Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 150 posts

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#51

Post by kapuasuite »

cryptica wrote: post #5

Facebook needs to be nationalized and regulated as a public utility. It's outrageous that this hasn't already happened. How much more election meddling do they need to get away with before everyone understands that this is necessary? At this stage, all remaining Facebook investors are deeply immoral individuals. All the reasonable moral individuals have already cashed out. The government should just screw over the re…

We should do that right after nationalizing every cellphone provider for letting their customers call each other and lie.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#53

Post by Dansvidania »

beagle3 wrote: post #44
Dansvidania wrote: post #13

People spread misinformation on Facebook. Arguably, it's not Facebook's responsibility to fact-check anything. Facebook is not a publishing house (at least not the Facebook social media platform as such) and mandating that they fact check and curate their ads and content is tricky business. It requires a legal definition of truth, which is a matter complex enough to justify the existence of the whole judiciary system…

Facebook selects and controls what users see. Facebook chooses to promote disinformation over your friend’s cat pictures because it drives more engagements and thus more money. They are totally responsible for that content, even if this is an emergent property of optimizing for money algorithmically aNd no explicit editorializing takes place. Their users may be dumb f&cks[0] but Facebook is not a dumb pipe. [0] Zucke…

I also do not like the fact that Facebook "optimizes" the content shown to users, and would rather just have no Algorithm at all, but that seems to me like a different (although possibly related) problem.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#54

Post by beagle3 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #21
Yuioup wrote: post #10

Facebook should be taken offline a week before the election.

So... I shouldn't talk to family overseas during this time or find another way to do it? Or everyone not living in the US should not have facebook before an American election? It would seem to be more prudent to disallow political ads the week before. Or make it a crime to, say, spread wrong information about voting. And so on.

You are facebook’s product. It’s ok to say “Facebook cannot sell any products for a few days” for some reasons. Lockdowns slowed covid. Facebook limits will Possibly slow riots.

Ask for your money back if you are inconvenienced.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#56

Post by Maarten88 »

Dansvidania wrote: post #13

People spread misinformation on Facebook. Arguably, it's not Facebook's responsibility to fact-check anything. Facebook is not a publishing house (at least not the Facebook social media platform as such) and mandating that they fact check and curate their ads and content is tricky business. It requires a legal definition of truth, which is a matter complex enough to justify the existence of the whole judiciary system…

> Facebook is not a publishing house (at least not the Facebook social media platform as such) and mandating that they fact check and curate their ads and content is tricky business.

This is not by force of nature; this is the result of laws and policies that people created and that can be changed. The safe harbor provisions that exempts internet service providers from liability for user generated content created the circumstances that led to the creation and growth of huge companies like Facebook. But it doesn't have to be that way: in another world where all publishers (internet or other) would be liable for all content on their platform, companies like Facebook would never have existed, we'd probably have many smaller and more local publishers, economically less efficient but having much less of the current disinformation problems.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#57

Post by tester34 »

sgdesign wrote: post #7

One thing I still don’t quite understand is how a system like this one can develop when the people developing it almost certainly are completely opposed to these ideas on a personal political level. I almost feel like it was an excess of idealism and belief in “the free market of ideas” -as well as the idea that Facebook should remain a neutral party at all cost- that led to overcompensating in the wrong direction, a…

I think professionals should be able to separate work and their private life.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#58

Post by code_sloth »

Dansvidania wrote: post #13

People spread misinformation on Facebook. Arguably, it's not Facebook's responsibility to fact-check anything. Facebook is not a publishing house (at least not the Facebook social media platform as such) and mandating that they fact check and curate their ads and content is tricky business. It requires a legal definition of truth, which is a matter complex enough to justify the existence of the whole judiciary system…

In the "old" days, people had to actively look for or click through to get misinformation on platforms. Facebook's algorithm now shoves posts into user's feed, which is optimized for engagement. We're all seeing now where that has led, and it's not going to get any better if nothing changes.

Facebook keeps hiding behind the claim that they are a neutral platform when their own man made algorithm optimizes user feeds for ad/content delivery to maximize profit. Whether the developers meant to or not, that algorithm has actively spread and amplified misinformation, even polarizing entire nations.

If facebook cannot tame (identifying "truth") what they have made (their algorithmic feed), they should kill it. It does not matter if this taming is possible or not, because they do have the ability to terminate the algorithm.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#59

Post by Dansvidania »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #22
Dansvidania wrote: post #13

People spread misinformation on Facebook. Arguably, it's not Facebook's responsibility to fact-check anything. Facebook is not a publishing house (at least not the Facebook social media platform as such) and mandating that they fact check and curate their ads and content is tricky business. It requires a legal definition of truth, which is a matter complex enough to justify the existence of the whole judiciary system…

Ads are different to the things people post on social media. Facebook can’t moderate and fact check ads? Why not? Because it would cost them too much of their 17billion dollar revenue? Boohoo

Because that allows the people in charge to censorship ads with the excuse of fact checking, for one.
Post reply on HN