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Behind Cambridge Analytica lay a bigger threat to our democracy: Facebook

210 points by elorant 6y ago

VHRanger 6y ago
Ryan Mac's series of reporting on the matter at Buzzfeed is commendable: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac They intentionally protect right wing bad actors like Breitbart because they along with their milder counterparts (Ben Shapiro, etc.) continuously score the top posts of the day on the network.
- fatnoah 6y ago
  In the end, I think the main issue here is that algorithms are designed to show you what you're likely to engage with. FB actually does have pretty good tools to limit what you see in your feed. Making use of the "Hide this Post" (or whatever it's called) on my own FB feed has all but eliminated all political ads or any of the stuff in my feed that I'm not interested, i.e. anything that's not about my friends' lives. That functionality needs to be MUCH more prominent, IMHO. The ease of sharing and retweeting also means that little or no effort is required to propagate whatever you come across. Even without the algorithms, people will essentially do that work themselves. There's a reason Fox News, Breitbart, and these types of "news" sources are popular. People are comfortable when their beliefs are reinforced and not challenged. I don't think this is a conscious action, but it happens nevertheless. My anecdote here is my father-in-law. He's glued to Fox News, right wing podcasters, and the like. He's as up to date on every bit of news propagated by those sites as anyone I know that's regularly on Facebook.
- tqi 6y ago
  That is proof of nothing. If the stereotype that "only old people are on Facebook" is true, and old people tend to be more right leaning, then it would follow that the top posts ranked by # likes or # views would skew toward their interests even with a completely neutral ranking scheme.
sprafa 6y ago
The fact that FB allows for certifiably false information to be broadcasted on their network will be their downfall. We’ve never had a decentralized network of information with no fact verification with global reach. Now we’re seeing the consequences
- the_snooze 6y ago
  I think you have to put more responsibility on Facebook here. It's very much a centralized network. It's just that the people behind the network don't want the duty of being good stewards of it. Based on their actions and inaction, their values don't seem to go much further than "ad money printer goes brrrr." They want the money and influence that comes with scale but none of the responsibility for it.
- rvz 6y ago
  Sounds like most of all the social media companies. > Now we’re seeing the consequences As with all of 'Big Tech', this road to hell was paved with 'good intentions' with thanks to those very smart engineers and scientists who created these cool technologies but with the unintended consequence that it can be (ab)used by bad actors. They tried their best to control it or 'regulate themselves', but I guess the 'Big Tech' story will ultimately end in the US supreme court.
- rtx 6y ago
  The downfall will be due to loosing patience with democracy. Don't assume people motives for voting one way or other are any different than yours.
  - sprafa 6y ago
    If you go to the latest tom Hanks trailer up on YT, the comment section is full of QAnon folks who claim he’s part of a cabal of paedos. Some people are crazy and they should not have a platform.
haffi112 6y ago
The title is exceptionally provocative. I do not want to defend Facebook per se. However, blaming Facebook as an entity seems over-simplistic (feel free to correct that view or possibly unpopular opinion). Look at it this way: A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy? Suppose things would work out in a utopian manner. In that case, such platforms should lead to a better-informed society and, therefore, a better democracy. Suppose one party in an election can take advantage of social media to nudge their voters. Why shouldn't the other party do so? Where do we draw the line regarding what is allowed and what is not? I guess there is some work to be done regarding what constitutes information warfare legally speaking.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  > A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy? The problem is that the platform does not make all information available equally. Instead, it uses algorithms to prioritize displaying certain information over the other (sometimes in direct contradiction with the user's wishes, where their friend's posts are ranked lower in the feed in favour of some unrelated bullshit). Ultimately the problem is not just Facebook but the whole business model of advertising and engagement. Now this normally wouldn't be that big of a deal if people were aware of it and alternatives existed, but people seem to be oblivious to it (and the mismatch between their interests and Facebook's) and network effects make starting an alternative impossible (plus Facebook would abuse copyright laws to shut down any alternative services that would interoperate with them).
  - haffi112 6y ago
    How do you solve the problem of displaying information equally? There is already so much noise out there anyway; Facebook recognized the need for a filter like a newsfeed. Facebook is incentivized to keep people on their platform and, therefore, the filter is not designed for the end-user. But that is still Facebook playing by the rules. If enough people are not happy with that, then they should switch to another platform with a better filter.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mtberatwork 6y ago
> The algorithms platforms use to recommend content should be heavily regulated. ... More ambitiously, a wholesale restructuring of the platform ecosystem may be required. I agree with the premise of the article but I'm not sure anything new is being said here and the conclusion is lacking substance. What would regulations of algorithms look like? What does restructuring of the platform ecosystem entail? Requiring all social media companies implement ActivityPub? What are the author's opinions on how any of this would come to fruition?
- ianai 6y ago
  Restricting who may purchase which ads would be a start. Placing a financial value and further fines on misusing personal data would continue to hinder the attack vector. Ie not just hippa/PII.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    Saving democracy via dictatorship?
    - ahartmetz 6y ago
      Who would be the dictator and how would they not have any checks and balances?
      - secondcoming 6y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your question, but the dictator would be the onewho decides what is and isn't acceptable, and it's a trait of dictators that they don't pay much attention to checks and balances. Of course, any dictator worth their salt will immediately ban any expression of discontent with said dictatorship. Similar to how in Thailand it's an offense to criticise the monarchy.
    - arrosenberg 6y ago
      You have the right to free speech, not to the broadcast thereof. When is the last time you saw a cigarette ad?
mxuribe 6y ago
This is all among the reasons why so many tech enthusiasts have fled to - or at least spend more time on - places like the fediverse, tildeverse, gopherspace, gemini, etc. I count myself among them; I've been spending lots more time on these other places, and tons less time on conventional social networks. But - with maybe the exception of the fediverse - where are the non-tech folks going? Or, is it that the non-tech folks have no alternatives and either put up with the garbage, or simply diminish their overall use/exposure, I wonder?
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  The non-tech-oriented folks in my life who have become frustrated with newsfeed-style social media have mostly diminished their use by reverting to techified variants of classic comms: Chat (SMS with GIFs), zoom calls, (pre-covid) involving themselves socially with the world around them. I get the sense that overall they're spending less time staring at the internet. I think the key insight that many people have reached after ~20 years of social media use is that, while there's a dopamine-feel of communicating and socializing, you're actually just consuming entertainment, so why not split the issues and make both your entertainment consumption and your socializing more direct and intentional. I suspect that pattern is also part of why the social media systems that are successful in the modern era are those that deemphasize content in favor of social interaction (whatsapp, discord) or deemphasize social interaction in favor of content consumption (instagram, tiktok)
- secondcoming 6y ago
  > fediverse, tildeverse, gopherspace, gemini, etc I'm a tech person and I've honestly never heard of these places. Perhaps I don't need social media that much.
  - mxuribe 6y ago
    I'm with you, we really don't need social media that much. Also, not sure if you're interested in learning about the other places...if so, here goes (if not, please ignore): gopherspace (well this is quite old) = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) fediverse = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse (Also, some people might have heard of Mastodon which is probably the most popular - though by far not the only - software used on the fediverse.) tildeverse = there isn't a wikipedia entry, but the following website is a good example = https://tildeverse.org/ https://tildeverse.org/ gemini = https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
mechnesium 6y ago
Forgot Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. FAAMG is evil and each of them needs to be fractured into oblivion like the Standard Oil of yesteryear.
- azangru 6y ago
  Google gave the world a fantastic search engine (is there anything comparable to Google Books when it comes to full-text search across all books?), a web browser with fantastic dev tools, a great space for hosting videos online, and it has been driving innovations in the web development space (web components, browser APIs) for a number of years. I think it's been great.
- intended 6y ago
  Even with multiple networks, how would it be meaningfully different from our current scenario? 1) Network issue: Social Media depends on network effects. Advertisers go to the largest network. The new networks will eventually recreate another singular network which has the majority of consumers. 2) Content is always under selection pressure to be engaging. The most engaging, (not the most factual) content/formats survive.
holidayacct 6y ago
Breaking News: Associative learning is now a threat to democracy.
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
So now that the Cambridge Analytica story is unraveling they're looking for a new scapegoat to blame an undesirable (to them) political outcome on.
- iamkroot 6y ago
  I have often wondered: if Brexit and the 2016 presidential election had gone differently, would we still have this panic surrounding social media? To me, a lot of it feels like people can't believe that a thinking human would ever vote for "the bad guys", so they go searching for some other explanation. It must have been some sort of brainwashing, that's the only reason someone would ever fall for their obvious lies! Curiously, I very rarely hear people who complain about social media admit to it influencing their own political decisions, it's always their opponents who are being led astray.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    My thoughts are that most people's political views are shaped by the media they consume. For a large portion of the social elite, these views are shaped by their education and by the class views espoused in publications like the New Yorker, NYT, etc. These prestige publications no longer have the influence they once had on other social classes because these social classes have access to a wide variety of new media enabled by the internet, and this loss of control is what's shocking to the political/social elite. I think something along these lines must be what's happening because in terms of actual policy, Trump isn't that different from someone like Pat Buchanan.
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      Pat Buchanan is generally regarded as a political extremist. And yes, I'm very familiar with him based on his own speech and writing, not someone else's characterization of it.
      - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
        Sure, but he doesn't provoke the intense reaction that Trump does.
onetimepadmi 6y ago
It’s 1984, folks. No joke. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/facebook-allies-with-us-regime-change-orgs-for-fact-checking-in-foreign-countries.html https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/facebook-allies-with-u... https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/01/twitter-suspends-accounts-for-propaganda-has-literal-propagandist-as-high-level-executive https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/01/twitter-suspends-acc... https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/20/ciad-a20.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/20/ciad-a20.html (As for the R’s, I saw but can’t find a clip of John Bolton bragging about helping R’s elect people with similar pedigrees.) https://www.corbettreport.com/psychographics-101/ https://www.corbettreport.com/psychographics-101/ https://www.corbettreport.com/the-cfr-loves-domestic-propaganda-propagandawatch/ https://www.corbettreport.com/the-cfr-loves-domestic-propaga... https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how-us-flooded-the-world-with-psyops/ https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how-us-flooded-the-wor... https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/13/the-victory-of-perception-management-2/ https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/13/the-victory-of-percept... From 2007 BTW: https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=1941 https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=1941
newcomputer 6y ago
The Guardian is a bigger threat to democracy than Facebook. At least Facebook allows some level of political dissent. The Guardian is non-stop one-sided political propaganda masquerading as news.
paulsutter 6y ago
There are two ways to arrange media and censorship: centralized or decentralized. Definitely, decentralized/democratized media (Facebook, etc) is very difficult to do well and today seems to require centralized censorship. But that can't be the right solution. And neither can going back to centralized media.
- loudmax 6y ago
  Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube. While it's true that there are multiple platforms, there are a small number of platforms that are really widespread, and each one of them is centralized. I don't know that a federated social network (eg Mastadon) would solve the particular problem at hand. There would be other benefits though, and it's possible that a federated social network would at least mitigate some of the problems. It's idea at least worth consideration.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube. I think it's not about technical centralized/decentralized but about who decides what can be read. Pre-social-media: journalists are selected by companies based on political alignment and are controlled by their editors, only journalists get published, average people cannot communicate with each other at scale, journalists/media companies have total control over information and thereby over the perception of reality. Social media changed that. You can no longer just put an embargo on a story and expect people not to learn about it, as was made very obvious in Germany at new year's eve 2015. The news will spread via social media and there's nothing you can do about it short of shutting down the communication networks. Federated social networks take that a step further by also removing Facebook's centralized control from the system, but that's a minor step, because Facebook doesn't interfere with their users that much. At least that was true, the Hunter Biden thing might be a taste of what's to come.
ffggvv 6y ago
we recently found out that the cambridge analytica scandal was widely overblown and essentially fake news: https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/10/how-cambridge-analytica-scandal-unravelled https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/...
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Thank you for providing a citation for that claim. Please see my response to a similar comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802636
  - ffggvv 6y ago
    i appreciate your response but IMO you aren't addressing the core results or argument of the ICO's investigation. You seem to mostly be accusing them of bias. >>More damning was the finding that Cambridge Analytica wasn’t doing anything particularly unique. The information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, told parliament that “on examination, the methods that SCL (a company that is corporately interlinked with Cambridge Analytica) was using were, in the main, well-recognised processes using commonly available technology” I think that is the killer claim and needs to be addressed head-on instead of hand waving and saying they are biased.
    - save_ferris 6y ago
      That report goes on to reiterate on one of the major points of the CA scandal, that executives of the company explicitly sold themselves as nefarious kingmakers willing to deploy blackmail and honeypots for a client in order to manipulate elections. > All of this does not diminish the nefariousness of Cambridge Analytica and SCL. In fact, arguably the most egregious aspect of the company was their work in countries other than the US and UK. In an undercover sting, Channel 4 filmed CA CEO Alexander Nix boasting of the firm’s willingness to engage in unethical tactics including honeypots, bribes, blackmail and entrapment to swing an election. To your point, the story largely was fake news because they failed to achieve their objective as election manipulators, not because they were wrapped up in some conspiracy theory that accused them of misbehavior. They were caught on camera going around to powerful people and telling them that they could manipulate elections and that absolutely cannot be overlooked. There's an immensely wealthy market for this kind of service, and just because one player overhyped themselves and got caught up in a scandal that largely turned out to be nothing doesn't mean that someone else won't try again.
LanceH 6y ago
The last 20 years have seen enormous strides -- in no small part due to social media -- in a number of progressive movements. The unfiltered nature of the web let all ideas be shared freely. Now that the left believes they have the numbers they would like to throw the filters on. Regulation of how speech is presented is a regulation of speech and shouldn't be restricted. The authoritarian streak I see from people I might agree with on policy is terrifying.
sjroot 6y ago
Behind Facebook lay an event bigger threat to our democracy: a population lacking the educational foundation necessary to build informed opinions on issues by seeking and critically evaluating available sources of information.
intended 6y ago
I'd argue that the issue is the fundamentally incompatible model of news and competition. We didn't know this before the internet, but now that we can actually measure engagement for crazy content vs real content, I'll make the argument. In essence, FB/Twit have the same issue as old school cable networks. Markets drive competition which drives optimization. In the case of news and media, the optimization force is engagement. The market rewards engagement over "truth". People will rather watch sports or reality TV than watch boring news. You can see it in media studies of headlines, and we now have empirical data on submissions to reddit and engagement being related to sentiment/modification of headlines. So news talks about the most sensational content it can find (Man bites dog). As sensational news gets boring, you get more "breaking news" to cut through the ennui. I hope its not too much of a stretch to argue that barring any upper limit, this system will optimize itself to self mockery. At least I don't see how publicly owned firms can afford to optimize differently.
crakhamster01 6y ago
> Cambridge Analytica was overblown Louder for the people in the back.
eddhead 6y ago
Hasn't it been proven that Cambridge Analytica did nothing wrong or sinister?
milquetoastaf 6y ago
I don't support either party in the US really but it's interesting to note how views around using social networks in electioneering have morphed When Facebook "helps" elects Obama - a well executed maneuver by a savvy politician on his ascendancy https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-... https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-obama-and-the-facebook-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-ob... When Trump benefits: scandal, uproar, a gross violation of American Norms

210 points by elorant 6y ago

Ryan Mac's series of reporting on the matter at Buzzfeed is commendable: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac They intentionally protect right wing bad actors like Breitbart because they along with their milder counterparts (Ben Shapiro, etc.) continuously score the top posts of the day on the network.

fatnoah 6y ago
In the end, I think the main issue here is that algorithms are designed to show you what you're likely to engage with. FB actually does have pretty good tools to limit what you see in your feed. Making use of the "Hide this Post" (or whatever it's called) on my own FB feed has all but eliminated all political ads or any of the stuff in my feed that I'm not interested, i.e. anything that's not about my friends' lives. That functionality needs to be MUCH more prominent, IMHO. The ease of sharing and retweeting also means that little or no effort is required to propagate whatever you come across. Even without the algorithms, people will essentially do that work themselves. There's a reason Fox News, Breitbart, and these types of "news" sources are popular. People are comfortable when their beliefs are reinforced and not challenged. I don't think this is a conscious action, but it happens nevertheless. My anecdote here is my father-in-law. He's glued to Fox News, right wing podcasters, and the like. He's as up to date on every bit of news propagated by those sites as anyone I know that's regularly on Facebook.
tqi 6y ago
That is proof of nothing. If the stereotype that "only old people are on Facebook" is true, and old people tend to be more right leaning, then it would follow that the top posts ranked by # likes or # views would skew toward their interests even with a completely neutral ranking scheme.

sprafa 6y ago

The fact that FB allows for certifiably false information to be broadcasted on their network will be their downfall. We’ve never had a decentralized network of information with no fact verification with global reach. Now we’re seeing the consequences

the_snooze 6y ago
I think you have to put more responsibility on Facebook here. It's very much a centralized network. It's just that the people behind the network don't want the duty of being good stewards of it. Based on their actions and inaction, their values don't seem to go much further than "ad money printer goes brrrr." They want the money and influence that comes with scale but none of the responsibility for it.
rvz 6y ago
Sounds like most of all the social media companies. > Now we’re seeing the consequences As with all of 'Big Tech', this road to hell was paved with 'good intentions' with thanks to those very smart engineers and scientists who created these cool technologies but with the unintended consequence that it can be (ab)used by bad actors. They tried their best to control it or 'regulate themselves', but I guess the 'Big Tech' story will ultimately end in the US supreme court.
rtx 6y ago
The downfall will be due to loosing patience with democracy. Don't assume people motives for voting one way or other are any different than yours.
- sprafa 6y ago
  If you go to the latest tom Hanks trailer up on YT, the comment section is full of QAnon folks who claim he’s part of a cabal of paedos. Some people are crazy and they should not have a platform.

haffi112 6y ago

The title is exceptionally provocative. I do not want to defend Facebook per se. However, blaming Facebook as an entity seems over-simplistic (feel free to correct that view or possibly unpopular opinion). Look at it this way: A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy? Suppose things would work out in a utopian manner. In that case, such platforms should lead to a better-informed society and, therefore, a better democracy. Suppose one party in an election can take advantage of social media to nudge their voters. Why shouldn't the other party do so? Where do we draw the line regarding what is allowed and what is not? I guess there is some work to be done regarding what constitutes information warfare legally speaking.

Nextgrid 6y ago
> A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy? The problem is that the platform does not make all information available equally. Instead, it uses algorithms to prioritize displaying certain information over the other (sometimes in direct contradiction with the user's wishes, where their friend's posts are ranked lower in the feed in favour of some unrelated bullshit). Ultimately the problem is not just Facebook but the whole business model of advertising and engagement. Now this normally wouldn't be that big of a deal if people were aware of it and alternatives existed, but people seem to be oblivious to it (and the mismatch between their interests and Facebook's) and network effects make starting an alternative impossible (plus Facebook would abuse copyright laws to shut down any alternative services that would interoperate with them).
- haffi112 6y ago
  How do you solve the problem of displaying information equally? There is already so much noise out there anyway; Facebook recognized the need for a filter like a newsfeed. Facebook is incentivized to keep people on their platform and, therefore, the filter is not designed for the end-user. But that is still Facebook playing by the rules. If enough people are not happy with that, then they should switch to another platform with a better filter.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mtberatwork 6y ago

> The algorithms platforms use to recommend content should be heavily regulated. ... More ambitiously, a wholesale restructuring of the platform ecosystem may be required. I agree with the premise of the article but I'm not sure anything new is being said here and the conclusion is lacking substance. What would regulations of algorithms look like? What does restructuring of the platform ecosystem entail? Requiring all social media companies implement ActivityPub? What are the author's opinions on how any of this would come to fruition?

ianai 6y ago
Restricting who may purchase which ads would be a start. Placing a financial value and further fines on misusing personal data would continue to hinder the attack vector. Ie not just hippa/PII.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Saving democracy via dictatorship?
  - ahartmetz 6y ago
    Who would be the dictator and how would they not have any checks and balances?
    - secondcoming 6y ago
      I'm not sure I understand your question, but the dictator would be the onewho decides what is and isn't acceptable, and it's a trait of dictators that they don't pay much attention to checks and balances. Of course, any dictator worth their salt will immediately ban any expression of discontent with said dictatorship. Similar to how in Thailand it's an offense to criticise the monarchy.
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    You have the right to free speech, not to the broadcast thereof. When is the last time you saw a cigarette ad?

mxuribe 6y ago

This is all among the reasons why so many tech enthusiasts have fled to - or at least spend more time on - places like the fediverse, tildeverse, gopherspace, gemini, etc. I count myself among them; I've been spending lots more time on these other places, and tons less time on conventional social networks. But - with maybe the exception of the fediverse - where are the non-tech folks going? Or, is it that the non-tech folks have no alternatives and either put up with the garbage, or simply diminish their overall use/exposure, I wonder?

InitialLastName 6y ago
The non-tech-oriented folks in my life who have become frustrated with newsfeed-style social media have mostly diminished their use by reverting to techified variants of classic comms: Chat (SMS with GIFs), zoom calls, (pre-covid) involving themselves socially with the world around them. I get the sense that overall they're spending less time staring at the internet. I think the key insight that many people have reached after ~20 years of social media use is that, while there's a dopamine-feel of communicating and socializing, you're actually just consuming entertainment, so why not split the issues and make both your entertainment consumption and your socializing more direct and intentional. I suspect that pattern is also part of why the social media systems that are successful in the modern era are those that deemphasize content in favor of social interaction (whatsapp, discord) or deemphasize social interaction in favor of content consumption (instagram, tiktok)
secondcoming 6y ago
> fediverse, tildeverse, gopherspace, gemini, etc I'm a tech person and I've honestly never heard of these places. Perhaps I don't need social media that much.
- mxuribe 6y ago
  I'm with you, we really don't need social media that much. Also, not sure if you're interested in learning about the other places...if so, here goes (if not, please ignore): gopherspace (well this is quite old) = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) fediverse = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse (Also, some people might have heard of Mastodon which is probably the most popular - though by far not the only - software used on the fediverse.) tildeverse = there isn't a wikipedia entry, but the following website is a good example = https://tildeverse.org/ https://tildeverse.org/ gemini = https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

mechnesium 6y ago

Forgot Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. FAAMG is evil and each of them needs to be fractured into oblivion like the Standard Oil of yesteryear.

azangru 6y ago
Google gave the world a fantastic search engine (is there anything comparable to Google Books when it comes to full-text search across all books?), a web browser with fantastic dev tools, a great space for hosting videos online, and it has been driving innovations in the web development space (web components, browser APIs) for a number of years. I think it's been great.
intended 6y ago
Even with multiple networks, how would it be meaningfully different from our current scenario? 1) Network issue: Social Media depends on network effects. Advertisers go to the largest network. The new networks will eventually recreate another singular network which has the majority of consumers. 2) Content is always under selection pressure to be engaging. The most engaging, (not the most factual) content/formats survive.

holidayacct 6y ago

Breaking News: Associative learning is now a threat to democracy.

jeffreyrogers 6y ago

So now that the Cambridge Analytica story is unraveling they're looking for a new scapegoat to blame an undesirable (to them) political outcome on.

iamkroot 6y ago
I have often wondered: if Brexit and the 2016 presidential election had gone differently, would we still have this panic surrounding social media? To me, a lot of it feels like people can't believe that a thinking human would ever vote for "the bad guys", so they go searching for some other explanation. It must have been some sort of brainwashing, that's the only reason someone would ever fall for their obvious lies! Curiously, I very rarely hear people who complain about social media admit to it influencing their own political decisions, it's always their opponents who are being led astray.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  My thoughts are that most people's political views are shaped by the media they consume. For a large portion of the social elite, these views are shaped by their education and by the class views espoused in publications like the New Yorker, NYT, etc. These prestige publications no longer have the influence they once had on other social classes because these social classes have access to a wide variety of new media enabled by the internet, and this loss of control is what's shocking to the political/social elite. I think something along these lines must be what's happening because in terms of actual policy, Trump isn't that different from someone like Pat Buchanan.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Pat Buchanan is generally regarded as a political extremist. And yes, I'm very familiar with him based on his own speech and writing, not someone else's characterization of it.
    - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Sure, but he doesn't provoke the intense reaction that Trump does.

onetimepadmi 6y ago

It’s 1984, folks. No joke. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/facebook-allies-with-us-regime-change-orgs-for-fact-checking-in-foreign-countries.html https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/facebook-allies-with-u... https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/01/twitter-suspends-accounts-for-propaganda-has-literal-propagandist-as-high-level-executive https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/01/twitter-suspends-acc... https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/20/ciad-a20.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/20/ciad-a20.html (As for the R’s, I saw but can’t find a clip of John Bolton bragging about helping R’s elect people with similar pedigrees.) https://www.corbettreport.com/psychographics-101/ https://www.corbettreport.com/psychographics-101/ https://www.corbettreport.com/the-cfr-loves-domestic-propaganda-propagandawatch/ https://www.corbettreport.com/the-cfr-loves-domestic-propaga... https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how-us-flooded-the-world-with-psyops/ https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how-us-flooded-the-wor... https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/13/the-victory-of-perception-management-2/ https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/13/the-victory-of-percept... From 2007 BTW: https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=1941 https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=1941

newcomputer 6y ago

The Guardian is a bigger threat to democracy than Facebook. At least Facebook allows some level of political dissent. The Guardian is non-stop one-sided political propaganda masquerading as news.

paulsutter 6y ago

There are two ways to arrange media and censorship: centralized or decentralized. Definitely, decentralized/democratized media (Facebook, etc) is very difficult to do well and today seems to require centralized censorship. But that can't be the right solution. And neither can going back to centralized media.

loudmax 6y ago
Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube. While it's true that there are multiple platforms, there are a small number of platforms that are really widespread, and each one of them is centralized. I don't know that a federated social network (eg Mastadon) would solve the particular problem at hand. There would be other benefits though, and it's possible that a federated social network would at least mitigate some of the problems. It's idea at least worth consideration.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube. I think it's not about technical centralized/decentralized but about who decides what can be read. Pre-social-media: journalists are selected by companies based on political alignment and are controlled by their editors, only journalists get published, average people cannot communicate with each other at scale, journalists/media companies have total control over information and thereby over the perception of reality. Social media changed that. You can no longer just put an embargo on a story and expect people not to learn about it, as was made very obvious in Germany at new year's eve 2015. The news will spread via social media and there's nothing you can do about it short of shutting down the communication networks. Federated social networks take that a step further by also removing Facebook's centralized control from the system, but that's a minor step, because Facebook doesn't interfere with their users that much. At least that was true, the Hunter Biden thing might be a taste of what's to come.

ffggvv 6y ago

we recently found out that the cambridge analytica scandal was widely overblown and essentially fake news: https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/10/how-cambridge-analytica-scandal-unravelled https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/...

dane-pgp 6y ago
Thank you for providing a citation for that claim. Please see my response to a similar comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802636
- ffggvv 6y ago
  i appreciate your response but IMO you aren't addressing the core results or argument of the ICO's investigation. You seem to mostly be accusing them of bias. >>More damning was the finding that Cambridge Analytica wasn’t doing anything particularly unique. The information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, told parliament that “on examination, the methods that SCL (a company that is corporately interlinked with Cambridge Analytica) was using were, in the main, well-recognised processes using commonly available technology” I think that is the killer claim and needs to be addressed head-on instead of hand waving and saying they are biased.
  - save_ferris 6y ago
    That report goes on to reiterate on one of the major points of the CA scandal, that executives of the company explicitly sold themselves as nefarious kingmakers willing to deploy blackmail and honeypots for a client in order to manipulate elections. > All of this does not diminish the nefariousness of Cambridge Analytica and SCL. In fact, arguably the most egregious aspect of the company was their work in countries other than the US and UK. In an undercover sting, Channel 4 filmed CA CEO Alexander Nix boasting of the firm’s willingness to engage in unethical tactics including honeypots, bribes, blackmail and entrapment to swing an election. To your point, the story largely was fake news because they failed to achieve their objective as election manipulators, not because they were wrapped up in some conspiracy theory that accused them of misbehavior. They were caught on camera going around to powerful people and telling them that they could manipulate elections and that absolutely cannot be overlooked. There's an immensely wealthy market for this kind of service, and just because one player overhyped themselves and got caught up in a scandal that largely turned out to be nothing doesn't mean that someone else won't try again.

LanceH 6y ago

The last 20 years have seen enormous strides -- in no small part due to social media -- in a number of progressive movements. The unfiltered nature of the web let all ideas be shared freely. Now that the left believes they have the numbers they would like to throw the filters on. Regulation of how speech is presented is a regulation of speech and shouldn't be restricted. The authoritarian streak I see from people I might agree with on policy is terrifying.

sjroot 6y ago

Behind Facebook lay an event bigger threat to our democracy: a population lacking the educational foundation necessary to build informed opinions on issues by seeking and critically evaluating available sources of information.

intended 6y ago

I'd argue that the issue is the fundamentally incompatible model of news and competition. We didn't know this before the internet, but now that we can actually measure engagement for crazy content vs real content, I'll make the argument. In essence, FB/Twit have the same issue as old school cable networks. Markets drive competition which drives optimization. In the case of news and media, the optimization force is engagement. The market rewards engagement over "truth". People will rather watch sports or reality TV than watch boring news. You can see it in media studies of headlines, and we now have empirical data on submissions to reddit and engagement being related to sentiment/modification of headlines. So news talks about the most sensational content it can find (Man bites dog). As sensational news gets boring, you get more "breaking news" to cut through the ennui. I hope its not too much of a stretch to argue that barring any upper limit, this system will optimize itself to self mockery. At least I don't see how publicly owned firms can afford to optimize differently.

crakhamster01 6y ago

> Cambridge Analytica was overblown Louder for the people in the back.

eddhead 6y ago

Hasn't it been proven that Cambridge Analytica did nothing wrong or sinister?

milquetoastaf 6y ago

I don't support either party in the US really but it's interesting to note how views around using social networks in electioneering have morphed When Facebook "helps" elects Obama - a well executed maneuver by a savvy politician on his ascendancy https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-... https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-obama-and-the-facebook-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-ob... When Trump benefits: scandal, uproar, a gross violation of American Norms