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Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#231

Post by nitwit005 »

vtail wrote: post #100

Disclaimer: I started working at FB recently. Consider the following model scenario. You are a PM at a discussion board startup in Elbonia. There are too many discussions at every single time, so you personalize the list for each user, showing only discussions she is more likely to interact with (it's a crude indication of user interest, but it's tough to measure it accurately). One day, your brilliant data scientist…

I'd just suggest the data scientist was optimizing the wrong metrics. People might behave that way, but having frequent political arguments is a reason people stop using Facebook entirely. It's definitely one of the more common reason people unfollow friends.

Very high levels of engagement seems to be a negative indicator for social sites. You don't want your users staying up to 2AM having arguments on your platform.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#233

Post by freeflight »

cj wrote: post #184
drchopchop wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Why should the only desirable metric be user engagement? Is the goal of FB engagement/virality/time-on-site/revenue above all else? What does society have to gain, long term, by ranking a news feed by items most likely to provoke the strongest reaction? How does Facebook's long-term health look, 10 years from now, if it hastens the polarization and anti-intellectualism of society?

> Is the goal of FB engagement/virality/time-on-site/revenue above all else? Strictly speaking, Facebook is a public company that exists only to serve its shareholder's interests. The goal of Facebook (as a public company) is to increase stock price. That almost often, if not always, means prioritizing revenue over all else. That's the dilemma. Then again, I believe Mark has control of the board, right? (And therefor…

> Strictly speaking, Facebook is a public company that exists only to serve its shareholder's interests.

That's a very US-centric interpretation, which fits because Facebook is a US company.

But it's still reductive to the issue considering how Facebook's reach is also far and wide outside the US.

In that context, it's not really that much of an unsolvable dilemma, it only appears as such when the notion of "shareholder gains above all else" is considered some kind of "holy grail thu shall never challenge".

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#234

Post by forgotmypw17 »

hackissimo123 wrote: post #117
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thinking, looking behind the veil of money, has convinced me to stop using currency altogether, for now, for the most part. I still pay for web hosting and domains, I still buy bottled water for lack of better options, but for anything else like clothes, food, houseware stuff, etc., I've stopped buying altogether. Everything you buy carries a huge veiled cost of human health and lives, animal and plant h…

Where do you get free food?

I live in a city, so mostly from dumpsters. Tons of recoverable food is thrown out every day. Way, way more than I can figure out what to do it.

I've also gotten more into fasting and eating less, but so far, no involuntary fasting has occurred.

I've also become more social, so sometimes others share their food with me, even in these difficult times. Yes, they bought it with money, and fed the eco-shaver, but I think it's still less than if I'd done it myself.

Occasionally, I go to restaurants towards closing time, and ask if they have any leftovers they are throwing away.

A great book on all this I read on this is called "The Scavengers' Manifesto". I learned a lot from meeting others on the street and looking through the trash.

I've done a bit of foraging when in wilder areas, and I've seen places where people grow most of their food themselves, in small communities. I think this is the future.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#235

Post by spaced-out »

thomasjudge wrote: post #31
miguelmota wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of a combination of all the above. Majority of employees are working for a paycheck and they don’t really care what goes on as long as they get paid. If the person is in an executive type role then their goal is to increase revenue so they convince themselves that it’s good for the company.

This seems very near the moral vacuity of the "just following orders" defense

That's perhaps the greatest power of the corporation: it allows people to do shitty things without any specific person being at fault.

Executives have a "duty" to increase "shareholder value". It's not that they necessarily wanted to do X, but their hands were tied because the "data" clearly showed that X was best for shareholders. Plus, if X was so bad, it's really the government's fault for not making it explicitly illegal.

Shareholders aren't individuals either, they're mostly mutual funds, pension funds, ETFs, etc... that makes algorithmic investment decisions. They didn't ask for X, but the funds they invested in will react to not getting X.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#236

Post by asdff »

renewiltord wrote: post #56

People always blame Facebook when the existence of Internet forums has always led to radicalization of individuals. Facebook's crime is making forums accessible to all. These are just your fellow people. This is how they are in the situation that they're in. So be it. Let them speak to others like them. The cost of that is many angry people. The benefit of that is that folks like me can find my people. That benefit o…

The difference is that facebook is unlike a forum. It's not actively moderated, and content is bumped according to engagement/marketing potential rather than chronologically by genuine user interest alone.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#237

Post by 1propionyl »

pm90 wrote: post #44
contemporary343 wrote: post #6

Every platform ultimately makes choices in how users engage with it, whether that goal is to drive up engagement, ad revenues or whatever metric is relevant to them. My general read is that Facebook tries to message that they're "neutral" arbiters and passive observers of whatever happens on their platform. But they aren't, certainly not in effect, and possibly in intent either. To preserve existing algorithms is not…

If the private platform is de facto the primary source of news for the majority of the population, this affects the public in incredible ways. I don’t understand how the US Congress does not recognize and regulate this.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his [campaign fundraising] depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair (lightly adapted)

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#238

Post by whathappenedto »

dfxm12 wrote: post #156
whathappenedto wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually feel the opposite. Consumers have the ultimate choice -- their choice is not beholden to anyone except themselves. Then they can execute their choice unilaterally. A VP or even the CEO is beholden to shareholders, their employees, their advertisers, their own ethics, their users, various government regulations (and government interests that are not laws but what they prefer). So almost everything they do i…

What a cop out. You can't just pass the buck forever. You want to bring shareholders into this? Was exploiting the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness put to a vote? What does it matter when Zuckerberg has a controlling share of the company [0]? He answers to himself. Facebook spent almost $17MM in lobbying efforts last year [1]. I wonder why governments doesn't exactly have an eagle eye on this... The rank and…

This is not passing the buck. It's acknowledging that there are many stakeholders involved in a company+platform, and that many decisions are about making tradeoffs rather than having a "right" answer.

If you always go with the populist vote, like when users rioted about the news feed when it was first introduced, https://techcrunch.com/2006/09/06/facebook-users-revolt-face... then you may be sacrificing the long-term viability of your company. This harms employees, investors, and eventually the public. Are you saying that's not even a consideration at all?

We're not talking about "Facebook exploiting the human brain to increase time on the platform". You brought up Target and shirts. So we're talking about who has more agency, users or executives, in a general manner. That consumers generally only need to concern themselves with their own ethics, versus the complex entanglement of ethics at a company, gives users more agency to make choices reflecting their ethics.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#239

Post by kgin »

hadtodoit wrote: post #154

Why does facebook need to do anything about this? People have been disagreeing with each other violently or otherwise for as long as humans have existed. Do they think they can do anything about this?

There has never been a mechanism whereby everyone can be against everyone else about everything.

When my high school english teacher and my aunt are arguing about politics and they've never met each other, it's clear this is a new development in human conflict.

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