8 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history

31 points by boffinism 6y ago

CryptoPunk 6y ago
The best way to fight disinformation is to challenge it with true information. Censorship erodes trust in the establishment and communication commons. Censorship is the lazy and dangerously elitist alternative to doing the hard work of engaging those spreading falsehoods and debunking their arguments in the public forum. And yes, Gavet here is advocating censorship, no matter much she tries to couch it in excuses and euphemisms.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  best way to fight disinformation is to challenge it with true information. When it comes to pandemic disinformation, there's 200,000 dead Americans who would disagree with that. A better way to fight disinformation would be to challenge it with... an appeal to popularity. But if Copernicus or Richard Feynman were alive and on Youtube today, they'd be unknowns compared to PewDiePie. So neither sunlight, nor an appeal to popularity, are going to help us here. I may not love censorship, but it beats having some deluded moron shoot at my car in a civil war, or infect me with Covid-19 thanks to a lecture by some Youtube science-ist. If the choice is stricter Facebook moderation or to live in a new Dark Age... well, you catch my drift.
  - LifeIsThermal 6y ago
    Yes, lets use censorship to improve our democracies. Good idea! Let´s also put all those who disagree in prison.
    - yeneek 6y ago
      And let me decide, what is truth and what is not.
      - uniqueid 6y ago
        As long as you don't spend your weekends monitoring 8kun for Qanon "drops", fine by me :)
        yeneek 6y ago
        I don't have to, Qanon is my messenger. :)
    - uniqueid 6y ago
      Yes, lets use censorship to improve our democracies. What democracies? Out of the three Western countries in which I have roots, only one is still a healthy democracy. Good idea! Let´s also put all those who disagree in prison. No, we should only send to prison the handful of criminally negligent executives at companies like Facebook.
  - yeneek 6y ago
    Facebook isn't exclusively just in America. Everyone in america has access to WHO webpage. How is it, that Americans need someone else to think for them?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tolleydbg 6y ago
    200,000 Americans aren't dead because of something they read on Facebook.
    - uniqueid 6y ago
      Yes, but some of them are dead because of people who learned on Facebook of Bill Gates and the Inter-dimensional Lizard People, and Hillary Clinton's penchant for drinking the blood of infants. Granted those people didn't know any better, and are only indirectly responsible. Also granted, I'm not a medical expert, so I won't pretend to know how many would have died regardless.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    2.8 million Americans die every year, so other risks, that are causing the rest of the deaths, have to be weighed as well. Far more than 200,000 people can die in one year if we set up an apparatus of censorship, as these tools could always be commandeered by corrupt individuals and used to horrific effect. Look at autocratic societies around the world, and see what giving any group, no matter how seemingly altruistic and enlightened, the power to censor, can lead to. Once the social taboo against violating the right to free speech is broken, dystopia becomes a possibility, as it becomes possible for voices to be silenced and concentrations of power to magnify their control through constricting the flow of critical information.
    - uniqueid 6y ago
      Once the social taboo against violating the right to free speech is broken, dystopia becomes a possibility I keep this bookmarked to save time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
      - CryptoPunk 6y ago
        The types of limits on free speech being proposed here go far beyond the traditional limits imposed in the Anglo sphere on speech. The types of censorship proposed in the article deal with expressing beliefs pertaining to highly complex and contentious social issues about which powerful special interests seek to shape the public's perceptions about. Once this class of speech becomes acceptable to subject to censorship, politics becomes a much more dangerous, winner-takes-all game.
- iwwr 6y ago
  This may work if Facebook were just a dumb hoster of content. The algorithm promotes content and sends notification in an attempt to generate ad revenue, eyballs and 'engagement'. This is less about censorship. Facebook is not neutral. Since they make this choice of spreading content they should be responsible for its effects. In economics, we call these externalities. Facebook is not paying the spread of misinformation, manipulation or genocide it helps enable (see Myanmar). Asking them to safeguard the platform is just asking them to take responsibility for what their algorithm recommends.
- andrewjl 6y ago
  > The best way to fight disinformation is to challenge it with true information. History shows there exists a subset of issues that drive deep emotion or passion, whether for historical reasons or otherwise, for which this approach won't work. It assumes rational debate is possible in an environment antithetical to it. The hard part is defining that subset, in real-time, on a globalized planet. Hard to say that anyone is capable of this kind of definition. Edit: I too don't think censorship works in the long-term. That doesn't mean we should throw our hands up at this problem and give up. It'll be with us whether we like it or not, so we as a society better solve it.
- beagle3 6y ago
  [citation needed] about this being the best way. To me, based on my n=1 experience, it is wishful thinking. It is my experience that most people will adopt any information that matches their preconceived notions, regardless of whether it is false or true - so giving true "objective" information when disinformation is more often than not specifically crafted to appeal to a demographic - is a losing game.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    In my experience, the truth eventually becomes evident with enough discussion. Public discourse is not a random walk. It is an evolving phenomenon that gets refined as the participants become more informed about the sources, arguments and facts relating to a subject. It's a messy and seemingly chaotic process, but over time, it works. The force of reason eventually sees through the lies, as long as there are those who persist in showing evidence of the falsehood of the lies. Lies only work when discussions are superficial, and evidence for the various positions doesn't need to be compared. Substantive discussion exposes lies. Even when it comes to those who, when shown convincing evidence that their beliefs are based on lies, stay wedded to those beliefs out of emotional/tribalistic attachment, it is valuable to go through the process of discrediting their beliefs, because it demoralizes them, and makes them less effective evangelists for their deluded view of the world. The process of dialogue and debate is also valuable in its own right. It is beneficial to the population at large for people to make public their reasoning, sources and evidence in the attempt to demonstrate their claims are true. Again, the benefits of debate are hard to observe on the shorter time scale. It can seem futile at times, especially when you want to immediately enlighten hopelessly deluded individuals, but the forces that guide the evolution of society work on longer time scales, and a determined effort to expose falsehoods and propagate truth through dialogue has benefits on that longer time scale through its long-term ripple effects.
    - beagle3 6y ago
      This rings true about history and philosophy in my experience - but with politics, every week the subject and narrative are different, and by the time you’ve resolved this week’s fake news in 6 months time, there have been 20 more lies and no one cares about that one thing from 6 months ago.
lazzlazzlazz 6y ago
The people are crying out for the largest, most powerful corporations on Earth to become the "arbiters of truth" at the same time that they lament the evils of their being purely profit-driven. If Zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history, its arc bends away from justice.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  If Zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history, its arc bends away from justice. And if millions die in the meantime, no big deal? people are crying out for the [etc] to become the "arbiters of truth" If I thought it had a chance of happening, I'd prefer we imprison Mark and Sheryl, shut down Facebook, and donate its money to the homeless.
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    Imprison them for what? This is madness.
    - uniqueid 6y ago
      I don't know. Whatever they did that warranted that $5 billion fine? We could fine them again, I guess, but last time it just pumped up their stock price.
- notru3 6y ago
  Position not supported by science Your head is maybe crying out “people want these powerful corporations.” Because you’ve been trained to believe the shape of society has been achieved through organic debate over that shape. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of evidence to show it’s nothing but corruption and manufactured consent. When kids are told “this is the way it works”, did they ask for that adult existence? As someone with a bachelors in math, having built go karts from welding the frame together up, worked on a farm delivering livestock, build homes foundation up, and spent the last 23 years writing code... I’d strongly challenge the concept that the people even need these companies. I think the people are being sold a line. An implicit “see, this is what you want!” when the metrics to be pointed at to make that true is due to those metrics being the only option for measuring offered by economists. I suppose you also believe every Nazi “wanted” the war, too. Nation state citizen != state mouthpiece. What choice do they have though but to be counted as such when some knob on TV tells them their normal survival behavior of acquiring materials to mean “we want Google to sort our stuff” so keep letting Google do that!
schwartzworld 6y ago
Nationalize Facebook, Google and Amazon. All are too big to ban outright, but too evil to be allowed to continue existing.
- jakearmitage 6y ago
  Yes! Let's also nationalize Big Oil and Big Pharma. Problems will go away once evil profiteering is removed from our society, comrades.
mythrwy 6y ago
History is written by the victors. Much as I dislike Facebook (and I've never used it) I wouldn't count on these dopey claims of Facebook supporting racism and bigotry because they refuse to remove a politician the author doesn't care for (or whatever it is they are doing) making it to "how it really happened" in History 101.
pie_flavor 6y ago
It is infinitely amusing seeing people talk about the right and wrong sides of history as though they had a crystal ball. The phrase is best translated as "I'm right and you're wrong, moron", with no further clarification at all, but fifty times as smug.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tharne 6y ago
I really don't respect Mark Zuckerberg as a man, but it's hard to claim he's on the wrong side of history when he's the one writing a lot of it. To be on the wrong side of history you have to lose, it's not enough just to be morally wrong.
- babycake 6y ago
  Who knows, Christopher Columbus used to be hailed as a hero. Now he's the villain!
  - throwawayay02 6y ago
    And who knows, one day he'll be hailed as a hero again. Nothing's to say today's dominant opinion will reign forever.
    - tharne 6y ago
      Good point. Nietzche pointed this out in Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil. A lot of what we often think of as good and evil is just the preferences of whatever group happens to be culturally dominant at the moment, and Zuckerberg and co. is nothing if not culturally dominant right now.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
return1 6y ago
> I’ve admired Facebook’s stunning growth Facebook s growth ended almost a decade ago, and its increasingly irrelevant
athriren 6y ago
the phrase “wrong side of history” imagines some future perspective where a thing called “history” will say “thus and such person/act/idea was wrong in a moral sense”. it is comforting to imagine the future judgement of those presently engaged in behavior we think is wrong, especially when we perceive that behavior to negatively impact us (as opposed to just being something we find distasteful that feels like it has low personal impact). so people say something like “mark zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history” and mean “even if mark zuckerberg can get away with his behavior for a long time, at some point in geologic time the people alive will know zuckerberg’s name and hold him in contempt”. this is a false, presumptuous comfort so i find the charge impotent. history is being actively constructed in front of you. even “settled” topics we feel we can accurately assess who was on the right and wrong sides of whatever are being constantly societally negotiated. just as we can imagine an egalitarian future free of resource constraints where people who hoarded wealth are judged harshly, so too can we imagine a future where tech titans are revered as demigods. you can apply this same logic to the posture the future will adopt toward aspects of the present and the past. will the 1960s US civil rights movement be viewed positively and those who opposed it be viewed negatively for all time? i hope so, and i hope the reader does too, but there are no guarantees. zuckerberg isn’t taking solace that in some imagined future his detractors will be regarded as nothing more than jealous petty luddites, he is burying your future now. his goal is to entirely foreclose the opportunity for the future to view him badly. he doesn’t need to be your friend, he only needs to ingratiate himself to the arbiters of the historical record—or better yet, make facebook’s product line become the historical record.

31 points by boffinism 6y ago

The best way to fight disinformation is to challenge it with true information. Censorship erodes trust in the establishment and communication commons. Censorship is the lazy and dangerously elitist alternative to doing the hard work of engaging those spreading falsehoods and debunking their arguments in the public forum. And yes, Gavet here is advocating censorship, no matter much she tries to couch it in excuses and euphemisms.

uniqueid 6y ago
best way to fight disinformation is to challenge it with true information. When it comes to pandemic disinformation, there's 200,000 dead Americans who would disagree with that. A better way to fight disinformation would be to challenge it with... an appeal to popularity. But if Copernicus or Richard Feynman were alive and on Youtube today, they'd be unknowns compared to PewDiePie. So neither sunlight, nor an appeal to popularity, are going to help us here. I may not love censorship, but it beats having some deluded moron shoot at my car in a civil war, or infect me with Covid-19 thanks to a lecture by some Youtube science-ist. If the choice is stricter Facebook moderation or to live in a new Dark Age... well, you catch my drift.
- LifeIsThermal 6y ago
  Yes, lets use censorship to improve our democracies. Good idea! Let´s also put all those who disagree in prison.
  - yeneek 6y ago
    And let me decide, what is truth and what is not.
    - uniqueid 6y ago
      As long as you don't spend your weekends monitoring 8kun for Qanon "drops", fine by me :)
      - yeneek 6y ago
        I don't have to, Qanon is my messenger. :)
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    Yes, lets use censorship to improve our democracies. What democracies? Out of the three Western countries in which I have roots, only one is still a healthy democracy. Good idea! Let´s also put all those who disagree in prison. No, we should only send to prison the handful of criminally negligent executives at companies like Facebook.
- yeneek 6y ago
  Facebook isn't exclusively just in America. Everyone in america has access to WHO webpage. How is it, that Americans need someone else to think for them?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tolleydbg 6y ago
  200,000 Americans aren't dead because of something they read on Facebook.
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    Yes, but some of them are dead because of people who learned on Facebook of Bill Gates and the Inter-dimensional Lizard People, and Hillary Clinton's penchant for drinking the blood of infants. Granted those people didn't know any better, and are only indirectly responsible. Also granted, I'm not a medical expert, so I won't pretend to know how many would have died regardless.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  2.8 million Americans die every year, so other risks, that are causing the rest of the deaths, have to be weighed as well. Far more than 200,000 people can die in one year if we set up an apparatus of censorship, as these tools could always be commandeered by corrupt individuals and used to horrific effect. Look at autocratic societies around the world, and see what giving any group, no matter how seemingly altruistic and enlightened, the power to censor, can lead to. Once the social taboo against violating the right to free speech is broken, dystopia becomes a possibility, as it becomes possible for voices to be silenced and concentrations of power to magnify their control through constricting the flow of critical information.
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    Once the social taboo against violating the right to free speech is broken, dystopia becomes a possibility I keep this bookmarked to save time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      The types of limits on free speech being proposed here go far beyond the traditional limits imposed in the Anglo sphere on speech. The types of censorship proposed in the article deal with expressing beliefs pertaining to highly complex and contentious social issues about which powerful special interests seek to shape the public's perceptions about. Once this class of speech becomes acceptable to subject to censorship, politics becomes a much more dangerous, winner-takes-all game.
iwwr 6y ago
This may work if Facebook were just a dumb hoster of content. The algorithm promotes content and sends notification in an attempt to generate ad revenue, eyballs and 'engagement'. This is less about censorship. Facebook is not neutral. Since they make this choice of spreading content they should be responsible for its effects. In economics, we call these externalities. Facebook is not paying the spread of misinformation, manipulation or genocide it helps enable (see Myanmar). Asking them to safeguard the platform is just asking them to take responsibility for what their algorithm recommends.
andrewjl 6y ago
> The best way to fight disinformation is to challenge it with true information. History shows there exists a subset of issues that drive deep emotion or passion, whether for historical reasons or otherwise, for which this approach won't work. It assumes rational debate is possible in an environment antithetical to it. The hard part is defining that subset, in real-time, on a globalized planet. Hard to say that anyone is capable of this kind of definition. Edit: I too don't think censorship works in the long-term. That doesn't mean we should throw our hands up at this problem and give up. It'll be with us whether we like it or not, so we as a society better solve it.
beagle3 6y ago
[citation needed] about this being the best way. To me, based on my n=1 experience, it is wishful thinking. It is my experience that most people will adopt any information that matches their preconceived notions, regardless of whether it is false or true - so giving true "objective" information when disinformation is more often than not specifically crafted to appeal to a demographic - is a losing game.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  In my experience, the truth eventually becomes evident with enough discussion. Public discourse is not a random walk. It is an evolving phenomenon that gets refined as the participants become more informed about the sources, arguments and facts relating to a subject. It's a messy and seemingly chaotic process, but over time, it works. The force of reason eventually sees through the lies, as long as there are those who persist in showing evidence of the falsehood of the lies. Lies only work when discussions are superficial, and evidence for the various positions doesn't need to be compared. Substantive discussion exposes lies. Even when it comes to those who, when shown convincing evidence that their beliefs are based on lies, stay wedded to those beliefs out of emotional/tribalistic attachment, it is valuable to go through the process of discrediting their beliefs, because it demoralizes them, and makes them less effective evangelists for their deluded view of the world. The process of dialogue and debate is also valuable in its own right. It is beneficial to the population at large for people to make public their reasoning, sources and evidence in the attempt to demonstrate their claims are true. Again, the benefits of debate are hard to observe on the shorter time scale. It can seem futile at times, especially when you want to immediately enlighten hopelessly deluded individuals, but the forces that guide the evolution of society work on longer time scales, and a determined effort to expose falsehoods and propagate truth through dialogue has benefits on that longer time scale through its long-term ripple effects.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    This rings true about history and philosophy in my experience - but with politics, every week the subject and narrative are different, and by the time you’ve resolved this week’s fake news in 6 months time, there have been 20 more lies and no one cares about that one thing from 6 months ago.

lazzlazzlazz 6y ago

The people are crying out for the largest, most powerful corporations on Earth to become the "arbiters of truth" at the same time that they lament the evils of their being purely profit-driven. If Zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history, its arc bends away from justice.

uniqueid 6y ago
If Zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history, its arc bends away from justice. And if millions die in the meantime, no big deal? people are crying out for the [etc] to become the "arbiters of truth" If I thought it had a chance of happening, I'd prefer we imprison Mark and Sheryl, shut down Facebook, and donate its money to the homeless.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Imprison them for what? This is madness.
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    I don't know. Whatever they did that warranted that $5 billion fine? We could fine them again, I guess, but last time it just pumped up their stock price.
notru3 6y ago
Position not supported by science Your head is maybe crying out “people want these powerful corporations.” Because you’ve been trained to believe the shape of society has been achieved through organic debate over that shape. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of evidence to show it’s nothing but corruption and manufactured consent. When kids are told “this is the way it works”, did they ask for that adult existence? As someone with a bachelors in math, having built go karts from welding the frame together up, worked on a farm delivering livestock, build homes foundation up, and spent the last 23 years writing code... I’d strongly challenge the concept that the people even need these companies. I think the people are being sold a line. An implicit “see, this is what you want!” when the metrics to be pointed at to make that true is due to those metrics being the only option for measuring offered by economists. I suppose you also believe every Nazi “wanted” the war, too. Nation state citizen != state mouthpiece. What choice do they have though but to be counted as such when some knob on TV tells them their normal survival behavior of acquiring materials to mean “we want Google to sort our stuff” so keep letting Google do that!

schwartzworld 6y ago

Nationalize Facebook, Google and Amazon. All are too big to ban outright, but too evil to be allowed to continue existing.

jakearmitage 6y ago
Yes! Let's also nationalize Big Oil and Big Pharma. Problems will go away once evil profiteering is removed from our society, comrades.

mythrwy 6y ago

History is written by the victors. Much as I dislike Facebook (and I've never used it) I wouldn't count on these dopey claims of Facebook supporting racism and bigotry because they refuse to remove a politician the author doesn't care for (or whatever it is they are doing) making it to "how it really happened" in History 101.

pie_flavor 6y ago

It is infinitely amusing seeing people talk about the right and wrong sides of history as though they had a crystal ball. The phrase is best translated as "I'm right and you're wrong, moron", with no further clarification at all, but fifty times as smug.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tharne 6y ago

I really don't respect Mark Zuckerberg as a man, but it's hard to claim he's on the wrong side of history when he's the one writing a lot of it. To be on the wrong side of history you have to lose, it's not enough just to be morally wrong.

babycake 6y ago
Who knows, Christopher Columbus used to be hailed as a hero. Now he's the villain!
- throwawayay02 6y ago
  And who knows, one day he'll be hailed as a hero again. Nothing's to say today's dominant opinion will reign forever.
  - tharne 6y ago
    Good point. Nietzche pointed this out in Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil. A lot of what we often think of as good and evil is just the preferences of whatever group happens to be culturally dominant at the moment, and Zuckerberg and co. is nothing if not culturally dominant right now.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

return1 6y ago

> I’ve admired Facebook’s stunning growth Facebook s growth ended almost a decade ago, and its increasingly irrelevant

athriren 6y ago

the phrase “wrong side of history” imagines some future perspective where a thing called “history” will say “thus and such person/act/idea was wrong in a moral sense”. it is comforting to imagine the future judgement of those presently engaged in behavior we think is wrong, especially when we perceive that behavior to negatively impact us (as opposed to just being something we find distasteful that feels like it has low personal impact). so people say something like “mark zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history” and mean “even if mark zuckerberg can get away with his behavior for a long time, at some point in geologic time the people alive will know zuckerberg’s name and hold him in contempt”. this is a false, presumptuous comfort so i find the charge impotent. history is being actively constructed in front of you. even “settled” topics we feel we can accurately assess who was on the right and wrong sides of whatever are being constantly societally negotiated. just as we can imagine an egalitarian future free of resource constraints where people who hoarded wealth are judged harshly, so too can we imagine a future where tech titans are revered as demigods. you can apply this same logic to the posture the future will adopt toward aspects of the present and the past. will the 1960s US civil rights movement be viewed positively and those who opposed it be viewed negatively for all time? i hope so, and i hope the reader does too, but there are no guarantees. zuckerberg isn’t taking solace that in some imagined future his detractors will be regarded as nothing more than jealous petty luddites, he is burying your future now. his goal is to entirely foreclose the opportunity for the future to view him badly. he doesn’t need to be your friend, he only needs to ingratiate himself to the arbiters of the historical record—or better yet, make facebook’s product line become the historical record.