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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

#601

Post by pessimizer »

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…

All of HN other than you isn't actually one person arguing with themselves. There are a variety of people here with a range of opinions, each with different degrees of internal consistency. This smacks of the "everybody says all kinds of things, so you should just ignore everybody" or the "they're yelling at me from the left and from the right, so that's proof I'm doing everything correctly" defenses. The second is the moderation fallacy; the first might be called the "Argument From Sociopathy."

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

#602

Post by jeffdavis »

dang wrote: post #453
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…

Sorry for the self-reference outside of a moderation context, but I wrote what turned into an entire essay about this last night: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 . It's about how this plays out specifically on HN. Short version: it's because this place is less divisive that it feels more divisive. HN is probably the least divisive community of its size and scope on the internet (if there are others, I'd…

One of my theories about the success of HN is that we are grouped together based on one set of topics (on which we largely agree), but we discuss other topics over which we are just as divided as the general public.

I believe there is an anchoring effect -- if you are just in a discussion where someone helps you understand the RISC-V memory model, it feels wrong to go into another thread on the same site and unload a string of epithets on someone who feels differently than you do about how doctors should get paid.

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

#603

Post by babesh »

specialist wrote: post #589
babesh wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. The founding fathers were the richest colonists and George Washington was the richest of them all. It was some rich people opposing richer people overseas that they were descended from. They didn’t want concentration of political power but they had the economic power. Interestingly the political power endangers them because it has the power to take away their economic power. That’s the real battle still going on…

How does one disprove the other?

Because it wasn’t concentration of power they were concerned with. They were only concerned with concentration of power against them (political power against their right to profit).

It was a selfish play not a principled one. For example, slavery was written into the constitution. How the hell does that happen when all men (and no women) were supposedly equal? Slavery was enshrined as an economic and then a political right (2/3 vote).

Not all of them were for slavery but that was the end result of the document/of the competing forces at play. It institutionalized slavery in the new nation.

Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of...

“According to those scholars who saw the root of Jefferson's thought in Locke's doctrine, Jefferson replaced "estate" with "the pursuit of happiness", although this does not mean that Jefferson meant the "pursuit of happiness" to refer primarily or exclusively to property.”

What has gradually happened is that personhood has been gradually extended to more and more entities (sometimes non human).

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

#604

Post by alzaeem »

The outrage towards Facebook causing divisiveness is a red herring. You want to see divisive content, go to foxnews vs cnn. Pretty much the entire media is partisan and biased towards their constituents' points of view. For Facebook, it would be nice if they stick to showing whatever is posted by a user's friends or organizations they like/follow without much curation, but my view is that their impact on divisiveness overall is miniscule

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

#605

Post by unethical_ban »

tdhoot wrote: post #305
pkilgore wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an average level of civility in a society `C`. Lets say users of your product, due to your product, operate at `0.5 C`. Is changing the product so they operate at a higher `0.75 C` or back to `C` "paternalistic"? Why? I can see the argument for moving `C` to `1.5 C` as paternalistic. But when you're already actively affecting `C` in one way, why do we moralize about moving it the other way? What makes down OK…

Paternalistic is thinking you are in a position to define C and measure it.

You keep on saying "paternalistic" as if it's a bad thing. I left another comment in this subthread suggesting it is not.

Yes, some people are wrong and some are right. With government, there are basic freedoms that allow people to be wrong, and not to be incarcerated or unduly burdened by government policing thought.

But society? Facebook? Even government messaging ala "The Ad Council"? Yes, absolutely, to hell with disinformation, trolls, and toxic platforms.

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

#606

Post by globular-toast »

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 that read every Facebook post and then decided what to show you.

So you can read more of what you already agree with? That's called living in a bubble. The mind cannot grow in a bubble.

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

#607

Post by pessimizer »

throwlaplace wrote: post #570
DenisM wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 eve…

The Law of Averages isn't actually a law, and everything doesn't balance out in the end.

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

#608

Post by TeMPOraL »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #530
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…

Why would a personal AI which curates your content be any “better” than FB’s AI which curates your content? Isn’t the current AI based on what you end up engaging with anyway? If you naturally engage in a variety of content across all ideological spectrums, than that’s what the FB AI is going to predict for you. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us engage with content which reinforces our existing worldview - which…

Because an algorithm under your control can be tweaked by you. Could be as simple as reordering topics on a list of preferences. Facebook's algorithm can't be controlled like that. Also, an algorithm you own won't change itself unbeknownst to you.

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

#609

Post by ccktlmazeltov »

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…

This 100%, this reminds me of PG's haters post[1].

[1]http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html

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

#610

Post by KorematsuFred »

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…

I am happy to pay $10 bucks a month for a facebook like service that suggests me engaging, high quality content without any promotional content.

I am already getting such service in the form of Android's newsfeed feature on pixel. Its google but its pretty good.

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