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Inside Facebook's Data Wars
- TeeMassive 5y ago> Facebook has disbanded one of its teams after the data they produced suggested that far-right commentators outperformed all other users. > CrowdTangle’s data showed that in the US the links posted on Facebook to other websites which got the most engagement was to content by right-wing commentators such as Ben Shapiro and the Fox News host Sean Hannity, and to right-wing sites including Breitbart and Newsmax. Any news site that uses "far-right" loses all credibility to me. I mean Shapiro far-right? Common.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- munk-a 5y agoInterestingly enough this also would seem to play against the common narrative that right wing views are being immediately shut down on FB. It seems pretty clear they're trying to shut down extreme conservative discussion but it also seems like they're failing pretty hard.
- TeeMassive 5y agoBeing popular doesn't mean not being suppressed. If anything this story proves they have a need to do so and that they failed.
- pjc50 5y agoThey're not trying to shut it down, they're very reluctantly doing so under public pressure. They're stuck between two backlashes.
- TaupeRanger 5y agoEvery ban adds fuel to the conspiratorial fire. It's something akin to the Barbara Streisand effect.
- smsm42 5y agoEven FB can't immediately shut down millions of people producing tens of millions of comments. Unless FB develops a human-level AI - or completely bans all right-wing personalities and any mention of them from accessing the service, which they aren't ready to do yet - there always will be people that slip through, and a lot of them. You can't pre-moderate a service with a billion users, especially when you're still pretending you're for open communication and have no ideological controls, and the moderation is just for safety.
- danbrooks 5y agoLink isn't working for me. Stuck on a captcha.
- munk-a 5y agoHere's a link[1] to the original article - that might work better though the archive version is much more pleasant to read. 1. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/facebook-axes-team-far-right-data-crowdtangle-v2hf8sxls https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/facebook-axes-team-far-ri...
- cinntaile 5y agoThis is unfortunate. Hiding the unwanted data doesn't make the problem go away, this only reduces their incentive to address the problem.
- TeeMassive 5y agoWhat problem?
- cinntaile 5y agoFacebook being an echo chamber.
- TeeMassive 5y agoThat's not what the article says
- cinntaile 5y agoThis isn't the original article anymore, both the content and the title were changed.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/zK9hn https://archive.is/zK9hn
- WisNorCan 5y ago"These executives argued that Facebook should selectively disclose its own data in the form of carefully curated reports, rather than handing outsiders the tools to discover it themselves. Team Selective Disclosure won, and CrowdTangle and its supporters lost." Anyone who has worked with data knows that you can torture the data show anything you want. Disappointing given all the talk from Zuck and team about taking disinformation seriously.
- hamburglar1 5y ago"Anyone who has worked with data knows that you can torture the data show anything you want." Couldn't this cut both ways though?
- WisNorCan 5y agoSure and that happens. Journalists will cherry pick data to tell the story they want. But there is a difference. If the data is out there someone can dispute the journalists characterization. If Facebook controls all the data and presents the story, there is no way to verify their characterization.
- jsemrau 5y agoUp to this day I am wondering for most social media sites how much of their daily active users is actually bots. I'd like to find a way to verify that.
- stirfish 5y agoThey will never tell you how many bots are on a platform because advertisers don't want to show ads to bots
- yuliyp 5y agoThey do reveal how many fake accounts they think they have. From Facebook's 2020 Annual Report (https://investor.fb.com/financials/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=14646367 https://investor.fb.com/financials/sec-filings-details/defau... page 4): > In the fourth quarter of 2020, we estimated that duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 11% of our worldwide MAUs. We believe the percentage of duplicate accounts is meaningfully higher in developing markets such as the Philippines and Vietnam, as compared to more developed markets. In the fourth quarter of 2020, we estimated that false accounts may have represented approximately 5% of our worldwide MAUs. Our estimation of false accounts can vary as a result of episodic spikes in the creation of such accounts, which we have seen originate more frequently in specific countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam. From time to time, we disable certain user accounts, make product changes, or take other actions to reduce the number of duplicate or false accounts among our users, which may also reduce our DAU and MAU estimates in a particular period. We intend to disclose our estimates of the number of duplicate andfalse accounts among our MAUs on an annual basis.
- res0nat0r 5y agoFacebook really isn't going to do anything real to counter their disinformation and right-wing propaganda problem, since it is their major content driver and money maker. Until they are forced by by the government to change they will continue to pay lip service since it is their cash cow.
- gigama 5y ago"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" --Upton Sinclair
- reilly3000 5y agoAt any given time 15-18 out of the top 20 stories are Ben Shapiro and others. Its definitely a money-maker, and also at an existential level they feel republicans are less likely to regulate them than democrats. Ironically the right has seen themselves as the victims in this arrangement and seeks to force their moderation to allow extremism.
- prezjordan 5y agoThey're playing the ref - and they're doing a fantastic job of it.
- rednerrus 5y agoIs disinformation and right-wing propaganda their problem? I run in really deep left circles and I can tell you my Facebook page is full of disinformation and left-wing propaganda. It's horrifying to see what people on both sides believe but it doesn't strike me as a Facebook problem as much as a human problem. I don't see people complaining about Twitter, mostly because they agree with the propaganda that's being spread there.
- blooalien 5y agoGotta agree with you wholeheartedly on your "horrifying" assessment of the situation. Extremists at the furthest ends of almost any spectrum you can name (especially political spectrums) seem to settle on the absolute worst ideas humanity is capable of coming up with.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ALittleLight 5y agoThe Facebook post this article links to[1] paints a pretty different picture. The table "Top US Publisher Domains by Reach" suggests a pretty balanced mainstream news diet to me. Also, I was quite surprised at the apparent popularity of Steve Harvey who apparently, by reach, has the third most popular Facebook page behind "The Dodo" and "Rick Lax" neither of whom I've ever heard of. 1 - https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/what-do-people-actually-see-on-facebook-in-the-us/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/what-do-people-actually-se...
- in_cahoots 5y agoReach isn’t impressions though. If I see ten articles by Breitbart and one by CNN they’re counted equivalently. Interesting that they chose to focus on reach and not even impressions, it suggests that people who do see that sort of content see a lot of it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mandevil 5y agoThe thing that struck me about this article was a point barely acknowledged: that the reporter had obtained an email chain of senior executives candidly discussing CrowdTangle. This points to a deeper problem within Facebook. In general, people leak to reporters when they feel like they have no ability to control the direction of their organization, and that it is making a mistake and they can't stop it any other way. Feeling ignored, feeling like your concerns aren't being addressed, that's what leads to leaks. The fact that at least one person on this email chain between their Vice President of Global Communications, Vice President of Global Affairs, Vice President of Choice and Competition, the head of the App, Chief Marketing Officer, and the head of CrowdTangle leaked it to a prominent reporter suggests that even very senior people feel like they aren't having their arguments listened to. That's a very dangerous sign for the internal culture of the company.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago> people leak to reporters when they feel like they have no ability to control the direction of their organization Also people leak to reporters when they feel like they are entitled to control the direction of their organization even if they sell all the stocks immediately after the vesting. Unpopular opinion: employees should express their concerns, and they are usually heard. And if the company decided to go against wishes of salaried employees, that's simply because the company exists to maximize profits of shareholders, not to make employees happy, and managers report to shareholders, not to employees. If one disagrees with management decision, there are two options: trust management judgement (perhaps they are better qualified to make certain decisions), or work elsewhere, in a company whose management they trust. But leaking e-mails is not just illegal, it is immoral. This does not apply of course to problems like, for example, intentional significant violation of the laws by the company.
- tablespoon 5y ago> Also people leak to reporters when they feel like they are entitled to control the direction of their organization even if they sell all the stocks immediately after the vesting. Yeah, they do. However you're confused about the organization in question: it's the Human Society or the United States of America (or some other nation), not Facebook, Inc.
- ctrlp 5y agoNYT has become closer to state-run media in the past 5 years than I ever thought possible. But that more likely reflects my own naivete and lack of imagination about what the NYT is and represents rather than a major shift in its content (excepting all the idpol stuff, that's new). The assumptions by NYT writers and readers about who 'the skeptical public' is and what they believe, and the nature of 'misinformation' and what it would mean to 'clean up the platform' are absurd projections by the 'paper of record'.