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Facebook is not the same as free speech. Facebook has an algorithm which highlights outrageous and livid claims. These often tend to be false. Your Facebook f

Facebook is not the same as free speech. Facebook has an algorithm which highlights outrageous and livid claims. These often tend to be false. Your Facebook feed is curated to look like this—something a “traditional” publisher can’t do because of libel laws, etc. What needs to happen? To my eye this is simple—all algorithmic publishing should be held to the same standard as a newspaper or even better—abolished altogether. Let’s keep it chronological.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Like, the core problem that algorithmic feeds were invented to solve is still there. The issue is that a minority of your connections produce a majority of the content, and it would suck to just see that one friend over and over again in your feed/timeline/whatever. You are essentially arguing for a social internet without filtering and search engines. Lots of people claim to want this, but the fact that no platform lets you do this leads me to believe that the revealed preferences of people are different.
- mucholove 6y ago
  Heroin is illegal for a reason. We have an opioid epidemic for a reason You can choose to see it as a revealed preference or you can call it unhinged addiction. I am in the “unhinged addiction” camp. We create and shape markets by defining the rules. As an example the supposedly free NYSE will stop trading if a stock is going down a certain percentage points in a day.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fsociety 6y ago
    Have you ever used heroin (don’t).. this is an unfair comparison for people who have struggled with a heroin addiction.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Or even nicotine? I can tell you that getting off social networks was a hell of a lot easier than getting off nicotine (i still haven't succeeded with the latter, to be honest). Like, the hyperbole associated with social networks just astounds me. They are just websites. They have been carefully engineered to be addictive, like many other services, but there's nobody at Facebook coming round to people's houses and forcing them to open the app. I actually think that social media is addictive because people like talking to other people, and these tools facilitate this. Is HN addictive? Is it more like heroin than the NYT?

disgruntledphd2 6y ago

Like, the core problem that algorithmic feeds were invented to solve is still there. The issue is that a minority of your connections produce a majority of the content, and it would suck to just see that one friend over and over again in your feed/timeline/whatever. You are essentially arguing for a social internet without filtering and search engines. Lots of people claim to want this, but the fact that no platform lets you do this leads me to believe that the revealed preferences of people are different.

mucholove 6y ago
Heroin is illegal for a reason. We have an opioid epidemic for a reason You can choose to see it as a revealed preference or you can call it unhinged addiction. I am in the “unhinged addiction” camp. We create and shape markets by defining the rules. As an example the supposedly free NYSE will stop trading if a stock is going down a certain percentage points in a day.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fsociety 6y ago
  Have you ever used heroin (don’t).. this is an unfair comparison for people who have struggled with a heroin addiction.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Or even nicotine? I can tell you that getting off social networks was a hell of a lot easier than getting off nicotine (i still haven't succeeded with the latter, to be honest). Like, the hyperbole associated with social networks just astounds me. They are just websites. They have been carefully engineered to be addictive, like many other services, but there's nobody at Facebook coming round to people's houses and forcing them to open the app. I actually think that social media is addictive because people like talking to other people, and these tools facilitate this. Is HN addictive? Is it more like heroin than the NYT?