8 ms·

Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

glial 6y ago
Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player, hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc. Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure (personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.
- aaroninsf 6y ago
  In this case it's appropriate to hate the player. There is nothing in the ad revenue ecosystem which requires indulgence in or tolerance for sociopathic, amoral, unethical, or duplicitous behavior. Complicity. Complacency. Collusion. That's what participation is today. Ignorance may no longer be pleaded.
  - glial 6y ago
    You're implicitly arguing that Facebook should be a censor. Censoring at scale is a fool's errand. Change the incentive structure. Make Facebook operate by subscription, make timelines linear, etc. You'll never stop people from spreading dumb shit online, but you can stop it being willfully propagated to maximize engagement.
    - creato 6y ago
      Your suggestions are still independent of personalized advertising. The thing your suggestions would reduce is engagement, which would reduce revenue from any kind of advertising, not just personalized ads.
      - glial 6y ago
        In my mind the problem isn't personalized ads per se, it's the incentive for Facebook to increase engagement -- which is shared by personalized and non-personalized ad revenue alike. I have the same issue with ad-driven news organizations of any type - how can you trust what they're saying, if they're just trying to keep you watching till the upcoming commercial?
    - mns 6y ago
      But this is absurd. We can’t give them a free pass and believe the fact that they can’t moderate content. They want all benefits of being this global giant, but none of the responsibilities. If you can’t moderate and provide a clean environment, maybe we should break them up or restrict their power, because it’s obvious they can’t handle it.
      - glial 6y ago
        How would you suggest they go about moderating content (assuming they should)? They currently have an army of human moderators who are emotionally scarred from seeing terrible images all day long - and of course, those images were public on Facebook until reported by someone.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  How about hating the player and the game? The game is shit, yeah. But so's this anyone who enthusiastically said "yes, I would like to find ways to monetize people's desire to talk with each other, and do not care in the least if this involves being paid to spread disinformation, or making ad view money off of pushing people towards insane viewpoints". Yes, this includes Google. This includes Twitter. This includes every damn online service that decides its primary customer is advertisers, not users.
  - sollewitt 6y ago
    And how much exacy are you willing to pay per Google search?
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      I started to think about this and now I find myself wondering if “internet search” is one of those things that should be a public good, funded by everyone’s taxes. Like libraries - their mission is pretty much the same as Google’s stated mission “make all the world’s information accessible”. Just take it out of the realm of commerce entirely.
      - beagle3 6y ago
        I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it seems right: If public libraries did not exist in this day and age, and someone floated the idea, they would be laughed at and/or fought in the courts of law and public opinion. "It would cause authors to starve! It's socialist/communist! There is no reason I should fund your perverse taste in books!" etc. It is considered axiomatic in Europe, but in the US even things like public schools and public fire brigades are not controversial to some segments of the population. Internet search should be a public good, as should internet service, and email service , much like public schools and the postal service; but it won't happen any time soon just because it makes sense. I think the reason it will happen in some form, sooner or later, is the fact the US is the de-facto hegemon of the internet by being the jurisdiction of Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS and Microsoft. The NSA+FBI+CIA are able, by decree through NSLs, to read and rewrite the personal communication of probably 90% of the world population, as well as shape their search results. FB has already shown they can affect mood of population at large (in an experiment they did without consent and of which they were proud at the time!) - and they will surely cooperate with governments if "asked" (In the "speak softly and carry a large gun" sense of asking, but likely even without it). At some point, likely after being burned by this (but possibly before), governments will likely setup a local hegemony if only to deleverage the US. Russia and China already did.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  What kind of moral values do you hold (if any) if your whole plan was to just create a page on which you can 'rate women'? How can anyone justify working at facebook, knowing perfectly well what they do. It just shows more that money seems to quiet a lot of consciences. And look at all that amazing tech you could work on! Werner von Braun worked also on awesome rocket tech back in the day...
  - drak0n1c 6y ago
    Nearly every immature teenager of both sexes has stack-ranked their sexual interest in peers when gossiping with friends. Yes, a teenager hacking together a website that does such publicly is worse because of how it magnifies the behavior and its consequences at scale. But is that so beyond the pale that the individual is deemed incapable of ever holding favorable moral values?
- apta 6y ago
  > don't hate the player, hate the game We can hate both. There needs to be both personal accountability as well as proper regulations.
Galactasm 6y ago
By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?
- aaroninsf 6y ago
  No. Take a moment and survey what whistleblowers and watchdogs have been shouting for years now. It's not the "medium." There is no abstract medium. There is corporate suppression of internal checks; active collusion or participation in unethical and immoral behavior; and grotesque performative punishment for those who push back.
- jameskilton 6y ago
  No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize and connect with each other.
  - kevindqc 6y ago
    In what ways would Facebook be different had they followed that science?
    - spenvo 6y ago
      I'd refer you to this, where they ignored conclusions from internally commissioned research into how their platform was divisive. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499?mod=djemalertNEWS https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di...
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    > There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact ... preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize and connect with each other. Yeah—imagine the concern people would probably more readily voice if the same "move fast and break things" approach were applied to, for example, malignant tumour resection surgery, all while reaping massive financial profits. (Whoops there goes another one...) At the outset of the company you could say that it was just naïveté. That can't really be said anymore.
tasuki 6y ago
Facebook helps me stay in touch with people I might not otherwise stay in touch with. It brings value into my life.
- glial 6y ago
  Go ahead and spell it out - the destruction of civil society is worth the convenience Facebook offers.
  - MikusR 6y ago
    Facebook owns Twitter and Reddit?
    - maest 6y ago
      > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We both know that's not what the GP meant. Snarkily strawmanning someone is low effort and boring.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    How is Facebook destroying civil society?
- mtalantikite 6y ago
  Would you not be able to stay in touch with them without Facebook? I deleted Facebook a number of years ago and still seem to be in touch with family and friends. Personally I think facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp should be broken apart.
  - heartbeats 6y ago
    Absolutely. Since the pandemic hit, I've been mostly alone since I don't have Facebook.
  - 6y ago
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
TL;DR: Recap of several recent revelations and reports about conspiracy theorists and bad foreign actors using Facebook as a tool to spread their messages. No suggestions for how to address the situation. These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.
- throwawayffffas 6y ago
  My personal 2c on how to fix this is make everyone liable for what's on their website, regardless of who wrote it. I don't care if that breaks youtubes, facebooks, twitters and reddits business model.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    How would that help if posting conspiracy theories and misinformation (other than libel) isn't illegal?
    - throwawayffffas 6y ago
      I think it would help get rid of the most toxic stuff. Most of the conspiracy theories that are actually harmful for society are definitely crossing libel lines. Compare for example Roswell conspiracies against QAnon. One is the goverement is hiding aliens in area 51, definitely not libel, not conductive to outrage, not dehumanizing political opponents, it does not actively harm national unity. QAnon on the other hand claims Democrat figureheads are eating babies in satanic orgies, definitely libel, greatly harmful to national unity. I furthermore think that just the liability would be great enough to completely change the face of this platforms, they would be on the defensive things that are not libel would definitely be censored.
- AnonC 6y ago
  > These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues. Considering that it’s NYTimes, I’ve seen people questioning it because of the trackers it uses to track and profile people while criticizing other companies using similar tactics for making money. Of course, Facebook is at a totally different (evil) level, but NYT shouldn’t get a free pass without criticizing its platform.
burlesona 6y ago
Money quote at the end: > Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the waste. It’s an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  Source of 1619 project says what?
ponker 6y ago
I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. When you think about connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of dollars doing it. Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weapons-bad level, he became the comic book villain that we know today.
- colpabar 6y ago
  https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-im...
- AnonC 6y ago
  > I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. Nope. [1] He didn’t start out that way. He just kept misleading people quite well every step of the way. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
- unishark 6y ago
  I thought he started out as a shark that ripped off his classmates business idea.
- saeranv 6y ago
  I kind of agree with you. I am still impressed with his commitment to donate his wealth to charity. Facebook may not have started with the best of intentions, or with complete integrity - but that doesn't equal the scale of evil (i.e actual genocide) that Facebook is now responsible for. He just made the same mistake a lot of us also would have made: underestimating humanity's capacity for evil. That being said, at some point it seems clear that FB internally recognized that FB was being used to support violent authoritarian politics - and the Zuckerberg/Sandberg/Kaplan crowd should be held responsible for that. It is shocking to me how badly they seemed to have acted (and are continuing to act) in response to bad faith political actors, and how much they have torched their own reputation as a result.
AlexandrB 6y ago
This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict posts we'll see: > Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media. > Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship in a tough time. > Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost. > A call for regulation. > A call for a free-market solution. > A post from someone who works in marketing about how "that's where the audience is so we have to give them money". > Personal story about eerily accurate targeting. > Personal story about how the targeting is totally inaccurate. > Humblebrags about how long ago one hasn't used Facebook - "I haven't used Facebook since 1914, when the Kaiser went to war." > Pointing out that traditional media is just scared because they're being disrupted. > Something about "Facebook" being a black mark on one's resume. I just wish there was something we could do other than repeatedly argue about the nature/scope/cause/solution of the problem, but the US political process is pretty broken.
- pbadg3r 6y ago
  Check out represent.US . The fundamental issue in much (not all) of American politics is the "company -> lobbying -> legislation -> company" feedback loop, and Represent.US is taking steps to address it. They're running pro-voting campaigns ahead of this election, and have had 114 wins across cities and states over the last few years. You can get involved by volunteering (https://represent.us/volunteer/ https://represent.us/volunteer/) or by donating. I don't work there, just love their work.
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  Facebook is being targeted by cancel culture because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.
  - throwawayffffas 6y ago
    I will assume good faith, and point out that cancel culture's main weapon is Facebook. That's where they gather all their outrage and yield it against their perceived enemies.
BrandonM 6y ago
I've recently been thinking about the parallels between social media and the Tower of Babel. Maybe ancient societies were onto something when they warned us of the dangers of everyone communicating with one another. Perhaps there's something more robust about a dispersed humanity where a message can't be distributed to everyone.
- saeranv 6y ago
  That's an interesting thought. Instant communication seems to pair badly with our inherent bias towards novelty and bigotry. In the past, we had gatekeepers (i.e media) that were educated enough to edit and contextualize communication to control that bias. Increasing the ability for everyone to communicate with one another has really unleased the worst of humanity.
  - BrandonM 6y ago
    Since you mentioned media's role, Matt Taibbi recently argued[1] that the media has somewhat recently departed from norms that were followed throughout the 20th century. To ensure the widest audiences possible, the CBSes and later CNNs of the world largely aimed to report stories from a "neutral" perspective (really a centrist perspective). Taibbi argues that in the last couple decades, though, even major media outlets have carved out biased perspectives to inspire more loyalty in smaller sets of people. Point being that I think you're right that the media played an important role in contextualizing mass communication and controlling bias. Not only does social media disintermediate mass communications, the intermediaries themselves are now ignoring roles they historically performed. [1] https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era
jackdh 6y ago
non paywall - https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/facebook-democracy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytim...
haunter 6y ago
>The most disturbing revelations from Zhang’s memo relate to the failure of Facebook to take swift action against coordinated activity in countries like Honduras and Azerbaijan, where political leaders used armies of fake accounts to attack opponents and undermine independent media. Same happened in Hungary and the EU can't give a flying fuck. But honestly I don't blame Facebook, the destruction of independent media is a complex problem not just a political one (adaptation of the market driven by Facebook and Google for example). Especially in East Europe, former soviet block where the kind of venture capitalism of the west/US never really existed. And like a vassal you have to pledge allegiance to the government either formally or informally.

Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player, hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc. Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure (personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.

aaroninsf 6y ago
In this case it's appropriate to hate the player. There is nothing in the ad revenue ecosystem which requires indulgence in or tolerance for sociopathic, amoral, unethical, or duplicitous behavior. Complicity. Complacency. Collusion. That's what participation is today. Ignorance may no longer be pleaded.
- glial 6y ago
  You're implicitly arguing that Facebook should be a censor. Censoring at scale is a fool's errand. Change the incentive structure. Make Facebook operate by subscription, make timelines linear, etc. You'll never stop people from spreading dumb shit online, but you can stop it being willfully propagated to maximize engagement.
  - creato 6y ago
    Your suggestions are still independent of personalized advertising. The thing your suggestions would reduce is engagement, which would reduce revenue from any kind of advertising, not just personalized ads.
    - glial 6y ago
      In my mind the problem isn't personalized ads per se, it's the incentive for Facebook to increase engagement -- which is shared by personalized and non-personalized ad revenue alike. I have the same issue with ad-driven news organizations of any type - how can you trust what they're saying, if they're just trying to keep you watching till the upcoming commercial?
  - mns 6y ago
    But this is absurd. We can’t give them a free pass and believe the fact that they can’t moderate content. They want all benefits of being this global giant, but none of the responsibilities. If you can’t moderate and provide a clean environment, maybe we should break them up or restrict their power, because it’s obvious they can’t handle it.
    - glial 6y ago
      How would you suggest they go about moderating content (assuming they should)? They currently have an army of human moderators who are emotionally scarred from seeing terrible images all day long - and of course, those images were public on Facebook until reported by someone.
egypturnash 6y ago
How about hating the player and the game? The game is shit, yeah. But so's this anyone who enthusiastically said "yes, I would like to find ways to monetize people's desire to talk with each other, and do not care in the least if this involves being paid to spread disinformation, or making ad view money off of pushing people towards insane viewpoints". Yes, this includes Google. This includes Twitter. This includes every damn online service that decides its primary customer is advertisers, not users.
- sollewitt 6y ago
  And how much exacy are you willing to pay per Google search?
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    I started to think about this and now I find myself wondering if “internet search” is one of those things that should be a public good, funded by everyone’s taxes. Like libraries - their mission is pretty much the same as Google’s stated mission “make all the world’s information accessible”. Just take it out of the realm of commerce entirely.
    - beagle3 6y ago
      I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it seems right: If public libraries did not exist in this day and age, and someone floated the idea, they would be laughed at and/or fought in the courts of law and public opinion. "It would cause authors to starve! It's socialist/communist! There is no reason I should fund your perverse taste in books!" etc. It is considered axiomatic in Europe, but in the US even things like public schools and public fire brigades are not controversial to some segments of the population. Internet search should be a public good, as should internet service, and email service , much like public schools and the postal service; but it won't happen any time soon just because it makes sense. I think the reason it will happen in some form, sooner or later, is the fact the US is the de-facto hegemon of the internet by being the jurisdiction of Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS and Microsoft. The NSA+FBI+CIA are able, by decree through NSLs, to read and rewrite the personal communication of probably 90% of the world population, as well as shape their search results. FB has already shown they can affect mood of population at large (in an experiment they did without consent and of which they were proud at the time!) - and they will surely cooperate with governments if "asked" (In the "speak softly and carry a large gun" sense of asking, but likely even without it). At some point, likely after being burned by this (but possibly before), governments will likely setup a local hegemony if only to deleverage the US. Russia and China already did.
louwrentius 6y ago
What kind of moral values do you hold (if any) if your whole plan was to just create a page on which you can 'rate women'? How can anyone justify working at facebook, knowing perfectly well what they do. It just shows more that money seems to quiet a lot of consciences. And look at all that amazing tech you could work on! Werner von Braun worked also on awesome rocket tech back in the day...
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  Nearly every immature teenager of both sexes has stack-ranked their sexual interest in peers when gossiping with friends. Yes, a teenager hacking together a website that does such publicly is worse because of how it magnifies the behavior and its consequences at scale. But is that so beyond the pale that the individual is deemed incapable of ever holding favorable moral values?
apta 6y ago
> don't hate the player, hate the game We can hate both. There needs to be both personal accountability as well as proper regulations.

Galactasm 6y ago

By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?

aaroninsf 6y ago
No. Take a moment and survey what whistleblowers and watchdogs have been shouting for years now. It's not the "medium." There is no abstract medium. There is corporate suppression of internal checks; active collusion or participation in unethical and immoral behavior; and grotesque performative punishment for those who push back.
jameskilton 6y ago
No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize and connect with each other.
- kevindqc 6y ago
  In what ways would Facebook be different had they followed that science?
  - spenvo 6y ago
    I'd refer you to this, where they ignored conclusions from internally commissioned research into how their platform was divisive. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499?mod=djemalertNEWS https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di...
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  > There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact ... preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize and connect with each other. Yeah—imagine the concern people would probably more readily voice if the same "move fast and break things" approach were applied to, for example, malignant tumour resection surgery, all while reaping massive financial profits. (Whoops there goes another one...) At the outset of the company you could say that it was just naïveté. That can't really be said anymore.

tasuki 6y ago

Facebook helps me stay in touch with people I might not otherwise stay in touch with. It brings value into my life.

glial 6y ago
Go ahead and spell it out - the destruction of civil society is worth the convenience Facebook offers.
- MikusR 6y ago
  Facebook owns Twitter and Reddit?
  - maest 6y ago
    > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We both know that's not what the GP meant. Snarkily strawmanning someone is low effort and boring.
- tasuki 6y ago
  How is Facebook destroying civil society?
mtalantikite 6y ago
Would you not be able to stay in touch with them without Facebook? I deleted Facebook a number of years ago and still seem to be in touch with family and friends. Personally I think facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp should be broken apart.
- heartbeats 6y ago
  Absolutely. Since the pandemic hit, I've been mostly alone since I don't have Facebook.
- 6y ago

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

TL;DR: Recap of several recent revelations and reports about conspiracy theorists and bad foreign actors using Facebook as a tool to spread their messages. No suggestions for how to address the situation. These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.

throwawayffffas 6y ago
My personal 2c on how to fix this is make everyone liable for what's on their website, regardless of who wrote it. I don't care if that breaks youtubes, facebooks, twitters and reddits business model.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  How would that help if posting conspiracy theories and misinformation (other than libel) isn't illegal?
  - throwawayffffas 6y ago
    I think it would help get rid of the most toxic stuff. Most of the conspiracy theories that are actually harmful for society are definitely crossing libel lines. Compare for example Roswell conspiracies against QAnon. One is the goverement is hiding aliens in area 51, definitely not libel, not conductive to outrage, not dehumanizing political opponents, it does not actively harm national unity. QAnon on the other hand claims Democrat figureheads are eating babies in satanic orgies, definitely libel, greatly harmful to national unity. I furthermore think that just the liability would be great enough to completely change the face of this platforms, they would be on the defensive things that are not libel would definitely be censored.
AnonC 6y ago
> These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues. Considering that it’s NYTimes, I’ve seen people questioning it because of the trackers it uses to track and profile people while criticizing other companies using similar tactics for making money. Of course, Facebook is at a totally different (evil) level, but NYT shouldn’t get a free pass without criticizing its platform.

burlesona 6y ago

Money quote at the end: > Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the waste. It’s an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.

smitty1e 6y ago
Source of 1619 project says what?

ponker 6y ago

I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. When you think about connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of dollars doing it. Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weapons-bad level, he became the comic book villain that we know today.

colpabar 6y ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-im...
AnonC 6y ago
> I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. Nope. [1] He didn’t start out that way. He just kept misleading people quite well every step of the way. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
unishark 6y ago
I thought he started out as a shark that ripped off his classmates business idea.
saeranv 6y ago
I kind of agree with you. I am still impressed with his commitment to donate his wealth to charity. Facebook may not have started with the best of intentions, or with complete integrity - but that doesn't equal the scale of evil (i.e actual genocide) that Facebook is now responsible for. He just made the same mistake a lot of us also would have made: underestimating humanity's capacity for evil. That being said, at some point it seems clear that FB internally recognized that FB was being used to support violent authoritarian politics - and the Zuckerberg/Sandberg/Kaplan crowd should be held responsible for that. It is shocking to me how badly they seemed to have acted (and are continuing to act) in response to bad faith political actors, and how much they have torched their own reputation as a result.

AlexandrB 6y ago

This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict posts we'll see: > Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media. > Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship in a tough time. > Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost. > A call for regulation. > A call for a free-market solution. > A post from someone who works in marketing about how "that's where the audience is so we have to give them money". > Personal story about eerily accurate targeting. > Personal story about how the targeting is totally inaccurate. > Humblebrags about how long ago one hasn't used Facebook - "I haven't used Facebook since 1914, when the Kaiser went to war." > Pointing out that traditional media is just scared because they're being disrupted. > Something about "Facebook" being a black mark on one's resume. I just wish there was something we could do other than repeatedly argue about the nature/scope/cause/solution of the problem, but the US political process is pretty broken.

pbadg3r 6y ago
Check out represent.US . The fundamental issue in much (not all) of American politics is the "company -> lobbying -> legislation -> company" feedback loop, and Represent.US is taking steps to address it. They're running pro-voting campaigns ahead of this election, and have had 114 wins across cities and states over the last few years. You can get involved by volunteering (https://represent.us/volunteer/ https://represent.us/volunteer/) or by donating. I don't work there, just love their work.
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
Facebook is being targeted by cancel culture because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.
- throwawayffffas 6y ago
  I will assume good faith, and point out that cancel culture's main weapon is Facebook. That's where they gather all their outrage and yield it against their perceived enemies.

BrandonM 6y ago

I've recently been thinking about the parallels between social media and the Tower of Babel. Maybe ancient societies were onto something when they warned us of the dangers of everyone communicating with one another. Perhaps there's something more robust about a dispersed humanity where a message can't be distributed to everyone.

saeranv 6y ago
That's an interesting thought. Instant communication seems to pair badly with our inherent bias towards novelty and bigotry. In the past, we had gatekeepers (i.e media) that were educated enough to edit and contextualize communication to control that bias. Increasing the ability for everyone to communicate with one another has really unleased the worst of humanity.
- BrandonM 6y ago
  Since you mentioned media's role, Matt Taibbi recently argued[1] that the media has somewhat recently departed from norms that were followed throughout the 20th century. To ensure the widest audiences possible, the CBSes and later CNNs of the world largely aimed to report stories from a "neutral" perspective (really a centrist perspective). Taibbi argues that in the last couple decades, though, even major media outlets have carved out biased perspectives to inspire more loyalty in smaller sets of people. Point being that I think you're right that the media played an important role in contextualizing mass communication and controlling bias. Not only does social media disintermediate mass communications, the intermediaries themselves are now ignoring roles they historically performed. [1] https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era

jackdh 6y ago

non paywall - https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/facebook-democracy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytim...

haunter 6y ago

>The most disturbing revelations from Zhang’s memo relate to the failure of Facebook to take swift action against coordinated activity in countries like Honduras and Azerbaijan, where political leaders used armies of fake accounts to attack opponents and undermine independent media. Same happened in Hungary and the EU can't give a flying fuck. But honestly I don't blame Facebook, the destruction of independent media is a complex problem not just a political one (adaptation of the market driven by Facebook and Google for example). Especially in East Europe, former soviet block where the kind of venture capitalism of the west/US never really existed. And like a vassal you have to pledge allegiance to the government either formally or informally.