52 ms·

Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

454 points by tysone 6y ago

nelson_muntz69 6y ago
We should consider shutting down all the various social networks, especially Facebook. These things don’t seem to be actually helping humanity.
throwawayosiu1 6y ago
On a side-note, I hate how Facebook sticks to their real name policy and does not allow for the creation of multiple accounts (I'd want one for my startup / work etc. and another for my personal use case for my friends / family etc.). That said, all the mainstream social media apps - Facebook and Twitter had a hand and if Parler was de-platformed with that reason, then they should be as well. I mean, if a 700B and a 50B company can't solve this issue, than how can we expect a much much smaller company like Parler to tackle it? But it's obvious that these companies don't give a damn about the insurrection - This was entirely to pacify the dems by giving them a "Win" considering they have the House, Senate and Presidency. It's funny because the company I'm currently consulting for a company that has a ~1B/yr account with Amazon and we've decided to slow our cloud migration projects. We run a major media site and if AWS decides to capitulate to the pressure from essentially people on social media or the wrath of the US Govt, what's stopping them from doing the exact same from Govts of other countries?
- mgbmtl 6y ago
  Isn't the Real Name policy a bit of a joke? I have a few test/fake/dev accounts, never had any issues (but for new accounts, need to associate them with a mobile number, but only for the initial signup). That said, I think the structure of Facebook intentionally makes it difficult to moderate. Reddit, for example, has public groups, group mods, etc. Far from perfect, but Facebook could definitely do more validation before promoting groups.
  - acover 6y ago
    I have been permanently banned from Facebook for using an incorrect birthday :/ Uploaded government id, correct information, phone number but I'm no longer allowed to create an account.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - chalst 6y ago
      Funny, last time I changed my birthday on Facebook I was asked "Are you sure? You can change your birthdate at most 5 times". Presumably they must be aware that at least one of the birthdates I gave was false.
      - acover 6y ago
        Interesting, then I'm not sure why I've been banned.
- TearsInTheRain 6y ago
  I dont think they were trying to pacify dems. I think they have wanted to do this for a long time but couldnt with Trump in power. This was a cathartic release for San Francisco bay liberals
- threatofrain 6y ago
  According to the CEO of Parler, banks and payment vendors, law firms, text and mail services also cancelled on them. Shouldn’t there be some discussion about banning those banks and lawyers too? Should a law firm be able to quit you? Should a bank be able to cancel on you? We even have major banks cancelling on the US President. At what point ought those who despise you be free to ditch you? These are all parties exercising their freedom of association. Parler was a red hot potato for anyone who didn’t leave fast enough.
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    Specific lawyers? Yes. Some clients are just horrible, and forcing them to work with a certain person is ... decidedly unethical. Banks? Now we're starting to have fun. If all banks cancel you, you cannot reasonably do business in this country. That's a very real concern and something that needs to be looked at. There may be some real value in investigating all of the oligopolies in the United States, and their behaviors in cancelling.
hoka-one-one 6y ago
Terrible. The storming of the capitol was probably the most frightening single event in American history in recent times. I just got off the phone with my friend who lives in China. He was in tears. He didn't understand how someone could have such disregard for the value of human life and democracy to walk inside the capitol building in DC. It's completely against the law. For those in the dark, the event caused serious international ripples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the_2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the...
- douglaswlance 6y ago
  Were you paid to post this?
- gvhst 6y ago
  > disregard for the value of human life While the deaths were sad, I don't think that's the main reason people are concerned.
  - hoka-one-one 6y ago
    Edited to include democracy, thank you for correcting me.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- docdeek 6y ago
  >> The storming of the capitol was probably the most frightening single event in American history in recent times. This is surely hyperbole or else recent times doesn’t include much of the 21st century.
  - gadders 6y ago
    Or even much of the past year in Portland, or even the violent BLM riots in Washington DC.
nr2x 6y ago
Somebody from Facebook recently told me they developed the best system to flag radical/violent content in the world, I pointed out they first developed the best system to spread it.
- umvi 6y ago
  Well they didn't develop the platform specifically for spreading radical/violent content. They build a generic platform for spreading thoughts among friends, and racist/violent people used the generic platform to spread their thoughts.
  - tolbish 6y ago
    Not quite. They tweaked the way it was run to keep people addicted.
    - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
      That is the thing, many argue as if Facebook is a flat, neutral forum, and leave out the whole big algorithmic blackbox it entails. In reality there are no chronological timelines and the regular user is pushed towards the most rage inducing (or as Facebook employees probably euphemize it: "most engaging") content and group recommendations Facebook can apply to an individual. Facebook was very much an actor in this, not some mere communication infrastructure. Facebook wasn't "warped" by malicious actors, it fanned the flames and by doing so nurtured their hatred and multiplied their reach, all to get the users as addicted as possible to this endless loop. (The same goes for Twitter and Google/Youtube too, of course)
  - nr2x 6y ago
    Philip Morris didn’t intentionally develop a system to spread lung cancer, and yet they did.
    - redisman 6y ago
      It's not a bad metaphor since PM and FB both did develop their addiction systems on purpose. Cigarettes are not just dried tobacco leaf, there was a ton of R&D to identify and add chemicals that make them extremely addicting. Same with FB, they have optimized for outrage culture etc. - whatever brings the most "engagement".
inanutshellus 6y ago
Facebook is intrinsically a passion-group generator. Where "passion" is the edges of "adoration" to "enmity". Anything that "triggers" you (to interact w/ the platform), be it pottery or anarchy, FB will find "your people". If you are prone to fits of passion, FB will find your passion-mates... mated to you by fear, anxiety, rage ... or joy.
- owlmirror 6y ago
  I really don't know about this. There are certainly fringe groups active on Facebook but at least in my immediate circle it's mostly a tool to connect families, friends and communities. I really don't see it as a forum for ideas or activism, unlike Twitter or reddit. but maybe that's just the bubble I'm in.
  - FreakyT 6y ago
    > I really don't see it as a forum for ideas or activism, unlike Twitter or reddit. but maybe that's just the bubble I'm in. Exactly -- and that's the real danger of algorithmic engagement-driven content. For you, it's picking harmless content because that's what you engage with. But once you start engaging with, say, some crazy cult, Facebook's algo will pick up on that, and start prioritizing content from the crazy cultists. In time, you'll get to the point where you're only seeing content from the cultists, and come to believe that's what everyone thinks, because that's all you'll ever see. YouTube suffers from this too.
    - doyouevensunbro 6y ago
      For me, when I had a Facebook account, it would show me this kind of content. Not because I agreed with it, but I felt compelled to argue with it. But with their algorithm that counted as engagement. So whenever I logged in I had a wall full of hostile content. It was affecting my mental wellbeing so I just deleted the whole thing and haven’t looked back.
    - phaedrus 6y ago
      If you're unlucky enough to have lots of crazy Trump cultist family members, or live in the conservative South, or both, Facebook will show you a never-ending stream of this content as well. It's like having to walk past an overflowing toilet on the way to the cafeteria, every time I go to check my Facebook.
deleted 6y ago
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zests 6y ago
Yes, social media and maybe even the internet as a whole will radicalize its users. Facebook is a groupthink incubator. So is hacker news. I've witnessed many people change their political beliefs to match whichever group they belong to.
- goto11 6y ago
  In what direction does HN radicalize us?
  - cecja 6y ago
    If you read the threads about last week we are left wing extremists and hackernews and we should be destroyed. So I guess we are a left extremist site.
  - sn_master 6y ago
    There are many Taboo opinions and thought tracks on HN that guarantee downvoting and as a result anyone not exposed to them in advance might be inclined to think that they must be heresies that should never be considered by the intelligentsia. Example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25768269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25768269 And things that contradict The Great Stallman teachings like TiVoization (even in self-driving cars) or saying that something can be done more efficiently with Windows (or just not Linux/OSS in general) or that plenty of ML is outright useless BS that does more harm that good. Edit: Thanks to whoever unflagged the HN post! Let's see how long it'll stay unflagged this time!
    - tester34 6y ago
      > or saying that something can be done more efficiently with Windows are people here this naive?
      - sn_master 6y ago
        I loved developing all kinds of command line and UI tools for Windows, so I might be a little biased, but I found the Linux equivalents..well..not as easy and straightforward to say the least. But, there is countless posts here passionately defending and stating otherwise, that I don't even know if I should bring it up in a discussion. What do you think?
yrimaxi 6y ago
NYT engineered consent for the Iraq War?
- 3princip 6y ago
  Absolutely correct. The actions of mainstream media have resulted in countless deaths, destruction and other barbarous acts committed as a result of fake news and propaganda. Yet they call for the censorship of others for deeds that pale in comparison.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    Newsmedia positions themselves as the defenders of democracy but in reality they're just a business. And this idea that you need "the press" to tell you the truth is the result of very successful branding.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    Sorry, but this comment betrays a lack of understanding about the very functioning of North American media. There is no real world scenario in which they can be lumped as one group. Even individual outlets carry such a variety of voices that you cannot pin one on any given outlet. The organizations that are lumped into the "MSM" branding opponents to a free press like to throw around are just large organizations. Remember, "the medium is the message": you cannot extricate one article from the entirety of content published by a given outlet any more than you can exalt one article as being the sum of any outlet on its own. For example, a muffin recipe[0] is as much the New York Times as an opinion commentary on the potential problematic nature of social media, yet you cannot say that the NYT is only one or the other. Because an outlet published an article that one might contend is responsible for a situation (rather than commentary on a situation), and that content has commonalities with content from other outlets does not mean there is any other practical association—only thematic. Secondly, calling it all "fake news and propaganda" really belies any rational discussion of the subject... it's like saying all computers are killing machines because they've been used in war. [0] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2868-jordan-marshs-blueberry-muffins https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2868-jordan-marshs-blueb...
mrweasel 6y ago
So is Google going to throw them out of the Play store? What's the argument for banning one social media and not another. Where do you draw the line that manages to keep Facebooks app available, while still being able to defend the removal of Parler. I know many will think I'm defending Parler, I'm not. I just don't see why Facebook is continuously given a free pass for all the horrible stuff on their platform. Is it just because Facebook has other uses, because they're bigger or because an app store that doesn't have a Facebook app will experience a huge backlash from consumers?
- NDizzle 6y ago
  I'm going to need a few "Jump to conclusions" mats to manage all of the replies to this. Nuts. Propaganda sure does work.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Facebook is big, wealthy and mainstream. Parler was small, poor and fringe. Same reason tech firms are happy to "stand up" for democracy in small developing nations but won't say boo to China. If you're looking to big business for some consistent moral principle, you're looking in the wrong place.
  - lr 6y ago
    Facebook, allegedly, has an "army" of moderators. Parler, on the other hand, relied on voluntary "flagging", and they admitted (quoted in some other article from today), that they had a backlog of some 26,000 posts to review. So, while this stuff looks arbitrary on the surface, I guess we will just have to see what comes out in discovery in these lawsuits and what happens with judge and jury.
    - ctrlp 6y ago
      Parler has allegedly had hundreds of paid moderators for months. They also allegedly cleared their backlog over the weekend in a foolish belief they could be on the right side of AWS politics.
temp8964 6y ago
Definition of insurrection : an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.
deleted 6y ago
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tomp 6y ago
So, the chickens are coming home to roost... Big Tech had hoped that by appeasing the Democrats & the pro-woke anti-Trump mainstream media, they'll escape scrutiny and avoid anti-cartel regulation. Well, looks like it's not working out as planned, at least not for Facebook, with both NYTimes and WSJ accusing them of basically being the same as Parler. One possible future is that this just blows over, and/or gets swept under the rug for a few months/years until another faux pas happens and Big Tech is again in the crosshairs (this time, Democrats' crosshairs - who are generally more anti-business). Another option is that FB&co fight back, and accuse the media/Democrats of tolerating/promoting violence over the summer. Who could have predicted this? :D
megaman821 6y ago
Emotional content elicits a larger response, says the article with the provocative headline. There is nothing new here. Why does the responsibility never lie with the people who say these things, only where they say it? It reminds of of the Columbine shootings, where many articles where written about the violent video games that must of inspired the shooters to do it. Those arguments sucked then and they still suck now.
- bjt2n3904 6y ago
  This, right here. In 2016, when Facebook was charged with hosting "fake news", their response should have been "It's your fault for believing everything you read on the internet." When Facebook replied, "We accept responsibility, and we will do better", they spelled their own doom.
  - NickGott 6y ago
    "It's your fault for believing everything you read on the internet." I disagree, it's our fault as a society for not allocating proper resources towards education. You can't expect people to understand critical thinking, media/source analysis, etc. if no-one ever taught it to them. Now, Facebook capitalized on that societal failure point and developed an algorithm that exploited individuals who lack that critical thinking skill by shoving progressively angrier and more unhinged content in front of their eyeballs, and recommending them groups of extreme individuals, therefore normalizing their way of thinking. They did this because they realized content that causes anger, outrage, and fear is extremely effective at keeping people clicking, scrolling, reading, and overall "engaged" which means more data, more ads shown, more money. They basically took the Fox News model and injected pure racing fuel into it. This, like most issues, cannot be explained by one specific cause, but Facebook absolutely shares the blame.
    - MrMan 6y ago
      Critical thinking is not an effective antidote to propaganda especially that which is spread peer-to-peer. It sounds good and is an intuitive concept but it's not enough to rely on critical thinking.
motohagiography 6y ago
Social media like Facebook/Twitter is basically a vibrator for narcissistic supply. We should all just step back, put these toys down, recognize it's a vice, and that there is a real world out there to be lived in.
- offtop5 6y ago
  Well put. Unless you want to be angry without reason it's a waste of time. Back in 2019 I went social media/ online dating free. Had more fun and better partners than I could ever imagine. Also boosted my income significantly
- NickGott 6y ago
  100% agree. Social Media should be treated like anything else in life that is addictive and potentially self-destructive: alcohol, drugs, junk food, video games, porn, gambling, online shopping, whatever. Actively moderate and track your usage, and if you ever feel like it's negatively impacting your life, take a step back and think carefully about if you're really still in control.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- fsociety 6y ago
  Yes and I think you can add Reddit and potentially even some HN posts to this. The world would benefit from an engagement diet.
gegtik 6y ago
https://archive.is/PUIyl https://archive.is/PUIyl
rangoon626 6y ago
All Facebook really did is show blue city liberals how their fellow countrymen actually are. Yes, they have been like this the whole time, you just either didn’t care or were insulated from it your entire life. If any of this is news to you, you should probably think twice before blaming it on Facebook, alone.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  This is revisionism. There have always been cranks in the Republican faithful, but never have they been as detached from reality in as large of numbers as with Q Anon. Consider all the stories of people "losing" their relatives to increasingly deranged Q-adjacent conspiracy nonsense. These aren't just the cranks that were always there, they're fresh converts.
  - rangoon626 6y ago
    They lost their relatives due to a declining living standard in the US. Qanon is a thing not because of Facebook, but because it gave people hope that the horrors and apparent wrongness of the globalism that has wiped out their communities, would be addressed. Things like Qanon and BLM are a result of that declining living standard. No one would care if the country hadn’t been sold out. It absolutely is the slow death of the middle class and working class has led to all of this civil unrest and jumping at shadows. In a heathy, growing society, you just wouldn’t see things like this.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      I agree. But the idea of declining living standards as a causal factor is not mentioned, nor even hinted at, in your original comment.
mc32 6y ago
I think Facebook should not have the power they have: to grant or deny speech as _they_ see fit, which may or may not align with the locales they operate in. They are a supranational entity without any local governance. So their policies are left up to them. That’s not good for democracies. They should not force their world view across the world. That said, this is sour grapes from the NYT. They want to pile on because this is their direct competitor to setting agenda in the anglosphere.
- dahart 6y ago
  > their policies are left up to them. That’s not good for democracies. I think many economists and many people from all political parties would argue the exact opposite, that companies having enough freedom to set their own policies (as long as they’re legal) is very much one feature of the United States that has been supporting democracy in the last century. Why should a private company not be allowed to establish their own rules on their own platform? Does your opinion apply to all private companies? Does Facebook have a history of limiting legal speech? There are many types of speech that are not legal and not protected as free speech by the constitution. Surely Facebook should be free to limit such speech on their own platform, so they don’t become liable for it? False statements of fact, incitement, commercial speech, fighting words, threats, obscenity, among many other types of speech, are not protected free speech in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
  - mc32 6y ago
    The issue is that it’s not federated by jurisdiction, so they apply American laws and principles to people in Ghana as well as Mexico and Indonesia, but all these countries have different frameworks for speech and what’s allowed and not. Facebook however does not observe that unless they get pressured (like Turkey). We may both hold that Turkey has issues with authoritarianism and freedom of speech, but that’s up to them and the international community, not Facebook to set and settle. They are not accountable to the local population they are serving.
    - 6y ago
nautilus12 6y ago
The violent comment botnets will continue to attack every social network until Twitter is the only one left. No due process required. Twitter has teamed up with Amazon now, they've got a giant in their corner.
silicon2401 6y ago
We should bar mega corporations like Amazon and Facebook from receiving public funds and subsidies. One of the many things that invalidates that argument that one should just "start your own ISP/cloud service/etc" is the fact that these megacorporations receive billions in things like subsidies. I would argue that if private companies can do what they want but the government is forbidden from favoring religion, controlling speech, then they shouldn't be giving assistance to companies that do so. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-news/amazon-hq2-to-receive-more-than-28-billion-in-incentives-from-virginia-new-york-and-tennessee/2018/11/13/f3f73cf4-e757-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-news/amazon-hq...
- 8note 6y ago
  One further: we should bar the government from giving subsidies and contracts. The government should do the work itself, not contract out to third parties who don't have to spend the money with the same constraints government has.
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    I would agree with this too. If contractors are able to attract the talent after government money is filtered through however many layers of bureaucracy, why wouldn't the government be able to attract that talent by paying directly? As an american software engineer I've dreamed of working for the government, but unfortunately the opportunities with contractors far outnumber (not to speak of how the compensation and benefits compare) direct government employment, let alone private industry overall. I would gladly take a 5-figure pay cut for the chance to do the equivalent of my current work but for the government.
biffstallion 6y ago
What hypocrisy... despite eight months of deaths, threats, and continued destruction from BLM/Antif rioters who continue to get bailed out by the "Minnesota Freedom Fund" they continue to have a platform but conservative voices do not. What a load of garbage. The breakup of BigTech cannot happen fast enough!
balozi 6y ago
The last two paragraphs seem strangely familiar. Almost like I have read it somewhere else before.
justinzollars 6y ago
This was discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25769840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25769840
btbuildem 6y ago
So.. suppose you're Superman, and you can just burn every last Facebook data centre to the ground. Would removing FB from the internet help, or is it too late at this point?
- mordymoop 6y ago
  Only if we could remove and permanently prohibit what we currently think of as "social media", which in my opinion would include things like Discord and Reddit as well as Facebook and Twitter. A full-on Butlerian Jihad aimed at reverting the species back to traditional modes of human interaction. We clearly can't handle this drug. But that won't happen, obviously, so we need to figure something else out.
  - tqi 6y ago
    > include things like Discord and Reddit as well as Facebook and Twitter. Hackernews?
    - mordymoop 6y ago
      Maybe. It didn’t seem like stuff was this nuts when we were constrained to BBSes, which is closer to what this is.
      - tqi 6y ago
        That's probably because only 5% of the world had access to the internet at the time.
- dbetteridge 6y ago
  I think FB could work if there was a hard limit on the size of groups/spread of ideas. Say a group can have only 50 members Anything a person shares can only be seen by X people and no re-sharing allowed. Basically a return to old style forums, niche audience etc.
- redisman 6y ago
zyxzevn 6y ago
It was a protest. Don't start the gaslighting again.
- babygoat 6y ago
  Deadly assault and destruction of a federal building is a protest to you?
  - zests 6y ago
    Which event are we talking about? The ones that agree with my sensibilities are protests. The others are riots.
    - babygoat 6y ago
      Are you being facetious, or are you really saying the definition of a riot or insurrection change according to your preferences?
      - AlexandrB 6y ago
        I think they are comparing Jan 6 with the summer's BLM protests. I don't have a fully coherent argument why the two are different, but intuitively I think they are very different. For example, one was a response to unchecked executive power (killings by police), while the other was incited by unchecked executive power (the president).
        zests 6y ago
        Or even the HK protests. I could list many famous [protests|riots] in history and they would also make great examples. I am not referring to any real life events.
        Hitton 6y ago
        From my European point of view. One was response to conspiracy theory that cops are assholes biased black people (much more likely that cops are assholes in general), second was response to conspiracy theory that democrats stole the election (much more likely republicans just didn't vote by mail). That said, attacking government building during recent riots makes much more sense then previous BLMers looting and setting on fire random supermarkets/buildings which were not related to cops or government in general.
tayistay 6y ago
I think we should ban the use of opaque algorithms to mediate communication between individuals. You need to be able to understand and predict the semantics of communication.
- spiralx 6y ago
  Yeah, I would say that algorithmic curation is the key difference between "before" and "after" here. Social media makes it easy to form filter bubbles, but on its own it's just an iterative change to an existing phenomenon. But when you curate and present content for engagement, especially content from outside of your chosen set of interactions, it becomes a positive feedback loop of ever-increasing extremism - even in the most benign of topics. Google's search personalisation and targeted ads fall under this even if they're not as effective at radicalisation IMO.
zug_zug 6y ago
I think the title says one thing but the body doesn't really provide enough evidence to support the title (aka linkbait). The body shows some people got a bunch of likes for saying crazy things on Facebook. I assume that's true of twitter or all social media, and true for all conspiracy theories. I'd be curious what exactly the proposal is from this post.
- umeshunni 6y ago
  This is just NY times' daily anti-Facebook tirade. Facebook pissed the NYTimes off a few years ago when they backed off on an ads deal and since then NYT has daily hit pieces against facebook.
justicezyx 6y ago
Well I guess it's indeed true that people only realized the sin when themselves are the victims... This should be obvious and media and propaganda tools have always been like this. If there were no Facebook, it would be another news paper brooding the insurrection.
globular-toast 6y ago
I've been a huge critic of Facebook right from the beginning. I was that guy who quit Facebook back in 2008 when it was really uncool to do so. But I really don't understand why they are being blamed for recent events. What, in particular, has Facebook done to encourage this kind of behaviour? Are we really going to blame them for making it easier for people to be heard and to find other like-minded people to communicate with? What we are witnessing is a societal problem. It's possibly a new problem, or maybe just one that has never been seen at such large scale. But all that's being done about is the oldest trick in the book: scapegoating. I get it. It's a huge and complex problem and it's easier to focus one entity and call it the enemy. But we can do better than this. All we'll achieve by blaming Facebook is less free speech. Is that really the best solution here? Again? This has been tried so many times before.
flowerlad 6y ago
Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It is as if the age of reason -- the era of evidential argument -- is ending. Knowledge is de-legitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy which depends on shared truths is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history. The above is by Sacha Baron Cohen, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM More excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.
- redisman 6y ago
  > 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz If this is true - which I very much doubt as a millenial, isn't that a giant failing of the US school system first and foremost?
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    There was a Tablet magazine piece some years ago that claimed Spielberg hadn’t heard of Auschwitz until his 30s
- randompwd 6y ago
  > When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist. Probably better to qualify the statistic when you are using it as a prelude to declaring "Facts do exist" Maybe making the quote more exact slightly dampens the hyperbole you were aiming for: first result for the line: > 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz gives https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04/12/two-thirds-of-millennials-dont-know-what-auschwitz-is-according-to-study-of-fading-holocaust-knowledge/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04... which includes the excerpt of: > Two-thirds of American millennials > how are they supposed to know what's true Please do explain the equivalence of not knowing what is true with not knowing what Auschwitz is?
flowerlad 6y ago
Related: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
There are so many problems with this NYT opinion piece. The most glaring and worrisome to me is that 2 out of the 3 did not consent to be subjects of this NYT op-Ed.
crobertsbmw 6y ago
This seems like more of a sad story of people needing love and attention from the people around them so they don’t need to seek it out from anonymous people online.
sonthonax 6y ago
I experienced the inverse of this. When I was in the Army Reserve (in the UK) and still had Instagram, I was purchasing a lot of tactical kit and this caused Instagram to promote far-right groups to me. I couldn't be further from the kind of person who would involve themselves with such grimy associations (and it's one of the reasons I deleted Instagram). I'm fairly left wing; in fact my entire unit was pretty centrist. And it was aggravating having right wing propaganda pushed down my throat, solely because Facebook's crude advertising algorithms could not distinguish between a soldier who needed some webbing for a deployment, and a far-right militiaman who had delusions of protecting their constitutional rights.
mancerayder 6y ago
Twitter is full of hostility, threats, doxxing, and violent comments. As well. Justice would have that banned, or nothing banned. The call of journalists wanting to shut down, regulate and censor is deeply disturbing. One argument is that these are mainstream media outlets (NYT, WP, Fox, MSNBC, etc.) up against and wanting to use various "unassailable" arguments to shut down alternative new media. When we call for banning things, we should not just look at how bad and awful the stuff we're asking to be banned is (even if it is absolutely terrible), but what are the long-term consequences for stuff-that-isn't-harmful but simply alternative once the precedent has been set.
samizdis 6y ago
> Over the past week, they’ve [Trump supporters] flocked to an array of other platforms, including encrypted text-messaging services like Signal and Telegram, which were among the most popular apps in the country this week. That statement is a bit annoying, given that a fair few people have been switching to Signal/Telegram et al in the same time period for another reason - namely WhatsApp's changes to its terms to allow more data-sharing with FaceBook. Edited to add this: Regardless of what I might think of the people highlighted in the NYT article, I found this affecting: He’s paid a price. He said he lost a few customers of the credit repair business he runs, which he also promotes on Facebook. And members of his family started distancing themselves. After his cat died in December, Mr. McGee said, no one in his family offered condolences. A bereavement is horrible, and I'd offer condolences to anyone who had lost a friend, relative or pet, regardless of what I thought of their behaviour or views. The feeling of loss is, I think, something common in humanity. It should make us reach out - even in this case if, as I am, you are a dog person rather than a cat person (and definitely not a Trump person). I would definitely have commiserated. Shame on his family.
Mc_Big_G 6y ago
This has been obvious to anyone with a clue since 2015. Facebook is barely more than a propaganda machine where nefarious actors can spread lies and brainwash the masses who are either too lazy, too stupid or simply enjoy the confirmation bias too much to realize they're being manipulated. It's depressing and sad. Even more concerning is that seemingly intelligent people are equally susceptible and perfectly willing to go down the insane conspiracy rabbit hole.
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
xkcd.com/1357/ "I'm not defending parlor" doesn't absolve you of then spending your time writing an essay defending a platform and it's clear use in organizing and promoting armed insurrection...
dentldir 6y ago
The NY Times changed the title of this article to: "They Used To Post Selfies. Now They Are Trying To Reverse The Election." from "How Facebook Incubated The Insurrection."
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
Observation: A party can incite insurrections -- by claiming that other parties incited insurrections... Advice: If a party doesn't want to incite insurrections -- it should never claim that other parties incited insurrections... Shakespeare Quote: "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be..."
muhResearch 6y ago
Facebook made me do it, I love the government. Why not blame the piss poor representation that most Americans feels as a catalyst??
muhResearch 6y ago
This failed society continues to prune symptoms instead of fixing core illnesses. Poor opportunities across board complimented by a callous politicians who represent ruling class. Saving grace is the highly suggestible slaves and mind control techniques of the plutocrats. Elementary. Muh social app caused this.

454 points by tysone 6y ago

We should consider shutting down all the various social networks, especially Facebook. These things don’t seem to be actually helping humanity.

throwawayosiu1 6y ago

On a side-note, I hate how Facebook sticks to their real name policy and does not allow for the creation of multiple accounts (I'd want one for my startup / work etc. and another for my personal use case for my friends / family etc.). That said, all the mainstream social media apps - Facebook and Twitter had a hand and if Parler was de-platformed with that reason, then they should be as well. I mean, if a 700B and a 50B company can't solve this issue, than how can we expect a much much smaller company like Parler to tackle it? But it's obvious that these companies don't give a damn about the insurrection - This was entirely to pacify the dems by giving them a "Win" considering they have the House, Senate and Presidency. It's funny because the company I'm currently consulting for a company that has a ~1B/yr account with Amazon and we've decided to slow our cloud migration projects. We run a major media site and if AWS decides to capitulate to the pressure from essentially people on social media or the wrath of the US Govt, what's stopping them from doing the exact same from Govts of other countries?

mgbmtl 6y ago
Isn't the Real Name policy a bit of a joke? I have a few test/fake/dev accounts, never had any issues (but for new accounts, need to associate them with a mobile number, but only for the initial signup). That said, I think the structure of Facebook intentionally makes it difficult to moderate. Reddit, for example, has public groups, group mods, etc. Far from perfect, but Facebook could definitely do more validation before promoting groups.
- acover 6y ago
  I have been permanently banned from Facebook for using an incorrect birthday :/ Uploaded government id, correct information, phone number but I'm no longer allowed to create an account.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chalst 6y ago
    Funny, last time I changed my birthday on Facebook I was asked "Are you sure? You can change your birthdate at most 5 times". Presumably they must be aware that at least one of the birthdates I gave was false.
    - acover 6y ago
      Interesting, then I'm not sure why I've been banned.
TearsInTheRain 6y ago
I dont think they were trying to pacify dems. I think they have wanted to do this for a long time but couldnt with Trump in power. This was a cathartic release for San Francisco bay liberals
threatofrain 6y ago
According to the CEO of Parler, banks and payment vendors, law firms, text and mail services also cancelled on them. Shouldn’t there be some discussion about banning those banks and lawyers too? Should a law firm be able to quit you? Should a bank be able to cancel on you? We even have major banks cancelling on the US President. At what point ought those who despise you be free to ditch you? These are all parties exercising their freedom of association. Parler was a red hot potato for anyone who didn’t leave fast enough.
- t-writescode 6y ago
  Specific lawyers? Yes. Some clients are just horrible, and forcing them to work with a certain person is ... decidedly unethical. Banks? Now we're starting to have fun. If all banks cancel you, you cannot reasonably do business in this country. That's a very real concern and something that needs to be looked at. There may be some real value in investigating all of the oligopolies in the United States, and their behaviors in cancelling.

hoka-one-one 6y ago

Terrible. The storming of the capitol was probably the most frightening single event in American history in recent times. I just got off the phone with my friend who lives in China. He was in tears. He didn't understand how someone could have such disregard for the value of human life and democracy to walk inside the capitol building in DC. It's completely against the law. For those in the dark, the event caused serious international ripples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the_2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the...

douglaswlance 6y ago
Were you paid to post this?
gvhst 6y ago
> disregard for the value of human life While the deaths were sad, I don't think that's the main reason people are concerned.
- hoka-one-one 6y ago
  Edited to include democracy, thank you for correcting me.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
docdeek 6y ago
>> The storming of the capitol was probably the most frightening single event in American history in recent times. This is surely hyperbole or else recent times doesn’t include much of the 21st century.
- gadders 6y ago
  Or even much of the past year in Portland, or even the violent BLM riots in Washington DC.

nr2x 6y ago

Somebody from Facebook recently told me they developed the best system to flag radical/violent content in the world, I pointed out they first developed the best system to spread it.

umvi 6y ago
Well they didn't develop the platform specifically for spreading radical/violent content. They build a generic platform for spreading thoughts among friends, and racist/violent people used the generic platform to spread their thoughts.
- tolbish 6y ago
  Not quite. They tweaked the way it was run to keep people addicted.
  - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
    That is the thing, many argue as if Facebook is a flat, neutral forum, and leave out the whole big algorithmic blackbox it entails. In reality there are no chronological timelines and the regular user is pushed towards the most rage inducing (or as Facebook employees probably euphemize it: "most engaging") content and group recommendations Facebook can apply to an individual. Facebook was very much an actor in this, not some mere communication infrastructure. Facebook wasn't "warped" by malicious actors, it fanned the flames and by doing so nurtured their hatred and multiplied their reach, all to get the users as addicted as possible to this endless loop. (The same goes for Twitter and Google/Youtube too, of course)
- nr2x 6y ago
  Philip Morris didn’t intentionally develop a system to spread lung cancer, and yet they did.
  - redisman 6y ago
    It's not a bad metaphor since PM and FB both did develop their addiction systems on purpose. Cigarettes are not just dried tobacco leaf, there was a ton of R&D to identify and add chemicals that make them extremely addicting. Same with FB, they have optimized for outrage culture etc. - whatever brings the most "engagement".

inanutshellus 6y ago

Facebook is intrinsically a passion-group generator. Where "passion" is the edges of "adoration" to "enmity". Anything that "triggers" you (to interact w/ the platform), be it pottery or anarchy, FB will find "your people". If you are prone to fits of passion, FB will find your passion-mates... mated to you by fear, anxiety, rage ... or joy.

owlmirror 6y ago
I really don't know about this. There are certainly fringe groups active on Facebook but at least in my immediate circle it's mostly a tool to connect families, friends and communities. I really don't see it as a forum for ideas or activism, unlike Twitter or reddit. but maybe that's just the bubble I'm in.
- FreakyT 6y ago
  > I really don't see it as a forum for ideas or activism, unlike Twitter or reddit. but maybe that's just the bubble I'm in. Exactly -- and that's the real danger of algorithmic engagement-driven content. For you, it's picking harmless content because that's what you engage with. But once you start engaging with, say, some crazy cult, Facebook's algo will pick up on that, and start prioritizing content from the crazy cultists. In time, you'll get to the point where you're only seeing content from the cultists, and come to believe that's what everyone thinks, because that's all you'll ever see. YouTube suffers from this too.
  - doyouevensunbro 6y ago
    For me, when I had a Facebook account, it would show me this kind of content. Not because I agreed with it, but I felt compelled to argue with it. But with their algorithm that counted as engagement. So whenever I logged in I had a wall full of hostile content. It was affecting my mental wellbeing so I just deleted the whole thing and haven’t looked back.
  - phaedrus 6y ago
    If you're unlucky enough to have lots of crazy Trump cultist family members, or live in the conservative South, or both, Facebook will show you a never-ending stream of this content as well. It's like having to walk past an overflowing toilet on the way to the cafeteria, every time I go to check my Facebook.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zests 6y ago

Yes, social media and maybe even the internet as a whole will radicalize its users. Facebook is a groupthink incubator. So is hacker news. I've witnessed many people change their political beliefs to match whichever group they belong to.

goto11 6y ago
In what direction does HN radicalize us?
- cecja 6y ago
  If you read the threads about last week we are left wing extremists and hackernews and we should be destroyed. So I guess we are a left extremist site.
- sn_master 6y ago
  There are many Taboo opinions and thought tracks on HN that guarantee downvoting and as a result anyone not exposed to them in advance might be inclined to think that they must be heresies that should never be considered by the intelligentsia. Example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25768269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25768269 And things that contradict The Great Stallman teachings like TiVoization (even in self-driving cars) or saying that something can be done more efficiently with Windows (or just not Linux/OSS in general) or that plenty of ML is outright useless BS that does more harm that good. Edit: Thanks to whoever unflagged the HN post! Let's see how long it'll stay unflagged this time!
  - tester34 6y ago
    > or saying that something can be done more efficiently with Windows are people here this naive?
    - sn_master 6y ago
      I loved developing all kinds of command line and UI tools for Windows, so I might be a little biased, but I found the Linux equivalents..well..not as easy and straightforward to say the least. But, there is countless posts here passionately defending and stating otherwise, that I don't even know if I should bring it up in a discussion. What do you think?

yrimaxi 6y ago

NYT engineered consent for the Iraq War?

3princip 6y ago
Absolutely correct. The actions of mainstream media have resulted in countless deaths, destruction and other barbarous acts committed as a result of fake news and propaganda. Yet they call for the censorship of others for deeds that pale in comparison.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  Newsmedia positions themselves as the defenders of democracy but in reality they're just a business. And this idea that you need "the press" to tell you the truth is the result of very successful branding.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  Sorry, but this comment betrays a lack of understanding about the very functioning of North American media. There is no real world scenario in which they can be lumped as one group. Even individual outlets carry such a variety of voices that you cannot pin one on any given outlet. The organizations that are lumped into the "MSM" branding opponents to a free press like to throw around are just large organizations. Remember, "the medium is the message": you cannot extricate one article from the entirety of content published by a given outlet any more than you can exalt one article as being the sum of any outlet on its own. For example, a muffin recipe[0] is as much the New York Times as an opinion commentary on the potential problematic nature of social media, yet you cannot say that the NYT is only one or the other. Because an outlet published an article that one might contend is responsible for a situation (rather than commentary on a situation), and that content has commonalities with content from other outlets does not mean there is any other practical association—only thematic. Secondly, calling it all "fake news and propaganda" really belies any rational discussion of the subject... it's like saying all computers are killing machines because they've been used in war. [0] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2868-jordan-marshs-blueberry-muffins https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2868-jordan-marshs-blueb...

mrweasel 6y ago

So is Google going to throw them out of the Play store? What's the argument for banning one social media and not another. Where do you draw the line that manages to keep Facebooks app available, while still being able to defend the removal of Parler. I know many will think I'm defending Parler, I'm not. I just don't see why Facebook is continuously given a free pass for all the horrible stuff on their platform. Is it just because Facebook has other uses, because they're bigger or because an app store that doesn't have a Facebook app will experience a huge backlash from consumers?

NDizzle 6y ago
I'm going to need a few "Jump to conclusions" mats to manage all of the replies to this. Nuts. Propaganda sure does work.
ForHackernews 6y ago
Facebook is big, wealthy and mainstream. Parler was small, poor and fringe. Same reason tech firms are happy to "stand up" for democracy in small developing nations but won't say boo to China. If you're looking to big business for some consistent moral principle, you're looking in the wrong place.
- lr 6y ago
  Facebook, allegedly, has an "army" of moderators. Parler, on the other hand, relied on voluntary "flagging", and they admitted (quoted in some other article from today), that they had a backlog of some 26,000 posts to review. So, while this stuff looks arbitrary on the surface, I guess we will just have to see what comes out in discovery in these lawsuits and what happens with judge and jury.
  - ctrlp 6y ago
    Parler has allegedly had hundreds of paid moderators for months. They also allegedly cleared their backlog over the weekend in a foolish belief they could be on the right side of AWS politics.

temp8964 6y ago

Definition of insurrection : an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tomp 6y ago

So, the chickens are coming home to roost... Big Tech had hoped that by appeasing the Democrats & the pro-woke anti-Trump mainstream media, they'll escape scrutiny and avoid anti-cartel regulation. Well, looks like it's not working out as planned, at least not for Facebook, with both NYTimes and WSJ accusing them of basically being the same as Parler. One possible future is that this just blows over, and/or gets swept under the rug for a few months/years until another faux pas happens and Big Tech is again in the crosshairs (this time, Democrats' crosshairs - who are generally more anti-business). Another option is that FB&co fight back, and accuse the media/Democrats of tolerating/promoting violence over the summer. Who could have predicted this? :D

megaman821 6y ago

Emotional content elicits a larger response, says the article with the provocative headline. There is nothing new here. Why does the responsibility never lie with the people who say these things, only where they say it? It reminds of of the Columbine shootings, where many articles where written about the violent video games that must of inspired the shooters to do it. Those arguments sucked then and they still suck now.

bjt2n3904 6y ago
This, right here. In 2016, when Facebook was charged with hosting "fake news", their response should have been "It's your fault for believing everything you read on the internet." When Facebook replied, "We accept responsibility, and we will do better", they spelled their own doom.
- NickGott 6y ago
  "It's your fault for believing everything you read on the internet." I disagree, it's our fault as a society for not allocating proper resources towards education. You can't expect people to understand critical thinking, media/source analysis, etc. if no-one ever taught it to them. Now, Facebook capitalized on that societal failure point and developed an algorithm that exploited individuals who lack that critical thinking skill by shoving progressively angrier and more unhinged content in front of their eyeballs, and recommending them groups of extreme individuals, therefore normalizing their way of thinking. They did this because they realized content that causes anger, outrage, and fear is extremely effective at keeping people clicking, scrolling, reading, and overall "engaged" which means more data, more ads shown, more money. They basically took the Fox News model and injected pure racing fuel into it. This, like most issues, cannot be explained by one specific cause, but Facebook absolutely shares the blame.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    Critical thinking is not an effective antidote to propaganda especially that which is spread peer-to-peer. It sounds good and is an intuitive concept but it's not enough to rely on critical thinking.

motohagiography 6y ago

Social media like Facebook/Twitter is basically a vibrator for narcissistic supply. We should all just step back, put these toys down, recognize it's a vice, and that there is a real world out there to be lived in.

offtop5 6y ago
Well put. Unless you want to be angry without reason it's a waste of time. Back in 2019 I went social media/ online dating free. Had more fun and better partners than I could ever imagine. Also boosted my income significantly
NickGott 6y ago
100% agree. Social Media should be treated like anything else in life that is addictive and potentially self-destructive: alcohol, drugs, junk food, video games, porn, gambling, online shopping, whatever. Actively moderate and track your usage, and if you ever feel like it's negatively impacting your life, take a step back and think carefully about if you're really still in control.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
fsociety 6y ago
Yes and I think you can add Reddit and potentially even some HN posts to this. The world would benefit from an engagement diet.

gegtik 6y ago

https://archive.is/PUIyl https://archive.is/PUIyl

rangoon626 6y ago

All Facebook really did is show blue city liberals how their fellow countrymen actually are. Yes, they have been like this the whole time, you just either didn’t care or were insulated from it your entire life. If any of this is news to you, you should probably think twice before blaming it on Facebook, alone.

AlexandrB 6y ago
This is revisionism. There have always been cranks in the Republican faithful, but never have they been as detached from reality in as large of numbers as with Q Anon. Consider all the stories of people "losing" their relatives to increasingly deranged Q-adjacent conspiracy nonsense. These aren't just the cranks that were always there, they're fresh converts.
- rangoon626 6y ago
  They lost their relatives due to a declining living standard in the US. Qanon is a thing not because of Facebook, but because it gave people hope that the horrors and apparent wrongness of the globalism that has wiped out their communities, would be addressed. Things like Qanon and BLM are a result of that declining living standard. No one would care if the country hadn’t been sold out. It absolutely is the slow death of the middle class and working class has led to all of this civil unrest and jumping at shadows. In a heathy, growing society, you just wouldn’t see things like this.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    I agree. But the idea of declining living standards as a causal factor is not mentioned, nor even hinted at, in your original comment.

mc32 6y ago

I think Facebook should not have the power they have: to grant or deny speech as _they_ see fit, which may or may not align with the locales they operate in. They are a supranational entity without any local governance. So their policies are left up to them. That’s not good for democracies. They should not force their world view across the world. That said, this is sour grapes from the NYT. They want to pile on because this is their direct competitor to setting agenda in the anglosphere.

dahart 6y ago
> their policies are left up to them. That’s not good for democracies. I think many economists and many people from all political parties would argue the exact opposite, that companies having enough freedom to set their own policies (as long as they’re legal) is very much one feature of the United States that has been supporting democracy in the last century. Why should a private company not be allowed to establish their own rules on their own platform? Does your opinion apply to all private companies? Does Facebook have a history of limiting legal speech? There are many types of speech that are not legal and not protected as free speech by the constitution. Surely Facebook should be free to limit such speech on their own platform, so they don’t become liable for it? False statements of fact, incitement, commercial speech, fighting words, threats, obscenity, among many other types of speech, are not protected free speech in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
- mc32 6y ago
  The issue is that it’s not federated by jurisdiction, so they apply American laws and principles to people in Ghana as well as Mexico and Indonesia, but all these countries have different frameworks for speech and what’s allowed and not. Facebook however does not observe that unless they get pressured (like Turkey). We may both hold that Turkey has issues with authoritarianism and freedom of speech, but that’s up to them and the international community, not Facebook to set and settle. They are not accountable to the local population they are serving.
  - 6y ago

nautilus12 6y ago

The violent comment botnets will continue to attack every social network until Twitter is the only one left. No due process required. Twitter has teamed up with Amazon now, they've got a giant in their corner.

silicon2401 6y ago

We should bar mega corporations like Amazon and Facebook from receiving public funds and subsidies. One of the many things that invalidates that argument that one should just "start your own ISP/cloud service/etc" is the fact that these megacorporations receive billions in things like subsidies. I would argue that if private companies can do what they want but the government is forbidden from favoring religion, controlling speech, then they shouldn't be giving assistance to companies that do so. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-news/amazon-hq2-to-receive-more-than-28-billion-in-incentives-from-virginia-new-york-and-tennessee/2018/11/13/f3f73cf4-e757-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-news/amazon-hq...

8note 6y ago
One further: we should bar the government from giving subsidies and contracts. The government should do the work itself, not contract out to third parties who don't have to spend the money with the same constraints government has.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  I would agree with this too. If contractors are able to attract the talent after government money is filtered through however many layers of bureaucracy, why wouldn't the government be able to attract that talent by paying directly? As an american software engineer I've dreamed of working for the government, but unfortunately the opportunities with contractors far outnumber (not to speak of how the compensation and benefits compare) direct government employment, let alone private industry overall. I would gladly take a 5-figure pay cut for the chance to do the equivalent of my current work but for the government.

biffstallion 6y ago

What hypocrisy... despite eight months of deaths, threats, and continued destruction from BLM/Antif rioters who continue to get bailed out by the "Minnesota Freedom Fund" they continue to have a platform but conservative voices do not. What a load of garbage. The breakup of BigTech cannot happen fast enough!

balozi 6y ago

The last two paragraphs seem strangely familiar. Almost like I have read it somewhere else before.

justinzollars 6y ago

This was discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25769840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25769840

btbuildem 6y ago

So.. suppose you're Superman, and you can just burn every last Facebook data centre to the ground. Would removing FB from the internet help, or is it too late at this point?

mordymoop 6y ago
Only if we could remove and permanently prohibit what we currently think of as "social media", which in my opinion would include things like Discord and Reddit as well as Facebook and Twitter. A full-on Butlerian Jihad aimed at reverting the species back to traditional modes of human interaction. We clearly can't handle this drug. But that won't happen, obviously, so we need to figure something else out.
- tqi 6y ago
  > include things like Discord and Reddit as well as Facebook and Twitter. Hackernews?
  - mordymoop 6y ago
    Maybe. It didn’t seem like stuff was this nuts when we were constrained to BBSes, which is closer to what this is.
    - tqi 6y ago
      That's probably because only 5% of the world had access to the internet at the time.
dbetteridge 6y ago
I think FB could work if there was a hard limit on the size of groups/spread of ideas. Say a group can have only 50 members Anything a person shares can only be seen by X people and no re-sharing allowed. Basically a return to old style forums, niche audience etc.
redisman 6y ago

zyxzevn 6y ago

It was a protest. Don't start the gaslighting again.

babygoat 6y ago
Deadly assault and destruction of a federal building is a protest to you?
- zests 6y ago
  Which event are we talking about? The ones that agree with my sensibilities are protests. The others are riots.
  - babygoat 6y ago
    Are you being facetious, or are you really saying the definition of a riot or insurrection change according to your preferences?
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      I think they are comparing Jan 6 with the summer's BLM protests. I don't have a fully coherent argument why the two are different, but intuitively I think they are very different. For example, one was a response to unchecked executive power (killings by police), while the other was incited by unchecked executive power (the president).
      - zests 6y ago
        Or even the HK protests. I could list many famous [protests|riots] in history and they would also make great examples. I am not referring to any real life events.
      - Hitton 6y ago
        From my European point of view. One was response to conspiracy theory that cops are assholes biased black people (much more likely that cops are assholes in general), second was response to conspiracy theory that democrats stole the election (much more likely republicans just didn't vote by mail). That said, attacking government building during recent riots makes much more sense then previous BLMers looting and setting on fire random supermarkets/buildings which were not related to cops or government in general.

tayistay 6y ago

I think we should ban the use of opaque algorithms to mediate communication between individuals. You need to be able to understand and predict the semantics of communication.

spiralx 6y ago
Yeah, I would say that algorithmic curation is the key difference between "before" and "after" here. Social media makes it easy to form filter bubbles, but on its own it's just an iterative change to an existing phenomenon. But when you curate and present content for engagement, especially content from outside of your chosen set of interactions, it becomes a positive feedback loop of ever-increasing extremism - even in the most benign of topics. Google's search personalisation and targeted ads fall under this even if they're not as effective at radicalisation IMO.

zug_zug 6y ago

I think the title says one thing but the body doesn't really provide enough evidence to support the title (aka linkbait). The body shows some people got a bunch of likes for saying crazy things on Facebook. I assume that's true of twitter or all social media, and true for all conspiracy theories. I'd be curious what exactly the proposal is from this post.

umeshunni 6y ago
This is just NY times' daily anti-Facebook tirade. Facebook pissed the NYTimes off a few years ago when they backed off on an ads deal and since then NYT has daily hit pieces against facebook.

justicezyx 6y ago

Well I guess it's indeed true that people only realized the sin when themselves are the victims... This should be obvious and media and propaganda tools have always been like this. If there were no Facebook, it would be another news paper brooding the insurrection.

globular-toast 6y ago

I've been a huge critic of Facebook right from the beginning. I was that guy who quit Facebook back in 2008 when it was really uncool to do so. But I really don't understand why they are being blamed for recent events. What, in particular, has Facebook done to encourage this kind of behaviour? Are we really going to blame them for making it easier for people to be heard and to find other like-minded people to communicate with? What we are witnessing is a societal problem. It's possibly a new problem, or maybe just one that has never been seen at such large scale. But all that's being done about is the oldest trick in the book: scapegoating. I get it. It's a huge and complex problem and it's easier to focus one entity and call it the enemy. But we can do better than this. All we'll achieve by blaming Facebook is less free speech. Is that really the best solution here? Again? This has been tried so many times before.

flowerlad 6y ago

Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It is as if the age of reason -- the era of evidential argument -- is ending. Knowledge is de-legitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy which depends on shared truths is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history. The above is by Sacha Baron Cohen, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM More excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.

redisman 6y ago
> 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz If this is true - which I very much doubt as a millenial, isn't that a giant failing of the US school system first and foremost?
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  There was a Tablet magazine piece some years ago that claimed Spielberg hadn’t heard of Auschwitz until his 30s
randompwd 6y ago
> When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist. Probably better to qualify the statistic when you are using it as a prelude to declaring "Facts do exist" Maybe making the quote more exact slightly dampens the hyperbole you were aiming for: first result for the line: > 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz gives https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04/12/two-thirds-of-millennials-dont-know-what-auschwitz-is-according-to-study-of-fading-holocaust-knowledge/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04... which includes the excerpt of: > Two-thirds of American millennials > how are they supposed to know what's true Please do explain the equivalence of not knowing what is true with not knowing what Auschwitz is?

flowerlad 6y ago

Related: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

There are so many problems with this NYT opinion piece. The most glaring and worrisome to me is that 2 out of the 3 did not consent to be subjects of this NYT op-Ed.

crobertsbmw 6y ago

This seems like more of a sad story of people needing love and attention from the people around them so they don’t need to seek it out from anonymous people online.

sonthonax 6y ago

I experienced the inverse of this. When I was in the Army Reserve (in the UK) and still had Instagram, I was purchasing a lot of tactical kit and this caused Instagram to promote far-right groups to me. I couldn't be further from the kind of person who would involve themselves with such grimy associations (and it's one of the reasons I deleted Instagram). I'm fairly left wing; in fact my entire unit was pretty centrist. And it was aggravating having right wing propaganda pushed down my throat, solely because Facebook's crude advertising algorithms could not distinguish between a soldier who needed some webbing for a deployment, and a far-right militiaman who had delusions of protecting their constitutional rights.

mancerayder 6y ago

Twitter is full of hostility, threats, doxxing, and violent comments. As well. Justice would have that banned, or nothing banned. The call of journalists wanting to shut down, regulate and censor is deeply disturbing. One argument is that these are mainstream media outlets (NYT, WP, Fox, MSNBC, etc.) up against and wanting to use various "unassailable" arguments to shut down alternative new media. When we call for banning things, we should not just look at how bad and awful the stuff we're asking to be banned is (even if it is absolutely terrible), but what are the long-term consequences for stuff-that-isn't-harmful but simply alternative once the precedent has been set.

samizdis 6y ago

> Over the past week, they’ve [Trump supporters] flocked to an array of other platforms, including encrypted text-messaging services like Signal and Telegram, which were among the most popular apps in the country this week. That statement is a bit annoying, given that a fair few people have been switching to Signal/Telegram et al in the same time period for another reason - namely WhatsApp's changes to its terms to allow more data-sharing with FaceBook. Edited to add this: Regardless of what I might think of the people highlighted in the NYT article, I found this affecting: He’s paid a price. He said he lost a few customers of the credit repair business he runs, which he also promotes on Facebook. And members of his family started distancing themselves. After his cat died in December, Mr. McGee said, no one in his family offered condolences. A bereavement is horrible, and I'd offer condolences to anyone who had lost a friend, relative or pet, regardless of what I thought of their behaviour or views. The feeling of loss is, I think, something common in humanity. It should make us reach out - even in this case if, as I am, you are a dog person rather than a cat person (and definitely not a Trump person). I would definitely have commiserated. Shame on his family.

Mc_Big_G 6y ago

This has been obvious to anyone with a clue since 2015. Facebook is barely more than a propaganda machine where nefarious actors can spread lies and brainwash the masses who are either too lazy, too stupid or simply enjoy the confirmation bias too much to realize they're being manipulated. It's depressing and sad. Even more concerning is that seemingly intelligent people are equally susceptible and perfectly willing to go down the insane conspiracy rabbit hole.

cosmiccatnap 6y ago

xkcd.com/1357/ "I'm not defending parlor" doesn't absolve you of then spending your time writing an essay defending a platform and it's clear use in organizing and promoting armed insurrection...

dentldir 6y ago

The NY Times changed the title of this article to: "They Used To Post Selfies. Now They Are Trying To Reverse The Election." from "How Facebook Incubated The Insurrection."

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

Observation: A party can incite insurrections -- by claiming that other parties incited insurrections... Advice: If a party doesn't want to incite insurrections -- it should never claim that other parties incited insurrections... Shakespeare Quote: "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be..."

muhResearch 6y ago

Facebook made me do it, I love the government. Why not blame the piss poor representation that most Americans feels as a catalyst??

muhResearch 6y ago

This failed society continues to prune symptoms instead of fixing core illnesses. Poor opportunities across board complimented by a callous politicians who represent ruling class. Saving grace is the highly suggestible slaves and mind control techniques of the plutocrats. Elementary. Muh social app caused this.