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> in the absence of facebook these groups would no doubt still exist. I don’t think they would. Creation, discovery, participation, following. None of these i

> in the absence of facebook these groups would no doubt still exist. I don’t think they would. Creation, discovery, participation, following. None of these is particularly easy if you revert to forums and Google. I won’t join Cute Puppies Forum but I wouldn’t mind following an homonymous group on Facebook for a little while, maybe I’ll answer some questions too. The average Joe won’t care enough to join their little city group, but Facebook makes it so easy that you find all kinds of non-tech people on it, ready to answer your questions (and sometimes insult you, but I block those on sight).

stormbrew 6y ago
I don't think we really know what kind of social spaces would have evolved in a world where something like facebook didn't or couldn't grow. I think there were some hints of it evolving in the early 2000s, but when facebook blew up it just sucked ALL the air out of the room and forums and blogs all got stuck in 2009. Maybe I'm wrong, but again I have to ask the question: Are those conveniences actually worth the harm we see from aggressive narrow ad targeting/tracking, as well as the issues mentioned here around parasitic viral memes, that make things like facebook even viable as businesses? This is an evaluation we are allowed to make, and it's not a foregone conclusion that just because people can build these things they have a place in our society.
- asiando 6y ago
  I’d rather keep my Facebook groups and have Facebook manually quarantine misinformation groups and pages instead, in a way similar to how Reddit does it. I don’t think we should reduce public liberties because some people take advantage of them. I’d rather punish/limit them instead.
  - stormbrew 6y ago
    Ok, so who's going to accurately quarantine misinformation among the trillions of posts being made by billions of people? How many moderators does it take to do that effectively? Likely a few orders of magnitude more than facebook employs. Anyways, no "public liberties" are unlimited. All are constrained where leaving them open creates significant harm or burdens other people's liberties. Even free speech and freedom of association. People understood that once. "All my freedoms are absolute and who cares if society falls down with them" is a modern construct and it seems pretty plain to me that it's resulted in a lot of problems.

stormbrew 6y ago

I don't think we really know what kind of social spaces would have evolved in a world where something like facebook didn't or couldn't grow. I think there were some hints of it evolving in the early 2000s, but when facebook blew up it just sucked ALL the air out of the room and forums and blogs all got stuck in 2009. Maybe I'm wrong, but again I have to ask the question: Are those conveniences actually worth the harm we see from aggressive narrow ad targeting/tracking, as well as the issues mentioned here around parasitic viral memes, that make things like facebook even viable as businesses? This is an evaluation we are allowed to make, and it's not a foregone conclusion that just because people can build these things they have a place in our society.

asiando 6y ago
I’d rather keep my Facebook groups and have Facebook manually quarantine misinformation groups and pages instead, in a way similar to how Reddit does it. I don’t think we should reduce public liberties because some people take advantage of them. I’d rather punish/limit them instead.
- stormbrew 6y ago
  Ok, so who's going to accurately quarantine misinformation among the trillions of posts being made by billions of people? How many moderators does it take to do that effectively? Likely a few orders of magnitude more than facebook employs. Anyways, no "public liberties" are unlimited. All are constrained where leaving them open creates significant harm or burdens other people's liberties. Even free speech and freedom of association. People understood that once. "All my freedoms are absolute and who cares if society falls down with them" is a modern construct and it seems pretty plain to me that it's resulted in a lot of problems.