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Mark in the Middle

theverge.com

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#11

Post by ForHackernews »

joejohnson wrote: post #2

Interesting how they reiterate over and over how right-wing media proliferates on the platform but imply that centrist/liberal propaganda does not. Is there evidence of this?

Yes, there is at least some anecdotal evidence: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/how-mace...

> Earlier in the year, some in Veles experimented with left-leaning or pro–Bernie Sanders content, but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/24/facebook-... https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/

Re: Mark in the Middle

#12

Post by agloeregrets »

roenxi wrote: post #6
jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

Although a follow up would be the comforting level of maturity in Facebook's leadership, acknowledging that it isn't their role to bring politics into the workplace. It is distressingly refreshing to see a company in the news for taking a stance like "In my work with Joel, I’ve found him to be ... very rigorous and principled in his thinking [and therefore I'm happy to work with him despite being a Republican]". It r…

Yes and no. There are lines that can be crossed and defending a line-crosser is political.

This isn’t really a new line of thinking for Zuck, he has had to defend boards stacked with far more right members than typical in the valley for a long time. Peter Theil comes to mind along with their news chief from Bribart.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#13

Post by Miner49er »

joejohnson wrote: post #2

Interesting how they reiterate over and over how right-wing media proliferates on the platform but imply that centrist/liberal propaganda does not. Is there evidence of this?

Article about it, with some data backing it up:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/how-facebook-became-...

They censor anti-racists:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-whil...

AFAIK their new News tab has far-right publications like Breitbart, but no leftist publications.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#14

Post by luckylion »

agloe_dreams wrote: post #10
joejohnson wrote: post #2

Interesting how they reiterate over and over how right-wing media proliferates on the platform but imply that centrist/liberal propaganda does not. Is there evidence of this?

For what it is worth, it’s been shown that the most popular and most shared posts for years have been basically 80% extreme conservative ones. See here: https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?s=21 That said, this is no defense of left wing propaganda. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, just that by the numbers Facebook is mostly right wing users and that extreme right wing material is more popular. Interestingly the popula…

> by the numbers Facebook is mostly right wing users and that extreme right wing material is more popular.

Is that the case, or is it just that the extreme right wing posts get more traction than other posts. Like, are the extreme right wing posts more popular than all other posts combined, or are they getting e.g. on average 10 likes where other posts only get 7?

The source on Twitter seems to only look at pages (i.e. curated content), not what people share. Since they're doing it manually according to the bio, the sample must be pretty small.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#15

Post by SiempreViernes »

jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

Who are these people they "serve"? Surely you don't imply that Facebook is a user driven website? One look at how they handle UI changes tells you that any claims to "serve" the users is extremely hollow.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#16

Post by coldcode »

roenxi wrote: post #6
jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

Although a follow up would be the comforting level of maturity in Facebook's leadership, acknowledging that it isn't their role to bring politics into the workplace. It is distressingly refreshing to see a company in the news for taking a stance like "In my work with Joel, I’ve found him to be ... very rigorous and principled in his thinking [and therefore I'm happy to work with him despite being a Republican]". It r…

Nothing remarkable in a company that makes lawnmowers.

Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think because so many view it as a source of truth. Doing it for money, or doing it for power, is essentially the same thing. If you are in position to manipulate the truth for benefits to you or your friends in high places you will, and he is.

If I worked at Facebook and felt the CEO was twisting truth for money, I'd leave, but the bribe to work there is so high.

If Zuckerberg truly was not a dictator wannabe, he'd give up voting control of the company, but of course he won't.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#17

Post by ppod »

Miner49er wrote: post #13
joejohnson wrote: post #2

Interesting how they reiterate over and over how right-wing media proliferates on the platform but imply that centrist/liberal propaganda does not. Is there evidence of this?

Article about it, with some data backing it up: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/how-facebook-became-... They censor anti-racists: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-whil... AFAIK their new News tab has far-right publications like Breitbart, but no leftist publications.

"White men are so fragile," she fired off, "

Not everyone would see that as anti-racism

Re: Mark in the Middle

#18

Post by henearkr »

This aligns with how I have always seen Facebook, in contrast to Google for example.

In their business plan Google (now Alphabet) favors a "greater good" for society rather than purely revenue optimization, whereas Facebook centers on the revenue and does not shy away morally doubtful decisions (like selling user data without regard for their anonymity, which Google avoids by restricting sensitive access to closed-loop algorithms).

And that makes sense in that Google historically (and still now) favors attracting talents and great minds (who lean leftwards) to work in its teams, to build the best technology, whereas Facebook tries to focus on its market, and how to please users (quite 50/50 politically) as well as business partners (maybe rather revenue-focused guys than socially responsible guys).

Both approaches make sense, but I do prefer the Google approach.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#19

Post by C1sc0cat »

roenxi wrote: post #6
jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

Although a follow up would be the comforting level of maturity in Facebook's leadership, acknowledging that it isn't their role to bring politics into the workplace. It is distressingly refreshing to see a company in the news for taking a stance like "In my work with Joel, I’ve found him to be ... very rigorous and principled in his thinking [and therefore I'm happy to work with him despite being a Republican]". It r…

Well that's due to the entryist take over of the republican party by far right - this is no long the party of Lincoln Esinhower or even Nixon.

What sensible business leaders should have down was to put a stop to this - and freeze out the ultra hard line rightist's as they are poisoning the well for them.

A bit like how in the 50's when the communists wanted to take over some large UK unions moderate Unions work with MI5

Re: Mark in the Middle

#20

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

Whatever you think of the opinion of some of the employees regarding FB's stance towards politics, they're just never going to get their way without a union. It's exactly right that FB is a monarchy and what we see here are akin to the political challenges you'd read about in a monarchy. The small collective actions seem to be a good step in that direction but still much, much smaller than you'd need to form a union. We've seen recent unionization efforts in professional occupations that are shrinking - media & academia mainly. But I'm not sure political mishandling or ethical concerns about data are enough to overcome the fact that tech is growing and paying good wages. People need some self-interest at stake before they make the leap to something risky like that so we'll probably keep seeing this sort of employee flailing, be it leaks or small group actions or what have you.
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