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So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussi

So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussion and helping people avoid an unbalanced relationship with social media? Could they "manipulate" their user base to achieve this? Wouldn't they simply loose their users to other venues that would provide a vacuous engagement fix? Moreover, a lot of FB is based on user generated content? How do you prevent that from being trolly/provocative/etc? Edit: my point would be the manipulation happens but it's much more a product of the generators of provocative content than the forums, which give a certain spin but can't help but provide a forum for what is viral. As an "exception that proves the rule", FB and mainstream social media successfully suppressed Guilliani's one, big hit-piece last election. They got tremendous heat for this and it was clearly something they couldn't keep doing for every bit of content. Just consider, the NY Post still gets a wide forum despite, imo, being the tissue of lies and a river of filth. Edit2: And FB provides rebuttal like for some number of overtly fake stories. Is that enough? Is that itself manipulation?

thatguy0900 5y ago
They already have emotional algorithms. Tilt the scales to happy stories instead of outrage porn.
slipframe 5y ago
> So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussion and helping people avoid an unbalanced relationship with social media? In the case of Facebook, it's not immediately apparent to me how the platform might be changed to facilitate more thoughtful conversation. But on the other hand, Twitter is an easy case: get rid of the comment limit and let people express their thoughts using more than pithy snippets.
- codemonkey-zeta 5y ago
  But those snippets (like 7-second videos) are optimized for the attention economy in a way longer-form media is not. Even if Twitter made this change the traditional short pithy tweets would beat any long-form thoughtful comment.
  - slipframe 5y ago
    Giving people the opportunity can only improve the situation. On social media platforms that permit longer comments, people often leave longer comments. And if nobody wanted to leave longer comments, then the twitter limitation would serve no purpose at all.

thatguy0900 5y ago

They already have emotional algorithms. Tilt the scales to happy stories instead of outrage porn.

slipframe 5y ago

> So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussion and helping people avoid an unbalanced relationship with social media? In the case of Facebook, it's not immediately apparent to me how the platform might be changed to facilitate more thoughtful conversation. But on the other hand, Twitter is an easy case: get rid of the comment limit and let people express their thoughts using more than pithy snippets.

codemonkey-zeta 5y ago
But those snippets (like 7-second videos) are optimized for the attention economy in a way longer-form media is not. Even if Twitter made this change the traditional short pithy tweets would beat any long-form thoughtful comment.
- slipframe 5y ago
  Giving people the opportunity can only improve the situation. On social media platforms that permit longer comments, people often leave longer comments. And if nobody wanted to leave longer comments, then the twitter limitation would serve no purpose at all.