7 ms·

Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself

35 points by the_decider 6y ago

corytheboyd 6y ago
Money. It’s money.
benjaminjosephw 6y ago
> “If you’re Mark Zuckerberg, then I’m sure applying one minimal set of standards everywhere in the world seems like a form of universalism,” Kate said. “To me, it seems like a kind of libertarian imperialism, especially if there’s no way for the standards to be strengthened, no matter how many people complain.” It is a kind of imperialism to be willing to export your own structure of governance and rules about what is and isn't acceptable to other parts of the world where central HQ always has the final say. I know it's a loaded term but I think the definition does apply.
jesperlang 6y ago
> In retrospect, it seems that the company’s strategy has never been to manage the problem of dangerous content, but rather to manage the public’s perception of the problem. I think this is key. And not just managing the public's perception but also the employees' perception through these convoluted stories like "connecting people"
ng12 6y ago
Is it a Facebook problem or is it a people problem? To me Facebook doesn't really seem that much different than it was when you needed a .edu email address to sign up. Social media hasn't changed, it's just used by a wider group which includes some minority who chose to interact with content some people don't like.
- ssss11 6y ago
  Facebook hasnt changed since the start? I completely disagree. What fb was at the start was actually useful - simply a way to write a status update to your friends and see what they have been up to in chronological order. None of the tracking or manipulative bull. What it has become (and rapidly since going public) is an attention-seeking addiction portal trying to gain every dollar it can from clicks. Full of ads, showing you only the friend status updates it wants to show you from its blackbox algorithm, inferring what your interests are based on whatever you click on, adding on tons and tons of functionality to keep you in the bubble (events, marketplace and so on) It is very different to what it began as.
- Karellen 6y ago
  I think it's a Facebook problem. Facebook, and other social media, incentivise "engagement". Content that makes people angry and get into bile-filled back-and-forth screaming matches with each other is fucking amazing for engagement, so Facebook et al push it to the top of peoples' feeds in order to get them to keep clicking, and to keep serving them ads. Maybe Facebook hasn't really changed since it began, and "maximising engagement" has always been their main priority. But it's probably a pretty safe bet that they've put a lot of effort into that, and got much, much better at it in the last 15 years. From the article: > In July, Nick Clegg, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. who is now a top flack at Facebook, published a piece on AdAge.com and on the company’s official blog titled “Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate,” in which he wrote, “There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it.” I would disagree. I submit that hate drives engagement, engagement drives eyeballs on adverts, and eyeballs on adverts drives $$$$, which absolutely benefits Facebook, and gives them an incentive to keep hate on the platform.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    Where is this bad, addictive content coming from? Isn't that all content from a list of people or businesses that you green-list yourself?
    - josephg 6y ago
      Sure; but if facebook shows me 1% of all the content from people I follow, it exerts a huge amount of editorial power. And it doesn't use that editorial power to serve users. It uses that power to keep people addicted to the site so they can sell more advertisements. The fact that my friendships are weaponized doesn't make facebook any less culpable. I'm a pretty nice guy. But if you made a supercut of 1% of what I say in a day, you could tell any story you like. It would be my words, but its your narrative.
      - threatofrain 6y ago
        What is the extent of FB's ability to craft narrative? What is the most egregious example of FB editorializing? It should be easy for people to find examples online with over 2B users.
- izacus 6y ago
  It's a people problem that is being majorly amplified by Facebook. Propaganda always existed and political parties always paid for billboards, ads and submarine articles to mislead people. This dates back centuries (remember how "snake oil salesman" term came to be?). Facebook however makes the reach of these propaganda articles larger by order of the magnitude, it makes it utterly cheap to reach a vast amount of audience with any kind of message. It exposes the rotten core of society, where demagogues and liars can be hugely successful and where truth isn't really all that important. And then amplifies this until things start breaking. So anyone who puts blame solely on Facebook is wrong. But Facebook also isn't the naive neutral entity here just like a person using a fan to spread fires isn't.
PureParadigm 6y ago
It is clear that Facebook is either unwilling or unable to effectively address the spread of misinformation. In light of this, I'm increasingly of the opinion that if misinformation and conspiracy theories are like viruses, then we should be practicing "political distancing," if you will. This doesn't mean being politically ignorant, but rather engaging in the minimum amount of political content you need to and no more. This would slow the spread of misinformation, since it simply doesn't have as many people to "infect" as quickly. While this may appear to go against the democratic spirit of maximum political engagement, democracy has worked before Facebook (and would probably be a lot better with less use of it). I think people's "default" political beliefs are generally less insane than many of the conspiracy theories (and if your beliefs already are that crazy then going on Facebook will only make them worse), so reducing engagement with political content should be something positive. This isn't something the journalists will recommend since their careers depend on clicks, but I think it's in everyone's best interest for people to back off the scrolling through the feed all day and take a break.
- PakG1 6y ago
  I think this makes sense. But I also think it's not easy because I posit that the people most susceptible to being swayed by extremism or conspiracy theories on Facebook are also the same people who would scoff at the concept of political distancing. In fact, they may decry it as attempts to suppress free speech. In that event, it's like COVID-19 deniers. They are the ones who would most flaunt the guidelines to avoid COVID-19, so they are the ones who would be most susceptible to get infected and spread infection among other COVID-19 deniers. This idea of political distancing may stop the spread of misinformation among the general population if the general population agreed to it, but it's the peopled swayed by extremism and conspiracy theories that would cause the most issues and/or societal damage anyway. How do you slow down the spread of misinformation amongst people who seek it out is the more difficult question.
  - claytongulick 6y ago
    Really? We're calling people Covid-19 deniers now? This doesn't seem to be in keeping with the spirit of discussion or rules on HN.
zpeti 6y ago
"Disinformation" existed way before social media. Except it spread through your physical social circle. Which arguable might make it even more potent, because hearing something from a friend face-to-face might make you much more likely to believe it. The speed of spread might have been slower, that is an argument to make. But to suggest disinformation is a recent issue is ridiculous. And what exactly is disinformation? To me it looks like every "twisted truth" of people on the opposite end of your political views is disinformation, whereas when you're own side does it it's creative truth telling. I find it absolutely ridiculous when some politician claims the other side is lying, it is the most ridiculous hypocrisy from professional liars on both sides. There is not a politician out there who has not selectively used statistics, or outright lied. Where do you draw the line? So from a practical perspective, what exactly are social networks to do? How do you define truth? How do you define where each side slips into disinformation vs marketing? For that matter, at what point does advertising become disinformation? I really think this is an impossible problem to solve, because humans do everything on a sliding scale, nothing is black and white in terms of communication.
- kace91 6y ago
  Disinformation always existed, but: - it could never be targeted with the precision it is nowadays - its effects could not be measured with the precision they can nowadays - you couldn't plant information in a way that it seemed to come from a persons' trust circle in the way that you can now - you couldn't remove differing opinions from the view of the person in the way that you can now - you didn't have a place people are mentally addicted to to inject the content in. - you didn't have a whole generation of people that didn't understand the basics of where the media they consume is coming from - This last point is hard to understand by a tech savvy person, but there are many, many people for which "I read it on the internet" holds the same amount of truth whether it was the washington post website or a pink-over-black hobby run website made by a random wacko.
  - rtx 6y ago
    Random wackos views are driven by self preservation same as Washington Post's. Atleast the wacko is not doing it for ad revenue.
sneak 6y ago
Disinformation isn’t the problem with Facebook. Censorship and surveillance are. It extends even to “private”, 1-on-1 messages. You simply aren’t allowed to communicate freely or privately using it.
- evgen 6y ago
  Censorship is not a problem on Facebook, it is disinformation. There are no problems limiting information on Facebook, the problem is the opposite in that you are constantly bombarded by an endless stream of highly-targeted bullshit that is designed to engage your lizard hindbrain and bypass reasoning as much as possible.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    > constantly bombarded by an endless stream of highly-targeted bullshit Isn't this content from friends, family, and any other groups you greenlist? How addictive can they be if you've greenlisted them?
    - evgen 6y ago
      No, it is content from clickbait farms forwarded by friends of friends and casual acquaintances of that crazy uncle who you always try to avoid at family gatherings. The ratio of content and updates from this core circle of people you might actually care about vs content created with the intention of being forwarded and going viral has been in a constant decline for more than a decade.
creato 6y ago
I can't stand all the talk about this as a problem of moderation and suppressing "dangerous" content. That's a distraction and leads nowhere good. I think the problem is that FB forces everyone into gigantic mosh pits of conversations that span whole regions of millions of people, and elevates uneducated but "engaging" hot takes for thousands or millions of people to see at a time. And most importantly, FB builds positive feedback loops into this environment. That's why I stopped using FB quite a while ago: not because I thought some moderator somewhere wasn't doing a good job, but because friends of friends (I can only assume) spewing bullshit comments on sketchy "news" articles in comment sections with thousands of people would show up too often.
- sneak 6y ago
  Algorithmic “timelines” that result in these feedback loops are themselves a form of censorship: you can’t promote some content without pushing other content down the page. Nobody reads, or can read, all of it. Promote enough high-cortisol clickbait to the top and the routine, mundane things, like the announcement of your friend’s funeral[1], won’t appear in your feed at a reasonable depth at all. 1: I’m not on Facebook any longer.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    Ye the new algorithmic feed from ca 2014 killed Facebook usability. Since then it feels like Memebase, Reddit or something. Zuckerberg decides what you will see not your friends.
  - xenadu02 6y ago
    Indeed... prior to the algorithmic timeline and the push for "engagement" what you saw on your timeline was posts from your friends and family. If some cousin posted a nonsense conspiracy theory you could comment on the post and there was at least the possibility of some kind of debate among your own social circle. The drive for engagement killed all of that.
alkonaut 6y ago
> the best way to stay out of trouble with their bosses was to leave borderline stuff up So take a step back and ask why is there a boss on any level that would object to "borderline stuff" being cut? Is there a manager that fears that they are seen as unreasonably strict in their moderation? Is there some mesured outcome that would go down?` They have a lot of very clever people, so I assume they have figured all of it out. Despite a lot of people leaving facebook due to the nature of what's there, they must believe that the "bordeline stuff" is either critical for their business, or impossible to get rid of. Also, why arnen't there hundreds of ex-facebook managers that can explain how this works? NDA's don't block anonymously describing business practices after you leave.
- ralfd 6y ago
  Leaving "borderline stuff" up is just a negative description of not abridging freedom of speech. Every social network before Facebook failed sooner or later to a successor social network. Of course FB tries to prevent that fate. One fail state would be if FB is censored in a way that people can't express their opinions anymore, than in a democracy people will leave for communication channels which allow them to do that. eg private Whatsapp or Telegram groups.
  - kthejoker2 6y ago
    Amazingly this is not true? For example, Reddit has a much more aggressive take on censoring content, and is still thriving and a huge part of the Internet. When's the last time Pinterest was in the news for espousing hateful views? Even YouTube/Google is getting their shit together (a quick Google search for YouTube flat earth reveals a top set of results of scientists debunking these theories, discussing why they're hafmful, discussion boards complaining YouTube is censoring flat earthers, this Wired article explaining why I'm seeing the results I'm seeing ...) https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-algorithm-silence-conspiracy-theories/ https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-algorithm-silence-conspi... And yet these networks still have a healthy presence of left and right political views, thoughtful critiques, points and counterpoints, political humor .. What is so special about them? And the only obvious answer is Facebook wants power, in both revenue and the power to dictate what "information" and narrative you're fed. Which, for a social media network ostensibly designed around your family and friends, is terrifyingly off-brand.
switch11 6y ago
This statement makes a lot of assumptions -> It is clear that Facebook is either unwilling or unable to effectively address the spread of misinformation. Let's consider What happens if Facebook stops 'misinformation'? People go to places that have 'misinformation' because people are seeking what validates their already existing view of the world + people want to be excited and thrilled and entertained Misinformation = way more exciting than the boring truth It's not that Facebook is unwilling or unable to address the spread of misinformation It's entire existence is predicated on playing to the lower instincts of humans Facebook is set up to ENTERTAIN people and create a Beautiful Skinner Box for people where they keep chasing (likes) cheese and keep avoiding electric shocks (getting ignored, no juicy gossip, no polarizing and exciting news) It's a Skinner Box You do good things for the Box and it gives you a rush of dopamine Create good content -> get Likes -> dopamine -> Skinner Box working as intended Then against that good content, Facebook shows its ads That's how it makes money * It needs GOOD content i.e. content that spreads content that gets people to keep coming back again and again and again content that gets people excited Twain said -> A Lie has traveled around the world twice by the time the truth has put its pants on * Facebook would never work if it became very efficient at weeding out lies, gossip, politically extreme content, misinformation * Why does everybody start off with assumptions A) Do we really think people want the boring truth? B) Do we really think people who believe something want that belief to be destroyed and replaced with something else? C) Does Facebook have any desire to 'fix' things? They have internal testing. Pretty much 100% sure it would show what happens if they 'fixed misinformation' D) Do people want Facebook to 'fix' things I don't see anyone complaining when Obama campaign was using Facebook to win elections Now Trump is using Facebook to win elections so suddenly Facebook is the target of everyone in tech Why a double standard? If a platform can be used to manipulate and sway people, is that dangerous only if it is used to sway people in a direction you don't like? shouldn't it be considered wrong to manipulate and sway people in ANY direction? * Facebook is basically a 'Appeal to People's Base Instincts' Engine A skinner box Everyone believes the nonsense that it is a 'social utility' or a 'social network' It's not It's a skinner box. Just observe how the normal people use it Not tech people Find some teenagers and see how they use it. Some people in their 20s. Some in their 30s apart from the really old people (60+) who use it as a sort of communication site, everyone else is using it for really 'bottom of the barrel' stuff - stalking their exes - checking on gossip - chasing likes (external validation) - showing off - pretending their life is better than it is
SrslyJosh 6y ago
The answer rhymes with "Fuckerberg."
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Getting trite at this point, but it fits here quite well: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
- izacus 6y ago
  Seriously though - while it is a trite, it doesn't seem like Facebook is actually hurting because of that. Besides the loud Twitter and HN screaming, what else really happened? Who here really believes that a Republican government will regulate FB which is very effective medium to spread their message?
tsjq 6y ago
If there's a social media website with none of the problem factors of FB : ads, tracking, manipulation, selling of personal data, etc. How much would we pay that site, on a monthly or per-use basis ?
- josephg 6y ago
  Probably very little. Users are conditioned to assume internet infrastructure (chat rooms, reddit, twitter, gmail, etc) will be free. That said, Mastodon is doing reasonably well, depending on how you measure success.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  I'm a minority but I'd be happy to pay ~30 bucks a month for a tool like Facebook as long as it doesn't behave in a user-hostile manner (so basically the Facebook from 10 years ago).
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  Let's be honest, very few people would want to pay upfront for that. Maybe it could work with very specialized social media with 50,000 users max, but not at the scale of Facebook. The question is, why is everyone flocking to these giga social media when smaller forums like HN did the job for decades before that? I like HN, it's not perfect, but I had several opportunities to engage with "famous" developers in meaningful ways that would not have been possible on Twitter or Facebook and this is invaluable to me. Same with another design/photography related forum in my native language. This is a model that might work commercially or at least with crowdfunding. A paid Twitter of Facebook? No.
- new_guy 6y ago
  > How much would we pay that site, on a monthly or per-use basis ? I run a network of sites, based on 'no censorship', no ads, no tracking etc etc Typically while everyone loves the sites and the value they provide, only about 0.05% of people are actually willing to pay anything for it. We do ok, but unless you aggressively monetise/milk/sell out your users you can never get to FB scale.
headmelted 6y ago
I don’t see that “fixing” Facebook solves anything to be honest. I kind of feel like trying to “fix” Facebook is akin to taking a time machine back to 1930’s Berlin and smashing up Hitler’s podium. Yeah it’ll be harder to spread hatred for about five minutes but there’s still a bunch of nazis everywhere. The education system is imho the root cause of all of these problems. We don’t teach children critical thinking. We teach them about science but not why science. We also dump our kids at school for childcare rather than education, which doesn’t inspire an interest in learning just for learning’s sake at all. Relying on overworked and underpaid teaching staff to care more about educating our kids than we do clearly hasn’t worked either. My point is that a well educated person will be able to easily identify most bullst when they read it, will know how to check the credibility of their sources, and will know why some opinions really are more valid than others (you wouldn’t ask a plumber for advice on a tumour, or a doctor for advice on a busted boiler, so why would you trust some rando on the internet’s whackadoodle conspiracy nonsense?). I hate saying this, but I hate more that you’re not allowed to say this. Every time a post is made about Facebook or Twitter or Instagram it comes back to a variant of “how do we manage what gets shown to the cattle?”. We don’t use that language, but it’s what we mean. They’re not cattle, they’re our friends and family, and they’ve been failed by our broken education system. Not to go all Will McAvoy (not least as this is not a partisan problem) but the first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging there is one. There is a not insignificant number of people in the world who have been failed by the school system. We need to solve the real problem. We need to invest in intelligence and critical thinking.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Can we agree that anyone wishing to regulate FB (let alone FB itself) has planning timescales significantly shorter than that which would be required to change education for a generation or two?
  - headmelted 6y ago
    Absolutely! Completely in agreement with you, but relying on short-term fixes hasn’t worked for any issue of this significance that I’m aware of. Besides that, the same cause and effect is (again imho) why we’ve done next to nothing about climate change.
cryptica 6y ago
Facebook's hiring process has a tendency to benefit people who are good at presenting themselves a certain way and who can perform well when under pressure... One group which has particularly benefited from Facebook's hiring process are psychopaths. I'm sure that there are good people working for Facebook but when I think about all the people I knew who ended up at Facebook, they all had psychopathic tendencies. If the company is full of such people, of course there is no incentive to fix problems.
- rtx 6y ago
  Psychopaths are born that way, no reason to pull them down. If they can add value to the society I am happy about it.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    I agree but the problem is that this characteristic that they have doesn't add any value to society (it takes away value) and they shouldn't be given preferential treatment. Psychopathy only helps the individual who has it, it does not help society at all. This is a myth. The most successful capitalist countries (in terms of average quality of life for all citizens) are those in which people have an altruistic mindset. We also need to account for the evolutionary consequences of selecting for psychopathy. If everyone ends up becoming a psychopath and is entirely focused on capturing value for themselves, who is going to be left to actually create value? Society would collapse into a lawless, violent, cannibalistic mess. Society is held together by altruism. It can function with a small number of wolves at the top and many sheeps at the bottom. But in a world with only wolves, the wolves start eating each other. Wolves are only useful for population control, not value creation. That said, society doesn't need to be made up of sheep and wolves (as is the current trend). We could select for balanced free-thinking individuals.
- cryptica 6y ago
  Also, with all the negative media which Facebook is getting these days, it would attract more psychopaths. Psychopaths want to control people, so Facebook is the perfect company where they can realize their ambitions.
thinkingemote 6y ago
I'm starting to think that out of all the social platforms, Facebook understands that people in different parts of the world have different cultures. Co existence and tolerance is what's needed rather than explusion and intolerance. Since we as individuals are embedded within our own cultures it's hard to empathise with how other people elsewhere think across cultures. Usually social media is about one view of the world made in its creators image. A truly global social media is the aim.
CommieDetector 6y ago
One mans misinformation is another mans truth.
Juliate 6y ago
Because Facebook doesn't see the issue to fix.

35 points by the_decider 6y ago

Money. It’s money.

> “If you’re Mark Zuckerberg, then I’m sure applying one minimal set of standards everywhere in the world seems like a form of universalism,” Kate said. “To me, it seems like a kind of libertarian imperialism, especially if there’s no way for the standards to be strengthened, no matter how many people complain.” It is a kind of imperialism to be willing to export your own structure of governance and rules about what is and isn't acceptable to other parts of the world where central HQ always has the final say. I know it's a loaded term but I think the definition does apply.

jesperlang 6y ago

> In retrospect, it seems that the company’s strategy has never been to manage the problem of dangerous content, but rather to manage the public’s perception of the problem. I think this is key. And not just managing the public's perception but also the employees' perception through these convoluted stories like "connecting people"

ng12 6y ago

Is it a Facebook problem or is it a people problem? To me Facebook doesn't really seem that much different than it was when you needed a .edu email address to sign up. Social media hasn't changed, it's just used by a wider group which includes some minority who chose to interact with content some people don't like.

ssss11 6y ago
Facebook hasnt changed since the start? I completely disagree. What fb was at the start was actually useful - simply a way to write a status update to your friends and see what they have been up to in chronological order. None of the tracking or manipulative bull. What it has become (and rapidly since going public) is an attention-seeking addiction portal trying to gain every dollar it can from clicks. Full of ads, showing you only the friend status updates it wants to show you from its blackbox algorithm, inferring what your interests are based on whatever you click on, adding on tons and tons of functionality to keep you in the bubble (events, marketplace and so on) It is very different to what it began as.
Karellen 6y ago
I think it's a Facebook problem. Facebook, and other social media, incentivise "engagement". Content that makes people angry and get into bile-filled back-and-forth screaming matches with each other is fucking amazing for engagement, so Facebook et al push it to the top of peoples' feeds in order to get them to keep clicking, and to keep serving them ads. Maybe Facebook hasn't really changed since it began, and "maximising engagement" has always been their main priority. But it's probably a pretty safe bet that they've put a lot of effort into that, and got much, much better at it in the last 15 years. From the article: > In July, Nick Clegg, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. who is now a top flack at Facebook, published a piece on AdAge.com and on the company’s official blog titled “Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate,” in which he wrote, “There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it.” I would disagree. I submit that hate drives engagement, engagement drives eyeballs on adverts, and eyeballs on adverts drives $$$$, which absolutely benefits Facebook, and gives them an incentive to keep hate on the platform.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Where is this bad, addictive content coming from? Isn't that all content from a list of people or businesses that you green-list yourself?
  - josephg 6y ago
    Sure; but if facebook shows me 1% of all the content from people I follow, it exerts a huge amount of editorial power. And it doesn't use that editorial power to serve users. It uses that power to keep people addicted to the site so they can sell more advertisements. The fact that my friendships are weaponized doesn't make facebook any less culpable. I'm a pretty nice guy. But if you made a supercut of 1% of what I say in a day, you could tell any story you like. It would be my words, but its your narrative.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      What is the extent of FB's ability to craft narrative? What is the most egregious example of FB editorializing? It should be easy for people to find examples online with over 2B users.
izacus 6y ago
It's a people problem that is being majorly amplified by Facebook. Propaganda always existed and political parties always paid for billboards, ads and submarine articles to mislead people. This dates back centuries (remember how "snake oil salesman" term came to be?). Facebook however makes the reach of these propaganda articles larger by order of the magnitude, it makes it utterly cheap to reach a vast amount of audience with any kind of message. It exposes the rotten core of society, where demagogues and liars can be hugely successful and where truth isn't really all that important. And then amplifies this until things start breaking. So anyone who puts blame solely on Facebook is wrong. But Facebook also isn't the naive neutral entity here just like a person using a fan to spread fires isn't.

PureParadigm 6y ago

It is clear that Facebook is either unwilling or unable to effectively address the spread of misinformation. In light of this, I'm increasingly of the opinion that if misinformation and conspiracy theories are like viruses, then we should be practicing "political distancing," if you will. This doesn't mean being politically ignorant, but rather engaging in the minimum amount of political content you need to and no more. This would slow the spread of misinformation, since it simply doesn't have as many people to "infect" as quickly. While this may appear to go against the democratic spirit of maximum political engagement, democracy has worked before Facebook (and would probably be a lot better with less use of it). I think people's "default" political beliefs are generally less insane than many of the conspiracy theories (and if your beliefs already are that crazy then going on Facebook will only make them worse), so reducing engagement with political content should be something positive. This isn't something the journalists will recommend since their careers depend on clicks, but I think it's in everyone's best interest for people to back off the scrolling through the feed all day and take a break.

PakG1 6y ago
I think this makes sense. But I also think it's not easy because I posit that the people most susceptible to being swayed by extremism or conspiracy theories on Facebook are also the same people who would scoff at the concept of political distancing. In fact, they may decry it as attempts to suppress free speech. In that event, it's like COVID-19 deniers. They are the ones who would most flaunt the guidelines to avoid COVID-19, so they are the ones who would be most susceptible to get infected and spread infection among other COVID-19 deniers. This idea of political distancing may stop the spread of misinformation among the general population if the general population agreed to it, but it's the peopled swayed by extremism and conspiracy theories that would cause the most issues and/or societal damage anyway. How do you slow down the spread of misinformation amongst people who seek it out is the more difficult question.
- claytongulick 6y ago
  Really? We're calling people Covid-19 deniers now? This doesn't seem to be in keeping with the spirit of discussion or rules on HN.

zpeti 6y ago

"Disinformation" existed way before social media. Except it spread through your physical social circle. Which arguable might make it even more potent, because hearing something from a friend face-to-face might make you much more likely to believe it. The speed of spread might have been slower, that is an argument to make. But to suggest disinformation is a recent issue is ridiculous. And what exactly is disinformation? To me it looks like every "twisted truth" of people on the opposite end of your political views is disinformation, whereas when you're own side does it it's creative truth telling. I find it absolutely ridiculous when some politician claims the other side is lying, it is the most ridiculous hypocrisy from professional liars on both sides. There is not a politician out there who has not selectively used statistics, or outright lied. Where do you draw the line? So from a practical perspective, what exactly are social networks to do? How do you define truth? How do you define where each side slips into disinformation vs marketing? For that matter, at what point does advertising become disinformation? I really think this is an impossible problem to solve, because humans do everything on a sliding scale, nothing is black and white in terms of communication.

kace91 6y ago
Disinformation always existed, but: - it could never be targeted with the precision it is nowadays - its effects could not be measured with the precision they can nowadays - you couldn't plant information in a way that it seemed to come from a persons' trust circle in the way that you can now - you couldn't remove differing opinions from the view of the person in the way that you can now - you didn't have a place people are mentally addicted to to inject the content in. - you didn't have a whole generation of people that didn't understand the basics of where the media they consume is coming from - This last point is hard to understand by a tech savvy person, but there are many, many people for which "I read it on the internet" holds the same amount of truth whether it was the washington post website or a pink-over-black hobby run website made by a random wacko.
- rtx 6y ago
  Random wackos views are driven by self preservation same as Washington Post's. Atleast the wacko is not doing it for ad revenue.

sneak 6y ago

Disinformation isn’t the problem with Facebook. Censorship and surveillance are. It extends even to “private”, 1-on-1 messages. You simply aren’t allowed to communicate freely or privately using it.

evgen 6y ago
Censorship is not a problem on Facebook, it is disinformation. There are no problems limiting information on Facebook, the problem is the opposite in that you are constantly bombarded by an endless stream of highly-targeted bullshit that is designed to engage your lizard hindbrain and bypass reasoning as much as possible.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  > constantly bombarded by an endless stream of highly-targeted bullshit Isn't this content from friends, family, and any other groups you greenlist? How addictive can they be if you've greenlisted them?
  - evgen 6y ago
    No, it is content from clickbait farms forwarded by friends of friends and casual acquaintances of that crazy uncle who you always try to avoid at family gatherings. The ratio of content and updates from this core circle of people you might actually care about vs content created with the intention of being forwarded and going viral has been in a constant decline for more than a decade.

creato 6y ago

I can't stand all the talk about this as a problem of moderation and suppressing "dangerous" content. That's a distraction and leads nowhere good. I think the problem is that FB forces everyone into gigantic mosh pits of conversations that span whole regions of millions of people, and elevates uneducated but "engaging" hot takes for thousands or millions of people to see at a time. And most importantly, FB builds positive feedback loops into this environment. That's why I stopped using FB quite a while ago: not because I thought some moderator somewhere wasn't doing a good job, but because friends of friends (I can only assume) spewing bullshit comments on sketchy "news" articles in comment sections with thousands of people would show up too often.

sneak 6y ago
Algorithmic “timelines” that result in these feedback loops are themselves a form of censorship: you can’t promote some content without pushing other content down the page. Nobody reads, or can read, all of it. Promote enough high-cortisol clickbait to the top and the routine, mundane things, like the announcement of your friend’s funeral[1], won’t appear in your feed at a reasonable depth at all. 1: I’m not on Facebook any longer.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Ye the new algorithmic feed from ca 2014 killed Facebook usability. Since then it feels like Memebase, Reddit or something. Zuckerberg decides what you will see not your friends.
- xenadu02 6y ago
  Indeed... prior to the algorithmic timeline and the push for "engagement" what you saw on your timeline was posts from your friends and family. If some cousin posted a nonsense conspiracy theory you could comment on the post and there was at least the possibility of some kind of debate among your own social circle. The drive for engagement killed all of that.

alkonaut 6y ago

> the best way to stay out of trouble with their bosses was to leave borderline stuff up So take a step back and ask why is there a boss on any level that would object to "borderline stuff" being cut? Is there a manager that fears that they are seen as unreasonably strict in their moderation? Is there some mesured outcome that would go down?` They have a lot of very clever people, so I assume they have figured all of it out. Despite a lot of people leaving facebook due to the nature of what's there, they must believe that the "bordeline stuff" is either critical for their business, or impossible to get rid of. Also, why arnen't there hundreds of ex-facebook managers that can explain how this works? NDA's don't block anonymously describing business practices after you leave.

ralfd 6y ago
Leaving "borderline stuff" up is just a negative description of not abridging freedom of speech. Every social network before Facebook failed sooner or later to a successor social network. Of course FB tries to prevent that fate. One fail state would be if FB is censored in a way that people can't express their opinions anymore, than in a democracy people will leave for communication channels which allow them to do that. eg private Whatsapp or Telegram groups.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  Amazingly this is not true? For example, Reddit has a much more aggressive take on censoring content, and is still thriving and a huge part of the Internet. When's the last time Pinterest was in the news for espousing hateful views? Even YouTube/Google is getting their shit together (a quick Google search for YouTube flat earth reveals a top set of results of scientists debunking these theories, discussing why they're hafmful, discussion boards complaining YouTube is censoring flat earthers, this Wired article explaining why I'm seeing the results I'm seeing ...) https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-algorithm-silence-conspiracy-theories/ https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-algorithm-silence-conspi... And yet these networks still have a healthy presence of left and right political views, thoughtful critiques, points and counterpoints, political humor .. What is so special about them? And the only obvious answer is Facebook wants power, in both revenue and the power to dictate what "information" and narrative you're fed. Which, for a social media network ostensibly designed around your family and friends, is terrifyingly off-brand.

switch11 6y ago

This statement makes a lot of assumptions -> It is clear that Facebook is either unwilling or unable to effectively address the spread of misinformation. Let's consider What happens if Facebook stops 'misinformation'? People go to places that have 'misinformation' because people are seeking what validates their already existing view of the world + people want to be excited and thrilled and entertained Misinformation = way more exciting than the boring truth It's not that Facebook is unwilling or unable to address the spread of misinformation It's entire existence is predicated on playing to the lower instincts of humans Facebook is set up to ENTERTAIN people and create a Beautiful Skinner Box for people where they keep chasing (likes) cheese and keep avoiding electric shocks (getting ignored, no juicy gossip, no polarizing and exciting news) It's a Skinner Box You do good things for the Box and it gives you a rush of dopamine Create good content -> get Likes -> dopamine -> Skinner Box working as intended Then against that good content, Facebook shows its ads That's how it makes money * It needs GOOD content i.e. content that spreads content that gets people to keep coming back again and again and again content that gets people excited Twain said -> A Lie has traveled around the world twice by the time the truth has put its pants on * Facebook would never work if it became very efficient at weeding out lies, gossip, politically extreme content, misinformation * Why does everybody start off with assumptions A) Do we really think people want the boring truth? B) Do we really think people who believe something want that belief to be destroyed and replaced with something else? C) Does Facebook have any desire to 'fix' things? They have internal testing. Pretty much 100% sure it would show what happens if they 'fixed misinformation' D) Do people want Facebook to 'fix' things I don't see anyone complaining when Obama campaign was using Facebook to win elections Now Trump is using Facebook to win elections so suddenly Facebook is the target of everyone in tech Why a double standard? If a platform can be used to manipulate and sway people, is that dangerous only if it is used to sway people in a direction you don't like? shouldn't it be considered wrong to manipulate and sway people in ANY direction? * Facebook is basically a 'Appeal to People's Base Instincts' Engine A skinner box Everyone believes the nonsense that it is a 'social utility' or a 'social network' It's not It's a skinner box. Just observe how the normal people use it Not tech people Find some teenagers and see how they use it. Some people in their 20s. Some in their 30s apart from the really old people (60+) who use it as a sort of communication site, everyone else is using it for really 'bottom of the barrel' stuff - stalking their exes - checking on gossip - chasing likes (external validation) - showing off - pretending their life is better than it is

SrslyJosh 6y ago

The answer rhymes with "Fuckerberg."

mixmastamyk 6y ago

Getting trite at this point, but it fits here quite well: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair

izacus 6y ago
Seriously though - while it is a trite, it doesn't seem like Facebook is actually hurting because of that. Besides the loud Twitter and HN screaming, what else really happened? Who here really believes that a Republican government will regulate FB which is very effective medium to spread their message?

tsjq 6y ago

If there's a social media website with none of the problem factors of FB : ads, tracking, manipulation, selling of personal data, etc. How much would we pay that site, on a monthly or per-use basis ?

josephg 6y ago
Probably very little. Users are conditioned to assume internet infrastructure (chat rooms, reddit, twitter, gmail, etc) will be free. That said, Mastodon is doing reasonably well, depending on how you measure success.
Nextgrid 6y ago
I'm a minority but I'd be happy to pay ~30 bucks a month for a tool like Facebook as long as it doesn't behave in a user-hostile manner (so basically the Facebook from 10 years ago).
throw_m239339 6y ago
Let's be honest, very few people would want to pay upfront for that. Maybe it could work with very specialized social media with 50,000 users max, but not at the scale of Facebook. The question is, why is everyone flocking to these giga social media when smaller forums like HN did the job for decades before that? I like HN, it's not perfect, but I had several opportunities to engage with "famous" developers in meaningful ways that would not have been possible on Twitter or Facebook and this is invaluable to me. Same with another design/photography related forum in my native language. This is a model that might work commercially or at least with crowdfunding. A paid Twitter of Facebook? No.
new_guy 6y ago
> How much would we pay that site, on a monthly or per-use basis ? I run a network of sites, based on 'no censorship', no ads, no tracking etc etc Typically while everyone loves the sites and the value they provide, only about 0.05% of people are actually willing to pay anything for it. We do ok, but unless you aggressively monetise/milk/sell out your users you can never get to FB scale.

headmelted 6y ago

I don’t see that “fixing” Facebook solves anything to be honest. I kind of feel like trying to “fix” Facebook is akin to taking a time machine back to 1930’s Berlin and smashing up Hitler’s podium. Yeah it’ll be harder to spread hatred for about five minutes but there’s still a bunch of nazis everywhere. The education system is imho the root cause of all of these problems. We don’t teach children critical thinking. We teach them about science but not why science. We also dump our kids at school for childcare rather than education, which doesn’t inspire an interest in learning just for learning’s sake at all. Relying on overworked and underpaid teaching staff to care more about educating our kids than we do clearly hasn’t worked either. My point is that a well educated person will be able to easily identify most bullst when they read it, will know how to check the credibility of their sources, and will know why some opinions really are more valid than others (you wouldn’t ask a plumber for advice on a tumour, or a doctor for advice on a busted boiler, so why would you trust some rando on the internet’s whackadoodle conspiracy nonsense?). I hate saying this, but I hate more that you’re not allowed to say this. Every time a post is made about Facebook or Twitter or Instagram it comes back to a variant of “how do we manage what gets shown to the cattle?”. We don’t use that language, but it’s what we mean. They’re not cattle, they’re our friends and family, and they’ve been failed by our broken education system. Not to go all Will McAvoy (not least as this is not a partisan problem) but the first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging there is one. There is a not insignificant number of people in the world who have been failed by the school system. We need to solve the real problem. We need to invest in intelligence and critical thinking.

082349872349872 6y ago
Can we agree that anyone wishing to regulate FB (let alone FB itself) has planning timescales significantly shorter than that which would be required to change education for a generation or two?
- headmelted 6y ago
  Absolutely! Completely in agreement with you, but relying on short-term fixes hasn’t worked for any issue of this significance that I’m aware of. Besides that, the same cause and effect is (again imho) why we’ve done next to nothing about climate change.

cryptica 6y ago

Facebook's hiring process has a tendency to benefit people who are good at presenting themselves a certain way and who can perform well when under pressure... One group which has particularly benefited from Facebook's hiring process are psychopaths. I'm sure that there are good people working for Facebook but when I think about all the people I knew who ended up at Facebook, they all had psychopathic tendencies. If the company is full of such people, of course there is no incentive to fix problems.

rtx 6y ago
Psychopaths are born that way, no reason to pull them down. If they can add value to the society I am happy about it.
- cryptica 6y ago
  I agree but the problem is that this characteristic that they have doesn't add any value to society (it takes away value) and they shouldn't be given preferential treatment. Psychopathy only helps the individual who has it, it does not help society at all. This is a myth. The most successful capitalist countries (in terms of average quality of life for all citizens) are those in which people have an altruistic mindset. We also need to account for the evolutionary consequences of selecting for psychopathy. If everyone ends up becoming a psychopath and is entirely focused on capturing value for themselves, who is going to be left to actually create value? Society would collapse into a lawless, violent, cannibalistic mess. Society is held together by altruism. It can function with a small number of wolves at the top and many sheeps at the bottom. But in a world with only wolves, the wolves start eating each other. Wolves are only useful for population control, not value creation. That said, society doesn't need to be made up of sheep and wolves (as is the current trend). We could select for balanced free-thinking individuals.
cryptica 6y ago
Also, with all the negative media which Facebook is getting these days, it would attract more psychopaths. Psychopaths want to control people, so Facebook is the perfect company where they can realize their ambitions.

thinkingemote 6y ago

I'm starting to think that out of all the social platforms, Facebook understands that people in different parts of the world have different cultures. Co existence and tolerance is what's needed rather than explusion and intolerance. Since we as individuals are embedded within our own cultures it's hard to empathise with how other people elsewhere think across cultures. Usually social media is about one view of the world made in its creators image. A truly global social media is the aim.

CommieDetector 6y ago

One mans misinformation is another mans truth.

Juliate 6y ago

Because Facebook doesn't see the issue to fix.