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Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

economist.com

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Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#251

Post by pixelgeek »

pessimizer wrote: post #155
pixelgeek wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he jumped his own shark a while ago when he left The Intercept [1] and has been writing some articles that sound reasonable but then veer into BS pretty quickly. "And that is Facebook's only real political problem: not that they are too powerful but that they are not using that power to censor enough content from the internet that offends the sensibilities and beliefs of Democratic Party leaders and their lib…

> This is just fringe, nutty stuff. Why? You have room here to explain. > The media is indeed doing what he says they are nut they are doing it because that is what they always do when they have a story they want to be a part of to try to feed off the popularity. Ah, they're doing it because they're doing it. Why didn't he think of this?

@unethical_ban is correct.

> Ah, they're doing it because they're doing it. Why didn't he think of this?

No, the media does this so you don't need to come up with an ulterior motive to explain it. They see a story and they want to get a part of it to get eyeballs on their shows/magazines/podcasts.

The difference here is that a Democratic leadership is more likely to take an adversarial approach to its relations to Facebook and companies like it than a Republican leadership would. (Trump being banned from all the platforms forms an outlier to this)

Further to that...

Manufacturing Consent [1] in 1988 formed a pretty solid argument that what the media does is not support a side as much as it supports the status quo. Media moves to support whomever is in power. Trump obviously blew the hell out of that but you can go back and look at critiques of Bush, Reagan, Obama and other presidents to see that media will criticize the current leadership but (again excluding the Trump outlier) won't take an adversarial role too far since it needs to maintain its relationship with those in power to continue to get content to publish.

This is one of the main reasons why I think right-wing leadership made such a big deal of getting the Fairness Doctrine repealed under Reagan. It lead to the development of media that didn't rely on having a symbiotic relationship with whomever was in power and could instead push a single doctrine with its broadcasting.

Not all Conservatives in the US believe that the repeal was a good thing [2] but for the folks like the Koch brothers it was a prime focus and it has paid dividends to them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

[2] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/conservativ...

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#252

Post by hunterb123 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #238
hunterb123 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any calls from any Republicans to censor any speech. Their base is very adamant about the Bill of Rights. Do you have any examples to back up your statement? Keep in mind we're talking about silencing political dissent, that's pretty fucking major, not a "oh both sides do it, that's life" thing.

Marco Rubio just proposed a bill to stop corporations from being too "woke"[1]. There are also numerous instances of Republican politicians complaining or proposing bills about things like athletes kneeling during the anthem, burning of the flag, or other forms of expressions they deem "un-American". That's not even mentioning the Republican obsession with controlling "obscenity" on TV and other public media. [1] htt…

Read it again, it doesn't stop them, it puts them on record.

Not comparable to silencing speech of citizens.

Choose a better whataboutism in your defense of censorship, not just Marco lol.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#253

Post by JohnBooty »

ethbr0 wrote: post #230
mkr-hn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been so long since a company reached Facebook's heights and fell that a whole generation doesn't know what it looks like. AOL was the Facebook of its time: a joke to system admins, a default ban on small game servers and IRC channels. Meanwhile, most people had no idea anyone had a problem with AOL. Like with Facebook, there were people reporting on its follies like Observers.net[0], but it mostly went unremarke…

I'd hesitate to generalize AOL's fall into Facebook's future. AOL's core proposition was being better than the Internet (more curated, coherent, and faster). When the web and internet exploded in size and scale, AOL's value evaporated. The dumb mergers and other mistakes were window dressing on this landscape transformation. And for years (decades? still?) afterwards, people used AOL Instant Messager (AIM), because i…

    Users would need an order of magnitude superior 
    alternative, and most critically, users would 
    need to move en mass.
Yeah. Network effect. Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook.

I dislike FB for all of the usual reasons, plus a few of my own.

But I still have an FB account. I don't check it very often, and I've got notifications turned off. But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise.

History tells us that something eventually will replace it. But, it's hard to imagine.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#254

Post by moritonal »

whatshisface wrote: post #248
mkr-hn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been so long since a company reached Facebook's heights and fell that a whole generation doesn't know what it looks like. AOL was the Facebook of its time: a joke to system admins, a default ban on small game servers and IRC channels. Meanwhile, most people had no idea anyone had a problem with AOL. Like with Facebook, there were people reporting on its follies like Observers.net[0], but it mostly went unremarke…

Everyone keeps leaving Instagram out of the discussion. I wonder why?

Because it's Facebooks horcrux and no-one wants to admit it.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#255

Post by tenaciousDaniel »

bell-cot wrote: post #219
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #22

I still have a FB account because my family is on there, and even then I check it maybe once a month, if that. It's just not in my life anymore. When I do go on there, I have a hard time imagining how anyone could get sucked into it. Sometimes I feel like FB is a kind of scapegoat for social critique. Maybe because it's the largest, but not sure. Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural fo…

> I still have a FB account [...] I have a hard time imagining how anyone could get sucked into it. I drink a glass of beer several times a week, and can't imagine how anyone could become addicted to alcohol. Very sadly, the world does not feel at all constrained by my imagination.

Fair enough, the second half of my comment didn’t really follow from the first. But I think my point stands about the relative attention paid to FB compared to other platforms. I don’t get it.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#256

Post by Omnitaus »

nradov wrote: post #217
shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

I am aware that Facebook has done a bunch of bad stuff, and that they own Instagram and WhatsApp. I still don't give a shit. For all it's faults Facebook is still the most convenient way to keep up with friends and family spread around the world, and share my underwater photography. If you engage with Facebook on your own terms and "hide all from" the news / politics / meme pages then it works great. And it's free! A…

Personally I prefer to upload my photography to my own website, where I don't have to worry about Facebook setting up a shadow account for every face in my images

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#258

Post by AzzieElbab »

seneca wrote: post #223
AzzieElbab wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but that is exactly why fb is getting targeted by media and politicians so much. It is more popular with older people who also happen to be active voters and news consumers.

Yep, exactly. The key question is to ask why this stream of concerted effort is pointed at taking down Favebook, and Twitter is left alone.

If these hearings produce regulations fb won’t be the only one.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#259

Post by p_j_w »

ghostoftiber wrote: post #180
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB This is close to a straw man argument. Nobody claims users will abandon Facebook. The article posits, instead, strengthening headwinds. Headwinds in hiring (there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent). From recurring whistleblowing, and its impact on morale and productivity. Headwinds in projects and partnerships, like Libre/Diem be…

> People didn't stop using oil after the Standard Oil break-up. Nor Windows after its antitrust brush or cigarettes after the tobacco master settlement. The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced. I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO becam…

>How many competitors to Windows popped up after the microsoft antitrust suit? Is there a "windows specific browser" to compete with Edge or IE which is from a former microsoft company?

I don't think this one really illustrates your point very well. There are no former Microsoft companies because Microsoft was never broken up. That was actually on the agenda until we elected a Republican president who decided MS just needed a slap on the wrist. Add this to the "ways in which the Bush administration hosed America" pile.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#260

Post by cageface »

goatlover wrote: post #193
notjustanymike wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Harley Davidson has learned, you can't lean on an aging population long-term, as they tend to stop aging.

Sure, but the internet is global, and a majority of the world doesn't live in Europe or the US. Large populations are still coming online.

This isn’t necessarily to Facebook’s advantage. Everybody I know in Asia is all over TikTok now. They’re not deleting their FB accounts but they spend a lot less time there.
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