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Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

theatlantic.com

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Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#51

Post by AlexandrB »

runawaybottle wrote: post #22
oarsinsync wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but Facebook will deliberately "optimise for engagement", regardless of whether the engagement is positive or negative for the user or society, because ads. Facebook wasn't the cesspit it is today when your news feed actually showed you your friends updates in chronological order. Hell, it was better still even before the GD news feed even existed.

I guess I just don’t understand the argument. For decades everyone knew commercial breaks were just that, no one was being influenced by 30 second ads on TV. The stuff that influenced people back then is the same stuff that influences people today, social pressure and desire to fit in/attain status. Facebook ads, if anything, should be a distraction from social pressure. People are creating the social pressure to exp…

> Do we bear no responsibility at all here for how we behave?

If all the infrastructure around you is intended for driving, it's tough to blame you for not walking instead.

Either software design has a real impact on how users behave and interact with a system or it doesn't. If you concede that design can impact a user's behavior, then it becomes a question of "how much" and the ethics of how to use that power. The irony is that by placing the burden on users to counteract the tendencies that are openly being encouraged by the software we absolve ourselves of our responsibility as designers, engineers, and architects to consider ethics in our work.

Do we bear no responsibility at all here for what we build?

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#52

Post by pjc50 »

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…

While we're spitballing suggestions: make automated systems liable for publishing recommendations to extremist material.

You can argue that s230 protects them just hosting it for other people. However, if Facebook suggests you join "Islamist Kill-The-Infidels And Cake Recipes" because you're into cake, that's entirely their speech.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#54

Post by ceilingcorner »

Another week, another hyperbolic article written by journalists against the industry eating their lunch. I hate Facebook as much as anyone else, but let’s be honest here: the Information Age means that the technologies of information generation and propagation have been democratized. Just like the Church was angry at the Printing Press, the old gatekeepers (legacy media) are rabidly resisting the new technology.

Ultimately it isn’t a question of right or wrong, but when and how. Get used to it. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle and these top-down solutions are still stuck in the previous century.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#55

Post by jackcosgrove »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #30

The Atlantic has always been a kind of tabloid for people who fancy themselves intellectuals, especially with its cover stories. After seeming like they were really on the brink for a few years there, not really knowing how to do digital, they turned it around - apparently by doubling down on this approach. High-minded clickbait for right-thinking elites, in other words. Have a look at their "most popular articles" b…

> Ironic they're doing it in a critical article about Facebook.

They're both fighting for the same advertising dollar pile. And to be honest Facebook is walking away with it.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#56

Post by Merman_Mike »

blhack wrote: post #47
busterarm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When you have billions of users, and you know every little detail about their lives, "millionaires plus guys sleeping in their car" is probably it's own little segment.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#57

Post by Keeeeeeeks »

trident5000 wrote: post #29
ben_w wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I do see some similar criticisms of YouTube and its algorithms. I don’t read the Atlantic so I can’t compare scale, but it does happen.

Good point, I do see this but it seems to be from the anti-censorship side on the right. It seems the right is focused on the YouTube algos and the left is out for Facebook influence basically since the 2016 election. In all, these media debates over which platforms are dangerous seem highly partisan. We should really be looking at them through a neutral light. What is a monopoly and what is not a monopoly.

In addition to this, people on the left have talked about how certain pockets of YT (gaming, action movies, self help) quickly funnels people into a corner of YT that's rife with misogyny and pseudo-rationalist fallacies.

Also the term Monopoly has tricky denotations and connotations; if you read Thiel's work you'll be inclined to have a strict definition of Monopoly (Ex: an online retailer isn't a monopoly because people still buy most things Elsewhere), whereas some have a looser definition (where Online Retailer is defined as likely monopoly because it is online retailer for everything that it can be, while also tracking sales data and using a white label brand to undercut other brands' SKUs)

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#58

Post by pjc50 »

runawaybottle wrote: post #2

I hate to be this dismissive, but I couldn’t find a single paragraph in that article that provided any kind of compelling analysis or insight into human behavior. I’m less concerned about misinformation propagating through a platform vs why misinformation even works on someone. I don’t care if the whole country of Russia sat there and told you lies with fake accounts 24/7, I want to know why you believed any of it. A…

> I want to know why you believed any of it

People are really keen to believe the worst of their enemies. People also are prone to believing in "revelations" and "scoops".

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#59

Post by cbozeman »

blhack wrote: post #47
busterarm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> contains people who make over $1M/yr, and people who live in their car.

If you live in the Bay Area, this can actually be the same group.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#60

Post by busterarm »

blhack wrote: post #47
busterarm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not shaming you. Congrats, you made it.

But you're basically talking about all Bay Area people, which is not a representative cross-section of America as a whole in any way shape or form.

I've lived all over this country and abroad, succeeded, failed, been homeless, succeeded again. My social circle is absurdly broad and my Facebook looked like people fighting each other all the time.

Facebook has even confirmed that it drives engagement.

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