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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

#721

Post by stonogo »

coffeecat wrote: post #719
stonogo wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It appears to me that the parent post was criticizing the ad-based business model - not endorsing it.

I'm complaining about the structure of the dialog around this issue, not casting aspersions on the parent post's argument itself. It's impossible to have a reasonable discussion when the terminology in use is strongly prejudiced against one of the key parties in the relationship.

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

#722

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

ggggtez wrote: post #561
a1369209993 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

But the kind of people who get $300 for a post should have a very large group of followers. Which should imply that there should be a reasonably large group of people prepared to part with some money in support of their work.

And for the small group of people it seems to me that it should be easily self correcting by normal social cues since there’s no network effect to offset it.

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

#723

Post by Izkata »

save_ferris wrote: post #694
K0SM0S wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Anecdotally of course, as one of those tech-folks who's got nothing against good and relevant ads. Be careful what you wish for. This TED talk[0] on persuasion architectures brings up some interesting moral arguments against this idea. If we generally accept that ad conversion is a metric of an ad's success, how do we handle the situation where people that are susceptible to addictive behaviors like gambling and co…

> how do we handle the situation where people that are susceptible to addictive behaviors like gambling and compulsive shopping are exposed to ads that exploit their condition?

Ads like that used to be common. By your description, it sounds like they died out on their own.

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

#724

Post by mindfulhack »

You can more strongly control - and capitalise on - people when they're divided and isolated, triggered and engaged, in their own little world where they think they're engaging with the whole world, but in reality they have no idea that it's just their tiny little access of it.

This is control. Not uniting humanity. It's 'divide and conquer', through business. The users are the conquered ones.

It is hurting civilisation greatly. Facebook is the archetype of capitalism needing to be reined in by government due to its bad effects on society. It's like pollution, but sociocultural pollution.

I don't care that a company made money while producing the pollution. I don't care that people voluntarily chose to buy their products whose production produced the pollution. That doesn't justify their business activities.

It's pollution.

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

#725

Post by enchiridion »

supernova87a wrote: post #149

I really didn't realize until perhaps the last 2 years that Facebook fundamentally tapped some hidden human need/instinct to argue with people who they believe are incorrect. Specifically, and more importantly, combined with the human inability to actively decide to not pay attention when things are inconsequential or not yet worth arguing about. Sometimes, just shutting up about an issue and not discussing it is the…

A lot of people here are saying they will write responses then wait before posting.

Could this be part of the solution? If a discussion is getting particularly heated, put responses on a time delay. Maybe even put the account on a general delay for engaging with heated subjects, so the outrage doesn't crop up elsewhere.

Of course this would decreased engagement. It might even push users to more permissive platforms.

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

#726

Post by tambourine_man »

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…

Nah, they’ve already filtered by your IP, geolocation, browser fingerprint, etc.

We need access to all the data so we can decide which algorithms to apply. There’s really no escaping that

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

#727

Post by bradlys »

stonogo wrote: post #720
bobthepanda wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, today's model is "users tolerate your ad network in return for free content". Which is clearly true given that Facebook is making profits despite everyone and their mother grumbling about ads. Something has to pay the bills.

Yes, tolerating the ad network definitely falls under "users don't care"... until they do, and they start taking measures to counteract it, and then we're back to "something has to pay the bills," which is where I'm suggesting some R&D investment might be wise.

If not ads then what would pay the bills? We all know users won’t pay for a subscription service.

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

#728

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

manquer wrote: post #500
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…

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. While everyone is sceptical on whether such a service can reach critical mass to make financial sense, a brand new FB replacement may not be able to do it, However FB itself can certainly give that as an option without hurting their revenues substantially. I was sceptical on the value…

In don’t see Facebook surviving such a transition. Without the manipulation and data mining for engagement you’re just left with a few features that is probably easily subsumed by other services in some federated fashion. It would provably look as exciting as hosted e-mail from the business side.

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

#729

Post by ccktlmazeltov »

deadwing0 wrote: post #661
ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is that reason enough not to try? Because people will complain? You know very well that people will complain no matter what happens, yet we still must seek to work towards truth and a better way, even though "better" is in opinion word, and sometimes so is "truth."

good luck filtering human content via deterministic algorithms, and if people can reverse engineer these then they'll get gamed... it's just a stupid idea.

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

#730

Post by bhupy »

stonogo wrote: post #721
coffeecat wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to me that the parent post was criticizing the ad-based business model - not endorsing it.

I'm complaining about the structure of the dialog around this issue, not casting aspersions on the parent post's argument itself. It's impossible to have a reasonable discussion when the terminology in use is strongly prejudiced against one of the key parties in the relationship.

Reality is strongly prejudiced against one of the key parties in the relationship. Users, today, tolerate ads in exchange for free content. Any reasonable discussion — where continued delivery of content is a desired end goal — needs to come up with an answer for how we pay for it. Calling out "fundamental flaws" is one such way of doing that.
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