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Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#41

Post by OneEyedRobot »

strict9 wrote: post #16

> Company researchers discovered that publishers and political parties were reorienting their posts toward outrage and sensationalism. That tactic produced high levels of comments and reactions that translated into success on Facebook. This is why The Daily Wire and other such outrage aggregators are consistently on Facebook's Top 10. Not coincidentally, it's also been the source of fuel for the anti-vaccine movement…

I'd love to talk to the folks that work at the outrage porn outlets. Are they true believers doing whatever it takes? Actually think they print news? Just in it for the money?

How honed is the writing and how is that done? How do advertisers (the point of the exercise after all) respond? How has it all changed over time? How do people become writers, how much of it is done programatically?

It's a small thing, but something I'm struck by is how little international news is out there anymore.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#42

Post by Invictus0 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #34
VortexDream wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unfollowed everybody, joined a bunch of local special interest groups and met a ton of new people who lived in the same city. Facebook is actually an incredible tool to connect with other people. But the more I saw how FB behaved, the less I wanted to be involved in any way with their business. I ended up deleting my FB account, which even now 3 years later I feel was a huge loss for me. But I just can't do FB anym…

It is supposed to make you feel that way. That is on FB's agenda to achieve, in order to bind you to their (dis-)services. Real friends will not require you to use FB and sacrifice your privacy to communicate with them. You might feel a loss, but there are alternative ways of communicating. Get as many friends as possible over to messengers, which are not owned by FB. Give people a call every now and then. Write them…

People still use FB marketplace and events. If you can't be reached on events, many times you simply won't be invited.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#44

Post by VortexDream »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #34
VortexDream wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unfollowed everybody, joined a bunch of local special interest groups and met a ton of new people who lived in the same city. Facebook is actually an incredible tool to connect with other people. But the more I saw how FB behaved, the less I wanted to be involved in any way with their business. I ended up deleting my FB account, which even now 3 years later I feel was a huge loss for me. But I just can't do FB anym…

It is supposed to make you feel that way. That is on FB's agenda to achieve, in order to bind you to their (dis-)services. Real friends will not require you to use FB and sacrifice your privacy to communicate with them. You might feel a loss, but there are alternative ways of communicating. Get as many friends as possible over to messengers, which are not owned by FB. Give people a call every now and then. Write them…

I guess you missed the part about meeting new people? I'm in contact with people I know over other apps. But there's no replacement for that discoverability of local groups and events or facilitating the meeting with new people.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#45

Post by fortuna86 »

VortexDream wrote: post #14
mzkply wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I in the super-minority if I say I've unfollowed about 80% of my FB friends? I've never seen a political or outrage post in the last 3 years since I just unfollowed everyone but my closest friends and family.

I unfollowed everybody, joined a bunch of local special interest groups and met a ton of new people who lived in the same city. Facebook is actually an incredible tool to connect with other people. But the more I saw how FB behaved, the less I wanted to be involved in any way with their business. I ended up deleting my FB account, which even now 3 years later I feel was a huge loss for me. But I just can't do FB anym…

> Facebook is actually an incredible tool to connect with other people.

I guess you have to be a certain age, being < 40 you aren't going to meet anyone on FB anymore.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#46

Post by nixpulvis »

mzkply wrote: post #6
maxfurman wrote: post #3

> Data scientists on that integrity team—whose job is to improve the quality and trustworthiness of content on the platform—worked on a number of potential changes to curb the tendency of the overhauled algorithm to reward outrage and lies. Mr. Zuckerberg resisted some of the proposed fixes, the documents show, because he was worried they might hurt the company’s other objective—making users engage more with Facebook…

Am I in the super-minority if I say I've unfollowed about 80% of my FB friends? I've never seen a political or outrage post in the last 3 years since I just unfollowed everyone but my closest friends and family.

I deleted it becuase it was easier to not manage it than it was to be forced to deal with it.

The benefits absolutely did not outweigh the consequences. But, just like any lifestyle change, it took a while to notice all the ways it affected my life.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#47

Post by dntrkv »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #34
VortexDream wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unfollowed everybody, joined a bunch of local special interest groups and met a ton of new people who lived in the same city. Facebook is actually an incredible tool to connect with other people. But the more I saw how FB behaved, the less I wanted to be involved in any way with their business. I ended up deleting my FB account, which even now 3 years later I feel was a huge loss for me. But I just can't do FB anym…

It is supposed to make you feel that way. That is on FB's agenda to achieve, in order to bind you to their (dis-)services. Real friends will not require you to use FB and sacrifice your privacy to communicate with them. You might feel a loss, but there are alternative ways of communicating. Get as many friends as possible over to messengers, which are not owned by FB. Give people a call every now and then. Write them…

> If you are not worth the "trouble" or effort in their eyes, then good riddance, you do not need them.

Relationships are a spectrum, and your friends move around on that spectrum over time. Social media gives you the ability to maintain some kind of connection to people even though maybe at a certain point in time, those friends are distant from you on the spectrum. But that can change at any moment and having that line of communication makes it that much easier to reconnect at any given moment.

Sending a text or calling someone randomly is not always easy to do, especially if it's someone you haven't spoken to in a while. Whereas commenting on a post or replying to a story has much less friction and can result in reconnecting with people you otherwise wouldn't.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#48

Post by fortuna86 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #39
rflec028 wrote: post #19

wsj.com is not a trustworthy news source and should not be posted.

You're thinking of their opinion section. The reporting is solid.

Which is another argument for scrapping the opinion section of every newspaper, it confuses people.

But they keep it for the same reason FB doesn't turn down their own volume, angry people make for better customers.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#49

Post by OneEyedRobot »

strict9 wrote: post #32
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't get me started on how Twitter consistently pushes those "influencers" on the left to the top of the trending feed. "Duty to Warn", "Palmer Report", "Gravel Institute", "BrooklynDad", and others. In many ways I feel like those smug hot-takes are even more corrosive than what the Daily Wire does.

We are in agreement. "engagement" is a plague that brings out the worst of all sides of the political spectrum. But worse than political rhetoric is the proliferation and promotion of medical misinformation. It's resulting in the deaths of thousands of people who were duped into believing the vaccines are part of some sort of conspiracy and that bogus treatments are the only thing that work.

>the proliferation and promotion of medical misinformation.

I can see that working both ways. The anti-vax folks are never going to believe the 'get vaccinated or you'll die' sort of rhetoric. Better to use real numbers. There's been enough time and cases to make good estimates.

Do masks work very well? What kinds of masks? Where do people actually get COVID (home? bars? schools? hiking in the forest?). What are the actual results from non-vax drugs or treatments? How long are the vaccinations likely to be useful? Did early large-scale vaccination simply cause forced evolution of variants?

There's a shroud of mystery throughout this situation with a need by some people to simply shout down to the masses. None of this is that complicated and medical leadership is some mixture of secretive and incompetent, and I'm not sure what the strongest tendency is.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#50

Post by OneEyedRobot »

Pxtl wrote: post #37
badRNG wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? Content here seems pretty reasonable most of the time.

WSJ's editorial pages have a long and storied history of supporting conservative positions that are utterly disconnected from reality, for example on climate change or the Iraq war. These are not trivial matters that we should quickly forgive them over.

>These are not trivial matters that we should quickly forgive them over.

Just imagine the fun you'll have when you start kicking them out of helicopters. The endorphin rush should be incredible.

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