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

71–80 of 150 posts

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

#71

Post by fakedang »

irjustin wrote: post #38
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 the top comment has it right. The result is actually an emergent property of "increase attention/engagement to the max". This is actually an algorithmic result that was just one of many possibilities. So, I don't blame the developers 100%. Forest/trees problem. What I do blame is Zuckerberg & the Board's decision to not 180' on the algorithm and lower engagement now that we know this is the result - money & p…

Let's be honest here. Facebook for Zuckerberg is just a political tool for him now. Earlier, he wanted to run for President, which is obviously at severe conflict with the FB board's stated vision. Now he has realized that he can just twist any nation into his image. Money and power, at the end of the day.

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

#72

Post by bananaface »

pjc50 wrote: post #37
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…

The BBC, our nationalised TV producer, has now been explicitly politicised by the government. It's very hard to have a state-owned media enterprise that doesn't end up propping up the status quo.

I would say the BBC is biased towards people holding long-term political office, i.e. the bureaucratic class, not the incumbent party. They're pretty good at bringing the hammer down on representatives.

They were explicitly anti-Brexit, and arguably anti-Corbyn. They're fairly anti-Boris. The common factor is bias against threats to the bureaucracy. It always puzzled me that they could get away with criticizing the people who held power over them, but I think it's just that MPs don't hold much power over them. They're more worried about the branches of government that don't change between elections.

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

#73

Post by foldr »

pjc50 wrote: post #66
nkozyra wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's self evident but Facebook could afford not incentivizing political engagement. It's only fairly recently that this threat vector was exploited. Facebook grew for years without being a disinformation channel.

As we found out when HN tried to ban politics, everything is political.

I don't want to start a meta flamewar, but I don't think HN has ever officially banned political discussion tout court. There's always been a fair amount of it on the site for the past decade, as far as I remember.

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

#74

Post by raxxorrax »

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 don't think so. We didn't have the free market of ideas. Instead we had engagement optimized content. These approaches are completely different. Most other platforms and forums had a free market of ideas and it didn't lead to problems.

edit: Also, the demographic might be relevant.

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

#75

Post by raxxorrax »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
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 Social media is a sufficiently different form of media that it will require its own form of regulation. Pointing to the publisher-editor delineation is anachronistic. Publishers never had the reach, insidiousness and information velocity that Facebook does.

What concrete problem did Facebook cause on that matter?

I don't use facebook, just passively through contacts, but that is very limited. There are opinions that are wrong. But where did it lead to a real problem?

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

#76

Post by cblconfederate »

irjustin wrote: post #38
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 the top comment has it right. The result is actually an emergent property of "increase attention/engagement to the max". This is actually an algorithmic result that was just one of many possibilities. So, I don't blame the developers 100%. Forest/trees problem. What I do blame is Zuckerberg & the Board's decision to not 180' on the algorithm and lower engagement now that we know this is the result - money & p…

I m sure they have performed their experiments.

They know they can't lower engagement, these are positive feedback loops, and attention is a zero-sum economy. If they give up even a tiny bit, they 'll lose out to competitors.

Subjects must remain fixated until the end.

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

#77

Post by izacus »

sveme wrote: post #45
harwoodleon wrote: post #9

It’s baked into the business model. Attention is the main material of the business, however it is gotten. It can’t change. Facebook couldn’t afford for it to change.

That's actually always a good guidance: What's the business model/the aim of a company? Does it align with my own aims and wishes? It's the basic difference between Google/Facebook and Apple. Google/Facebook sells ads, Apple sells hardware. Google/Facebook need to know as much as possible about you to sell more ads. Apple does not. Obviously, these things can change.

If that's true, why did Apple ads start showing in iOS? There's now a promotion for Apples services in iOS 14 settings, we're getting notifications about Apple arcade things, the Apple Ads tracking setting is ON by default and split from 3rd party ad tracking settings...

Not to mention their actions like political censorship (just from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24939717 )

Your narrative fits Apple marketing, but not their actions anymore.

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

#79

Post by jokethrowaway »

albertTJames wrote: post #14

Mercer/Bannon/Trump and co. are super spreaders of misinformation. They happen to also use facebook, but I dont remember any issues of "fake news" in elections pre-2016/brexit. So no, its not inherent to the platform, only to the bad actors on it.

The term wasn't there but the phenomenon was.

Obama was probably the first candidate to win thanks to social media and facebook groups. Partisan Facebook groups post a lot and it's 50% your party's interpretation of reality, 45% outrageous claims, 5% pure fake news. I don't even think the fake news spreading is done maliciously, the groups are probably maintained by radicalised individuals who believe whatever news fit their narrative.

Trump (who often retweets fake news and even retweeted a website similar to the onion, once) equally calls fake news on opposing publications.

Still, I think fake news is a vastly overblown problem. Fake news is merely the scapegoat left wing media use to explain why Trump/Brexit won, even if it's represented so poorly in media. You can call it populism or far right extremism or Nazi, but outside of the rich tech community bubble, outside of universities, poor people want less government not more. The socialist message is lost on them, that's why Trump and Brexit won, despite the media coverage.

If we look at similar cases, like Berlusconi in Italy 30 years ago, it's just a matter of time before Trump understands fixing the government is hard, if not impossible and get caught in some corruption case himself.

The parasitical nature of the state just allow for the state to grow larger until it destroys its host. Spending in the USA is still at record highs.

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

#80

Post by arethuza »

foldr wrote: post #73
pjc50 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we found out when HN tried to ban politics, everything is political.

I don't want to start a meta flamewar, but I don't think HN has ever officially banned political discussion tout court. There's always been a fair amount of it on the site for the past decade, as far as I remember.

The guidelines says the following are off-topic:

"Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."

So I'd say HN explicitly allows some political content as long as it is "interesting".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Post reply on HN