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Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

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Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#171

Post by usrusr »

cmurf wrote: post #20
mozumder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Facebook, but also Twitter and Reddit. The Republican guy that shot the pizza place in DC today was driven by a conspiracy theory marketed on Reddit. These social-media sites are literally dangerous.

Hardly any different than fanatic religions. Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. I think the problem with digital walled gardens is when the filter totally prevents critical thinking and sometimes even the ensuing cognitive dissonance. Most will resolve the dissonance via withdrawal, not changing their minds. But even withdrawal is better than escalation. If the walled garden makes it easy for people to…

I think that the key difference between the human filter bubbles of old (in Germany we call that “Stammtisch“, after the table where the village pub's regulars meet to mutually confirm their shared beliefs) and the new filter bubble in social media is that the latter gives more of the appearance of professional journalism, with all the expectations we associate with that. And even if what we see in the social media bubble actually is professional, balanced journalism, it's still a much narrower selection compared to what we saw in the age of mainstream mass media.

When we watched TV news or skimmed a newspaper, we would also selectively focus on our favorite topics. But other topics at least momentarily grazed or attention while we mentally tuned out or skimmed for more interesting headlines. With highly personalized online media (and yes, the social media filter bubble is just one method to achieve that) we are losing that weak connection to out-of-focus topics. The worst part is that we do not even notice, because when our personalized digest contains a certain amount of content that would be on general news we feel our desire stay up to date already satiated.

If real news (as in what would have made it into mainstream mass media) would somehow disappear from our personalized feeds (leaving them with only the necessarily personalized stuff like niche hobbies, friends and very local content), we would go back to consuming more mainstream news channels again, making us less vulnerable to viral fakes and the like. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a solution since there is no way Facebook could do this (and they would not want anyway).

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#172

Post by yummyfajitas »

lovich wrote: post #167
yummyfajitas wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a reply to this asking about the alternate category of material which is both true/accurate and also intended to incite negative feelings. That comment was flagged to death. I guess that's the answer - it's not just "fake" news we want suppressed.

The closest I've seen to something like that is when a country's merits or good deeds are being discussed and someone brings up past mistakes/atrocities. An example would be bringing up Unit 731 when discussing Japan giving aid to some country as a reason that Japan is evil. As an aside, I frequently see your comments flagged to death and have used you as an example of how a community will create its own bubble. I ha…

I get a little bit of exposure to white nationalist blogs since they are occasionally quoted by neoreactionary blogs. I don't agree with their normative conclusions at all, but their factual claims seem reasonably accurate.

There was a great article on this recently: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co...

Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up. I’ve never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article....I wrote a curt reply to my friend: “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me made-up crap from neo-Nazi websites”.

Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times.

Of all the people pushing for Facebook to suppress "fake news", I've not heard a single one that had a plausible mechanism to make sure true stories like this don't also get suppressed.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#173

Post by gdulli »

herbst wrote: post #104

This is just getting more stupid everday. Facebook is no and never was a news platform. It is a crappy social network and only reflects your inner friend circle. Why anyone and especially facebook should care about fake news is beyond me.

Well here's why someone should care about fake news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-...

I won't answer whether that entity should be Facebook. But when people start getting shot at and transparently disreputable demagogues start getting elected I would say the conversation at least has to begin.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#174

Post by pjc50 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #172
lovich wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest I've seen to something like that is when a country's merits or good deeds are being discussed and someone brings up past mistakes/atrocities. An example would be bringing up Unit 731 when discussing Japan giving aid to some country as a reason that Japan is evil. As an aside, I frequently see your comments flagged to death and have used you as an example of how a community will create its own bubble. I ha…

I get a little bit of exposure to white nationalist blogs since they are occasionally quoted by neoreactionary blogs. I don't agree with their normative conclusions at all, but their factual claims seem reasonably accurate. There was a great article on this recently: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co... Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls w…

The whole Rotherham grooming business is one of those things that really ought to have had a national inquiry to establish what happened and punish the guilty and the negligent. Instead it's seemingly vanished from mainstream public discussion. Can we even name any of the victims? Or even any of the perpetrators?

It's going to be like Hillsborough or Orgreave but for the right instead of the left: a historical injustice flag to wave for decades. Ignoring it is a massive disaster for race relations.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#175

Post by asdfasdfa11112 »

sergiosgc wrote: post #41
aikah wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit. Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business. Now to anybody who thinks he can control the internet and what people read/think/d…

> Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business. This is a technology forum, so I'll warn beforehand that my opinion, although it has political conclusions, is from a systems perspective…

Is FB keeping users in their comfort zone, or have users clearly and regularly indicated they want their ideologically safe spaces?

If the latter, any attempts FB makes will be create an exodus, lose-lose.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#176

Post by herbst »

gdulli wrote: post #173
herbst wrote: post #104

This is just getting more stupid everday. Facebook is no and never was a news platform. It is a crappy social network and only reflects your inner friend circle. Why anyone and especially facebook should care about fake news is beyond me.

Well here's why someone should care about fake news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-... I won't answer whether that entity should be Facebook. But when people start getting shot at and transparently disreputable demagogues start getting elected I would say the conversation at least has to begin.

So lets censor everything that some entity thinks is false on the whole internet? This shit grew on reddit and 4chan, 2 of the last places i want to see government censorship.

Also nobody was shot, the other article i read in the morning clearly mentioned that he only shot upwards and was not trying to actually hurt anyone.

Seriously if people are stupid enough to do such shit there are different issues to be solved. If people are scared of people wearing and using weapons then they should no be so easily available for example.

The only solution against stuff like this without fixing our society would be complete censorship & government control. I hope this is not really what you suggest.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#177

Post by joshkpeterson »

vasaulys wrote: post #158
welanes wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population Twitter is the app for that. Set up lists of different individuals so you can switch between different viewpoints in two clicks. No need to follow anybody on your list. It's actually fascinating to do so. Watch 'the reality' of a current or political event contort as you switch fr…

I'm surprised that more people don't know about lists, it seems like Twitter doesn't promote it as much as they should.

People have been asking Twitter for years to improve lists, but they don't listen.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#178

Post by 794CD01 »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #82
ivanhoe wrote: post #42

How is this different from news sites? They also earn the most of money from advertisers and the main criteria for those advertisers are page views. We still completely lack a viable internet business model that would strongly encourage the quality and not quantity...

> How is this different from news sites? I thought that was very clear from reading the article. FB tailors the feed to each user making sure that they don't see things that they may not like. In contrast to that, news sites cater to large segments of the population and they have to in order to be economically successful. The result is that news sites will always present us with some amount of material that is contra…

Newspapers and news television broadcasts had to do that due to the nature of the medium. There's no reason news websites couldn't tailor their content to the user in order to maximize views, engagement, or whatever other metric makes them the most money. Google News already does that.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#180

Post by eli_gottlieb »

fleitz wrote: post #53
pg314 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues.' You're lifting one sentence out of context. The rest of the paragraph reads [1]: "In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choi…

If they weren't publishing bullshit why are they rededicating themselves to journalism? Shouldn't they instead be saying, 'We got everything right, we reported all the facts, like the polls sampling Dems and women @ 60%, and Hillary lost surprising absolutely no one with a rudimentary understanding that the population of the US is 50/50 male / female' The context always was that this wasn't a normal election year and…

>Alt-media is believed because it resonates with the overall feeling people get from the news

"Alt-media" convinced a man to go shoot up a pizzeria on no factual grounds whatsoever. This is not just dangerous to democracy, it's inciting violence against innocent people.

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