8 ms·

I don’t personally use FB and don’t have a very favorable view of their products. I would, however, like to see the same level scrutiny applied to the general

I don’t personally use FB and don’t have a very favorable view of their products. I would, however, like to see the same level scrutiny applied to the general American media, especially the news media. FB has come in and started eating their lunch. There’s a deeper problem here, and it feels more like the powers that he want to take down FB. I’m not denying any allegation made against FB, but why is it that Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and Hollywood get a pass when they’ve been damaging America for much longer than FB has existed? If the government sees a problem and wants to get involved - great. But let’s hold an equal bar.

philwelch 5y ago
The elephant in the room here is the First Amendment. The government, legally, cannot do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on CNN or Fox News. They also can't do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on Facebook, but they can certainly harass Facebook into doing it for them.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  Not completely true. Historically mass media was regulated. Lying also isn't legally protected if it causes injury (fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example, libel another). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
  - philwelch 5y ago
    > fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example That phrase comes from Schenck v. United States, where the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could imprison an anti-war activist for disseminating pamphlets.
  - bhupy 5y ago
    > fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    “Fire in a crowded theater” comes from the Supreme Court upholding the criminal conviction of a man handing out pamphlets protesting the WW1 draft. Not exactly the precedent I’d reach for if I was trying to argue that governmental regulation of speech is not dangerous.
    - mike00632 5y ago
      Facebook Groups have been host to many organized acts of violence. The Kenosha shooting comes to mind as a recent example where the Group was reported to Facebook and made it through multiple layers of review before being allowed to persist. To say that such speech is protected under the First Amendment is too much of a stretch.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        Please point out where I argued that that was protected speech. I think you’ll find that you’ve made up my argument out of whole cloth, which is quite tiresome.
        mike00632 5y ago
        Facebook: willingly hosts groups that plan and enact violence. You: It's a matter of free speech. Me: Point out that people have been killed. You: I didn't say it was free speech. Like, what do you think people are mad at Facebook over if not all the people dying from the misinformation and violence coming from them?
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        The only thing I can say here that’s within the rules is this: this is completely unrelated to what I actually said. I’m not sure where this conversation you’re paraphrasing happened, but I wasn’t part of it.
      - philwelch 5y ago
        It hasn’t even been legally established that Kyle Rittenhouse did anything wrong. Legally, he is innocent until proven guilty, and he has a case for self-defense for every round he fired that night. To say that the First Amendment doesn’t protect the rights of people to organize and assemble in a public place where one of them is later forced to defend themselves is absurd. People don’t use Facebook to plan premeditated acts of political violence. They use Signal.
  - riffic 5y ago
    well, the airwaves (which is where the FCC fairness doctrine was applied to) are a limited resource which, without regulation, become quickly polluted by bad actors. print and cable are somewhat more immune to that particular issue.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    The Supreme Court only upheld the fairness doctrine in situations where spectrum was limited (Red Lion Broadcasting vs FCC). Even at the time the fairness doctrine wasn't really applicable to mediums in which bandwidth/spectrum is not limited and not licensed to specific broadcasters. It's not clear to me how this kind of regulation would be justified to the Supreme Court in regards to the Internet.
- cronix 5y ago
  > but they can certainly harass Facebook into doing it for them. I believe you are exactly right here, or at least giving them cover to censor more with "the public's blessing."
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  And this is exactly what they're doing. In effect they're loopholing the 1st amendment. Bring in Zuckerberg, hound him about removing specific "disinformation" under the threat of future political action if they don't comply. Then they get to throw the private company bs flag whenever someone says it's stomping on the 1st amendment.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Breaking up Facebook would probably be the way to go; it has less troubling side effects than trying to regulate “hate speech” via a clever legal trick.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    The leaker herself says breaking up FB won't solve anything and what's needed is far more resources internally
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      I’m strongly inclined to disagree. I generally find that the best way to prevent an organization from abusing its power is to deny it power.
      - fighterpilot 5y ago
        If we split insta from FB, what incentives change that will cause a change in behavior?
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        It’s my external opinion that the real issue is the combination of the ad sales platform with the social media. If Instagram wasn’t owned by a company with an ad sales program, they would not have the capability to do what Facebook does today.
Noumenon72 5y ago
I've definitely had much darker thoughts after reading a lot of traditional media than looking at Instagram.
- isoskeles 5y ago
  This past year, I think immediately back to believing and repeating the grotesque lie that Brian Sicknick had his brains savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by Jan 6 rioters. That never happened, but it was major news for a few days. I actually feel a bit violated for believing and repeating something so false. On the other hand, I haven't had a FB account of any type for over five years, so it hasn't directly affected my personal life.
  - rumblerock 5y ago
    That feeling of being violated by false / incomplete information and narratives drives me mad. I've spent the last 5 years trying to manage my digital hygiene, not oversaturate myself with news notifications, etc. I look at things with a more critical eye, always hunting for bias. But it's still inescapable, especially with the force with which some of these narratives are pushed.
jasondigitized 5y ago
Hey I said that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762415
- gremIin 5y ago
  When you phrase your argument like that, it comes off as whataboutism. You are free to campaign against Fox News, CNN, and the like. I will even upvote and share those HN posts if you do.
  - jasondigitized 5y ago
    I should have simply said "This is a good start"
farcebook 5y ago
One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness. Facebook, along with some of the sketchier news outlets, are the opposite: they profit off (and optimize for) disinformation. Two, it's a matter of scale. Facebook reaches a far larger audience and has far more detail into their preferences and can nano-target personalized stories for them and corral them into groups, creating perfect echo chambers. The news companies are way too small and in some way irrelevant. Even if they all went bankrupt overnight, Facebook's algorithms will keep working, keep producing personalized truth bubbles. Is fake news a problem in general? Sure. But the news companies are tiny compared to Facebook, and not the immediate and persistent threat to democracy that Facebook is, just because they're much smaller. Even if you take the entirety of local news networks as a whole, they don't have the same saturation and engagement feedback loops that Facebook has. The Powers That Be are typically reactionary forces, and has long battled the news industry over free speech and censorship etc. Facebook is a relatively new villain, different than the old ones, and way more powerful. Further regulating the news industry won't really deal the Facebook issue since they can keep on aggregating from anywhere and everywhere. It's a different beast altogether.
- mdoms 5y ago
  > One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness. Come on, man. There are just so many counter examples, from the "paper of record" NYT (1619 Project) to MSNBC (Russia nonsense) to Fox News (literally everything) to Rolling Stone (A Rape on Campus) I could sit here all day listing outright lies and untruths published in the pages of mainstream media outlets in order to push an agenda.
  - farcebook 5y ago
    I agree, and that's why I said "rudimentary". Still, as content producers and not algorithmic aggregators, both their ability and success at amplifying disinformation is much, much less than Facebook's. Even Breitbart or DailyKOS's impacts -- as outlets who often and purposefully distort the truth -- are not even rounding errors to Facebook's sheer scale.
keewee7 5y ago
One thing that makes Facebook distinct from other big Internet companies is that they allow far-right speech on their platform. That is probably why the Democrats and liberal media are targeting Facebook but not twitter, YouTube, reddit, Snap, TikTok etc.
- baby 5y ago
  Have you read the comments on youtube?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
jorblumesea 5y ago
FB is much worse because there's no sense of moderation. In mainstream media, there's someone who vets content, fact checkers etc. You can disagree on whether you think Tucker Carlson is "factual" but effort goes into not running afoul of legal rules and fear of being sued. Scripts are written, it's edited, etc. With social media, it's just straight up lies. Not even "a little bias" but just straight up garbage. They hide behind "free speech" and "light moderation" but the reality is that there's no rules like traditional media have to take into account. > when they’ve been damaging America for much longer than FB has existed Has modern mainstream media been implicated in major events like the Jan 6th insurrection?
cblconfederate 5y ago
The press and media are an old and mature ecosystem that has legal framework around it . These new companies are using free content, and sometimes free moderation but still act like the press. There's something unsustainable about that and sooner or later the society and the law would have to deal with it. There's something particularly unethical about companies that hide behind "User generated content" and "external fact-checkers".
h2odragon 5y ago
Facebook gets to say "its the users being polarizing"; where traditional media gets to enjoy libel and slander laws. If Facebook's editorial decisions rendered them subject to those laws, would that be equal enough? There are answers to this question that do not easily summarize as "we need more rules about who gets to say what". We gots plenty of rules. Let's apply them fairly and equally for once.
mcguire 5y ago
I note that the "general American media" is subject to quite a few more constraints than Facebook and others of similar ilk. At the lowest level, the "general American media" can have advertising pulled if they get too far out of hand. Going further, they have to live with their editorial decisions---see, for example, your own antipathy to them. Ultimately, they can be sued. Facebook, on the other hand, can offer not to associate someone's advertising with that content, but someone else will surely be happy to fill the spot and FB will be making money on both. Facebook doesn't have to live with its (non-) editorial decisions---that's user generated content, right? And you can't really sue Facebook either. The bar has never been equal, but not in the way you think.
rblion 5y ago
Both mass media and social media are sleeping in the same bed with the same 'influencers' and 'voices of authority' on a pile of ad dollars. They can both go fuck themselves.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Opinion: Facebook is eating their lunch because humans love being fed belief-affirming drivel for dopamine. It's easy to churn out this content when you have no integrity or regard for the truth. Tinfoil hat: Bad actors are freaking out because their greatest mis/disinformation tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) are about to be regulated. The jig is up.
gorwell 5y ago
I agree, and further it smacks of Manufactured Consent. First, notice the surge in specifically anti-facebook stories over the past month. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=false&query=facebook&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa... While twitter and the corporate media are largely absent from the same scrutiny, as you note. They are just as responsible for eroding democratic norms, eroding trust and whipping up the public into a frothing, misinformed rage. Now this culminates with an impeccably credentialed, rich, Harvard elite `whistleblower` who is largely repeating what we've long known? And who just started a twitter account and web site while on a whirlwind tour. And who is roundly supported by the corporate media and government. This doesn't strike me as speaking truth to power. It's the opposite. Contrast with Snowden, who came out with new revelations and knowingly took on a great amount of risk to do so. There was no anti-NSA media surge leading up to his appearance. He was not embraced by the ruling class. Rather he infuriated them. That is speaking truth to power. What we are seeing is the ruling class desperately trying to reassert control over the flow of information. Using facebook as a mechanism to take back control is smart, clearly. Both sides of the aisle want to regulate them. Mark is not a sympathetic character. People want to see a powerful corporation and CEO finally get more than a slap on the wrist. We thirst for a hanging. It appears they are going to give it to us, but I fear we will regret it in the end. As the response will reach far beyond the walls of facebook. To understand the dynamic we are seeing play out, the book `Revolt of the Public` is worth reading. “All over the world, elite institutions from governments to media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader public. This book, until now only in samizdat (and Kindle) form, has been my #1 handout for the last several years to anyone seeking to understand this unfolding shift in power from hierarchies to networks in the age of the Internet.” --Marc Andreessen https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143 https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millen...
smsm42 5y ago
It looks like the problem here is that CNN, MSNBC, Hollywood, Fox News, etc. are in general controlled by the either the same people or people with the same interests as top political elites. For Facebook, while they are trying really really hard to be the good boys, it's not the case. While they doing a lot of effort to "suppress misinformation" (i.e. prevent any heretical thought from being voiced) they are, by nature, less efficient in this than centralized legacy media. It's not possible to be a heretic on CNN. It's still possible - though increasingly hard - to be one on Facebook. This is going to be fixed, and what you're witnessing is the process of implementing this fix.
cush 5y ago
NBC doesn't watch you constantly, know when you're feeling anxious, then target your 14 year-old brain with ads at your most vulnerable moments. There is no comparison here.
kovek 5y ago
Will users eventually be more empowered against the publications? All of these publications try to play against human biases to receive attention and sell ads. There are psychological tricks. By now we should have tools that distill whose interests are upheld by an article (liberals, cocacola, war or peace, workers, some researcher/university which is selling their latest drug). We’ll be able to “pagerank” who is upholding who.

philwelch 5y ago

The elephant in the room here is the First Amendment. The government, legally, cannot do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on CNN or Fox News. They also can't do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on Facebook, but they can certainly harass Facebook into doing it for them.

n8cpdx 5y ago
Not completely true. Historically mass media was regulated. Lying also isn't legally protected if it causes injury (fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example, libel another). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
- philwelch 5y ago
  > fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example That phrase comes from Schenck v. United States, where the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could imprison an anti-war activist for disseminating pamphlets.
- bhupy 5y ago
  > fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  “Fire in a crowded theater” comes from the Supreme Court upholding the criminal conviction of a man handing out pamphlets protesting the WW1 draft. Not exactly the precedent I’d reach for if I was trying to argue that governmental regulation of speech is not dangerous.
  - mike00632 5y ago
    Facebook Groups have been host to many organized acts of violence. The Kenosha shooting comes to mind as a recent example where the Group was reported to Facebook and made it through multiple layers of review before being allowed to persist. To say that such speech is protected under the First Amendment is too much of a stretch.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Please point out where I argued that that was protected speech. I think you’ll find that you’ve made up my argument out of whole cloth, which is quite tiresome.
      - mike00632 5y ago
        Facebook: willingly hosts groups that plan and enact violence. You: It's a matter of free speech. Me: Point out that people have been killed. You: I didn't say it was free speech. Like, what do you think people are mad at Facebook over if not all the people dying from the misinformation and violence coming from them?
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        The only thing I can say here that’s within the rules is this: this is completely unrelated to what I actually said. I’m not sure where this conversation you’re paraphrasing happened, but I wasn’t part of it.
    - philwelch 5y ago
      It hasn’t even been legally established that Kyle Rittenhouse did anything wrong. Legally, he is innocent until proven guilty, and he has a case for self-defense for every round he fired that night. To say that the First Amendment doesn’t protect the rights of people to organize and assemble in a public place where one of them is later forced to defend themselves is absurd. People don’t use Facebook to plan premeditated acts of political violence. They use Signal.
- riffic 5y ago
  well, the airwaves (which is where the FCC fairness doctrine was applied to) are a limited resource which, without regulation, become quickly polluted by bad actors. print and cable are somewhat more immune to that particular issue.
- danShumway 5y ago
  The Supreme Court only upheld the fairness doctrine in situations where spectrum was limited (Red Lion Broadcasting vs FCC). Even at the time the fairness doctrine wasn't really applicable to mediums in which bandwidth/spectrum is not limited and not licensed to specific broadcasters. It's not clear to me how this kind of regulation would be justified to the Supreme Court in regards to the Internet.
cronix 5y ago
> but they can certainly harass Facebook into doing it for them. I believe you are exactly right here, or at least giving them cover to censor more with "the public's blessing."
CountDrewku 5y ago
And this is exactly what they're doing. In effect they're loopholing the 1st amendment. Bring in Zuckerberg, hound him about removing specific "disinformation" under the threat of future political action if they don't comply. Then they get to throw the private company bs flag whenever someone says it's stomping on the 1st amendment.
ashtonkem 5y ago
Breaking up Facebook would probably be the way to go; it has less troubling side effects than trying to regulate “hate speech” via a clever legal trick.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  The leaker herself says breaking up FB won't solve anything and what's needed is far more resources internally
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    I’m strongly inclined to disagree. I generally find that the best way to prevent an organization from abusing its power is to deny it power.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      If we split insta from FB, what incentives change that will cause a change in behavior?
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        It’s my external opinion that the real issue is the combination of the ad sales platform with the social media. If Instagram wasn’t owned by a company with an ad sales program, they would not have the capability to do what Facebook does today.

Noumenon72 5y ago

I've definitely had much darker thoughts after reading a lot of traditional media than looking at Instagram.

isoskeles 5y ago
This past year, I think immediately back to believing and repeating the grotesque lie that Brian Sicknick had his brains savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by Jan 6 rioters. That never happened, but it was major news for a few days. I actually feel a bit violated for believing and repeating something so false. On the other hand, I haven't had a FB account of any type for over five years, so it hasn't directly affected my personal life.
- rumblerock 5y ago
  That feeling of being violated by false / incomplete information and narratives drives me mad. I've spent the last 5 years trying to manage my digital hygiene, not oversaturate myself with news notifications, etc. I look at things with a more critical eye, always hunting for bias. But it's still inescapable, especially with the force with which some of these narratives are pushed.

jasondigitized 5y ago

Hey I said that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762415

gremIin 5y ago
When you phrase your argument like that, it comes off as whataboutism. You are free to campaign against Fox News, CNN, and the like. I will even upvote and share those HN posts if you do.
- jasondigitized 5y ago
  I should have simply said "This is a good start"

farcebook 5y ago

One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness. Facebook, along with some of the sketchier news outlets, are the opposite: they profit off (and optimize for) disinformation. Two, it's a matter of scale. Facebook reaches a far larger audience and has far more detail into their preferences and can nano-target personalized stories for them and corral them into groups, creating perfect echo chambers. The news companies are way too small and in some way irrelevant. Even if they all went bankrupt overnight, Facebook's algorithms will keep working, keep producing personalized truth bubbles. Is fake news a problem in general? Sure. But the news companies are tiny compared to Facebook, and not the immediate and persistent threat to democracy that Facebook is, just because they're much smaller. Even if you take the entirety of local news networks as a whole, they don't have the same saturation and engagement feedback loops that Facebook has. The Powers That Be are typically reactionary forces, and has long battled the news industry over free speech and censorship etc. Facebook is a relatively new villain, different than the old ones, and way more powerful. Further regulating the news industry won't really deal the Facebook issue since they can keep on aggregating from anywhere and everywhere. It's a different beast altogether.

mdoms 5y ago
> One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness. Come on, man. There are just so many counter examples, from the "paper of record" NYT (1619 Project) to MSNBC (Russia nonsense) to Fox News (literally everything) to Rolling Stone (A Rape on Campus) I could sit here all day listing outright lies and untruths published in the pages of mainstream media outlets in order to push an agenda.
- farcebook 5y ago
  I agree, and that's why I said "rudimentary". Still, as content producers and not algorithmic aggregators, both their ability and success at amplifying disinformation is much, much less than Facebook's. Even Breitbart or DailyKOS's impacts -- as outlets who often and purposefully distort the truth -- are not even rounding errors to Facebook's sheer scale.

keewee7 5y ago

One thing that makes Facebook distinct from other big Internet companies is that they allow far-right speech on their platform. That is probably why the Democrats and liberal media are targeting Facebook but not twitter, YouTube, reddit, Snap, TikTok etc.

baby 5y ago
Have you read the comments on youtube?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

jorblumesea 5y ago

FB is much worse because there's no sense of moderation. In mainstream media, there's someone who vets content, fact checkers etc. You can disagree on whether you think Tucker Carlson is "factual" but effort goes into not running afoul of legal rules and fear of being sued. Scripts are written, it's edited, etc. With social media, it's just straight up lies. Not even "a little bias" but just straight up garbage. They hide behind "free speech" and "light moderation" but the reality is that there's no rules like traditional media have to take into account. > when they’ve been damaging America for much longer than FB has existed Has modern mainstream media been implicated in major events like the Jan 6th insurrection?

cblconfederate 5y ago

The press and media are an old and mature ecosystem that has legal framework around it . These new companies are using free content, and sometimes free moderation but still act like the press. There's something unsustainable about that and sooner or later the society and the law would have to deal with it. There's something particularly unethical about companies that hide behind "User generated content" and "external fact-checkers".

h2odragon 5y ago

Facebook gets to say "its the users being polarizing"; where traditional media gets to enjoy libel and slander laws. If Facebook's editorial decisions rendered them subject to those laws, would that be equal enough? There are answers to this question that do not easily summarize as "we need more rules about who gets to say what". We gots plenty of rules. Let's apply them fairly and equally for once.

mcguire 5y ago

I note that the "general American media" is subject to quite a few more constraints than Facebook and others of similar ilk. At the lowest level, the "general American media" can have advertising pulled if they get too far out of hand. Going further, they have to live with their editorial decisions---see, for example, your own antipathy to them. Ultimately, they can be sued. Facebook, on the other hand, can offer not to associate someone's advertising with that content, but someone else will surely be happy to fill the spot and FB will be making money on both. Facebook doesn't have to live with its (non-) editorial decisions---that's user generated content, right? And you can't really sue Facebook either. The bar has never been equal, but not in the way you think.

rblion 5y ago

Both mass media and social media are sleeping in the same bed with the same 'influencers' and 'voices of authority' on a pile of ad dollars. They can both go fuck themselves.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Opinion: Facebook is eating their lunch because humans love being fed belief-affirming drivel for dopamine. It's easy to churn out this content when you have no integrity or regard for the truth. Tinfoil hat: Bad actors are freaking out because their greatest mis/disinformation tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) are about to be regulated. The jig is up.

gorwell 5y ago

I agree, and further it smacks of Manufactured Consent. First, notice the surge in specifically anti-facebook stories over the past month. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=false&query=facebook&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa... While twitter and the corporate media are largely absent from the same scrutiny, as you note. They are just as responsible for eroding democratic norms, eroding trust and whipping up the public into a frothing, misinformed rage. Now this culminates with an impeccably credentialed, rich, Harvard elite `whistleblower` who is largely repeating what we've long known? And who just started a twitter account and web site while on a whirlwind tour. And who is roundly supported by the corporate media and government. This doesn't strike me as speaking truth to power. It's the opposite. Contrast with Snowden, who came out with new revelations and knowingly took on a great amount of risk to do so. There was no anti-NSA media surge leading up to his appearance. He was not embraced by the ruling class. Rather he infuriated them. That is speaking truth to power. What we are seeing is the ruling class desperately trying to reassert control over the flow of information. Using facebook as a mechanism to take back control is smart, clearly. Both sides of the aisle want to regulate them. Mark is not a sympathetic character. People want to see a powerful corporation and CEO finally get more than a slap on the wrist. We thirst for a hanging. It appears they are going to give it to us, but I fear we will regret it in the end. As the response will reach far beyond the walls of facebook. To understand the dynamic we are seeing play out, the book `Revolt of the Public` is worth reading. “All over the world, elite institutions from governments to media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader public. This book, until now only in samizdat (and Kindle) form, has been my #1 handout for the last several years to anyone seeking to understand this unfolding shift in power from hierarchies to networks in the age of the Internet.” --Marc Andreessen https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143 https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millen...

smsm42 5y ago

It looks like the problem here is that CNN, MSNBC, Hollywood, Fox News, etc. are in general controlled by the either the same people or people with the same interests as top political elites. For Facebook, while they are trying really really hard to be the good boys, it's not the case. While they doing a lot of effort to "suppress misinformation" (i.e. prevent any heretical thought from being voiced) they are, by nature, less efficient in this than centralized legacy media. It's not possible to be a heretic on CNN. It's still possible - though increasingly hard - to be one on Facebook. This is going to be fixed, and what you're witnessing is the process of implementing this fix.

cush 5y ago

NBC doesn't watch you constantly, know when you're feeling anxious, then target your 14 year-old brain with ads at your most vulnerable moments. There is no comparison here.

kovek 5y ago

Will users eventually be more empowered against the publications? All of these publications try to play against human biases to receive attention and sell ads. There are psychological tricks. By now we should have tools that distill whose interests are upheld by an article (liberals, cocacola, war or peace, workers, some researcher/university which is selling their latest drug). We’ll be able to “pagerank” who is upholding who.