Does WeChat cause the same problems in China as Facebook & Twitter in the west?
Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
11–20 of 224 posts
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#12Is there a source for the video? I am only seeing an audio clip in this article and I can’t seem to find the video by googling “Max Wang facebook”.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#13I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chanc…
Amen. The thing that's funny is it seems relatively straightforward to measure the positive and negative interactions and promote appropriately and transparently.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#14> "Yaël Eisenstat, Facebook's former election ads integrity lead, said the employees’ concerns reflect her experience at the company, which she believes is on a dangerous path heading into the election. > “All of these steps are leading up to a situation where, come November, a portion of Facebook users will not trust the outcome of the election because they have been bombarded with messages on Facebook preparing the…
Wait, you think a social media company should be in the business of regulating what politicians or people can say about politics? The damning thing is that people believe a corporation should be in charge of deciding acceptable parameters for speech. Some part of this article is spin. You can take a Trump tweet and spin it in a really horrific way if you like. Is Trump calling for laws to be enforced against property…
Facebook's corporate spin on this has been that all calls for them to improve behavior come down to calls for moderation, and I've been a bit sad to see HN (not you specifically, but in all of these discussions) buying into that spin.
There are plenty of ways Facebook could improve that are not moderation, starting with removing the incentives that make the most divisive/controversial speech have the furthest reach.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#15I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chanc…
This is so right. But are you aware of any ideas what to do about this? It seems like everyone has just accepted that‘s the way it is now.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#16Does WeChat cause the same problems in China as Facebook & Twitter in the west?
Obviously there's less open dialogue about it, but I think it's fair to say that it must. The CCP censors it very heavily, sometimes explicitly stating they're trying to prevent rumors and misinformation.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#17I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chanc…
It's more than just the toxicity of the conversations. These vapid online brawls have engaged millions more people to vote who never would have voted in the past.
Hence, introducing an easily swayed group of uneducated voters into the pool, and debasing politics to their level.
If democracy represents the intelligence of the average voter, then engaging literally tens of millions of uneducated/emotional/immature people to vote significantly diminishes the ability of our government to make decisions and/or speak about problems honestly.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#18I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chanc…
The other problem is that the business model of social media is based on generating "engagement" at all costs, so the platforms are built to encourage outrage as it generates lots of engagement, among other addictive behaviors (the infinite "algorithmic" feed for example). Social media was supposed to be a tool that serves people but its current business model encourages it to work against people.
There were plenty of other technologies that could've been used to organize large-scale virtual fight clubs (forums, BBSes, chatrooms, maybe even the telephone) but this didn't happen because nobody actually wanted to foster such toxic behavior.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is extremely predictable though, because a sizable segment of Facebook users did not trust the outcome of the 2016 election. Why would it be any different in 2020?
People trust the outcome generally, whether they like it or hate it. The folks aren't trusting the inputs. 2020 is not 2016. Polling is suggesting a large shift. That may cause distrust in the outcome itself if the outcome doesn't align to polling due to voter suppression efforts and other possible issues.
Just saying, only ~1/3 of the population votes. These elections are already illegitimate if you believe that they're supposed to express some kind of will of the majority. Additionally, the only areas of real contestation are suburban areas filled with reactionaries and relatively wealthy people. Dems have a lock on cities, Rs have a lock on rural areas.
EDIT: Those of you downvoting, I think it's amusing that you think that clicking a button on a website will make this idea disappear, because I'm just stating reality. Try thinking about why America is so messed up if you're scared by de-legitimizing the elections system.
Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built
#20I think the idea is we need diversity in online social media. I'd like to see human editors come back.
Here's how Benjamin Franklin dealt with his social media platform:
"In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place... "