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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

#911

Post by baq »

industriousthou wrote: post #676
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…

I mean Facebook doesn't really decide what content I see, I do. I aggressively police my timeline and unfollow people who post garbage content. I don't really need an AI to do that for me...

do you cross-validate what the algorithm serves to you with full timelines of people you follow? how do you do that?

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

#912

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

creato wrote: post #891
nradov wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. That's a horrible example, I don't think that is even remotely comparable to swaying the population into burning down dozens (hundreds?) of cell towers or accusing Bill Gates of starting the coronavirus pandemic.

So, pretty much every new medium in history has been accused of formenting conspiracies at one point or the other.

The core issue here is that the internet allows many, many voices to flourish, and some of these voices speculate attractively but incorrectly (from my viewpoint, at least).

Blaming the platform which allows the voices to spread seems like a bad move, given that the core issue is the people who choose to go along with it.

The only way in which I can assume that FB is responsible for all the alternative theories on their platform is by refusing to accept any agency on the part of FB's users, which I think is probably the wrong idea.

As an example, right now you are promoting a narrative on an internet site holding FB responsible for the behaviour of others. Do your readers have so little agency that they will mindlessly act on your words without reflection?

If so, what differentiates your post from a similar post on FB?

If not, what makes FB different?

These are genuine questions by the way, I'm actually interested in your answers.

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

#913

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

beachy wrote: post #816
nradov wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

This already exists, in Singapore. See for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50613341

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

#914

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

guy_ro wrote: post #873
guy_ro wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w26669

A freely available version of this paper can be found here: https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/cross-polar.pdf

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

#915

Post by square_usual »

2019-nCoV wrote: post #908
creato wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are knowingly missing the point. Nutritional experts disagreed among themselves, and probably still do. Is there even a single 5G engineer that will take up the cause of 5G causing coronavirus? How about an immunologist that will claim Bill Gates is trying to inject people with microchips delivered in vaccines?

Which is why it's a non-sequitur. Any well-adjusted adult with a modicum of common sense can see through such claims. Cults and conspiracies flourished long before FB's existence, as they will after. Removing such content just validates it in their minds — it must be true that's why "the corporations" insist on covering it up! Most of the west has learnt that we should not penalise drug addicts. We treat the underlyi…

> Cults and conspiracies flourished long before FB's existence, as they will after

The problem is that Facebook's algorithms are directly helping those cults grow by polarising people, as stated in the linked article:

> Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for their growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”

I'm sure we can all agree that you can't end all cults, but surely actively encouraging their growth is a bad idea.

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

#916

Post by square_usual »

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.

> I don't think Facebook is the problem here.

Facebook's researchers seemed to think otherwise:

> Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for [extremist groups'] growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”

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

#917

Post by dkersten »

mola wrote: post #910
rat9988 wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why should we trust you to conduct or fund it properly? You are welcome to conduct research or fund it. You can even help current research by criticizing their research in its substance, or engage yourself politically (at least by voting) so we can have more and better research about the topic.

I do, but that's irrelevant to the fact the corporate funded research is used to muddy the waters and make reality even less accessible than it is. It's not the lack of research that's a problem, it's the weaponization of research.

So, what’s the solution?

How do you think Facebook should deal with this? If Facebook-funded research is suspect and nobody else is able or willing to fund it (why should someone else fund soemthing for Facebooks potential benefit, when Facebook are rich, and if someone else is funding research for Facebooks detriment, then I would say its equally suspect), how should such research be funded then?

How can you show results of the research in a way that you wouldn’t consider as “weaponized”?

I’m not a fan of Facebook and am quite suspicious of them, but I’m also not sure what they can do in this particular situation that we would find satisfactory,

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

#918

Post by cheschire »

rmrfstar wrote: post #902
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…

> Criticism and scrutiny are always welcome Genuine question here. We have entered an era in which non-state actors like Facebook have power that was once the exclusive domain of governments [1]. Facebook understands this, and justifiably views itself as a quasi-government [2]. I would really like to understand Facebook’s theory of governance. If I want to understand my own government, I can read the Federalist paper…

So tethics then?

https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/silicon-valley-recap-season-...

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

#919

Post by grishka »

mikestaub wrote: post #756
grishka wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is indeed the problem of discovery that Mastodon doesn't feel like addressing. Like, you pick a server, make an account and now what ? There's no way to bring your existing social graph with you. Even if your friends are there, you won't ever find them without asking each and every one about their username@domain. But I have some ideas on fixing that for my fediverse project — like making a DHT out of instance…

I agree this is the main problem with ActivityPub, can you elaborate on your DHT idea? I'm thinking of doing something similar. How can the search be fast if the data is on many nodes, will you store the cache on a single instance and update it on some interval?

To be honest, I haven't really explored this yet, it's just that DHT feels like the most sensible approach. It's a rather ambitious project and I'm currently making the core functionality work (and interoperate with Mastodon where applicable). I'll probably do a Show HN post at some point.

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

#920

Post by [deleted] »

cheschire wrote: post #918
rmrfstar wrote: post #902

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Criticism and scrutiny are always welcome Genuine question here. We have entered an era in which non-state actors like Facebook have power that was once the exclusive domain of governments [1]. Facebook understands this, and justifiably views itself as a quasi-government [2]. I would really like to understand Facebook’s theory of governance. If I want to understand my own government, I can read the Federalist paper…

So tethics then? https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/silicon-valley-recap-season-...

[deleted]
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