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How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

washingtonmonthly.com

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Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#111

Post by marttt »

fzeroracer wrote: post #51
tzakrajs wrote: post #39

Quit using it. Let's go back to the way the internet used to be, y'know with instant messaging and a multitude of cultures that have their own ecosystems. Let's stop consolidating all of this information and wealth in the hands of people who don't give a shit about what makes us different (unless it sells an ad).

Go back to what, the AIM and Myspace domination? Before Facebook it was Myspace that was the juggernaut of the social media sphere. As the number of people that can freely access the internet grows, you see them focusing around a single social media platform. That's because social media strongly benefits from centralization, it's easier to talk to family and friends if you don't have to manage fifty different account…

Somewhat related -- a recent 'exit interview from social media' by one of the maintainers of 9front (which is an active fork of the Plan9 OS): http://stanleylieber.com/2017/11/07/0/

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#112

Post by qbaqbaqba »

pimmen wrote: post #63

This year is election year in Sweden and we know the Russians spread disinformation during the Finnish election through social media. They’ve had plenty of practice for taking on our small country. Denmark, Norway and Finland have a populist, far right party in their respective government coalition, Sweden and Iceland are the only Nordic countries that have resisted. I fear this will stop being the case. The Sweden D…

Aren't you overestimating facebook influence and underestimating the real life? If "evil Russia" is spreading misinformation isn't it a great opportunity for traditional media to expose and correct the misinformation? Censorship will mate the matter only worse.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#113

Post by dingaling »

JoshMnem wrote: post #34
jdavis703 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually did this a few months ago. Today I realized I had gone 7 days without logging into Facebook or even thinking about it. The good thing about unfollowing everyone is that I can still participate in Facebook Events and Groups, both of which many of us still need to coordinate meatspace activity.

I think that most people don't really need Facebook Events and Groups. If people tell you to join an event of group, tell them you don't use Facebook (for ethical and personal reasons) and that they should provide another method for people to participate so that it doesn't lock out non-Facebook users. I block all of their sites in my hosts file so can't even view a Facebook event page or group. It has only provided b…

> and that they should provide another method for people to participate

Ideally that would be perfect.

Realistically, the people running the groups and events have 99% of their time dedicated to non-communication activities and standing-up a mailing list or website is outside their time-capacity AND experience.

As an example here in Ireland we have a group called Airliner Experiences that organise enthusiast flights on rare and interesting aircraft. They exist only on Facebook, I have asked why and it's because they "don't have time" to run a website for the few non-Facebook oddballs. So I've missed many potentially-interesting experiences but they haven't missed my money because there is such a huge audience in Facebook.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#114

Post by Const-me »

pmlnr wrote: post #15
aaron-lebo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. Some of us got off Facebook years ago (or stopped using it). An individual abstaining didn't stop society from being manipulated the way this describes, FB's reach is too great.

Society has always been manipulated. In ancient Egypt, priest calculated eclipses and used it as act of the gods to threaten people with them. To change society, we indeed need to fix ourselves, but those fixes would be essentially getting rid of wanting to poses. Once that's gone, we can finally think ahead, but for that, countless steps are ahead of us. ( One of the first, in my opinion, should be a base income, bu…

> To change society, we indeed need to fix ourselves

Dark ages with manipulative priests didn’t end because people decided to fix themselves. They ended because people decided to fix their society. Namely, they separated church from government, instilled compulsory education, etc.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#116

Post by pmlnr »

Yetanfou wrote: post #79

Don't use Facebook or any of their properties like Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. Just as important, tell others not to use Facebook (et al). Tell your children not to use Instagram and Whatsapp (they won't care about Facebook as that is 'for older people'). When someone proposes using Facebook to plan something point out that Facebook is not the right venue for such activities, use email instead. If your neighbourhood wa…

Don't this, don't that - geez. Tell what TO do, what TO use. Saying not to without solutions is completely useless noise.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#117

Post by pimmen »

qbaqbaqba wrote: post #112
pimmen wrote: post #63

This year is election year in Sweden and we know the Russians spread disinformation during the Finnish election through social media. They’ve had plenty of practice for taking on our small country. Denmark, Norway and Finland have a populist, far right party in their respective government coalition, Sweden and Iceland are the only Nordic countries that have resisted. I fear this will stop being the case. The Sweden D…

Aren't you overestimating facebook influence and underestimating the real life? If "evil Russia" is spreading misinformation isn't it a great opportunity for traditional media to expose and correct the misinformation? Censorship will mate the matter only worse.

I don't really think I am underestimating it, we can see a clear connection between supporters of Trump (and other far-right populist politicians) and the disinformation they've received from Russia. I'm not suggesting Russia started the angry movements that are dismissive of experts and government officials to begin with but they could potentially swing other people to join the already existing movement.

We already know this is possible. The media has managed to influence elections multiple times, so has celebrities and religious officials (in Sweden, one of our most beloved children's books authors is credited with influencing the 1976 election a lot) and Facebook makes the angry person with a catchy meme as influential for a few weeks.

The thing is that too many don't trust traditional media even when it's revealed Russia were influencing elections. As the piece stated, more than 30% of Americans believe Russian meddling in the US election is fake news, even though the US intelligence community has no doubt they were involved. 30% is absolutely enough to swing an election.

So, I'm not really suggesting censorship, neither is the opinion piece linked in the OP. Let Facebook be responsible for the defamation resulting from these malicious posts and you can bet your ass they'll throw money at stomping out this problem.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#120

Post by JoshMnem »

fzeroracer wrote: post #60
JoshMnem wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not AIM and MySpace, but things like XMPP, where you could use one chat client and connect to your own Jabber server, Twitter, and Google chat. One solution is open, decentralized protocols. The article addresses that a little bit here: > ...the internet platforms were able to pursue business strategies that would not have been allowed in prior decades. No one stopped them from using free products to centralize the i…

It's a solution to a separate problem. You need to make something easy to use for the masses, you need to make it safe from bad actors and you need to actually advertise it. It's easy to talk about open and decentralized protocols but social media is a popularity contest, not one based off the best or most free platform. As the article mentions nothing was and nothing is stopping them from capitalizing on open and fr…

They build their products on open technologies and then attempt to extinguish the open technologies.

XMPP, RSS/Atom, and HTML are three examples of EEE in modern times.

- XMPP => proprietary chat that locks users in

- RSS/Atom => algorithmic news feeds that lock users in

- HTML => AMP -- if you want distribution, they tie your hands with markup and monetization restrictions

- etc.

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