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> I believe our platforms can play a positive role in helping to heal the divisions in our society, Facebook systematically promotes and propogates the most in
by boplicity 6y ago
> I believe our platforms can play a positive role in helping to heal the divisions in our society,
Facebook systematically promotes and propogates the most inflammatory content posted on its platform. Why? Because it is the most engaging. This is part of the intentional design of Facebook, and is the fundamental reason there are so many problematic things happening on the platform.
Mark's "thoughts" on the topic do nothing to address this in any way.
In other words, the plan is "business as usual."
- asdf333 6y agoIt is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair
- artsyca 6y agoWe all act like we're above the false corporacy with our casual ways and toxic pecadilloes but it's actually a signal that we're willing to be even more ignorant than the average bloke.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y agoThe vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and family. The cynical framing we encounter on HN isn't actually representative of the experience of most FB users.
- OpieCunningham 6y agoHave you met my friends and family? Oy vey.
- goatherders 6y agoI disagree completely.
- boplicity 6y agoThat gets to the heart of the problem, actually. People use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends, yet Facebook still systematically pushes inflammatory content on them, despite that not being the "reason" people are there. And, eventually, it gets a surprisingly high percentage of people to respond to that inflammatory content, thus furthering the cycle.
- danlugo92 6y agoFWIW (and it might not be worth much much). I'm from Venezuela and most of my contacts are too. Most content that I would consider "bad" that comes up for people are just memes, and stupid top X/spammy-ish/clickbaity content or recipe videos. Maybe a different algorithm or just network effects?
- bromuro 6y agoYeah they should just stop hosting public profiles and figures.
- slantedview 6y agoJust because you haven't been radicalized on FB doesn't mean it's not a real problem.
- chrisco255 6y agoYeah, same goes for books. You know how many people have been indoctrinated and persuaded by books? Let's burn those while we're at it.
- harikb 6y agoIf the cost (monetary and one’s credibility) of publishing a Social post matched that of publishing a book, we wouldn’t be here discussing this. If we allow anyone with opposing thumbs to spew garbage online, platform have some responsibility to have some limits or require making source/author public
- chrisco255 6y agoYeah that's how freedom of speech works. Listen, you don't police private conversations among friends. Not in America. One man's trash is another man's treasure. I'm sure I could comb over your personal beliefs and find all sorts of garbage, including what you're saying now Corporate regulation of speech is a losing proposition for society. Period.
- harikb 6y agoMy only ask is that you see the difference between free-speech as intended in the constitution vs free-speech under an unverifiable and easily forged online pseudonym. You may not even be defending free speech of an American citizen/resident
- chrisco255 6y agoI believe free speech is a human right. Facebook itself is not built up around pseudonyms, that would be Twitter moreso. But the founding members of the U.S. regularly wrote in pseudonyms in the Federalist Papers. Ben Franklin also regularly wrote in pseudonyms. I don't like social media, as it exists today. I think it's a toxic form of communication. But I'd rather people just realize that and migrate off it and towards chat rooms, group chats, discussion forums, etc. I'd be fine with forcing social media companies to regularly warn users of addiction and to provide built in and highly visible tools for tuning it out.
- claudeganon 6y agoThe idea that being barraged by insane politics is separate from staying in touch with friends and family is contrary to most people’s experience of national and religious holidays.
- koolba 6y agoRather than shying from it, dreading Thanksgiving, or hiding behind an eggshell thin wall of group think, people should learn to grow a spine. Learn to defend your own opinions, stop getting overly agitated that someone has their own conflicting ones, and generally stop caring when people disagree with you. I’m no doctor but I’m fairly certain you’ll live longer.
- hsitz 6y agoYou seem to live in a different world than mine. In mine, social media would be much less of a problem if people tended to shy away from online confrontation. The online/social media problem is in large part one of people defending their own opinions too aggressively.
- koolba 6y ago> You seem to live in a different world than mine. I liked the more inflammatory initial hot take of “What kind of world do you live in?” better. It goes better with my speak your mind and damn the consequences philosophy. I wasn’t talking about online. I meant in person communication. It’s likely even hard for people these days but once you get used to the idea that it’s okay to offend people, you realize you’re never really offended either. > In mine, social media would be much less of a problem if people tended to shy away from online confrontation. The online/social media problem is in large part one of people defending their own opinions too aggressively. Having any sort of personal accountability for social media defeats the purpose. It should be an outlet for the id. Be the craziest you and assume everyone else is as well.
- nvrspyx 6y agoThe average number of friends that a Facebook user has is 338. Out of those, I'm sure there's quite a few in every person's group of "friends" that posts some pretty inflammatory content. I, for example, have over 800 friends, despite the fact that I haven't posted anything in about 10 years, I don't go on the site more than once every three months or so, and the only thing I use my Facebook account for is messaging my significant other because they mainly use Messenger to stay in contact with their friends. Yet, when I go on for my quarterly check-in because my SO wants me to like a photo, it's nothing but inflammatory posts. I quickly unfriend them and move on, but it still seems to mostly be those types of posts.
- autokad 6y agoi generally use the unfollow button for people who post a lot of stuff I don't like. I got to the point where its really stable, I mostly see what I want, funny memes, pictures of my friends doing things, etc. I use to have 800 friends, went on several purges to get it to 250 - much more managable
- fzeroracer 6y agoReally? Because my parents are probably among the most tech-illiterate people I know (love you, Mom) but I've had to talk with them multiple times because they asked me if such-and-such or so-and-so was true or real and it was the result of completely fake FB groups or accounts posting bullshit that they read on there. I'm lucky that I have such a good relationship with my family that they're willing to come to me as a source of truth for some of those things.
- bryan_w 6y agoMost people who complain about FB on HN, "deleted FB years ago"
- bitL 6y agoYet our profiles are still alive and well, as our friends are telling us.
- BLanen 6y ago> The vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and family. Out of personal experience it's the opposite. I even talked about a chrome plugin to get rid of everything but friends' activities and they said they primarily use it for just scrolling through news and memes and shit.
- sarcasmatwork 6y ago>Facebook systematically promotes and propogates the most inflammatory content posted on its platform. Why? Because it is the most engaging. This is part of the intentional design of Facebook, and is the fundamental reason there are so many problematic things happening on the platform. Remove the word "Facebook" and change it with MSM. How is that okay?
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoIt's not okay, and it is a real problem with ad-supported platforms. twitter and youtube have both been dealing with this same issue.
- saltedonion 6y agoThe problem is the recommendation algorithm. Oh you like this far right video? Here’s a bunch more!!!
- sitkack 6y agoThe problem is on all monetized platforms, esp those governed by ML. It will always degenerate into the worst of everything because of humanity ⓧ money equals sadness.
- purple_ferret 6y agoFacebook is hands down the most toxic platform I've encountered. It doesn't get as much flak as twitter because not every 'post' is visible to everyone, but go to your local town's facebook group. Boy oh boy is the stuff you find there is horrid.
- quietthrow 6y agoPrecisely. The business of fb is measured in MAU and DAU. These are their key metrics. The only things that drives these metrics are engagement. It’s basically the core of their business. And controversial items generate the most engagement. Unless it’s crossing the line in black and white terms for example like a beheading and most items don’t do that because the world is shades of grey they are good for business as they have the potential to generate more engagement. It’s basically good for business. What’s good for business may not be good for society. Sometime it is. Sometimes it’s not. Some people are ok with this and some are not.
- emeerson 6y agoMakes sense that business incentives inform decision making, but how do you explain the difference in Twitter's content policy? They also, presumably, measure their business via MAU & DAU. Sometimes I think its as simple as humans making decisions. And Zuckerberg is making a spineless decision (by way of inertia).
- quietthrow 6y agoThat my friend is exactly is the difference made by who is leads the company. This is exactly why what kind of a person a leader is so important. Be it for a company or a nation. We get what we tolerate.
- im3w1l 6y ago> Facebook systematically promotes and propogates the most inflammatory content posted on its platform. This is not borne out by the facts. Facebook is a lot tamer than unmoderated, uncurated, algorithm-free platforms. This idea that facebook promotes inflammatory content was invented by unscrupulous people, with the goal of getting facebook to censor even more than they already do, because this will give their viewpoint the upper hand.
- lewiscollard 6y agoYou are entirely right. I've long said that optimising for "engagement", with no regard to what kind of "engagement" that is, is a paperclip maximiser.[0] Rewarding the posts that get the most comments regardless of whether they are positive or negative or thoughtful or shitposting, and the posts that get the most reactions regardless of whether the reactors (?) have or have not given it a few seconds of thought, is destructive to understanding each other and destructive to democracy. See, I would rather Facebook not de-platform Trump, or any of his fans, or anyone else I don't like, but let's not pretend that Zuckerberg gives a shit about peace, love, and understanding. They have taken conscious decisions to prioritise "engagement" over anything else, because that is what makes them money. I get it, that's business, that is what they have to do. Likewise, we should do what we have to do to protect ourselves and to protect democracy: Zuckerberg and anyone that works at or has worked at Facebook should, to borrow a phrase, be unto us as heathens and publicans. (You can extend this to Twitter too. I know, they scored some imaginary Internet points with left-leaning crowds by "fact-checking" Trump, but the truth is, with the algorithmic timeline providing exactly the same rewards to shitposting as Facebook does, they are as much to blame for this too.) [0] https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
- tomjen3 6y agoI am not so sure - I had to put away my twitter usage because it was all the crap that is going on. I have pretty much dumped facebook because it has nothing but crap on it.