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Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

theatlantic.com

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Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#71

Post by BlueTemplar »

earthboundkid wrote: post #35
ben_w wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery ended because human values made it end. A paperclip optimiser doesn’t have human values .

Slavery ended because human beings (the slaves) made it end. They revolted constantly, and the threat of revolt wasn't worth the money savings. No European wanted another Hati, so that was the beginning of the end. In the case of the US, after the Civil War had begun, slaves fled to the Union camps in large numbers, which forced the Union to emancipate and enlist them. Anyway, capitalism doesn't have human values. No…

There's a theory that slaveowners were just outcompeted by machine owners...

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#72

Post by tenebrisalietum »

cobbzilla wrote: post #39

> No one, not even Mark Zuckerberg, can control the product he made. Well, one can control oneself, that's about the best we can do. As others have mentioned, don't use it. I tried that. After years of not using FB at all, I missed out on some important news that was only posted there. I decided to get back on FB, on my own terms . I created Bubble [1] and now I can visit FB with most tracking disabled, no ads, I onl…

I got tired of the garbage. First of all, I made a decision Facebook is not the center of my life and decided to stop posting personal things on it except for major announcements. I also started doing the following very aggressively:

- unfollowing everyone who only tended to posted stuff I didn't want to see,

- using the "Hide Post", "Hide All From X", and "Hide Ad" options very liberally - if I had any problem at all with the post or ad whatsoever,

- reporting posts that had content I didn't like and even had a hint of violating Facebook policies--none got deleted but I think this affects Facebook's AI.

I'd love to see a list of everything I've blocked and share it, but I don't see how to get that from Facebook.

It took several months, but probably would have been less time if I was a daily Facebook user.

At this point I have no political or news items (things I hid like crazy) on my Facebook at all. I have fun things from groups I've joined and that's it.

It's boring and quiet, and there if I really need it without annoyances.

But it did take some work and it's true, not everyone cares to put in that work. But they'll repost dumb meme stuff all day.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#73

Post by noahtallen »

blhack wrote: post #27

I must have really different experiences than all of these people that write these articles (it seems like there has been something like this, every week on HN, for the last 10 years) My facebook is mostly people showing pictures of stuff, sharing memes, some movie discussion groups, event planning groups. It seems like mostly just people using facebook as a proxy for real world interactions. Twitter on the other han…

I think it’s little to do with your local circles and more to do with the content you interact with. I know someone whose Facebook is mostly helpful tips, cooking, and family photos without any politics. Another person in the same household has a very different Facebook experience with lots of politics and religion and toxicity. This is coming from an extremely rural part of Ohio with people who have a very conservative social circle.

The difference is that the one person doesn’t care about politics very much and thus doesn’t interact with political content if it shows up, whereas the other person gets very invested into political content. I myself deleted Facebook because I was getting far too invested into political content.

The overall point being that Facebook’s machine learning algorithm is going to increase your engagement with the platform by showing you posts with content you’re more likely to interact with.

So I guess the question is: OP, do you have a tendency to interact and comment on political posts if they ever come up, or do you just ignore them?

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#74

Post by WildParser »

soupfordummies wrote: post #19
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…

The fix is easy and it's simple -- stop using them! Normalize it. Encourage others to do the same. Make it "cool" to not be on them/"lame" to use them. I struggle to see how personal FB/IG/Twitter use is anything other than a net negative at this point. And it's gotten a lot more so over the last several years, IMO.

Problem is - by removing sane people the thing will become even more insane... And most people there are unable to notice - they form democratic majority - nowadays things can accelerate downhill very fast.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#75

Post by harscoat »

re. Twitter negative comments: sorry, it's very valuable to me. It's easy to curate: I use LIST. I have a focused list ("story") which provides great, relevant information. It seems there is a subgroup of people on Twitter who understand how to use (& how not to use) it / imo Twitter is underrated.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#76

Post by [deleted] »

jancsika wrote: post #66
blhack wrote: post #27

I must have really different experiences than all of these people that write these articles (it seems like there has been something like this, every week on HN, for the last 10 years) My facebook is mostly people showing pictures of stuff, sharing memes, some movie discussion groups, event planning groups. It seems like mostly just people using facebook as a proxy for real world interactions. Twitter on the other han…

> I must have really different experiences than all of these people that write these articles (it seems like there has been something like this, every week on HN, for the last 10 years) Me too! It's almost as if the recommendation algorithm and ad model end up showing and reinforcing different types of content and behavior for different sets of users. We really need a good word for this process how different people o…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#77

Post by johncena33 »

blhack wrote: post #27

I must have really different experiences than all of these people that write these articles (it seems like there has been something like this, every week on HN, for the last 10 years) My facebook is mostly people showing pictures of stuff, sharing memes, some movie discussion groups, event planning groups. It seems like mostly just people using facebook as a proxy for real world interactions. Twitter on the other han…

> Twitter on the other hand is just pure toxic garbage which seems made to intentionally divide people and incite hatred and eventually violence.

That's also my impression. I mostly use FB for my neighborhood, hiking, biking, bird watching or any kind of nature related groups. It's been mostly pleasant experience for me. I think you can use FB without lowering yourself in all that outrage and drama. It's absolutely doable.

Twitter, OTOH, is a cesspool. I feel the whole platform was designed to congregate the worst of humanity and to bring out the worst in any decent person. It's almost impossible to use Twitter without causing emotional harm to yourself or the others. I find it interesting that FB gets so much hate from media, but Twitter seems to be a media-darling.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#78

Post by blhack »

pjc50 wrote: post #43
blhack wrote: post #27

I must have really different experiences than all of these people that write these articles (it seems like there has been something like this, every week on HN, for the last 10 years) My facebook is mostly people showing pictures of stuff, sharing memes, some movie discussion groups, event planning groups. It seems like mostly just people using facebook as a proxy for real world interactions. Twitter on the other han…

Twitter is also incredibly bad in many ways, but you can still switch to non-algorithmic timeline, you can be anon or pseudonymous, and people aren't socially "expected" to be on there. On Twitter it's complete strangers who are the problem (and the occasional bluetick or celebrity). On Facebook, it's your friends and family being recommended all sorts of extremist propaganda groups to join. (Oh, and there's an incre…

You can also switch to non algorithmic timeline on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

Look, I'm not trying to defend facebook here. I agree that social media is basically a drug, and have said many times that one day we will look back at it the way we look back now at cigarettes.

But I think it's a little bit ridiculous to see all of the fingers get pointed at facebook when at least my experience has been that facebook is bad, and twitter is infinitely worse to the point where somebody could reasonably assume that twitter was actively trying to create chaos and make people hate one another.

Re: Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

#79

Post by BlueTemplar »

> If you owned a store and someone walked in and started shouting Nazi propaganda or recruiting terrorists near the cash register, would you, as the shop owner, tell all of the other customers you couldn’t possibly intervene?

Perhaps a better metaphor is how a Jehovah's Witness was forbidden to preach from a sidewalk of a company town. She was later found in her right to do that by the Supreme Court.

But in both of these cases, the issue is that of scale - neither compares to Facebook's megascale.

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