Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

> Does the Big Bang Theory encourage violence against creationists?

Excellent point. There's much broader support for banning advocacy of violence, than for banning statements that offend the audience's religious sensibilities.

Perhaps a better example is speech that advocates abortion rights. Pro-life advocates consider such speech to incite murder; pro-abortion advocates don't.

I think this adds an interesting wrinkle to the hate-speech / censorship debate: It shows that even meta-rules meant to keep a discussion civil (i.e., we won't allow speech that advocates violence) aren't necessarily neutral to the viewpoints being discussed.

Is it true that failing to ban is the source of the divisiveness? I haven't used Facebook before, but it seems like the mechanism is the feed, which prioritizes divisive content.

Even as a relatively senior employee, you may be unable to discern intent. You might just get an incentive scheme that compensates you for engagement rather than profitable engagement.

And some moderation. 4chan wasn't ever going to attract ad revenue because nobody at Coca-Cola wants their brand run alongside a goatse link.

But massive political fights aren't something that the advertisers (until recently) see as bad imagery for their brands.

It's pretty well documented in the Federalist Papers. I recommend reading them in their entirety, because it's IMO one of the most profound writings of political exposition in written history, even if you disagree with the philosophies being promoted.

Federalist No. 10[1] is probably one of the most highly regarded of the papers, and explicitly lays out these concerns. Selected quotes:

"AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice."

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens."

"From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

Hamilton also talks a little bit about this phenomenon in Federalist No. 68, and Federalist No. 62 lays out the impetus for having an equally represented Senate (which is inherently undemocratic), part of which was to check the immediate impulses/passions of the people, as can be the case with the House of Representatives.

[1] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp

Social media, and all of the "talking heads" on network news and talk radio, are basically in an arms race, just like advertisers have been for years. For instance, Coke can't stop advertising because then Pepsi or another brand will take over, i.e., they have to keep it up. We are now at that same point with politics: everyone has to keep it up, and even more so; constantly upping the ante. Facebook is the dominant platform for upping the ante, which gives them money, and more importantly, power.