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Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

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

#291

Post by Hokusai »

mc32 wrote: post #133
Hokusai wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of harm do you propose is the kind that should have pushback? "Some 700,000 members of the Rohingya community had recently fled the country amid a military crackdown and ethnic violence. In March, a United Nations investigator said Facebook was used to incite violence and hatred against the Muslim minority group. The platform, she said, had “turned into a beast.”" https://www.reuters.com/investigates/spec…

So why facebook but not movies and TV over the air or streamed via other platforms? What, because it comes from studios and other sanctioned organs? Are they above propaganda and above having agendas? I’m not saying FB is not culpable, but I’m saying if they are, then so are others.

> above having agendas?

Having an agenda is normal and is good. Everybody that plans for the future has an agenda. What is wrong is to have a "hidden agenda".

A "hidden agenda" is wrong because is a form of manipulation. When an organization has a "hidden agenda" means that they are lying to achieve a goal that they are hiding.

If a movie agenda is to "create awareness of human trafficking", and it shows how "human trafficking" impacts peoples lives, that is not "hidden" and it is actually an agenda that most people supports.

So, to have an agenda is intelligent, needed, common, awesome behavior. Stones have no-agenda, rocks have no agenda. To have a "hidden agenda" is what should be criticized.

Why will anyone think that to have an agenda is bad?

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

#292

Post by newacct583 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #70

Reddit has the same issues of division and does not do anything as a company to sort people. It all comes down to the individuals themselves. Is division really all that new or can we just see it more now?

It's a little different. Reddit doesn't choose the content presented to users, they allow the community to self-sort into community-managed subreddits with their own cultures and preferences and voting behavior. In fact reddit only barely exerts any control over the selection of subreddit moderators (mostly stepping in only to resolve things in extremis).

Facebook's algorithms decide on everything in your feed. If you aren't interested in politics on reddit you might never see it at all. If Facebook thinks you might be a republican (and often that's just a demographic thing coupled with a few past clicks on political stories), they will literally fill your screen with paid advertising designed to drive your political preferences.

The point is that division is visible on Reddit (and everywhere), but driven and encouraged by Facebook. And that these are different phenomena. I'm not completely sure I agree, but the point isn't as simple as "division exists".

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

#293

Post by SNosTrAnDbLe »

brewdad wrote: post #195
derg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general and not necessarily related to just facebook, but one of the best things I've come to learn about myself and the world around me is that sometimes the absolute _best_ thing you can do for yourself is to just shut up and walk away, even if you know in your heart of hearts that you are correct.

I've gotten better, over time, at typing my heated, emotional response to someone online and then hitting Cancel or the back button and not posting. Sometimes I do hit the Reply button though. I still have room for self-improvement. :-)

This! It always helps me to take time out and paste what you have on a different notepad and come back to it. Only hit send if it still makes sense.

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

#294

Post by mrbungie »

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…

Well, your reply is being 'deescalated' via downvotes. That shows how open people are to thoughts that defy their values and/or world model.

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

#295

Post by MaxBarraclough »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #131
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…

> some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business of the company If you start with such black-and-white assumptions, you will never be able to actually empathize with those people. Nothing is that simple when you're close enough to see the details. Things good for the company should be and frequently are good for the people using the product. The same thing can also harm the…

> Things good for the company should be and frequently are good for the people using the product. The same thing can also harm the same people, or a different set of people, or the company, in a way that's impossible to disentangle from the good.

> It's never as simple as "this is bad for everyone except us but at least we're getting rich". Everything has more nuance than that when you experience it up close

This too needs more nuance. These points even apply to outright crime. Legal prohibitions should sometimes be expanded in the public interest, because sometimes it essentially is the case that something is bad for everyone except some small group.

This is reflected in the way data-protection laws now exist in many countries, for instance.

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

#296

Post by [deleted] »

jimmaswell wrote: post #188

They decided against paternalistic meddling and let discourse happen naturally? That sounds best to me. I don't want Facebook to be a school teacher hovering over a lunch table to make sure nobody swears. People posting "divisive" content is far preferable to the alternative.

[deleted]

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

#297

Post by abdullahkhalids »

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…

> some hidden human need/instinct to argue with people who they believe are incorrect

This is perhaps a form of "folk activism" [1]:

> In early human tribes, there were few enough people in each social structure such that anyone could change policy. If you didn’t like how the buffalo meat got divvied up, you could propose an alternative, build a coalition around it, and actually make it happen. Success required the agreement of tens of allies — yet those same instincts now drive our actions when success requires the agreement of tens of millions. When we read in the evening paper that we’re footing the bill for another bailout, we react by complaining to our friends, suggesting alternatives, and trying to build coalitions for reform. This primal behavior is as good a guide for how to effectively reform modern political systems as our instinctive taste for sugar and fat is for how to eat nutritiously.

Facebook is a collection of your friends or your "tribe", so repeated arguments with your tribe members is what our unconscious brain pushes us towards. That coupled with the dopamine hit of validation via likes (which is common to other online discussion platforms).

[1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyon... I don't agree with a lot said here. Only linking the definition of folk activism

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

#298

Post by accountinhn »

brewdad wrote: post #195
derg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general and not necessarily related to just facebook, but one of the best things I've come to learn about myself and the world around me is that sometimes the absolute _best_ thing you can do for yourself is to just shut up and walk away, even if you know in your heart of hearts that you are correct.

I've gotten better, over time, at typing my heated, emotional response to someone online and then hitting Cancel or the back button and not posting. Sometimes I do hit the Reply button though. I still have room for self-improvement. :-)

I do this a lot, especially in Reddit. Trick I learned is I use my notepad now to type the reply, then wait for an hour and post it. This helped with few things:

1. Slowly improving in checking for typos

2. Reading something after a break helps framing my point better and helps remove the heated emotion from the text

3. I also don't save the comment, so I have to spend time searching for it. This further helps in filtering the topics that I don't care about

4. Using services while not logged in, basically be a lurker

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

#299

Post by fpgaminer »

You know what the internet needs? User agents.

We've got this idea stuck in our heads that only the website itself is allowed to curate content. Only Facebook gets to decide which Facebook posts to show us.

What if, instead, you had a personal AI that read every Facebook post and then decided what to show you. Trained on your own preferences, under your control, with whatever settings you like.

Instead of being tuned to line the pockets of Facebook, the AI is an agent of your own choosing. Maybe you want it to actually _reduce_ engagement after an hour of mindless browsing.

And not just for Facebook, but every website. Twitter, Instagram, etc. Even websites like Reddit, which are "user moderated", are still ultimately run by Reddit's algorithm and could instead be curated by _your_ agent.

I don't know. Maybe that will just make the echo chambers worse. But can it possibly make them worse than they already are? Are we really saying that an agent built by us, for us, will be worse than an agent built by Facebook for Facebook?

And isn't that how the internet used to be? Back when the scale of the internet wasn't so vast, people just ... skimmed everything themselves and decided what to engage with. So what I'm really driving at is some way to scale that up to what the internet has since become. Some way to build a tiny AI version of yourself that goes out and crawls the internet in ways that you personally can't, and return to you the things you would have wanted to engage with had it been possible for you to read all 1 trillion internet comments per minute.

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

#300

Post by carapace »

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…

You voluntarily put yourself in this position with no good way of fixing it. No one's forcing Facebook to do what they (and now you) do, eh?

My perception of reality is that you and your brilliant data scientist are (at best naive and unsuspecting) patronizing arrogant jerks who have no business making these decisions for your users.

You captured these peasants' minds, now you've got a tiger by the tail. The obvious thing to do is let go of the tiger and run like hell.

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