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Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

theatlantic.com

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Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#11

Post by OminousWeapons »

blakesterz wrote: post #4

Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I've read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I've never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don't think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots/fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doi…

The solution to some of these problems is obvious: ban collection of data for advertising purposes and ban targeted, cross platform advertising. You would still be allowed to advertise, but ads would have to function like magazine ads effectively where the only targeting is by site interest. This would force these social media companies (and many others) to change their business model and actually charge users directly for services which would not only shrink the user base but would make running a bot farm increasingly unaffordable at scale.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#12

Post by MR4D »

FB has turned into the Paperclip Maximizer [0]. The question I have is what do we do when we recognize that there is a paperclip maximizer among us. This is a pattern that is new with internet technology, and we’ve never had to deal with before.

I would also argue that Google Search with its SEO crap has also become a paperclip maximizer (or at least on its way to becoming one).

As a civilization, we need to start thinking about it like this before we destroy ourselves.

[0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#13

Post by m12k »

gfody wrote: post #7
blakesterz wrote: post #4

Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I've read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I've never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don't think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots/fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doi…

> Those people will be highly incentivized not if we don't incentivize them - we just need a social media platform to not be an advertisement platform

What if we got rid of "sharing"? Like, what if I could only read posts by my direct contacts, but there was no way for ads or posts from "friends of friends" (e.g. the bot that my conspiracy-obsessed uncle follows) to show up in my feed? Limit the reach of bots and echo chambers.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#14

Post by nobody9999 »

gfody wrote: post #7
blakesterz wrote: post #4

Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I've read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I've never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don't think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots/fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doi…

> Those people will be highly incentivized not if we don't incentivize them - we just need a social media platform to not be an advertisement platform

>not if we don't incentivize them - we just need a social media platform to not be an advertisement platform

Which is why we need to make decentralized, federated, non-commercial social networks dead simple to set up and use (shameless plug[0]).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270070

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#15

Post by claydavisss »

blakesterz wrote: post #4

Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I've read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I've never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don't think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots/fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doi…

Of course in the eyes of The Atlantic, New York Times etc, the "solution" is for "the correct people" to provide "approved viewpoints".

Surely this is what the world needs - sanitized, selectively edited neoliberal pablum.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#16

Post by earthboundkid »

runawaybottle wrote: post #9
gfody wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those people will be highly incentivized not if we don't incentivize them - we just need a social media platform to not be an advertisement platform

Again, this is just thinking about the problem incorrectly. You think people are vain, reactionary, signaling-obsessed, shallow and gossipy because Facebook put a fucking ad system on their website?

No, but FB/Twitter promote people who are vain, etc. because they drive traffic.

In a system like Google Reader or FB/Twitter before algorithmic feeds, you just see what your friends post in roughly chronological order. It still has the problem that people like to post junk, but there's a natural limit on it. Algorithmic feeds however promote "hot" content, which is pretty much inevitably emotionally driven. There are a lot of possible fixes, such as rate limiters and manual review of high performing content, but they all come down to the same thing: don't let sheer virality be the driving metric. The best way to decouple virality is just to make advertising against algorithmic feeds illegal.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#17

Post by trident5000 »

YouTube has just as much of a monopoly in its category if not more than Facebook (with similar influence over society) yet we dont see the level of regular attacks (I'm not here to defend either, I'm a critic, but just pointing this out). Facebook total users: about 2.7 billion (with probably 80% dominance in its category). YouTube: about 2 billion but with a ~95% video stream dominance. The difference seems to be in the politics. I don't see the Atlantic or peers coming down on YouTubes dominance and influence.

Edit: As others have pointed out in here the difference might also be financial. Facebook publishes news articles and YouTube does not. A broken up Facebook offers a fractured publishing market and better pricing for news distribution.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#18

Post by matthewdgreen »

blakesterz wrote: post #4

Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I've read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I've never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don't think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots/fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doi…

This is the kind of writing that seems hyperbolic until you actually think about what's at stake. I think if you give serious consideration to the global implications of a worst-case civic outcome in the United States -- the world's largest economic and nuclear power -- you realize that terrible outcomes are possible, and maybe even likely.

I mean it's not like the bad outcomes are theoretical here. We've grown up in a blessed time, but we have relatively recent examples of how civic dysfunction can lead to genocide and massive world wars. The risk this time is similar except that (1) political destabilization is visibly happening in many nations at once, and (2) the tools of warfare and genocide are orders-of-magnitude more powerful.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#19

Post by soupfordummies »

blakesterz wrote: post #4

Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I've read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I've never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don't think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots/fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doi…

The fix is easy and it's simple -- stop using them! Normalize it. Encourage others to do the same. Make it "cool" to not be on them/"lame" to use them.

I struggle to see how personal FB/IG/Twitter use is anything other than a net negative at this point. And it's gotten a lot more so over the last several years, IMO.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#20

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

MR4D wrote: post #12

FB has turned into the Paperclip Maximizer [0]. The question I have is what do we do when we recognize that there is a paperclip maximizer among us. This is a pattern that is new with internet technology, and we’ve never had to deal with before. I would also argue that Google Search with its SEO crap has also become a paperclip maximizer (or at least on its way to becoming one). As a civilization, we need to start th…

> It has one simple goal of maximizing the number of paperclips; human life, learning, joy, and so on are not specified as goals.

Replace paperclips with dollars and you’ve got Facebook.

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