Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#51

Post by throwawayffffas » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41

throwawayffffas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal 2c on how to fix this is make everyone liable for what's on their website, regardless of who wrote it. I don't care if that breaks youtubes, facebooks, twitters and reddits business model.

How would that help if posting conspiracy theories and misinformation (other than libel) isn't illegal?

I think it would help get rid of the most toxic stuff. Most of the conspiracy theories that are actually harmful for society are definitely crossing libel lines. Compare for example Roswell conspiracies against QAnon.

One is the goverement is hiding aliens in area 51, definitely not libel, not conductive to outrage, not dehumanizing political opponents, it does not actively harm national unity.

QAnon on the other hand claims Democrat figureheads are eating babies in satanic orgies, definitely libel, greatly harmful to national unity.

I furthermore think that just the liability would be great enough to completely change the face of this platforms, they would be on the defensive things that are not libel would definitely be censored.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#52

Post by AnonC » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

mtalantikite wrote: post #31

tasuki wrote: post #5

Facebook helps me stay in touch with people I might not otherwise stay in touch with. It brings value into my life.

Would you not be able to stay in touch with them without Facebook? I deleted Facebook a number of years ago and still seem to be in touch with family and friends. Personally I think facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp should be broken apart.

I’m completely against Facebook and agree with the sentiment to break up the company, but the fact that you’re in touch with family and friends without Facebook says more about those people...it may not be the same for the GP or many other people where the people in their lives have a lot going on and prefer these platforms for convenience because “everybody is there”.

We can’t achieve change at a rapid pace by dismissing the experience of others.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#53

Post by MikusR » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

glial wrote: post #8

tasuki wrote: post #5

Facebook helps me stay in touch with people I might not otherwise stay in touch with. It brings value into my life.

Go ahead and spell it out - the destruction of civil society is worth the convenience Facebook offers.

Facebook owns Twitter and Reddit?

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#54

Post by AnonC » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

TL;DR: Recap of several recent revelations and reports about conspiracy theorists and bad foreign actors using Facebook as a tool to spread their messages. No suggestions for how to address the situation. These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.

> These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.

Considering that it’s NYTimes, I’ve seen people questioning it because of the trackers it uses to track and profile people while criticizing other companies using similar tactics for making money. Of course, Facebook is at a totally different (evil) level, but NYT shouldn’t get a free pass without criticizing its platform.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#55

Post by AnonC » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

ponker wrote: post #19

I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. When you think about connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of dollars doing it. Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weap…

> I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy.

Nope. [1] He didn’t start out that way. He just kept misleading people quite well every step of the way.

[1]: https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#56

Post by throwawayffffas » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #42

throwawayffffas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will assume good faith, and point out that cancel culture's main weapon is Facebook. That's where they gather all their outrage and yield it against their perceived enemies.

Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about dog being abandoned".

I think you are right that twitter is their main thing indeed. Though I think that most of the arguments against facebook can be easily applied to twitter too. And any action against facebook would be regulatory in nature and probably hit twitter too. I think this discussion is more appropriate about social media not a specific platform.

What do you think? Is there enough of a difference between the way the platforms handle disinformation and calls to violence to distinguish them?

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#57

Post by maest » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

MikusR wrote: post #53

glial wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead and spell it out - the destruction of civil society is worth the convenience Facebook offers.

Facebook owns Twitter and Reddit?

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We both know that's not what the GP meant. Snarkily strawmanning someone is low effort and boring.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#58

Post by luckylion » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

throwawayffffas wrote: post #56

luckylion wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about dog being abandoned".

I think you are right that twitter is their main thing indeed. Though I think that most of the arguments against facebook can be easily applied to twitter too. And any action against facebook would be regulatory in nature and probably hit twitter too. I think this discussion is more appropriate about social media not a specific platform. What do you think? Is there enough of a difference between the way the platforms…

I don't have a strong opinion, I'm not really active on either platform. I have an account on FB, but never actively used it.

From what I read, it appears to me that Twitter is more outspoken about their policies (which are also stricter than FB's) but gives a bit more lenience to people politically aligned with their employees. FB's approach seems to be to have fewer rules but apply them more consistently, and not care as much about their employees' political ideology (which might also explain why FB is massively profitable and Twitter is not).

Twitter feels less like a neutral platform than Facebook, but I wouldn't say that they hand-pick who's allowed to post (and what they can post) either, so they're also not a publisher. I don't know anyone that was ever banned from FB, but I know a few people who were banned from Twitter, which might suggest that Twitter enforces their rules more, but on the other hand, my impression is that Twitter brings out fundamentalist aggressiveness in people, so that may lead to more bans as well.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#59

Post by heartbeats » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

jameskilton wrote: post #9

Galactasm wrote: post #3

By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?

No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our abili…

It's more profitable to do it that way. And after all, who can be blamed for following the incentives? Really, it's the users' fault for creating the incentives.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#60

Post by luckylion » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

binxbolling wrote: post #48

luckylion wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about dog being abandoned".

Cancel culture is not primarily anywhere. For as long as humans have existed we have wanted to persuade our peers to avoid some things and embrace others; we have wanted some voices amplified and some quieted; we have wanted people to face the consequences of their actions and to reap what they've sown. That's all cancel culture is at its root. It's been rebranded in America's asinine culture wars so we can pretend t…

Sure, but at least my impression is that the current iteration of it is different. I can't recall a time in my lifetime (made it past 40 a few years ago) that deplatforming on ideological grounds by non-state groups was that pervasive in the West.

There's been the red scare in the decades between ww2 and my birth, but that seemed more like a "threat to the system" kind of thing, this feels more religious, with individual small-time sinners being exposed and hunted down, not the deep state pulling levers to blacklist hollywood actors they suspect of having sympathies for communism.