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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

#701

Post by [deleted] »

stonogo wrote: post #687
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…

I sure am tired of hearing about "the fundamental flaw" in empowering people. What you describe is not a flaw in empowerment, it's a flaw in their business model, and it's one that can that be fixed (i.e. "innovate a better business model"). Can we stop propagating the idea that people who do not want to use their limited bandwidth and processing power to rasterize someone else's advertising are somehow "flawed"? The…

[deleted]

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

#702

Post by mch82 »

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…

Nice idea. Anyone working on this?

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

#703

Post by dkn775 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #586
smhinsey wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the liberal arts are important, because you need someone in the room with enough knowledge of the world's history to be able to look at this and suggest that maybe given the terrible history of pseudo-scientifically sorting people into political categories, you should not pursue this tactic simply in order to make a buck off of it.

You don't need liberal arts majors in the boardroom, you need a military general in charge at the FTC and FCC. Can we dispense with the idea that someone employed by facebook regardless of their number of history degrees has any damn influence on the structural issue here, which is that Facebook is a private company whose purpose is to mindlessly make as much money for their owners as they can? The solution here isn'…

A lot of people wouldn’t know about the policy avenues that can be used to regulate these companies (of which FTC is not the only one), or how even advisory groups to the president could help.

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

#704

Post by antepodius »

throwlaplace wrote: post #640
all-fakes wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responses have to be ranked, because some comments are much more valuable to the reader than others. Well-thought-out comments and spam lie at the extreme ends of the spectrum. I think there's merit to the idea of requiring a response for upvotes or downvotes, but how can you tell whether a response is "genuine"? It sounds like it'd devolve into people leaving vacuous replies just to clear that prerequisite.

>comments are much more valuable to the reader than others This presupposes some kind of universal value function. >but how can you tell whether a response is "genuine"? It sounds like it'd devolve into people leaving vacuous replies just to clear that prerequisite This is like perfect is the enemy of good counterargument. I don't know and I'm not going to hypothesize right here right now where one misstep on my part…

So long as people's value functions have a directional bias in hyperdimensional value-space, the averaged value function embodied by the upvote-downvote tendencies is useful.

(If there were no bias- if people's opinions/tendenfies varied equally likely between all possibilities- all comment scores would be 0. Of course, practically survivor bias soon sets in, as radical suicide advocates wouldn't stick around long enough to like/dislike much.)

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

#705

Post by [deleted] »

scarmig wrote: post #688
pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be as skeptical as you want to be. Even assuming this idea was intended to "make a splash" (it isn't), these sort of comments make no difference whatsoever. We have all seen how HN commenters have criticised ideas that, rightly or wrongly, later went on to become successful businesses. The thing is, this is definitely not intended to be a business. It is just some software that exists and that works. If it wo…

And, secondarily to your main point, the idea that "sharing images and text with a small group of people" is some weird niche case that Facebook users don't care about is... pretty off-base. I'd say it's the main use case for the majority of Facebook users.

[deleted]

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

#706

Post by isbjorn16 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #683
isbjorn16 wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can't read every facebook post, but if your browser extension is scanning your feed and suppressing posts for you, how can they even stop you?

It's a violation of copyright under current interpretations of the Copyright Act. Companies like FB are well aware of this and send C&Ds to this effect every day.

That is shocking. How could something like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger ever exist? They're doing the exact same thing; modifying the status of the page payload. Even BrowserName developer tools would run afoul of this. I can't fathom how these are materially different.

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

#707

Post by taurath »

K0SM0S wrote: post #657
justapassenger wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary content no user wants to see any every user agent would filter out is ads "no user"? Nope. People buy magazines, that are 90% ads. Subscribe to newsletters. Hunt for coupons. Watch home shopping channels. Etc, etc. There's large part of population that wants to see ads. Scammy and bad ads? No. Good and relevant ads? A LOT of people do want them. Even tech-folks, who claim that ads are worst thing for hu…

Honestly a truly well-made ad targeting on me, something that really ticked all the right boxes... gosh I'd spend 3-4× more, easily. Because ordinarily I just don't lose time on shopping websites, but I'm kinda of a spender when I do find things that I like. And I'm a sucker for good deals, I'm a patient prey hunter, I can wait months in ambush for the right deal. Anecdotally of course, as one of those tech-folks who…

The “ads just aren’t good enough yet” poster while right doesn’t really take into account the terrifying things companies would ask to know about you in order to properly target those ads

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

#708

Post by matz1 »

seph-reed wrote: post #642
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…

Why are you defending Zuckerberg for being a dick? If you have power, you have responsibility: full fucking stop. The idea that it's okay to be a selfish child with power is tantamount to allowing driving while drunk. Power is deadly, you can just as easily crush a persons life as you could their legs with a car. Don't drive drunk, don't be in power if you can't be a responsible citizen about it.

The poster doesn't defending Zuckerberg, merely trying to explain why Zuckerberg did what he did.

>If you have power, you have responsibility: full fucking stop.

No, if you have power you get to decide the rule.

Same as drunk driving, the reason we are not allowing driving while drunk is because the people who are against drunk driving has more power than the people who are pro drunk driving. The side that has more power get to decide what the law is.

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

#709

Post by pixl97 »

kelnos wrote: post #690
justapassenger wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary content no user wants to see any every user agent would filter out is ads "no user"? Nope. People buy magazines, that are 90% ads. Subscribe to newsletters. Hunt for coupons. Watch home shopping channels. Etc, etc. There's large part of population that wants to see ads. Scammy and bad ads? No. Good and relevant ads? A LOT of people do want them. Even tech-folks, who claim that ads are worst thing for hu…

> Don't you want to learn about sale for new tech gadgets? Discounts for AWS? Good rent deals? No, not at all. Ads don't just inform about deals, they also incite you to buy . I don't want to buy just because some random company got the chance to put some psychological manipulation in front of my eyeballs. If I want or need something, I will specifically seek it out. If I don't specifically seek it out, then I probab…

>I don't want to buy just because some random company got the chance to put some psychological manipulation in front of my eyeballs

Lots of people say this online, I just don't believe them. Visual psychological manipulation works well enough on most people.

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

#710

Post by flippyhead »

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 don't know about that. I buy a lot of things. I wish something would help me buy what I need and didn't know I needed so I didn't have to spend time shopping and researching.
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