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Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

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Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#31

Post by makomk »

leeleelee wrote: post #8
Spellman wrote: post #2

Right. People just need to leave their bubbles, read from a variety of sources, and not rely on their friends for news. Obviously easier said than done. But personally that's what RSS feeds are great for. Long ago in 2011, there was a lovely TED talk about the possible bubbles forming. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...

People don't want to leave their bubbles, for the fear of uncovering uncomfortable truths. For example, I have friends who flat out refused to read any of the WikiLeaks e-mails that could potentially reveal something bad about Hillary, her campaign, the DNC, or any entity on the left. That's just how some (probably a lot of) people are. When some people encounter something that challenges your pre-existing beliefs, i…

People don't even seem to care if their news turns out to be fake so long as it confirms their beliefs - the fact that it was believable means there must be some underlying truth to it in their eyes.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#32

Post by duaneb »

JayHost wrote: post #15

I quit Facebook 1 to 2 years ago. I suppose that's one of the reasons I didn't understand the hatred during the election towards the other side. I don't have a feed of "He's evil" "She's evil". I saw two bad candidates and I understand where people are coming from with their votes. I'd like to see most independents / democratic people unite under a real progressive platform next election and stop the extremist cycle…

> I'd like to see most independents / democratic people unite under a real progressive platform next election and stop the extremist cycle of social issues vs fear mongering.

There's virtually zero chance of this happening without another party collapsing first.

Hell, even then, independents are harder to herd than cats.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#34

Post by empath75 »

electic wrote: post #12
r00fus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct answer isn't to "switch feeds". It's to just turn it off. I'm happier, more productive and a better dad when I'm not being a feed-junkie. Maybe I'm an outlier.

Me too. I turned it off as well. However, like most, people want to log in and get their views validated. It makes them feel great, feel wanted, and belonging to something bigger. I am not sure Facebook wants this problem to go away.

There really are an amazing number of people who simply aren't interested in understanding the world as it is.

I think a big part of it is fundamentally not understanding how the brain works, and that just because your brain presents a convincing reality to you, that it doesn't necessarily coincide with actual reality. People don't understand that intuition can lead you very, very far astray.

So they're building up this concept of the world which seems solid and internally consistent to them, but it's built on sand. And they get annoyed when people start kicking at the sand. Because they're happy in the world that they built. When really what they should be doing is digging out the sand, looking for the bedrock underneath.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#35

Post by makomk »

notadoc wrote: post #30

This article is on a "How to make money blogging" website, not exactly a source I'd turn to for trustworthy anything let alone news about not relying on other news... Anyway, here are some more legitimate sources for the same topic for anyone interested: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/snowden-discusses-facebook... https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/15/snowden-we-rely-too-much...

This is the problem with any solution that relies on people checking the reliability of news sources: they don't. Even on here.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#36

Post by zanny »

duaneb wrote: post #32
JayHost wrote: post #15

I quit Facebook 1 to 2 years ago. I suppose that's one of the reasons I didn't understand the hatred during the election towards the other side. I don't have a feed of "He's evil" "She's evil". I saw two bad candidates and I understand where people are coming from with their votes. I'd like to see most independents / democratic people unite under a real progressive platform next election and stop the extremist cycle…

> I'd like to see most independents / democratic people unite under a real progressive platform next election and stop the extremist cycle of social issues vs fear mongering. There's virtually zero chance of this happening without another party collapsing first. Hell, even then, independents are harder to herd than cats.

Its impossible to happen under the system as it is established, but you just needed to push for a constitutional amendment and / or state compact like the one to overturn the electoral college to change the voting system to support either proportional (doesn't work when you elect a single seat like the president) or STV (ie runoff voting).

The chance of that happening in the next four years? Really low. About as unlikely as it has been since the Internet established itself as a place to talk about how to fix the voting system. But unlikely doesn't mean you don't try, and don't talk about it where you can.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#37

Post by jaredtking »

JayHost wrote: post #15

I quit Facebook 1 to 2 years ago. I suppose that's one of the reasons I didn't understand the hatred during the election towards the other side. I don't have a feed of "He's evil" "She's evil". I saw two bad candidates and I understand where people are coming from with their votes. I'd like to see most independents / democratic people unite under a real progressive platform next election and stop the extremist cycle…

I'm in a similar boat as you having quit Facebook several years ago after the revelations about the emotion manipulation experiments they were running. At first I did not understand why people were so polarized about the candidates. Now I'm attributing this mainly to being cut off from Facebook.

EDIT: By polarized I mean intense hatred, coming from both sides

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#38

Post by cdubzzz »

sambe wrote: post #24

I know it's off-topic to comment on the quality of a submission, but this is the first time I've been truly shocked by a #1 HN story. Normally when there is some discussion about relevance to HN, I can at least say "this is not really for me, but there's no problem with it being here". This is so mundane and obvious that I suspect non-normal voting. If you found this story interesting - why? "On-Topic: Anything that…

Well this ends up being on topic since the content touches on "fake news". Perhaps this site should be classified as such by whatever voodoo standard Facebook implements.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#39

Post by havetocharge »

canistr wrote: post #21

If the problem is that Facebook provides an echo-chamber that exacerbates the influence of one particular viewpoint, wouldn't the solution be for Facebook to begin injecting opposing content directly into the newsfeed? You can kind of see this with trending topics. If you don't follow a particular topic but suddenly see it trending in your feed, there's a chance you may random walk into clicking it. If Facebook opens…

It's not the Facebook that provides echo chamber, it's the individuals themselves who create it via their friend selections.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#40

Post by sien »

So, some actual data on how many US adults get news from various sources:

http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-...

38% Never, 18% hardly ever, 26% sometimes, 18% often.

Note that none of this excludes people getting news from non-social sources such as going directly to whatever news sites they like.

It's not clear that this is really much more of an issue than hearing what Bob in marketing thinks of issue X, Y or Z.

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