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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

#381

Post by ummonk »

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…

Is it clear that echo chambers and polarized discussion are good for the bottom line? I imagine they help with user growth and user retention, but would people engaged in these polarized echo chambers actually spend more on advertised products?

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

#382

Post by foofoo4u »

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…

This is the exact same behavior I have noticed from YouTube as well. I miss the "old" YouTube around 2011, when it was a terrific place to discover new and interesting videos. If I watched a video on mountain biking, let's say, then the list of suggested videos all revolved around that topic. But in today's YouTube, the suggested content for the same mountain biking video is all unrelated, often extremely polarizing, political content. I actually can NO LONGER discover new interesting content on YouTube. Like you say, it automatically categorizes you based on the very first few videos and that's all you see from there on out. That is why I have now configured my browser to block all cookies from YouTube. I'm annoyed that I can no longer enjoy YouTube logged in, but at least now I feel like I've gotten back that "old" YouTube of what it once was. It's a whole lot less polarizing now, I feel much better as a result of it, and the suggestions are significantly improved.

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

#383

Post by specialist »

From the article:

"Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for their growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”"

Then:

"In keeping with Facebook’s commitment to neutrality, the teams decided Facebook shouldn’t police people’s opinions, stop conflict on the platform, or prevent people from forming communities."

Does not compute.

How can they claim to be neutral about the very problem they themselves created?

There's a lot of daylight between proactively accelerating extremism and censorship. This is not a binary choice.

I'm right alongside Kara Swisher on this topic: Facebook's leadership team is apparently incapable of nuance, self awareness, or acknowledging culpability.

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

#385

Post by Defenestresque »

obi1kenobi wrote: post #355
neonate wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updated: https://archive.md/FyTDB

Wow, Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS server sets up a man-in-the-middle (broken cert gives it away) and serves a 403 Forbidden page when clicking on this link. Verified that 8.8.8.8 works fine.

I don't want to derail the discussion too much either, but anyone curious about the reasoning can see this comment from CloudFlare [0]

>We don’t block archive.is or any other domain via 1.1.1.1. Doing so, we believe, would violate the integrity of DNS and the privacy and security promises we made to our users when we launched the service.

>Archive.is’s authoritative DNS servers return bad results to 1.1.1.1 when we query them. I’ve proposed we just fix it on our end but our team, quite rightly, said that too would violate the integrity of DNS and the privacy and security promises we made to our users when we launched the service.

>The archive.is owner has explained that he returns bad results to us because we don’t pass along the EDNS subnet information. This information leaks information about a requester’s IP and, in turn, sacrifices the privacy of users. This is especially problematic as we work to encrypt more DNS traffic since the request from Resolver to Authoritative DNS is typically unencrypted. We’re aware of real world examples where nationstate actors have monitored EDNS subnet information to track individuals, which was part of the motivation for the privacy and security policies of 1.1.1.1.

> [snipped the rest]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702

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

#386

Post by afthonos »

pdonis wrote: post #370
cataphract wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies on persuading people out of prejudice do exist (see e.g. https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~broockma/kalla_broockman_reduc... ). The problem is that the approaches are not as emotionally satisfying as just affirming your moral superiority and calling people bigots, so not many people do it (though some do, search for "deep canvasing"). Abortion is tricky because once you recognize the life of the embryo as a value…

> Studies on persuading people out of prejudice The GP is not talking about prejudice; he's talking about a genuine difference in priorities. Calling that "prejudice" implies that one of those choices of priorities is simply wrong; it ignores the possibility that there is no one "right" choice of priorities.

I think the argument doesn’t suffer if you replace “prejudice” with “strongly held beliefs”. The human mind doesn’t have a secret truth-o-meter, so from the inside, prejudice and strongly held beliefs are indistinguishable. The fact that some people hold a belief strongly is itself proof that that belief can be held, and therefore that people can be convinced to hold it.

Basically, a technique that works to convince people away from prejudice over and above what presenting them with truth does should be applicable to any belief.

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

#387

Post by [deleted] »

derg wrote: post #182
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#388

Post by puranjay »

deathgrips wrote: post #345
ErikAugust wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Psychopaths often excuse their behavior by saying that if they don't take advantage of others, someone else will do it instead.

To be fair, people will go to great lengths to argue over things they think are wrong. People make alt accounts on Reddit and Twitter to do it. Heck, people will even navigate 4chan's awful UI and content, fill in captchas, just to tell someone that they're wrong.

Facebook could make it harder to post content, but I doubt that would make much of a difference

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

#389

Post by neutronicus »

gonehome wrote: post #356
cataphract wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies on persuading people out of prejudice do exist (see e.g. https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~broockma/kalla_broockman_reduc... ). The problem is that the approaches are not as emotionally satisfying as just affirming your moral superiority and calling people bigots, so not many people do it (though some do, search for "deep canvasing"). Abortion is tricky because once you recognize the life of the embryo as a value…

I think abortion is a lot easier when you frame the argument around suffering. I think part of the problem with abortion is the left argues that "it is not a life" which is generally a weak argument. It's better to accept/concede that you are ending life, but doing so without suffering before there's a neural net that can recognize anything - I think that's the important bit (and why third trimester abortions are ban…

> I think part of the problem with abortion is the left argues that "it is not a life"

I don't think this is accurate. Getting a typical pro-choice person to discuss the fetus at all, much less whether it can be called alive, takes some serious cornering (I am pro-choice, to be clear).

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

#390

Post by vharuck »

danlugo92 wrote: post #246
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…

It's always alien when I read stuff like this. Most of my facebook feed is just memes and selfies. (I'm venezuelan) When facebook as new/trending up years ago there were some political discussions but people quickly figured out it was worthless, how come USAians haven't?

Being angry over politics is a pastime in the USA. Not sure why this happens in some countries and less so in others.
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