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A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

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Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#181
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see you stare that Billion Dollars in the eye and say 'no thank you, these are my principles'. Bonus points if you can do it with your spouse and children by your side.

Instagram did that. However for social networks you make money from ads, so they’re rotten in a different way.

What do you mean? Instagram was bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 Billion. So they literally looked the billion dollars in the eye and said "OK!"

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are, but the blame has to be shared, too. In many cases the algorithm is being reinforced by your and everyone's actions. It may not even necessarily be specifically trying to prioritize polarizing content: that just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference. I've used YouTube for many hours per day for several years. I've almost never seen a single…

That is, until you click even accidentally on a single outrage clickbait video, then youtube would immediately suggest at least 20 other videoa of the same kind and you have to click “not interested” to videos for several weeks until your feed is sane again. And IME, it doesn’t even have to be videos watched by most of the people, but a subset of “power users” who binge certain kind of videos are over represented on…

>That is, until you click even accidentally on a single outrage clickbait video, then youtube would immediately suggest at least 20 other videoa of the same kind and you have to click “not interested” to videos for several weeks until your feed is sane again.

For me it takes a single round of a few "Not interested" clicks. Definitely not weeks, or even days.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are, but the blame has to be shared, too. In many cases the algorithm is being reinforced by your and everyone's actions. It may not even necessarily be specifically trying to prioritize polarizing content: that just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference. I've used YouTube for many hours per day for several years. I've almost never seen a single…

No, it’s being driven by the lowest common denominator for engagement, which is distinct from personal preferences. For a self-contained example, spam in large Facebook groups always rises to the top, because many people comment asking it to be deleted, causing the algorithm to show it to more people, some of which comment, until a moderator finally kills the post. These kinds of side effects do not happen in a votin…

For Facebook groups, yes, this is a big problem. That's one reason why I don't use Facebook. For one's personal feed, I don't think the same issue necessarily applies.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#184

Love the use of the term "inauthentic". They cannot say "fake" anymore.

It's also a clever little bit of legal CYA. Coordinated inauthentic behavior' = fake accounts amplifying things. Actual extremists posting on main and organizing on FB? A-OK as long as they exercise a bare minimum of discretion and avoid discussing specific illegal activities.

Extremism itself is a vacuous term and normative. Anyone calling for the end of segregation, the end of aparthiad or for gay marriage was once "extremist". So yes it is perfectly A-OK for actual extremists operating under a bare minimium of discretion.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are, but the blame has to be shared, too. In many cases the algorithm is being reinforced by your and everyone's actions. It may not even necessarily be specifically trying to prioritize polarizing content: that just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference. I've used YouTube for many hours per day for several years. I've almost never seen a single…

> just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference No, it's the content that other people engage with. Disregarding the whole "engagement is a good metric of how much you want to see something" bullshit, if you served me food based on what other people like to eat, it would be a weird mix of gluten free vegan stuff, and also coke, pizza and doritos. I don…

That just hasn't been my experience with Twitter or YouTube. (I don't use Facebook or other things.) I agree that would be very annoying if it happened to me, but for some reason it just doesn't seem to. I probably watch so many videos that it's just picked up my preferences well.

I do want to see what other videos are watched by large numbers of people who've watched things I've already watched. That's how I discover new and interesting things. I've found tons of great content that way, and pretty much no clickbaity or LCD / popular crap seeps in (maybe once every few months, but the "Not interested" immediately takes care of it). I don't know how common my experience is.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are, but the blame has to be shared, too. In many cases the algorithm is being reinforced by your and everyone's actions. It may not even necessarily be specifically trying to prioritize polarizing content: that just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference. I've used YouTube for many hours per day for several years. I've almost never seen a single…

Sorry but this is a very naive view of human psychology. The Social Dilemma on Netflix does a good job of explaining why asking people to just exert more willpower is not the solution.

Maybe it is. I just am repulsed by stuff like that and try to get it out of my sight whenever possible. I figure most of HN is the same way. It pretty much never appears on any of my feeds, since I don't hesitate to click the "Not interested" button on the rare occasions it appears.

I'll watch that film, though.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#187
post #99

Facebook itself, the corporation, is global political manipulation. Both https://joebiden.info/ and https://kamalaharris.info/ are blocked on Facebook, and on Instagram which is owned by Facebook. The block is silently applied to private messages on Instagram, with the sender seeing it go out but the recipient never getting it. Facebook isn't turning a blind eye. Facebook is actively participating, by purposely block…

Every .info domain I've ever seen in my life has been a spam site. I didn't click the link because of that preconceived notion and opted to google it instead. And of course, this is the tagline: > Creepy Uncle Joe Biden is back and ready to take a hands-on approach to America's problems! Sure enough, it's a spam site.

Spam? Words have meaning. Spam is not normally defined as political commentary.

OK, you don't like the content. That's fine.

Did you get it in an unsolicited email, fax, text message, phone call, or other intrusive communication? Unless it did, it is not spam.

The video is worth watching. It's silent and short, probably animated GIF files, just showing actual stuff that has been on things like C-SPAN.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be contradicted, but it's very hard to definitively refute them in a way that will convince somebody who wishes to believe it. Even people without a stake in it will often conclude, "I heard X, I heard Y, sounds to me like it could go either way." If anything, they're taken in by how short and empirical those statements are: it makes them seem more true because after all, if it were false I'd see the evidenc…

> "I heard X, I heard Y, sounds to me like it could go either way." Still an improvement compared to "I heard X", which is the default with radio and books.

I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods.

Obviously that doesn't always work, but social media makes it effectively impossible. Not only do you have official sources of propaganda, you live in a swamp of anecdotes that are impossible to refute or contextualize. The radio says "Group X is bad", and you yourself may never have had any trouble with X, but a flood of "X did [bad-thing] to me" stories on social media can make you think that you've got personal exposure to it.

Ultimately, I believe the problem rests with the individuals who are willing to be manipulated. The human organism has a massive security hole that has been very well exploited, and I've got no idea how to patch it. No amount of coherent, cogent argument will change the mind of somebody bent on having a target to hate, and people have gotten very good at insinuating those targets.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#189
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see you stare that Billion Dollars in the eye and say 'no thank you, these are my principles'. Bonus points if you can do it with your spouse and children by your side.

Instagram did that. However for social networks you make money from ads, so they’re rotten in a different way.

The hell they did. They took the money and ran.

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instag...

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but this is a very naive view of human psychology. The Social Dilemma on Netflix does a good job of explaining why asking people to just exert more willpower is not the solution.

Maybe it is. I just am repulsed by stuff like that and try to get it out of my sight whenever possible. I figure most of HN is the same way. It pretty much never appears on any of my feeds, since I don't hesitate to click the "Not interested" button on the rare occasions it appears. I'll watch that film, though.

The new AI is different than the algorithms of old. The old algorithms are one size fits all and everyone get exactly the same schlock. The new AI knows you individually and shows you as an individual the kinds of things that you are most likely to engage with. It doesn't matter at all if the kinds of things you as an individual are more likely to engage with have less inflammatory headlines. The system is still doing the same thing to you as it's doing to everyone else.
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