Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#21

Post by Taikonerd » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

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…

> I don't think there is a fix really.

Maybe not a "fix" per se, but one big step could be a ban on infini-scrolling in websites. I think having to click on "page 2," scroll to the bottom of the page again, click on "page 3," etc, would introduce enough friction to get people to stop a little earlier.

(My own personal rule on Hacker News is that I never go deeper than page 2. That helps me not spend all day on HN) ;-)

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#22

Post by runawaybottle » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #10

runawaybottle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Facebook will deliberately "optimise for engagement", regardless of whether the engagement is positive or negative for the user or society, because ads. Facebook wasn't the cesspit it is today when your news feed actually showed you your friends updates in chronological order. Hell, it was better still even before the GD news feed even existed.

I guess I just don’t understand the argument. For decades everyone knew commercial breaks were just that, no one was being influenced by 30 second ads on TV. The stuff that influenced people back then is the same stuff that influences people today, social pressure and desire to fit in/attain status.

Facebook ads, if anything, should be a distraction from social pressure. People are creating the social pressure to express yourself, and it’s now manifesting in shallow ways (too much pressure). Ads is not what’s causing this.

If there’s any argument to make, and maybe I’ve been missing this the whole time, maybe you guys are saying platforms like Facebook abstract you into a living Advertisement. Thus, you must behave like an advertisement (get attention at all costs), and that is the core of their ad system, you, like a human battery in the matrix.

But, there’s no argument to be made if you realize you’re jacked into the matrix and can leave. If you’re aware, you can bounce.

Do we bear no responsibility at all here for how we behave?

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#23

Post by ben_w » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

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?

I don’t. People were clearly already vain, reactionary, signaling-obsessed, shallow and gossipy, and the ad system isn’t (by itself) the part that makes Facebook an existential threat.

The misaligned A.I. which drives engagement — or whatever the precise metric is — with no regard for anything else, and optimises that metric ruthlessly with continuous variations to tease out the most effective way to maximise eyeball-seconds, that’s the problem.

The paperclip factory doesn’t hate you, it’s just that you’re made of stuff that can be used to make more paperclips.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#24

Post by earthboundkid » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

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…

Like all scifi, "Paperclip Maximizer" is just a fable about something that already happened but you put it in the future to make it seem more interesting. (E.g. robots are just slaves; space colonization is just regular colonization; Weyland-Yutani is just the East India Company; World War 3 is just WW2; etc.)

Capitalism has always been the paperclip maximizer, for better or worse. Why did Europeans drag a bunch of Africans across the ocean to America? Well, there's this thing called "money" and Europeans were trying to maximize it, and it turned out that getting cheap labor to work in the Americas would let you trade stuff to China and collect money in Europe. It makes no actual goddamn sense, but it maximized numbers, so it happened.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#25

Post by ben_w » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #17

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…

FWIW, I do see some similar criticisms of YouTube and its algorithms. I don’t read the Atlantic so I can’t compare scale, but it does happen.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#26

Post by MR4D » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #24

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…

Like all scifi, "Paperclip Maximizer" is just a fable about something that already happened but you put it in the future to make it seem more interesting. (E.g. robots are just slaves; space colonization is just regular colonization; Weyland-Yutani is just the East India Company; World War 3 is just WW2; etc.) Capitalism has always been the paperclip maximizer, for better or worse. Why did Europeans drag a bunch of A…

I don’t disagree, but technology have now given us a near-zero cost of duplicating that paperclip, so both the growth rate and practical upper bound are much higher than we’ve ever imagined before.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#27

Post by blhack » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

I must have really different experiences than all of these people that write these articles (it seems like there has been something like this, every week on HN, for the last 10 years)

My facebook is mostly people showing pictures of stuff, sharing memes, some movie discussion groups, event planning groups. It seems like mostly just people using facebook as a proxy for real world interactions.

Twitter on the other hand is just pure toxic garbage which seems made to intentionally divide people and incite hatred and eventually violence.

I think there is a simple explanation for this: the people writing these articles are twitter users, and the people who use facebook are their outgroup.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#28

Post by ben_w » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #24

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…

Like all scifi, "Paperclip Maximizer" is just a fable about something that already happened but you put it in the future to make it seem more interesting. (E.g. robots are just slaves; space colonization is just regular colonization; Weyland-Yutani is just the East India Company; World War 3 is just WW2; etc.) Capitalism has always been the paperclip maximizer, for better or worse. Why did Europeans drag a bunch of A…

Slavery ended because human values made it end. A paperclip optimiser doesn’t have human values.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#29

Post by trident5000 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #25

trident5000 wrote: post #17

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…

FWIW, I do see some similar criticisms of YouTube and its algorithms. I don’t read the Atlantic so I can’t compare scale, but it does happen.

Good point, I do see this but it seems to be from the anti-censorship side on the right. It seems the right is focused on the YouTube algos and the left is out for Facebook influence basically since the 2016 election. In all, these media debates over which platforms are dangerous seem highly partisan. We should really be looking at them through a neutral light. What is a monopoly and what is not a monopoly.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#30

Post by maybelsyrup » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

The Atlantic has always been a kind of tabloid for people who fancy themselves intellectuals, especially with its cover stories. After seeming like they were really on the brink for a few years there, not really knowing how to do digital, they turned it around - apparently by doubling down on this approach. High-minded clickbait for right-thinking elites, in other words. Have a look at their "most popular articles" box and you'll frequently see some breathless, hysterical stuff.

It's a shame, too, because a majority of their content is probably still pretty good! Their pandemic coverage is a good example. But their editorial staff need engagement and they're gonna drive it by pushing the same "dark" buttons (fear, anger) that everyone else pushes these days. Ironic they're doing it in a critical article about Facebook.