This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict posts we'll see:
> Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media.
> Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship in a tough time.
> Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost.
> A call for regulation.
> A call for a free-market solution.
> A post from someone who works in marketing about how "that's where the audience is so we have to give them money".
> Personal story about eerily accurate targeting.
> Personal story about how the targeting is totally inaccurate.
> Humblebrags about how long ago one hasn't used Facebook - "I haven't used Facebook since 1914, when the Kaiser went to war."
> Pointing out that traditional media is just scared because they're being disrupted.
> Something about "Facebook" being a black mark on one's resume.
I just wish there was something we could do other than repeatedly argue about the nature/scope/cause/solution of the problem, but the US political process is pretty broken.
Check out represent.US . The fundamental issue in much (not all) of American politics is the "company -> lobbying -> legislation -> company" feedback loop, and Represent.US is taking steps to address it. They're running pro-voting campaigns ahead of this election, and have had 114 wins across cities and states over the last few years. You can get involved by volunteering (https://represent.us/volunteer/) or by donating. I don't work there, just love their work.
Shoot, I haven't used Facebook, not just since 1914, but since Frederick the Great marched into Silesia. (You can see that I, too, date stuff by the Hohenzollerns.)
I do wonder whether we'd be having this conversation if Clinton had won Florida and Michigan in 2016.
There is no such thing as cancel culture, just like there is no such thing as the Q behind Qanon. The reason why is because these concepts are memes held in the collective consciousness of humans (and now AI because we trained them on our crap).
No one person or organization exists to "cancel" things. It's a thing that happens, like nuns all meowing together at the same time. It's a phenomenon of nature, or mind, but not at an individual organization or at a personal belief level.
In other words, people may be "for" "cancel culture", but the growth and life of the phenomenon itself is empty of meaning in the individualist sense. Also, because things like Facebook enable these memes to form, your statement could easily be rewritten:
> Facebook is being targeted by mass thinking on their platform because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.
Now we see the truth of the matter, which is that Republicans support the Tragedy of the Commons for their own gain.
>There is no such thing as cancel culture, just like there is no such thing as the Q behind Qanon.
While cancel culture is a derogatory term and nobody flies that flag. The terminology still touches on a real thing. As for Q. Q is horoscopes. They have larger numbers of predictions, most of which are wrong.
>No one person or organization exists to "cancel" things. It's a thing that happens, like nuns all meowing together at the same time. It's a phenomenon of nature, or mind, but not at an individual organization or at a personal belief level.
JKRowling and the book burning would tend to disagree with this.
>In other words, people may be "for" "cancel culture", but the growth and life of the phenomenon itself is empty of meaning in the individualist sense.
I don't understand this. How can people be for it and not for it?
>Also, because things like Facebook enable these memes to form, your statement could easily be rewritten:
>Facebook is being targeted by mass thinking on their platform because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.
I'm not sure I necessarily agree that is my position. Though we could fork into a side discussion into the reality that social media represents society and that thinking is what is happening. The only way forward is more thinking and longer discussions. The absolute antithesis of the situation is censorship.
>Now we see the truth of the matter, which is that Republicans support the Tragedy of the Commons for their own gain.
I'm not American. I'm an objective observer. The problem isn't tragedy of the commons at all. We need more thinking and more discussion.
I will assume good faith, and point out that cancel culture's main weapon is Facebook. That's where they gather all their outrage and yield it against their perceived enemies.
Facebook is the main weapon, but because of my point. Though, Twitter used to be the main weapon until they banned conservatives.
I ask if you've seen social dilemma because it's not about facebook vs twitter. It's all of the above and especially why tiktok is a national security threat. Also why there's bipartisan support in banning tiktok.
Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about dog being abandoned".
Cancel culture is not primarily anywhere. For as long as humans have existed we have wanted to persuade our peers to avoid some things and embrace others; we have wanted some voices amplified and some quieted; we have wanted people to face the consequences of their actions and to reap what they've sown.
That's all cancel culture is at its root. It's been rebranded in America's asinine culture wars so we can pretend there's some insidious new threat to free speech while the real threats go perpetually unchallenged.
Clearly a difference in magnitude can be a difference in kind altogether. The ability for disparately frustrated individuals to all echo chamber their way into a fever pitch that affects the news cycle and the political cycle is quite new.
Twenty years ago, an insensitive (and probably intoxicated) comment at a bar would be forgotten about the next day. Today, someone says the wrong thing on the internet and a pitchfork mob is ready to cancel their humanity forever.
Has this sort of witch hunting occurred in human history? Yes, but we typically taught these lessons as cautionary tales of the hysterical past, not blueprints for the 21st century.
Sure, but at least my impression is that the current iteration of it is different. I can't recall a time in my lifetime (made it past 40 a few years ago) that deplatforming on ideological grounds by non-state groups was that pervasive in the West.
There's been the red scare in the decades between ww2 and my birth, but that seemed more like a "threat to the system" kind of thing, this feels more religious, with individual small-time sinners being exposed and hunted down, not the deep state pulling levers to blacklist hollywood actors they suspect of having sympathies for communism.
I think you are right that twitter is their main thing indeed. Though I think that most of the arguments against facebook can be easily applied to twitter too. And any action against facebook would be regulatory in nature and probably hit twitter too. I think this discussion is more appropriate about social media not a specific platform.
What do you think? Is there enough of a difference between the way the platforms handle disinformation and calls to violence to distinguish them?
I don't have a strong opinion, I'm not really active on either platform. I have an account on FB, but never actively used it.
From what I read, it appears to me that Twitter is more outspoken about their policies (which are also stricter than FB's) but gives a bit more lenience to people politically aligned with their employees. FB's approach seems to be to have fewer rules but apply them more consistently, and not care as much about their employees' political ideology (which might also explain why FB is massively profitable and Twitter is not).
Twitter feels less like a neutral platform than Facebook, but I wouldn't say that they hand-pick who's allowed to post (and what they can post) either, so they're also not a publisher. I don't know anyone that was ever banned from FB, but I know a few people who were banned from Twitter, which might suggest that Twitter enforces their rules more, but on the other hand, my impression is that Twitter brings out fundamentalist aggressiveness in people, so that may lead to more bans as well.
> Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the waste. It’s an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.
Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player, hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc.
Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure (personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.
The game is shit, yeah. But so's this anyone who enthusiastically said "yes, I would like to find ways to monetize people's desire to talk with each other, and do not care in the least if this involves being paid to spread disinformation, or making ad view money off of pushing people towards insane viewpoints".
Yes, this includes Google. This includes Twitter. This includes every damn online service that decides its primary customer is advertisers, not users.
That's a thing people want. If you ask most people who have been pushed toward insane viewpoints how they feel about said insane viewpoints, I'm sure 99% of them would say it's great.
Who are we to deny the validity of their feelings?
I started to think about this and now I find myself wondering if “internet search” is one of those things that should be a public good, funded by everyone’s taxes. Like libraries - their mission is pretty much the same as Google’s stated mission “make all the world’s information accessible”. Just take it out of the realm of commerce entirely.
I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it seems right:
If public libraries did not exist in this day and age, and someone floated the idea, they would be laughed at and/or fought in the courts of law and public opinion. "It would cause authors to starve! It's socialist/communist! There is no reason I should fund your perverse taste in books!" etc.
It is considered axiomatic in Europe, but in the US even things like public schools and public fire brigades are not controversial to some segments of the population.
Internet search should be a public good, as should internet service, and email service , much like public schools and the postal service; but it won't happen any time soon just because it makes sense.
I think the reason it will happen in some form, sooner or later, is the fact the US is the de-facto hegemon of the internet by being the jurisdiction of Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS and Microsoft. The NSA+FBI+CIA are able, by decree through NSLs, to read and rewrite the personal communication of probably 90% of the world population, as well as shape their search results. FB has already shown they can affect mood of population at large (in an experiment they did without consent and of which they were proud at the time!) - and they will surely cooperate with governments if "asked" (In the "speak softly and carry a large gun" sense of asking, but likely even without it).
At some point, likely after being burned by this (but possibly before), governments will likely setup a local hegemony if only to deleverage the US. Russia and China already did.
Nearly every immature teenager of both sexes has stack-ranked their sexual interest in peers when gossiping with friends. Yes, a teenager hacking together a website that does such publicly is worse because of how it magnifies the behavior and its consequences at scale. But is that so beyond the pale that the individual is deemed incapable of ever holding favorable moral values?
You're implicitly arguing that Facebook should be a censor. Censoring at scale is a fool's errand. Change the incentive structure. Make Facebook operate by subscription, make timelines linear, etc. You'll never stop people from spreading dumb shit online, but you can stop it being willfully propagated to maximize engagement.
But this is absurd. We can’t give them a free pass and believe the fact that they can’t moderate content. They want all benefits of being this global giant, but none of the responsibilities. If you can’t moderate and provide a clean environment, maybe we should break them up or restrict their power, because it’s obvious they can’t handle it.
How would you suggest they go about moderating content (assuming they should)? They currently have an army of human moderators who are emotionally scarred from seeing terrible images all day long - and of course, those images were public on Facebook until reported by someone.
Your suggestions are still independent of personalized advertising. The thing your suggestions would reduce is engagement, which would reduce revenue from any kind of advertising, not just personalized ads.
In my mind the problem isn't personalized ads per se, it's the incentive for Facebook to increase engagement -- which is shared by personalized and non-personalized ad revenue alike. I have the same issue with ad-driven news organizations of any type - how can you trust what they're saying, if they're just trying to keep you watching till the upcoming commercial?
Would you not be able to stay in touch with them without Facebook? I deleted Facebook a number of years ago and still seem to be in touch with family and friends.
Personally I think facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp should be broken apart.
I’m completely against Facebook and agree with the sentiment to break up the company, but the fact that you’re in touch with family and friends without Facebook says more about those people...it may not be the same for the GP or many other people where the people in their lives have a lot going on and prefer these platforms for convenience because “everybody is there”.
We can’t achieve change at a rapid pace by dismissing the experience of others.
I mean it’s not like I’m handwriting letters over here (although I do do that from time to time). Between FaceTime, email, signal groups, and regular calls/text messages I’ve kept the close people close in my life. I understand people are sort of lazy and want to be where everyone else is out of convenience, but if that place is actively ruining the world I think we should expend a bit of personal effort to not let that happen.
Family and close friends? Yes, sure - I don't even have many family members on Facebook.
Acquiantances I haven't seen for 5 years because they live in a distant place? No I wouldn't bother. But I like visiting Facebook once a week and check up on what everyone's been up to. The less often I visit the better stuff I get shown.
I've recently been thinking about the parallels between social media and the Tower of Babel. Maybe ancient societies were onto something when they warned us of the dangers of everyone communicating with one another. Perhaps there's something more robust about a dispersed humanity where a message can't be distributed to everyone.
That's an interesting thought. Instant communication seems to pair badly with our inherent bias towards novelty and bigotry. In the past, we had gatekeepers (i.e media) that were educated enough to edit and contextualize communication to control that bias. Increasing the ability for everyone to communicate with one another has really unleased the worst of humanity.
Since you mentioned media's role, Matt Taibbi recently argued[1] that the media has somewhat recently departed from norms that were followed throughout the 20th century. To ensure the widest audiences possible, the CBSes and later CNNs of the world largely aimed to report stories from a "neutral" perspective (really a centrist perspective). Taibbi argues that in the last couple decades, though, even major media outlets have carved out biased perspectives to inspire more loyalty in smaller sets of people.
Point being that I think you're right that the media played an important role in contextualizing mass communication and controlling bias. Not only does social media disintermediate mass communications, the intermediaries themselves are now ignoring roles they historically performed.
By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?
No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize and connect with each other.
> There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact ... preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize and connect with each other.
Yeah—imagine the concern people would probably more readily voice if the same "move fast and break things" approach were applied to, for example, malignant tumour resection surgery, all while reaping massive financial profits. (Whoops there goes another one...)
At the outset of the company you could say that it was just naïveté. That can't really be said anymore.
If Facebook had acted morally according to your definition, wouldn’t some other less moral company step in with their own version which would be more popular (I guess because it’s engineered to be maximally viral rather than promote... social well-being) because free market. Which following that train of logic to me implies that social media basically should be regulated. What do you think?
"If I didn't do it someone else would" is a bit of a straw-man argument and rarely actually true. But to be fair Twitter exposes and presents some of the same problems. I'll admit it's a very hard problem because for Facebook to actually try to fix itself would, by necessity, also reduce its ability to generate revenue. I hate the "decentralized" bandwagon but in a case like this, providing something less centrally controlled would most likely be a huge improvement, but that itself is a very difficult problem too.
Or, to put it succinctly: it's a people problem, and people problems are hard.
It's more profitable to do it that way. And after all, who can be blamed for following the incentives? Really, it's the users' fault for creating the incentives.
I think the main reason behind blaming facebook is that facebook decides what you see in your stream. It does so automatically and doesn't author that conent but I don't think it absolves them of responsibility.
Facebook is not neutral technology. They use algorithmically generated division to increase engagement, ad revenue, and profits. Outrage and the violence that results is part of their business model.
I think it's a bit apples and oranges. Facebook is not packet switching or RF, or other enabling technologies. Facebook is a business, and those business interests are not aligned with bring the best out of people.
Take a moment and survey what whistleblowers and watchdogs have been shouting for years now.
It's not the "medium."
There is no abstract medium.
There is corporate suppression of internal checks; active collusion or participation in unethical and immoral behavior; and grotesque performative punishment for those who push back.
Imagine a highway and car traffic on that highway. Then a car manufacturer comes along and figure out a way that their revenue increases the more their cars have accidents.
In such a case one could blame that car manufacturer without blaming the highway their cars are operating on.
TL;DR: Recap of several recent revelations and reports about conspiracy theorists and bad foreign actors using Facebook as a tool to spread their messages. No suggestions for how to address the situation.
These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.
> These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.
Considering that it’s NYTimes, I’ve seen people questioning it because of the trackers it uses to track and profile people while criticizing other companies using similar tactics for making money. Of course, Facebook is at a totally different (evil) level, but NYT shouldn’t get a free pass without criticizing its platform.
My personal 2c on how to fix this is make everyone liable for what's on their website, regardless of who wrote it. I don't care if that breaks youtubes, facebooks, twitters and reddits business model.
I think it would help get rid of the most toxic stuff. Most of the conspiracy theories that are actually harmful for society are definitely crossing libel lines. Compare for example Roswell conspiracies against QAnon.
One is the goverement is hiding aliens in area 51, definitely not libel, not conductive to outrage, not dehumanizing political opponents, it does not actively harm national unity.
QAnon on the other hand claims Democrat figureheads are eating babies in satanic orgies, definitely libel, greatly harmful to national unity.
I furthermore think that just the liability would be great enough to completely change the face of this platforms, they would be on the defensive things that are not libel would definitely be censored.
I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. When you think about connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of dollars doing it.
Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weapons-bad level, he became the comic book villain that we know today.
I kind of agree with you. I am still impressed with his commitment to donate his wealth to charity. Facebook may not have started with the best of intentions, or with complete integrity - but that doesn't equal the scale of evil (i.e actual genocide) that Facebook is now responsible for. He just made the same mistake a lot of us also would have made: underestimating humanity's capacity for evil.
That being said, at some point it seems clear that FB internally recognized that FB was being used to support violent authoritarian politics - and the Zuckerberg/Sandberg/Kaplan crowd should be held responsible for that. It is shocking to me how badly they seemed to have acted (and are continuing to act) in response to bad faith political actors, and how much they have torched their own reputation as a result.
>The most disturbing revelations from Zhang’s memo relate to the failure of Facebook to take swift action against coordinated activity in countries like Honduras and Azerbaijan, where political leaders used armies of fake accounts to attack opponents and undermine independent media.
Same happened in Hungary and the EU can't give a flying fuck. But honestly I don't blame Facebook, the destruction of independent media is a complex problem not just a political one (adaptation of the market driven by Facebook and Google for example). Especially in East Europe, former soviet block where the kind of venture capitalism of the west/US never really existed. And like a vassal you have to pledge allegiance to the government either formally or informally.
> Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media.
> Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship in a tough time.
> Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost.
> A call for regulation.
> A call for a free-market solution.
> A post from someone who works in marketing about how "that's where the audience is so we have to give them money".
> Personal story about eerily accurate targeting.
> Personal story about how the targeting is totally inaccurate.
> Humblebrags about how long ago one hasn't used Facebook - "I haven't used Facebook since 1914, when the Kaiser went to war."
> Pointing out that traditional media is just scared because they're being disrupted.
> Something about "Facebook" being a black mark on one's resume.
I just wish there was something we could do other than repeatedly argue about the nature/scope/cause/solution of the problem, but the US political process is pretty broken.