The truth is in fact that hn is hypocritical and becomes outraged for the sake of outrage just like every other opinionated group (where the raison d etre is to express an opinion rather than discourse). Edit: think hn isn't just about getting attention? Then explain to me why responses are ranked? Or even ranked without requiring a response? Even Amazon reviews in principle require leaving ratings only in good faith (ie having engaged with the product). It's obvious and dang and whomever could make that a perquisite of voting. That they haven't proves my point.

neilk 6y ago

Facebook is sometimes in a difficult position. But, with respect, I don't think it's correct to say that it's the fault of their critics for putting them in a dilemma. Facebook does not face outrage for "literally remov[ing] anything". In the real world, Facebook is removing thousands of items every day, maybe tens of thousands. Most of them are totally justified. Is HN outraged about that? Also, keep vs. remove is a false dilemma. Facebook has many more options than keeping or removing items. Most of the time, it's about what they choose to boost or reward in other ways. https://twitter.com/BKCHarvard/status/1263891198068039680 https://twitter.com/BKCHarvard/status/1263891198068039680 That said, I think you're right that being an effective arbiter on planetary speech is a difficult place to be, even for people with the best intentions, and FB didn't get where they are today by having the best intentions all the time. But personally, I think that calls into question whether Facebook or anything like them should even exist.

root_axis 6y ago
> Most of them are totally justified. Is HN outraged about that? Well that's the crux of the issue isn't it? Obviously there would be no controversy if everyone agreed on which removals are justified. Every censorship article that reaches the front-page of HN includes a litigation over the specifics of the removal, including those who are quite clear that in an ideal world all large social media websites would be prohibited from filtering out content based on the site operator's judgements about content acceptability. > Also, keep vs. remove is a false dilemma. Facebook has many more options than keeping or removing items. Most of the time, it's about what they choose to boost or reward in other ways A distinction without much difference for the sake of this discussion; if the system is hiding the content it's as good as deleted or perhaps even worse than deleted in the same way that shadowbans are often perceived as more hostile than explicit bans. > But personally, I think that calls into question whether Facebook or anything like them should even exist. I share that perspective. I believe that social media is a net negative to society despite the nice things its given us like a stream of friend and family photos, but the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. Ultimately this is a cultural problem, it costs a user nothing to have the Facebook app sitting on their phone even if they only open it once a year. Literally billions of Facebook users don't care at all about what Facebook removes from the site, most users know what they want out of the internet and know which places to go to get the things they want.

StanislavPetrov 6y ago

Personally I don't think Facebook should censor anything except spam and posts that break the law like direct threats of violence and child abuse. However, I do think they have a responsibility when it comes to paid content and the algorithms they use to push content on people. Its one thing to have an uncensored forum where people might be exposed to things they seek out, and entirely another thing for Facebook to choose and collate what people are seeing. Once they do that, they share responsibility for the content people see, rather than just being a platform.

closeparen 6y ago

If Facebook followed some deterministic algorithm like "show all content from friends, in chronological order" then I don't think there would be such loud voices calling for it to also solve $social_problem. But Facebook does exercise editorial control, in the service of engagement. It's fair to ask that this curation consider other objectives as well, or at least counterbalance the side-effects it's known to have (divisive content is more engaging and so is amplified; at least correct it back down to neutral).

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
If facebook was following a deterministic algorithm, people would complain too.
- deadwing0 6y ago
  Is that reason enough not to try? Because people will complain? You know very well that people will complain no matter what happens, yet we still must seek to work towards truth and a better way, even though "better" is in opinion word, and sometimes so is "truth."
  - ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
    good luck filtering human content via deterministic algorithms, and if people can reverse engineer these then they'll get gamed... it's just a stupid idea.
- irishcoffee 6y ago
  Back in the day this is how it worked. They changed it. Nobody that I can recall was complaining for it to change at the time. Circa 2006 I think. edit: grammar
  - canjobear 6y ago
    It was much smaller and less influential back then.

pessimizer 6y ago

All of HN other than you isn't actually one person arguing with themselves. There are a variety of people here with a range of opinions, each with different degrees of internal consistency. This smacks of the "everybody says all kinds of things, so you should just ignore everybody" or the "they're yelling at me from the left and from the right, so that's proof I'm doing everything correctly" defenses. The second is the moderation fallacy; the first might be called the "Argument From Sociopathy."

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

This 100%, this reminds me of PG's haters post[1]. [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html

haukilup 6y ago

There is no single voice here on HN. It is a divisive, complex issue. Not only are (some) individuals uncertain on where they stand, but the community itself does not entirely agree. I know personally that I draw the line somewhere, though where exactly isn't clear. I suspect that to fully articulate my opinion on this, I would have to spend about a week doing research and forming a truly educated opinion.

kelnos 6y ago

> Which is it, guys? How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? Perhaps because it's not the same people in the two different cases? HN is a pretty diverse bunch at this point; I'm sure there are a lot of people here who want FB to be a disinterested publisher, and others who want FB to curate like mad.

mrfusion 6y ago

Show all things posted in chronological order. Let users filter out things they don’t want. Done.

throwaway93132 6y ago
I don't think this would be a good idea. There's a lot of content created on Facebook at any given moment. If you show things only in chronological order, it would take an incredible amount of filtering (that the vast majority of users won't do) to get to anything reasonable.
- dimator 6y ago
  But this is how Reddit works. And HN actually.
  - nikanj 6y ago
    Reddit and HN front pages are both driven by an algorithm sampling both popularity and time. I think HN also has a chronological view, but that's not considered the front page.

phlakaton 6y ago

I liked the idea of tweaking the newsfeed based on the frequency of activity of the producers, and bumping down the influence of bots and chain accounts. It would probably make for a higher quality newsfeed, and it wouldn't play favorites. The problem is, as the article suggests, it might decrease the only metrics Facebook cares about, and there's no guarantee it would look fair to the outside world. I am not at all outraged that Facebook would impose "restrictions" on speech, nor I think are people in my social circles. You can't have a working newsfeed without a significant amount of filtering, for example. So I suspect that's a straw man. All that being said, I have left Facebook because I prefer to exercise my freedom _not_ to hear the kinds of speech Facebook has made their stock in trade. So, as far as I'm concerned, Facebook can do as they like.

dang 6y ago

Neither of the top two subthreads matches this description. (I meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23315216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23315216 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23314507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23314507)

knzhou 6y ago
That’s true, but it wasn’t when I posted my comment. It looks like comments just naturally get more reasonable over time... similarly, about half my comments get to negative score instantly, but most then slowly climb back up to positive over the next 24 hours.
- dang 6y ago
  I'm glad to hear that! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=corrective%20upvote&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...