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A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

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Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#61

Post by ByteJockey »

hash872 wrote: post #59
cabaalis wrote: post #37

None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

What I've long wondered is- would it really be that hard/expensive to build an open source social media alternative that does exactly that? Updates & photos from friends & family, in chronological order, and little else. Social media has been around for a while now, I have to imagine that most of the hard problems around a customized feed and so on have been solved. Probably some idealistic ex-FB and IG engineers wou…

Based on a quick glance at the fediverse sites, I think you're looking for friendica.

Link for the curious: https://friendi.ca/

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#62

Post by Rebelgecko »

swiley wrote: post #38
strangeloops85 wrote: post #2

"“I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count,” she wrote." The scale of how the platform's being used for political manipulation in every country is enormous, and it's clear that if a junior data scientist is having to independently make these decisions, that there's little intere…

With real estate and rent so expensive a protest by a junior employee pretty much ends in moving back with their parents or homelessness.

From what I've seen of FB salaries, if an engineer is living paycheck to paycheck it's probably their own fault

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#63

Post by meowface »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #57
Consultant32452 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they give up control of the world by doing something silly like that? Think about how much political influence Twitter has based solely on which tweets they show the President and corporate press. Consider how much untraced in-kind donations these companies can make by tweaking which news stories you see. The crazy thing about it is these things can be tweaked by humans, but it's largely controlled by AI no…

This needs to be more understood by the population. Our world-destroying-AI paperclip maximizer is here. It's called a "news feed". The thing that gets the most clicks is outrage, as the AI has discovered. We're setting people against each-other in a more and more efficient fashion. The result has been clear since the Arab Spring. Good things don't come from helping people hate each-other in the most efficient way po…

We are, but the blame has to be shared, too. In many cases the algorithm is being reinforced by your and everyone's actions. It may not even necessarily be specifically trying to prioritize polarizing content: that just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference.

I've used YouTube for many hours per day for several years. I've almost never seen a single thing appear on my home page that was polarizing or even clickbaity. The very rare times I do (always after I watch something that's kind of adjacent), I just click "Not interested" and I never see it or anything like it again. It's done a pretty good job of predicting what I would and wouldn't be interested in.

Same with Twitter. I just unfollow anyone I find tweeting polarizing or charged things. My Twitter feed looks pretty close to the HN front page.

Many people crave these things, whether they want to or even realize it. I think it's going to be this way for a very long time.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#64

Post by stiglitz »

cabaalis wrote: post #37

None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

They didn’t sell it to you, is the thing.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#65

Post by duskwuff »

save_ferris wrote: post #53
m463 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Craigslist is a for-profit company and makes quite a lot of money. I thought they just made a modest amount of money. However I believe their benefit to society is significantly higher than fb just because of R number 2. (of "reduce, reuse, recycle")

They grossed $694M in 2016, according to Wikipedia[0]. I think Craigslist benefits from a transparent business model that doesn’t rely on capturing and manipulating consumer data. They charge for job ads, which is a pretty straightforward model. Contrast that with the miasmic, tailored advertising business that Facebook has created. Craigslist isn’t necessarily leaving money on the table, they just operate a more tra…

They charge for a couple other things, FWIW, but it's mostly commercial postings and certain other big-ticket listings (cars, real estate, services).

https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#66

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

Clubber wrote: post #60
hash872 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've long wondered is- would it really be that hard/expensive to build an open source social media alternative that does exactly that? Updates & photos from friends & family, in chronological order, and little else. Social media has been around for a while now, I have to imagine that most of the hard problems around a customized feed and so on have been solved. Probably some idealistic ex-FB and IG engineers wou…

Building the app is trivial, building the network of users is the hard part.

The users are already fragmented and / or using multiple social networking platforms / apps.

Maybe you only need to have some tiny fraction on board to make it worth the effort?

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#67

Post by cageface »

meowface wrote: post #63
throwaway13337 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This needs to be more understood by the population. Our world-destroying-AI paperclip maximizer is here. It's called a "news feed". The thing that gets the most clicks is outrage, as the AI has discovered. We're setting people against each-other in a more and more efficient fashion. The result has been clear since the Arab Spring. Good things don't come from helping people hate each-other in the most efficient way po…

We are, but the blame has to be shared, too. In many cases the algorithm is being reinforced by your and everyone's actions. It may not even necessarily be specifically trying to prioritize polarizing content: that just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference. I've used YouTube for many hours per day for several years. I've almost never seen a single…

Sorry but this is a very naive view of human psychology. The Social Dilemma on Netflix does a good job of explaining why asking people to just exert more willpower is not the solution.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#68

Post by cageface »

skybrian wrote: post #58
cabaalis wrote: post #37

None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

Blaming viral content on bad algorithms is naive. All that’s needed for fake content to spread everywhere unchecked are a few bad actors, group messages, and forwarding (the reshare button). In some cases this results in genocide [1]. No fancy algorithms are necessary to get exponential spread of rumors. Friends and family will spread any memes that confirm their biases themselves. To prevent this from happening, it…

I think this is a good point. Recommendation algorithms exacerbate the problem but they're not the whole story. I don't see how you solve this problem without eliminating the virality that's at the heart of these platforms' profitability. They have a strong vested interest in not fixing it.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#69

Post by matchbok »

souprock wrote: post #28

Facebook itself, the corporation, is global political manipulation. Both https://joebiden.info/ and https://kamalaharris.info/ are blocked on Facebook, and on Instagram which is owned by Facebook. The block is silently applied to private messages on Instagram, with the sender seeing it go out but the recipient never getting it. Facebook isn't turning a blind eye. Facebook is actively participating, by purposely block…

[flagged]

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#70

Post by amelius »

hash872 wrote: post #59
cabaalis wrote: post #37

None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

What I've long wondered is- would it really be that hard/expensive to build an open source social media alternative that does exactly that? Updates & photos from friends & family, in chronological order, and little else. Social media has been around for a while now, I have to imagine that most of the hard problems around a customized feed and so on have been solved. Probably some idealistic ex-FB and IG engineers wou…

The reason I'm still on Facebook is "events". I want to see which events my friends go to. The problem is getting the organizations that host these events to post their events to other platforms.
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