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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

#741

Post by solveit »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #734
rockinghigh wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Spotify is reliant on copyright exclusions to keep competing free services at bay. So aren’t really providing any value. YouTube is still reliant on ads, and ad-funded content creators, and will continue serving you manipulative content wether you pay or not. So can’t really count that as a success either. The thing is when you remove the ugly side of those business what remains can bee done better for free using p2p…

> The thing is when you remove the ugly side of those business what remains can be done better for free using p2p networks or federation over open protocols.

Then why hasn't it happened?

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

#742

Post by enneff »

bradlys wrote: post #727
stonogo wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps if people aren’t willing to pay for it the service isn’t that valuable after all.

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

#743

Post by egypturnash »

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…

Honestly I think the only way to make an ethical social network is to make a non-profit one. Fund it alongside other public goods like PBS, public education, highways, rail networks, healthcare, etc.

And yes, I know: good luck getting THAT to happen in the US given how badly funded everything else in my list is. If you’re in another country that actually funds public goods maybe this is a thing you could talk to some of your fellow techies about and make a proposal, especially if your country is getting increasingly tired of Facebook?

Alternatively, ground-up local funding of federated social networks might be workable; I run a Mastodon server for myself and a small group of my friends and acquaintances, with the costs pretty much evenly split between myself and the users who have money to spare. It is not without its flaws and problems but it is a thing I can generally keep going with a small investment of my spare time every few months.

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

#744

Post by all-fakes »

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…

> This presupposes some kind of universal value function.

Sorry, I did not mean to suggest that some comments are intrinsically more valuable. But we do want to sort comments so that, on average, the distance between the "ideal" order for any given reader and the actual order is minimized, don't we?

> This is like perfect is the enemy of good counterargument.

I'm not trying to argue anything here, I just wanted your thoughts on how this could be implemented effectively.

> I have never browsed a journal or arxiv by the number of citations or the hindex or whatever.

I don't know if arXiv is a very good comparison — the posts are much fewer, the range of interests is much narrower, and the site itself is very heavily moderated.

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

#745

Post by dannyw »

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 purposefully read a site called OzBargain, which is basically a compilation of ads. Sometimes I buy stuff I don’t need. Nonetheless, I like OzBargain.

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

#746

Post by brigandish »

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…

> it's a flaw in their business model, and it's one that can that be fixed (i.e. "innovate a better business model")

Doesn't that assume that there is a better business model?

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

#747

Post by egypturnash »

bradlys wrote: post #727
stonogo wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We all know users won’t pay enough for a subscription service to make a huge profit that makes the VC happy, makes the founder one of the ten richest people in the country, and supports a ton of offices and salaries in some of the priciest places to live and work.

But the tiny Mastodon server I run for myself, with a total user count in the low triple digits, costs about fifty bucks a month, and the users who are willing to pay cover half of that. I could probably get more of them to cover it if I was more aggressive about asking, but I prefer to keep it super low-key. I could also lower those costs if I felt like putting some work into optimizing it.

It’s not my job, it’s a thing I run on the side and put a few hours of technical work into every few months. I ain’t gonna get rich from it but it gives my friends a nice place to chat on the Internet.

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

#748

Post by true_religion »

solveit wrote: post #737
stonogo wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> until they do, and they start taking measures to counteract it, When? Adblock has been free and easy for years now

Adblock usage has been creeping upwards every year. It’s only the fact that most people use mobile devices, that slowed its growth.

Now, extensions to block ads are mature on mobile.

On some sites I run, I see 60% blocking on desktop, 10% on mobile. If it hits 60% on mobile as well, then the ads would cease to be profitable.

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

#749

Post by inetknght »

brigandish wrote: post #746
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's a flaw in their business model, and it's one that can that be fixed (i.e. "innovate a better business model") Doesn't that assume that there is a better business model?

Yes. They're based on users voluntarily giving payment for services rendered and, importantly, being satisfied with the transaction.

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

#750

Post by mrfusion »

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…

Show all things posted in chronological order. Let users filter out things they don’t want. Done.
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