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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

#611

Post by ccktlmazeltov »

cityzen wrote: post #518
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…

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…

Why? It's a great app to keep track of what your friends are doing

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

#612

Post by rockinghigh »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #593
TwoBit wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook would be perfectly happy to eliminate all ads if instead you paid a small or even tiny monthly fee. But you won't pay it.

No, they wouldn't, unless advertising gets banned. They'd instead accept your payment and find a way to shove ads in anyway, in a covert or overt way, just as many paid services do, because why leave money on the table?

YouTube and Spotify went that subscription route and it works well. There are no ads.

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

#613

Post by panopticon »

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 think another tangential but related issue is with how these companies measure success. They measure success by engagement, and things that drive the most user engagement aren't usually the best for the user.

YouTube has been getting a lot of flack for this recently.

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

#614

Post by ccktlmazeltov »

closeparen wrote: post #585
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…

If Facebook followed some deterministic algorithm like "show all content from friends, in chronological order" then I don't think there would be such loud voices calling for it to also solve $social_problem. But Facebook does exercise editorial control, in the service of engagement. It's fair to ask that this curation consider other objectives as well, or at least counterbalance the side-effects it's known to have (d…

If facebook was following a deterministic algorithm, people would complain too.

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

#615

Post by rockinghigh »

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…

> The good content is just a necessary evil to make you tolerate looking at ads.

You could make the same argument for Google or other online web sites relying on ads as the primary source of revenue.

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

#616

Post by tomaskafka »

rockinghigh wrote: post #615
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 good content is just a necessary evil to make you tolerate looking at ads. You could make the same argument for Google or other online web sites relying on ads as the primary source of revenue.

You can, and if you look at Google's actions long term, they do.

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

#617

Post by throwlaplace »

pessimizer wrote: post #607
throwlaplace wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lol the law of large numbers (the real name for the law of averages) is absolutely a law and it's exactly the phenomenon I'm alluding to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

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

#618

Post by bhupy »

skosch wrote: post #332
crocodiletears wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, this does give me much more confidence in Facebook's internal governance, even if the platform often bows to media demands. Much to the Chagrin of many on HN, Facebook is, and has been a fairly open platform to people of all convictions, backgrounds, and political stripes. Even if it has been unsteady handed at times. This, as well as their sorting algorithm may well be contributing to the collapse of insti…

> political dialogues That sounds lovely. Fake news (the actual kind), name-calling, absurd conspiracy-theorizing, memes that remove all nuance from complex issues, botnets that amplify anti-science/anti-intellectual nonsense ... aren't political dialogue, they're the breakdown of it.

> Fake news (the actual kind), name-calling, absurd conspiracy-theorizing, memes that remove all nuance from complex issues, botnets that amplify anti-science/anti-intellectual nonsense ... aren't political dialogue, they're the breakdown of it.

I understand the disdain for all of this, but this has been the state of American media for the vast majority of its history. Ben Franklin et al would find the anomalous post-Cold War period of journalistic "neutrality" to be unrecognizable. Fake news, name calling, absurd theorizing have been society's way of communicating about issues since the dawn of the printing press — or in other words, "political dialogue".

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

#619

Post by marcinzm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #590
marcinzm wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And many horrors of the past and present were and are caused by optimizing for profits. So it's not like we get to side-step horror-avoidance. I'd start with treating users as partners, and not cattle.

>So it's not like we get to side-step horror-avoidance.

Which is my point. It's easy to say "just force them to optimize for value to society" and then ignore what that really entails in practice. And what giving someone the power to do that tends to cause.

Actually solving the related problems and making things actually better is probably possible but it's messy and hard and complicated.

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

#620

Post by babesh »

babesh wrote: post #603
specialist wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The colonists were ALL for maximizing economic power (pursuit of estate). They were ALL for limiting political power against economic power.

So this notion that colonists were against economic power is just wrong. Others may have held the notion but not as the colonists if you go by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

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