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Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#91

Post by jancsika »

spodek wrote: post #17

Eben Moglen's FreedomBox project -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreedomBox -- is more democratic. It would enable social media functionality without privately-owned central servers. It needs work, but what part of democracy doesn't? What does it take for widespread support for the project?

> It would enable social media functionality without privately-owned central servers.

Early Bitcoin-- download this app and click the "Generate Coins" button. Now you've got digital tokens in exchange for having verified the global state of the transaction database. A problem was addressed by some software. Woot! Somebody bought a pizza with these digital tokens, so mission accomplished.

Current IPFS-- lots of people add an important file/directory, and now other people can retrieve that data. Doesn't exactly have a robust system to discover things. But Catalonia used it to workaround some censorship, so it must be at least minimally usable. Hence a problem was addressed with software. Mission accomplished.

Freedombox-- please continue the pattern here. What technical problem does Freedombox solve with software, and what is a single example of how it has been leveraged to accomplish a mission by ordinary humans?

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#92

Post by nradov »

cisanti wrote: post #85
lowry wrote: post #49

This is stupid. Facebook was bashed for influencing politics. It now tries to avoid political discussion entirely by downplaying news from Pages, but it is now bashed for it as well. Where's your integrity, journalists?

What a bullshit comment, Facebook needs to be more responsible with its massive power, it can ruin countries. Europe needs to do something about the Silicon Valley companies, we can't build Chinese firewall but in order to have a chance for competition we need to come up with a plan. One possible way to fuck off FB is because it's spy machine that is very much illegal on some aspects.

Europe doesn't need a plan. High level central planning has never succeeded in producing viable world-class competitors. That approach has already been tried and failed. European countries would achieve better results by setting up more favorable business climates and letting competition occur naturally.

(There's nothing wrong with European countries protecting their citizens with data privacy and security laws. But that's separate from competition.)

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#93

Post by rplnt »

cisanti wrote: post #88
rplnt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiding spam is not a threat to the public good.

Why are you talking about spam, did you even read the article?

They didn't selectively choose this media organization, they did it for every single page. Users still have choice to see the content, if they are interested. I would argue that engagement should be higher if people actively opt in to view this content, as opposed to having it mixed in with their social feed.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#94

Post by watwut »

werewolf wrote: post #21
mtgx wrote: post #2

I understand why the media is frustrated about this. Zuckerberg basically promised them all of this traffic if they just "go all in" with Facebook. And now he's pulling the blanket from under them - just like the media was warned he would do, and they didn't listen. That said, from an objective point of view, first off the media is not entitled to the user's home page in a random social network. They should have neve…

Don't turn this into "media fighting against Facebook" thingy or whatever you just tried. It's not only about them. Yes, they have the strength/influence and they used it. But what about every other Page? What about small businesses and communities that are now losing their viewers? They have no chance to get noticed if they want to speak up against those changes. And yes you can say that they should expect it, but m…

> What about small businesses and communities that are now losing their viewers?

There is no duty whatsoever for Facebook or reddit or twitter or any other company to provide viewers for small businesses and communities for free. As far as I know, facebook never even promised to not change this functionality. If you claim to be search engine or use your power to damage competitors, absolutely. If you selectively hide content to damage opposition, sure.

Maybe facebook should think about timing when there are election around or something similarly important. But still, just like it was ok to separate games from feed, it is ok to separate news from feed.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#95

Post by r3bl »

nsnick wrote: post #83
r3bl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what are you gonna do in Venezuela and Cambodia (also on this experiment) where people have and use Free Basics? Cut yourself off completely from your potential market because you don't want to have Facebook?

Free Basics is a scam by Facebook to get more users hooked. India rightly rejected it.

Well other countries didn't reject it. And the battle wasn't won because India rejected it.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#96

Post by frik »

nof wrote: post #12

Just boycott Facebook already. 'but everyone uses it', yes but you have a choice. If you don't like the Facebook, then gtfo and make the effort to build something to replace it. But I guess that is too much work. People whine about Facebook, yet they do nothing to change the situation. You change the situation by making a choice. If your choice is to have Facebook account, then you are part of the problem, not the so…

Reminds me of a scene in "The Social Network" movie (2010):

  Lawyer: What are you doing?
  Mark Zuckerberg: Checking in to see how it's going in Bosnia.
  Lawyer: Bosnia? The don't have roads. But they do have Facebook.
  Mark Zuckerberg: [stops typing and looks up from his notebook]
Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI-r39_QkAs

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#97

Post by egwynn »

chmike wrote: post #67
orf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad blanket statement to make. Why does Buddhism suck, for example?

Because people rule their life on base of beliefs, maybe ? (beliefs=unproven concepts assumed to be true)

If life is a formal system, then it needs postulates. Obviously humans can’t agree on postulates. Do you have a useful scheme of postulates that you’re sure all humans will agree on? If so, please share. You’ll be able to clear up tens of thousands of years of misunderstandings if so.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#98

Post by loceng »

cantrip wrote: post #84
loceng wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it obvious though? I thought maybe they were being funny or clever by perhaps meaning to use the word treat. Responded further here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703788 No jab intended. I think assumptions are dangerous as well, and lead to more problems - including internal distress - instead of perhaps putting inquiry forward to ask for intentions instead. Obviously you're getting an answer from me no…

Let's break it down. The first poster says Facebook "[is] not [a] concern for democracy". The responder says "What an uneducated answer from what I assume is a techy. Facebook is a treat to democracies. There are more articles on this than the other way around." The first two sentences seems to imply that they disagree with what has just been said, that is except for the word "treat", which implies that they actually…

I think you're not understanding me. If "Facebook is a treat for democracy" is said sarcastically, it has the same meaning as "Facebook is a threat to democracy."; sarcastic might be the wrong term, I can't think of the right one at the moment.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#99

Post by orf »

chmike wrote: post #67
orf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad blanket statement to make. Why does Buddhism suck, for example?

Because people rule their life on base of beliefs, maybe ? (beliefs=unproven concepts assumed to be true)

What specific Buddhists beliefs suck, or are unproven?

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#100

Post by Spoygg »

I'm not sure this is explained well. Everything is still accessible, it's just put on different tab. Now there's "News Feed" as before and "Activity Feed", the tab just below "News Feed" tab.

It's really annoying from my experience, I just forget to check that other tab also. Basically your feed is now split to what your friends posted and what pages you follow posted. The effect author describes might as well be attributed to people: a) not realizing there is another tab to check, b) people forget to check other tab (I'm one of those). From UX standpoint it might be an improvement, but I'd rather see it implemented as filter you can switch on/off than hardcoded tab you have to remember to check.

For comments advising author not using Facebook, I don't see where that goes? It's just how media works in our country and Facebook is most common social network that all groups of people follow, and there is quite a lot (otherwise censored) political information floating around on it.

Specifically:

> You change the situation by making a choice. If your choice is to have Facebook account, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.

That's all nice and visionary, but in countries where you can cut yourself off of alternative news sources by not following Facebook I don't see how that's good advice.

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