36 ms·

We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

283 points by imartin2k 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
It's troubling to me that censorship is being set up as the narrative savior of a free society, when in fact just the opposite is true.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 6y ago
  Any measure for success, when used as a target, becomes a bad measure. Freedom of speech is a measure of a free society, if you make freedom of speech the target and insist on maximising it without limit, then boring complicated truths are overwhelmed by simplistic emotionally engaging lies. I don’t know where to aim, exactly, only that the real target is whatever freedom of speech is for — call it X because I’m not confident I know what X is. To the extent freedom of speech and X are aligned, aiming for whatever X is will also enable as much free speech as possible.
  - sneak 6y ago
    This sounds to me like mental gymnastics to justify censorship on the grounds that lies are more popular than the truth, as if this is some new development that Facebook just recently made possible. Lies have always been more popular than the truth. Observe that billions of people are entirely convinced that there is an invisible and omniscient wizard residing in the sky, watching them. The majority of people believing false things is dangerous, to be sure. Appointing censors is a naive and harmful approach to solving that problem, counterintuitively. Uncensored communications tools are how we fix that issue, despite the fact that fearful people will look at some of the short term effects and foolishly conclude that it's making things worse, focusing on antivaxxers and the like while ignoring the rise in global literacy and scientific progress and achievement.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      It sounds like you’re aggressively agreeing with me, and the closest you get to disagreement is: > Appointing censors is a naive and harmful approach to solving that problem, counterintuitively. But even then I would happily accept even the part that it is “naive” to appoint censors (I am calling for something much more subtle). These two things are close, but not perfectly so. “Free speech = free society” has been a good approximation for most of history even despite a majority believing in falsehoods. But the difference is there. Facebook per se isn’t the problem, I think; I would blame everyone who uses A.I. on large populations, testing and refining what is most likely to be shared without consideration as it “sounds about right” while pushing a particular narrative (in Facebook’s case the goal is “money”; others, including those who use Facebook as their means for this testing, have political rather than financial agendas). Facebook is just one of many doing that, the A.I. genie is well out of the bottle, and conversely Facebook could exist without that A.I. optimising for something we don’t really want. However, despite that being the only point where I think you’re actively disagreeing with me, I disagree with your new point here: > look at some of the short term effects and foolishly conclude that it's making things worse, focusing on antivaxxers and the like while ignoring the rise in global literacy and scientific progress and achievement. These are separate dimensions of what I consider a good society. China is part of the rise in those two, yet lacks free speech. Does it lack all the things which free speech is a good proxy for? I don’t know; but it does lack free speech.
- XorNot 6y ago
  You don't have the freedom of speech you describe on Hacker News at all.
  - sneak 6y ago
    What did I describe, and where?
- gjulianm 6y ago
  There are alternative solutions to censorship. Censorship would just be a patch, and not even enough for the problems Facebook and other social media is creating. The issue is that Facebook has completely changed the incentives for what type of speech gets the most exposure. Now the contents of the speech do not matter, nor the source, nor whether it is true or useful or anything. Instead the metric is how much "engagement" it can create. Facebook will, by design, show on your timeline a lie that creates comments before a truth that doesn't. And it will do this time and time again, and the effect of the repeated exposures to lies is that even if you don't believe them, you will start doubting. Society can't keep up with that. It isn't just that there are people with polarized opinions, it's that you have people with completely different views of reality. Propping up lies is incredibly easy, and doing the necessary research to disprove those lies and spread the result is orders of magnitude more difficult. It's impossible to keep up the rhythm. The solution is not censorship, the solution is to force these companies to change those incentives. Stop with the automatic suggestions to get more engagement, stop showing content to people who didn't explicitly subscribe to it, stop the uncontrolled spread of content of any type. We can live without viral memes, we can't without a functioning society.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  The most pessimistic and paranoid commentators saw this coming back when the "fake news" and "fact checking" narratives were being ramped up, and it seems they were right.
- jpttsn 6y ago
  Yup, and it's interesting to ponder why this narrative gains ground. Especially if we take at face value the claims that undue influence has been exerted for the past few years to ruin free society.
exdsq 6y ago
How can freedom of speech be the downfall of democracy? Surely Facebook and democracy can coexist if we get better at teaching people to think for themselves? I don’t like the idea democracy can only survive if governments censor and remove platforms for spreading information (however false that may be).
- contravariant 6y ago
  The central point of the article is that Facebook is not free. Yes you can have free speech and democracy but free speech becomes rather more difficult when its biggest medium is a privately controlled monopoly. Fake-news and the like aren't mentioned in the article.
  - rimliu 6y ago
    Was TV and radio ever free in that sense then?
    - contravariant 6y ago
      In most countries, as far as I'm aware, TV started out as a government controlled medium, which has its own problems but is definitely not privately owned. And to the best of my knowledge there's still nothing preventing you from buying radio bandwidth. It's not really my area though so I could be wrong.
  - exdsq 6y ago
    But why does it become more difficult when it's centralised by numerous tech companies and not by numerous media organisations or the government itself? I don't see why FB is any different except it's easier for anyone to share stuff, and I don't see why that stuff should be a risk to democracy.
    - MonAlternatiu 6y ago
      Many reasons. - For one when a news article is incorrect it is very easy to hold accountable the source of that information. How many people keep track of who said what on the internet? - Fake Information takes more time to respond to than true information. False news travels 6 times faster (..) than truthful news [0]. - Media has a cycle of information that is way slower and more curated (even if manipulative) which allows true information to be heard louder. - It's becoming easier and easier to fake image, video, and audio in a way never seen before [1]. - It's way easier for platforms like FB and Twitter and YT to make you spiral down a rabbit hole of similar content. Sure, this did happen in the past, but the current level of detailed recommendations makes it really easy for people to lose context inside their bubble. - People are not machines, if they hear a message many times by different sources that trigger the right emotional responses they will believe it to be true. Now group every point and compound it by a lot of consumption and ingest it into monkey-like brains :) [0]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/false-news-travels-6-times-faster-on-twitter-than-truthful-news https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/false-news-travels-6-ti... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo
waihtis 6y ago
Does anyone actually enjoy this kind of writing style where the author constantly blows their own trumpet? The introductionary text is borderline satire.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Journalists tend to have an over-inflated sense of self-importance. They even created an entire section of society for themselves ("The Fourth Estate") because being a commoner wasn't good enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
mhoad 6y ago
The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/the-report https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/the-report We already have rules regarding what we consider to be acceptable both in general society and in a legal context with regards to free speech so the line in the sand already exists. Trying to wave away this debate by just shouting “censorship” contributes nothing meaningful to a debate that is sorely missing from society. Edit: There are some interesting points in the replies that I think could be answered with some clarifications. I think there is something that is very unique about social media specifically that should have a higher standard about it than other forms of speech. My argument is not at all about trying to force "the one acceptable point of view" or anything like that. History has a long long list of ideas that were once considered dangerous that not only stood the test of time but instead became something much more and in order to continue having that diversity of opinion is generally a good thing. There are fundamental problems with how the economics of a social media platform function. Never before has a tool existed that allowed everyone to broadcast any unfiltered thought they had to everyone else in the world with basically zero effort. Furthermore, they can do this both anonymously and without any kind of repercussion. That sounds great in theory as some libertarian fantasy where you might expect the "marketplace of ideas" to take care of everything and the cream would rise to the top. The reality of what that looks like in 2020 however is actually very different and I think now would be a great time to have that discussion about what guardrails we can all generally agree on that would address some of the many downsides that have come out of this experiment so far. All of the current iterations of major social networks came pretty much exclusively from a group of people who had zero background in anything then Computer Science. At no point have we reached out to groups like sociologists, ethicists, historians, psychologists or anyone else who might have some really valuable thoughts on how to arrange anonymous social interactions in a way that might not devolve into the shit fight we have on our hands currently. As an example Facebook was started by a guy who by all accounts is not exactly known for having great social skills where he could rate women on campus. Twitter is a platform that purposely doesn't allow for nuance. I think they were both a terrible starting point and that perhaps we should rethink what social media COULD look like from the ground up and learning from all of the mistakes we made with it the first time around.
Mysterise 6y ago
I think the "Facebook bad" horse has been beaten down to Earth's inner core. Yes, Facebook has its downsides just as any other social platform would. Yes, you can live without it. But I don't believe that the negatives Facebook has enabled comes close to the utility it has provided to society.
- danjac 6y ago
  I'm sure it's a comfort to the victims of the Rohingya genocide that your mother has a platform to share photos of her grandkids.
  - necovek 6y ago
    You seem to suggest that Facebook itself is to blame for that, and not the people interacting on it. Previously, mass manipulation was only available to really rich and powerful, or states versed in it. Now it's available to much smaller and less sophisticated actors. But I don't think that's an issue, the issue is that manipulation is acceptable at all, and how we can draw the new, better line there? (Looking at you too, Marketing)
  - primroot 6y ago
    In that case, why not blame Hillary Clinton for normalizing relations with the genocidal state, so that American corporations could have access to a new market?
- paganel 6y ago
  It is "bad" only because the right people cannot control it as easily, it was "good" 8-9 years ago when the good people (or the countries that they controlled/lead at the time) were using Facebook against "bad" people (i.e. Arab Spring).
- swiley 6y ago
  What utility is that exactly? I don't think I've benefited from having a Facebook account at all, though I hardly use it.
- eptcyka 6y ago
Hokusai 6y ago
There article is reasonable and it just asks to apply laws that already exist. I am surprised how much false advertising is allowed on all this platforms. Chinese counterfeit products sold on Amazon, Russian state propaganda promoted by Facebook, ... The judicial system and the law need to catch-up with new technologies. USA companies are becoming less competitive and more hostile to its own users and costumers. USA in general has an increasing image problem as many people defend to lie and scam customers. Trust is extremely important for a well functioning society and even more to do business.
inglor_cz 6y ago
These headline dichotomies have a tendency to be utterly false. Even after a successful antitrust action and forced division, Facebook would likely stay Facebook, only minus Instagram, WhatsApp and possibly other current appendages.
feralimal 6y ago
Yuck. Neither democracy nor facebook, thanks. Nor any nannying or moralising about hate speech. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. Or you.
- firepoet 6y ago
  Boy do I hate that phrase. It's absolutely incorrect from a neuroscience perspective. Words can in fact hurt you, and, depending on circumstances, cause long term psychological damage. Here's a place to start to learn more if you want: https://www.td.org/insights/the-neuroscience-of-reward-and-threat https://www.td.org/insights/the-neuroscience-of-reward-and-t...
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    Case in point: hate speech like death threats can be so harmful that is made illegal almost everywhere in the world.
    - feralimal 6y ago
      Well, if governments (that claim the right to use actual force) have made it illegal, say no more! That's all I needed to hear. The government is my authority, they made it illegal, I should just switch off my brain and accept their pronouncements!!! /s
    - jpttsn 6y ago
      It may well be harmful, but your reasoning seems spurious. It would imply that "marijuana can be so harmful that is made illegal almost everywhere in the world".
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Really? Did my saying that phrase make you feel threatened? Did I cause you psychological damage? Perhaps my opinion should be squashed? To keep you safe (in your delusions...)
  - jpttsn 6y ago
thinkingemote 6y ago
Google censors. HN: "this is the end for democracy!" FB doesn't censor. HN: "this is the end for democracy!" In a careful watching of the US Senate committee where the FAANG media companies were quizzed the message was "censor or be broken up". It's why this weeks two big stories, Youtube censorship and anti-monopoly actions against Facebook are intimately tied together.
KaiserPro 6y ago
I'm struggling to see the argument here. Facebook is a very large company, and is taking large amount of advertiser cash. That is true. That money would otherwise go to publishers (possibly true, although I suspect it would go to google.) What the author fails to back up is the either facebook/democracy argument. facebook could attempt to editorialise all content, to give a specific bias to the news feed. But I don't see any evidence that it is, barring the bias towards "virality". (again I'm not convinced that's a function of facebook, I think its a function of society.) Virtually all publishers (be it paper, radio, tv or internets) are privately funded. They all make editorial decisions about the content they commission, edit and syndicate. I suspect the argument is that because there are more than one of them, its not a concentrator of power. Unlike these entities, facebook doesn't actually wield power, its far to incoherent. It allows certain content to flourish, which has a similar effect, perhaps. I am uncomfortable with facebook the website, its trivially easy to create organise and operate a group that is contrary to the health of wider society (what the subject is, it entirely left to the reader's preconceptions of what bad is.) I don't think facebook is the antithesis of democracy. Far from it, we are seeing more people voting. What we are seeing is western democracies struggling with people finding their own voices. We are also seeing many extreme opinions. Most of them emerging after being amplified to catch eyeballs. Some of it is being driven by facebook, but a lot is being driven by the twitter->pundit->journalist->politician->journalist->pundit feedback loop.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  "Is Facebook a publisher or just a platform that connects people?" That's exactly the core question in legal cases so far. If it's recognized as a publisher, it can be held accountable for it's editorial decisions. If it's just a platform, that accountability is delegated to the people posting on that platform. The big issue is that Facebook will purport to be one or the other depending on the context. As a publisher, for instance, it's protected by free speech rights. As a neutral platform, it can deny that it disrupts the news industry. This is is exactly what has happened thus far. Facebook says A before Congress, and B in court cases. [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-... > What the author fails to back up is the either facebook/democracy argument. Yes, the article falls short. So, the question to ask is this: "How does FB even get away with this chameleon like behavior all these years?" and the answer is: careful exploitation of the legal framework. An innate consequence of a democracy - to be more specific, any self-governing society with a majority vote - is that the process of law making are governed through models as described in game theory. Laws aren't "designed" and decreed in isolation of one another, they are often the result of bargaining, negotiations and compromise. Laws are also written by multiple representatives who often landed their chairs through complex power dynamics with their constituencies, interest groups and so on. So, unless you're willing to dismiss democracy for a technocracy, the legal framework will never truly be "engineered" towards some ideal equilibrium through the eyes of experts. In a democracy, law making will always be a "work in progress" that represents the state of a public debate. Facebook isn't a "political institution" as it is described in the article. At least, not in the formal sense of the word. But it is very much a participant in the same public debate that shapes law making. And it will unscrupuously use the flaws in the legal system to its own advantage as a private actor. This leads to a big question: "How do other participants in a democracy feel about Facebook doing this?" This a moral question, though, and it is based on value attribution. So, the result is many different answers that don't easily converge into a compromise either. Paradoxically, it's this disparity in opinions within the public debate that allows Facebook to keep doing what it does without being hindered. > I don't think facebook is the antithesis of democracy. Personally, I think that Facebook does hold a shared, moral responsibility. Suppose your parents aren't at a home and you decide to host a party. People flock to your house. Not just your friends, but also friends of friends. And maybe people you don't really know. Including people who do not really care about blasting loud music at night, or even vandalizing cars two streets down the road. You might think "it's not my responsibility how others behave", but you will def have angry neighbours coming down at you over you not minding who came through your door that night. Facebook's design, architecture, principles,... allow anyone to partake in the party, but they don't provide the proper affordances to watch the door - e.g. moderation, archiving and findability of posted content,... - and they don't provide it either for private moderation, or public law enforcement. By extension, news publishers do make the same cardinal sin by putting a "comments section" below any and all news articles without proper moderation. The Web isn't an affair of a few million early adopters anymore. It's frequented by billions today. And this dynamic brings different, very complex moral questions that can't be readily be answered with "people are responsible enough, they will figure it out for themselves."
amelius 6y ago
I think democracy needs more fixing than Facebook. But then again, always fix the things first that are easiest to fix.
cyldefrog 6y ago
Maybe someone who works or has worked the big F can answer this: what do FB employees think about news like this and how the world sees what they do? Have they drank the kool aid and think facebook is great for the world or just think that the work they specifically do doesn't cause the negatives?
CyberRabbi 6y ago
> The business model is to divert revenue that used to go to newspapers and publishers to themselves. And there you have it. Anything that threatens the position of media companies is always portrayed as an attack against Democracy. If choosing democracy means shutting down the free flow of information between individuals on social media sites like Facebook, then my vote is for Facebook.
- primroot 6y ago
  "The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest." - Bernays. This quote makes me think how it should not be a surprise that journalists working for big media companies are some of the main voices behind the calls for censorship.
- TheCondor 6y ago
  This
solaarphunk 6y ago
This person is confusing ranked newsfeeds with free speech. Ranked newsfeeds are the actual poison, because they are their own form of censorship and amplification for exploitative purposes. It’s fine if someone says something horrible or false on the internet, it’s not fine if a ranked newsfeed amplifies that message to millions of people because it’s engaging. This free speech or not argument is a complete straw man.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jraby3 6y ago
  Exactly. Facebook along with google, Twitter, etc. become an echo chamber based on their tracking your precious history of what interested you.
- josephg 6y ago
  Yep. Alex Jones is a bit of a nut, and left alone I'd have no problem with him. But youtube recommended his videos 15 billion times, and presumably made a killing in advertising revenue off his videos. I don't have a problem with alex jones. I have a problem with social media companies promoting lies about reality in the name of engagement. Polluting our information ecology in the name of a quick advertising dollar is lazy and dishonest and they know it.
- 3131s 6y ago
  Yes, and the effect is more pronounced when a site offers no other choice beyond ranking by a single hidden formula, like HN.
  - aethertron 6y ago
    In the case of HN, what is the bad effect? HN's formula may be hidden but I think we have a good sense of its inputs: recency, upvotes, moderation to remove crap, and perhaps some boosting to promote YC interests.
- humanrebar 6y ago
raxxorrax 6y ago
I am sick that "hate speech" is an alleged problem because some people read something on the net they didn't like. I also don't like the people that write it. But the reaction to it is just infantile and the exchange of ideas is degraded. The nature of the medium has intrinsic properties and that means that if you broadcast opinions, you always get pushback. It doesn't mean there is or is no justification for it. It is the trivial result of connecting everyone on the planet. Be it differences or misunderstandings, there simply is no authority that would be accepted to enact a rule that you have to adhere to certain official statements about health, elections or Santa Clause. As bas as some terrorist deeds may be, the continuation of decreasing liberty for security we tried for some decades is counterproductive and devoid of any results. Change it or lets yourself be classified as insane already. Not a fan of facebook, but if you don't like it, you can just not use it. Doesn't mean you have the right to dictate how others use media. And don't think you are different to other historic mistakes of curbing speech.
- cptaj 6y ago
  The problem isn't an awkward exchange of ideas. The problem is industrial-scale disinformation campaigns manipulating public opinion and discrediting every single thing you can imagine, grinding the free exchange of ideas to a halt at every turn. Its a DDOS attack on that very same free exchange of ideas you mention.
  - bondarchuk 6y ago
    >industrial-scale disinformation campaigns manipulating public opinion and discrediting every single thing you can imagine This is just a fancy way of saying "people saying things I don't like". >grinding the free exchange of ideas to a halt at every turn. How so? Like GP said, you can just not use facebook and freely exchange ideas with your peers through other channels. Sure, some of your peers might have a different opinion than you, and (gasp!) you might even be unable to change their mind, but that's just how it is.
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
In an earlier era, people's opinions were shaped by a small number of newspapers and newscasts. Some of these old media were so biased and agenda driven that they caused wars. Not that much has changed, except that people now rely on centralized, AI-driven funnels of information and entertainment. Democracy has always been fragile, barely functional, easily corrupted, warped by money. The best and only way to defend and nurture it is education. Teach people to think for themselves, critical reading,logic and analysis. This is the best inoculation against totalitarianism.
- CPLX 6y ago
  > a small number That's not correct. There were staggering numbers of them. In 1900 there were 15 English language daily newspapers in New York City alone. The problem with Facebook is monopolization. It's different when you have a ton of places that share information, and some of them are biased in one direction or another, versus when you have just one, and that one actively works to prevent other options from emerging.
  - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
    In 1895, William Randolph Hearst's jingoistic yellow journalism pushed millions of Americans to support a pointless war with Spain. Time Magazine influenced three generations of Americans. For the last hundred or so years, every major city has had one primary newspaper, 2-3 local news broadcasters, maybe a local magazine. Old line magazines and newspapers were information silos unto themselves.
    - kasey_junk 6y ago
      > every major city had one primary newspaper That’s more a last 30 years or so phenomenon. Before that most major cities had at least 2 primary newspapers (often split on party lines). Most large cities had many more than that.
  - skewart 6y ago
    There are far more news sources available today than in the 20th century. Not only can I read local newspapers and magazines from all over the world, which wasn’t easy to do before the internet, but also there are tons of new digital-only publications and millions of blogs. In the 1990s in the US, before the internet took off, most people had access to one local paper (two in some cases), maybe an a few local magazines (include “alternative weekly” newspapers), a few local TV and radio stations, PBS and NPR, the 100 or so cable channels their local provider offered, the hundred or so magazines and newspapers the local Borders or Barnes & Noble sold, and whatever magazines and newspapers their library had in the periodicals section. And a lot of this media was owned by a few big corporations like Time Warner, News Corp, Condé Nast, etc. > versus when you have just one, and that one actively works to prevent other options from emerging. How has Facebook tried to prevent news outlets from emerging? They benefit hugely from news outlets, and kind of even depend on them for existence. They need the content for people to post and share. New publications like Vox probably owe some of their success to Facebook, and vice versa. FB might have a lot of power to amplify traffic to certain publications (kind of like the big retail chains did in the 90s only more so), but that’s very different from actively preventing new news outlets from emerging.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
People complaining about this issue don't seem to understand how the Internet works. Facebook is not the Internet and restricting "hate speech" (a notoriously vague concept) will only result in people going elsewhere. There is no universe where the average person goes back to thinking CNN/NYT is the sole arbiter of news. Period. The only way to ensure such a scenario would make the Soviet Union blush. These are technological realities. You can continue to lament them, or you can accept networked information as inevitable and start dealing with your new reality.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
> The business model is to divert revenue that used to go to newspapers and publishers to themselves. And so by manipulating people in this specific way that they do, which is to keep them using their system and keep surveilling them so that they can target them with ads, they are, in the process, crushing newspapers and publishers, who no longer have any financing, particularly local newspapers and niche publications like Black-owned newspapers. Is there any business this entitled? Imagine a bookstore owner describing amazon's business model as diverting revenue that used to go to bookstores, particularly black-owned backstores, to themselves. Somehow the revenue flows, like water, it used to flow to newspapers, and now it flows to facebook. I'm glad at least that the interview skips over bots, russians and algorithms and goes straight to the point, which is that people like matt make less money because everyone can share their views now, and people find their friends rants just as entertaining as matts.
- nillium 6y ago
  This is more like Amazon diverting the money that used to go to the book authors back to themselves, and then when the authors and publishers start layoffs and go bankrupt, people ask why the writing is so bad. Shameless plug, but we're working on something to take the good of social without the predatory leanings or misaligned interests: https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/ https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/
- glasss 6y ago
  I tend to agree with you. Imagine if a restaurant complained that they are losing money because people are making their own food at home. I think it would be clear that said restaurant isn't providing enough value to compete at that point. What would be more likely - that everyone cooking at home is a michelin star chef, or that the restaurant(s) losing money weren't very good to begin with? Enough with the food analogy - respected and valuable journalists and news agencies are still thriving. Facebook is not eating AP or Reuters lunch, nor the Financial Times or other specialized organizations.
nopriorarrests 6y ago
Honestly, americans who are thinking in all seriousness that "we can have democracy or we can have Facebook" are just deluding themselves. I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries? From what I know, Facebook makes some real euros there, so adoption rate is quite high, but still, democracy is not "under attack" in these countries because of "automated newsfeed". Consider these countries as a control group for "facebook being bad for democracy" test. Maybe US should take a hard look into a mirror and accept the fact that it is very polarized country, not very cohesive society, with very little common ground (if any at all) between different factions, and facebook just shows this fact. Don't blame the mirror for what you see in it.
- gjulianm 6y ago
  > I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries? From what I know, Facebook makes some real euros there, so adoption rate is quite high, but still, democracy is not "under attack" in these countries because of "automated newsfeed". Yes it is. Polarization is increasing in a lot of countries, and there is heavy criticism. But while US news are exposed to the rest of the world, news from EU countries aren't as much. That's why you don't see "Facebook is damaging democracy" takes from EU countries. At least from what I see in Spain (I can't speak for other countries because I don't read french or german or dutch news) the debate on Facebook (and other social media platforms) effect on democracy is growing bigger each day, specially now with the COVID pandemic.
  - CaptainZapp 6y ago
    Brexit? I certainly can't prove it, but I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't have happened without Facebook. The thing is that it's the first time were you can really microtarget bigots, racists and xenophobes. And that's what makes it frightening. Especially when everybody nowadays has his own brand of reality. Note: Despite the fact that I think Brexit is a devastatingly bad idea I don't mean to imply that leave voters are bigots or racists. Brexit is just a great example about undue influence on a referendum. E: Removed redundancy
hooya 6y ago
We gleefully exclaimed "Arab Spring" when social media destabilized other countries. It's come home to roost. Spring has sprung, bitches.
macspoofing 6y ago
"We can have democracy or we can have media conglomerate hegemony" Facebook is not the problem when it acts like a platform.
Gokuldas027 6y ago
Every news in Internet is fake until it's proven otherwise.
engineer_22 6y ago
Nationalize Facebook!
citronvert2 6y ago
Big brother looks so scary in the first pic.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
My first reaction was rather visceral based on the title, but I calmed down significantly after I read the article as the interviewee's position is a little more nuanced. Clearly, the article editor's made the title more clickable than it had to be. Guy is arguing that monopoly powers are bad and FB appears to match that definition. Most importantly, the interviewee states "I think monopoly is a worldview." And I happen to agree as I have a tendency to believe that too much power in too few hands tends to make things worse. The question naturally is.. is FB a monopoly?
giantg2 6y ago
So the premises to support the title are that Facebook 'steals' revenue from traditional news publishers and allows user generated content to proliferate, which can contain conspiracies. I don't know that breaking up Facebook will actually fix these issues or 'save' democracy. Conspiracies will still spread on other sites (Reddit: The Frontpage of the Internet, anyone?). Ad revenue will continue to go to electronic platforms and use tracking (Google is huge in this space too). I can see that Facebook has engaged in anticompetitive behavior, such as buying some competitive companies. I don't see them as a full monopoly. There are plenty of other sites (some of them large) that allow you to connect with others, share content, and create an online identity. Just look at LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, etc. There are other large ad services too, like Google. A strong democracy requires an educated and diligent citizenry. We can break up Facebook, but that won't fix the root problems in our society. We could start by teaching basic logic in schools. And I'm sure this will be controversial, but I do think we should make a citizenship test part of school curriculums so that the citizens know their rights, the structure and function of our government, etc. Then we still need to hope that voters do their homework.
- ab3rC1te 6y ago
  For starters conspiracies were created by the CIA, but an underlying fact of truth is part of what makes a conspiracies a driving factor. The question one asks themselves is, If Microsoft was not forced back in the 90's by the government to break up their monopoly on controlling the Operating System sector we all would be using 1 OS today and that would be Microsoft. Just as these major tech giants as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and the rest are allowed to censor the freedom's that the internet was designed for. Freedom of speech and your way of thinking. Not to be limited or call out what someone thinks is misinformation. The thing that really pisses me off about this site is I get limited on how many fucking things I can reply to. Says I am posting way to fast. I must be faster than the damn computer.
JulianMorrison 6y ago
Given the number of Republicans supporting the current "what evidence, just hand me the election" self-coup attempt, I honestly think that around half of Americans have decided they don't want democracy, because the wrong guy might win.
egberts1 6y ago
Corporate-based media doesn’t like competition. Perhaps we need more journalists and not National Enquirer-type ones. After all, who is really turning off the lights to this “Democracy dies in a darkness”?
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  >Perhaps we need more journalists and not National Enquirer-type ones. I totally agree. But I think even now it's too little, too late. HN loved Glenn Greenwald, and then immediately turned against him overnight because he dared to say bad words about a Democratic presidential candidate.
  - egberts1 6y ago
    I’m sure he has his source. Did he cite his opinion as a journalist or a blogger?
nondeveloper 6y ago
America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally. Whenever I read that people “aren’t educated” enough or are “unduly influenced” by media, e.g., newspapers, television, or social media, I like to remind myself of this. I notice that there is, and maybe always has been, a vocal group of people who believe that we should only elect and appoint experts, highly-trained specialists in their area of government. Heinlein reminds us that “specialization is for insects”. I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about governance as the average professional politician. Crowds can be pretty smart. Not faultless, but smart. That idea has been fashionable for a few years now but it’s definitely not new. Its implementation has changed from democracy to democracy. But as a general principle it’s been broadly and effectively applied.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally.... > I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about governance as the average professional politician. The idea that Facebook is bad for democracy doesn't contradict that idea. For anyone to make good decisions, they need good information, and the problem with Facebook is that it amplifies lies and disinformation. > I notice that there is, and maybe always has been, a vocal group of people who believe that we should only elect and appoint experts, highly-trained specialists in their area of government. Heinlein reminds us that “specialization is for insects”. I don't think that's what being advocated for. What specialists are good at is providing accurate information in their specialty. Often different specialists will disagree. In many cases, democracy should be about the people choosing which specialists to listen to and where the balance will be between them when they conflict. It shouldn't be about ordinary people trying to replace specialists (e.g. lets have a vote of non-engineers to determine how big the support beams for the new bridge should be).
diegoholiveira 6y ago
The first step to protect democracy is to imposing huge limitations in the governments and a review of the antitrust laws to cover tech companies. Governments around the world have too much power and our antitrusts laws are outdated.
DennisP 6y ago
Partly Facebook is a problem because of their top-down profit-driven manipulation. But partly it seems inherent to any recommendation algorithm that gives weight to content you're more likely to share, reply to, etc. The stuff that outrages you is more likely to propagate. So what would be a recommendation algorithm that does not have this effect? What would it measure and optimize?
martin_drapeau 6y ago
>Can they prevent you from learning about a local city council candidate by blocking that person from advertising? Absolutely. If you remove moderation rules, there won't be blocking. However we fall in the other extreme with fake news and obsceneties taking over. The loudest and most provocative win because that's what makes the news. At least that's the logic. Is the root of the problem that no one elected Facebook to be moderators? And now that it is so big, it has become a problem because it has an overbearing affect on people? So essentially the monopolistic argument is a justification for government to grab back control. I can't help to see this as a growing pain for global companies becoming bigger than countries. FB has 2.9 billion users. Only 10% are in the US. It has such a reach beyond borders that countries are freaking out, afraid to lose sovereignty over their citizens. Or am I reading too deep here?
known 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo are not listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
another_sock 6y ago
Information used to be hard to reproduce and disseminate across geography. This is no longer the case, and now exploits in human psychology that weren't really feasible to exploit in the past are available. The "problem" isn't facebook or any social media company, it is with humans as a whole, and it isn't really a problem, just an evolutionary bottleneck. Selection pressures have changed and certain traits that used to be a net positive are now net negatives. People will adjust generationally as those resistant to mass hysteria from information overload succeed and get rich while everybody else (most people on HN included) fail and get poorer. Until the adjustment to the new ecosystem is complete, expect instability and uncertainty.
- randoramax 6y ago
  Those who fail and get poor reproduce faster than the riches and within a few generations you put salt on your fields... Your comment reminded me of the movie Idiocracy
  - another_sock 6y ago
    The elite need lots of slaves to work the fields and if you can keep them spending all their free time worried and emotionally exhausted about the news item du jour you never need to even whip them, they won't have any energy to cause you problems.
tengbretson 6y ago
Can we get rid of both?
dweekly 6y ago
What a bizarre set of beliefs and claims. 1. That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. Except newspaper readership has been on the decline since the 90's. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation-and-revenue-fall-for-newspaper-industry/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation... - the article frames Facebook's grand plan as taking money from newspapers, but Facebook's revenues in 2019 were nearly twice what the whole newspaper industry had as revenue in 2008. In that same window of time the ad industry grew 50%. Facebook makes money by making products that engage people and then presenting them with ads that are of interest to the individual in question. That makes them in the broader attention market but the framing of "Facebook versus newspapers" seems peculiar here. 2. That "monopolism" is rampant and anti-democratic. Besides the fact that this is poorly defined in the article (perhaps as incentive to purchase his book?), it sure is an curious turn of phrase that there are "endless numbers of monopolists" in healthcare. Perhaps one could say there are millions of monopolists in music because each work is copyright? Over what does the author claim Facebook have true monopoly? On attention? On information dissemination? 3. The thread of conversation implies that breaking up Facebook will somehow help, for example, the decline of the newspaper industry. It's not clear how any of the author's goals will be accomplished by this and the OP alludes to this in "there's a lot more you need to do than just break them up". But what? If the point of the article is to claim Facebook's present mode is a threat to democracy (claimed in title) they A: need to actually articulate this case and B: ought make an argument for how they'd propose to remedy the situation. Instead the former was done barely at all and the latter was omitted.
- glasss 6y ago
  I generally believe Facebook and other social media platforms are bad. I can also absolutely recognize that most people complaining about them don't seem to articulate their reasoning well or in some cases at all. In the article, Matt claims >There's a lot more that you have to do than just break them up. But the answer is, it would improve things dramatically if they were broken up, and you don't have to imagine it. Facebook has been doing their practices that deserve criticism before they became a "financial conglomerate". If they are broken up, they will not stop poisoning people's news feed overnight. Things will NOT dramatically improve. In fact I believe if Facebook is forced to break off instagram and other companies, things may get worse. They would need to try harder to make more revenue using less users / screen time. Breaking up Facebook would most likely be a good thing, but I personally believe as long the news feed exists, the negatives that Facebook brings will be there.
ffggvv 6y ago
i wish facebook killed newspapers. then we wouldn’t have to deal with blue check marks
superkuh 6y ago
This is absurd. Just stop using Facebook yourself. It's by far the most democratic reaction you can have. Arguing for bringing in the use of government violence against them is unethical to the point of being evil.
- mrits 6y ago
  Google owning youtube is an example of a real problem with monopolies.
- zmix 6y ago
  "Hate speech on Facebook is pushing ethiopia dangerously close to a genocide"[1] [1]: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/14/2029237/hate-speech-on-facebook-is-pushing-ethiopia-dangerously-close-to-a-genocide https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/14/2029237/hate-speech...
threesmegiste 6y ago
Anti Facebook Pr detected
jula432vdf 6y ago
Not quite so, Somebody, ultimately, will define the agenda. Maybe now is an algorithm, some person censoring news or posts for fcbk, but if you involve the government, any government, they will define the agenda. So, the most you can get from that deal is to choose who would you want to be your master. With algorithms at least we - still - have the out of sight factor, some things the algo doesn't "see" or "understand" (quite few probably), but if involve governments, specially the american government, with thousands and thousands of interests, some of them even confronted; you could end with some franken-facebook promoting several hundred of agendas from who-god-knows. I have no solutions, but I can tell you, there are problems ahead.
Cyberthal 6y ago
Democracy would require something like Facebook for frequent referendums. The USA and most Western countries (all?) have republics. Sometimes I wonder what functional modern organizations actually use democracy.
PEOPLEgetoff 6y ago
I completely disagree that deleting Facebook is a waste of time. Regardless of whether or not it’s made an impact on Zuck’s bottom line, it’s made me a MUCH happier person therefore - WORTH IT!
mushroomzulu 6y ago
Any private company acting as a public utility should have to obey the laws of the land.

283 points by imartin2k 6y ago

It's troubling to me that censorship is being set up as the narrative savior of a free society, when in fact just the opposite is true.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 6y ago
Any measure for success, when used as a target, becomes a bad measure. Freedom of speech is a measure of a free society, if you make freedom of speech the target and insist on maximising it without limit, then boring complicated truths are overwhelmed by simplistic emotionally engaging lies. I don’t know where to aim, exactly, only that the real target is whatever freedom of speech is for — call it X because I’m not confident I know what X is. To the extent freedom of speech and X are aligned, aiming for whatever X is will also enable as much free speech as possible.
- sneak 6y ago
  This sounds to me like mental gymnastics to justify censorship on the grounds that lies are more popular than the truth, as if this is some new development that Facebook just recently made possible. Lies have always been more popular than the truth. Observe that billions of people are entirely convinced that there is an invisible and omniscient wizard residing in the sky, watching them. The majority of people believing false things is dangerous, to be sure. Appointing censors is a naive and harmful approach to solving that problem, counterintuitively. Uncensored communications tools are how we fix that issue, despite the fact that fearful people will look at some of the short term effects and foolishly conclude that it's making things worse, focusing on antivaxxers and the like while ignoring the rise in global literacy and scientific progress and achievement.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    It sounds like you’re aggressively agreeing with me, and the closest you get to disagreement is: > Appointing censors is a naive and harmful approach to solving that problem, counterintuitively. But even then I would happily accept even the part that it is “naive” to appoint censors (I am calling for something much more subtle). These two things are close, but not perfectly so. “Free speech = free society” has been a good approximation for most of history even despite a majority believing in falsehoods. But the difference is there. Facebook per se isn’t the problem, I think; I would blame everyone who uses A.I. on large populations, testing and refining what is most likely to be shared without consideration as it “sounds about right” while pushing a particular narrative (in Facebook’s case the goal is “money”; others, including those who use Facebook as their means for this testing, have political rather than financial agendas). Facebook is just one of many doing that, the A.I. genie is well out of the bottle, and conversely Facebook could exist without that A.I. optimising for something we don’t really want. However, despite that being the only point where I think you’re actively disagreeing with me, I disagree with your new point here: > look at some of the short term effects and foolishly conclude that it's making things worse, focusing on antivaxxers and the like while ignoring the rise in global literacy and scientific progress and achievement. These are separate dimensions of what I consider a good society. China is part of the rise in those two, yet lacks free speech. Does it lack all the things which free speech is a good proxy for? I don’t know; but it does lack free speech.
XorNot 6y ago
You don't have the freedom of speech you describe on Hacker News at all.
- sneak 6y ago
  What did I describe, and where?
gjulianm 6y ago
There are alternative solutions to censorship. Censorship would just be a patch, and not even enough for the problems Facebook and other social media is creating. The issue is that Facebook has completely changed the incentives for what type of speech gets the most exposure. Now the contents of the speech do not matter, nor the source, nor whether it is true or useful or anything. Instead the metric is how much "engagement" it can create. Facebook will, by design, show on your timeline a lie that creates comments before a truth that doesn't. And it will do this time and time again, and the effect of the repeated exposures to lies is that even if you don't believe them, you will start doubting. Society can't keep up with that. It isn't just that there are people with polarized opinions, it's that you have people with completely different views of reality. Propping up lies is incredibly easy, and doing the necessary research to disprove those lies and spread the result is orders of magnitude more difficult. It's impossible to keep up the rhythm. The solution is not censorship, the solution is to force these companies to change those incentives. Stop with the automatic suggestions to get more engagement, stop showing content to people who didn't explicitly subscribe to it, stop the uncontrolled spread of content of any type. We can live without viral memes, we can't without a functioning society.
bondarchuk 6y ago
The most pessimistic and paranoid commentators saw this coming back when the "fake news" and "fact checking" narratives were being ramped up, and it seems they were right.
jpttsn 6y ago
Yup, and it's interesting to ponder why this narrative gains ground. Especially if we take at face value the claims that undue influence has been exerted for the past few years to ruin free society.

exdsq 6y ago

How can freedom of speech be the downfall of democracy? Surely Facebook and democracy can coexist if we get better at teaching people to think for themselves? I don’t like the idea democracy can only survive if governments censor and remove platforms for spreading information (however false that may be).

contravariant 6y ago
The central point of the article is that Facebook is not free. Yes you can have free speech and democracy but free speech becomes rather more difficult when its biggest medium is a privately controlled monopoly. Fake-news and the like aren't mentioned in the article.
- rimliu 6y ago
  Was TV and radio ever free in that sense then?
  - contravariant 6y ago
    In most countries, as far as I'm aware, TV started out as a government controlled medium, which has its own problems but is definitely not privately owned. And to the best of my knowledge there's still nothing preventing you from buying radio bandwidth. It's not really my area though so I could be wrong.
- exdsq 6y ago
  But why does it become more difficult when it's centralised by numerous tech companies and not by numerous media organisations or the government itself? I don't see why FB is any different except it's easier for anyone to share stuff, and I don't see why that stuff should be a risk to democracy.
  - MonAlternatiu 6y ago
    Many reasons. - For one when a news article is incorrect it is very easy to hold accountable the source of that information. How many people keep track of who said what on the internet? - Fake Information takes more time to respond to than true information. False news travels 6 times faster (..) than truthful news [0]. - Media has a cycle of information that is way slower and more curated (even if manipulative) which allows true information to be heard louder. - It's becoming easier and easier to fake image, video, and audio in a way never seen before [1]. - It's way easier for platforms like FB and Twitter and YT to make you spiral down a rabbit hole of similar content. Sure, this did happen in the past, but the current level of detailed recommendations makes it really easy for people to lose context inside their bubble. - People are not machines, if they hear a message many times by different sources that trigger the right emotional responses they will believe it to be true. Now group every point and compound it by a lot of consumption and ingest it into monkey-like brains :) [0]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/false-news-travels-6-times-faster-on-twitter-than-truthful-news https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/false-news-travels-6-ti... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo

waihtis 6y ago

Does anyone actually enjoy this kind of writing style where the author constantly blows their own trumpet? The introductionary text is borderline satire.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Journalists tend to have an over-inflated sense of self-importance. They even created an entire section of society for themselves ("The Fourth Estate") because being a commoner wasn't good enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

mhoad 6y ago

The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/the-report https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/the-report We already have rules regarding what we consider to be acceptable both in general society and in a legal context with regards to free speech so the line in the sand already exists. Trying to wave away this debate by just shouting “censorship” contributes nothing meaningful to a debate that is sorely missing from society. Edit: There are some interesting points in the replies that I think could be answered with some clarifications. I think there is something that is very unique about social media specifically that should have a higher standard about it than other forms of speech. My argument is not at all about trying to force "the one acceptable point of view" or anything like that. History has a long long list of ideas that were once considered dangerous that not only stood the test of time but instead became something much more and in order to continue having that diversity of opinion is generally a good thing. There are fundamental problems with how the economics of a social media platform function. Never before has a tool existed that allowed everyone to broadcast any unfiltered thought they had to everyone else in the world with basically zero effort. Furthermore, they can do this both anonymously and without any kind of repercussion. That sounds great in theory as some libertarian fantasy where you might expect the "marketplace of ideas" to take care of everything and the cream would rise to the top. The reality of what that looks like in 2020 however is actually very different and I think now would be a great time to have that discussion about what guardrails we can all generally agree on that would address some of the many downsides that have come out of this experiment so far. All of the current iterations of major social networks came pretty much exclusively from a group of people who had zero background in anything then Computer Science. At no point have we reached out to groups like sociologists, ethicists, historians, psychologists or anyone else who might have some really valuable thoughts on how to arrange anonymous social interactions in a way that might not devolve into the shit fight we have on our hands currently. As an example Facebook was started by a guy who by all accounts is not exactly known for having great social skills where he could rate women on campus. Twitter is a platform that purposely doesn't allow for nuance. I think they were both a terrible starting point and that perhaps we should rethink what social media COULD look like from the ground up and learning from all of the mistakes we made with it the first time around.

Mysterise 6y ago

I think the "Facebook bad" horse has been beaten down to Earth's inner core. Yes, Facebook has its downsides just as any other social platform would. Yes, you can live without it. But I don't believe that the negatives Facebook has enabled comes close to the utility it has provided to society.

danjac 6y ago
I'm sure it's a comfort to the victims of the Rohingya genocide that your mother has a platform to share photos of her grandkids.
- necovek 6y ago
  You seem to suggest that Facebook itself is to blame for that, and not the people interacting on it. Previously, mass manipulation was only available to really rich and powerful, or states versed in it. Now it's available to much smaller and less sophisticated actors. But I don't think that's an issue, the issue is that manipulation is acceptable at all, and how we can draw the new, better line there? (Looking at you too, Marketing)
- primroot 6y ago
  In that case, why not blame Hillary Clinton for normalizing relations with the genocidal state, so that American corporations could have access to a new market?
paganel 6y ago
It is "bad" only because the right people cannot control it as easily, it was "good" 8-9 years ago when the good people (or the countries that they controlled/lead at the time) were using Facebook against "bad" people (i.e. Arab Spring).
swiley 6y ago
What utility is that exactly? I don't think I've benefited from having a Facebook account at all, though I hardly use it.
eptcyka 6y ago

Hokusai 6y ago

There article is reasonable and it just asks to apply laws that already exist. I am surprised how much false advertising is allowed on all this platforms. Chinese counterfeit products sold on Amazon, Russian state propaganda promoted by Facebook, ... The judicial system and the law need to catch-up with new technologies. USA companies are becoming less competitive and more hostile to its own users and costumers. USA in general has an increasing image problem as many people defend to lie and scam customers. Trust is extremely important for a well functioning society and even more to do business.

inglor_cz 6y ago

These headline dichotomies have a tendency to be utterly false. Even after a successful antitrust action and forced division, Facebook would likely stay Facebook, only minus Instagram, WhatsApp and possibly other current appendages.

feralimal 6y ago

Yuck. Neither democracy nor facebook, thanks. Nor any nannying or moralising about hate speech. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. Or you.

firepoet 6y ago
Boy do I hate that phrase. It's absolutely incorrect from a neuroscience perspective. Words can in fact hurt you, and, depending on circumstances, cause long term psychological damage. Here's a place to start to learn more if you want: https://www.td.org/insights/the-neuroscience-of-reward-and-threat https://www.td.org/insights/the-neuroscience-of-reward-and-t...
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  Case in point: hate speech like death threats can be so harmful that is made illegal almost everywhere in the world.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Well, if governments (that claim the right to use actual force) have made it illegal, say no more! That's all I needed to hear. The government is my authority, they made it illegal, I should just switch off my brain and accept their pronouncements!!! /s
  - jpttsn 6y ago
    It may well be harmful, but your reasoning seems spurious. It would imply that "marijuana can be so harmful that is made illegal almost everywhere in the world".
- feralimal 6y ago
  Really? Did my saying that phrase make you feel threatened? Did I cause you psychological damage? Perhaps my opinion should be squashed? To keep you safe (in your delusions...)
- jpttsn 6y ago

thinkingemote 6y ago

Google censors. HN: "this is the end for democracy!" FB doesn't censor. HN: "this is the end for democracy!" In a careful watching of the US Senate committee where the FAANG media companies were quizzed the message was "censor or be broken up". It's why this weeks two big stories, Youtube censorship and anti-monopoly actions against Facebook are intimately tied together.

KaiserPro 6y ago

I'm struggling to see the argument here. Facebook is a very large company, and is taking large amount of advertiser cash. That is true. That money would otherwise go to publishers (possibly true, although I suspect it would go to google.) What the author fails to back up is the either facebook/democracy argument. facebook could attempt to editorialise all content, to give a specific bias to the news feed. But I don't see any evidence that it is, barring the bias towards "virality". (again I'm not convinced that's a function of facebook, I think its a function of society.) Virtually all publishers (be it paper, radio, tv or internets) are privately funded. They all make editorial decisions about the content they commission, edit and syndicate. I suspect the argument is that because there are more than one of them, its not a concentrator of power. Unlike these entities, facebook doesn't actually wield power, its far to incoherent. It allows certain content to flourish, which has a similar effect, perhaps. I am uncomfortable with facebook the website, its trivially easy to create organise and operate a group that is contrary to the health of wider society (what the subject is, it entirely left to the reader's preconceptions of what bad is.) I don't think facebook is the antithesis of democracy. Far from it, we are seeing more people voting. What we are seeing is western democracies struggling with people finding their own voices. We are also seeing many extreme opinions. Most of them emerging after being amplified to catch eyeballs. Some of it is being driven by facebook, but a lot is being driven by the twitter->pundit->journalist->politician->journalist->pundit feedback loop.

CaptArmchair 6y ago
"Is Facebook a publisher or just a platform that connects people?" That's exactly the core question in legal cases so far. If it's recognized as a publisher, it can be held accountable for it's editorial decisions. If it's just a platform, that accountability is delegated to the people posting on that platform. The big issue is that Facebook will purport to be one or the other depending on the context. As a publisher, for instance, it's protected by free speech rights. As a neutral platform, it can deny that it disrupts the news industry. This is is exactly what has happened thus far. Facebook says A before Congress, and B in court cases. [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-... > What the author fails to back up is the either facebook/democracy argument. Yes, the article falls short. So, the question to ask is this: "How does FB even get away with this chameleon like behavior all these years?" and the answer is: careful exploitation of the legal framework. An innate consequence of a democracy - to be more specific, any self-governing society with a majority vote - is that the process of law making are governed through models as described in game theory. Laws aren't "designed" and decreed in isolation of one another, they are often the result of bargaining, negotiations and compromise. Laws are also written by multiple representatives who often landed their chairs through complex power dynamics with their constituencies, interest groups and so on. So, unless you're willing to dismiss democracy for a technocracy, the legal framework will never truly be "engineered" towards some ideal equilibrium through the eyes of experts. In a democracy, law making will always be a "work in progress" that represents the state of a public debate. Facebook isn't a "political institution" as it is described in the article. At least, not in the formal sense of the word. But it is very much a participant in the same public debate that shapes law making. And it will unscrupuously use the flaws in the legal system to its own advantage as a private actor. This leads to a big question: "How do other participants in a democracy feel about Facebook doing this?" This a moral question, though, and it is based on value attribution. So, the result is many different answers that don't easily converge into a compromise either. Paradoxically, it's this disparity in opinions within the public debate that allows Facebook to keep doing what it does without being hindered. > I don't think facebook is the antithesis of democracy. Personally, I think that Facebook does hold a shared, moral responsibility. Suppose your parents aren't at a home and you decide to host a party. People flock to your house. Not just your friends, but also friends of friends. And maybe people you don't really know. Including people who do not really care about blasting loud music at night, or even vandalizing cars two streets down the road. You might think "it's not my responsibility how others behave", but you will def have angry neighbours coming down at you over you not minding who came through your door that night. Facebook's design, architecture, principles,... allow anyone to partake in the party, but they don't provide the proper affordances to watch the door - e.g. moderation, archiving and findability of posted content,... - and they don't provide it either for private moderation, or public law enforcement. By extension, news publishers do make the same cardinal sin by putting a "comments section" below any and all news articles without proper moderation. The Web isn't an affair of a few million early adopters anymore. It's frequented by billions today. And this dynamic brings different, very complex moral questions that can't be readily be answered with "people are responsible enough, they will figure it out for themselves."

amelius 6y ago

I think democracy needs more fixing than Facebook. But then again, always fix the things first that are easiest to fix.

cyldefrog 6y ago

Maybe someone who works or has worked the big F can answer this: what do FB employees think about news like this and how the world sees what they do? Have they drank the kool aid and think facebook is great for the world or just think that the work they specifically do doesn't cause the negatives?

CyberRabbi 6y ago

> The business model is to divert revenue that used to go to newspapers and publishers to themselves. And there you have it. Anything that threatens the position of media companies is always portrayed as an attack against Democracy. If choosing democracy means shutting down the free flow of information between individuals on social media sites like Facebook, then my vote is for Facebook.

primroot 6y ago
"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest." - Bernays. This quote makes me think how it should not be a surprise that journalists working for big media companies are some of the main voices behind the calls for censorship.
TheCondor 6y ago
This

solaarphunk 6y ago

This person is confusing ranked newsfeeds with free speech. Ranked newsfeeds are the actual poison, because they are their own form of censorship and amplification for exploitative purposes. It’s fine if someone says something horrible or false on the internet, it’s not fine if a ranked newsfeed amplifies that message to millions of people because it’s engaging. This free speech or not argument is a complete straw man.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jraby3 6y ago
Exactly. Facebook along with google, Twitter, etc. become an echo chamber based on their tracking your precious history of what interested you.
josephg 6y ago
Yep. Alex Jones is a bit of a nut, and left alone I'd have no problem with him. But youtube recommended his videos 15 billion times, and presumably made a killing in advertising revenue off his videos. I don't have a problem with alex jones. I have a problem with social media companies promoting lies about reality in the name of engagement. Polluting our information ecology in the name of a quick advertising dollar is lazy and dishonest and they know it.
3131s 6y ago
Yes, and the effect is more pronounced when a site offers no other choice beyond ranking by a single hidden formula, like HN.
- aethertron 6y ago
  In the case of HN, what is the bad effect? HN's formula may be hidden but I think we have a good sense of its inputs: recency, upvotes, moderation to remove crap, and perhaps some boosting to promote YC interests.
humanrebar 6y ago

raxxorrax 6y ago

I am sick that "hate speech" is an alleged problem because some people read something on the net they didn't like. I also don't like the people that write it. But the reaction to it is just infantile and the exchange of ideas is degraded. The nature of the medium has intrinsic properties and that means that if you broadcast opinions, you always get pushback. It doesn't mean there is or is no justification for it. It is the trivial result of connecting everyone on the planet. Be it differences or misunderstandings, there simply is no authority that would be accepted to enact a rule that you have to adhere to certain official statements about health, elections or Santa Clause. As bas as some terrorist deeds may be, the continuation of decreasing liberty for security we tried for some decades is counterproductive and devoid of any results. Change it or lets yourself be classified as insane already. Not a fan of facebook, but if you don't like it, you can just not use it. Doesn't mean you have the right to dictate how others use media. And don't think you are different to other historic mistakes of curbing speech.

cptaj 6y ago
The problem isn't an awkward exchange of ideas. The problem is industrial-scale disinformation campaigns manipulating public opinion and discrediting every single thing you can imagine, grinding the free exchange of ideas to a halt at every turn. Its a DDOS attack on that very same free exchange of ideas you mention.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  >industrial-scale disinformation campaigns manipulating public opinion and discrediting every single thing you can imagine This is just a fancy way of saying "people saying things I don't like". >grinding the free exchange of ideas to a halt at every turn. How so? Like GP said, you can just not use facebook and freely exchange ideas with your peers through other channels. Sure, some of your peers might have a different opinion than you, and (gasp!) you might even be unable to change their mind, but that's just how it is.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

blisterpeanuts 6y ago

In an earlier era, people's opinions were shaped by a small number of newspapers and newscasts. Some of these old media were so biased and agenda driven that they caused wars. Not that much has changed, except that people now rely on centralized, AI-driven funnels of information and entertainment. Democracy has always been fragile, barely functional, easily corrupted, warped by money. The best and only way to defend and nurture it is education. Teach people to think for themselves, critical reading,logic and analysis. This is the best inoculation against totalitarianism.

CPLX 6y ago
> a small number That's not correct. There were staggering numbers of them. In 1900 there were 15 English language daily newspapers in New York City alone. The problem with Facebook is monopolization. It's different when you have a ton of places that share information, and some of them are biased in one direction or another, versus when you have just one, and that one actively works to prevent other options from emerging.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  In 1895, William Randolph Hearst's jingoistic yellow journalism pushed millions of Americans to support a pointless war with Spain. Time Magazine influenced three generations of Americans. For the last hundred or so years, every major city has had one primary newspaper, 2-3 local news broadcasters, maybe a local magazine. Old line magazines and newspapers were information silos unto themselves.
  - kasey_junk 6y ago
    > every major city had one primary newspaper That’s more a last 30 years or so phenomenon. Before that most major cities had at least 2 primary newspapers (often split on party lines). Most large cities had many more than that.
- skewart 6y ago
  There are far more news sources available today than in the 20th century. Not only can I read local newspapers and magazines from all over the world, which wasn’t easy to do before the internet, but also there are tons of new digital-only publications and millions of blogs. In the 1990s in the US, before the internet took off, most people had access to one local paper (two in some cases), maybe an a few local magazines (include “alternative weekly” newspapers), a few local TV and radio stations, PBS and NPR, the 100 or so cable channels their local provider offered, the hundred or so magazines and newspapers the local Borders or Barnes & Noble sold, and whatever magazines and newspapers their library had in the periodicals section. And a lot of this media was owned by a few big corporations like Time Warner, News Corp, Condé Nast, etc. > versus when you have just one, and that one actively works to prevent other options from emerging. How has Facebook tried to prevent news outlets from emerging? They benefit hugely from news outlets, and kind of even depend on them for existence. They need the content for people to post and share. New publications like Vox probably owe some of their success to Facebook, and vice versa. FB might have a lot of power to amplify traffic to certain publications (kind of like the big retail chains did in the 90s only more so), but that’s very different from actively preventing new news outlets from emerging.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

People complaining about this issue don't seem to understand how the Internet works. Facebook is not the Internet and restricting "hate speech" (a notoriously vague concept) will only result in people going elsewhere. There is no universe where the average person goes back to thinking CNN/NYT is the sole arbiter of news. Period. The only way to ensure such a scenario would make the Soviet Union blush. These are technological realities. You can continue to lament them, or you can accept networked information as inevitable and start dealing with your new reality.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

> The business model is to divert revenue that used to go to newspapers and publishers to themselves. And so by manipulating people in this specific way that they do, which is to keep them using their system and keep surveilling them so that they can target them with ads, they are, in the process, crushing newspapers and publishers, who no longer have any financing, particularly local newspapers and niche publications like Black-owned newspapers. Is there any business this entitled? Imagine a bookstore owner describing amazon's business model as diverting revenue that used to go to bookstores, particularly black-owned backstores, to themselves. Somehow the revenue flows, like water, it used to flow to newspapers, and now it flows to facebook. I'm glad at least that the interview skips over bots, russians and algorithms and goes straight to the point, which is that people like matt make less money because everyone can share their views now, and people find their friends rants just as entertaining as matts.

nillium 6y ago
This is more like Amazon diverting the money that used to go to the book authors back to themselves, and then when the authors and publishers start layoffs and go bankrupt, people ask why the writing is so bad. Shameless plug, but we're working on something to take the good of social without the predatory leanings or misaligned interests: https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/ https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/
glasss 6y ago
I tend to agree with you. Imagine if a restaurant complained that they are losing money because people are making their own food at home. I think it would be clear that said restaurant isn't providing enough value to compete at that point. What would be more likely - that everyone cooking at home is a michelin star chef, or that the restaurant(s) losing money weren't very good to begin with? Enough with the food analogy - respected and valuable journalists and news agencies are still thriving. Facebook is not eating AP or Reuters lunch, nor the Financial Times or other specialized organizations.

nopriorarrests 6y ago

Honestly, americans who are thinking in all seriousness that "we can have democracy or we can have Facebook" are just deluding themselves. I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries? From what I know, Facebook makes some real euros there, so adoption rate is quite high, but still, democracy is not "under attack" in these countries because of "automated newsfeed". Consider these countries as a control group for "facebook being bad for democracy" test. Maybe US should take a hard look into a mirror and accept the fact that it is very polarized country, not very cohesive society, with very little common ground (if any at all) between different factions, and facebook just shows this fact. Don't blame the mirror for what you see in it.

gjulianm 6y ago
> I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries? From what I know, Facebook makes some real euros there, so adoption rate is quite high, but still, democracy is not "under attack" in these countries because of "automated newsfeed". Yes it is. Polarization is increasing in a lot of countries, and there is heavy criticism. But while US news are exposed to the rest of the world, news from EU countries aren't as much. That's why you don't see "Facebook is damaging democracy" takes from EU countries. At least from what I see in Spain (I can't speak for other countries because I don't read french or german or dutch news) the debate on Facebook (and other social media platforms) effect on democracy is growing bigger each day, specially now with the COVID pandemic.
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  Brexit? I certainly can't prove it, but I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't have happened without Facebook. The thing is that it's the first time were you can really microtarget bigots, racists and xenophobes. And that's what makes it frightening. Especially when everybody nowadays has his own brand of reality. Note: Despite the fact that I think Brexit is a devastatingly bad idea I don't mean to imply that leave voters are bigots or racists. Brexit is just a great example about undue influence on a referendum. E: Removed redundancy

hooya 6y ago

We gleefully exclaimed "Arab Spring" when social media destabilized other countries. It's come home to roost. Spring has sprung, bitches.

macspoofing 6y ago

"We can have democracy or we can have media conglomerate hegemony" Facebook is not the problem when it acts like a platform.

Gokuldas027 6y ago

Every news in Internet is fake until it's proven otherwise.

engineer_22 6y ago

Nationalize Facebook!

citronvert2 6y ago

Big brother looks so scary in the first pic.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

My first reaction was rather visceral based on the title, but I calmed down significantly after I read the article as the interviewee's position is a little more nuanced. Clearly, the article editor's made the title more clickable than it had to be. Guy is arguing that monopoly powers are bad and FB appears to match that definition. Most importantly, the interviewee states "I think monopoly is a worldview." And I happen to agree as I have a tendency to believe that too much power in too few hands tends to make things worse. The question naturally is.. is FB a monopoly?

giantg2 6y ago

So the premises to support the title are that Facebook 'steals' revenue from traditional news publishers and allows user generated content to proliferate, which can contain conspiracies. I don't know that breaking up Facebook will actually fix these issues or 'save' democracy. Conspiracies will still spread on other sites (Reddit: The Frontpage of the Internet, anyone?). Ad revenue will continue to go to electronic platforms and use tracking (Google is huge in this space too). I can see that Facebook has engaged in anticompetitive behavior, such as buying some competitive companies. I don't see them as a full monopoly. There are plenty of other sites (some of them large) that allow you to connect with others, share content, and create an online identity. Just look at LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, etc. There are other large ad services too, like Google. A strong democracy requires an educated and diligent citizenry. We can break up Facebook, but that won't fix the root problems in our society. We could start by teaching basic logic in schools. And I'm sure this will be controversial, but I do think we should make a citizenship test part of school curriculums so that the citizens know their rights, the structure and function of our government, etc. Then we still need to hope that voters do their homework.

ab3rC1te 6y ago
For starters conspiracies were created by the CIA, but an underlying fact of truth is part of what makes a conspiracies a driving factor. The question one asks themselves is, If Microsoft was not forced back in the 90's by the government to break up their monopoly on controlling the Operating System sector we all would be using 1 OS today and that would be Microsoft. Just as these major tech giants as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and the rest are allowed to censor the freedom's that the internet was designed for. Freedom of speech and your way of thinking. Not to be limited or call out what someone thinks is misinformation. The thing that really pisses me off about this site is I get limited on how many fucking things I can reply to. Says I am posting way to fast. I must be faster than the damn computer.

JulianMorrison 6y ago

Given the number of Republicans supporting the current "what evidence, just hand me the election" self-coup attempt, I honestly think that around half of Americans have decided they don't want democracy, because the wrong guy might win.

egberts1 6y ago

Corporate-based media doesn’t like competition. Perhaps we need more journalists and not National Enquirer-type ones. After all, who is really turning off the lights to this “Democracy dies in a darkness”?

Dirlewanger 6y ago
>Perhaps we need more journalists and not National Enquirer-type ones. I totally agree. But I think even now it's too little, too late. HN loved Glenn Greenwald, and then immediately turned against him overnight because he dared to say bad words about a Democratic presidential candidate.
- egberts1 6y ago
  I’m sure he has his source. Did he cite his opinion as a journalist or a blogger?

nondeveloper 6y ago

America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally. Whenever I read that people “aren’t educated” enough or are “unduly influenced” by media, e.g., newspapers, television, or social media, I like to remind myself of this. I notice that there is, and maybe always has been, a vocal group of people who believe that we should only elect and appoint experts, highly-trained specialists in their area of government. Heinlein reminds us that “specialization is for insects”. I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about governance as the average professional politician. Crowds can be pretty smart. Not faultless, but smart. That idea has been fashionable for a few years now but it’s definitely not new. Its implementation has changed from democracy to democracy. But as a general principle it’s been broadly and effectively applied.

ardy42 6y ago
> America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally.... > I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about governance as the average professional politician. The idea that Facebook is bad for democracy doesn't contradict that idea. For anyone to make good decisions, they need good information, and the problem with Facebook is that it amplifies lies and disinformation. > I notice that there is, and maybe always has been, a vocal group of people who believe that we should only elect and appoint experts, highly-trained specialists in their area of government. Heinlein reminds us that “specialization is for insects”. I don't think that's what being advocated for. What specialists are good at is providing accurate information in their specialty. Often different specialists will disagree. In many cases, democracy should be about the people choosing which specialists to listen to and where the balance will be between them when they conflict. It shouldn't be about ordinary people trying to replace specialists (e.g. lets have a vote of non-engineers to determine how big the support beams for the new bridge should be).

diegoholiveira 6y ago

The first step to protect democracy is to imposing huge limitations in the governments and a review of the antitrust laws to cover tech companies. Governments around the world have too much power and our antitrusts laws are outdated.

DennisP 6y ago

Partly Facebook is a problem because of their top-down profit-driven manipulation. But partly it seems inherent to any recommendation algorithm that gives weight to content you're more likely to share, reply to, etc. The stuff that outrages you is more likely to propagate. So what would be a recommendation algorithm that does not have this effect? What would it measure and optimize?

martin_drapeau 6y ago

>Can they prevent you from learning about a local city council candidate by blocking that person from advertising? Absolutely. If you remove moderation rules, there won't be blocking. However we fall in the other extreme with fake news and obsceneties taking over. The loudest and most provocative win because that's what makes the news. At least that's the logic. Is the root of the problem that no one elected Facebook to be moderators? And now that it is so big, it has become a problem because it has an overbearing affect on people? So essentially the monopolistic argument is a justification for government to grab back control. I can't help to see this as a growing pain for global companies becoming bigger than countries. FB has 2.9 billion users. Only 10% are in the US. It has such a reach beyond borders that countries are freaking out, afraid to lose sovereignty over their citizens. Or am I reading too deep here?

known 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo are not listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud

another_sock 6y ago

Information used to be hard to reproduce and disseminate across geography. This is no longer the case, and now exploits in human psychology that weren't really feasible to exploit in the past are available. The "problem" isn't facebook or any social media company, it is with humans as a whole, and it isn't really a problem, just an evolutionary bottleneck. Selection pressures have changed and certain traits that used to be a net positive are now net negatives. People will adjust generationally as those resistant to mass hysteria from information overload succeed and get rich while everybody else (most people on HN included) fail and get poorer. Until the adjustment to the new ecosystem is complete, expect instability and uncertainty.

randoramax 6y ago
Those who fail and get poor reproduce faster than the riches and within a few generations you put salt on your fields... Your comment reminded me of the movie Idiocracy
- another_sock 6y ago
  The elite need lots of slaves to work the fields and if you can keep them spending all their free time worried and emotionally exhausted about the news item du jour you never need to even whip them, they won't have any energy to cause you problems.

tengbretson 6y ago

Can we get rid of both?

dweekly 6y ago

What a bizarre set of beliefs and claims. 1. That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. Except newspaper readership has been on the decline since the 90's. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation-and-revenue-fall-for-newspaper-industry/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation... - the article frames Facebook's grand plan as taking money from newspapers, but Facebook's revenues in 2019 were nearly twice what the whole newspaper industry had as revenue in 2008. In that same window of time the ad industry grew 50%. Facebook makes money by making products that engage people and then presenting them with ads that are of interest to the individual in question. That makes them in the broader attention market but the framing of "Facebook versus newspapers" seems peculiar here. 2. That "monopolism" is rampant and anti-democratic. Besides the fact that this is poorly defined in the article (perhaps as incentive to purchase his book?), it sure is an curious turn of phrase that there are "endless numbers of monopolists" in healthcare. Perhaps one could say there are millions of monopolists in music because each work is copyright? Over what does the author claim Facebook have true monopoly? On attention? On information dissemination? 3. The thread of conversation implies that breaking up Facebook will somehow help, for example, the decline of the newspaper industry. It's not clear how any of the author's goals will be accomplished by this and the OP alludes to this in "there's a lot more you need to do than just break them up". But what? If the point of the article is to claim Facebook's present mode is a threat to democracy (claimed in title) they A: need to actually articulate this case and B: ought make an argument for how they'd propose to remedy the situation. Instead the former was done barely at all and the latter was omitted.

glasss 6y ago
I generally believe Facebook and other social media platforms are bad. I can also absolutely recognize that most people complaining about them don't seem to articulate their reasoning well or in some cases at all. In the article, Matt claims >There's a lot more that you have to do than just break them up. But the answer is, it would improve things dramatically if they were broken up, and you don't have to imagine it. Facebook has been doing their practices that deserve criticism before they became a "financial conglomerate". If they are broken up, they will not stop poisoning people's news feed overnight. Things will NOT dramatically improve. In fact I believe if Facebook is forced to break off instagram and other companies, things may get worse. They would need to try harder to make more revenue using less users / screen time. Breaking up Facebook would most likely be a good thing, but I personally believe as long the news feed exists, the negatives that Facebook brings will be there.

ffggvv 6y ago

i wish facebook killed newspapers. then we wouldn’t have to deal with blue check marks

superkuh 6y ago

This is absurd. Just stop using Facebook yourself. It's by far the most democratic reaction you can have. Arguing for bringing in the use of government violence against them is unethical to the point of being evil.

mrits 6y ago
Google owning youtube is an example of a real problem with monopolies.
zmix 6y ago
"Hate speech on Facebook is pushing ethiopia dangerously close to a genocide"[1] [1]: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/14/2029237/hate-speech-on-facebook-is-pushing-ethiopia-dangerously-close-to-a-genocide https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/14/2029237/hate-speech...

threesmegiste 6y ago

Anti Facebook Pr detected

jula432vdf 6y ago

Not quite so, Somebody, ultimately, will define the agenda. Maybe now is an algorithm, some person censoring news or posts for fcbk, but if you involve the government, any government, they will define the agenda. So, the most you can get from that deal is to choose who would you want to be your master. With algorithms at least we - still - have the out of sight factor, some things the algo doesn't "see" or "understand" (quite few probably), but if involve governments, specially the american government, with thousands and thousands of interests, some of them even confronted; you could end with some franken-facebook promoting several hundred of agendas from who-god-knows. I have no solutions, but I can tell you, there are problems ahead.

Cyberthal 6y ago

Democracy would require something like Facebook for frequent referendums. The USA and most Western countries (all?) have republics. Sometimes I wonder what functional modern organizations actually use democracy.

PEOPLEgetoff 6y ago

I completely disagree that deleting Facebook is a waste of time. Regardless of whether or not it’s made an impact on Zuck’s bottom line, it’s made me a MUCH happier person therefore - WORTH IT!

mushroomzulu 6y ago

Any private company acting as a public utility should have to obey the laws of the land.