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Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

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Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#41

Post by sergiosgc »

aikah wrote: post #17
andrewvijay wrote: post #6

> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging. Simply incredible. They are ass…

> Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit. Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business. Now to anybody who thinks he can control the internet and what people read/think/d…

> Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business.

This is a technology forum, so I'll warn beforehand that my opinion, although it has political conclusions, is from a systems perspective and not meant to cause a flame war.

Your position, above, is a very common defense of capitalism. Each agent should act on its best interest, and disregard all else. Distilled like that, it's the purest form of capitalism.

While that position has its merits, we should understand its limitations. It prevents capture of companies by the power struggle. On the other hand, in this case, it is failing to act on FB's exploitation of a negative externality.

FB, by keeping users in their comfort zone is preventing society from improving. And is profiting from it. It gains the profit, sheds some costs to the society at large.

Capitalism is the best society optimization mechanism we know. It is not perfect, though. It creates local maximums, it is short sighted and we must always be careful about its limitations.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#42

Post by ivanhoe »

How is this different from news sites? They also earn the most of money from advertisers and the main criteria for those advertisers are page views. We still completely lack a viable internet business model that would strongly encourage the quality and not quantity...

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#43

Post by whowalrus »

grzm wrote: post #27
andrewvijay wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply dont know answers to all these questions!! And quite frankly their top executives have to be worried about that. Not us.

And they obviously are. Facebook has been trying to address these issues, and has made missteps on the way. They wouldn't have issued the statements they have if they weren't concerned about it. I'd be really surprised if they're happy with the current situation and are going to just stop working on it. Maybe they're not working fast enough or in the way you want them to. But it's helpful to recognize that they're hu…

While I agree that its an extremely complicated problem to solve, I would be more inclined to believe they are trying to solve it if they took responsibility for (at least some of) them, instead of saying:

"We don’t favor specific kinds of sources — or ideas. Our aim is to deliver the types of stories we’ve gotten feedback that an individual person most wants to see."

Of course they could be working behind closed doors, while PR spins its yarn, in which case I wish them best of luck. It would be interesting to see how they solve it.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#44

Post by gmac »

fleitz wrote: post #39
zoul wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forced to use Facebook, but the fact is that for a vast number of people it represents the main source of news. Which, if this source can be easily gamed, is a problem. Since how do you “convince others that they are being misled” if the “alternative” media, plenty represented in their news feeds, discredit the traditional, trustworthy media first? There is a great Guardian Long Read about this very topic:…

Isn't it up to the viewer not the publisher to decide what is trustworthy? Perhaps when major media get so many real stories about democracy wrong and the alt media get them right it's time to stop trusting the people getting things wrong and start trusting the people getting things right. Fuck, even the NYT had to recommit itself to journalism their reporting this year was so bad. 'As we reflect on the momentous res…

Isn't it up to the viewer not the publisher to decide what is trustworthy?

That's difficult if the publisher (Facebook) only shows them untrustworthy material, and the viewer is not aware that this is the case.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#45

Post by fleitz »

gmac wrote: post #44
fleitz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it up to the viewer not the publisher to decide what is trustworthy? Perhaps when major media get so many real stories about democracy wrong and the alt media get them right it's time to stop trusting the people getting things wrong and start trusting the people getting things right. Fuck, even the NYT had to recommit itself to journalism their reporting this year was so bad. 'As we reflect on the momentous res…

Isn't it up to the viewer not the publisher to decide what is trustworthy? That's difficult if the publisher (Facebook) only shows them untrustworthy material, and the viewer is not aware that this is the case.

If people in China can figure out that the state is lying to them, I'm pretty sure we can figure it out that random sites on the internet aren't trustworthy.

The alt-media links extensively to MSM to point out their lies and inconsistency, I'm sure someone has realized that CNN, and MSNBC, and NYT are a thing.

Even if you're not right wing, you'd probably at some point heard of Noam Chomsky who goes on similar rants about how even highly regarded NYT publishes articles that are pretty much propaganda. And then there's Jason Blair...

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#46

Post by amelius »

elorant wrote: post #28
andrewvijay wrote: post #6

> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging. Simply incredible. They are ass…

Ignorance is killing democracy. And that’s not Facebook’s problem. It’s an educational problem. Our education system is failing to instill critical thinking into young people. So they go out in the world and become adults who are easily duped into this idea or that because they lack the skills and the mindset to evaluate opposing viewpoints. Sure the Internet has made things worse, and that’s a bit shocking for those…

> Ignorance is killing democracy.

No it is worse. Misinformation is killing democracy. And that's exactly where Facebook is a problem.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#47

Post by scalio »

grzm wrote: post #10
andrewvijay wrote: post #6

> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging. Simply incredible. They are ass…

I understand your frustration, though I find statements like Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit frustrating as well. Facebook is attempting to police the community they provide. Online communities, while they've been around in some form since the usenet days, are still a relatively new phenomenon, especially at the scale of billions, and there's a lot of stuff to figure out. What concrete steps wou…

> What tradeoffs are worthwhile that ensure an overall positive experience? And still be a profitable business?

Facebook is a business, and real life is not always profitable. When people interact with real life through facebook, they only get to see what's profitable for the company. So yes, fb inherently destroys democracy. Not necessarily on purpose (that's conspiracy territory), but because well-informed people go against their business model.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#48

Post by briandear »

grzm wrote: post #10
andrewvijay wrote: post #6

> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging. Simply incredible. They are ass…

I understand your frustration, though I find statements like Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit frustrating as well. Facebook is attempting to police the community they provide. Online communities, while they've been around in some form since the usenet days, are still a relatively new phenomenon, especially at the scale of billions, and there's a lot of stuff to figure out. What concrete steps wou…

I don't necessarily agree with the comment to which you are replying however one concrete step is the newsfeed algorithm. As someone mentioned, Facebook becomes a bubble; I have a few hundred 'friends' of widely different politics and interests, yet my feed is populated with an echo chamber of my own inadvertent creation. I like stories I find interesting and agree with however that then results of me seeing more of the same so my feed now consists of probably a maximum of ten people's content, so the "inventory" of shareable content from my feed gets more and more focused to the point where there is no longer much diversity in my feed and thus the things I share.

For example: I "like" Mises posts, I like my "real" friends's music posts and I like the occasional post from The Paris Review.

However I follow a ton of people from interior design and architecture but I rarely see posts from those people/subjects. So my feed looks like a very narrow focus on Austrian economics and electronic music.

My point: the content isn't the problem with Facebook, the problem is the feed algorithm that decides the content I see. I would prefer no algorithm at all: just show me everything my 'friends' are posting. If I get tired of someone, I unfollow them. Facebook has made a conscious decision to behave as a de facto curator of content. I get it, it's my own fault for "liking" things. But I am a relatively sophisticated user -- I am aware of the echo chamber I create; but for hundreds of millions of users the newsfeed is their 'news' and it isn't transparent how their past likes are creating this environment.

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#49

Post by pg314 »

fleitz wrote: post #39
zoul wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forced to use Facebook, but the fact is that for a vast number of people it represents the main source of news. Which, if this source can be easily gamed, is a problem. Since how do you “convince others that they are being misled” if the “alternative” media, plenty represented in their news feeds, discredit the traditional, trustworthy media first? There is a great Guardian Long Read about this very topic:…

Isn't it up to the viewer not the publisher to decide what is trustworthy? Perhaps when major media get so many real stories about democracy wrong and the alt media get them right it's time to stop trusting the people getting things wrong and start trusting the people getting things right. Fuck, even the NYT had to recommit itself to journalism their reporting this year was so bad. 'As we reflect on the momentous res…

> 'In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues.'

You're lifting one sentence out of context. The rest of the paragraph reads [1]:

"In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway."

The president-elect's walking back on so many of his promises since the election seem to be vindicating these comments.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-cli...

Re: Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News

#50

Post by welanes »

andrewvijay wrote: post #6

> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging. Simply incredible. They are ass…

> They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional influencers...The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is very powerful.

The same could be said of TV networks, Spotify, Twitter, Google photos.

We are the catalyst that turn stories, music, photos into emotional reactions. We control the dials. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to step outside our bubbles. Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it.

If we're not seeing it, it's probably because we don't want to.

My online shopping recommends groceries for me based on my past purchases. If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible?

Facebook is not a window to the world. It's a mirror of ourselves. Perhaps there should be guidelines on how to consume information - and I thought school served that purpose - but to expect a social network (a blank slate that you populate with your interests) to provide one a healthy dose of diverse opinion is to deny ones agency and responsibility.

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