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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

#811

Post by ppalevsky »

guy_ro wrote: post #758

Hey, Facebook VP of Integrity here (I work on this stuff). This WSJ story cites old research and falsely suggests we aren’t invested in fighting polarization. The reality is we didn’t adopt some of the product suggestions cited because we pursued alternatives we believed are more effective. What’s undeniable is we’ve made significant changes to the way FB works to improve the integrity of our products, such as fundam…

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

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

#812

Post by ppalevsky »

guy_ro wrote: post #807
alpacaillama wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article also claims that some of these people whose suggestions facebook ignored quit. Is this also cherrypicked?

Should I list the people who joined the team?

Yes, please do!

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

#813

Post by fogetti »

guy_ro wrote: post #758

Hey, Facebook VP of Integrity here (I work on this stuff). This WSJ story cites old research and falsely suggests we aren’t invested in fighting polarization. The reality is we didn’t adopt some of the product suggestions cited because we pursued alternatives we believed are more effective. What’s undeniable is we’ve made significant changes to the way FB works to improve the integrity of our products, such as fundam…

Hi there. Have you ever considered making the decision making open? I mean it seems you are obsessed with criticism and scrutiny. Then here is an idea for you: invite journalists from major media outlets to your decisions making. Then you can avoid these "unfortunate" cherry-pickings as you put it.

Why I am saying this: it seems you sit backwards on your high horse, criticising those people who for all intents and purposes have very limited insight into the decision making.

Me and my close friends are fed up with Facebook and how obviously it is trying to polarize everyone in this world.

No sympathy for you on my side, and I cann assure you I speak on behalf of my friends too.

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

#814

Post by guy_ro »

alpacaillama wrote: post #799
guy_ro wrote: post #758

Hey, Facebook VP of Integrity here (I work on this stuff). This WSJ story cites old research and falsely suggests we aren’t invested in fighting polarization. The reality is we didn’t adopt some of the product suggestions cited because we pursued alternatives we believed are more effective. What’s undeniable is we’ve made significant changes to the way FB works to improve the integrity of our products, such as fundam…

Would you care to post the same stats but updated for 2020 then? Also i see that this is statement is also copy pasted on your twitter so I have a hard time believing you actually do read this feedback and didn’t just post This comment as damage control.

Hi! I am really here, not a bot :)

If we're talking metrics, the 64% stat cited in the article turns out not to be a good way to measure impact of recommendations on an extremist group. We internally think about things like prevalence of bad recommendations. More on prevalence here - https://about.fb.com/news/2019/05/measuring-prevalence/. I don't have a metric I can share on recommendations specifically but you can see the areas we've shared it for so far here: https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforc...

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

#815

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…

It's this dynamic that some people want to treat each other as peers in some ways. This is because they are stronger as a group i.e. united we stand, individually we fall. However they to exclude others since if you include everyone, then there is no advantage (us vs them, the other).

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

#816

Post by beachy »

nradov wrote: post #791
beachy wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to cherry-pick from your reply here, if $2M is the biggest ticket item you have to show for independent research on this topic - then you're woefully short given Facebook's revenues and size. 10 short years ago, nobody could have imagined that huge swathes of the population could have been swayed to accept non-scientific statements as fact because of social media. Now we're struggling to deal with existential th…

10 short years ago, huge swaths of the population were swayed to accept non-scientific statements like eating fat and cholesterol were unhealthy. I don't think Facebook is the problem here. How much exactly do you think Facebook ought to donate to independent researchers? Most tech companies donate ~0$ to such efforts.

If I was a higher up at FB, I'd consider the risks to me as a business of these issues of polarization, and I'd spend according on advice and evaluation (a lot).

For example, if FB comes to be seen as a kind of mind control platform, that could be devastating as national govts decide to step in and put a stop to things. Imagine even a mid-sized country regulating that FB was responsible for tagging any posts that contained not just Covid-19 misinformation but all sorts of misinformation. That sort of thing could be extremely dangerous to FB's business model.

These sorts of risk in my mind would be very high indeed and I would devote a lot of resources to at the very least understand them. $2M is a drop in the bucket for a company with revenues of $70B for addressing such risk.

(Actually I checked and a bucket contains approx 10K drops, so this is actually surprisingly close to being a drop in the bucket).

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

#817

Post by adrianN »

nradov wrote: post #791
beachy wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to cherry-pick from your reply here, if $2M is the biggest ticket item you have to show for independent research on this topic - then you're woefully short given Facebook's revenues and size. 10 short years ago, nobody could have imagined that huge swathes of the population could have been swayed to accept non-scientific statements as fact because of social media. Now we're struggling to deal with existential th…

10 short years ago, huge swaths of the population were swayed to accept non-scientific statements like eating fat and cholesterol were unhealthy. I don't think Facebook is the problem here. How much exactly do you think Facebook ought to donate to independent researchers? Most tech companies donate ~0$ to such efforts.

Everything social that exists today already existed when humans were still living in trees. That doesn't mean that social media like Facebook can't serve as an amplifier that turns problems from annoyances to existential threats to our society.

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

#818

Post by berdario »

giardini wrote: post #809
egypturnash wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The solution is to nationalize FaceBook (and any site that proves to be similar) and allow everyone free access to it w/o censorship. Give Zuckerberg a $1 for his time and effort. Meahwhile, Google must be split up: e.g., Alphabet can go do AI work as a private corporation but Google Search needs to be nationalized (or split into at least 3 entities - i prefer nationalization). Amazon must be broken up and parts nati…

Ok, but which country would Google Search have to be nationalized into?

The brits won't be happy if Google is nationalized into a french public service

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

#819

Post by ponker »

guy_ro wrote: post #758

Hey, Facebook VP of Integrity here (I work on this stuff). This WSJ story cites old research and falsely suggests we aren’t invested in fighting polarization. The reality is we didn’t adopt some of the product suggestions cited because we pursued alternatives we believed are more effective. What’s undeniable is we’ve made significant changes to the way FB works to improve the integrity of our products, such as fundam…

Potentially useful context: the parent here was the Co-Founder and CEO of Onavo which he sold to Facebook for $120 million. If the name "Onavo" doesn't trigger any bells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo . It was ostensibly a VPN but tracked its users' behavior and Facebook used the data from Onavo to judge how much traffic various startups had when deciding whether to acquire them.

I think that the fact that the founder/CEO of Onavo is now Facebook's VP of Integrity is entirely consistent with everything else we've read about Facebook over the years.

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

#820

Post by adrianN »

DevKoala wrote: post #794
guy_ro wrote: post #758

Hey, Facebook VP of Integrity here (I work on this stuff). This WSJ story cites old research and falsely suggests we aren’t invested in fighting polarization. The reality is we didn’t adopt some of the product suggestions cited because we pursued alternatives we believed are more effective. What’s undeniable is we’ve made significant changes to the way FB works to improve the integrity of our products, such as fundam…

Why are you asking third parties to conduct this research? Why isn’t this an initiative driven by an internal team? Where applications for this program advertised outside of Facebook? Is $2M realistic for this research? I know I wouldn’t be enthused considering my total compensation. Do you expect top quality researchers to apply?

To be honest, I'd be a lot more skeptical if this research weren't done by a third party.
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