5 ms·

They chose to do algorithmic timelines. They could do a chronological timeline. They could choose to not do any editorializing. They chose instead to get into

by rtpg 5y ago

They chose to do algorithmic timelines. They could do a chronological timeline. They could choose to not do any editorializing. They chose instead to get into the content promotion business. Their active choices lead to this result

Dove 5y ago
It's a much bigger problem than than merely content promotion and aggregation. There are countries where Facebook is the entire internet. Maybe they tried to make it happen and maybe they didn't - but however it happened, they are effectively the Ministry of Information now for that country. They probably shouldn't be. Everyone agrees on this, even them. But like the child-kings of history, it is still the situation. Avoiding the job is simply doing it badly. Google, Twitter, others, are in a similar boat. They find themselves effectively running branches of government now, not of countries but of the world. Nobody has ever done that before. Nobody knows how to do it correctly, least of all people that mainly want to make money on a website. The censorship is not because they're evil. It's because one of their subjects approached them saying their stuff is getting people killed and they were like, "Aaugh, I'm just a web site! I don't deal in such matters! Get it off me!" Because they think they're a web site. A political philosopher or an expert statesman would weigh philosophically how to maximize freedom and minimize harm while understanding that freedom gets some people killed, with an eye towards avoiding atrocities. Facebook isn't thinking about the historical risks associated with censorship because they still think they're a web site. They don't know how to drive this thing - nobody does - and they are going to drive it straight into wars and catastrophes and atrocities. At least, that's the risk. There are countries whose actual ministry of information communicates matters of public safety primarily through Facebook. Or hosted on Amazon. Or whatever. And that company is going to make some minor change intended to protect transgender people in Wisconsin or something, and accidentally massively empower an oppressive government in Africa. That's the problem space. You think you're miserable because people in California are currently effectively setting policy in Arizona? Imagine you live in India. Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown, and this might be one of the biggest crowns ever made. It would be nice if we could find a way to destroy the ring. I definitely don't see another serious answer. In the mean time, the situation is what it is. The rest of us are idiots if we sit around criticizing them for not being perfect. We should be figuring out how to help!
- exikyut 5y ago
  Regarding the Ministry of Information concept, I recently realized that one potential motivation for the large-scale end-to-end encryption agenda is to move the "keys to the kingdom" for the world's trillions of chat messages (and attached media) to end-user devices, *and* loudly signal that this shift has taken place by taking advantage of the very loud minority of security-conscious folks that implicitly trust and signal-boost E2E everywhere they find it. My theory for why this may have become existentially necessary was exactly the sort of "get it off me!" ideology you describe, except from the perspective of protecting from coordinated attacks by multiple cooperating nation states. Of course, all this now means general interest in pwning all smartphones everywhere is now that much higher :(. (Medium-size wall of text version at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522220, also referenced in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27841760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27841760.) Regarding perspective mismatches because Facebook "still thinks it's a web site", thought-experiment nitpick: do Facebook really believe this, or is their problem a) that they are expected to behave as a website by the very same governments they're (optimistically) trying to support, and/or b) that they're afraid to stand up and behave how everyone's pining for them to do because doing so would "rock the boat", so to speak, and trip all over large swathes of plausible deniability that are still comfortably nestled in shadows and grey areas?
  - Dove 5y ago
    I don't think Facebook literally thinks they're a web site -- I think they know something extraordinary is going on. Probably much better than I do. But I do know that what they set out to do, and what they found themselves doing, are very different, and the head shift has been difficult. This is why, when people come to them with questions and requests and complaints that seem a little more appropriate to ask a judge or monarch or a legislature, they make expedient and historically and politically short-sighted decisions. They don't recognize them as questions of political philosophy, opportunities to think about the right way to architect a global community. They don't even draw on the considerable existing wisdom we have about how governments should work. They fumblingly reinvent ideas from ancient Babylon so they can get back to doing what they think they do and what they want to do. It's hard to blame them. The head shift is difficult. They didn't ask for this responsibility, and finding themselves at the wheel of something enormous they aren't qualified to pilot, shrink from the task. Any sane person would. I only write about it here in the hopes that we all can start taking these problems seriously. How should a global information community work? It's not literally true that Facebook is a branch of government, either. It's just the closest analogy I have, and it's closer to the truth than where we started. Really, they are something new. Something nobody knows how to manage correctly yet. I am not the only one to understand that the stakes are high, which is why people keep passing the buck. Facebook wants the government to tell them what's expected and allowed, and the government refuses -- or acts in small-minded expedient ways, too. They don't know either. This disinformation and censorship question is one of a hundred with deep philosophical and legal elements. What Facebook thinks about the value of free speech, how they decide disputes should be adjudicated, what they do in small cases of deception and fraud and political manipulation, actually matters a lot more to us practically than what our own laws say. This is a shame, because our legal thinkers actually have a lot more experience with being wise and just when it comes to such matters. Facebook has the power to set policy in a way no one ever has before, and they do not seem to be thinking in terms of implications for humanity. They seem to be thinking in terms of how to get people off their back because this sort of thing isn't what they do. Or perhaps more charitably, because the people coming to them with problems are so terrifyingly powerful and the problems are so terrifyingly high stakes. There have been complaints about minor changes in advertising policy throwing elections in far-flung countries. Would you want that responsibility? This is why I say we need a Thomas Jefferson. What I really mean is, we need a political philosopher who sees the moment and its dangers and opportunities clearly, and can try to help us do things fairly and right. I don't know where you'd find one, though. You're right that it isn't as easy as that -- people's expectations play into it. Governments', yes, and people's too. While I say Twitter should be creating a legislature and courts and a constitution, we'd all think they were insanely arrogant to do so. Even though now that I say it, you can probably see that it probably is getting to the point where that's needed. But they aren't ready for it and we aren't either -- inertia and expectations. A Thomas Paine could fix that. I don't know where you'd find one of those, either. We are at a time of great change in history. The information revolution is in full swing. The internet had been a tool for research, then a toy for nerds, then a novel technology full of opportunity. Now it is changing the way society organizes itself. Some people think these digital communities will supplant nations, or exist alongside as something equally important. I don't know. I suspect the change is as profound as the one that ended the middle ages, when we transitioned from the church as a primary social organization to nations. But living in the middle of history, who's to say? It took us a while to figure out how to run nations, too. We really shouldn't expect too much for a generation or two at least. My main hope in writing this is to encourage people to take the problem seriously, and think of it as belonging to the space of political philosophy -- which it does. If you work for one of these organizations, learn something about the history and philosophy of government -- why we have laws, why we have courts, why we have elections, why we have bills of rights. You are running a community bigger and more diverse than any nation, with totally novel powers and limitations, totally novel ways to be unfair and evil that you need to avoid, and you do not have the resources to do it right, nor can anyone even tell you what doing it right even looks like. It has to be invented. Get help -- from history, from scholars, from anywhere you find it. If you find Thomas Jefferson living under a rock, hire him immediately. The rest of us are living under the feet of a giant struggling while trying to carry far too many boulders. We yelp when he steps on us -- and we should -- but we should also be trying to figure out if we can build something that will help carry that load. The boulders are there regardless and the guy is hardly up to the task. Running massive communities fairly is hard and complicated. We need widsom and principled understanding. Attacking the overwhelmed monarch is not how you get peace and justice -- you get that by finding him advisors and engineers that can help him build it. The situation as it stands is untenable. We need a better way. But until we have one, the situation is what it is and we should help the poor guy stuck managing it.
nradov 5y ago
A chronological timeline is still based on an editorial algorithm. A simple algorithm, but an algorithm nonetheless. It's no less editorial than any other algorithm, like (hypothetically) putting posts in alphabetical order or whatever.

by rtpg 5y ago

Dove 5y ago

It's a much bigger problem than than merely content promotion and aggregation. There are countries where Facebook is the entire internet. Maybe they tried to make it happen and maybe they didn't - but however it happened, they are effectively the Ministry of Information now for that country. They probably shouldn't be. Everyone agrees on this, even them. But like the child-kings of history, it is still the situation. Avoiding the job is simply doing it badly. Google, Twitter, others, are in a similar boat. They find themselves effectively running branches of government now, not of countries but of the world. Nobody has ever done that before. Nobody knows how to do it correctly, least of all people that mainly want to make money on a website. The censorship is not because they're evil. It's because one of their subjects approached them saying their stuff is getting people killed and they were like, "Aaugh, I'm just a web site! I don't deal in such matters! Get it off me!" Because they think they're a web site. A political philosopher or an expert statesman would weigh philosophically how to maximize freedom and minimize harm while understanding that freedom gets some people killed, with an eye towards avoiding atrocities. Facebook isn't thinking about the historical risks associated with censorship because they still think they're a web site. They don't know how to drive this thing - nobody does - and they are going to drive it straight into wars and catastrophes and atrocities. At least, that's the risk. There are countries whose actual ministry of information communicates matters of public safety primarily through Facebook. Or hosted on Amazon. Or whatever. And that company is going to make some minor change intended to protect transgender people in Wisconsin or something, and accidentally massively empower an oppressive government in Africa. That's the problem space. You think you're miserable because people in California are currently effectively setting policy in Arizona? Imagine you live in India. Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown, and this might be one of the biggest crowns ever made. It would be nice if we could find a way to destroy the ring. I definitely don't see another serious answer. In the mean time, the situation is what it is. The rest of us are idiots if we sit around criticizing them for not being perfect. We should be figuring out how to help!

exikyut 5y ago
Regarding the Ministry of Information concept, I recently realized that one potential motivation for the large-scale end-to-end encryption agenda is to move the "keys to the kingdom" for the world's trillions of chat messages (and attached media) to end-user devices, *and* loudly signal that this shift has taken place by taking advantage of the very loud minority of security-conscious folks that implicitly trust and signal-boost E2E everywhere they find it. My theory for why this may have become existentially necessary was exactly the sort of "get it off me!" ideology you describe, except from the perspective of protecting from coordinated attacks by multiple cooperating nation states. Of course, all this now means general interest in pwning all smartphones everywhere is now that much higher :(. (Medium-size wall of text version at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522220, also referenced in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27841760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27841760.) Regarding perspective mismatches because Facebook "still thinks it's a web site", thought-experiment nitpick: do Facebook really believe this, or is their problem a) that they are expected to behave as a website by the very same governments they're (optimistically) trying to support, and/or b) that they're afraid to stand up and behave how everyone's pining for them to do because doing so would "rock the boat", so to speak, and trip all over large swathes of plausible deniability that are still comfortably nestled in shadows and grey areas?
- Dove 5y ago
  I don't think Facebook literally thinks they're a web site -- I think they know something extraordinary is going on. Probably much better than I do. But I do know that what they set out to do, and what they found themselves doing, are very different, and the head shift has been difficult. This is why, when people come to them with questions and requests and complaints that seem a little more appropriate to ask a judge or monarch or a legislature, they make expedient and historically and politically short-sighted decisions. They don't recognize them as questions of political philosophy, opportunities to think about the right way to architect a global community. They don't even draw on the considerable existing wisdom we have about how governments should work. They fumblingly reinvent ideas from ancient Babylon so they can get back to doing what they think they do and what they want to do. It's hard to blame them. The head shift is difficult. They didn't ask for this responsibility, and finding themselves at the wheel of something enormous they aren't qualified to pilot, shrink from the task. Any sane person would. I only write about it here in the hopes that we all can start taking these problems seriously. How should a global information community work? It's not literally true that Facebook is a branch of government, either. It's just the closest analogy I have, and it's closer to the truth than where we started. Really, they are something new. Something nobody knows how to manage correctly yet. I am not the only one to understand that the stakes are high, which is why people keep passing the buck. Facebook wants the government to tell them what's expected and allowed, and the government refuses -- or acts in small-minded expedient ways, too. They don't know either. This disinformation and censorship question is one of a hundred with deep philosophical and legal elements. What Facebook thinks about the value of free speech, how they decide disputes should be adjudicated, what they do in small cases of deception and fraud and political manipulation, actually matters a lot more to us practically than what our own laws say. This is a shame, because our legal thinkers actually have a lot more experience with being wise and just when it comes to such matters. Facebook has the power to set policy in a way no one ever has before, and they do not seem to be thinking in terms of implications for humanity. They seem to be thinking in terms of how to get people off their back because this sort of thing isn't what they do. Or perhaps more charitably, because the people coming to them with problems are so terrifyingly powerful and the problems are so terrifyingly high stakes. There have been complaints about minor changes in advertising policy throwing elections in far-flung countries. Would you want that responsibility? This is why I say we need a Thomas Jefferson. What I really mean is, we need a political philosopher who sees the moment and its dangers and opportunities clearly, and can try to help us do things fairly and right. I don't know where you'd find one, though. You're right that it isn't as easy as that -- people's expectations play into it. Governments', yes, and people's too. While I say Twitter should be creating a legislature and courts and a constitution, we'd all think they were insanely arrogant to do so. Even though now that I say it, you can probably see that it probably is getting to the point where that's needed. But they aren't ready for it and we aren't either -- inertia and expectations. A Thomas Paine could fix that. I don't know where you'd find one of those, either. We are at a time of great change in history. The information revolution is in full swing. The internet had been a tool for research, then a toy for nerds, then a novel technology full of opportunity. Now it is changing the way society organizes itself. Some people think these digital communities will supplant nations, or exist alongside as something equally important. I don't know. I suspect the change is as profound as the one that ended the middle ages, when we transitioned from the church as a primary social organization to nations. But living in the middle of history, who's to say? It took us a while to figure out how to run nations, too. We really shouldn't expect too much for a generation or two at least. My main hope in writing this is to encourage people to take the problem seriously, and think of it as belonging to the space of political philosophy -- which it does. If you work for one of these organizations, learn something about the history and philosophy of government -- why we have laws, why we have courts, why we have elections, why we have bills of rights. You are running a community bigger and more diverse than any nation, with totally novel powers and limitations, totally novel ways to be unfair and evil that you need to avoid, and you do not have the resources to do it right, nor can anyone even tell you what doing it right even looks like. It has to be invented. Get help -- from history, from scholars, from anywhere you find it. If you find Thomas Jefferson living under a rock, hire him immediately. The rest of us are living under the feet of a giant struggling while trying to carry far too many boulders. We yelp when he steps on us -- and we should -- but we should also be trying to figure out if we can build something that will help carry that load. The boulders are there regardless and the guy is hardly up to the task. Running massive communities fairly is hard and complicated. We need widsom and principled understanding. Attacking the overwhelmed monarch is not how you get peace and justice -- you get that by finding him advisors and engineers that can help him build it. The situation as it stands is untenable. We need a better way. But until we have one, the situation is what it is and we should help the poor guy stuck managing it.

nradov 5y ago

A chronological timeline is still based on an editorial algorithm. A simple algorithm, but an algorithm nonetheless. It's no less editorial than any other algorithm, like (hypothetically) putting posts in alphabetical order or whatever.