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> "Most people in this movie were early employees, before we knew how bad it could get. Back then, social media was connecting people in new ways. Facebook in t

> "Most people in this movie were early employees, before we knew how bad it could get. Back then, social media was connecting people in new ways. Facebook in the early days was fucking magical." no, before facebook, there was myspace and friendster (and more primitive social networks before that). we all knew exactly how bad it could get. facebook was not fucking magical. it was a psychological exploit for profit's sake. zuck said as much when he let his guard down. he and facebook are not to be venerated nor absolved for this bare-naked blight on humanity.

gkoberger 6y ago
I think we had different experiences. MySpace and Friendster and message boards and IRC were all pretty benign. I don't think MySpace had a single "algorithm". There was no newsfeed; it was just a personal Geocities basically. How were they "bad"? Facebook WAS magical for anyone who was in college around the time it started. All of a sudden, you could connect with thousands of people around you. You could organize events, stay in touch with friends, share pictures and talk about your life. Back then, it was a very different site than it is now. If you told me in 2005, when I signed up for Facebook, that someday the election would be swayed by it? I would have laughed at you. The biggest fear back then was a drunken picture costing someone a job someday. Now governments are being crippled. I'm not venerating anyone. I'm talking about 15 years ago, not now. That was the whole point of the movie. Social media isn't inherently bad; human connection is a good thing. It's bad when it's fueled by a limitless need for growth and profit.
- clairity 6y ago
  of course everything looks rosy with rose-colored glasses on, but facebook not only encouraged those glasses, but made you believe the glasses didn't even exist. same with google. it only took a little perspective shift and foresight to realize the future dangers under a relentless profit motive. the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
  - gkoberger 6y ago
    The first time you loaded up TheFacebook in high school and saw your friend set his status to "Greg is making dinner!", you thought "ah yes, someday this will topple governments due to disinformation campaigns"? Are you sure you aren't conflating "it's obvious" with hindsight bias?
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      We can call it a failure of imagination, but when you have a tool that knows a lot about your political views and your location, we should have predicted that information would be used to hypertarget political propaganda. And all advertising has the goal of swaying some election - which car you buy, where you get your groceries, what clothes you choose. You think you made those choices without external influence when you didn't.
      - gkoberger 6y ago
        That's my point, though – that wasn't true in 2006! Maybe, just maybe, I posted "Gregory is voting for ______" in 2008, but that's not how people used Facebook back then. There was no realtime location collection (no iPhones), no sharing of articles, no commenting on posts, no groups, no minifeed, etc. There wasn't any mechanisms for all the data to be used for targeting. When I started using Facebook, you literally had to go to a person's page to check on them. There was no newsfeed or algorithm or ads. There definitely weren't bots. It was pretty unimaginable that you could figure out who someone was voting for and influence them based on how FB was in 2006. Now, of course, it's different.
        deckard1 6y ago
        > There wasn't any mechanisms for all the data to be used for targeting. Facebook's original pitch deck from 2004 disagrees with you. https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-first-ever-ad-sales-pitch-deck-2015-9#the-level-of-targeting-was-extremely-specific-even-at-this-early-stage-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-first-ever-ad-sale... Look at the slide "Our Online Marketing Services" and the box labeled "Targeted Advertising" > This site allows for targeted advertisement on the basis of any of the parameters listed below. Then, of course, it lists gender, age, dating interests and... Political Views. I vividly remember 2002-2005, and I even had a website once about disinformation. Fake news was a thing during the Bush administration.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Voloskaya 6y ago
> we all knew exactly how bad it could get. You were very smart then, congratulations. Back in 2006 there was no mention anywhere of "fake news", "bias bubbles" and such because there was almost no news sharing in Facebook, and your feed was not curated to only show you what you were most likely to like. There was no political advertising on Facebook for a long time, and even no ads at all until like 2007 or 2008. User tracking was almost non existent as well until 2010 or so. So sure, there was already some concern about privacy back then, it was mostly about people voluntarily over-sharing thins they shouldn't, not about being tracked and manipulated against your wish.
- marcodave 6y ago
  As I like to say, Facebook should have stayed within the area of Universities and schools; A platform born in Harvard, by well-fed white male US Americans, for use and consumption by their peers, was not meant to be used by billions of regular people. At some point in the documentary, I was expecting someone in front of the question: "what is the real problem here?", to answer: "people are horrible"

gkoberger 6y ago

I think we had different experiences. MySpace and Friendster and message boards and IRC were all pretty benign. I don't think MySpace had a single "algorithm". There was no newsfeed; it was just a personal Geocities basically. How were they "bad"? Facebook WAS magical for anyone who was in college around the time it started. All of a sudden, you could connect with thousands of people around you. You could organize events, stay in touch with friends, share pictures and talk about your life. Back then, it was a very different site than it is now. If you told me in 2005, when I signed up for Facebook, that someday the election would be swayed by it? I would have laughed at you. The biggest fear back then was a drunken picture costing someone a job someday. Now governments are being crippled. I'm not venerating anyone. I'm talking about 15 years ago, not now. That was the whole point of the movie. Social media isn't inherently bad; human connection is a good thing. It's bad when it's fueled by a limitless need for growth and profit.

clairity 6y ago
of course everything looks rosy with rose-colored glasses on, but facebook not only encouraged those glasses, but made you believe the glasses didn't even exist. same with google. it only took a little perspective shift and foresight to realize the future dangers under a relentless profit motive. the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
- gkoberger 6y ago
  The first time you loaded up TheFacebook in high school and saw your friend set his status to "Greg is making dinner!", you thought "ah yes, someday this will topple governments due to disinformation campaigns"? Are you sure you aren't conflating "it's obvious" with hindsight bias?
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    We can call it a failure of imagination, but when you have a tool that knows a lot about your political views and your location, we should have predicted that information would be used to hypertarget political propaganda. And all advertising has the goal of swaying some election - which car you buy, where you get your groceries, what clothes you choose. You think you made those choices without external influence when you didn't.
    - gkoberger 6y ago
      That's my point, though – that wasn't true in 2006! Maybe, just maybe, I posted "Gregory is voting for ______" in 2008, but that's not how people used Facebook back then. There was no realtime location collection (no iPhones), no sharing of articles, no commenting on posts, no groups, no minifeed, etc. There wasn't any mechanisms for all the data to be used for targeting. When I started using Facebook, you literally had to go to a person's page to check on them. There was no newsfeed or algorithm or ads. There definitely weren't bots. It was pretty unimaginable that you could figure out who someone was voting for and influence them based on how FB was in 2006. Now, of course, it's different.
      - deckard1 6y ago
        > There wasn't any mechanisms for all the data to be used for targeting. Facebook's original pitch deck from 2004 disagrees with you. https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-first-ever-ad-sales-pitch-deck-2015-9#the-level-of-targeting-was-extremely-specific-even-at-this-early-stage-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-first-ever-ad-sale... Look at the slide "Our Online Marketing Services" and the box labeled "Targeted Advertising" > This site allows for targeted advertisement on the basis of any of the parameters listed below. Then, of course, it lists gender, age, dating interests and... Political Views. I vividly remember 2002-2005, and I even had a website once about disinformation. Fake news was a thing during the Bush administration.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Voloskaya 6y ago

> we all knew exactly how bad it could get. You were very smart then, congratulations. Back in 2006 there was no mention anywhere of "fake news", "bias bubbles" and such because there was almost no news sharing in Facebook, and your feed was not curated to only show you what you were most likely to like. There was no political advertising on Facebook for a long time, and even no ads at all until like 2007 or 2008. User tracking was almost non existent as well until 2010 or so. So sure, there was already some concern about privacy back then, it was mostly about people voluntarily over-sharing thins they shouldn't, not about being tracked and manipulated against your wish.

marcodave 6y ago
As I like to say, Facebook should have stayed within the area of Universities and schools; A platform born in Harvard, by well-fed white male US Americans, for use and consumption by their peers, was not meant to be used by billions of regular people. At some point in the documentary, I was expecting someone in front of the question: "what is the real problem here?", to answer: "people are horrible"