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> All of that recent fight against FB is driven by them “not censoring enough” This is a gross distortion of the problem. Facebook has been caught actively pro

by jquery 5y ago

> All of that recent fight against FB is driven by them “not censoring enough” This is a gross distortion of the problem. Facebook has been caught actively promoting conspiracy theories and societal discord because it increases engagement (in my case it drove me from the site but the plural of anecdote is not data). Most recently it was reported that “angry” reactions were weighted five times more than “likes”. This is not just backseat driving concerns, Facebook’s also is a major driver of our culture and societal values whether we like it or not. Nor is it Monday-morning quarterbacking, these concerns were raised by Facebook’s own employees. To let them abuse our social harmony for ad revenue is short sighted.

ksdale 5y ago
I don't think the parent would disagree with you, they were saying that basically all of the big media companies sow discord to get higher engagement, and that any solution that only deals with FB and not all media is likely to not be in the interest of everyone.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Except posts that are easily proven to be false flourish on Facebook because they're not accountable for what is posted. Traditional news gets sued when they post false information. Fox news had to publicly apologize for all the voter fraud stuff they talked about while anonymous accounts continued furthering the laugable theory on Facebook.
  - jiscariot 5y ago
    NYT helped lead the country in to war with Iraq. They were never sued, but did issue a "my bad" apology.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      Quoting the president who lied isn't the same as lying.
      - ksdale 5y ago
        I think it's a stretch to call what the NYT did in the run up to the Iraq war merely "quoting the president."
benf76 5y ago
The corporate media pushed the Russiagate conspiracy theory for 4 years, how is that different?
- coffeefirst 5y ago
  People keep saying this as if there wasn't a Mueller Report. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
nme01 5y ago
I don’t say they’re not spicing conversations by promoting provoking content. What I rather say is that all media companies do it and they don’t get a similar PR which they well deserve. As an exercise one can watch today’s news and count how many news made them angry vs. how many were neutral/positive.
- jquery 5y ago
  It is to Facebook’s great delight that you are repeating its own talking points. > they don’t get a similar PR which they well deserve. Not sure where this came from. We just had a leader spend four years calling them fake news. Why don’t you name an organization instead of just referring to “the media” (which includes everything from Infowars to The Intercept).
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    For a concrete example, I just checked CNN's website, and the top article is about a pretrial ruling by the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case that the prosecutors should avoid using the word "victim". I don't see any plausible argument that this is the most important news story in the country this morning - if you had only 5 minutes to read the news, you'd be much better served by their articles about Facebook's ranking system or progress on Covid vaccine approval for kids. But it very well might be the most provocative!
    - b3morales 5y ago
      Checking now (about half an hour later), I see a half-dozen stories about the "Rust" movie shooting (a video statement by a sheriff as the top headline), with Rittenhouse just below that. Do you have a reason to believe these are being ranked by some kind of editorial interest and not simply by new-ness?
      - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        Like the Facebook timeline (and I don't think that's a coincidence!), newness is a big factor but not the only factor. They publish their "top stories" section as an RSS feed (http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss), and you can see it's both not strictly chronological and clearly has editorial topic selection, as opposed to their "most recent" feed (http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss) which seems to be a true chronological order of everything they publish.
judge2020 5y ago
At least regarding the actual whistleblower in question, it very much is about not censoring things when shared outside of posts on facebook.com, ie. Facebook wants to enable E2EE on Instagram and Facebook Messenger, which would allow them to say "well we don't know what they're sending now" in regards to misinformation, so it is a fight against secure communications on that regard[0]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28999844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28999844
copenja 5y ago
FYI, what was reported was that Facebook was previously weighting all emoji reactions at 5 times the like button, but not specifically the angry reaction. By the end of last year, they changed it so the angry reaction specifically gets a zero bonus, but love/sad still get boosted. Apparently this did not affect engagement. I got this all from the Washington Post article on the subject.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  It’s funny that FB’s scoring algorithm probably got less design effort and less ‘play testing’ than the average LoL update.
ai_ja_nai 5y ago
Did anybody actually read those researches?

by jquery 5y ago

ksdale 5y ago

I don't think the parent would disagree with you, they were saying that basically all of the big media companies sow discord to get higher engagement, and that any solution that only deals with FB and not all media is likely to not be in the interest of everyone.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Except posts that are easily proven to be false flourish on Facebook because they're not accountable for what is posted. Traditional news gets sued when they post false information. Fox news had to publicly apologize for all the voter fraud stuff they talked about while anonymous accounts continued furthering the laugable theory on Facebook.
- jiscariot 5y ago
  NYT helped lead the country in to war with Iraq. They were never sued, but did issue a "my bad" apology.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Quoting the president who lied isn't the same as lying.
    - ksdale 5y ago
      I think it's a stretch to call what the NYT did in the run up to the Iraq war merely "quoting the president."

benf76 5y ago

The corporate media pushed the Russiagate conspiracy theory for 4 years, how is that different?

coffeefirst 5y ago
People keep saying this as if there wasn't a Mueller Report. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

nme01 5y ago

I don’t say they’re not spicing conversations by promoting provoking content. What I rather say is that all media companies do it and they don’t get a similar PR which they well deserve. As an exercise one can watch today’s news and count how many news made them angry vs. how many were neutral/positive.

jquery 5y ago
It is to Facebook’s great delight that you are repeating its own talking points. > they don’t get a similar PR which they well deserve. Not sure where this came from. We just had a leader spend four years calling them fake news. Why don’t you name an organization instead of just referring to “the media” (which includes everything from Infowars to The Intercept).
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  For a concrete example, I just checked CNN's website, and the top article is about a pretrial ruling by the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case that the prosecutors should avoid using the word "victim". I don't see any plausible argument that this is the most important news story in the country this morning - if you had only 5 minutes to read the news, you'd be much better served by their articles about Facebook's ranking system or progress on Covid vaccine approval for kids. But it very well might be the most provocative!
  - b3morales 5y ago
    Checking now (about half an hour later), I see a half-dozen stories about the "Rust" movie shooting (a video statement by a sheriff as the top headline), with Rittenhouse just below that. Do you have a reason to believe these are being ranked by some kind of editorial interest and not simply by new-ness?
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      Like the Facebook timeline (and I don't think that's a coincidence!), newness is a big factor but not the only factor. They publish their "top stories" section as an RSS feed (http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss), and you can see it's both not strictly chronological and clearly has editorial topic selection, as opposed to their "most recent" feed (http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss) which seems to be a true chronological order of everything they publish.

judge2020 5y ago

At least regarding the actual whistleblower in question, it very much is about not censoring things when shared outside of posts on facebook.com, ie. Facebook wants to enable E2EE on Instagram and Facebook Messenger, which would allow them to say "well we don't know what they're sending now" in regards to misinformation, so it is a fight against secure communications on that regard[0]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28999844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28999844

copenja 5y ago

FYI, what was reported was that Facebook was previously weighting all emoji reactions at 5 times the like button, but not specifically the angry reaction. By the end of last year, they changed it so the angry reaction specifically gets a zero bonus, but love/sad still get boosted. Apparently this did not affect engagement. I got this all from the Washington Post article on the subject.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
It’s funny that FB’s scoring algorithm probably got less design effort and less ‘play testing’ than the average LoL update.

ai_ja_nai 5y ago

Did anybody actually read those researches?