20 ms·

Facebook's “see no evil” strategy

170 points by samizdis 5y ago

klausjensen 5y ago
Referenced column by Kevin Roose (behind NYT paywall): https://archive.md/As8DH https://archive.md/As8DH
- samizdis 5y ago
  Also, HN thread with 50 comments about that Roose column: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27834324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27834324
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > The company, blamed for everything from election interference to vaccine hesitancy, badly wants to rebuild trust with a skeptical public.... > These people, most of whom would speak only anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss internal conversations, said Facebook’s executives were more worried about fixing the perception that Facebook was amplifying harmful content than figuring out whether it actually was amplifying harmful content. Transparency, they said, ultimately took a back seat to image management. I can think of few approaches that are worse than that at rebuilding trust. "Building trust," by ignoring the real issue to focus on perceptions can only work (sometimes) if you can dominate someone's perceptions. Facebook doesn't have the power to do that, especially since it's lost the public's trust and invited more scrutiny. And that leads me to the conclusion that Facebook's executives may not event understand even some basic things about trust, at least with they're in a sociopathic corporate setting.
  - dfadsadsf 5y ago
    The problem is defining harmful content. For some it's china lab theory, for others CRT/anti-racist propoganda or stolen election. What ever FB censures, half the country will be mad at it. FB can't win here. Personally I think "harmful content" concept is extremely dangerous when applied to social networks. If 5 years ago it was unquestionable that USA has more press and thought freedom than India, Russia or China, the situation now is much more nuanced and really depends on the topic discussed. What it mean for democracy in US long term is a big question.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Personally I think "harmful content" concept is extremely dangerous when applied to social networks. It's a kludge. The real problem is broadcast technology becoming too easy to access (in the form of social media). It's reduced transmission friction too much, which has seriously undermined the ability of the "marketplace of ideas" to filter the good from the bad. There's a sweet spot between monopolization and total democratization of broadcast technology, and I don't think we're there anymore. > If 5 years ago it was unquestionable that USA has more press and thought freedom than India, Russia or China, the situation now is much more nuanced and really depends on the topic discussed. Come on. You could only say such a thing if you're almost totally ignorant of "press and thought freedom" situation in China. About the only thing you can say China is more permissive of than the US is outright racism, and that's only at the social level (you can still legally be a flaming racist in the US, it's just that many people won't want to associate with you and many will remind you you're full of shit). I'm less familiar with Russia and India, but I highly doubt the situations there will salvage your statement.
      - hammock 5y ago
        This is actually a really insightful way to look at it. I gather you are saying Facebook should not be the one to do the "filtering," but also that it's not ideal for each individual to have to do it themselves. What's the solution?
        tablespoon 5y ago
        > What's the solution? The easiest and least problematic is to add friction, which in my fantasies would be to ban sites like Facebook and Twitter outright that provide too-easy access to ready-made audiences of millions. They're basically like handing out loaded guns to a class of first graders playing on a playground. Guns are fine and shouldn't be monopolized by one group or another, but they should also not be in the hands of untrained first graders on playgrounds. A somewhat less radical form would be to kneecap the ability to share widely on social media sites: no public posts, sharing limited to direct connections (and a cap the number of those to 1000 or something), no features to easily re-share a post outside of its initial audience, get rid of groups, kick out organizations, etc. Bring back classic web forums for communities, and push people who want to build an audience back to blogs and personal websites.
  - MengerSponge 5y ago
    Trustworthiness simply isn't in their corporate DNA. Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks. https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-im...
  - heresie-dabord 5y ago
    This passage is a good summary: "Facebook is not a giant right-wing echo chamber. But it does contain a giant right-wing echo chamber — a kind of AM talk radio built into the heart of Facebook’s news ecosystem, with a hyper-engaged audience of loyal partisans who love liking, sharing and clicking on posts from right-wing pages, many of which have gotten good at serving up Facebook-optimized outrage bait at a consistent clip." And then there is the advertising profit that these enthusiasts of the absurd generate for the corporation. What former US President DJT called, "the golden goose".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - fossuser 5y ago
    > "These people, most of whom would speak only anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss internal conversations, said Facebook’s executives were more worried about fixing the perception that Facebook was amplifying harmful content than figuring out whether it actually was amplifying harmful content." I don't work at FB, but I suspect this is bullshit.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Predictably, Roose is only concerned about right wing opinions.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Maybe because they're * Much more widespread * Much more moronic * Much more vicious
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
What is also interesting is the motivation of the people wanting to use CrowdTangle, etc to see the list of top posts. My guess, is that it less about learning what is the top post, but more about using that information as a way to try to pressure Facebook to censor content they don't like.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > ...but more about using that information as a way to try to pressure Facebook to censor content they don't like. That's far too simplistic of a take. Facebook and social media amplifying partisan shit-stirrers and misinformation over more sober voices should be seen as a serious issue, regardless of your ideological commitments.
  - rscoots 5y ago
    Who at Facebook do you trust to decide who is a "sober voice" that will be artificially promoted after the organically popular are censored? What is this person's qualifications? How can they be held to account when they inevitably get it wrong? Where will the highly-transparent write-up detailing this decision making be published? Before these Q's are answered I don't want FB touching their algorithms at all.
  - herbst 5y ago
    In my town there is a shizophrenic lady with a lot of weird signs, which partly are non readable partly outright dangerous should anyone believe that. If she is around, she defenitly is the most noticeable person. Yet we don't need to censor her, people can decide themself how much they read into this. The idea to mass censor mentally challenged people likely only increases their hate and gives them confirmation for their believes and even worse hides them from possible help. It's not the missinformation that is the issue IMO but the people who just follow it without fact checking.
- sp332 5y ago
  More fundamentally than asking for censorship is holding Facebook accountable for what content they are promoting. They've been caught multiple times allowing Ben Shapiro's page to break the rules that other pages have to follow [0]. They also keep claiming that they don't favor right-leaning content. Maybe this should be regulated or not, but at least we can call them out for lying about it. [0] https://popular.info/p/facebook-admits-ben-shapiro-is-breaking?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyMzQyNzY4LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo2MTg4NjgsIl8iOiJHR1hRaiIsImlhdCI6MTYyNjM2Nzc4NywiZXhwIjoxNjI2MzcxMzg3LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTY2NCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.5-N-0ESr1avOTF_ev7WLo8HZ_koB0FuD8xtai9z-y0c https://popular.info/p/facebook-admits-ben-shapiro-is-breaki...
mullingitover 5y ago
I think the real problem that facebook leadership sees isn't that they're amplifying overly partisan posters, but that the popularity of these posters demonstrates that their userbase is increasingly low rent and heading toward an AOL/Yahoo style long goodbye.
- xmprt 5y ago
  Their solution to this is VR which is really smart but who know if it's too little, too late.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    The VR stuff has the same energy as "The Titanic's crew has announced the installation of an amazing collection of trendy new Louis Vuitton deck chairs with an exciting new arrangement, and insists that the minor iceberg collision will be resolved soon."
  - jmcgough 5y ago
    Their solution to an aging userbase is buying out competitors (instagram, whatsapp) to prevent them from overtaking FB. FB bought Oculus because they're beholden to Apple and Google in the mobile space; if VR is the next major platform (Zuck thought it was 10 years away in 2015) and Oculus is the market leader, it weakens Apple/Google's control on them.
- clairity 5y ago
  no, their problem is simply greed. zuckerberg, sandberg, et al. want money, status, and power, and as long as they can distract from losing (or slowing down gains of) any of those by blaming problems on those bad users (or anything else), they're fat and happy. the leadership is the problem. from a systemic perspective, it's incentives (borne of societally-mediated values). you don't change systems by treating symptoms, but rather the incentives.
  - hugosbaseball 5y ago
    "Leadership" (ie officers) serve at the pleasure of the board, who are elected by shareholders. Facebook intentionally focuses attention on Zuckerberg. "By all means, pump out memes about Android Zuck. Pay no attention to the inherent evil in our business model that cannot be fixed without destroying the company, or the shareholders behind the curtain who will keep right on pushing that business model because it makes them piles of cash."
varelse 5y ago
I suspect if they provided telemetry into the Facebook Zeitgeist, it would show its userbase to be terrifyingly stupid and superstitious folk on par with the late Carl Sagan's predictions in _The Demon Haunted World_. For IMO the Google Zeitgeist was bad enough 10 years ago in a somewhat simpler time when we could still laugh at stupidity and ludicrous conspiracies, but stupidity is a major influencer on social media now that it has been monetized and drives revenue. I don't see a solution to that any time soon.
- the_optimist 5y ago
  Please tell us more about how telemetry can reveal the moral and intellectual value of a human being.
  - Miraste 5y ago
    How could it not? What you click on, what you look at, what you read and for how long, what you write, where you go, what you buy, how you feel, what you like and dislike, who you know, who you talk to, what sites you visit... Facebook knows many of its users (and non-users) better than they know themselves.
    - hammock 5y ago
      So my moral value is based on what I read? If I read the wrong thing I might as well be second-class citizen?
      - thereisnospork 5y ago
        Do you think what a person reads has no predictive value on their 'moral value'? (An admittedly vague term) Trivially: someone who reads NRA's weekly newsletter religiously is more likely to be pro gun, pro republican, and pro 'life', for instance
        rayiner 5y ago
samizdis 5y ago
There's a piece by Cory Doctorow about this [1], which I found interesting for its expansion into highighting FB's apparent beef with Ad Observer [2]. I also like Doctorow's piece because he used the word "flensed", which I don't think I've seen for years but which, for some reason, I like. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/#inconvenient-truth https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-tre... [2] https://adobserver.org/ https://adobserver.org/
cs702 5y ago
It's not so much that the key people at the top of Facebook "see no evil," but that they truly, sincerely, earnestly believe there is no evil to be seen, or if there is any evil, they truly, sincerely, earnestly believe they can subdue it with great engineering and great management. They fail to see what every outsider, and many insiders, clearly see. Paraphrasing Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get people to see something if their wealth, status, and self-worth depend upon not seeing it.
- ellyagg 5y ago
  I think it's more that city folk truly, sincerely, earnestly believe country folk are evil, and the fact that Facebook is not programmatically and automatically squashing country folk speech just because city folk want them to annoys city folk.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - eggsmediumrare 5y ago
    I'm "country folk" and have never experienced this kind of attitude from "city folk" on the basis of my address. Then again, I do truly, sincerely, earnestly believe the enablers like Fox News, the GOP, et cetera are evil. The people who listen to them aren't evil, just deceived.
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      Indeed. So-called "country folk" are a serious minority, and if the right in the US had to rely on rural voters exclusively for support they'd never win an election. For sure, there's a right wing voting block that might see itself as "salt of the earth" or "country folk" or "common sense"; but it's just an ideological package held together with shoestring and old gum made out of old school nativism, pro-life stuff, and an appeal to a sense of lost opportunity. And I grew up in rural Alberta, Canada, oil country heartland of "country folk" in Canada, the Texas of Canada, and I live rural now, too. It's never been the case that all "country folk" vote right or hold right wing opinions, even if a sizable chunk do. I do think "city folk" hold some pretty stereotyped views of rural life though.
ffggvv 5y ago
why is it anyone else’s business to see that data? why would they be entitled to? so they can whinge and ask fb to censor more content? i could see an argument for saying they should provide users more data about their own posts. but not aggregate data about their platform that will just be used against them
zohch 5y ago
What exactly is the evil that Facebook is supposedly trying to not see? And how would making reach data available make it easier for Facebook to see evil? Or if Facebook is trying to hide the evil, what evil is it they are trying to hide? What will the reach data reveal that is so evil? And if the evil is manifest without reach data, why does it matter?
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > What exactly is the evil that Facebook is supposedly trying to not see? I see that you are new here, this is not Reddit. You should read the linked article before posting, there you can find the answer to this question and others. Be informed, be polite.
  - zohch 5y ago
    I did read the article, twice. I can't figure it out. That is why I asked. How is your response polite?
  - gunapologist99 5y ago
    > I see that you are new here, this is not Reddit. It seemed like an honest question; this response may have been a bit harsh to a newbie. (if it even really is a newbie and not just a new account.) "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - windowojji 5y ago
      Not just that: > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
  - Gunax 5y ago
    It would be nice if we all came to the same conclusions if we just read the same material. But reality doesnt work that way. Assuming we are just dolts who cannot read because we disagree is a bit presumptuous.
fossuser 5y ago
For people that are genuinely interested in this - I'd highly recommend Steven Levy's book: Facebook The Inside Story. It's a fair account without a political bent (really hard to find on this topic) and he had a lot of access to FB leadership while writing it. It also gives a lot of historical context. WRT the specific outreach metrics mentioned in the article - I'd bet the internal discussion is more nuanced. Making that public could make it harder for them to control abuse by making it easier for people to determine how to maximize reach with spammier hacks. This is already a problem without access to the data. My personal opinion is this is a hard problem at scale and that Zuckerberg genuinely cares about it [0]. That there is some incentive mismatch given the issues around engagement driving ad revenue, but that the speech issues are more complicated and Zuck cares about how they leverage their power around issues of speech. My take on the Trump ban was less that he changed his position and more that the US no longer met the requirements for a hands-off approach after the insurrection. Rather than rehash the stuff I wrote in the post, here's the relevant bit: > "If there’s to be policy around political speech and social media, it should not be the responsibility of private companies to determine when to censor or not censor the speech from democratically elected politicians, operating in countries with rule of law and a free press. > "There are a lot of conditions on that statement, but it’s because the conditions are relevant and important. The same standard cannot be automatically held for politicians in non-democratic countries, countries without rule of law, countries that suppress speech themselves, or countries without a free press." ... > "It doesn’t mean they’re not doing anything wrong because they’ve long ago abandoned the chronological news feed in favor of an algorithmically sorted news feed focused on engagement. This is decidedly not neutral. Abuse of these engagement algorithms are what allowed spammers to leverage the viral nature of misinformation to enrich themselves. It’s also what gave credibility and reach to the Russian political interference. If Facebook wants to act as a neutral platform for speech, then they should be neutral. If they are elevating certain content algorithmically then they are acting as a publisher. This weakens their argument about being a neutral platform and makes them more responsible for what they choose to elevate on Facebook." There's probably reasonable policy here - but it's not trivial. [0]: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...
throwitaway1235 5y ago
The moment liberals got in bed with technology corporations they almost immediately requested opposition views be scrubbed from the internet. It reveals how weak their ideas are.
ALittleLight 5y ago
Facebook at least claims to be a leader in scanning for and detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on their platform. As a result of their diligence and size Facebook reports a lot ~90+% of all CSAM reports[1]. That fact suggests that Facebook really is better than most when it comes to detecting CSAM because there is nothing inherent to Facebook that would make it a more appealing platform for CSAM than pornography websites (e.g. MindGeek), 4chan, or snapchat. When the media get a hold of a fact like 90% of CSAM reports come from Facebook they jump to the conclusion that Facebook is a "hotbed" of child pornography - as in this example[2]. Facebook's efforts and openness about the problem are fuel for click bait criticism of Facebook. Naturally, this has a result. Facebook, in part, I think, because of negative feedback, wants to move towards end to end encryption in their messenger platforms. This will make it impossible for their automated systems to detect CSAM in messages and so their CSAM report numbers will fall. Everyone wins. Well, except for the children who are now exploited behind the protections of end to end encrypted messages. This article seems similar, in part, to what I've described above. Facebook is unusually transparent to media companies by providing their CrowdTangle tool to media and academics. This level of transparency is not offered by competitors and so Facebook, with some data available, looks worse than competitors who have no available data to compare to. I write "in part" because here the content isn't inherently bad the way CSAM is. Instead, it's just political messaging that some media groups do not like. Neither the article here nor in the New York Times even try to address whether Facebook is doing something to cause this, or whether Facebook's audience simply likes Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino. Is Facebook giving preferential treatment to these people, or do Facebook users just like the "wrong" pundits? 1 - https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/gethelp/2020-reports-by-esp.pdf https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/gethelp/... 2- https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-a-hotbed-of-child-sexual-abuse-material-with-203-million-reports-far-more-than-pornhub https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-a-hotbed-of-child-sex...
- mlindner 5y ago
  Your post seems to imply that end to end encryption is bad and that we need a surveillance state run either by corporations or government in order to protect children. We need to not head down this path. Protecting children has always historically been led by their own parents and we should empower that. Improvements should always be about parental education (teaching parents to recognize the signs of abuse/grooming before abuse) and cultural education (teaching about the harms of sexual abuse so that potential offenders don't act). Contrary to popular belief, most pedophiles are not actually psychopaths and actually have consciences and if they see the damage that their actions could cause, they're less likely to act and more likely to find non-damaging outlets for their urges (simulated or drawn material, as two examples).
Sophistifunk 5y ago
Notice how everybody seems to have accepted that non-mainstream positions, sources, and interest-groups must be banned, and now they're simply arguing about who should be doing it and how? This is not OK.
- clcaev 5y ago
  The promotion of false things is very profitable; by contrast, true things are far less engaging. Worse, it is more expensive to dispel a mistruth than it is to create and spread misinformation. How do we address this systems design challenge without censorship?
  - davidw 5y ago
    AKA "Brandolini's Law": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
  - dbtc 5y ago
    Make “mistruth” dispelling monetizable? Not sure how that could be done. I see the root problem as the same as general device addiction. Seeking instathrills. So, teaching mindfulness and attention-strength-training. General mental health.
  - peytn 5y ago
    James Madison figured it was better to leave a few “noxious branches to their luxuriant growth” than to risk “[injuring] the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits.” What makes you think now, 250 years into the most prosperous society in human history, is the right time to revisit this position?
    - mattzito 5y ago
      The noxious branches have mutated into kudzu- invasive, ever-spreading, and damaging to the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits. Madison's analogy imagines a world that was true up until 20-some years ago, where most people believed in a common view of the world, with different philosophies about that world. Today, a significant percentage of the population believes that the election was stolen from donald trump due to extreme election fraud. Another, similar, significant percentage believes that vaccines are at best dangerous and at worst implanting microchips and turning people magnetic. That's people not operating under the same basis of facts as everyone else.
sjg007 5y ago
How would you solve this problem? Presumably the engagement algorithms look at posts people share more frequently, reshare, and share to large numbers of people. Maybe there is a rate (virality/time) metric involved as well. This gives them some priority in the news feed which causes more sharing in a positive viral feedback loop. That would have to be filtered by NLP or image recognition and possibly a source reputation score. I imagine there are a host of bots that instantly reshare things..

170 points by samizdis 5y ago

klausjensen 5y ago

Referenced column by Kevin Roose (behind NYT paywall): https://archive.md/As8DH https://archive.md/As8DH

samizdis 5y ago
Also, HN thread with 50 comments about that Roose column: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27834324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27834324
tablespoon 5y ago
> The company, blamed for everything from election interference to vaccine hesitancy, badly wants to rebuild trust with a skeptical public.... > These people, most of whom would speak only anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss internal conversations, said Facebook’s executives were more worried about fixing the perception that Facebook was amplifying harmful content than figuring out whether it actually was amplifying harmful content. Transparency, they said, ultimately took a back seat to image management. I can think of few approaches that are worse than that at rebuilding trust. "Building trust," by ignoring the real issue to focus on perceptions can only work (sometimes) if you can dominate someone's perceptions. Facebook doesn't have the power to do that, especially since it's lost the public's trust and invited more scrutiny. And that leads me to the conclusion that Facebook's executives may not event understand even some basic things about trust, at least with they're in a sociopathic corporate setting.
- dfadsadsf 5y ago
  The problem is defining harmful content. For some it's china lab theory, for others CRT/anti-racist propoganda or stolen election. What ever FB censures, half the country will be mad at it. FB can't win here. Personally I think "harmful content" concept is extremely dangerous when applied to social networks. If 5 years ago it was unquestionable that USA has more press and thought freedom than India, Russia or China, the situation now is much more nuanced and really depends on the topic discussed. What it mean for democracy in US long term is a big question.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Personally I think "harmful content" concept is extremely dangerous when applied to social networks. It's a kludge. The real problem is broadcast technology becoming too easy to access (in the form of social media). It's reduced transmission friction too much, which has seriously undermined the ability of the "marketplace of ideas" to filter the good from the bad. There's a sweet spot between monopolization and total democratization of broadcast technology, and I don't think we're there anymore. > If 5 years ago it was unquestionable that USA has more press and thought freedom than India, Russia or China, the situation now is much more nuanced and really depends on the topic discussed. Come on. You could only say such a thing if you're almost totally ignorant of "press and thought freedom" situation in China. About the only thing you can say China is more permissive of than the US is outright racism, and that's only at the social level (you can still legally be a flaming racist in the US, it's just that many people won't want to associate with you and many will remind you you're full of shit). I'm less familiar with Russia and India, but I highly doubt the situations there will salvage your statement.
    - hammock 5y ago
      This is actually a really insightful way to look at it. I gather you are saying Facebook should not be the one to do the "filtering," but also that it's not ideal for each individual to have to do it themselves. What's the solution?
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > What's the solution? The easiest and least problematic is to add friction, which in my fantasies would be to ban sites like Facebook and Twitter outright that provide too-easy access to ready-made audiences of millions. They're basically like handing out loaded guns to a class of first graders playing on a playground. Guns are fine and shouldn't be monopolized by one group or another, but they should also not be in the hands of untrained first graders on playgrounds. A somewhat less radical form would be to kneecap the ability to share widely on social media sites: no public posts, sharing limited to direct connections (and a cap the number of those to 1000 or something), no features to easily re-share a post outside of its initial audience, get rid of groups, kick out organizations, etc. Bring back classic web forums for communities, and push people who want to build an audience back to blogs and personal websites.
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  Trustworthiness simply isn't in their corporate DNA. Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks. https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-im...
- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  This passage is a good summary: "Facebook is not a giant right-wing echo chamber. But it does contain a giant right-wing echo chamber — a kind of AM talk radio built into the heart of Facebook’s news ecosystem, with a hyper-engaged audience of loyal partisans who love liking, sharing and clicking on posts from right-wing pages, many of which have gotten good at serving up Facebook-optimized outrage bait at a consistent clip." And then there is the advertising profit that these enthusiasts of the absurd generate for the corporation. What former US President DJT called, "the golden goose".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fossuser 5y ago
  > "These people, most of whom would speak only anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss internal conversations, said Facebook’s executives were more worried about fixing the perception that Facebook was amplifying harmful content than figuring out whether it actually was amplifying harmful content." I don't work at FB, but I suspect this is bullshit.
WalterBright 5y ago
Predictably, Roose is only concerned about right wing opinions.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Maybe because they're * Much more widespread * Much more moronic * Much more vicious

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

What is also interesting is the motivation of the people wanting to use CrowdTangle, etc to see the list of top posts. My guess, is that it less about learning what is the top post, but more about using that information as a way to try to pressure Facebook to censor content they don't like.

tablespoon 5y ago
> ...but more about using that information as a way to try to pressure Facebook to censor content they don't like. That's far too simplistic of a take. Facebook and social media amplifying partisan shit-stirrers and misinformation over more sober voices should be seen as a serious issue, regardless of your ideological commitments.
- rscoots 5y ago
  Who at Facebook do you trust to decide who is a "sober voice" that will be artificially promoted after the organically popular are censored? What is this person's qualifications? How can they be held to account when they inevitably get it wrong? Where will the highly-transparent write-up detailing this decision making be published? Before these Q's are answered I don't want FB touching their algorithms at all.
- herbst 5y ago
  In my town there is a shizophrenic lady with a lot of weird signs, which partly are non readable partly outright dangerous should anyone believe that. If she is around, she defenitly is the most noticeable person. Yet we don't need to censor her, people can decide themself how much they read into this. The idea to mass censor mentally challenged people likely only increases their hate and gives them confirmation for their believes and even worse hides them from possible help. It's not the missinformation that is the issue IMO but the people who just follow it without fact checking.
sp332 5y ago
More fundamentally than asking for censorship is holding Facebook accountable for what content they are promoting. They've been caught multiple times allowing Ben Shapiro's page to break the rules that other pages have to follow [0]. They also keep claiming that they don't favor right-leaning content. Maybe this should be regulated or not, but at least we can call them out for lying about it. [0] https://popular.info/p/facebook-admits-ben-shapiro-is-breaking?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyMzQyNzY4LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo2MTg4NjgsIl8iOiJHR1hRaiIsImlhdCI6MTYyNjM2Nzc4NywiZXhwIjoxNjI2MzcxMzg3LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTY2NCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.5-N-0ESr1avOTF_ev7WLo8HZ_koB0FuD8xtai9z-y0c https://popular.info/p/facebook-admits-ben-shapiro-is-breaki...

mullingitover 5y ago

I think the real problem that facebook leadership sees isn't that they're amplifying overly partisan posters, but that the popularity of these posters demonstrates that their userbase is increasingly low rent and heading toward an AOL/Yahoo style long goodbye.

xmprt 5y ago
Their solution to this is VR which is really smart but who know if it's too little, too late.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  The VR stuff has the same energy as "The Titanic's crew has announced the installation of an amazing collection of trendy new Louis Vuitton deck chairs with an exciting new arrangement, and insists that the minor iceberg collision will be resolved soon."
- jmcgough 5y ago
  Their solution to an aging userbase is buying out competitors (instagram, whatsapp) to prevent them from overtaking FB. FB bought Oculus because they're beholden to Apple and Google in the mobile space; if VR is the next major platform (Zuck thought it was 10 years away in 2015) and Oculus is the market leader, it weakens Apple/Google's control on them.
clairity 5y ago
no, their problem is simply greed. zuckerberg, sandberg, et al. want money, status, and power, and as long as they can distract from losing (or slowing down gains of) any of those by blaming problems on those bad users (or anything else), they're fat and happy. the leadership is the problem. from a systemic perspective, it's incentives (borne of societally-mediated values). you don't change systems by treating symptoms, but rather the incentives.
- hugosbaseball 5y ago
  "Leadership" (ie officers) serve at the pleasure of the board, who are elected by shareholders. Facebook intentionally focuses attention on Zuckerberg. "By all means, pump out memes about Android Zuck. Pay no attention to the inherent evil in our business model that cannot be fixed without destroying the company, or the shareholders behind the curtain who will keep right on pushing that business model because it makes them piles of cash."

varelse 5y ago

I suspect if they provided telemetry into the Facebook Zeitgeist, it would show its userbase to be terrifyingly stupid and superstitious folk on par with the late Carl Sagan's predictions in _The Demon Haunted World_. For IMO the Google Zeitgeist was bad enough 10 years ago in a somewhat simpler time when we could still laugh at stupidity and ludicrous conspiracies, but stupidity is a major influencer on social media now that it has been monetized and drives revenue. I don't see a solution to that any time soon.

the_optimist 5y ago
Please tell us more about how telemetry can reveal the moral and intellectual value of a human being.
- Miraste 5y ago
  How could it not? What you click on, what you look at, what you read and for how long, what you write, where you go, what you buy, how you feel, what you like and dislike, who you know, who you talk to, what sites you visit... Facebook knows many of its users (and non-users) better than they know themselves.
  - hammock 5y ago
    So my moral value is based on what I read? If I read the wrong thing I might as well be second-class citizen?
    - thereisnospork 5y ago
      Do you think what a person reads has no predictive value on their 'moral value'? (An admittedly vague term) Trivially: someone who reads NRA's weekly newsletter religiously is more likely to be pro gun, pro republican, and pro 'life', for instance
      - rayiner 5y ago

samizdis 5y ago

There's a piece by Cory Doctorow about this [1], which I found interesting for its expansion into highighting FB's apparent beef with Ad Observer [2]. I also like Doctorow's piece because he used the word "flensed", which I don't think I've seen for years but which, for some reason, I like. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/#inconvenient-truth https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-tre... [2] https://adobserver.org/ https://adobserver.org/

cs702 5y ago

It's not so much that the key people at the top of Facebook "see no evil," but that they truly, sincerely, earnestly believe there is no evil to be seen, or if there is any evil, they truly, sincerely, earnestly believe they can subdue it with great engineering and great management. They fail to see what every outsider, and many insiders, clearly see. Paraphrasing Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get people to see something if their wealth, status, and self-worth depend upon not seeing it.

ellyagg 5y ago
I think it's more that city folk truly, sincerely, earnestly believe country folk are evil, and the fact that Facebook is not programmatically and automatically squashing country folk speech just because city folk want them to annoys city folk.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- eggsmediumrare 5y ago
  I'm "country folk" and have never experienced this kind of attitude from "city folk" on the basis of my address. Then again, I do truly, sincerely, earnestly believe the enablers like Fox News, the GOP, et cetera are evil. The people who listen to them aren't evil, just deceived.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Indeed. So-called "country folk" are a serious minority, and if the right in the US had to rely on rural voters exclusively for support they'd never win an election. For sure, there's a right wing voting block that might see itself as "salt of the earth" or "country folk" or "common sense"; but it's just an ideological package held together with shoestring and old gum made out of old school nativism, pro-life stuff, and an appeal to a sense of lost opportunity. And I grew up in rural Alberta, Canada, oil country heartland of "country folk" in Canada, the Texas of Canada, and I live rural now, too. It's never been the case that all "country folk" vote right or hold right wing opinions, even if a sizable chunk do. I do think "city folk" hold some pretty stereotyped views of rural life though.

ffggvv 5y ago

why is it anyone else’s business to see that data? why would they be entitled to? so they can whinge and ask fb to censor more content? i could see an argument for saying they should provide users more data about their own posts. but not aggregate data about their platform that will just be used against them

zohch 5y ago

What exactly is the evil that Facebook is supposedly trying to not see? And how would making reach data available make it easier for Facebook to see evil? Or if Facebook is trying to hide the evil, what evil is it they are trying to hide? What will the reach data reveal that is so evil? And if the evil is manifest without reach data, why does it matter?

Hokusai 5y ago
> What exactly is the evil that Facebook is supposedly trying to not see? I see that you are new here, this is not Reddit. You should read the linked article before posting, there you can find the answer to this question and others. Be informed, be polite.
- zohch 5y ago
  I did read the article, twice. I can't figure it out. That is why I asked. How is your response polite?
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  > I see that you are new here, this is not Reddit. It seemed like an honest question; this response may have been a bit harsh to a newbie. (if it even really is a newbie and not just a new account.) "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - windowojji 5y ago
    Not just that: > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
- Gunax 5y ago
  It would be nice if we all came to the same conclusions if we just read the same material. But reality doesnt work that way. Assuming we are just dolts who cannot read because we disagree is a bit presumptuous.

fossuser 5y ago

For people that are genuinely interested in this - I'd highly recommend Steven Levy's book: Facebook The Inside Story. It's a fair account without a political bent (really hard to find on this topic) and he had a lot of access to FB leadership while writing it. It also gives a lot of historical context. WRT the specific outreach metrics mentioned in the article - I'd bet the internal discussion is more nuanced. Making that public could make it harder for them to control abuse by making it easier for people to determine how to maximize reach with spammier hacks. This is already a problem without access to the data. My personal opinion is this is a hard problem at scale and that Zuckerberg genuinely cares about it [0]. That there is some incentive mismatch given the issues around engagement driving ad revenue, but that the speech issues are more complicated and Zuck cares about how they leverage their power around issues of speech. My take on the Trump ban was less that he changed his position and more that the US no longer met the requirements for a hands-off approach after the insurrection. Rather than rehash the stuff I wrote in the post, here's the relevant bit: > "If there’s to be policy around political speech and social media, it should not be the responsibility of private companies to determine when to censor or not censor the speech from democratically elected politicians, operating in countries with rule of law and a free press. > "There are a lot of conditions on that statement, but it’s because the conditions are relevant and important. The same standard cannot be automatically held for politicians in non-democratic countries, countries without rule of law, countries that suppress speech themselves, or countries without a free press." ... > "It doesn’t mean they’re not doing anything wrong because they’ve long ago abandoned the chronological news feed in favor of an algorithmically sorted news feed focused on engagement. This is decidedly not neutral. Abuse of these engagement algorithms are what allowed spammers to leverage the viral nature of misinformation to enrich themselves. It’s also what gave credibility and reach to the Russian political interference. If Facebook wants to act as a neutral platform for speech, then they should be neutral. If they are elevating certain content algorithmically then they are acting as a publisher. This weakens their argument about being a neutral platform and makes them more responsible for what they choose to elevate on Facebook." There's probably reasonable policy here - but it's not trivial. [0]: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...

throwitaway1235 5y ago

The moment liberals got in bed with technology corporations they almost immediately requested opposition views be scrubbed from the internet. It reveals how weak their ideas are.

ALittleLight 5y ago

Facebook at least claims to be a leader in scanning for and detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on their platform. As a result of their diligence and size Facebook reports a lot ~90+% of all CSAM reports[1]. That fact suggests that Facebook really is better than most when it comes to detecting CSAM because there is nothing inherent to Facebook that would make it a more appealing platform for CSAM than pornography websites (e.g. MindGeek), 4chan, or snapchat. When the media get a hold of a fact like 90% of CSAM reports come from Facebook they jump to the conclusion that Facebook is a "hotbed" of child pornography - as in this example[2]. Facebook's efforts and openness about the problem are fuel for click bait criticism of Facebook. Naturally, this has a result. Facebook, in part, I think, because of negative feedback, wants to move towards end to end encryption in their messenger platforms. This will make it impossible for their automated systems to detect CSAM in messages and so their CSAM report numbers will fall. Everyone wins. Well, except for the children who are now exploited behind the protections of end to end encrypted messages. This article seems similar, in part, to what I've described above. Facebook is unusually transparent to media companies by providing their CrowdTangle tool to media and academics. This level of transparency is not offered by competitors and so Facebook, with some data available, looks worse than competitors who have no available data to compare to. I write "in part" because here the content isn't inherently bad the way CSAM is. Instead, it's just political messaging that some media groups do not like. Neither the article here nor in the New York Times even try to address whether Facebook is doing something to cause this, or whether Facebook's audience simply likes Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino. Is Facebook giving preferential treatment to these people, or do Facebook users just like the "wrong" pundits? 1 - https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/gethelp/2020-reports-by-esp.pdf https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/gethelp/... 2- https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-a-hotbed-of-child-sexual-abuse-material-with-203-million-reports-far-more-than-pornhub https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-a-hotbed-of-child-sex...

mlindner 5y ago
Your post seems to imply that end to end encryption is bad and that we need a surveillance state run either by corporations or government in order to protect children. We need to not head down this path. Protecting children has always historically been led by their own parents and we should empower that. Improvements should always be about parental education (teaching parents to recognize the signs of abuse/grooming before abuse) and cultural education (teaching about the harms of sexual abuse so that potential offenders don't act). Contrary to popular belief, most pedophiles are not actually psychopaths and actually have consciences and if they see the damage that their actions could cause, they're less likely to act and more likely to find non-damaging outlets for their urges (simulated or drawn material, as two examples).

Sophistifunk 5y ago

Notice how everybody seems to have accepted that non-mainstream positions, sources, and interest-groups must be banned, and now they're simply arguing about who should be doing it and how? This is not OK.

clcaev 5y ago
The promotion of false things is very profitable; by contrast, true things are far less engaging. Worse, it is more expensive to dispel a mistruth than it is to create and spread misinformation. How do we address this systems design challenge without censorship?
- davidw 5y ago
  AKA "Brandolini's Law": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
- dbtc 5y ago
  Make “mistruth” dispelling monetizable? Not sure how that could be done. I see the root problem as the same as general device addiction. Seeking instathrills. So, teaching mindfulness and attention-strength-training. General mental health.
- peytn 5y ago
  James Madison figured it was better to leave a few “noxious branches to their luxuriant growth” than to risk “[injuring] the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits.” What makes you think now, 250 years into the most prosperous society in human history, is the right time to revisit this position?
  - mattzito 5y ago
    The noxious branches have mutated into kudzu- invasive, ever-spreading, and damaging to the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits. Madison's analogy imagines a world that was true up until 20-some years ago, where most people believed in a common view of the world, with different philosophies about that world. Today, a significant percentage of the population believes that the election was stolen from donald trump due to extreme election fraud. Another, similar, significant percentage believes that vaccines are at best dangerous and at worst implanting microchips and turning people magnetic. That's people not operating under the same basis of facts as everyone else.

sjg007 5y ago

How would you solve this problem? Presumably the engagement algorithms look at posts people share more frequently, reshare, and share to large numbers of people. Maybe there is a rate (virality/time) metric involved as well. This gives them some priority in the news feed which causes more sharing in a positive viral feedback loop. That would have to be filtered by NLP or image recognition and possibly a source reputation score. I imagine there are a host of bots that instantly reshare things..