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As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

theguardian.com

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Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#41

Post by pessimizer »

Nothing in the neolib Anglosphere and its colonies. We grant power by skill at the accumulation of money (which we call a meritocracy - a religion with credit as merit and cash as grace), so Facebook is only answerable to its corporate peers. Those are the people it can't piss off.

In other countries, there are power centers awarded by other than cash accumulation. Xi, Putin, and MBS aren't particularly worried about Facebook.

Europe is the only place making an attempt, but that's because they have a post-WWII extra-capitalist social consensus sponsored (and enforced) by US military spending. Any real flexing by the US, and Europe either backs down or turns to China.

This article is typical Guardian legislative fanfiction, where we pretend that rules are put into place based on how well they might work to achieve liberal philosophical aims, rather than by power. If any politician or movement amassed the power to do any of these things, the Guardian would devote all of its energy to attacking them.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#42

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

tchalla wrote: post #28
cletus wrote: post #14

Calls for breaking up companies make great headlines for politicians but let's look at the history and why this was necessary as a solution to antitrust. The textbook case for the Sherman Act was Standard Oil. Built up by Rockefeller in the late 19th century, Standard Oil came to effectively control the extraction, refining, distribution and sale of kerosene (in particular). This is when oil pipelines began, interest…

The number of employees in a company has no bearing on anti-competitive behaviour of an acquisition.

IG have over a 1bn users now, they had 20-30mn at time of acquisition. Maybe FB felt they were a threat, but it's definitely not a given that they would have been equally successful alone.

Whatsapp, OTOH is a completely different issue and probably should have to be divested.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#43

Post by MadeThisToReply »

jorgesborges wrote: post #10
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

Facebook is primarily a propaganda organization. It's main objective is to influence, manipulate and subvert the user's judgment and convince them to buy something --- be it physical product or ideology. To further this objective, it has developed an incredibly detailed psychological profile of each individual user using deeply personal info willing surrendered by the user themselves. It's skill at doing this is what…

> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has argued that only companies as large as Facebook have the resources to fight misinformation, election meddling and harmful content. Look, they’re not a propaganda machine! I’m so thankful we have them to “fight” against “misinformation”. I read that and my blood began to boil. Evil is the perfect description of such disgusting, deceitful pandering.

Facebook thinks it's the company to "fight election meddling"? Is this the same Facebook that meddled in the 2020 US presidential election by suppressing the distribution of a factual news story because the facts were embarrassing to the Biden campaign?

What next, is Bill Cosby going to tell us that he's an activist for women's rights?

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#44

Post by nefitty »

lokar wrote: post #12

I worry that simply breaking up FB could make things worse. Today, with a safe monopoly feedung high profit margins they can afford some mitigations (more reviewers, etc) and to "hold back" a bit on some of the worst/unhealthy engagement tricks. Several more equal competitors would feel pressure to outdo each other. Some other fix is needed (probably in addition to breakup).

I wonder if the government could create a regulatory AI that could be applied to social media companies. As laws and regulations change, the AI would just need to be updated and it would enforce them automatically on the companies.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#45

Post by wpietri »

spectramax wrote: post #9
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

Facebook is primarily a propaganda organization. It's main objective is to influence, manipulate and subvert the user's judgment and convince them to buy something --- be it physical product or ideology. To further this objective, it has developed an incredibly detailed psychological profile of each individual user using deeply personal info willing surrendered by the user themselves. It's skill at doing this is what…

I’d say Twitter has done more damage to the society than FB. Twitter is a pure outrage machine. I might be in the minority but Instagram is still awesome. It’s gotten more ads but most of them are quite interesting. I’ve found made in USA goods from IG ads like this: https://psudo.com/

You may be using Twitter wrong. Switch it from "top tweets" to "latest tweets" mode, and then follow people who tweet and retweet things that are not outrage-driven. I follow a lot of interesting people and I learn a ton.

But even if Twitter were pure outrage, that is far from the most serious social media damage to society. Twitter, for all its faults, is relatively low on mis- and dis-information because people call it out. It's all one conversational space. Facebook, which is much more fragmented, enables flourishing niches of bonkers thought. Some of those niches are just wild-type insanity, but many more are gardens of crazy cultivated by people with a financial or political need for that.

I firmly believe that without Facebook, we wouldn't have a situation where thousands of people are dying per day of a preventable disease, with 95+% of those because of mis- and dis-information about the disease and the necessary countermeasures.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#46

Post by stri8ted »

Assume Facebook no longer exists tomorrow. The same incentives that drive Facebook's behavior, i.e. human consumption patterns, will still exist. And will be exploited by another company. Facebook is merely one instance of a problem deeply rooted in humans.

Sure, there is the anti-competitive aspect to it. But wrt to the divisiveness and polarization, the exploitation by political actors, it would not make a difference. Something else would just rise up to fill that void. It's the digital equivalent of junk food. Banning Coke, would do nothing to solve obesity.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#47

Post by andrew_ »

stri8ted wrote: post #46

Assume Facebook no longer exists tomorrow. The same incentives that drive Facebook's behavior, i.e. human consumption patterns, will still exist. And will be exploited by another company. Facebook is merely one instance of a problem deeply rooted in humans. Sure, there is the anti-competitive aspect to it. But wrt to the divisiveness and polarization, the exploitation by political actors, it would not make a differen…

Pandora's box, if you will. Social media companies created the void as they filled it. There's no putting the lid back on it now.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#48

Post by wintermutestwin »

mrdoops wrote: post #19

Build something better.

... as a non-profit. Keep it focused on the core reasons people wanted FB to begin with: connecting with family and RL friends (old and new) and a easy way to see what's going on in people's lives. This would be incredibly cheap to build and run. Positioned as a way to combat the evils of facecrook I would donate a large % of my annual charitable spend and I think many others would as well.

I feel that this is the only effective way to counter FBs network effect monopoly.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#50

Post by wpietri »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #3

Odd that "Stop using Facebook and products it owns" wasn't listed. While I understand that at this point it will probably take some regulatory action to fully deal with Facebook and its abuses, there's a huge cognitive dissonance among many people when it comes to Facebook. Lots of the people who complain about how evil the company's behavior is use the company's products frequently. Lots of criticism of Facebook is…

It's not like "stop using Facebook and products it owns" is novel advice. But it doesn't seem to be constraining Facebook much. At this point, I don't think it's a realistic way to have impact on the problem. The people who are thoughtful and aware and dedicated enough to do that have taken some action. But Facebook clearly doesn't need those people to make a lot of money.
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