121–130 of 187 posts
Ads are a canard. The earliest non-ad-driven social networks: USENET, mailing lists etc, had the same problems.
One reason why Facebook keeps failing in increasing "meaningful social interaction" could be because they at the same time tries to sell ads. It seems like it would be easy to simply exclude "reshares" from users news feed. They could try to: "Sort by date" and "only posts posted/shared by my friend directly". Personally I think that would remove much of the toxicity. Secondly, simply ban news sites from the platform…
This is a social science experiment with 3 billion guinea pigs. Every time you rerun it, if someone somewhere (and the people connected to them get effected) how many attempts do you get?
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There must be a better word for "enjoy" here.
I think it's called "doomscrolling".
I made a dummy Twitter account to be logged into, that has no friends, just to be able to see links people post. There's no such thing as a dummy Facebook account and I've not looked at anything on Facebook since. The only account there is their shadow account on me, something Twitter has no interest in doing, and which Facebook must do so it can accurately assign accounts to every living human and avoid dummy/sockpuppet accounts.
> 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…
Tabloids knew it decades before Facebook. Nothing new here.
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> As someone in that cohort who was also there for the "glory" days of early FB (when you had to have a college email to sign up), I have to agree that at this point the idea of making friends on FB weirds me out. How? Why? I was a freshman when Facebook was introduced and required a .edu email. I've used it on and off since the beginning. I've made lots of friends there - both local and in other states/countries. It…
I just don't know people that still use Facebook with any regularity. I understand selection bias is at play (I'm inclined to hang out with people like myself, and I think Facebook is a flaming trash-pit). I made friends on Facebook years ago. I felt fundamental changes in both the user-base and use-cases that I don't find enjoyable. I assume most people under the age of 40 feel similarly, and those that don't aren't…
One reason why Facebook keeps failing in increasing "meaningful social interaction" could be because they at the same time tries to sell ads. It seems like it would be easy to simply exclude "reshares" from users news feed. They could try to: "Sort by date" and "only posts posted/shared by my friend directly". Personally I think that would remove much of the toxicity. Secondly, simply ban news sites from the platform…
Agreed. But I think big tech didn't use their power years ago when advertisers started demanding their ads don't appear next to X, where X is the offensive thing/position/etc. Big tech has power but it folded and immediately started policing when this happened. Instead of a united front each of them caved to advertisers and now the content on each platform must be kosher according to the ethics that the platforms' ru…
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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.
Meetup? Am I missing something that FB offered vs Meetup other than user base? (TBH, I never used FB to meet new people, just encourage relationships with people I had met elsewhere and I haven't been on the platform in years)
> 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.
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It feels like this is a core point that's somehow got lost here. There's a lot of assumptions in these discussions that connections and sharing are only good and useful if the results look a certain way. People sharing dog photos: good. Sharing approved mainstream news stories: good. People posting personal politics: bad. People disagreeing with each other: also bad. Etc. But it's a purely subjective take. Maybe our…
The problem I see on FB is less with what people argue about, but how . It feels like people are just saying things at each other trying to "win" an argument. Of course, that's a problem with education, not FB. And I think it's a good thing that it's surfaced on FB. FB can act as toxic behavior multiplier, though.
Indeed, the medium can alter the message. For example, supposedly any extra lag in voice communication makes participants think the other person is angry.
We also see groups that never had close proximity now interacting directly and finding that they disagree pretty strongly on fundamentals.
So there may be ways to facilitate the same discussions, but more productively and humanely. And it simply might not be possible for people with diametrically opposed beliefs to do this -- there may need to be a game of a few layers of telephone, or at least an active moderator as in a formal debate, to help translate meaning and intent across the epistemological divide.