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Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

theatlantic.com

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Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#41

Post by sudosysgen »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #20
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.

Facebook is what you get with s/paperclip/engagement/. What you get with s/paperclip/$/ is just capitalism.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#42

Post by BitwiseFool »

blhack wrote: post #27

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 han…

Journalists also have an axe to grind with Facebook, seeing as the primary revenue source for journalism is (used to be?) advertisements.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#43

Post by pjc50 »

blhack wrote: post #27

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 han…

Twitter is also incredibly bad in many ways, but you can still switch to non-algorithmic timeline, you can be anon or pseudonymous, and people aren't socially "expected" to be on there.

On Twitter it's complete strangers who are the problem (and the occasional bluetick or celebrity). On Facebook, it's your friends and family being recommended all sorts of extremist propaganda groups to join.

(Oh, and there's an incredibly nasty feedback loop between the worst of the media and the worst of Twitter, producing things like the Graham Linehan anti-trans fiasco)

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#44

Post by vmception »

Extend the indefinite public health orders to Facebook

Health and Human Services can ban Facebook and states have clauses in their own emergency orders to automatically include that

To pass constitutional muster, you can say “publicly traded social media networks that brag about how many fake users they have with over 500 million of them”

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#45

Post by upofadown »

Social media is, well, social. It is a place for people to express how they feel, not how they think. I find it surprising that anyone thinks Facebook could ever be a place of rational thought. It isn't for that.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#46

Post by reuben_scratton »

That article is one of the dumbest articles I've read in an unusually dumb year.

Why do these journalists think we should all only ever be spoon-fed inoffensive, carefully-curated pap? And when was the last time anyone changed their mind about anything because of something they saw on Facebook? The worst it does is confirm existing bias and prejudice.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#47

Post by blhack »

busterarm wrote: post #32
blhack wrote: post #27

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 han…

You're in a socioeconomically-stratified filter bubble on facebook. My facebook was sufficiently diverse and my feed was exactly like twitter, even though none of my friend group were twitter users. I closed all of my social accounts. Doomsday machine is _exactly_ how I would describe all social media.

I am? My Facebook feed contains people who make over $1M/yr, and people who live in their car. Some right wing people talking about how suspicious they think the election was, and left wing people talking about how bad those people are.

I’m not sure how that’s me living is a socioeconomically stratified filter bubble.

My twitter on the other hand, is mostly (all?) left wing Silicon Valley/tech types. It’s diverse in the way that I’d expect a hackathon to be “diverse”.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#48

Post by jackcosgrove »

soupfordummies wrote: post #19
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.

If social networks discourage you from participating, then they really are Doomsday machines, according to the intent of a Doomsday machine.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#49

Post by dundarious »

blhack wrote: post #27

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 han…

Twitter's character limit certainly begs for hot takes, but I find Twitter to be as filled with cat photos, Simpsons memes, movie rankings, and whatnot. Nevertheless, I do enjoy the political sparring there as well.

My qualm with the "Twitter is toxic" discourse is that it often (not accusing you of doing this) points the finger at people with opposing beliefs who are making _fun_ of each other, or being "snarky" as HN guidelines put it. Certainly HN isn't the place for that, nor should it be, but I don't see why Twitter should stop being a place for that. Of course there are users who do incite violence as you say, and I don't have a problem with calling them toxic, and moderating them.

I should also add that Twitter is far easier to curate -- there is no social obligation to follow people in your real world social circle.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#50

Post by Diederich »

soupfordummies wrote: post #19
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.

> stop using them

Very quick thought experiment. FB had about 70 billion in income in 2019, and 2.7 billion monthly users. That's $25/user/year.

So maybe transition FB to a paid platform? In return, no advertisements, no tracking, no 'adversarial' feed algorithms.

I know that a large chunk of monthly FB users would not pay, and that a lot of the problems aren't from the algorithms, but rather with the groups and communities people form themselves, and what people share with each other.

I post pretty rarely on FB, and when I use it, I only look at particular people's pages, so I'm not (directly) subject to the dreaded feed.

As some others have said, using it as described, my personal FB experience is pretty positive. To be clear: I do manually follow a wide variety of people, across the socio-political spectrum. There is a certain amount of noise but the signal is much higher. And I will naturally tend to stop following people who primarily share/reshare toxic crap.

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