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It isn't just about what users 'might want to read'. Between experiments done that changed election results in the 2010 Congressional Elections ("Here we report

It isn't just about what users 'might want to read'. Between experiments done that changed election results in the 2010 Congressional Elections ("Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US congressional elections. The results show that the messages directly influenced self-expression, information seeking, and real world voting behavior of millions of people. Furthermore the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of friends."), the Facebook emotion experiment with direct financial ties to the DARPA Minerva Initiative, and partnered censorship, and censorship partnerships with governments worldwide I don't trust Facebooks to be stewards of the information I'm encouraged to read. http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf https://stallman.org/facebook.html https://stallman.org/facebook.html

userbinator 12y ago
Indeed, I see Facebook's "recommendations" and content filtering (which they innocuously refer to as "personalisation") as being nothing more than instruments of persuasion and control. Facebook is just one example but they are not alone - Google is the other big one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble
- vdaniuk 12y ago
  Do you also consider HN voting and flagging system to be nothing more than instruments of persuasion and control?
  - simonh 12y ago
    Facebook's personalisation and content filtering is managed by a central authority that chooses what gets filtered and what gets broad circulation. They have also demonstrated a willingness to use that capability to pursue their own agenda, such as in order to perform experiments in behaviour manipulation to determine exactly how much control they can exert. A voting system based on free and fair participation by the users is in no way similar or equivalent to that.
    - poolpool 12y ago
      How about the shadowbanning or comment curation that admins do?
      - icebraining 12y ago
        I dislike shadowbanning, but it's not necessarily triggered by moderator action; it's often the result of voting and flagging.
      - aw3c2 12y ago
        Comment curation? You can show shadowbanned people's contributions by setting showdead to true in your profile. I haven't seen too much admin/mod abuse lately.
      - DanBC 12y ago
        As I understand it the admins very rarely shaddowban or curate comments. Users with karma over 750(?) can downvote and so it's entirely users who are greying out comments or flag-killing comments.
  - aragot 12y ago
    Sure it is. The influence of HN is unavoidable, like any media, especially since it is a leader in the sector. It is even publically said that content will be edited according to YCombinator's choices. - If you've spent more than 6 months on HN, you probably know the rules (and they are not a secret), - I'm myself a French entrepreneur and I'm glad I have been influenced towards start-up creation by HN, - HN is both capitalizing on SV's leadership and reinforcing it. Of course I wish I were influenced by my country's start-up material, but I'm not. Now that we've confirmed HN has influence, what would you do differently?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
judk 12y ago
You misrepresent the voting story. Facebook did a GOTV campaign that motivated an apathetic 0.14% of the population to vote. It was one of many many election advertising campaigns that influenced voters, and wasn't biased beyond the general leanings of its user base, which is already a majority of voters.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  The paper in question addresses the first criticism (of numbers). "However, the ability to reach large populations online means that even small effects could yield behaviour changes for millions of people. Furthermore, as many elections are competitive, these changes could affect electoral outcomes. For example, in the 2000 US presidential election, George Bush beat Al Gore in Florida by 537 votes (less than 0.01% of votes cast in Florida). Had Gore won Florida, he would have won the election" "To put these results in context, it is important to note that turnout has been steadily increasing in recent US midterm elections, from 36.3% of the voting age population in 2002 to 37.2% in 2006, and to 37.8% in 2010. Our results suggest that the Facebook social message increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes. That represents about 0.14% of the voting age population of about 236 million in 2010. However, this estimate does not include the effect of the treatment on Facebook users who were registered to vote but who we could not match because of nicknames, typographical errors, and so on. It would be complex to estimate the number of users on Facebook who are in the voter record but unmatchable, and it is not clear whether treatment effects would be of the same magnitude for these individuals, so we restrict our estimate to the matched group that we were able to sample and observe. This means it is possible that more of the 0.60% growth in turnout between 2006 and 2010 might have been caused by a single message on Facebook." It's important to note that 0.14% of the population is the small number. It was 0.6% of the mobilized voting population and they got these results messaging 1/6 of the population. Furthermore they only report on effects that they could track and so all numbers are lower bounds.

userbinator 12y ago

Indeed, I see Facebook's "recommendations" and content filtering (which they innocuously refer to as "personalisation") as being nothing more than instruments of persuasion and control. Facebook is just one example but they are not alone - Google is the other big one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

vdaniuk 12y ago
Do you also consider HN voting and flagging system to be nothing more than instruments of persuasion and control?
- simonh 12y ago
  Facebook's personalisation and content filtering is managed by a central authority that chooses what gets filtered and what gets broad circulation. They have also demonstrated a willingness to use that capability to pursue their own agenda, such as in order to perform experiments in behaviour manipulation to determine exactly how much control they can exert. A voting system based on free and fair participation by the users is in no way similar or equivalent to that.
  - poolpool 12y ago
    How about the shadowbanning or comment curation that admins do?
    - icebraining 12y ago
      I dislike shadowbanning, but it's not necessarily triggered by moderator action; it's often the result of voting and flagging.
    - aw3c2 12y ago
      Comment curation? You can show shadowbanned people's contributions by setting showdead to true in your profile. I haven't seen too much admin/mod abuse lately.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      As I understand it the admins very rarely shaddowban or curate comments. Users with karma over 750(?) can downvote and so it's entirely users who are greying out comments or flag-killing comments.
- aragot 12y ago
  Sure it is. The influence of HN is unavoidable, like any media, especially since it is a leader in the sector. It is even publically said that content will be edited according to YCombinator's choices. - If you've spent more than 6 months on HN, you probably know the rules (and they are not a secret), - I'm myself a French entrepreneur and I'm glad I have been influenced towards start-up creation by HN, - HN is both capitalizing on SV's leadership and reinforcing it. Of course I wish I were influenced by my country's start-up material, but I'm not. Now that we've confirmed HN has influence, what would you do differently?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

judk 12y ago

You misrepresent the voting story. Facebook did a GOTV campaign that motivated an apathetic 0.14% of the population to vote. It was one of many many election advertising campaigns that influenced voters, and wasn't biased beyond the general leanings of its user base, which is already a majority of voters.

xnull2guest 12y ago
The paper in question addresses the first criticism (of numbers). "However, the ability to reach large populations online means that even small effects could yield behaviour changes for millions of people. Furthermore, as many elections are competitive, these changes could affect electoral outcomes. For example, in the 2000 US presidential election, George Bush beat Al Gore in Florida by 537 votes (less than 0.01% of votes cast in Florida). Had Gore won Florida, he would have won the election" "To put these results in context, it is important to note that turnout has been steadily increasing in recent US midterm elections, from 36.3% of the voting age population in 2002 to 37.2% in 2006, and to 37.8% in 2010. Our results suggest that the Facebook social message increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes. That represents about 0.14% of the voting age population of about 236 million in 2010. However, this estimate does not include the effect of the treatment on Facebook users who were registered to vote but who we could not match because of nicknames, typographical errors, and so on. It would be complex to estimate the number of users on Facebook who are in the voter record but unmatchable, and it is not clear whether treatment effects would be of the same magnitude for these individuals, so we restrict our estimate to the matched group that we were able to sample and observe. This means it is possible that more of the 0.60% growth in turnout between 2006 and 2010 might have been caused by a single message on Facebook." It's important to note that 0.14% of the population is the small number. It was 0.6% of the mobilized voting population and they got these results messaging 1/6 of the population. Furthermore they only report on effects that they could track and so all numbers are lower bounds.