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Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

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Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#631

Post by BaitBlock »

fpgaminer wrote: post #299

You know what the internet needs? User agents. We've got this idea stuck in our heads that only the website itself is allowed to curate content. Only Facebook gets to decide which Facebook posts to show us. What if, instead, you had a personal AI that read every Facebook post and then decided what to show you. Trained on your own preferences, under your control, with whatever settings you like. Instead of being tuned…

At Baitblock (https://baitblock.app), we're working on something similar. It's called the Intelligent Blocker, and has the same intended goal as your user agent 'AI' (not yet open to general public, under development right now). With it you will be able to block all Facebook posts that are for example say not from your family, or not of a specific type or from specific person.

Or comments on different Internet forums that are blatantly spammy/SEO gaming etc.

Or block authors in search results or Twitter feed or any comment that you don't like. Basically the Zapier of content filtering.

This will be available to the user as a subscription service.

Some of these thigs are not possible on mobile platforms (Android, iOS) unfortunately because the OS do not allow such access, but we hope that Android and iOS in the future open up to allow external curation systems, apart from the app platform it's self as it's in the interest of the user.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#632

Post by all-fakes »

throwlaplace wrote: post #570
DenisM wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? There is a simple answer to that - HN is not a homogeneous set of people; different users have different opinions and express them at different times with different intensity.

If this were true you'd have the average opinion filter out - naysayers would downvote supporters and vice versa. The truth is in fact that hn is hypocritical and becomes outraged for the sake of outrage just like every other opinionated group (where the raison d etre is to express an opinion rather than discourse). Edit: think hn isn't just about getting attention? Then explain to me why responses are ranked? Or eve…

Responses have to be ranked, because some comments are much more valuable to the reader than others. Well-thought-out comments and spam lie at the extreme ends of the spectrum.

I think there's merit to the idea of requiring a response for upvotes or downvotes, but how can you tell whether a response is "genuine"? It sounds like it'd devolve into people leaving vacuous replies just to clear that prerequisite.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#633

Post by elicash »

knzhou wrote: post #532
DenisM wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you simultaneously be outraged that Facebook is imposing any restrictions on speech at all, and horrified that it isn’t actively molding user behavior on a massive scale? There is a simple answer to that - HN is not a homogeneous set of people; different users have different opinions and express them at different times with different intensity.

True, but I would have expected at least a little visible disagreement. You never see anybody saying “wait a second, I think making the filter bubble effect a bit worse is actually worth it!” Each individual submission’s comments is just full throated, unanimous condemnation —- even when adjacent comments are directly contradictory. They just don’t engage with the possibility that deciding what to do might actually b…

People speak up more when they disagree than when they agree.

Which is why I'm commenting right now.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#634

Post by root_axis »

neilk wrote: post #540
knzhou wrote: post #457

The degree to which “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is in effect here is remarkable. If Facebook literally removes anything, then HN is outraged because it’s censorship, paternalism, all that. But if Facebook does not adopt an actively paternalistic attitude where it shows people content that they deem is “good for them” , then that’s outrageous too. Both complaints predictably rocket to the top of HN. Which…

Facebook is sometimes in a difficult position. But, with respect, I don't think it's correct to say that it's the fault of their critics for putting them in a dilemma. Facebook does not face outrage for "literally remov[ing] anything". In the real world, Facebook is removing thousands of items every day, maybe tens of thousands. Most of them are totally justified. Is HN outraged about that? Also, keep vs. remove is a…

> Most of them are totally justified. Is HN outraged about that?

Well that's the crux of the issue isn't it? Obviously there would be no controversy if everyone agreed on which removals are justified. Every censorship article that reaches the front-page of HN includes a litigation over the specifics of the removal, including those who are quite clear that in an ideal world all large social media websites would be prohibited from filtering out content based on the site operator's judgements about content acceptability.

> Also, keep vs. remove is a false dilemma. Facebook has many more options than keeping or removing items. Most of the time, it's about what they choose to boost or reward in other ways

A distinction without much difference for the sake of this discussion; if the system is hiding the content it's as good as deleted or perhaps even worse than deleted in the same way that shadowbans are often perceived as more hostile than explicit bans.

> But personally, I think that calls into question whether Facebook or anything like them should even exist.

I share that perspective. I believe that social media is a net negative to society despite the nice things its given us like a stream of friend and family photos, but the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. Ultimately this is a cultural problem, it costs a user nothing to have the Facebook app sitting on their phone even if they only open it once a year. Literally billions of Facebook users don't care at all about what Facebook removes from the site, most users know what they want out of the internet and know which places to go to get the things they want.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#635

Post by dvduval »

fpgaminer wrote: post #299

You know what the internet needs? User agents. We've got this idea stuck in our heads that only the website itself is allowed to curate content. Only Facebook gets to decide which Facebook posts to show us. What if, instead, you had a personal AI that read every Facebook post and then decided what to show you. Trained on your own preferences, under your control, with whatever settings you like. Instead of being tuned…

In the right medium, perhaps the user agent would also decide when my posts are shown to people versus an ad being shown in place of my post such that I make money. Then a site like Facebook would only make a small portion of my ad revenue in exchange for hosting it.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#636

Post by redelbee »

fpgaminer wrote: post #299

You know what the internet needs? User agents. We've got this idea stuck in our heads that only the website itself is allowed to curate content. Only Facebook gets to decide which Facebook posts to show us. What if, instead, you had a personal AI that read every Facebook post and then decided what to show you. Trained on your own preferences, under your control, with whatever settings you like. Instead of being tuned…

Neal Stephenson explores something like your “user agent” idea and comes up with an different solution in his novel “ Fall; or, Dodge in Hell.”

Spoilers ahead:

In Stephenson‘s world people can hire “editors” to curate what they see, and those editors effectively determine reality for people at a mass scale. This is just one of the many fascinating ideas Stephenson explores and I highly recommend reading the book.

This interview covers some of the details if you’re not willing to dive into an 800+ page novel:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/neal-stephenson-explains-his-visi...

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#637

Post by gitgud »

fpgaminer wrote: post #299

You know what the internet needs? User agents. We've got this idea stuck in our heads that only the website itself is allowed to curate content. Only Facebook gets to decide which Facebook posts to show us. What if, instead, you had a personal AI that read every Facebook post and then decided what to show you. Trained on your own preferences, under your control, with whatever settings you like. Instead of being tuned…

Well that kind of already exists in a project called "huginn".

https://github.com/huginn/huginn

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#638

Post by tarkin2 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #490
tarkin2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. It's different to normal society. Normal society encourages civility by offering the inclusion into a needed physically-near social group. Digital society deincentises civility by offering a multitude of alternative groups.

It's localness by homogeneity rather than geography.

A community based on geographic locality is the prerequisite for a functioning society and state. Anything that polarises that geographic community ultimately damages the state by attacking its precondition.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#639

Post by downerending »

austincheney wrote: post #578
fpgaminer wrote: post #299

You know what the internet needs? User agents. We've got this idea stuck in our heads that only the website itself is allowed to curate content. Only Facebook gets to decide which Facebook posts to show us. What if, instead, you had a personal AI that read every Facebook post and then decided what to show you. Trained on your own preferences, under your control, with whatever settings you like. Instead of being tuned…

> What if, instead, you had a personal AI I was in agreement with you until I read that. People don’t need to have content dictated to them like mindless drones whether it is from social media, bloggers, AI, or whatever. Many people prefer that, though, out of laziness. It’s like the laugh track on sitcoms because people were too stupid or tuned out to catch the poorly written jokes even with pausing and other unnece…

> People don’t need to have content dictated to them like mindless drones whether it is from social media, bloggers, AI, or whatever.

If the AI is entirely under the user's control, why not? It's like having a buddie that's doing for me what I'd do for myself, if I had the time and energy (and eyebleach).

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#640

Post by throwlaplace »

all-fakes wrote: post #632
throwlaplace wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true you'd have the average opinion filter out - naysayers would downvote supporters and vice versa. The truth is in fact that hn is hypocritical and becomes outraged for the sake of outrage just like every other opinionated group (where the raison d etre is to express an opinion rather than discourse). Edit: think hn isn't just about getting attention? Then explain to me why responses are ranked? Or eve…

Responses have to be ranked, because some comments are much more valuable to the reader than others. Well-thought-out comments and spam lie at the extreme ends of the spectrum. I think there's merit to the idea of requiring a response for upvotes or downvotes, but how can you tell whether a response is "genuine"? It sounds like it'd devolve into people leaving vacuous replies just to clear that prerequisite.

>comments are much more valuable to the reader than others

This presupposes some kind of universal value function.

>but how can you tell whether a response is "genuine"? It sounds like it'd devolve into people leaving vacuous replies just to clear that prerequisite

This is like perfect is the enemy of good counterargument. I don't know and I'm not going to hypothesize right here right now where one misstep on my part gives credence to the idea that it's impossible.

Here's what I'll say though about modern forums: they fixed a system that wasn't broken as far as discourse goes. When I was in high school the were forums where responses were ordered in time rather than by popularity. Those places were actual venues for discussion. Ranking only exists for monetization. If you don't agree with this then consider professional venues for discourse: academic journals. I have never browsed a journal or arxiv by the number of citations or the hindex or whatever.

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