20 ms·

Solomon Islands set to ban Facebook in the name of 'national unity'

653 points by hentrep 6y ago

0goel0 6y ago
Good.
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  How is good that a government is banning Facebook to control narrative about their corruption? I really don't understand the Hacker News crowd sometimes.
mikece 6y ago
How did memes, misinformation, fake news and cyber bullying propagate before Facebook and other forms of social media? I know it happened but I don't remember it being such a high-profile issue.
- jansan 6y ago
  I existed in the early days of the internet, but it was more genuine and it wasn't used to manipulate people and there were no gatekeepers or editors who decided what informations is visible or hidden.
  - oblio 6y ago
    That's so naive :-))) Check out all the censorship laws in the past and even present. Content ratings, censorship committees present even today in many countries, including democratic ones. Just for fun, check out how many pictures of Roosevelt showing him as a cripple you can find ;-)
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Books were routinely banned in the UK until the 1960s; this basically ended with the Lady Chatterly trial at which the ridiculousness became apparent.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  email chains. Super long email chains that you had to scroll really far down to actually see the content
  - mikece 6y ago
    I suppose newsgroups might have been a vector for that -- it's where we got the term "flame wars" though I think the popularity of those waned quite a bit by the late 90s.
- ISL 6y ago
  Once upon a time, it was called gossip.
  - selfhoster11 6y ago
    Gossip spread much slower.
    - mfer 6y ago
      Wasn't just gossip. It was propaganda, too. We are in the golden age of propaganda due to the pervasiveness or our communications technology and the alert/addictive nature of the communications technology.
    - brlewis 6y ago
      It probably spread at a similar rate relative to how fast truth spread at the time. Lots of old quotes about falsehood spreading faster than truth: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/
- 0x445442 6y ago
  Newsgroups, IRC, Email Lists, Blogs... The biggest change is the creation of the term cyber bullying. In the "old" days one just didn't pay attention to opinions they disagreed with. Now they seek government to impose draconian censorship on opinions they don't agree with.
  - Raffers 6y ago
    When you have documented cases of, primarily teens. Taking their own lives due to these interactions. Then it becomes a bit more than "opinions they don't agree with" & crosses into full on harassment.
  - darkcha0s 6y ago
    >In the "old" days one just didn't pay attention to opinions they disagreed with. Now they seek government to impose draconian censorship on opinions they don't agree with Excuse me for sounding daft, but I think the intensity with which you are confronted with these opinions has changed drastically. I think you're purposefully being a bit ignorant here; no one (viz: 'they') wants to cancel opinions they disagree with. However to think that false information has the same platform today that it had 50 years ago is also just plain wrong-- and whether you agree with it or not, it does shape the public discourse these days. Unless you want to erode discussions to a point where its a battle of who can fabricate the biggest claim (true or not), you're going to have to accept that in a modern information society we will eventually need some form of controls. Case in point: https://twitter.com/0x445442 https://twitter.com/0x445442 (Seems you have a problem with "Leftists" and like to retweet right wing tweets)
    - throwaway3699 6y ago
      Sorry, but posting this guy's Twitter doesn't prove anything. These are _opinions_ he's posting, and it's the responsibility of other people to decide if they care about these opinions or not. Back in the day, the internet just laughed at "stupid people". Now it tries to ruin their lives for daring to say something edgy. "Information controls" is one of the most horrific concepts I've ever heard of.
- pizza234 6y ago
  They did spread, but significantly slower and with less exposure - communication nowadays is fast and pervasive.
- cecja 6y ago
  The thing is before facebook, instagram and youtube communication was mostly text based. With the advancing broadband capabilities, smartphones and easier to use software our communication shitfted to a more picture based form of communication and as we all know... one picture says more than thousand words AND it transports hate easier.
- chippy 6y ago
  The assumption that memes, misinformation, fake news and cyber bullying are propagating at a higher rate than before and is a new problem could be reviewed. It's probably an extension of advertising, behaviour modification and outright propaganda (including agit-prop). Previously newspapers, magazines and televisions were used. Would Facebook etc be giving rise to a new phenomena or is it an existing one in new clothes? Hoaxes are a good subject to look at, like the dead alien hoax. How did a hoax spread before the Internet? Assuming new things are spreading, how can we make a vaccine to protect people against hoaxes and fake news but not against advertising, manipulation, behaviour modification and necessary government propaganda?
- pjc50 6y ago
  You'd enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion... ; published in 1841, but covering events of previous centuries. It covers everything from stock bubbles to catchphrase memes that appeared in London and everyone was saying for a few months before they were forgotten.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  Forums, email chains, IRC, Usenet, etc. there's several things that make it more potent and spread faster now. For starters the internet is less balkanized, social media platforms are magnitudes larger than the largest forums ever were so an idea can just spread faster and further than before. Email chains could approximate the reach but other factors meant they were less potent and also I think people had fewer emails known in their address books than they generally have friends on social media though I don't have any numbers to back up that gut feeling. Although things are just randomly shared outside of social nets by social media algorithms so that would also help it jump outside of limited social groups too. Next the medium is just inherently more engaging now that photo and video are first class citizens on the major platforms, they're way more attention grabbing and engaging than a wall of text could hope to be. Also I think fundamentally there's an imbalance between how easy it is to lie and to debunk a lie and how much each of those will spread. A lie is exciting/angering and people will spread it much faster than the 800 word debunk that explains just how full of crap the lie was (and often how the person spreading it is using it as a trojan horse for other shittier ideas). "Everything you know about X is wrong" spreads faster than "No most of what you knew was basically right and here's the history of X," it's shocking and new vs familiar and old. Finally I think there's a fair amount of blame on the structure of *feeds and the algorithms that place things on them. It optimizes for salacious, shocking content that gets people to share it because that's what the algorithm selects for (roughly), things that keep users on the site so more ad impressions can be served. Add to that bad actors willing to lie and twist the truth to make money and a decade or so of Darwinian corporate evolution and you've got a pretty nasty combo.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    > also I think people had fewer emails known in their address books than they generally have friends on social media though I don't have any numbers to back up that gut feeling. This is the bottom line. Back in the day you'd join a forum over a particular topic or hobby. Everyone had screen names. Moderation was tight, if there was politics it was confined to a single area that was easily avoided. You only saw "links" to "topics" that included images, not images. Now with social media, people share images, memes, quotes, posts, etc. But while before that could be confined to one particular area and wasn't visible with fully anonymous screen names, now you see a real person that you know saying it, in your feed. It makes it feel more real. And get this - 50 people liked it and shared it themselves. Where Facebook's brilliance comes in - is that it gamed the process of popularity. Most want to have as many "friends" as possible at first, they see old people they knew and want to see what they're up to, want to be popular, etc. But they don't realize that they really just don't want to get to know that many people that well. Some people are insane, some are borderline white supremacists, some are borderline anarchists. Before you never saw that side of people often. Now it's right in your face. My advice? use social media for what it was originally designed for - staying in touch with friends you actually care about. Not politics. And mute/remove any friend who cares more about their agenda than seeing a good friend's cool vacation or neat artwork or cute newborn.
akudha 6y ago
I loathe Facebook, but I don't see how this is going to help. It might help a bit in the short term, but will it really help long term? Even if it does, how many social networks are they going to ban? Surely someone else will take Facebook's place? Personally I will be happy if Facebook goes away, but I don't know if this is the right way to do it.
- Darmody 6y ago
  I agree. Will Twitter be available? Because in some cases is even worse. Will they ban every social network? If so, what criteria will they use to flag a website as social network? I think their premise is correct. Facebook is bad. But their solution doesn't make sense.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Better than waiting for Facebook to regulate itself or a national government to regulate it away, which might never happen. Incremental progress with the tools available to you.
  - conductr 6y ago
    Ignoring likely political motivations. I’d say you’re correct, technically, but if you have a bias for action this is what is available to you.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  The overton window is the range of acceptable topics of discussion in society, and is largely determined by a social network's size and diversity. The larger and more diverse a network is, the more likely a statement is to offend someone. Many of the social issues we see are caused by the overton window narrowing so quickly and fiercely that it's causing backlash. I'd bet that by slowing this restriction, we'd reduce the chance of social and governmental conflicts arising from swift social change. Banning facebook would do this.
  - bmelton 6y ago
motohagiography 6y ago
For island nations, it's not as bad an idea as it might sound. For all the bullshit about connectedness, the basic physical human urge social media stimulates is for conflict. All the other things like sentimentality, status signalling, attention seeking, are parts of the underlying addiction to conflict because in a lot of hind-brains, that sensation represents opportunity. It's a vice. Outright bans are clumsy, but imposing a cost or bar to entry, like most societies do with alcohol and drugs, might be constructive. I'm tired of meeting friends and family in person and listening to them spend 20mins one-way unloading all the shit they read on the internet. They're so indexed on things that aren't physically present in the moment it's like talking someone through a psychosis or reasoning with someone with schizophrenia. It's a mass hysteria machine. When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. We've basically invented language cancer, nice one guys.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > language cancer Verbal coronavirus. Snow Crash was rather ahead of its time on this, although derailed by the author infodumping ancient Sumeria in the middle.
  - garbagetime 6y ago
    The info-dump was one of the few enjoyable parts of the book.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. It's what they call a humanoid interface to the Data Integration Thought Entity.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    I can't imagine Yuki Nagato getting all her news from Facebook.
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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MikusR 6y ago
Definitely not because of " A few weeks ago, the Solomon Islands Government faced criticism over documents leaked on Facebook that showed how COVID-19 funds for economic recovery had been spent. Ruth Liloqula, the head of the anti-corruption group Transparency Solomon Islands, said she believed such leaks were the real reason behind the ban, which she said was "an indication that our Government is becoming very authoritarian". "
- kanox 6y ago
  This is a textbook example of an authoritarian government banning media outlets that allow criticism. It's unbelievable that anyone can hate Facebook so much that they side with authoritarian regimes.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    It is a shame only authoritarian regimes dare enforce local laws regarding Facebook. There has to be some local shell company to sue?
  - kordlessagain 6y ago
    Facebook is an unstoppable entity we all "hope" will do the right thing by us. But, the reality is that it and all the people beholden to it will do whatever it takes to stay operating.
    - forest_dweller 6y ago
      A corporation is much easier to get away from than a government. With a corporation you have a choice in whether you want to deal with them. Government not so much.
      - jen20 6y ago
        This is a quaint idea, and I’m sure it was true once. However, in the world of shadow profiles and invasive tracking techniques, it must also be easy to decide whether you want _the corporation to deal with you_, and it is simply not.
numair 6y ago
Before everyone calls this insane and reactionary, please do remember that Facebook has teams of employees who actively court favor with local politicians and help them craft social media campaigns for election / re-election. There is a LOT hidden behind the curtain. This isn’t like your mom telling you that you’re not allowed to go on MySpace.
relativeadv 6y ago
I think its cool to see extreme measures like this. There are so many books, articles, videos, and podcasts out there now espousing the perils of social media but when it comes to solutions they all wind up with the same measured response of "everything in moderation, including moderation. just be careful. turn off notifications!" Just nuke the fuckers from your life and you're be so much better for it.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  And burn the books, and keep out all the foreign newspapers!
  - varjag 6y ago
    facebook isn't really a book
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- racl101 6y ago
  Yeah that's nice, except this looks like a case of government trying to prevent people from having a form of communication to express discourse about the shady actions of that very government.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  >Just nuke the fuckers from your life and you're be so much better for it. Autocratic regimes the world over approve this message.
  - vixen99 6y ago
    In all fairness, the words are 'in your life' not everyone else's though I suppose that might not be what was meant.
forest_dweller 6y ago
I did a quick google search as there was scant detail in the actual article itself. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/17/solomon-islands-government-preparing-to-ban-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/17/solomon-island... Some things that stood out to me: > Facebook has also been cited as a factor in riots that gripped the capital, Honiara, in 2019. The social media platform was alight with anti-government rhetoric in the days after Sogavare’s election and was used by rioters to organise and congregate. > But observers say China has influenced the government’s decision. Facebook has been, officially at least, banned in China for more than a decade. > In September 2019 Solomon Islands switched from recognising Taiwan to instead embrace diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Solomons are home to a significant Chinese population and Beijing’s influence in the Melanesian archipelago – with the exception of Malaita, the most populous island and which remains loyal to Taiwan – has been steadily growing. The guardian also has a link to a solomon times article: https://www.solomontimes.com/news/solomon-islands-cabinet-passes-ban-on-facebook/10421 https://www.solomontimes.com/news/solomon-islands-cabinet-pa... > Minister Agovaka told Solomon Times Online (STO) that this temporary ban was made because of the controversial issues raised via Facebook. > “Abusive languages against Ministers, Prime Minister, character assasination, defamation of character, all these are issues of concerns”, Agovaka says.
varispeed 6y ago
Banning something never works. It only puts less able people in disadvantage. If they want to stop people from using Facebook, maybe they should invest in more transparent media and look why people prefer to use Facebook over different means of communication. If you want to ban something, it means that you assume that you know better than everyone else and that's a breeding ground for fascism. If you ban one thing, why not banning another? Power is a drug.
known 6y ago
TRUTH is always suppressed in the name of trust/loyalty/compliance/privacy/conspiracy/discipline/patriotism/sedition/job/national security/unity/intellectual property
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  I am not sure why the need to capitalize but although I disagree with a ban, it is also a huge misrepresentation to argue that Facebook of all platforms is somehow a vehicle for the truth (Whichever truth you choose). If anything it amplifies quite the opposite.
worldmerge 6y ago
I read the article and this seems just like government testing the waters for larger censorship plans. On the topic of Facebook: I've found a lot more instances extremism, divisiveness, and large groups attacking people/companies on Twitter and Reddit.
kanox 6y ago
It's sad that we're so far down the slippery slope of censorship that people are cheering for authoritarian governments.
cambalache 6y ago
90% of my comments here are bashing Facebook, Zuckerberg and similar, but I will oppose with equal force any attempt of a cleptocratic government to censor to stop people exposing their shitty actions.
- woutr_be 6y ago
  I truly don’t understand this. People are so opposed to governments adding more and more censorship, especially when it comes to China and what has been happening in HK. And now, they’re almost cheering this as a good thing, just because their hatred for Facebook. It seems people are okay with arbitrarily deciding we can ban websites, as long as they support that decision. How is that any different from a dictatorship deciding what their people can and can’t see?
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Because we in general are pretty bad having universally aplicable moral standards. We are tribal apes after all.
legulere 6y ago
Most governments cannot get illegal content off Facebook, in the meanwhile extremists find safe spaces in Facebook Groups to plan terrorist attacks, genocides and other horrible things with facebook stealing away from its responsibility. The US barely manages to cope with the damage Facebook does. How do you think this is for small island nations? Banning Facebook is entirely reasonable and more countries should follow.
deleted 6y ago
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throwsofaraway 6y ago
Here are some facts before you make any conclusions based on a cursory reading of a news article: - ABC News Australia is funded by the Australian government - There are Facebook groups named "Hate China" in support of Honk Kong, these groups are free to operate, why are they not removed under hate speech laws? [0] [1] - Separatists (Anti-Communists if you read NYT) use social media platforms to create violent mobs, beating anyone in support of Hong Kong unity [2] [3] - Facebook bans groups and individuals in the US almost immediately if they lean far-right or otherwise disagree with establish norms set by organizations like SPLC (not laws) - Facebook and Google see themselves as stop gap to prevent bad ideas from forming in the first place or "to prevent the next Trump situation." [4] - Facebook spies on millions of Americans and sells that information, what would it do to the citizens of a foreign nation? [0] https://www.facebook.com/hate.china/ https://www.facebook.com/hate.china/ [1] https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/We-hate-China-529966657164014/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/We-hate-Ch... [2] https://www.facebook.com/leeminhohkpalace/videos/813206585716130 https://www.facebook.com/leeminhohkpalace/videos/81320658571... [3] https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/videos/2452021925065490 https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/videos/2452021925065490 [4] https://www.facebook.com/ProjectVeritas/videos/2445258202376795/ https://www.facebook.com/ProjectVeritas/videos/2445258202376...
deleted 6y ago
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OscarTheGrinch 6y ago
It would be really interesting if this resulted in a natural A/B experiment, i.e. by comparing the Solomon's with another pacific island group, we could tease apart social phenomena like cohesion, polarisation, distracted parenting etc. Shit would get real if we could compare two larger nations, Hungary and Poland for example, to see if any negative effects could be reversed. Of course FB will come up with all manner of excuses why they can't possibly do this, but here is the rub: if their products were actually good for society they should want to do this sort of research.
- IngvarLynn 6y ago
  I believe humanity had enough of nation-scale a/b tests in just single 20th century. Is it time to draw some conclusions? Nah, noone needs that, also boring. And testing is so much fun!
- Cyclone_ 6y ago
  It would be nice to be able to do some A/B testing with Facebook, but I don't think it would work on a nation to nation basis. There's too many other factors involved. It would be more interesting to try on a very local basis, e.g. if every other house in a small city had Facebook.
madhadron 6y ago
This is going to be a bit of a problem for me. I've been working on putting together a computer lab for a school on one of the remote Solomon Islands (as in, fly to Honiara, take a small plane to Lata, then charter a boat for a couple days). Our primary contact lives part of the year in Honiara, and Facebook Messenger is his best means of contact, since it works when almost nothing else, including email, does out there. People underestimate just how good Facebook's network (computer network, not social network) is.
- tubularhells 6y ago
  I call bullshit. We have email, telegram, signal. There are so many ways to communicate. Messenger goes through but email doesn't? What's your agenda here?
  - madhadron 6y ago
    <shrugs> I haven't been there. This is what I have been told by the folks I'm dealing with over there. Mind you the island itself doesn't haven't anything.
- bryan_w 6y ago
  Give whatsapp a try. Doesn't seem to be under the block, lightweight client, made for poor network areas, shares FB infra (as it's owned by FB)
jeffrallen 6y ago
I've basically banned it for family unity, so why not?
- nickpp 6y ago
  Because the rules that apply inside a family are different from the ones that apply at society level.
02020202 6y ago
reasons do not matter. this is VERY good. more countries NEED to do this. facebook is cancer, just like twatter and instahoe.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Good move! Every country should actively block foreign propaganda and information harvesting.
thelicx 6y ago
Elon should expand the Starlink beta program to the Solomon Islands
tubularhells 6y ago
I wish the EU banned their shit as well. We have other means of communication. We don't need US companies influencing our lives & decision making.
rootsudo 6y ago
Wow!
hardsoftnfloppy 6y ago
Good. If only I could convince all of the morons I care about to do the same.
anshumankmr 6y ago
Why can't Facebook just have a membership fee? I don't mind paying a small amount. It would drastically reduce their user base but it might just be better for society as bot accounts would be difficult to make, younger children with responsible parents won't be able to join (it's a monstrous website that is full of frauds, conspiracy theorists etc and children shouldn't use it IMO ). I know it's wishful thinking.

653 points by hentrep 6y ago

0goel0 6y ago

Good.

whoisjuan 6y ago
How is good that a government is banning Facebook to control narrative about their corruption? I really don't understand the Hacker News crowd sometimes.

mikece 6y ago

How did memes, misinformation, fake news and cyber bullying propagate before Facebook and other forms of social media? I know it happened but I don't remember it being such a high-profile issue.

jansan 6y ago
I existed in the early days of the internet, but it was more genuine and it wasn't used to manipulate people and there were no gatekeepers or editors who decided what informations is visible or hidden.
- oblio 6y ago
  That's so naive :-))) Check out all the censorship laws in the past and even present. Content ratings, censorship committees present even today in many countries, including democratic ones. Just for fun, check out how many pictures of Roosevelt showing him as a cripple you can find ;-)
- pjc50 6y ago
  Books were routinely banned in the UK until the 1960s; this basically ended with the Lady Chatterly trial at which the ridiculousness became apparent.
vxNsr 6y ago
email chains. Super long email chains that you had to scroll really far down to actually see the content
- mikece 6y ago
  I suppose newsgroups might have been a vector for that -- it's where we got the term "flame wars" though I think the popularity of those waned quite a bit by the late 90s.
ISL 6y ago
Once upon a time, it was called gossip.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  Gossip spread much slower.
  - mfer 6y ago
    Wasn't just gossip. It was propaganda, too. We are in the golden age of propaganda due to the pervasiveness or our communications technology and the alert/addictive nature of the communications technology.
  - brlewis 6y ago
    It probably spread at a similar rate relative to how fast truth spread at the time. Lots of old quotes about falsehood spreading faster than truth: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/
0x445442 6y ago
Newsgroups, IRC, Email Lists, Blogs... The biggest change is the creation of the term cyber bullying. In the "old" days one just didn't pay attention to opinions they disagreed with. Now they seek government to impose draconian censorship on opinions they don't agree with.
- Raffers 6y ago
  When you have documented cases of, primarily teens. Taking their own lives due to these interactions. Then it becomes a bit more than "opinions they don't agree with" & crosses into full on harassment.
- darkcha0s 6y ago
  >In the "old" days one just didn't pay attention to opinions they disagreed with. Now they seek government to impose draconian censorship on opinions they don't agree with Excuse me for sounding daft, but I think the intensity with which you are confronted with these opinions has changed drastically. I think you're purposefully being a bit ignorant here; no one (viz: 'they') wants to cancel opinions they disagree with. However to think that false information has the same platform today that it had 50 years ago is also just plain wrong-- and whether you agree with it or not, it does shape the public discourse these days. Unless you want to erode discussions to a point where its a battle of who can fabricate the biggest claim (true or not), you're going to have to accept that in a modern information society we will eventually need some form of controls. Case in point: https://twitter.com/0x445442 https://twitter.com/0x445442 (Seems you have a problem with "Leftists" and like to retweet right wing tweets)
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    Sorry, but posting this guy's Twitter doesn't prove anything. These are _opinions_ he's posting, and it's the responsibility of other people to decide if they care about these opinions or not. Back in the day, the internet just laughed at "stupid people". Now it tries to ruin their lives for daring to say something edgy. "Information controls" is one of the most horrific concepts I've ever heard of.
pizza234 6y ago
They did spread, but significantly slower and with less exposure - communication nowadays is fast and pervasive.
cecja 6y ago
The thing is before facebook, instagram and youtube communication was mostly text based. With the advancing broadband capabilities, smartphones and easier to use software our communication shitfted to a more picture based form of communication and as we all know... one picture says more than thousand words AND it transports hate easier.
chippy 6y ago
The assumption that memes, misinformation, fake news and cyber bullying are propagating at a higher rate than before and is a new problem could be reviewed. It's probably an extension of advertising, behaviour modification and outright propaganda (including agit-prop). Previously newspapers, magazines and televisions were used. Would Facebook etc be giving rise to a new phenomena or is it an existing one in new clothes? Hoaxes are a good subject to look at, like the dead alien hoax. How did a hoax spread before the Internet? Assuming new things are spreading, how can we make a vaccine to protect people against hoaxes and fake news but not against advertising, manipulation, behaviour modification and necessary government propaganda?
pjc50 6y ago
You'd enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion... ; published in 1841, but covering events of previous centuries. It covers everything from stock bubbles to catchphrase memes that appeared in London and everyone was saying for a few months before they were forgotten.
rtkwe 6y ago
Forums, email chains, IRC, Usenet, etc. there's several things that make it more potent and spread faster now. For starters the internet is less balkanized, social media platforms are magnitudes larger than the largest forums ever were so an idea can just spread faster and further than before. Email chains could approximate the reach but other factors meant they were less potent and also I think people had fewer emails known in their address books than they generally have friends on social media though I don't have any numbers to back up that gut feeling. Although things are just randomly shared outside of social nets by social media algorithms so that would also help it jump outside of limited social groups too. Next the medium is just inherently more engaging now that photo and video are first class citizens on the major platforms, they're way more attention grabbing and engaging than a wall of text could hope to be. Also I think fundamentally there's an imbalance between how easy it is to lie and to debunk a lie and how much each of those will spread. A lie is exciting/angering and people will spread it much faster than the 800 word debunk that explains just how full of crap the lie was (and often how the person spreading it is using it as a trojan horse for other shittier ideas). "Everything you know about X is wrong" spreads faster than "No most of what you knew was basically right and here's the history of X," it's shocking and new vs familiar and old. Finally I think there's a fair amount of blame on the structure of *feeds and the algorithms that place things on them. It optimizes for salacious, shocking content that gets people to share it because that's what the algorithm selects for (roughly), things that keep users on the site so more ad impressions can be served. Add to that bad actors willing to lie and twist the truth to make money and a decade or so of Darwinian corporate evolution and you've got a pretty nasty combo.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  > also I think people had fewer emails known in their address books than they generally have friends on social media though I don't have any numbers to back up that gut feeling. This is the bottom line. Back in the day you'd join a forum over a particular topic or hobby. Everyone had screen names. Moderation was tight, if there was politics it was confined to a single area that was easily avoided. You only saw "links" to "topics" that included images, not images. Now with social media, people share images, memes, quotes, posts, etc. But while before that could be confined to one particular area and wasn't visible with fully anonymous screen names, now you see a real person that you know saying it, in your feed. It makes it feel more real. And get this - 50 people liked it and shared it themselves. Where Facebook's brilliance comes in - is that it gamed the process of popularity. Most want to have as many "friends" as possible at first, they see old people they knew and want to see what they're up to, want to be popular, etc. But they don't realize that they really just don't want to get to know that many people that well. Some people are insane, some are borderline white supremacists, some are borderline anarchists. Before you never saw that side of people often. Now it's right in your face. My advice? use social media for what it was originally designed for - staying in touch with friends you actually care about. Not politics. And mute/remove any friend who cares more about their agenda than seeing a good friend's cool vacation or neat artwork or cute newborn.

akudha 6y ago

I loathe Facebook, but I don't see how this is going to help. It might help a bit in the short term, but will it really help long term? Even if it does, how many social networks are they going to ban? Surely someone else will take Facebook's place? Personally I will be happy if Facebook goes away, but I don't know if this is the right way to do it.

Darmody 6y ago
I agree. Will Twitter be available? Because in some cases is even worse. Will they ban every social network? If so, what criteria will they use to flag a website as social network? I think their premise is correct. Facebook is bad. But their solution doesn't make sense.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Better than waiting for Facebook to regulate itself or a national government to regulate it away, which might never happen. Incremental progress with the tools available to you.
- conductr 6y ago
  Ignoring likely political motivations. I’d say you’re correct, technically, but if you have a bias for action this is what is available to you.
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
The overton window is the range of acceptable topics of discussion in society, and is largely determined by a social network's size and diversity. The larger and more diverse a network is, the more likely a statement is to offend someone. Many of the social issues we see are caused by the overton window narrowing so quickly and fiercely that it's causing backlash. I'd bet that by slowing this restriction, we'd reduce the chance of social and governmental conflicts arising from swift social change. Banning facebook would do this.
- bmelton 6y ago

motohagiography 6y ago

For island nations, it's not as bad an idea as it might sound. For all the bullshit about connectedness, the basic physical human urge social media stimulates is for conflict. All the other things like sentimentality, status signalling, attention seeking, are parts of the underlying addiction to conflict because in a lot of hind-brains, that sensation represents opportunity. It's a vice. Outright bans are clumsy, but imposing a cost or bar to entry, like most societies do with alcohol and drugs, might be constructive. I'm tired of meeting friends and family in person and listening to them spend 20mins one-way unloading all the shit they read on the internet. They're so indexed on things that aren't physically present in the moment it's like talking someone through a psychosis or reasoning with someone with schizophrenia. It's a mass hysteria machine. When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. We've basically invented language cancer, nice one guys.

pjc50 6y ago
> language cancer Verbal coronavirus. Snow Crash was rather ahead of its time on this, although derailed by the author infodumping ancient Sumeria in the middle.
- garbagetime 6y ago
  The info-dump was one of the few enjoyable parts of the book.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. It's what they call a humanoid interface to the Data Integration Thought Entity.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  I can't imagine Yuki Nagato getting all her news from Facebook.
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MikusR 6y ago

Definitely not because of " A few weeks ago, the Solomon Islands Government faced criticism over documents leaked on Facebook that showed how COVID-19 funds for economic recovery had been spent. Ruth Liloqula, the head of the anti-corruption group Transparency Solomon Islands, said she believed such leaks were the real reason behind the ban, which she said was "an indication that our Government is becoming very authoritarian". "

kanox 6y ago
This is a textbook example of an authoritarian government banning media outlets that allow criticism. It's unbelievable that anyone can hate Facebook so much that they side with authoritarian regimes.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  It is a shame only authoritarian regimes dare enforce local laws regarding Facebook. There has to be some local shell company to sue?
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  Facebook is an unstoppable entity we all "hope" will do the right thing by us. But, the reality is that it and all the people beholden to it will do whatever it takes to stay operating.
  - forest_dweller 6y ago
    A corporation is much easier to get away from than a government. With a corporation you have a choice in whether you want to deal with them. Government not so much.
    - jen20 6y ago
      This is a quaint idea, and I’m sure it was true once. However, in the world of shadow profiles and invasive tracking techniques, it must also be easy to decide whether you want _the corporation to deal with you_, and it is simply not.

numair 6y ago

Before everyone calls this insane and reactionary, please do remember that Facebook has teams of employees who actively court favor with local politicians and help them craft social media campaigns for election / re-election. There is a LOT hidden behind the curtain. This isn’t like your mom telling you that you’re not allowed to go on MySpace.

relativeadv 6y ago

I think its cool to see extreme measures like this. There are so many books, articles, videos, and podcasts out there now espousing the perils of social media but when it comes to solutions they all wind up with the same measured response of "everything in moderation, including moderation. just be careful. turn off notifications!" Just nuke the fuckers from your life and you're be so much better for it.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
And burn the books, and keep out all the foreign newspapers!
- varjag 6y ago
  facebook isn't really a book
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racl101 6y ago
Yeah that's nice, except this looks like a case of government trying to prevent people from having a form of communication to express discourse about the shady actions of that very government.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
>Just nuke the fuckers from your life and you're be so much better for it. Autocratic regimes the world over approve this message.
- vixen99 6y ago
  In all fairness, the words are 'in your life' not everyone else's though I suppose that might not be what was meant.

forest_dweller 6y ago

I did a quick google search as there was scant detail in the actual article itself. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/17/solomon-islands-government-preparing-to-ban-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/17/solomon-island... Some things that stood out to me: > Facebook has also been cited as a factor in riots that gripped the capital, Honiara, in 2019. The social media platform was alight with anti-government rhetoric in the days after Sogavare’s election and was used by rioters to organise and congregate. > But observers say China has influenced the government’s decision. Facebook has been, officially at least, banned in China for more than a decade. > In September 2019 Solomon Islands switched from recognising Taiwan to instead embrace diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Solomons are home to a significant Chinese population and Beijing’s influence in the Melanesian archipelago – with the exception of Malaita, the most populous island and which remains loyal to Taiwan – has been steadily growing. The guardian also has a link to a solomon times article: https://www.solomontimes.com/news/solomon-islands-cabinet-passes-ban-on-facebook/10421 https://www.solomontimes.com/news/solomon-islands-cabinet-pa... > Minister Agovaka told Solomon Times Online (STO) that this temporary ban was made because of the controversial issues raised via Facebook. > “Abusive languages against Ministers, Prime Minister, character assasination, defamation of character, all these are issues of concerns”, Agovaka says.

varispeed 6y ago

Banning something never works. It only puts less able people in disadvantage. If they want to stop people from using Facebook, maybe they should invest in more transparent media and look why people prefer to use Facebook over different means of communication. If you want to ban something, it means that you assume that you know better than everyone else and that's a breeding ground for fascism. If you ban one thing, why not banning another? Power is a drug.

known 6y ago

TRUTH is always suppressed in the name of trust/loyalty/compliance/privacy/conspiracy/discipline/patriotism/sedition/job/national security/unity/intellectual property

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
I am not sure why the need to capitalize but although I disagree with a ban, it is also a huge misrepresentation to argue that Facebook of all platforms is somehow a vehicle for the truth (Whichever truth you choose). If anything it amplifies quite the opposite.

worldmerge 6y ago

I read the article and this seems just like government testing the waters for larger censorship plans. On the topic of Facebook: I've found a lot more instances extremism, divisiveness, and large groups attacking people/companies on Twitter and Reddit.

kanox 6y ago

It's sad that we're so far down the slippery slope of censorship that people are cheering for authoritarian governments.

cambalache 6y ago

90% of my comments here are bashing Facebook, Zuckerberg and similar, but I will oppose with equal force any attempt of a cleptocratic government to censor to stop people exposing their shitty actions.

woutr_be 6y ago
I truly don’t understand this. People are so opposed to governments adding more and more censorship, especially when it comes to China and what has been happening in HK. And now, they’re almost cheering this as a good thing, just because their hatred for Facebook. It seems people are okay with arbitrarily deciding we can ban websites, as long as they support that decision. How is that any different from a dictatorship deciding what their people can and can’t see?
- cambalache 6y ago
  Because we in general are pretty bad having universally aplicable moral standards. We are tribal apes after all.

legulere 6y ago

Most governments cannot get illegal content off Facebook, in the meanwhile extremists find safe spaces in Facebook Groups to plan terrorist attacks, genocides and other horrible things with facebook stealing away from its responsibility. The US barely manages to cope with the damage Facebook does. How do you think this is for small island nations? Banning Facebook is entirely reasonable and more countries should follow.

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throwsofaraway 6y ago

Here are some facts before you make any conclusions based on a cursory reading of a news article: - ABC News Australia is funded by the Australian government - There are Facebook groups named "Hate China" in support of Honk Kong, these groups are free to operate, why are they not removed under hate speech laws? [0] [1] - Separatists (Anti-Communists if you read NYT) use social media platforms to create violent mobs, beating anyone in support of Hong Kong unity [2] [3] - Facebook bans groups and individuals in the US almost immediately if they lean far-right or otherwise disagree with establish norms set by organizations like SPLC (not laws) - Facebook and Google see themselves as stop gap to prevent bad ideas from forming in the first place or "to prevent the next Trump situation." [4] - Facebook spies on millions of Americans and sells that information, what would it do to the citizens of a foreign nation? [0] https://www.facebook.com/hate.china/ https://www.facebook.com/hate.china/ [1] https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/We-hate-China-529966657164014/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/We-hate-Ch... [2] https://www.facebook.com/leeminhohkpalace/videos/813206585716130 https://www.facebook.com/leeminhohkpalace/videos/81320658571... [3] https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/videos/2452021925065490 https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/videos/2452021925065490 [4] https://www.facebook.com/ProjectVeritas/videos/2445258202376795/ https://www.facebook.com/ProjectVeritas/videos/2445258202376...

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OscarTheGrinch 6y ago

It would be really interesting if this resulted in a natural A/B experiment, i.e. by comparing the Solomon's with another pacific island group, we could tease apart social phenomena like cohesion, polarisation, distracted parenting etc. Shit would get real if we could compare two larger nations, Hungary and Poland for example, to see if any negative effects could be reversed. Of course FB will come up with all manner of excuses why they can't possibly do this, but here is the rub: if their products were actually good for society they should want to do this sort of research.

IngvarLynn 6y ago
I believe humanity had enough of nation-scale a/b tests in just single 20th century. Is it time to draw some conclusions? Nah, noone needs that, also boring. And testing is so much fun!
Cyclone_ 6y ago
It would be nice to be able to do some A/B testing with Facebook, but I don't think it would work on a nation to nation basis. There's too many other factors involved. It would be more interesting to try on a very local basis, e.g. if every other house in a small city had Facebook.

madhadron 6y ago

This is going to be a bit of a problem for me. I've been working on putting together a computer lab for a school on one of the remote Solomon Islands (as in, fly to Honiara, take a small plane to Lata, then charter a boat for a couple days). Our primary contact lives part of the year in Honiara, and Facebook Messenger is his best means of contact, since it works when almost nothing else, including email, does out there. People underestimate just how good Facebook's network (computer network, not social network) is.

tubularhells 6y ago
I call bullshit. We have email, telegram, signal. There are so many ways to communicate. Messenger goes through but email doesn't? What's your agenda here?
- madhadron 6y ago
  <shrugs> I haven't been there. This is what I have been told by the folks I'm dealing with over there. Mind you the island itself doesn't haven't anything.
bryan_w 6y ago
Give whatsapp a try. Doesn't seem to be under the block, lightweight client, made for poor network areas, shares FB infra (as it's owned by FB)

jeffrallen 6y ago

I've basically banned it for family unity, so why not?

nickpp 6y ago
Because the rules that apply inside a family are different from the ones that apply at society level.

02020202 6y ago

reasons do not matter. this is VERY good. more countries NEED to do this. facebook is cancer, just like twatter and instahoe.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

Good move! Every country should actively block foreign propaganda and information harvesting.

thelicx 6y ago

Elon should expand the Starlink beta program to the Solomon Islands

tubularhells 6y ago

I wish the EU banned their shit as well. We have other means of communication. We don't need US companies influencing our lives & decision making.

rootsudo 6y ago

Wow!

hardsoftnfloppy 6y ago

Good. If only I could convince all of the morons I care about to do the same.

anshumankmr 6y ago

Why can't Facebook just have a membership fee? I don't mind paying a small amount. It would drastically reduce their user base but it might just be better for society as bot accounts would be difficult to make, younger children with responsible parents won't be able to join (it's a monstrous website that is full of frauds, conspiracy theorists etc and children shouldn't use it IMO ). I know it's wishful thinking.