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As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

100 points by SmkyMt 5y ago

jqpabc123 5y ago
Facebook is primarily a propaganda organization. It's main objective is to influence, manipulate and subvert the user's judgment and convince them to buy something --- be it physical product or ideology. To further this objective, it has developed an incredibly detailed psychological profile of each individual user using deeply personal info willing surrendered by the user themselves. It's skill at doing this is what it promotes to it's real paying customers --- mostly advertisers. Users are not their "customer", they are just the marks being manipulated. As board member Peter Thiel put it, "I'd rather be seen as evil than incompetent". Evil is obviously more profitable.
- dpratt 5y ago
  This is a shockingly concise, accurate and readily digestible by the common person description of what Facebook actually is. If you don’t mind, I’m going to save this for the future.
  - jqpabc123 5y ago
    Be my guest.
- spectramax 5y ago
  I’d say Twitter has done more damage to the society than FB. Twitter is a pure outrage machine. I might be in the minority but Instagram is still awesome. It’s gotten more ads but most of them are quite interesting. I’ve found made in USA goods from IG ads like this: https://psudo.com/ https://psudo.com/
  - wpietri 5y ago
    You may be using Twitter wrong. Switch it from "top tweets" to "latest tweets" mode, and then follow people who tweet and retweet things that are not outrage-driven. I follow a lot of interesting people and I learn a ton. But even if Twitter were pure outrage, that is far from the most serious social media damage to society. Twitter, for all its faults, is relatively low on mis- and dis-information because people call it out. It's all one conversational space. Facebook, which is much more fragmented, enables flourishing niches of bonkers thought. Some of those niches are just wild-type insanity, but many more are gardens of crazy cultivated by people with a financial or political need for that. I firmly believe that without Facebook, we wouldn't have a situation where thousands of people are dying per day of a preventable disease, with 95+% of those because of mis- and dis-information about the disease and the necessary countermeasures.
  - pfisherman 5y ago
    My understanding is that the scope of Facebook ads and surveillance is not limited to Facebook properties. The Facebook pixel and SDK are pretty ubiquitous. Twitter is actually useful if you limit who you follow to the right people. My experience of Twitter is a bunch of academics promoting their articles. Lior Pachter trashing tSNE and UMAP is about the spiciest it gets.
    - rendall 5y ago
      I know very few people on Twitter. Facebook, on the other hand, is nearly a requirement even to have a social life. I don't use FB, but I definitely miss out on general invitations. It is strictly not possible to participate in local Burning Man events here in Finland without a Facebook account, for instance. They flat out refuse to promote through any other platform or channel.
    - spectramax 5y ago
      I fundamentally disagree with Twitter's ideological position. Banning the president, allowing Taliban leaders, it is a censorship extravaganza and the selling point is ecochambered short blips of outrage. What you're pointing out is also true - there is some good stuff on Twitter just like any platform. Most political content on Twitter is horrible, left / right - both. FB goes against silicon valley's zeitgeist and it gets disproportional hate. IMO, all social media is toxic and it has done more damage to the society than benefited ... but the biases are very much evident in how each service is perceived by the larger tech community. FB also did many eggregious things, no doubt. Election interference, etc. Meanwhile, Tiktok is HN's darling. Another thing is Twitter has become de facto channels for official communications of government bodies. How do you access these official channels? With a phone number of course when you try to register an account - which is required. Twitter has destroyed the world by coaslescing social media, outrage tactics, government bodies into one hot boiling soup of toxins.
      - pfisherman 5y ago
        Well a big part of the distinction between FB and Twitter for me is the scale, scope, and competence of their surveillance and targeted influence (i.e. ads) capabilities and operations. Would Twitter be as evil as FB if they weren’t incompetent? Maybe. But that is not the world we live in. One area where I think we are talking past each other is referencing the consumer facing aspect vs the money making (B2B) aspect of social media. I think of these companies as ad platforms. They exist to collect data on people and their behavior, and sell tot to advertisers so they can use it to influence decisions. The whole public square thing is incidental to that. It exists only because it helps them collect data and sell ads. To your other points Twitter is an official channel of communication for government agencies, not THE official channel. They still maintain websites and put out press kits. Twitter should have banned the president long before they did for his repeated violations of their TOS, as they would have any normal member of the public. Same for other world leaders. Imo, leaders should be held to a higher standard of behavior wrt to the EULA and T&Cs than the average Joe.
  - katbyte 5y ago
    As far as I know Twitter had not been responsible for ethnic cleansing mole times in multiple countries not helping dictators stay in power: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-mark-zuckerberg-should-71796243/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
    - spectramax 5y ago
      Here is Twitter CEO promoting a dictatorship as a place to go for meditation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/09/latest-public-figure-face-backlash-his-tweets-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/09/latest-...
      - katbyte 5y ago
        I guess I stand corrected (thou can’t read the article) - next up is genocide on the evil company bingo card
  - fouc 5y ago
    I suspect that Facebook has more users than Twitter, and heavier engagement. Facebook has multiple aspects that people heavily use, things like photo albums, marketplace, messenger, birthdays, etc. In comparison Twitter seems more limited.
- jorgesborges 5y ago
  > Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has argued that only companies as large as Facebook have the resources to fight misinformation, election meddling and harmful content. Look, they’re not a propaganda machine! I’m so thankful we have them to “fight” against “misinformation”. I read that and my blood began to boil. Evil is the perfect description of such disgusting, deceitful pandering.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - user3939382 5y ago
    We should stop using the term misinformation and call it untruth. This deobfuscates what’s really happening, which is that: Extreme wealth and power has caused some self-appointed Deciders of Truth to band together and decide that anyone who does not pledge allegiance to anything they decide is true will be cast out of society as much as practically possible. I remember reading Plato’s The Republic when I was young and coming away with the impression that arriving at the nature of truth was very complicated and nuanced. Apparently these tech CEOs and their buddies in government have decided to simplify everything for us proles.
    - ViViDboarder 5y ago
      Do you really believe there is no such thing as a lie? I don’t want to trust Facebook as an arbiter of anything because their motivations do not align with anything other than personal profit, but people do completely fabricate things and present them as true.
      - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        There's such a thing as a lie, but "misinformation" isn't a synonym for "lie". Efforts to fight misinformation are almost always understood to encompass misleading information - that is, information that's literally true but is used to advance an argument the misinformation checker doesn't think is valid.
- echelon 5y ago
  Easy legislative fix 1) Stop hiring ex-Facebook employees. Unless they come clean about the company, they're willingly working at a corporation designed to destroy people. Why would you want people that sacrifice morals for money at your company? 2) Pass legislation requiring that algorithmic / amplified social media displays a "Surgeon General's" warning at the top that can't be dismissed. 12px white on black font: "This product is designed to be emotionally disruptive" 3) Disallow companies from targeting or onboarding children. If kids can have an account, there must be no adds or PII used in analytics or big data. No studying them. No manipulating them.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  Its main goal is to create more engagement so Zuck can sell more ads. Turning an AI out with the goal of maximizing engagement creates a machine as you described.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  It's a serious issue and not one that should be taken lightly, but I think it warrants taking a small step back and thinking a bit more about it. The claim in this comment is that Facebook's business is to sell ads, but facebook users actually the thing being sold, rather than the customers. This has caused Facebook to become evil and do evil things. However, if you think about it, almost any social "product" follows the same pattern. Consider Bars and Clubs. On the surface it seems like their only purpose is to sell alcohol to the patrons, and in a way the patrons are just a way to make the club look more popular to attract more alcohol consumers. But most bars don't become propaganda organizations delivering ethanol via an IV drip. Bars want to create a fun environment that is sustainable in the long term, so they avoid strategies that are likely to harm their customers and prevent them from coming back. Some bars are undoubtedly evil, but it's usually pretty obvious and there are regulations to detect and limit misleading or dangerous behavior (spiking drinks, racial discrimination on entry). For a lot of people, Instagram is more like a Bar than a physical product. It's a place you go to interact with people and have fun or catch up. Facebook wants people to enjoy themselves and keep coming back. Sometimes people have a bad time or are harmed, but it's in Facebook's best interest to understand that and change things to make Instagram safer and more enjoyable, so people will keep coming back and "buying drinks".
  - jqpabc123 5y ago
    Consider Bars and Clubs. Bars earn all their income from serving individual patrons. Facebook earns nothing from their individual patrons. All their income is earned serving those seeking to manipulate and take advantage of their patrons. It's easy to see where the allegiance lies in either case --- just follow the money.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  FB is primarily a data collection and behavior directing organization. Surveillance Capitalism is real. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
Odd that "Stop using Facebook and products it owns" wasn't listed. While I understand that at this point it will probably take some regulatory action to fully deal with Facebook and its abuses, there's a huge cognitive dissonance among many people when it comes to Facebook. Lots of the people who complain about how evil the company's behavior is use the company's products frequently. Lots of criticism of Facebook is published on websites that have Facebook Like and follow buttons, and use Facebook tracking pixels. Stop feeding the beast.
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  Facebook is an addiction. "Just say no", is wonderful advice but the reality is somewhat more complicated.
  - swsieber 5y ago
    > "Just say no", is wonderful advice Which is why we're surprised it's not in the article. Applying that advice is complicated, but we should still push for it, and there's is a very strong network effect. If in reaction to new a lot of people stopped using Facebook, then Facebook would be that much easier for others to stop using.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    It might be easier said than done, but at some point you have to stop indulging your addiction if you want to stop indulging your addiction.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Maybe, but that's now how addictions are generally fixed. Even for simple physical ones, like caffeine, kicking the habit is a complicated process, and is best done with careful preparation and a nuanced understanding of how the addict benefits from the addiction. That's even more true for more serious addictions. There are always reasons somebody became an addict, and preventing relapse often requires solving those problems first before any real headway is made. Generally, the "just say no" advice is much more fun to say than it is useful to the addict.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
This doesn't sound very promising. "Give users more control over their data" < what does this even mean. It sounds more like, look we give users more control over data, but please let us do the meta verse project. From what I see there, it will get even worse. Fb collects data and sells ads based on that data, meanwhile the users are undergoing gamification aka incentivized to spend as much time as possible on the platform. The best governance would be if people simply stopped using it, but people do want to share and like, they think it adds value to the life.
lokar 5y ago
I worry that simply breaking up FB could make things worse. Today, with a safe monopoly feedung high profit margins they can afford some mitigations (more reviewers, etc) and to "hold back" a bit on some of the worst/unhealthy engagement tricks. Several more equal competitors would feel pressure to outdo each other. Some other fix is needed (probably in addition to breakup).
- nefitty 5y ago
  I wonder if the government could create a regulatory AI that could be applied to social media companies. As laws and regulations change, the AI would just need to be updated and it would enforce them automatically on the companies.
  - barbecue_sauce 5y ago
    Maybe not to control content, but to create context. We could call it GW.
  - rosstex 5y ago
    And it should take into account the shared experiences and values of U.S. Congress members, who are elected to serve the best interests of their constituents.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  However, reach on any one platform becomes limited. Also, it doesn’t seem like their position in the market has really encouraged Facebook to “hold back” on anything. Growth is their only goal.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
Why does every attack on Facebook seem like an actual pressure tactic to get them to censor views the mainstream media disagrees with? It seems a lot of the reporting on Facebook is driven more by a desire for censorship than for anything else. In terms of misinformation, it was just a couple a weeks ago that the mainstream media was pushing the narrative that the Border Patrol was whipping immigrants, which was completely false.
- callmeal 5y ago
  > From https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/border-patrol-haitian-immigrants-whip-horses-fact-check/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/border-patrol-hai... Ratje said he saw a Border Patrol agent swing his horse’s rein in the air while migrants were in the river. One migrant who was holding bags of food fell backward. As some migrants tried to get past Border Patrol agents, Ratje took photos, including one that would later go viral. Ratje saw the agent swing his rein vertically, spot a Haitian migrant in a black shirt carrying bags of food, and then pursue him The Border Patrol agent “is grabbing the Haitian with his right hand and has his reins in his left hand. The rein swings up,” Ratje said. The migrant then “got swung around,” Ratje said, but the agent eventually let go. Nice. The rein "swings up" and the migrant "got swung around". Purely through divine intervention we presume. We also presume that when the agent eventually let go, the person was stood back on the ground without any excessive force A separate video tweeted by John Holman, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, showed a Border Patrol agent yelling at Haitian migrants as they crossed the Rio Grande with food. A video showed a Border Patrol agent in the river yelling at migrants: “Hey you use your women? This is why your country’s s—, because you use your women for this!” Even nicer: yelling at women who are trying to get food and water to feed their children and families.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
    https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/sep/24/what-we-know-about-images-border-patrol-and-haitia/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/sep/24/what-we-know-... >Ratje told PolitiFact that his photographs didn’t show signs of agents whipping any migrants or using anything as a whip to strike them. >"Nobody saw a Border Patrol agent whipping," he said. "What we did see was a Border Patrol agent swinging the rein in like a circle. It looked pretty threatening. Nobody saw him strike the migrant with that thing, the reins. >"I asked other colleagues, ‘Did you see him whipping?’ No," he added. "That stuff got misconstrued. Truth is there was no whipping of immigrants. That part was completely misinformation.
cletus 5y ago
Calls for breaking up companies make great headlines for politicians but let's look at the history and why this was necessary as a solution to antitrust. The textbook case for the Sherman Act was Standard Oil. Built up by Rockefeller in the late 19th century, Standard Oil came to effectively control the extraction, refining, distribution and sale of kerosene (in particular). This is when oil pipelines began, interestingly to break up another monopoly: the railroads (for distribution). Standard Oil split into a bunch of companies, many of which still exist today (eg Chevron, Exxon-Mobil). This break up actually made Rockefeller (even more) fantastically wealthy. The key point is that Standard Oil could (and did) use its significant market power to squash competitors. Another example: the Paramount decision that split film studios, distribution and theaters. Personally I think very few Big Tech companies would warrant this kind of government action and top of that list for me would be Amazon, whose stranglehold on logistics, delivery and online storefronts is near-total. Amazon's delivery prices (FedEx, UPS, USPS primarily) cannot be matched. The barrier to entry is so huge, no one could reasonably compete. But Facebook? Let's look at the last 10 years. FB bought IG when (IMHO) IG represented an existential threat to FB. So if you're going to argue market dominance, you're going to have to explain how a company a few years old with 13 employees (at the time of acquisition) could possibly threaten FB. Another is TikTok. Can we stop applying standards developed for 19th century oil producers to Big Tech where distribution is essentially free and said companies exist only so long as the users want them to? I know it's trendy for lawmakers to bang their drums about an issue as a kneejerk reaction to grab some headlines and that they must hurry to do so before the market just solves the problem anyway but still. Disclaimer: Ex-Facebooker. Opinions are my own.
- tchalla 5y ago
  The number of employees in a company has no bearing on anti-competitive behaviour of an acquisition.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    IG have over a 1bn users now, they had 20-30mn at time of acquisition. Maybe FB felt they were a threat, but it's definitely not a given that they would have been equally successful alone. Whatsapp, OTOH is a completely different issue and probably should have to be divested.
mrdoops 5y ago
Build something better.
- oddmiral 5y ago
  , then sell it to FB.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    That or FB will use its monopoly and vast reach to put you out of business.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  ... as a non-profit. Keep it focused on the core reasons people wanted FB to begin with: connecting with family and RL friends (old and new) and a easy way to see what's going on in people's lives. This would be incredibly cheap to build and run. Positioned as a way to combat the evils of facecrook I would donate a large % of my annual charitable spend and I think many others would as well. I feel that this is the only effective way to counter FBs network effect monopoly.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
pixelgeek 5y ago
What can be done to rein in Facebook? Nothing. Either shut it down or live with the impact but the time to 'do something' about Facebook was a long time ago. Before legislators in the US let it become this surveillance behemoth. Before it became a massive ad network. Reining it in also presumes that legislative methods will work. I think it is already clear that they don't. Shut it down.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Reining it in also presumes that legislative methods will work. I think it is already clear that they don't. How is it clear? What legislation has been attempted? The simplest legislation--I could fit it on a page--would be to ban M&A by social media companies over a certain size and force break-ups of past mergers that would have violated that restriction had it been in place since, I don't know, February 4, 2004.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    They are still operating under an FTC order that they effectively ignore. They were fined and they deliberately took a bigger fine to protect their CEO. They ignored calls for their CEO to appear before parliament in the UK and Canada. Ignored. I am not fully aware of the state of legislative action in the UK from the Cambridge/Brexit issue but that hasn't gone anywhere. They are far too large to be legislated. They have too much money to fine. What possible options other than shutting the company down exist that Facebook wouldn't either pay with their 'spare change' fund or bury with lobbyists?
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > too large to be legislated You haven't cited any legislation. The FTC is not powerful enough to regulate Facebook; the U.K. and Canada were snubbed by them--agreed. But none of that is legislation. (To be clear, Facebook is more powerful than some legislatures. But not the Congress. Not by a long shot.)
      - 5y ago
stri8ted 5y ago
Assume Facebook no longer exists tomorrow. The same incentives that drive Facebook's behavior, i.e. human consumption patterns, will still exist. And will be exploited by another company. Facebook is merely one instance of a problem deeply rooted in humans. Sure, there is the anti-competitive aspect to it. But wrt to the divisiveness and polarization, the exploitation by political actors, it would not make a difference. Something else would just rise up to fill that void. It's the digital equivalent of junk food. Banning Coke, would do nothing to solve obesity.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  Pandora's box, if you will. Social media companies created the void as they filled it. There's no putting the lid back on it now.
- dylan604 5y ago
  That's an acceptable view point. However, that doesn't mean FB should not be punished into oblivion. They don't get a free pass just because "someone else would have done it if we didn't" is not an acceptable defense.
  - stri8ted 5y ago
    I don't disagree. My point is more broadly about the ills of social media, and how it's often framed as a Facebook problem.
    - CosmicShadow 5y ago
      Yeah, but what other social media exists beyond Twitter?
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > what other social media exists beyond Twitter? Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit and Pinterest each have more MAUs than Twitter [1]. [1] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/#close https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-soc...
avalys 5y ago
I don’t really like the stuff the Guardian is doing. What can we do to rein in the Guardian?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 5y ago
Nothing in the neolib Anglosphere and its colonies. We grant power by skill at the accumulation of money (which we call a meritocracy - a religion with credit as merit and cash as grace), so Facebook is only answerable to its corporate peers. Those are the people it can't piss off. In other countries, there are power centers awarded by other than cash accumulation. Xi, Putin, and MBS aren't particularly worried about Facebook. Europe is the only place making an attempt, but that's because they have a post-WWII extra-capitalist social consensus sponsored (and enforced) by US military spending. Any real flexing by the US, and Europe either backs down or turns to China. This article is typical Guardian legislative fanfiction, where we pretend that rules are put into place based on how well they might work to achieve liberal philosophical aims, rather than by power. If any politician or movement amassed the power to do any of these things, the Guardian would devote all of its energy to attacking them.
bob229 5y ago
Delete. Your. Social. Media. Now
rPlayer6554 5y ago
Simple: Facebook will be stopped when people decide to stop using it or reduce their time on the platform. All the information about their privacy abuses are quite public and people still choose to use the product. I am well aware and I use that information to use it in an informed way (limited usage only on desktop, Firefox container, and more). Yes yes, inside the HN bubble it does seem to be popular. But in the normal world it doesn't seem like enough people care to me. Facebook will change once their is a mass movement to pull at their purse strings. In a free society, people are allowed to surrender some freedom and privacy if they choose. It seems like what Facebook offers is worth the cost to the average person.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > the information about their privacy abuses are quite public and people still choose to use the product I don't. I'm still tracked. Also negatively affected by its effects. People are free to smoke cigarettes, but we will pass measures to limit its damage, particularly to innocent bystanders.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    And yet second-hand smoking is only 100% preventable if you isolate yourself from any known smokers. That's why people who care will use a modern tracker blocker and/or firefox containers.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ferdowsi 5y ago
      Ad-ops is way ahead of you. Facebook and other corporate surveillers will track you on the backend, like whenever you make a purchase or some other transaction on an unassociated site. Your client-side protections won't save you.
  - johnjj257 5y ago
    How are you Negatively affected by it?
thepasswordis 5y ago
Nobody has the will to do anything to reign in any of these social media companies. We are all getting too rich off of them. So what can be done to reign in Facebook? Nothing.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
PrinceRichard 5y ago
What can be done by the government? Or by individuals taking responsibility for their families?
numair 5y ago
Pro tip: there’s people other than Mark Zuckerberg who own those super-voting shares in Facebook, who keep his power unchecked. One of them is considered a darling investor in Silicon Valley and pretends to be a voice of social justice (and funds a lot of that sort of stuff). When your politicians put random employees and other paid shills in front of committees as proof that they’re being “tough on Facebook,” understand that it’s a giant charade. It’s only when they call the super-voting shareholders and the board that something serious is going on. These are the people who think you’re all too stupid to know how the game works.
- Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago
  Thiel's money is not red btw.
  - numair 5y ago
    They’ve got both sides covered. The fact that you only know about one side should tell you that the other side, and where it places its money, might be worth looking into. You think Thiel and the Trump election was interesting? Go look at the largest donor to Biden’s “Future Forward PAC.”
    - daveguy 5y ago
      Dustin A Moskovitz of Asana. How is this some sort of gotcha? Just noting they're both in tech?
- thesausageking 5y ago
  Zuckerberg controls 58% of the voting shares. No one else on the board matters.
  - numair 5y ago
    He controls them. He doesn’t own them. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS275871279920151202 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS275871279920151202 > At Facebook, Zuckerberg’s stake, worth some $45 billion, comes with more than 53 percent of the votes in any shareholder poll, according to company filings. That rises to nearly 60 percent including stock owned by co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, which Zuckerberg usually gets to vote. Note that there have been share sales since the time of this article (2015), so I would assume that the majority has become even more dependent on others voting his way (I wouldn’t know what the board has granted since then, which is a whole other topic...)
guilhas 5y ago
Nothing, create your own Facebook ..Also send the whistleblower to the Ecuadorian embassy
anyonecancode 5y ago
Unless and until we come up with a different economic model for social media, we'll always have Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever successor toxic social media site comes next). Plenty of people here on HN have argued that the real problem is centralization, and I agree. Take whatever specific issue one might have with FB -- let's say disinformation, for instance. We have all these debates about censorship vs free speech vs accountability etc. But in fact, if FB wasn't the behemoth it is, much of this would be moot. In a world where there were _only_ smaller, more niche social media sites, fears around things like online radicalization would be much less, and any well-founded suspicions of actual criminal conspiracies would lend themselves to much more targeted warrant-backed investigations rather than privacy-destroying giant electronic dragnets. And if this example doesn't work for you, pick another one and think through how a world of smaller, less influential sites would change what you see as the problem with social media. But you can't brute force your way to that world -- that's pushing against a very strong current. So long as the economic model is to create a large, targetable advertising market, you're going to have very strong incentives for centralization and invasion of privacy. Contrast this with non-digital social hubs -- say, a pub. People come for the socialization, but the actual product being sold is food and drink. Social space becomes a side effect, one that complements and enhances the business model (a pub with a reputation as a good place to meet friends gets more business), but the business model isn't data-mining your audience. I think a social media network that focused on extending offline hubs into social spaces, where the economic model is attracting an audience to gather and chat and then _selling them something_, would mitigate the incentives to centralization and invasion of privacy. We need to tie social media to the selling of actual products; users need to be customers, not the actual product.
- tooltower 5y ago
  You can generalize even further. Acquisition of businesses, consolidating them into behemoths, they are all economically incentivized. Removing just that one aspect could solve many of these other issues, even outside of tech.
- gizmondo 5y ago
  > In a world where there were _only_ smaller, more niche social media sites, fears around things like online radicalization would be much less How so?

100 points by SmkyMt 5y ago

Facebook is primarily a propaganda organization. It's main objective is to influence, manipulate and subvert the user's judgment and convince them to buy something --- be it physical product or ideology. To further this objective, it has developed an incredibly detailed psychological profile of each individual user using deeply personal info willing surrendered by the user themselves. It's skill at doing this is what it promotes to it's real paying customers --- mostly advertisers. Users are not their "customer", they are just the marks being manipulated. As board member Peter Thiel put it, "I'd rather be seen as evil than incompetent". Evil is obviously more profitable.

dpratt 5y ago
This is a shockingly concise, accurate and readily digestible by the common person description of what Facebook actually is. If you don’t mind, I’m going to save this for the future.
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  Be my guest.
spectramax 5y ago
I’d say Twitter has done more damage to the society than FB. Twitter is a pure outrage machine. I might be in the minority but Instagram is still awesome. It’s gotten more ads but most of them are quite interesting. I’ve found made in USA goods from IG ads like this: https://psudo.com/ https://psudo.com/
- wpietri 5y ago
  You may be using Twitter wrong. Switch it from "top tweets" to "latest tweets" mode, and then follow people who tweet and retweet things that are not outrage-driven. I follow a lot of interesting people and I learn a ton. But even if Twitter were pure outrage, that is far from the most serious social media damage to society. Twitter, for all its faults, is relatively low on mis- and dis-information because people call it out. It's all one conversational space. Facebook, which is much more fragmented, enables flourishing niches of bonkers thought. Some of those niches are just wild-type insanity, but many more are gardens of crazy cultivated by people with a financial or political need for that. I firmly believe that without Facebook, we wouldn't have a situation where thousands of people are dying per day of a preventable disease, with 95+% of those because of mis- and dis-information about the disease and the necessary countermeasures.
- pfisherman 5y ago
  My understanding is that the scope of Facebook ads and surveillance is not limited to Facebook properties. The Facebook pixel and SDK are pretty ubiquitous. Twitter is actually useful if you limit who you follow to the right people. My experience of Twitter is a bunch of academics promoting their articles. Lior Pachter trashing tSNE and UMAP is about the spiciest it gets.
  - rendall 5y ago
    I know very few people on Twitter. Facebook, on the other hand, is nearly a requirement even to have a social life. I don't use FB, but I definitely miss out on general invitations. It is strictly not possible to participate in local Burning Man events here in Finland without a Facebook account, for instance. They flat out refuse to promote through any other platform or channel.
  - spectramax 5y ago
    I fundamentally disagree with Twitter's ideological position. Banning the president, allowing Taliban leaders, it is a censorship extravaganza and the selling point is ecochambered short blips of outrage. What you're pointing out is also true - there is some good stuff on Twitter just like any platform. Most political content on Twitter is horrible, left / right - both. FB goes against silicon valley's zeitgeist and it gets disproportional hate. IMO, all social media is toxic and it has done more damage to the society than benefited ... but the biases are very much evident in how each service is perceived by the larger tech community. FB also did many eggregious things, no doubt. Election interference, etc. Meanwhile, Tiktok is HN's darling. Another thing is Twitter has become de facto channels for official communications of government bodies. How do you access these official channels? With a phone number of course when you try to register an account - which is required. Twitter has destroyed the world by coaslescing social media, outrage tactics, government bodies into one hot boiling soup of toxins.
    - pfisherman 5y ago
      Well a big part of the distinction between FB and Twitter for me is the scale, scope, and competence of their surveillance and targeted influence (i.e. ads) capabilities and operations. Would Twitter be as evil as FB if they weren’t incompetent? Maybe. But that is not the world we live in. One area where I think we are talking past each other is referencing the consumer facing aspect vs the money making (B2B) aspect of social media. I think of these companies as ad platforms. They exist to collect data on people and their behavior, and sell tot to advertisers so they can use it to influence decisions. The whole public square thing is incidental to that. It exists only because it helps them collect data and sell ads. To your other points Twitter is an official channel of communication for government agencies, not THE official channel. They still maintain websites and put out press kits. Twitter should have banned the president long before they did for his repeated violations of their TOS, as they would have any normal member of the public. Same for other world leaders. Imo, leaders should be held to a higher standard of behavior wrt to the EULA and T&Cs than the average Joe.
- katbyte 5y ago
  As far as I know Twitter had not been responsible for ethnic cleansing mole times in multiple countries not helping dictators stay in power: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-mark-zuckerberg-should-71796243/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
  - spectramax 5y ago
    Here is Twitter CEO promoting a dictatorship as a place to go for meditation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/09/latest-public-figure-face-backlash-his-tweets-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/09/latest-...
    - katbyte 5y ago
      I guess I stand corrected (thou can’t read the article) - next up is genocide on the evil company bingo card
- fouc 5y ago
  I suspect that Facebook has more users than Twitter, and heavier engagement. Facebook has multiple aspects that people heavily use, things like photo albums, marketplace, messenger, birthdays, etc. In comparison Twitter seems more limited.
jorgesborges 5y ago
> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has argued that only companies as large as Facebook have the resources to fight misinformation, election meddling and harmful content. Look, they’re not a propaganda machine! I’m so thankful we have them to “fight” against “misinformation”. I read that and my blood began to boil. Evil is the perfect description of such disgusting, deceitful pandering.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- user3939382 5y ago
  We should stop using the term misinformation and call it untruth. This deobfuscates what’s really happening, which is that: Extreme wealth and power has caused some self-appointed Deciders of Truth to band together and decide that anyone who does not pledge allegiance to anything they decide is true will be cast out of society as much as practically possible. I remember reading Plato’s The Republic when I was young and coming away with the impression that arriving at the nature of truth was very complicated and nuanced. Apparently these tech CEOs and their buddies in government have decided to simplify everything for us proles.
  - ViViDboarder 5y ago
    Do you really believe there is no such thing as a lie? I don’t want to trust Facebook as an arbiter of anything because their motivations do not align with anything other than personal profit, but people do completely fabricate things and present them as true.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      There's such a thing as a lie, but "misinformation" isn't a synonym for "lie". Efforts to fight misinformation are almost always understood to encompass misleading information - that is, information that's literally true but is used to advance an argument the misinformation checker doesn't think is valid.
echelon 5y ago
Easy legislative fix 1) Stop hiring ex-Facebook employees. Unless they come clean about the company, they're willingly working at a corporation designed to destroy people. Why would you want people that sacrifice morals for money at your company? 2) Pass legislation requiring that algorithmic / amplified social media displays a "Surgeon General's" warning at the top that can't be dismissed. 12px white on black font: "This product is designed to be emotionally disruptive" 3) Disallow companies from targeting or onboarding children. If kids can have an account, there must be no adds or PII used in analytics or big data. No studying them. No manipulating them.
tomjen3 5y ago
Its main goal is to create more engagement so Zuck can sell more ads. Turning an AI out with the goal of maximizing engagement creates a machine as you described.
mgraczyk 5y ago
It's a serious issue and not one that should be taken lightly, but I think it warrants taking a small step back and thinking a bit more about it. The claim in this comment is that Facebook's business is to sell ads, but facebook users actually the thing being sold, rather than the customers. This has caused Facebook to become evil and do evil things. However, if you think about it, almost any social "product" follows the same pattern. Consider Bars and Clubs. On the surface it seems like their only purpose is to sell alcohol to the patrons, and in a way the patrons are just a way to make the club look more popular to attract more alcohol consumers. But most bars don't become propaganda organizations delivering ethanol via an IV drip. Bars want to create a fun environment that is sustainable in the long term, so they avoid strategies that are likely to harm their customers and prevent them from coming back. Some bars are undoubtedly evil, but it's usually pretty obvious and there are regulations to detect and limit misleading or dangerous behavior (spiking drinks, racial discrimination on entry). For a lot of people, Instagram is more like a Bar than a physical product. It's a place you go to interact with people and have fun or catch up. Facebook wants people to enjoy themselves and keep coming back. Sometimes people have a bad time or are harmed, but it's in Facebook's best interest to understand that and change things to make Instagram safer and more enjoyable, so people will keep coming back and "buying drinks".
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  Consider Bars and Clubs. Bars earn all their income from serving individual patrons. Facebook earns nothing from their individual patrons. All their income is earned serving those seeking to manipulate and take advantage of their patrons. It's easy to see where the allegiance lies in either case --- just follow the money.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
FB is primarily a data collection and behavior directing organization. Surveillance Capitalism is real. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw

LurkingPenguin 5y ago

Odd that "Stop using Facebook and products it owns" wasn't listed. While I understand that at this point it will probably take some regulatory action to fully deal with Facebook and its abuses, there's a huge cognitive dissonance among many people when it comes to Facebook. Lots of the people who complain about how evil the company's behavior is use the company's products frequently. Lots of criticism of Facebook is published on websites that have Facebook Like and follow buttons, and use Facebook tracking pixels. Stop feeding the beast.

jqpabc123 5y ago
Facebook is an addiction. "Just say no", is wonderful advice but the reality is somewhat more complicated.
- swsieber 5y ago
  > "Just say no", is wonderful advice Which is why we're surprised it's not in the article. Applying that advice is complicated, but we should still push for it, and there's is a very strong network effect. If in reaction to new a lot of people stopped using Facebook, then Facebook would be that much easier for others to stop using.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  It might be easier said than done, but at some point you have to stop indulging your addiction if you want to stop indulging your addiction.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Maybe, but that's now how addictions are generally fixed. Even for simple physical ones, like caffeine, kicking the habit is a complicated process, and is best done with careful preparation and a nuanced understanding of how the addict benefits from the addiction. That's even more true for more serious addictions. There are always reasons somebody became an addict, and preventing relapse often requires solving those problems first before any real headway is made. Generally, the "just say no" advice is much more fun to say than it is useful to the addict.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

This doesn't sound very promising. "Give users more control over their data" < what does this even mean. It sounds more like, look we give users more control over data, but please let us do the meta verse project. From what I see there, it will get even worse. Fb collects data and sells ads based on that data, meanwhile the users are undergoing gamification aka incentivized to spend as much time as possible on the platform. The best governance would be if people simply stopped using it, but people do want to share and like, they think it adds value to the life.

lokar 5y ago

I worry that simply breaking up FB could make things worse. Today, with a safe monopoly feedung high profit margins they can afford some mitigations (more reviewers, etc) and to "hold back" a bit on some of the worst/unhealthy engagement tricks. Several more equal competitors would feel pressure to outdo each other. Some other fix is needed (probably in addition to breakup).

nefitty 5y ago
I wonder if the government could create a regulatory AI that could be applied to social media companies. As laws and regulations change, the AI would just need to be updated and it would enforce them automatically on the companies.
- barbecue_sauce 5y ago
  Maybe not to control content, but to create context. We could call it GW.
- rosstex 5y ago
  And it should take into account the shared experiences and values of U.S. Congress members, who are elected to serve the best interests of their constituents.
ViViDboarder 5y ago
However, reach on any one platform becomes limited. Also, it doesn’t seem like their position in the market has really encouraged Facebook to “hold back” on anything. Growth is their only goal.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

Why does every attack on Facebook seem like an actual pressure tactic to get them to censor views the mainstream media disagrees with? It seems a lot of the reporting on Facebook is driven more by a desire for censorship than for anything else. In terms of misinformation, it was just a couple a weeks ago that the mainstream media was pushing the narrative that the Border Patrol was whipping immigrants, which was completely false.

callmeal 5y ago
> From https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/border-patrol-haitian-immigrants-whip-horses-fact-check/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/border-patrol-hai... Ratje said he saw a Border Patrol agent swing his horse’s rein in the air while migrants were in the river. One migrant who was holding bags of food fell backward. As some migrants tried to get past Border Patrol agents, Ratje took photos, including one that would later go viral. Ratje saw the agent swing his rein vertically, spot a Haitian migrant in a black shirt carrying bags of food, and then pursue him The Border Patrol agent “is grabbing the Haitian with his right hand and has his reins in his left hand. The rein swings up,” Ratje said. The migrant then “got swung around,” Ratje said, but the agent eventually let go. Nice. The rein "swings up" and the migrant "got swung around". Purely through divine intervention we presume. We also presume that when the agent eventually let go, the person was stood back on the ground without any excessive force A separate video tweeted by John Holman, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, showed a Border Patrol agent yelling at Haitian migrants as they crossed the Rio Grande with food. A video showed a Border Patrol agent in the river yelling at migrants: “Hey you use your women? This is why your country’s s—, because you use your women for this!” Even nicer: yelling at women who are trying to get food and water to feed their children and families.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/sep/24/what-we-know-about-images-border-patrol-and-haitia/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/sep/24/what-we-know-... >Ratje told PolitiFact that his photographs didn’t show signs of agents whipping any migrants or using anything as a whip to strike them. >"Nobody saw a Border Patrol agent whipping," he said. "What we did see was a Border Patrol agent swinging the rein in like a circle. It looked pretty threatening. Nobody saw him strike the migrant with that thing, the reins. >"I asked other colleagues, ‘Did you see him whipping?’ No," he added. "That stuff got misconstrued. Truth is there was no whipping of immigrants. That part was completely misinformation.

cletus 5y ago

Calls for breaking up companies make great headlines for politicians but let's look at the history and why this was necessary as a solution to antitrust. The textbook case for the Sherman Act was Standard Oil. Built up by Rockefeller in the late 19th century, Standard Oil came to effectively control the extraction, refining, distribution and sale of kerosene (in particular). This is when oil pipelines began, interestingly to break up another monopoly: the railroads (for distribution). Standard Oil split into a bunch of companies, many of which still exist today (eg Chevron, Exxon-Mobil). This break up actually made Rockefeller (even more) fantastically wealthy. The key point is that Standard Oil could (and did) use its significant market power to squash competitors. Another example: the Paramount decision that split film studios, distribution and theaters. Personally I think very few Big Tech companies would warrant this kind of government action and top of that list for me would be Amazon, whose stranglehold on logistics, delivery and online storefronts is near-total. Amazon's delivery prices (FedEx, UPS, USPS primarily) cannot be matched. The barrier to entry is so huge, no one could reasonably compete. But Facebook? Let's look at the last 10 years. FB bought IG when (IMHO) IG represented an existential threat to FB. So if you're going to argue market dominance, you're going to have to explain how a company a few years old with 13 employees (at the time of acquisition) could possibly threaten FB. Another is TikTok. Can we stop applying standards developed for 19th century oil producers to Big Tech where distribution is essentially free and said companies exist only so long as the users want them to? I know it's trendy for lawmakers to bang their drums about an issue as a kneejerk reaction to grab some headlines and that they must hurry to do so before the market just solves the problem anyway but still. Disclaimer: Ex-Facebooker. Opinions are my own.

tchalla 5y ago
The number of employees in a company has no bearing on anti-competitive behaviour of an acquisition.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  IG have over a 1bn users now, they had 20-30mn at time of acquisition. Maybe FB felt they were a threat, but it's definitely not a given that they would have been equally successful alone. Whatsapp, OTOH is a completely different issue and probably should have to be divested.

mrdoops 5y ago

Build something better.

oddmiral 5y ago
, then sell it to FB.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  That or FB will use its monopoly and vast reach to put you out of business.
wintermutestwin 5y ago
... as a non-profit. Keep it focused on the core reasons people wanted FB to begin with: connecting with family and RL friends (old and new) and a easy way to see what's going on in people's lives. This would be incredibly cheap to build and run. Positioned as a way to combat the evils of facecrook I would donate a large % of my annual charitable spend and I think many others would as well. I feel that this is the only effective way to counter FBs network effect monopoly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

pixelgeek 5y ago

What can be done to rein in Facebook? Nothing. Either shut it down or live with the impact but the time to 'do something' about Facebook was a long time ago. Before legislators in the US let it become this surveillance behemoth. Before it became a massive ad network. Reining it in also presumes that legislative methods will work. I think it is already clear that they don't. Shut it down.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Reining it in also presumes that legislative methods will work. I think it is already clear that they don't. How is it clear? What legislation has been attempted? The simplest legislation--I could fit it on a page--would be to ban M&A by social media companies over a certain size and force break-ups of past mergers that would have violated that restriction had it been in place since, I don't know, February 4, 2004.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  They are still operating under an FTC order that they effectively ignore. They were fined and they deliberately took a bigger fine to protect their CEO. They ignored calls for their CEO to appear before parliament in the UK and Canada. Ignored. I am not fully aware of the state of legislative action in the UK from the Cambridge/Brexit issue but that hasn't gone anywhere. They are far too large to be legislated. They have too much money to fine. What possible options other than shutting the company down exist that Facebook wouldn't either pay with their 'spare change' fund or bury with lobbyists?
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > too large to be legislated You haven't cited any legislation. The FTC is not powerful enough to regulate Facebook; the U.K. and Canada were snubbed by them--agreed. But none of that is legislation. (To be clear, Facebook is more powerful than some legislatures. But not the Congress. Not by a long shot.)
    - 5y ago

stri8ted 5y ago

Assume Facebook no longer exists tomorrow. The same incentives that drive Facebook's behavior, i.e. human consumption patterns, will still exist. And will be exploited by another company. Facebook is merely one instance of a problem deeply rooted in humans. Sure, there is the anti-competitive aspect to it. But wrt to the divisiveness and polarization, the exploitation by political actors, it would not make a difference. Something else would just rise up to fill that void. It's the digital equivalent of junk food. Banning Coke, would do nothing to solve obesity.

andrew_ 5y ago
Pandora's box, if you will. Social media companies created the void as they filled it. There's no putting the lid back on it now.
dylan604 5y ago
That's an acceptable view point. However, that doesn't mean FB should not be punished into oblivion. They don't get a free pass just because "someone else would have done it if we didn't" is not an acceptable defense.
- stri8ted 5y ago
  I don't disagree. My point is more broadly about the ills of social media, and how it's often framed as a Facebook problem.
  - CosmicShadow 5y ago
    Yeah, but what other social media exists beyond Twitter?
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > what other social media exists beyond Twitter? Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit and Pinterest each have more MAUs than Twitter [1]. [1] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/#close https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-soc...

avalys 5y ago

I don’t really like the stuff the Guardian is doing. What can we do to rein in the Guardian?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pessimizer 5y ago

Nothing in the neolib Anglosphere and its colonies. We grant power by skill at the accumulation of money (which we call a meritocracy - a religion with credit as merit and cash as grace), so Facebook is only answerable to its corporate peers. Those are the people it can't piss off. In other countries, there are power centers awarded by other than cash accumulation. Xi, Putin, and MBS aren't particularly worried about Facebook. Europe is the only place making an attempt, but that's because they have a post-WWII extra-capitalist social consensus sponsored (and enforced) by US military spending. Any real flexing by the US, and Europe either backs down or turns to China. This article is typical Guardian legislative fanfiction, where we pretend that rules are put into place based on how well they might work to achieve liberal philosophical aims, rather than by power. If any politician or movement amassed the power to do any of these things, the Guardian would devote all of its energy to attacking them.

bob229 5y ago

Delete. Your. Social. Media. Now

rPlayer6554 5y ago

Simple: Facebook will be stopped when people decide to stop using it or reduce their time on the platform. All the information about their privacy abuses are quite public and people still choose to use the product. I am well aware and I use that information to use it in an informed way (limited usage only on desktop, Firefox container, and more). Yes yes, inside the HN bubble it does seem to be popular. But in the normal world it doesn't seem like enough people care to me. Facebook will change once their is a mass movement to pull at their purse strings. In a free society, people are allowed to surrender some freedom and privacy if they choose. It seems like what Facebook offers is worth the cost to the average person.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> the information about their privacy abuses are quite public and people still choose to use the product I don't. I'm still tracked. Also negatively affected by its effects. People are free to smoke cigarettes, but we will pass measures to limit its damage, particularly to innocent bystanders.
- judge2020 5y ago
  And yet second-hand smoking is only 100% preventable if you isolate yourself from any known smokers. That's why people who care will use a modern tracker blocker and/or firefox containers.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ferdowsi 5y ago
    Ad-ops is way ahead of you. Facebook and other corporate surveillers will track you on the backend, like whenever you make a purchase or some other transaction on an unassociated site. Your client-side protections won't save you.
- johnjj257 5y ago
  How are you Negatively affected by it?

thepasswordis 5y ago

Nobody has the will to do anything to reign in any of these social media companies. We are all getting too rich off of them. So what can be done to reign in Facebook? Nothing.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

PrinceRichard 5y ago

What can be done by the government? Or by individuals taking responsibility for their families?

numair 5y ago

Pro tip: there’s people other than Mark Zuckerberg who own those super-voting shares in Facebook, who keep his power unchecked. One of them is considered a darling investor in Silicon Valley and pretends to be a voice of social justice (and funds a lot of that sort of stuff). When your politicians put random employees and other paid shills in front of committees as proof that they’re being “tough on Facebook,” understand that it’s a giant charade. It’s only when they call the super-voting shareholders and the board that something serious is going on. These are the people who think you’re all too stupid to know how the game works.

Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago
Thiel's money is not red btw.
- numair 5y ago
  They’ve got both sides covered. The fact that you only know about one side should tell you that the other side, and where it places its money, might be worth looking into. You think Thiel and the Trump election was interesting? Go look at the largest donor to Biden’s “Future Forward PAC.”
  - daveguy 5y ago
    Dustin A Moskovitz of Asana. How is this some sort of gotcha? Just noting they're both in tech?
thesausageking 5y ago
Zuckerberg controls 58% of the voting shares. No one else on the board matters.
- numair 5y ago
  He controls them. He doesn’t own them. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS275871279920151202 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS275871279920151202 > At Facebook, Zuckerberg’s stake, worth some $45 billion, comes with more than 53 percent of the votes in any shareholder poll, according to company filings. That rises to nearly 60 percent including stock owned by co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, which Zuckerberg usually gets to vote. Note that there have been share sales since the time of this article (2015), so I would assume that the majority has become even more dependent on others voting his way (I wouldn’t know what the board has granted since then, which is a whole other topic...)

guilhas 5y ago

Nothing, create your own Facebook ..Also send the whistleblower to the Ecuadorian embassy

anyonecancode 5y ago

Unless and until we come up with a different economic model for social media, we'll always have Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever successor toxic social media site comes next). Plenty of people here on HN have argued that the real problem is centralization, and I agree. Take whatever specific issue one might have with FB -- let's say disinformation, for instance. We have all these debates about censorship vs free speech vs accountability etc. But in fact, if FB wasn't the behemoth it is, much of this would be moot. In a world where there were _only_ smaller, more niche social media sites, fears around things like online radicalization would be much less, and any well-founded suspicions of actual criminal conspiracies would lend themselves to much more targeted warrant-backed investigations rather than privacy-destroying giant electronic dragnets. And if this example doesn't work for you, pick another one and think through how a world of smaller, less influential sites would change what you see as the problem with social media. But you can't brute force your way to that world -- that's pushing against a very strong current. So long as the economic model is to create a large, targetable advertising market, you're going to have very strong incentives for centralization and invasion of privacy. Contrast this with non-digital social hubs -- say, a pub. People come for the socialization, but the actual product being sold is food and drink. Social space becomes a side effect, one that complements and enhances the business model (a pub with a reputation as a good place to meet friends gets more business), but the business model isn't data-mining your audience. I think a social media network that focused on extending offline hubs into social spaces, where the economic model is attracting an audience to gather and chat and then _selling them something_, would mitigate the incentives to centralization and invasion of privacy. We need to tie social media to the selling of actual products; users need to be customers, not the actual product.

tooltower 5y ago
You can generalize even further. Acquisition of businesses, consolidating them into behemoths, they are all economically incentivized. Removing just that one aspect could solve many of these other issues, even outside of tech.
gizmondo 5y ago
> In a world where there were _only_ smaller, more niche social media sites, fears around things like online radicalization would be much less How so?