13 ms·

Just to cherry-pick from your reply here, if $2M is the biggest ticket item you have to show for independent research on this topic - then you're woefully short

by abraae 6y ago

Just to cherry-pick from your reply here, if $2M is the biggest ticket item you have to show for independent research on this topic - then you're woefully short given Facebook's revenues and size. 10 short years ago, nobody could have imagined that huge swathes of the population could have been swayed to accept non-scientific statements as fact because of social media. Now we're struggling to deal with existential threats like climate change because a lot of people get their worldview from Facebook. Algorithms have decided that they fall on one side of the polarization divide and should receive a powerful dose of fake science and denialism ... all because clicks and engagement.

nradov 6y ago
10 short years ago, huge swaths of the population were swayed to accept non-scientific statements like eating fat and cholesterol were unhealthy. I don't think Facebook is the problem here. How much exactly do you think Facebook ought to donate to independent researchers? Most tech companies donate ~0$ to such efforts.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  >Most tech companies donate ~0$ to such efforts. If they actually pay their taxes, they all do.
  - shitgoose 6y ago
    If they actually pay their taxes, they all do. They don't.
- alpacaillama 6y ago
  This is classic whataboutism. What does people being led to believe that fat was healthy have to do with Facebook’s deliberate inability to make their content less divisive
  - waheoo 6y ago
    The while thing is, what does what other tech companies donate to have to do with anything? Btw, some tech companies donate a fuckload to open source and other aligned initiatives. Its annoying to see this ignored for the sake of a weak argument.
  - nradov 6y ago
    You missed the point. Too many people are credulous, and lack a rigorous education in epistemology and the scientific method. This has been a problem forever and isn't something Facebook can fix.
    - alpacaillama 6y ago
      I don’t expect them to come out with a perfect solution but if they can’t fix it and no one else can, but they still contribute to it I don’t see how why they should be above criticism and reproach? Also the article mentions that even though they had they option to reduce it, they actively chose not to. How is this not something that I shod be critical of? Why is growth above everything else important? What if they disabled the group discovery part? How is that impossible?
      - nradov 6y ago
        As a Facebook user I like the group discovery feature. It works fine. There's no need to disable it.
      - john_minsk 6y ago
        If no one else can fix it - we should criticise with a remark that BTW this is not fixable at the moment Otherwise: Earth's gravity is too strong. Planes use too much fuel. Let's criticise Earth...
        Nevermark 6y ago
        We are talking about existential threats to humanity. It might be hard to believe but humans ability to bring about bad outcomes is growing at a very fast pace. Key players like Facebook throwing in the towel because “we don’t see an easy way to stop contributing to problems that are growing in size and can potentially destabilize democracies, world ecosystems, or a few decades from now hunan existence” is not an option. The problems we have today are growing exponentially in seriousness. Human beings need to learn to get along in ways they never needed to before both due to resource stress and technological powers we never had before. Facebook’s amplification of many human weaknesses is only one of many risk factors. But I don’t think many young people realize how easily humans have fallen into disasters in the past, which amplified by progress could easily become existential today.
- waheoo 6y ago
  Hey you guys, I found one, I found a jumper.
- abraae 6y ago
  If I was a higher up at FB, I'd consider the risks to me as a business of these issues of polarization, and I'd spend according on advice and evaluation (a lot). For example, if FB comes to be seen as a kind of mind control platform, that could be devastating as national govts decide to step in and put a stop to things. Imagine even a mid-sized country regulating that FB was responsible for tagging any posts that contained not just Covid-19 misinformation but all sorts of misinformation. That sort of thing could be extremely dangerous to FB's business model. These sorts of risk in my mind would be very high indeed and I would devote a lot of resources to at the very least understand them. $2M is a drop in the bucket for a company with revenues of $70B for addressing such risk. (Actually I checked and a bucket contains approx 10K drops, so this is actually surprisingly close to being a drop in the bucket).
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    This already exists, in Singapore. See for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50613341 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50613341
- adrianN 6y ago
  Everything social that exists today already existed when humans were still living in trees. That doesn't mean that social media like Facebook can't serve as an amplifier that turns problems from annoyances to existential threats to our society.
- creato 6y ago
  > 10 short years ago, huge swaths of the population were swayed to accept non-scientific statements like eating fat and cholesterol were unhealthy. I don't think Facebook is the problem here. That's a horrible example, I don't think that is even remotely comparable to swaying the population into burning down dozens (hundreds?) of cell towers or accusing Bill Gates of starting the coronavirus pandemic.
  - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
    Yes, the misleading dietary advice was objectively worse. How many needless deaths lost to the likes of diabetes and heart disease. The ramifications of the replication crisis (of which social media censorship also runs afoul) run much deeper.
    - creato 6y ago
      I think you are knowingly missing the point. Nutritional experts disagreed among themselves, and probably still do. Is there even a single 5G engineer that will take up the cause of 5G causing coronavirus? How about an immunologist that will claim Bill Gates is trying to inject people with microchips delivered in vaccines?
      - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
        Which is why it's a non-sequitur. Any well-adjusted adult with a modicum of common sense can see through such claims. Cults and conspiracies flourished long before FB's existence, as they will after. Removing such content just validates it in their minds — it must be true that's why "the corporations" insist on covering it up! Most of the west has learnt that we should not penalise drug addicts. We treat the underlying problems that brought about their habitual use. The need to self-medicate disappears. Like the war on drugs failed, so too shall the war on misinformation. The solution is tending for the human condition that leads one to not only believe, but want to believe, in these fantasies.
        square_usual 6y ago
- square_usual 6y ago
  > I don't think Facebook is the problem here. Facebook's researchers seemed to think otherwise: > Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for [extremist groups'] growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”
guy_ro 6y ago
A counter-point to this is that studies show polarization has also fallen in some countries over the past years - including ones where social media (Facebook or otherwise) is popular. Studies also show some of the most polarized segments in the US to be the older population, which uses social media less. We definitely have work to do, but this suggests there are many factors at play.
- guy_ro 6y ago
  https://www.nber.org/papers/w26669 https://www.nber.org/papers/w26669
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    A freely available version of this paper can be found here: https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/cross-polar.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/cross-polar.pdf
- mola 6y ago
  You have an interest in the outcome of the research, why should we trust you to conduct or fund it properly? Your track record is terrible. The fact you are throwing around dubious research as facts is crazy. I'm sorry, but really, there's no reason to believe a word a you say. You get paid from Facebook, Facebook lied again and again, how on earth do you expect people to take you seriously? Your job and title is to give FB the optics of caring about integrity, and was invented as part of FB PR in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre. The amount of cynicism is just mind boggling.
  - rat9988 6y ago
    >why should we trust you to conduct or fund it properly? You are welcome to conduct research or fund it. You can even help current research by criticizing their research in its substance, or engage yourself politically (at least by voting) so we can have more and better research about the topic.
hanspeter 6y ago
> Now we're struggling to deal with existential threats like climate change because a lot of people get their worldview from Facebook You state this as a matter of fact. How do you know this? Even if it were to be true, that people were more polarized in the climate worldview by Facebook and more so to the wrong side than the right side, we all know that climate change is the result of our behaviour the last centuries and that counter efforts has been resisted the last 50 years.
- abraae 6y ago
  No arguments there, and my point was certainly overreach.
asiachick 6y ago
Something like 85% of the planet believes in non-science. There are 2.3 billion Christians, 1.9 billion Islam, 1.1 billion Hindu and probably a billion "other" religion. The fact that people believe non-science has got nothing to do with Facebook.
JohnClark1337 6y ago
Weird, I'm pretty sure there were climate protests in the 70's and people who denied it. Didn't know Facebook was that old.

by abraae 6y ago

nradov 6y ago

10 short years ago, huge swaths of the population were swayed to accept non-scientific statements like eating fat and cholesterol were unhealthy. I don't think Facebook is the problem here. How much exactly do you think Facebook ought to donate to independent researchers? Most tech companies donate ~0$ to such efforts.

Frost1x 6y ago
>Most tech companies donate ~0$ to such efforts. If they actually pay their taxes, they all do.
- shitgoose 6y ago
  If they actually pay their taxes, they all do. They don't.
alpacaillama 6y ago
This is classic whataboutism. What does people being led to believe that fat was healthy have to do with Facebook’s deliberate inability to make their content less divisive
- waheoo 6y ago
  The while thing is, what does what other tech companies donate to have to do with anything? Btw, some tech companies donate a fuckload to open source and other aligned initiatives. Its annoying to see this ignored for the sake of a weak argument.
- nradov 6y ago
  You missed the point. Too many people are credulous, and lack a rigorous education in epistemology and the scientific method. This has been a problem forever and isn't something Facebook can fix.
  - alpacaillama 6y ago
    I don’t expect them to come out with a perfect solution but if they can’t fix it and no one else can, but they still contribute to it I don’t see how why they should be above criticism and reproach? Also the article mentions that even though they had they option to reduce it, they actively chose not to. How is this not something that I shod be critical of? Why is growth above everything else important? What if they disabled the group discovery part? How is that impossible?
    - nradov 6y ago
      As a Facebook user I like the group discovery feature. It works fine. There's no need to disable it.
    - john_minsk 6y ago
      If no one else can fix it - we should criticise with a remark that BTW this is not fixable at the moment Otherwise: Earth's gravity is too strong. Planes use too much fuel. Let's criticise Earth...
      - Nevermark 6y ago
        We are talking about existential threats to humanity. It might be hard to believe but humans ability to bring about bad outcomes is growing at a very fast pace. Key players like Facebook throwing in the towel because “we don’t see an easy way to stop contributing to problems that are growing in size and can potentially destabilize democracies, world ecosystems, or a few decades from now hunan existence” is not an option. The problems we have today are growing exponentially in seriousness. Human beings need to learn to get along in ways they never needed to before both due to resource stress and technological powers we never had before. Facebook’s amplification of many human weaknesses is only one of many risk factors. But I don’t think many young people realize how easily humans have fallen into disasters in the past, which amplified by progress could easily become existential today.
waheoo 6y ago
Hey you guys, I found one, I found a jumper.
abraae 6y ago
If I was a higher up at FB, I'd consider the risks to me as a business of these issues of polarization, and I'd spend according on advice and evaluation (a lot). For example, if FB comes to be seen as a kind of mind control platform, that could be devastating as national govts decide to step in and put a stop to things. Imagine even a mid-sized country regulating that FB was responsible for tagging any posts that contained not just Covid-19 misinformation but all sorts of misinformation. That sort of thing could be extremely dangerous to FB's business model. These sorts of risk in my mind would be very high indeed and I would devote a lot of resources to at the very least understand them. $2M is a drop in the bucket for a company with revenues of $70B for addressing such risk. (Actually I checked and a bucket contains approx 10K drops, so this is actually surprisingly close to being a drop in the bucket).
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  This already exists, in Singapore. See for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50613341 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50613341
adrianN 6y ago
Everything social that exists today already existed when humans were still living in trees. That doesn't mean that social media like Facebook can't serve as an amplifier that turns problems from annoyances to existential threats to our society.
creato 6y ago
> 10 short years ago, huge swaths of the population were swayed to accept non-scientific statements like eating fat and cholesterol were unhealthy. I don't think Facebook is the problem here. That's a horrible example, I don't think that is even remotely comparable to swaying the population into burning down dozens (hundreds?) of cell towers or accusing Bill Gates of starting the coronavirus pandemic.
- 2019-nCoV 6y ago
  Yes, the misleading dietary advice was objectively worse. How many needless deaths lost to the likes of diabetes and heart disease. The ramifications of the replication crisis (of which social media censorship also runs afoul) run much deeper.
  - creato 6y ago
    I think you are knowingly missing the point. Nutritional experts disagreed among themselves, and probably still do. Is there even a single 5G engineer that will take up the cause of 5G causing coronavirus? How about an immunologist that will claim Bill Gates is trying to inject people with microchips delivered in vaccines?
    - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
      Which is why it's a non-sequitur. Any well-adjusted adult with a modicum of common sense can see through such claims. Cults and conspiracies flourished long before FB's existence, as they will after. Removing such content just validates it in their minds — it must be true that's why "the corporations" insist on covering it up! Most of the west has learnt that we should not penalise drug addicts. We treat the underlying problems that brought about their habitual use. The need to self-medicate disappears. Like the war on drugs failed, so too shall the war on misinformation. The solution is tending for the human condition that leads one to not only believe, but want to believe, in these fantasies.
      - square_usual 6y ago
square_usual 6y ago
> I don't think Facebook is the problem here. Facebook's researchers seemed to think otherwise: > Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for [extremist groups'] growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”

guy_ro 6y ago

A counter-point to this is that studies show polarization has also fallen in some countries over the past years - including ones where social media (Facebook or otherwise) is popular. Studies also show some of the most polarized segments in the US to be the older population, which uses social media less. We definitely have work to do, but this suggests there are many factors at play.

guy_ro 6y ago
https://www.nber.org/papers/w26669 https://www.nber.org/papers/w26669
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  A freely available version of this paper can be found here: https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/cross-polar.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/cross-polar.pdf
mola 6y ago
You have an interest in the outcome of the research, why should we trust you to conduct or fund it properly? Your track record is terrible. The fact you are throwing around dubious research as facts is crazy. I'm sorry, but really, there's no reason to believe a word a you say. You get paid from Facebook, Facebook lied again and again, how on earth do you expect people to take you seriously? Your job and title is to give FB the optics of caring about integrity, and was invented as part of FB PR in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre. The amount of cynicism is just mind boggling.
- rat9988 6y ago
  >why should we trust you to conduct or fund it properly? You are welcome to conduct research or fund it. You can even help current research by criticizing their research in its substance, or engage yourself politically (at least by voting) so we can have more and better research about the topic.

hanspeter 6y ago

> Now we're struggling to deal with existential threats like climate change because a lot of people get their worldview from Facebook You state this as a matter of fact. How do you know this? Even if it were to be true, that people were more polarized in the climate worldview by Facebook and more so to the wrong side than the right side, we all know that climate change is the result of our behaviour the last centuries and that counter efforts has been resisted the last 50 years.

abraae 6y ago
No arguments there, and my point was certainly overreach.

asiachick 6y ago

Something like 85% of the planet believes in non-science. There are 2.3 billion Christians, 1.9 billion Islam, 1.1 billion Hindu and probably a billion "other" religion. The fact that people believe non-science has got nothing to do with Facebook.

JohnClark1337 6y ago

Weird, I'm pretty sure there were climate protests in the 70's and people who denied it. Didn't know Facebook was that old.