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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

#561

Post by ggggtez »

a1369209993 wrote: post #478
munificent wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental flaw is this: The primary content no user wants to see any every user agent would filter out is ads . Since ads are the primary way sites stay in business, they are obligated to fight against user agents or other intermediary systems. The ultimate problem is that Facebook doesn't want to show you good, enriching content from your friends and family. They want to show you ads. The good content is just…

> The primary content no user wants to see any every user agent would filter out is ads. Not that you're wrong, but: that's the fucking point ! Advertising delenda est.

Let's imagine for a moment that a decentralized social network actually took off.

How long until those ads crop back up anyway? Instagram should give us some idea on how sponsored content might look in such a system. According to some random site, the average price for a "sponsored" instagram post is $300. You think your friends are above showing you an ad when real money is on the line? Maybe they won't be making that kind of money with very few followers, but when Pizzahut asks you to post an ad in exchange for a free pizza, I think you'll see plenty of takers. Now, granted, at least the people being paid are your friends, instead of Zuck.

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

#562

Post by sneak »

dleslie wrote: post #15
AlexandrB wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone companies don't set up incentive structures that encourage a certain kind of content. Facebook has an "algorithmic" feed, likes, and "engagement" metrics that rewards certain behaviours and punish others. They are rightly being pilloried when these incentives encourage and promote constant outrage, conspiracies, and completely fact-free fear mongering.

This is a thought-provoking answer, and it shows how Facebook (and others) are straddling the line between publisher and platform. IMHO, because they do perform curation, both algorithmic and manual, they should be considered publishers.

Seems to me that their argument against censorship should be even stronger, then, as editorializing is protected expression.

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

#563

Post by marcinzm »

ardy42 wrote: post #551
marcinzm wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum doesn't matter, the only question is if it's more profitable than the current approach. Facebook makes $9/user/quarter. That's every user no matter how little they use the site. The issue however is that the users advertisers care about are the ones with disposable income. The users most likely to opt out of ads are the ones with disposable income. Thus the marginal cost to Facebook from such users is signifi…

>>> The ultimate problem is that Facebook doesn't want to show you good, enriching content from your friends and family. They want to show you ads. The good content is just a necessary evil to make you tolerate looking at ads. >> That is how it is today. But does it have to be like that ? What is the minimum revenue per user required for service like FB to run. > Minimum doesn't matter, the only question is if it's m…

Value to society is subjective and many horrors of the past (and current) were caused by trying to optimize specific definitions of that term.

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

#564

Post by root_axis »

devonkim wrote: post #446
fpgaminer wrote: post #299

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…

I think transparency matters more. I liked Andrew Yang’s suggestion to require the recommendation algorithms of the largest social networks to be open sourced given how they can shape public discourse and advertising in all mass media is regulated to prevent outright lies from being spread by major institutions (although an individual certainly may do so).

Setting aside the concerns about the efficacy of the idea, it also seems like an arbitrary encroachment on business prerogatives. I think everyone agrees that social media companies need more regulation, but mandating technical business process directives based on active user totals isn't workable, not the least of which because the definition of "active user" is highly subjective (especially if there is an incentive to get creative about the numbers), but also because something like "open source the recommendation algorithm" isn't a simple request that can be made on demand, especially with the inevitable enfilade of corporate lawyering to establish battle lines around the bounds of intellectual property that companies would still be allowed to control vs that which they would be forced to abdicate to the public domain.

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

#565

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

baq wrote: post #543
pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The ultimate problem is that Facebook doesn't want to show you good, enrishing content from your friends and family." Well, it is someone else's website. What do you expect Zuckerberg has his own interests in mind. In 2020, it is still too difficult for everyone to set up their own website, so they settle for a page on someone else's. If exchanging content with friends and family (not swaths of the public who visit…

i have a fundamental issue calling a content-curating, psychological-experiment-running platform visited by hundreds of millions of people daily 'someone else's website'. the fact that it is privately owned doesn't matter if nation states use it to wage information wars against other nation states' citizens. to make matters worse, the 'someone else' in question knows about it perfectly well and is fine with it becaus…

Well, that is what it is. No one knew a single website could grow so large, but it did. Even though there are thousands of people working for its owner, when reading articles like the OP we are reminded how much control he still has over it. No doubt he still thinks of it as his personal creation. Of course, "99.99999%" of the content is not his. Perhaps most of the people who sign up on Facebook are not employed by nation states but just ordinary people who want an easy way to stay connected to friends and family. Maybe these people should have a better way to stay connected than using a public website.

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

#566

Post by icelancer »

starpilot wrote: post #516
knzhou wrote: post #457

The degree to which “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is in effect here is remarkable. If Facebook literally removes anything, then HN is outraged because it’s censorship, paternalism, all that. But if Facebook does not adopt an actively paternalistic attitude where it shows people content that they deem is “good for them” , then that’s outrageous too. Both complaints predictably rocket to the top of HN. Which…

You people want less government, but you also want more. Which is it, guys? You could say this about any divisive issue if you lump all sides together.

I want more government when it helps me and less when it doesn't. What's so hard about that? Everyone agrees with me, I'm sure.

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

#568

Post by ggggtez »

>Another concern, they and others said, was that some proposed changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users and publishers, at a time when the company faced accusations from the right of political bias.

This is the same thing they were worried about in the lead up to the 2016 election when they fired their newsroom for not promoting pizzagate and other conspiracies that would be deemed as "biased" against conservatives. And they clearly still haven't learned anything about why letting engagement algorithms run wild is bad for society.

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

#569

Post by 2019-nCoV »

fpgaminer wrote: post #299

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…

This already exists — most social media is already curated. You only see tweets and posts from those you follow or friend. You can already block or ignore any undesirables. This works fine for self-curation.

There is no need for holier-than-thou censorship short of legal breaches. Good to see FB take this change of direction.

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

#570

Post by throwlaplace »

DenisM wrote: post #525
knzhou wrote: post #457

The degree to which “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is in effect here is remarkable. If Facebook literally removes anything, then HN is outraged because it’s censorship, paternalism, all that. But if Facebook does not adopt an actively paternalistic attitude where it shows people content that they deem is “good for them” , then that’s outrageous too. Both complaints predictably rocket to the top of HN. Which…

> How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? There is a simple answer to that - HN is not a homogeneous set of people; different users have different opinions and express them at different times with different intensity.

If this were true you'd have the average opinion filter out - naysayers would downvote supporters and vice versa. The truth is in fact that hn is hypocritical and becomes outraged for the sake of outrage just like every other opinionated group (where the raison d etre is to express an opinion rather than discourse).

Edit: think hn isn't just about getting attention? Then explain to me why responses are ranked? Or even ranked without requiring a response? Even Amazon reviews in principle require leaving ratings only in good faith (ie having engaged with the product). It's obvious and dang and whomever could make that a perquisite of voting. That they haven't proves my point.

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