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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

#571

Post by solarkraft »

2019-nCoV wrote: post #569
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.

Except when it doesn't.

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

#573

Post by 2019-nCoV »

solarkraft wrote: post #571
2019-nCoV wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except when it doesn't.

Such as?

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

#574

Post by StandardFuture »

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #526
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 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…

Excuse my ignorance, but isn't the overlay network setup problem one that has problems at almost every level of the stack? If there is not any definitive technical problems to overcome, why is it not possible to create a mobile app that friends and family could use as their own private network?

Isn't the internet supposed to be every node acting as it's own server and client simultaneously anyways? Is the problem just the inability to truly decentralize discovery, registry, and identity authentication of nodes in the network? Or is the problem that most ISPs don't want people operating services out of their homes or off of their phones?

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

#575

Post by ngold »

munificent wrote: post #461
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…

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…

Still waiting for that ublock origin web browser.

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

#576

Post by solarkraft »

scotty79 wrote: post #392
zachware wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk is that it behaves like a reinforcement learning algorithm which essentially rewards itself by making you more predictable, I'd argue that's what curated social networks do today. If you're unpredictable you're a problem. Thus, it makes sense to slowly push you to a pole so you conform to a group's preferences and are easier to predict. A hole in my own argument is that today's networks are incentivized to d…

> If you're unpredictable you're a problem. But you are predictable, even if you think you are unpredictable, you are just a bit more adventurous. Algorithm can capture that as well. It will be easier for algorithm that works on your behalf.

This makes me think of a talk with an AI-optimistic Microsoft sales guy I had a few years ago. His argument was essentially the same:"Look, it's no problem to have an AI curate everything for you because the algorithm will just know what you want, even if your habits are unusual!"

Of course this hasn't happened yet and I doubt it ever will. Maybe I'm just insane, but most of the recommendations from services I have fed data for hundreds of hours (YouTube) are actually repulsive.

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

#577

Post by ENOTTY »

tantalor wrote: post #361
ENOTTY wrote: post #302

Here's the paragraph I found most damning. It would make me want to assign liability to Facebook. > The high number of extremist groups was concerning, the presentation says. 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…

You are surprised? Here's the mission statement: > Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them. Encouraging group communication is the primary goal, regardless of the consequences.

It’s one thing to enable people to seek out extremist communities on their own. It’s quite another to build recommendation systems that push people towards these communities. That’s putting a thumb on the scale and that’s entirely Facebook’s doing.

This is one example, and it’s quite possibly a poor example as it is a partisan example, but Reddit allows The_Donald subreddit to remain open, but it has been delisted from search, the front page, and Reddit’s recommendation systems.

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

#578

Post by austincheney »

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…

> What if, instead, you had a personal AI

I was in agreement with you until I read that. People don’t need to have content dictated to them like mindless drones whether it is from social media, bloggers, AI, or whatever. Many people prefer that, though, out of laziness. It’s like the laugh track on sitcoms because people were too stupid or tuned out to catch the poorly written jokes even with pausing and other unnecessarily directed focus. It’s all because you are still thinking in terms of content and broadcast. Anybody can create content. Off loading that to AI is just more of the same but worse.

Instead imagine an online social application experience that is fully decentralized without a server in the middle, like a telephone conversation. Everybody is a content provider amongst their personal contacts. Provided complete decentralization and end-to-end encryption imagine how much more immersive your online experience can be without the most obvious concerns of security and privacy with the web as it is now. You could share access to the hardware, file system, copy/paste text/files, stream media, and of course original content.

> And isn't that how the internet used to be?

The web is not the internet. When you are so laser focused on web content I can see why they are indistinguishable.

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

#579

Post by geori »

So Neal Stephenson wrote a book about this - at least the good half of the book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell

It's 20 years in the future where facebook and similar services are much, much worse. Wealthy people pay for editors to remove misinformation from their feeds. And the country gets bifurcated with coastal elites having access to editors and flyover country ("Ameristan") has turned into a conspiracy plagued wasteland.

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

#580

Post by cityzen »

dctoedt wrote: post #522
cityzen wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right course of action is to stop using Facebook. That's it, very simple. people here being polarized is exactly what Facebook wants. Current facebook users are akin to opioid addicts... probably found some relief from whatever social pain they were feeling that now they have accepted selling their privacy for their fix. I would say I can't wait for the day that Facebook is gone but it will be a long time conside…

> The right course of action is to stop using Facebook. That'd give rise to something akin to a Gresham's Law problem [0]. I think we have a civic duty to engage patiently — and politely — with our friends who hold views we disagree with, because (A) they get to vote; (B) angry invective isn't persuasive; and (C) social proof is a thing, and sometimes people can be persuaded to come around to their friends' point of…

So stay on Facebook. Keep in mind that while you're trying to patiently and politely engage, Facebook continues to build a profile about who you are and how to manipulate you. The more you feed it, the more it learns and knows how to use yourself against yourself.

In terms of civic duty, this definition of American civic duty made me laugh:

Citizenship connects Americans in a nation bound by shared values of liberty, equality, and freedom. Being a citizen comes with both rights and responsibilities. Civic duty embodies these responsibilities. Such civic duties help uphold the democratic values of the United States.

The problem with civic duty is that I feel mine is to tell people to stop using Facebook... but others... well, they are going to show up at a state capital carrying military grade weapons because they don't want to wear facemasks in a pandemic. Would you like to patiently and politely engage with them? I sure as hell wouldn't because they focus more on their perception of "rights" while ignoring their responsibilities.

My point is that civic duty in America is a pretty romanticized concept that is certainly not based in any reality in 2020.

When I did use Facebook briefly back before 2012, I found it disappointing that my "christian" extended family members would send me incredibly hateful memes about how Obama was a muslim terrorist or satan in a tan suit. If that is civic discourse, no thanks. The one upside is that I haven't spoken to them in almost a decade and never plan to again.

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