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By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?
By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?
By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?
No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our abili…
These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our abili…
In what ways would Facebook be different had they followed that science?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case it's appropriate to hate the player. There is nothing in the ad revenue ecosystem which requires indulgence in or tolerance for sociopathic, amoral, unethical, or duplicitous behavior. Complicity. Complacency. Collusion. That's what participation is today. Ignorance may no longer be pleaded.
You're implicitly arguing that Facebook should be a censor. Censoring at scale is a fool's errand. Change the incentive structure. Make Facebook operate by subscription, make timelines linear, etc. You'll never stop people from spreading dumb shit online, but you can stop it being willfully propagated to maximize engagement.
By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?
No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our abili…
Yeah—imagine the concern people would probably more readily voice if the same "move fast and break things" approach were applied to, for example, malignant tumour resection surgery, all while reaping massive financial profits. (Whoops there goes another one...)
At the outset of the company you could say that it was just naïveté. That can't really be said anymore.
> Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the waste. It’s an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.
Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weapons-bad level, he became the comic book villain that we know today.
Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player, hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc. Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure (personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.
The game is shit, yeah. But so's this anyone who enthusiastically said "yes, I would like to find ways to monetize people's desire to talk with each other, and do not care in the least if this involves being paid to spread disinformation, or making ad view money off of pushing people towards insane viewpoints".
Yes, this includes Google. This includes Twitter. This includes every damn online service that decides its primary customer is advertisers, not users.