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We are asking tech platforms to solve society’s problems. I’ve said it before but people don’t ask: what if we shutdown Facebook tomorrow, will all these probl

We are asking tech platforms to solve society’s problems. I’ve said it before but people don’t ask: what if we shutdown Facebook tomorrow, will all these problems disappear?

s3r3nity 5y ago
Oh I can do this too: "...What if we alcohol and spirits tomorrow, will all these problems disappear?"
jpster 5y ago
I’ll repeat a comment I made earlier on HN re Zuckerberg’s response. Is there any counterargument to these two statements of his: > And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? > Similar to balancing other social issues, I don't believe private companies should make all of the decisions on their own. That's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now. I have testified in Congress multiple times and asked them to update these regulations. I've written op-eds outlining the areas of regulation we think are most important related to elections, harmful content, privacy, and competition. https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10113961365418581/?d=n https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10113961365418581/?d=n
- owlbite 5y ago
  Do we actually have a source for the polarization factoid delivered here? The only source I can find with a quick google is a 2020 study based on relatively old data from about 8 western countries. Further this focused on party-aligned polarization, rather than any other political axis. For instance my perception from UK politics is that was very polarized around Brexit, but less so around particular parties. For other countries like Germany that don't have the two party system going on, looking at at simple party polarization seems even less relevant, though we again see a rise in extreme ideologies such as those represented by AfD.
sorry_outta_gas 5y ago
> what if we shutdown Facebook tomorrow, will all these problems disappear? TBH other sites like reddit are just as bad or worse, large communities built on ephermeral content will always breed garbage it's likely people will generally grow to not want to consume it anymore espcially once good altearntives gain traction or just out of bordem eg. tiktok is more fun for a lot of people
owlbite 5y ago
One of the problems I see is that we are now in the era of what one might call "population scale mind control", actually delivering on the promises of propaganda. Given enough data you can find a large enough subset of the population you can persuade/trick/threaten into acting in a way you want, taking the moderate remainder in a direction completely contrary to their best interests. This is after all, what they claim as their major selling point to advertisers. So if we shut Facebook down tomorrow, would the problems disappear? Only if we took out Google and any other organizations pursuing the same dystopian models.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Gore writes about this in one of his books, I believe in reference to one of his Tennessee campaigns. In short form: His polling manager tells him that if he runs this ad, at this time, on these channels, he'll get this much of a polling bump. Gore reflects to self that surely people are more complicated than that. Ad is run, polling moves exactly as predicted. The dangers of population-scale mind control isn't that it's universally effective, but that it doesn't need to be to swing democratic elections. You can usually sway the outcome just by appealing to the lowest-thinking denominator, and micro-targeting on universal platforms is exceedingly good at that.
  - avalys 5y ago
    This is hardly news. You can sway a democratic election, by definition, by changing the opinion of the median voter. Which means political campaigns focus their energy on the median voter. And targeted advertising makes it easier and more efficient to do that. So what? This doesn't change the end result, that the person who gets elected is close to the median opinion in the country. It doesn't give you a way to elect an extremist that 90% of the country disagree with. It's also a mechanism that is equally available to all candidates. It is not as if only Republicans can run advertising on social media. In fact, I recall a bunch of fawning praise in the media and tech sphere for the 2008 Obama campaign's use of social media, and much prognostication that the old farts in the Republican party would be consigned to political oblivion because they wouldn't be able to master the use of big data and social media to precisely target their spending and efforts to win elections. At the time no one in the media seemed to consider this future the end of democracy - that's only a complaint that comes up when the Republicans use this technique to win, apparently.
ajkjk 5y ago
What we want to see out is leadership on the part of people with agency to do anything about these problems, to fix them. Not fix them just enough so their corporation survives, but fix them in a human sense; actually solve them, make positive change. Zuckerberg appears to only care about doing his job as a CEO of a company, which is totally phoning it in as a human being, so he deserves all the criticism he gets.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
baby 5y ago
Because my other comment got flagged. Reposting: > Hitler came to power before Facebook was a thing. There are periodic waves of fascism. It’s a thing.
asplake 5y ago
No, we are asking tech platforms not to amplify society’s problems

We are asking tech platforms to solve society’s problems. I’ve said it before but people don’t ask: what if we shutdown Facebook tomorrow, will all these problems disappear?

s3r3nity 5y ago

Oh I can do this too: "...What if we alcohol and spirits tomorrow, will all these problems disappear?"

jpster 5y ago

I’ll repeat a comment I made earlier on HN re Zuckerberg’s response. Is there any counterargument to these two statements of his: > And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? > Similar to balancing other social issues, I don't believe private companies should make all of the decisions on their own. That's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now. I have testified in Congress multiple times and asked them to update these regulations. I've written op-eds outlining the areas of regulation we think are most important related to elections, harmful content, privacy, and competition. https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10113961365418581/?d=n https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10113961365418581/?d=n

owlbite 5y ago
Do we actually have a source for the polarization factoid delivered here? The only source I can find with a quick google is a 2020 study based on relatively old data from about 8 western countries. Further this focused on party-aligned polarization, rather than any other political axis. For instance my perception from UK politics is that was very polarized around Brexit, but less so around particular parties. For other countries like Germany that don't have the two party system going on, looking at at simple party polarization seems even less relevant, though we again see a rise in extreme ideologies such as those represented by AfD.

sorry_outta_gas 5y ago

> what if we shutdown Facebook tomorrow, will all these problems disappear? TBH other sites like reddit are just as bad or worse, large communities built on ephermeral content will always breed garbage it's likely people will generally grow to not want to consume it anymore espcially once good altearntives gain traction or just out of bordem eg. tiktok is more fun for a lot of people

owlbite 5y ago

One of the problems I see is that we are now in the era of what one might call "population scale mind control", actually delivering on the promises of propaganda. Given enough data you can find a large enough subset of the population you can persuade/trick/threaten into acting in a way you want, taking the moderate remainder in a direction completely contrary to their best interests. This is after all, what they claim as their major selling point to advertisers. So if we shut Facebook down tomorrow, would the problems disappear? Only if we took out Google and any other organizations pursuing the same dystopian models.

ethbr0 5y ago
Gore writes about this in one of his books, I believe in reference to one of his Tennessee campaigns. In short form: His polling manager tells him that if he runs this ad, at this time, on these channels, he'll get this much of a polling bump. Gore reflects to self that surely people are more complicated than that. Ad is run, polling moves exactly as predicted. The dangers of population-scale mind control isn't that it's universally effective, but that it doesn't need to be to swing democratic elections. You can usually sway the outcome just by appealing to the lowest-thinking denominator, and micro-targeting on universal platforms is exceedingly good at that.
- avalys 5y ago
  This is hardly news. You can sway a democratic election, by definition, by changing the opinion of the median voter. Which means political campaigns focus their energy on the median voter. And targeted advertising makes it easier and more efficient to do that. So what? This doesn't change the end result, that the person who gets elected is close to the median opinion in the country. It doesn't give you a way to elect an extremist that 90% of the country disagree with. It's also a mechanism that is equally available to all candidates. It is not as if only Republicans can run advertising on social media. In fact, I recall a bunch of fawning praise in the media and tech sphere for the 2008 Obama campaign's use of social media, and much prognostication that the old farts in the Republican party would be consigned to political oblivion because they wouldn't be able to master the use of big data and social media to precisely target their spending and efforts to win elections. At the time no one in the media seemed to consider this future the end of democracy - that's only a complaint that comes up when the Republicans use this technique to win, apparently.

ajkjk 5y ago

What we want to see out is leadership on the part of people with agency to do anything about these problems, to fix them. Not fix them just enough so their corporation survives, but fix them in a human sense; actually solve them, make positive change. Zuckerberg appears to only care about doing his job as a CEO of a company, which is totally phoning it in as a human being, so he deserves all the criticism he gets.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

baby 5y ago

Because my other comment got flagged. Reposting: > Hitler came to power before Facebook was a thing. There are periodic waves of fascism. It’s a thing.

asplake 5y ago

No, we are asking tech platforms not to amplify society’s problems