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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

#831

Post by guy_ro »

beachy wrote: post #783
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…

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…

A counter-point to this is that studies show polarization has also fallen in some countries over the past years - including ones where social media (Facebook or otherwise) is popular. Studies also show some of the most polarized segments in the US to be the older population, which uses social media less. We definitely have work to do, but this suggests there are many factors at play.

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

#832

Post by doomrobo »

guy_ro wrote: post #827
fogetti wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

Yep we actually do this! (invite journalists to decision-making meetings). One of our regular meetings is about the content policies, we publish the minutes here - https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/content-standards-forum-mi... - and have also hosted journalists and outside academics from time to time.

It looks like everything after Dec. 11 2018 is slideshows. Is there a link to the minutes of those meetings?

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

#833

Post by fogetti »

guy_ro wrote: post #827
fogetti wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

Yep we actually do this! (invite journalists to decision-making meetings). One of our regular meetings is about the content policies, we publish the minutes here - https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/content-standards-forum-mi... - and have also hosted journalists and outside academics from time to time.

Thanks for the reply. But I am still not convinced. It seems these are watered down versions of outlines of the actual decision making. Which is different from what I am suggesting.

Here is an actual example:

> "• Question: How much will we communicate about this? We usually don't want people to game the Feed but this change might hit their pocketbook so my instinct is to be open about this.

> • Answer: Comms is aware and we will be proactive about communicating this. Inside Feed is one channel we can use to do this. The only way this can happen at the domain level is with full transparency and product is aware we can't do this unless we have that."

So the commitee passed the buck and all the transparency is gone. Also there are no names or responsible persons assigned. And by the way, the words "feed", "news feed" or "ranking" appears only once throughout the span of 4 months. I very much doubt there were no decisions in any form throughout those 4 months regarding the news feed.

So overall this looks to me like pixie dust rather than a true representation or involvement in decision making.

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

#834

Post by anewvillager »

guy_ro wrote: post #827
fogetti wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

Yep we actually do this! (invite journalists to decision-making meetings). One of our regular meetings is about the content policies, we publish the minutes here - https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/content-standards-forum-mi... - and have also hosted journalists and outside academics from time to time.

One of regular meetings.. from 2018? Did you publish minutes from this year?

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

#835

Post by Zandikar »

corporatehobo wrote: post #830
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…

The fact that FB has not banned political ads is pretty shocking and absolutely related to this topic. Twitter managed to do it, but FB continues to allow political parties to spread misinformation via the algorithm, and FB profits from it. So essentially VP of Integrity, your salary is paid for in part by the spread of misinformation. Until you at least ban political ads your integrity is non-existent.

Facebook having a "VP of Integrity" is laughable. They must have workshopped it and discovered "Minister of Truth" was a bit too on the nose.

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

#836

Post by dd36 »

asdff wrote: post #209
dd36 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used newsgroups and message boards long before Facebook. They weren’t as toxic, I’m assuming due to active moderation. The automated or passive or slow moderation is perhaps the issue.

Newsgroups and message boards users of old probably aren't very representative of the populations using Facebook today.

I’m not so sure.

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

#837

Post by aestetix »

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…

I have a few questions about this but I would prefer to ask them privately. Is there a non-twitter way to contact you, such as an email address?

My email address is in my hn bio if you don't want to make that public :)

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

#838

Post by beachy »

guy_ro wrote: post #831
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…

A counter-point to this is that studies show polarization has also fallen in some countries over the past years - including ones where social media (Facebook or otherwise) is popular. Studies also show some of the most polarized segments in the US to be the older population, which uses social media less. We definitely have work to do, but this suggests there are many factors at play.

That is interesting. My take would be that the older population may spend less time on social media (who can compete with a 20 year old with a phone welded to their hand anyway), but that a disproportionate number of these seniors are babes in the wood where technology is concerned, and are more amazed by, believing of, and susceptible to the influence of social media than youngsters who have grown up along with those social media platforms.

Would be very interesting to learn about these countries where polarization has fallen if you have links to hand.

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

#839

Post by dd36 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #220
dd36 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used newsgroups and message boards long before Facebook. They weren’t as toxic, I’m assuming due to active moderation. The automated or passive or slow moderation is perhaps the issue.

I think they weren't as toxic because content creators didn't realize divisive content drives much more engagement. It's not about moderation, it's a paradigm shift in the way content is created.

I disagree. Threads with conflict were among the longest. Only in moderated communities, there are active attempts to reduce conflict.

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

#840

Post by monadic2 »

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…

> We reduce distribution of posts that use divisive and polarizing tactics like clickbait, engagement bait, and we’ve become more restrictive when it comes to the types of Groups we recommend to people.

This seems inherently a political evaluation. What are the criteria and is this driven manually automatically?

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