Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

ptudan wrote: post #179

throwaway894345 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged, only perhaps the people in control. Seems likely that social media as an industry selects more strongly for unethical executives, presumably because online advertising is the only effective way to monetize social media and it is more or less fundamentally unethical. I imagine the same effect can be observed among tobacco and fossil energy executives--these ar…

Online advertising as a concept is fundamentally unethical? I think you're speaking in hyperbole here. Stealing user data without consent (or with fake here read this 500 pg legalise consent) is unethical for certain. But a bike blog putting ads for bike saddles on the bottom of their page to pay for their server costs and writing staff? Hard to see how that's unethical unless you think selling anything is unethical.

> Online advertising as a concept is fundamentally unethical?

No, I meant "online advertising as an industry". It's unethical to the extent that it depends on stealing user data, which presumably is the overwhelming majority of the industry by value (i.e., I'm assuming your privacy-respecting bike saddles ads don't account for even 1% of the industry's value).

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

#282

Post by jbay808 » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

lol636363 wrote: post #87

dfxm12 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree and think it is significantly different. Facebook decision makers have way more agency in the directions their company takes than a consumer has in their choice of clothes to buy at Target (or wherever). Shirt consumers don't have much of a choice. They can only buy what's for sale (and in their price range). And then, how can they be sure if a shirt was or wasn't made by child labor? How would an individu…

As consumer, you may not be able to stop child labor but you can vote with your wallet. Several of my friends buy clothes from a few vetted brands because of exactly this issue. Then I have another friend who was huge cruise ships fan. He encouraged me to go on my first cruise too. But then there was a report about mistreatment of cruiseship employees, and he is totally against cruiseships now. His actions probably w…

I often wonder. Even if people stop buying, the feedback signal to a company can be very inefficient.

They might not understand where they went wrong and think they need to lower prices or something. Of course, that just leads to more pressure on working conditions.

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

#283

Post by carapace » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #17

I've always wondered how such discussions go in company meetings where some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business of the company. I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged, only perhaps the people in control. So what goes through that minds of people who don't agree with such decisions. Do they keep quiet, just worry about the payroll, convince themselves t…

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality (sic) challenged...

Why not? Ockham's Razor says to accept the most parsimonious explanation, and I think that's it.

I mean look at little kids: they're amoral monsters. If they weren't so cute our species would have gone extinct ages ago.

Look at our methods to train ourselves to be better people: religions cause wars while "Wolf of Wallstreet" is a big hit. ($392 million worldwide.)

Look at our leaders.

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

#284

Post by AlexandrB » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #241

asdff wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pages are moderated by their creators and you can unfriend someone you don't want to see posts from.

Can I get Facebook to show me all posts from someone or is that still not possible?

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

#285

Post by CivBase » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #98

The problem really is platforms that give people content to please them. An algorithm selects content that you are likely to agree with or that you have shown previous interest. This only causes people to get reinforced in their beliefs and this leads to polarization. For example, when I browse videos on Youtube I will only get democratic content (even though I am from Poland). Seems as soon as you click on couple en…

What really scares me is how many people I know who acknowledge that platforms like Facebook and YouTube are designed to create echo chambers which tend to distort people's opinions and perceptions towards extremes... but still actively engage with them without taking any precautions. They know it's bad for them, but they keep going back for more.

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

#286

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #208

throwaway894345 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged, only perhaps the people in control. Seems likely that social media as an industry selects more strongly for unethical executives, presumably because online advertising is the only effective way to monetize social media and it is more or less fundamentally unethical. I imagine the same effect can be observed among tobacco and fossil energy executives--these ar…

>Seems likely that social media as an industry selects more strongly for unethical executives More so than the fossil fuel industry? Big tobacco? Or the pharmaceutical industry? Wallstreet? Clothing/apparel manufacturers?

> More so than the fossil fuel industry? Big tobacco?

I already addressed this in my second sentence:

> I imagine the same effect can be observed among tobacco and fossil energy executives

No, that wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list of unethical industries.

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

#287

Post by ckastner » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #149

I really didn't realize until perhaps the last 2 years that Facebook fundamentally tapped some hidden human need/instinct to argue with people who they believe are incorrect. Specifically, and more importantly, combined with the human inability to actively decide to not pay attention when things are inconsequential or not yet worth arguing about. Sometimes, just shutting up about an issue and not discussing it is the…

> I really didn't realize until perhaps the last 2 years that Facebook fundamentally tapped some hidden human need/instinct to argue with people who they believe are incorrect.

Hidden human need/instinct to argue, period. These arguments aren't intellectual debates, it's people getting pissed off at something, and venting their rage towards the other side.

It's odd how addictive rage can be. But that's not a new phenomenon. Tabloids have been exploiting this for decades before Facebook.

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

#288

Post by cryptoz » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

ErikAugust wrote: post #269

supernova87a wrote: post #149

I really didn't realize until perhaps the last 2 years that Facebook fundamentally tapped some hidden human need/instinct to argue with people who they believe are incorrect. Specifically, and more importantly, combined with the human inability to actively decide to not pay attention when things are inconsequential or not yet worth arguing about. Sometimes, just shutting up about an issue and not discussing it is the…

I think it’s important to note that Facebook didn’t invent any of this. They just built the biggest mainstream distribution channel to do so. Nothing they ever did in terms of facilitating pointless arguments has been all that original either. People have been doing this forever, and even on the Web much, much longer than Facebook has existed. Now that said, they know what they have on their hands and how it makes th…

> I think it’s important to note that Facebook didn’t invent any of this.

I don't agree with that. I very strongly think that Facebook did invent a lot of this.

> They just built the biggest mainstream distribution channel to do so

Scale does matter though. There is a lot in life that is legal or moral at small scale but illegal or immoral at large scale. Doing things at scale does change the nature of what you are doing. There's no 'just' to be had there.

> Nothing they ever did in terms of facilitating pointless arguments has been all that original either.

I don't agree with that either. They have even published scientific papers, peer-reviewed, to explain their new and novel methods of creating emotionally manipulative content and algorithms.

> People have been doing this forever, and even on the Web much, much longer than Facebook has existed.

I also don't agree with this. Facebook has spent 10+ years inventing new ways to rile people up. This stuff is new. Yes I know newspapers publish things that are twisted up etc, but that's different, clearly. The readers of the paper are not shouting at each other as they read it.

I think it's super dangerous to take this new kind of mass-surveillance and mass-scale manipulation and say, welp, nothing new here, who cares? I think that's extremely dangerous. It opens populations to apathy and lets corporations do illegal and immoral things to gain unfair and illegal power.

Facebook should not be legally allowed to do all the things they are doing. It's invasive, immoral, and novel, the way they deceive and manipulate society at large.

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

#289

Post by mwfunk » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

It just feels like weaponized Usenet from the mid-'90s, or almost every popular online forum since then. Multiplayer game communities even. They're like tinderboxes for negativity. Very small numbers of bad faith actors (griefers, trolls, scammers, spammers, or just plain assholes) can trivially derail entire communities. Even without people trying to screw everything up, plain old human nature, and the nature of electronic communications, can make it happen as well. It just takes a little longer.

Put another way, each flame begets one or more flames, whereas each good comment might get responses but maybe it stands on its own. Over time the signal to noise ratio of any forum tends to degrade to nothing as the forum becomes more popular because of this. Moderation, scoring systems, etc. can ameliorate this but in general the less specialized the forum, the worse it is. It's like entropy in that it only goes in one direction, it's just a matter of time and how much you can push back on it. Bad comments beget more bad comments, but good comments don't necessarily beget more good comments. And at some point, the ratio of bad comments to good comments drives away any potential good commenters and the event horizon is crossed and the forum dies. Or it lives on as a cesspool for whatever.

The difference between Facebook and Twitter in 2020 vs comp.os.linux (or whatever) in 1995 is that it's not specialists screaming at each other about which distro or programming language or OSS license is best (or worst). It's a much wider net of far less informed or rational people, encouraged to argue about infinitely dumber and less knowable or debatable stuff. It's like scammy clickbait, but for arguments rather than clicks. The other difference between Facebook and Twitter in 2020 vs online communities of the past is that Facebook and Twitter make money off of it. All this BS fuels "engagement" and keeps larger volumes of people posting and therefore revealing themselves to trackers and creating a stream of ad views for the platform owners. At some point I do think the toxicity of the platforms will start costing them users, but that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

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

#290

Post by seneca » Tue, May 26, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

pathseeker wrote: post #265

gonehome wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is generally helpful to keep in mind. I also think there’s an art to deescalation and discussing ideas or persuading someone you disagree with to see an alternative view (and then giving them space to change their mind). Productive discussion isn’t possible with everyone or even one individual depending on where they are in their life, but I’ve generally found it works better than expected when you can r…

>I also think there’s an art to deescalation and discussing ideas or persuading someone you disagree with to see an alternative view This doesn't really work with core views like politics. Some of the most polarizing topics are not because the opposite side can't see your view, it's because you fundamentally disagree on priorities. Examples: Anti-abortion people aren't going to be persuaded by yet another view on wom…

Yep, I think you're dead on. There are competing and diametrically opposed values out there, and in many cases both can be fairly argued in favor of. For example fairness vs freedom. No amount of shouting about the details will convince someone who primarily values fairness that freedom is more important, and the arguments are largely pointless unless the participants are genuinely seeking to examine the ideas, which is rarely ever the case online.

I think people understand that at a very base level, and that's why online arguments are often really more of a performance to score points with your side, or to take shots at the other side. Rarely is anyone actually attempting to convince or learn, they're just playing out some weird tribal warfare ritual and dressing it up as debate.

As the larger thread here suggests, the best move in this game is simply not to play it.