[HN Gopher] Facebook keeps recommending political groups
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Facebook keeps recommending political groups
Author : jbegley
Score : 382 points
Date : 2021-06-24 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (themarkup.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (themarkup.org)
| cwp wrote:
| This reminds me of a recurring conversation I've had with
| relatives, in which I try to explain to them that Facebook isn't
| a person. It's not a media company with an editorial staff. It's
| not a company like anything we have seen before. It has
| _billions_ of users. Trillions of posts, photos, videos and
| sundry other content. Thousands, possibly millions, of
| advertisers.
|
| If a person breaks a promise to you, he's a lying liar who lies.
| If Facebook recommends a political group to "at least 3 people,"
| that's not a broken promise. That's an amazingly effective tweak
| to the recommendation algorithm. The same goes for all sort of
| claims people make about Facebook: - You were
| paid in Rubles! (It's not like there was a salesman that should
| have been suspicious. Facebook gets paid in Rubles *all the time*
| because they have millions of Russian users and many, many
| Russian ad customers. No human looked at the ad before it went
| up.) - You're allowing people to post hateful things!
| (Again no human reads all the posts. There are people that review
| a tiny percentage that have been flagged for one reason or
| another, but they'd have to employ a sizable percentage of the
| world's population to review everything.) - You're
| censoring conservatives! (Same thing, nobody is checking the
| political affiliation of posters before allowing posts to go up.)
|
| The fact is, this thing has never existed before, and basically
| no human inventions have reached this many people before, and
| it's frigging hard. Zuckerberg and the rest, are making it up as
| they go.
|
| All that's not to say that Facebook is awesome and the criticism
| is unwarranted. I personally don't use Facebook anymore for all
| the usual reasons. We should absolutely be talking about the role
| of social media in society, and how it's really warped public
| discourse, polarized the polity etc. But "it's easy, if you would
| just do this one thing, everything would be peachy" is absolutely
| the wrong conclusion and people seem to insist on reaching it
| every damn time Facebook comes up.
| wnissen wrote:
| What you're saying is true to a large extent. But numerically
| the most interacted posts on the platform are not just right-
| wing, but far, far right wing. See
| https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10 which posts them every day.
| There's the occasional cute cat, NASA photo, or centrist/left-
| wing news source, sure. But it's 80-90% far right commentators.
| Whether this is due to the asymmetrical polarization of right
| vs. left or something that Facebook is doing is hard to say.
| But the fact is that the most active posts are almost all far
| right political commentary.
| samatman wrote:
| Out of curiosity, I checked out the last twenty entries from
| this list.
|
| Clearly, the reigning heavyweight champion of Facebook is Ben
| Shapiro. It is simply dishonest to call Ben Shapiro "far
| right". He's a Republican. He doesn't promote military
| dictatorship, or "plandemics", or "the steal"; he's an
| Orthodox Jew who wants Republicans to be in charge. That's
| it.
|
| That's just bog-standard right wing. I happen to think he's a
| twerp; so what?
|
| So your source doesn't support your claim.
| bryan_w wrote:
| That would only measure public content. A large portion of US
| users have stopped engaging with public content on FB. A lot
| of people want to use FB to communicate with loved ones and
| news is just shoehorned in awkwardly. They don't engage with
| public content because either because it got them put in
| timeout or because they realized it was like shouting at a
| brick wall
|
| It's not surprising that the ones that still engage with
| public content are people you could imagine enjoying shouting
| at walls.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I think there is a lot of ambiguity when trying to identify a
| political group.
| ffffraudci wrote:
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| DSingularity wrote:
| I just can't believe that decent people are still working for
| this company and not resigning in protest. Is there any doubt
| that their reckless drive towards anything that increases user
| engagement has directly resulted in the polarized societies we
| see everywhere today?
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| It's not only they work for Facebook, but are also pretty proud
| of it. After all, Facebook is the starting F of FAANG, which is
| a Holly Grail of every aspiring software developer, a pinnacle
| of human achievement.
|
| It's not Facebook that needs to be fixed, it's humanity.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| "a Holly Grail of every aspiring software developer" _You
| have to be kidding me_.
|
| Speaking as a Software Developer, there's no inducement on
| Earth you could offer me to work for the shitfactory that is
| Facebook. The company is evil through and through, and that
| starts at the top.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Then Facebook needs to be dropped off FAANG. It's a
| cultural problem on developers that the term is still used.
| fakedang wrote:
| He was referring to FAANG as the Holy Grail of every
| software engineer, but you're right. It's a Holy Grail of
| shitfactories.
| mywittyname wrote:
| FAANG starts with F because it makes a word, not because
| Facebook is particularly appealing in any respect. What else
| are you going to call it? NAGAF? GAANF? ANGFA?
| kbelder wrote:
| And I realize that Facebook is a much larger entity than
| Twitter, but I think that Twitter has a larger and more
| destructive cultural influence.
| esyir wrote:
| Similarly, I've always claimed that Netflix is there
| largely to avoid an offensive acronym.
| samatman wrote:
| My personal favourite is FAAAM: Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet,
| Apple, Microsoft. Obviously the AAA league can be whatever
| order you want.
|
| Microsoft is more deserving of a slot than Netflix, and
| Google is just a subsidiary of a company called Alphabet
| now, however weird and arbitrary that division is in
| practice.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Ah, yeah, politicians, academics and traditional media have
| nothing to do with the polarized society. It's all the
| Facebook's fault!
| srswtf123 wrote:
| It is my belief that their hiring process optimizes for people
| who get work done and don't ask questions. That sort of person
| will never resign in protest --- they don't see anything wrong
| and are fundamentally incapable of seeing it.
| tqi wrote:
| What is this belief based on?
| srswtf123 wrote:
| My personal experience with their hiring process and the
| comments of others on this site who confirm my suspicions,
| as well as ex-employees I've spoken with.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > people who get work done and don't ask questions
|
| People who rely on staying in the good graces of their
| employer to maintain their visa sponsorship status, for
| instance.
| sneak wrote:
| I dislike fb as much as anyone, but I am not sold on the
| current political polarization situation being their fault.
|
| They're a nice scapegoat, but I haven't seen enough to suggest
| that they are anywhere near the root cause.
| rytcio wrote:
| I mean it makes sense. The main stream media found they their
| viewership increased with explosive, inflammatory,
| polarizing, world-ending stories, so news reports are nothing
| but that. Twitter/Facebook learned that too, so they promote
| outrage culture so that people use their product. I remember
| back in the late 2000s, Twitter had a hard time keeping
| people engaged and getting new users. Who cares about what
| someone ate for lunch or what new latte they ordered? Then
| the Obama election happened and the Kony2012 meme. They got
| their dopamine hit and have kept it going.
| sneak wrote:
| Not everything that is plausible is true.
| fallingknife wrote:
| What if you think that any person should be able to communicate
| with any other person freely about any subject, and any person
| should be able to form a group and promote that group to other
| like minded people? What if you also think that this is
| completely independent of what upper middle class busybodies
| think about what is being said?
| bryan_w wrote:
| In other words, consider the fact that people aren't
| resigning in protest as a hint that perhaps there's another
| viewpoint that you haven't explored and this "news" source
| could just not be covering it.
|
| After all we want people to have good media literacy even
| when you like the source.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| >Is there any doubt that their reckless drive towards anything
| that increases user engagement has directly resulted in the
| polarized societies we see everywhere today?
|
| Yes. I doubt it. I think traditional media deserves a lot
| (most?) of the blame. It is easy for us to blame the internet
| because we are on the internet. As a generation we've
| practically forgotten that TV and radio exists and as a result
| massively undervalue its influence. In our head we all know the
| stereotype of the fox news addicted older person, yet for some
| reason we assign more blame to whatever the FB algorithm shows
| on accident than to the things that network shows on purpose.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I'd be curious to see the current numbers on the "older
| person" who uses Facebook vs. watches Fox News. My MIL is
| definitely not a Fox Newser but is on Facebook hours a day.
| renewiltord wrote:
| People were talking about this nonsense polarization during
| Nixon's term. Read Nixonland to get an idea.
|
| Listen, guys, all of you have an external locus of control.
| Facebook is doing things to you that you are unable to control.
| You have a paternalistic view of people. Grandpa is too dumb to
| evaluate on his own. Facebook made him a Nazi.
|
| Gonna be honest with you. It's the people. Facebook didn't
| exist when Nixon was elected. No one made grandpa a Nazi but
| grandpa and no one is doing things to you but you.
| maedla wrote:
| Society has benefitted a net zero from social media. Arguably a
| net negative.
| polyomino wrote:
| Society has benefitted a net zero from software. Arguably a net
| negative.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| The earth has benefitted a net zero from humans. Arguably a
| net negative.
| acheron wrote:
| In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a
| lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad
| move.
| fallingknife wrote:
| That's not even arguable.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The earth has benefitted a net zero from humans. Arguably
| a net negative.
|
| Stop anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, they hate that.
| person22 wrote:
| this made my day.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| "Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women man!"
| eplanit wrote:
| It's a short read -- I stopped at "insurrection". It's actually
| convenient for a writer to divulge their bias/worldview right up
| front so I can save my time.
| qshaman wrote:
| I closed my Facebook account years ago, but is not Facebook
| alone, Youtube keeps recommending me far right extremist
| channels, I'm a POC immigrant, is that just bad luck? I'm the
| only one?. Is f*cking cruel at this point.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| From my experience there's very little "intelligence" in these
| recommendation algorithms.
|
| If you do nothing, they recommend what is generally popular.
|
| If you watch or engage with content, you see recommendations
| for similar content to what you have watched recently.
|
| If you "like" or "subscribe" to channels, you see more of that
| type of stuff.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Long time ago i created a facebook account. I remember vividly
| the moment when some form asked my to volunteer my religious
| beliefs. At that moment I knew we had entered the twilight zone.
|
| We are not out of it yet and, for all I know, we might never be.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| It's a sad phenomenon. I am assuming you were not very young
| when you saw that and you had that reaction due to life
| experience. A young person may not see anything wrong the
| question, and that's why they're an easy target for
| indoctrination. Freedom of religion will seem a strange concept
| fairly soon to younger generations. Paraphrasing Nietzsche,
| values should change very slowly and carefully- but we're
| accelerating how quickly we throw the baby with the bath water.
| Not looking forward to "culture" by the time I get older,
| assuming the world is even stable.
| bitmapbrother wrote:
| >Four days after the Jan. 6 insurrection
|
| It's comedic how these far left wing publications continue to
| call it an "insurrection" when there were no weapons used and the
| only person killed was a woman that was assassinated by a trigger
| happy mall cop whose identity has still not been revealed.
| seventytwo wrote:
| It might be one type of extremism today, but it will be a
| different kind in the future.
|
| Absolutism about lack of censorship is not the answer to this
| problem anymore than a completely regulation-free economy would
| fix any problems there.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I think what bothers me a lot more than recommended political
| groups is censoring them selectively
| InternetPerson wrote:
| Maybe if we have another debate about Facebook, we'll finally
| solve this problem! Everyone, tell us your feelings about
| Facebook!
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Facebook does thing that keeps people using Facebook.
|
| Why would anyone expect Facebook to promote the "healthy option"?
| They're brain junk food.
| necessities wrote:
| That's a good way of putting it.
| minikites wrote:
| How is Facebook's word worth anything at this point? The only
| thing that will change them is outside government regulation,
| which is badly needed.
| wnevets wrote:
| YouTube loves to recommend me far-right channels despite rarely
| if ever watching politics on YouTube. Interesting enough I've
| never gotten left wing channels as recommendations.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| How would you know if that is just your perspective?
|
| If you are really far left, YouTube would have nothing to offer
| you that you don't already have, but everything else would
| appear far right.
|
| Just thinking out loud...
| wnevets wrote:
| If I'm not watching politics on YouTube how would YouTube
| have nothing available on the far left to offer me?
| pbalau wrote:
| Facebook recommends only sailing groups to me... Maybe what
| Facebook recommends to you, is your fucking problem.
| slver wrote:
| When I read about Facebook's issues, I sometimes have the urge so
| start giving armchair advice about how they should fix their
| problem this or that way.
|
| But having a clue about their scale, their business model, and
| the logistical and technical complexity of it... frankly there's
| no fixing this cesspool.
|
| Use it or leave it.
|
| My guess is that Facebook will be eventually replaced by a
| company with a completely different business model. I hope that
| business model focuses on (low) monthly fee, no ads, no tracking,
| just provide the service people need to connect with each other.
| Like a utility. Like your phone, or postal service.
|
| But also it's a bit of a wishful thinking.
| hliyan wrote:
| No-ad services are no longer possible. The very fact that you
| are willing to pay for a service signals advertisers that you
| have purchasing power. The more you pay to keep ads out, the
| more advertisers will pay to put them back in. This will only
| get worse until some sort of socioeconomic paradigm shift takes
| place.
| slver wrote:
| Ads are not that profitable per user. So as companies like
| Apple show, no-ad services are working great, and have great
| ROI.
| thatfunkymunki wrote:
| apple has rather annoying ads in their app store though, so
| maybe not as successful as you think.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| No longer possible? There's tons and tons of websites and
| apps that have paid subscriptions, most of which don't have
| ads after subscribing.
|
| If I'm willing to pay $50/mo to remove ads from Facebook,
| that just says what the ads are worth to me, not to the
| advertiser. Advertisers won't pay _any_ price to show me an
| ad for Pepsi.
| hliyan wrote:
| I hope to god you're right. But, a counterpoint from an
| adjacent post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27620036
| macintux wrote:
| Unfortunately leaving it individually doesn't help much: the
| societal damage is huge.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Wasn't app.net an attempt to be a paid Twitter?
|
| I don't disagree with this being where things needs to go, but
| I feel like you either need some critical mass of initial users
| (what college students were for Facebook), or you need
| exclusive content (Obama and then Trump really made Twitter the
| place-to-be for political discourse), or if it really is a
| "utility", you need it to be a monopoly (like the phone
| system).
|
| So the real question to me is, which of these will it be? Part
| of me wonders if the next social network might be something
| that arises in the halo of a place where people already spend
| money online to have social interactions-- Twitch being an
| obvious example, but even the non-social streaming services are
| candidates for this.
|
| Everyone has and pays for Netflix. What if part of Netflix was
| access to a no frills, bullshit-free social network? That would
| be a pretty wild pivot, but they have the resources and
| technical expertise, and they sure have pivoted before.
| slver wrote:
| Twitter itself is trying to move to a paid model with Twitter
| Blue. I'm looking forward to their experiment.
|
| Unfortunately there's absolutely nothing left in Twitter that
| makes it Twitter anymore. People are writing 20-30 tweet long
| threads, which are basically a long blog article, but
| presented in an infuriating format.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Is this actual malice / bad faith, or is this, as i suspect, that
| their codebase, and its actions, are now so big and opaque that
| they _cannot reason about their code_ - and are playing whack-a-
| mole ?
| karpierz wrote:
| What's the difference between malice and negligence for profit?
| In the end, the company has deliberately chosen a path which
| makes them money while creating externalities.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Hand wringing about "malice" isn't typically productive. No
| airline manufacturer wants to build a plane that crashes, but
| when one falls out of the sky and hundreds of people die, they
| still get taken to court and need to account for their
| decisions.
| swayvil wrote:
| facebook says, "right speech > free speech"
| fallingknife wrote:
| "People being able to directly organize and bypass the
| established political parties and corporate media entities that
| currently control the system is bad."
|
| - The established political parties and corporate media entities
| that currently control the system
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| This but its good actually. The opposite of "corporate media"
| isn't honest factual reporting free of agenda and aligned with
| the viewers interest. The opposite of "corporate media" is a
| complete lack of factual investigation, replaced instead by the
| loud opinions of overconfident charlatans spewing forth
| bullshit at an unprecedented rate. News orgs print retractions
| and have a reputation to maintain, but no one is ever going to
| come back and fact check a facebook rant. Its called a news
| 'feed' because its served from a trough.
| Miner49er wrote:
| There exists just-as-factual non-corporate media. I think
| _Democracy Now!_ is a good example. Yeah, it 's very biased,
| but I think it's factual reporting.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > the loud opinions of overconfident charlatans spewing forth
| bullshit at an unprecedented rate
|
| You just described corporate media. Ever watched
| Fox/CNN/MSNBC? Even the NYT and WaPo is going that direction
| now.
| dnissley wrote:
| "Rather than news, the paper (nytimes) began to sell what
| was, in effect, a creed, an agenda, to a congregation of
| like-minded souls. Post-journalism "mixes open ideological
| intentions with a hidden business necessity required for
| the media to survive," Mir observes. The new business model
| required a new style of reporting. Its language aimed to
| commodify polarization and threat: journalists had to
| "scare the audience to make it donate." At stake was
| survival in the digital storm."
|
| https://www.city-journal.org/journalism-advocacy-over-
| report...
| handrous wrote:
| Spoiler alert: the people "directly organized[ing]" aren't less
| manipulated, nor less manipulating. The rules have shifted and
| it's allowed some new players on the field, but it's the exact
| same game. Took very little time for the "game" to catch up
| with and overtake the web, in the scheme of things, really.
|
| (though, yes, of course, you're right that entrenched interests
| will hate this new thing whether or not what I wrote above is
| true)
| fallingknife wrote:
| > The rules have shifted and it's allowed some new players on
| the field, but it's the exact same game.
|
| Yeah this is exactly my point.
| beprogrammed wrote:
| Where is that quote from? I couldn't find it by searching the
| text.
| swiley wrote:
| Shocking
|
| Curated social media that is funded by manipulating people (ads)
| is manipulating people.
| afavour wrote:
| Have we reached a decade of "AI will fix it" yet, or are we still
| a couple of years off?
|
| I feel like so many issues around content moderation have been
| waved off by the big tech companies as being solved by algorithms
| and yet time and time again it's made very clear that algorithms
| alone aren't going to solve these problems.
|
| I used to think it was because the engineers and managers
| involved believed so deeply in the potential but now I'm pretty
| sure it's because higher ups know the alternative (e.g. hiring
| humans, or abandoning money-generating algorithmic feeds) would
| be expensive and they'll throw anything and everything they can
| at the wall to avoid having to do it.
| philovivero wrote:
| What makes you think we're not already in that decade, and this
| is what it looks like when AI "fixes" things?
|
| Are you familiar with AI Alignment? When AI does work, it does
| not always align with human values and motives. And even if it
| did, it only aligns with the values and motives of its
| creators.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Yes. I think it's a common view that realigning Facebook's
| values and motives is part of any improvement.
|
| Thus the public criticism.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The problem is the humans - the users. They keep clicking on
| outrage-bait, and re-posting it. AIs are not going to fix the
| humans. They might turn the gain down a bit, they might cut off
| some of the worst stuff, but they're not going to fix the
| problem. The problem is _us_.
| cvwright wrote:
| Sure, the _root_ of the problem is the humans.
|
| But IMO you minimize the importance of controlling that gain.
| HN is full of humans, too, but here the worst/craziest stuff
| _usually_ gets reduced visibility. On the big "social"
| platforms, they crank that crap up to 11.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| I don't love defending Facebook, but as of last year, they
| employed 15 THOUSAND content moderators (https://www.forbes.com
| /sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/09/300000-...)
|
| Content moderation at Facebook scale is really, really hard.
| Even for real people.
|
| Again I hate to defend Facebook, but your comment is very
| misleading by ignoring that Facebook HAS hired humans to help
| solve the content moderation problem. A lot of them.
| afavour wrote:
| The clear implication here is surely that 15,000 is not
| enough. Which is maybe not surprising when Facebook claims to
| have 2.85 billion active users. By that metric 15k isn't
| really all that much.
|
| > Content moderation at Facebook scale is really, really
| hard. Even for real people.
|
| Maybe you could even argue that it's impossible. The question
| then is what to do about it. One answer could be "stop using
| recommendation algorithms you do not control", but that would
| harm Facebook's profits.
| karmelapple wrote:
| Using algorithms to determine the order someone sees things
| in is, in my view, a social media company applying
| editorial content.
|
| And therefore, if their editor (which is an algorithm for
| Facebook and Twitter) promotes something that's slanderous
| or libelous, Facebook should be held to the same standards
| as an editor who could be prosecuted for that.
|
| Same with someone who writes something on Facebook. Write
| something slanderous? You are like a newspaper reporter at
| this point. Facebook promotes it in the algorithm? Now
| their algorithm is responsible, too.
|
| Facebook, nor its users, have any significant negative
| consequences for publishing anything that is false or
| misleading. Until that changes, I doubt the company's
| behavior, nor individual posters, will change.
| root_axis wrote:
| That's not a good analogy. "Editorial content" is
| authored by individuals working for or otherwise
| associated with the publication, this is not the case
| with Facebook where content is posted by individuals that
| have no business relationship to Facebook.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Your feed is not an innocent random sampling of posts and
| recommendations from the people and topics you follow.
|
| Facebook does need to be held accountable for the damage
| done by _promoting_ harmful content. They are
| externalizing grave costs in order to maximizing their
| advertising income.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| My guess (and this is purely a guess) is that it's
| "solvable" to within some threshold. But what is that
| threshold? I have no idea. If you turn the knobs too far,
| you'll presumably end up with more false positives. What's
| an acceptable threshold for false positives? I have no
| idea.
|
| If you asked me 3 years ago, I would have naively answered
| that technology can do a much better job consistently
| enforcing moderation rules than our current technology
| actually can. Realizing how hard it is, even for "trained"
| humans, eviscerated that naivety real fast.
|
| I definitely agree it's, literally, impossible for 15k
| moderators to accurately review anywhere near enough posts
| to get to whatever that acceptable threshold is. I'm also
| not convinced doubling that number is enough either.
|
| There's always a certain arbitrariness and subjective
| interpretation in content moderation. Someone will always
| end up unhappy with the result.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Aren't those just the "disposable" moderators that have to
| judge whether an image is child/animal abuse, who work for
| a while and get burned out with psychological trauma? And
| they're mostly living in third world countries, so in the
| eyes of Zuck even more disposable?
|
| Figuring out if a group is political or not needs the
| knowledge of political figures/parties, and the ability to
| understand the name of the group in its local language...
| beerandt wrote:
| Plus the number of moderators is irrelevant if they're
| trained to only remove posts from non-advertisers, or base
| their decisions on biased "fact-checker" articles.
| mdoms wrote:
| > I don't love defending Facebook, but as of last year, they
| employed 15 THOUSAND content moderators
|
| Great. Keep going. They clearly need many thousands more -
| and they can afford it[0].
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/business/facebook-
| earning...
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Yes, 15000 is a lot. But >2 billion people is a lot more.
| Wikipedia has far fewer people employed on content moderation
| yet they seem to fair just fine. This number throwing on
| Facebook "doing an effort" is an attempt to keep the toxic
| business model that they have a live at an acceptable rate.
| How many people would they save for hiring if they'd change
| the timeline into a chronological one instead of their
| current one? It'd be much harder to get as much attention
| than, but also less addictive, which is a net good for every
| human except for Facebook as a business.
| discobot2 wrote:
| Wikipedia has much less content
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Yes. Perhaps that's a clue?
|
| FB's groups are terribly designed if you want to have a
| conversation and keep a collection of useful information.
|
| They're cleverly designed to keep people scrolling
| forever on a content treadmill - in no way the same as
| optimising them for usefulness.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean TikTok is the perfectly optimized content
| treadmill and compared to Facebook and people rave about
| how good it is. You forget that a lot of the value of
| social media is passive entertainment to unwind.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Wikipedia can also be "moderated" by anyone. If I see
| spam or incorrect info on Wikipedia, I can edit it
| myself. Maybe reword things, add references, etc. On
| social media (FB/IG/etc), I don't have that choice. My
| _only_ option is to report it and _hope_ the moderators
| don't say "this [x] doesn't violate our community
| standards" on a clearly spam /scam account/comment/post.
|
| I've reported so much garbage on social media only to be
| told it's not a scam or whatever, I've practically given
| up trying.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean you can't really do that on Wikipedia anymore.
| Sure the edit button is there but there's the spiritual
| equivalent of a PR process now.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| True; I've definitely had my edits reversed or
| challenged. But I've also made many edits that weren't
| (mainly on more niche pages).
| jasonshaev wrote:
| I agree it's not enough. I simply wanted to point out that
| Facebook, tacitly or otherwise, admits it's not a problem
| they can solve purely with technology right now (...without
| making massive changes to their platform that undercut
| their bottom line, as you said).
| yy727 wrote:
| Content moderation is only viable for small-scale
| communities, we're just yet to accept that.
| ElViajero wrote:
| > I don't love defending Facebook, but as of last year, they
| employed 15 THOUSAND content moderators
|
| If all that discussions in Facebook happened in cafes,
| libraries and schools there will be way more "moderators" in
| that spaces. 15,000 is nothing for a business with 2.85
| billion users. That is a little more than 1 moderator for
| each 200,000 users.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That being the case, it seems like Facebook in it's current
| form shouldn't exist then. It has no natural right to exist,
| and the harms clearly outweigh any benefits that could be
| argued.
| mabub24 wrote:
| Most social networks operate with a business model/philosophy
| that the bare minimum of moderation will promote uploading and
| engagement, capturing the biggest user base, while also saving
| on expenses. Moderation is just for when you achieve market
| dominance or attention, and the bare minimum is shifted
| slightly towards a bit more moderation to appease any critical
| comments, outcries, or changes in expectations.
|
| AI moderation is, and, I think, always has been, a cost saving
| measure. The effectiveness of it for the health of a platform
| has always been secondary.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| I'd love to see more discussion about what success actually
| looks like for content moderation on facebook (or the internet,
| really).
|
| We don't seem to care that the legal system doesn't get
| remotely close to catching everyone who commits an ACTUAL crime
| so why do we need to be perfect (whatever that even means) for
| content moderation?
| paulpauper wrote:
| Even as early as 2013 Facebook was using advanced image
| recognition to moderate content. They use both humans and
| sutomated screening
| slg wrote:
| From the article.
|
| >we used keyword-based classification to assess whether they
| contained support for politicians, movements, parties, or
| ideologies
|
| They don't need AI to improve this. A boring old keyword search
| would improve things. Sure, classifying groups perfectly is a
| difficult problem especially at Facebook's scale. But this
| shows almost a complete lack of effort when groups like "Bernie
| Sanders for President 2020" and "Liberty lovers for Ted Cruz"
| are recommended.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| One of my extended family members works for a FAANG company
| (not Facebook) on a team that moderates user-generated content.
| They are actually using AI to great effect, with great results.
| They have large amounts of manual review and moderation as
| well, but having AI augment the human intervention and also
| continuously trained based on human overrides of AI decisions
| makes the system much more efficient.
|
| What many people don't understand is that even if Facebook
| employed human moderators to individually review every group,
| there would still be isolated examples of policy violations
| slipping through. Human moderators are far from perfect. They
| can and do make mistakes. At scale, you get some moderators who
| don't actually care about doing the work, so they start letting
| things slip through instead of reviewing them. AI is also
| helpful in flagging human moderator decisions that disagree
| strongly with AI predictions, which can then be used to catch
| moderator errors or improve the AI, depending on which is
| ultimately deemed correct.
|
| It's easy to forget that Facebook has almost 3 billion users.
| At scales that large, even 99.99% correct content moderation
| (human or otherwise) will still result in a lot of incorrectly
| moderated content slipping through.
|
| More commonly, it may not be immediately obvious that content
| breaks policies, or in this case that a group is political. Or
| maybe the group started as one thing, but then evolved over
| time to become highly political. Or maybe they chose a name
| that sounds innocuous, but is actually very offensive given
| some obscure context or lingo. The problem is impossible to
| solve perfectly, so we need to instead focus on setting
| realistic expectations for what can be done.
| temp8964 wrote:
| > "AI will fix it"
|
| What is the "it"? A society problem or a company problem? I
| don't think AI is designed to fix society problems. They are
| designed to make more money for the company, even with the cost
| of the society.
| Nevermark wrote:
| While AI isn't a wand for society's problems, it isn't a wand
| for business problems either.
|
| In both cases AI will do whatever task you design or train it
| to do.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Content classification and moderation at scale is hard. I wish
| this article had provided more concrete statistics.
|
| > The group, formed in December, is private and relatively small
| (57 members) but is still active, with four posts in the last
| month. We attempted to reach the administrator by email but did
| not receive a response.
|
| It's not really honest to expect Facebook to correctly classify
| every single, tiny group created on the entire website.
| CPLX wrote:
| We can demand companies do whatever we, as a society, deem
| important to do.
|
| If their scale and cost structure makes complying with that
| demand "impossible" then it's completely reasonably to propose
| that it's their scale and business model that's the problem,
| not the nature of the demand.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| If moderating their content is necessary to maintain a healthy
| platform (in terms that our society determines), then their
| inability to moderate that content means they are too big and
| need to be cut down to a manageable size.
|
| What real good has Facebook done? Even the few examples that
| can be mustered don't compete with the ongoing damage it does
| to our society. If they can't handle these problems at this
| scale (global X-billion users scale) then they should scale
| down.
| nradov wrote:
| As a society we don't restrict fundamental civil rights such
| as freedom of speech for individuals or corporations just
| because it might cause dune vaguely defined "damage". The
| legal bar is higher than that, as it should be.
| cvwright wrote:
| No but we do have anti-trust law
| nradov wrote:
| That's a non sequitur. Antitrust law has no relevance to
| content moderation policies or free speech rights.
| cvwright wrote:
| The argument was that Facebook is so big that they're a
| danger. Limiting their speech is not compatible with US
| law, as you mention.
|
| So the proper solution is not to limit what they can say.
| It's to stop them being so big that they are a danger.
| bingidingi wrote:
| Then maybe they shouldn't allow everyone to create these groups
| on their platform.
|
| If I run a music venue, and every weekend I sell out 1,000
| seats... BUT every weekend 1 person shoots another person...
| they're not going to let me keep having concerts. I can't throw
| my hands up and say "well there are just too many people at
| this event, I can't check them _all_ for guns "
| nradov wrote:
| That's a horrible comparison. Creating a political discussion
| group isn't a violent crime.
| bingidingi wrote:
| Running a music venue isn't a violent crime either, but if
| I'm failing to moderate and protect the space my business
| and its customers operate in... I won't have a business for
| long.
|
| My point is that their excuse of "there's too much volume
| for us to manage" is complete bologna. Any physical
| business with a similar issue would be forced to reduce
| volume to a rate that's manageable. If Facebook can't
| moderate their content effectively, then they need to
| either scale their moderation or reduce their content. I'm
| tired of this "well, it's a hard problem what are you going
| to do" nonsense.
| mdoms wrote:
| > It's not really honest to expect Facebook to correctly
| classify every single, tiny group created on the entire website
|
| I think it's entirely reasonable[0]. I'm sick and tired of this
| bogus idea that large websites are simply too big to be
| moderated by human beings. It's bullshit propaganda that is
| invented by companies that don't want to spend the money to do
| it.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/business/facebook-
| earning...
| afavour wrote:
| > It's not really honest to expect Facebook to correctly
| classify every single, tiny group created on the entire
| website.
|
| I agree, but _that 's what Facebook said it would do_. IMO the
| onus is on Facebook here. They promised to do something they
| surely knew they couldn't do. I suspect because the alternative
| is admitting that they don't really have any control over their
| recommendation algorithm, and the logical conclusion to _that_
| is to stop recommending things. But they don 't ever want to do
| that because their engagement numbers would tank.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I don't think it's reasonable to interpret their statement to
| mean that their user-submitted content classification would
| never be without fault. I think people are forgetting the
| scale of Facebook, or even the scale of the global internet
| population.
|
| If Facebook made a change to stop recommending groups that
| had been categorized as political, that's a fair fulfillment
| of their statement. If some users are miscategorizing their
| user-created groups and some of those aren't caught by
| automated filters and some of those are slipping into
| recommendations somewhere, we're starting to play a game of
| "gotchas".
|
| What do people actually want from Facebook? 100% perfect
| categorization of 100% user-generated content is impossible,
| and I think most people on HN understand that. So is there
| some degree of "good enough" that would be acceptable, or is
| this the type of issue that will generate outrage as long as
| someone can find an isolated exception somewhere? If it's the
| latter, I think we're bound to wear out the patience of
| reasonable people following along.
| wavefunction wrote:
| They agreed to do it and haven't done it. As Facebook was
| in the best position out of anyone to say whether they
| could or could not accomplish this moderation and said they
| could even though they apparently can't or don't want to,
| anything beyond that fact is really very meaningless.
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| I think you touch on the core problem. That 100% perfect
| categorization is impossible. Also, it turns out that items
| which are false or angry are more likely to go viral, be it
| in science or politics:
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/health-
| news/articles/2021-05-24/...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57558028
|
| Unfortunately it turns out that we humans over-react, and
| over-spread, falsehoods. So I want both the "reshare and
| retweet" banned as features on social media platforms if
| section 230 protections are to remain.
|
| The solution isn't to encroach on the 1st amendment right
| to say anything you want. It's to take away the 'gasoline'
| of the reshare, that has an innate bias to falsehoods, from
| spreading them. That's the first thing I want Facebook to
| change. And the second is to go back to enforcing that
| every account is tied to a real person. It was great when
| "Facebook" was about real people back in 2004 - it should
| get back to that original vision!
| erehweb wrote:
| The issue is that FB is not doing a good job - still
| recommending "Progressive Democrats of Nevada," "Michigan
| Republicans", "Bernie Sanders for President 2020," "Liberty
| lovers for Ted Cruz," "Philly for Elizabeth Warren". Sure, it's
| non-trivial, but if these fall through the cracks, then you're
| not trying hard enough.
| erehweb wrote:
| My guess is that there was a mixture of: 1) This not being a
| priority for FB 2) FB Eng / PM being too clever for its own
| good and not doing the obvious thing of substring matching
| ("not scalable"). (Arguably a part of (1) - if it's really
| important, you'd have the team to maintain a list of banned
| strings). 3) Just a plain old bug (although arguably this is
| a subcategory of (1)).
| slipframe wrote:
| > _"Progressive Democrats of Nevada," "Michigan
| Republicans", "Bernie Sanders for President 2020," "Liberty
| lovers for Ted Cruz," "Philly for Elizabeth Warren"_
|
| For classifying things like this as political, a typical
| bayesian 'spam' filter would perform very well.
| delecti wrote:
| > It's not really honest to expect Facebook to correctly
| classify every single, tiny group created on the entire
| website.
|
| Why is it reasonable for Facebook to promote content it hasn't
| classified?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The same reason it's reasonable for Hacker News to promote
| user-submitted links that have been voted up by users.
| _Before_ being individually vetted ahead of time by
| moderators.
|
| Do we really want to go down the road of restricting websites
| from sharing user-generated content? That's a non-starter for
| the free internet.
| nend wrote:
| That's not a fair comparison. Hacker News isn't making user
| based recommendations based on the content of the article
| or user preferences, Facebook is.
|
| FB's recommendation algorithm is tuned to promote (by their
| own admittance), divisive content because it promotes
| engagement. AND it's tuned based on specific user data.
|
| HN doesn't recommend specific content to specific users.
| It's based on site-wide upvotes, downvotes, and flagging,
| and doesn't take the actual content of the links in to
| account at all.
|
| I'm not saying you can legislate the difference and stop FB
| while keeping a free internet. But HN and FB are not
| remotely doing the same thing and is not an argument why
| it's fine for FB to continue doing what they're doing.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > That's not a fair comparison. Hacker News isn't making
| user based recommendations based on the content of the
| article or user preferences, Facebook is.
|
| Okay, then consider Reddit. Or Twitter. Or YouTube. Or
| Spotify's podcast recommendations. or Netflix's what to
| watch next recommendations.
|
| Letting users indicate their interests and then receive
| recommendations according to their interests is core to
| every recommendation engine on the internet. Obviously
| we're not going to ban recommendations engines or
| disallow recommending content to users based on what they
| want to see.
| delecti wrote:
| We don't need to draw a specific line where it becomes a
| problem to be able to say that Facebook has been
| irresponsible with their recommendations. Though on that
| note, Youtube's recommendations have also been implicated
| as pipeline for radicalizing people.
| rapind wrote:
| There exist recommendations engines who's goals are
| solely to be useful. It's the recommendation engines
| tuned to drive engagement for the purpose of advertising
| that are the issue. It's a business model (enabled by
| tech) problem.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The group, formed in December, is private and relatively
| small (57 members)_
|
| It's not reasonable to promote a _private_ group.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Meanwhile, YouTube continues to force a coronavirus section in my
| recommendations despite me hiding it over and over again. It's
| just an annoyance but still.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Youtube gets way too little blame for radicalizing a large
| chunk of angry/confused people imo. I watched a video one time
| that I guess was alt-right-adjacent. Youtube immediately
| started recommending more hardcore basically racist content
| intended to induce more anger - leading my right down the
| rabbit hole if I wanted to go. I had to train it to stop doing
| that.
|
| Instagram seems to have done the same thing for a bunch of
| people in the wellness community - pulling them some of them
| down into the Q-rabbit hole.
|
| I truly despise the algorithms and blame them for most of the
| problem.
| nomel wrote:
| You can easily opt out of this. Turn off watch history and
| search history, then you'll have recommendations related to
| your subscriptions, not what you watch. I've been doing this
| for over a decade now.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| Thank you for this; I've done similar on other sites but
| hadn't considered YouTube.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's more than an annoyance, they are clearly pushing an
| agenda.
| Talanes wrote:
| I don't think so, those banners are pure virtue signal. An
| attempt to look good to the market they've determined is the
| most profitable to align with.
|
| If they were actually trying to change minds, they have so
| many better tools than an annoying banner that only makes you
| dig in harder on whatever you already believed.
| slipframe wrote:
| Aren't they 'virtue signaling' by pushing a 'virtuous'
| agenda? These don't seem mutually exclusive to me.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yeah, maybe I should have said "promoting" an agenda rather
| than pushing, for whatever difference it makes. Virtue
| signaling is the motivation, I agree. Nobody at YouTube
| knows anything about virology or vaccinations, nor do the
| vast majority of the celebrity creators of most of the
| videos they are promoting under that particular banner.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| "Google FUNDED virus research carried out by Wuhan-linked
| scientist Peter Daszak for over a decade, new report reveals,
| amid accusations Big Tech has silenced COVID lab leak theory"
|
| If this is true now you know why Google has pushed so hard on
| controlling any information around it.
| clockwork123512 wrote:
| To solve this, I avoid using YouTube for discovering new videos
| because I don't believe the recommendation system has my
| interests in mind (e.g. spending my time more enjoyably). I've
| installed a free browser add-on to hide all YouTube
| recommendations in the sidebar (Distraction Free YouTube for
| Firefox).
| yalogin wrote:
| The way the algorithms and the current approach work, there is
| really no way to participate on a platform and not get slowly
| pulled into the extreme machine one way or the other. It's not
| just politics, the algorithms are geared towards driving you more
| and more into that world and maximize your attention. I wish
| there is a mellow mode where the platform just shows you
| everything. I like reddit for that reason, I can control what
| aspects I want to get into and block everything out. I don't
| think FB has an incentive to fix their stuff. They also have
| fully gone on to the "lets cover up things and spend on lobbyists
| and PR" mode, nothing is going to change.
| ananonymoususer wrote:
| How soon we forget that "not my president" was inspired not by
| Biden, but by Trump. I guess it was all okay to organize
| political protest groups back in 2016, but somehow it's not okay
| anymore today.
| archagon wrote:
| Check your memory? It started with Obama.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| "If people didn't see manipulative social media posts, they'd go
| back to believing our manipulative mass media broadcasts."
|
| There is really no way out of this. The age of information being
| dictated from a handful of corporations in New York is over.
| slothtrop wrote:
| At least the latter manipulative broadcasts have a vetting
| process to root them in some semblance of reality. Then you can
| rummage among various ones to see truth hidden in plain sight.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| But the fight is for the uncritical consumer who isn't going
| to look beyond the substance. The web overall also provides a
| vast amount of information that's useful to those who
| critically sift it even it is arguably harmful to those who
| uncritically swallow it.
|
| Moreover, the vetting process is an extra added because of
| mass media's monopoly position - part of "journalist quality"
| generally. And this has been declining for a while. Partly
| 'cause of competition from the web but also because of a
| generally more competitive environment.
|
| Which is to say, we're not going back to the old situation
| regardless so we may as well appreciate the benefits and
| drawbacks of each era.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Like the reality of WMDs in Iraq?
| lanevorockz wrote:
| next evolution of social media will be to embed it to politics.
| BigTech being part of the Democrat movement just means they will
| be replaced.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I love that the whole discourse revolves around the problem of
| stoopid voters having wrong thoughts and sharing wrong opinions.
|
| I wonder what "political" even means. A group of people who like
| Ben Shapiro will be classified as political, I guess. But what
| about an LGBT+ youth group? Is it politics? Is it Facebook that
| decides what issue is political and controversial and which issue
| should be considered the de facto norm?
| Spivak wrote:
| You're following into the trap of "there are two sexual
| orientations: straight and political."
|
| You can say that everything is politics and power dynamics.
| That the existence of a comic book club at your high school is
| the political act of organizing and normalizing these freaks
| and nerds who indoctrinate good christian boys away from
| football and family values with their superhero propaganda. The
| problem with reasoning like this is that it creates this world
| view where everything revolves this lotus of "establishment"
| and must exist in opposition to it. Where really it's just
| people who like comics and want to share this thing they like.
|
| The same with how LGBT groups are portrayed. There are people
| engaging in politics on issues like gay marriage and trans
| rights but that doesn't make an LGBT youth group set up to give
| community to people who feel alone and marginalized a place to
| be themselves and make friends a political group.
|
| But Ben Sharpie, his content is literally just political
| outrage bait designed to push a very specific narrative for the
| purpose of changing the political tide. And since that's all
| that he and people like him do day in and day out it's why they
| assume that that's what our comic book club must be doing as
| well. Bleh.
|
| You know what we do in our LGBT youth group, play Super Smash
| Bros, bake cookies, and watch gay rom coms.
|
| Our Discord is just a stream of people calling each other and
| random things gay, a deep fried meme of Lord Farquaad saying
| 'E', a twitter screencap about how attractive girls are with
| suspenders, a meme of Ferris from Re:Zero saying "excited gay
| noises" with a story about how a stranger called her miss in
| public, and someone suggesting we have a cottagecore theme
| night.
| rscoots wrote:
| I think that was the poster's whole point though.
|
| Name the people you trust at Facebook to make that same
| distinction you just made in your post.
|
| Name the process you as a consumer can use to hold those at
| Facebook to account when they inevitably get it wrong.
|
| Point me to the highly-transparent records of how and when
| Facebook employees made that decision.
|
| Obviously none of the above exists and that is the core
| issue.
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm not so sure because "what issue is political and
| controversial and which issue should be considered the de
| facto norm" misses the distinction. Apparently what make a
| social club for LGBT people political or not is how
| "normal" it is.
|
| I think you're point is 100% right that Facebook is a black
| box of moderation with basically no accountability outside
| of getting enough journalists to raise a stink on your
| behalf. But the issue is this perception that LGBT spaces
| are inherently political and that Facebook is just giving
| them a pass because of cultural favoritism. Because the
| answer is no, LGBT youth groups aren't political and
| Facebook isn't categorizing them as such so there isn't
| much to talk about unless you think they are.
| rscoots wrote:
| >Because the answer is no, LGBT youth groups aren't
| political
|
| None of them can ever be political? Really?
|
| Obviously groups realted to any politically-adjacent
| topic can run the gambit from entirely political to
| totally divorced from any politics or activism.
|
| I thought you were implying the first poster was not
| aware of that fact is all.
|
| Regardless, thinking Facebook (or anyone) is in any sort
| of position to decide this is a total farce, at least to
| my eyes.
|
| (Waited to post... Got my account rate limited cuz my
| fellow liberals downvoted me w/o comment. Seems like HN
| might not be a good place for reasonable discussion on
| controversial topics.)
| Spivak wrote:
| Oh come on, Do you really not recognize a difference
| between groups which are inherently political and groups
| which are incidentally political? A sewing circle that
| decides to participate in their local county's get out
| the vote campaign is now acting politically despite the
| fact that sewing is not a political activity. The same is
| true for LGBT communities and spaces. So your question
| boils down to what if an LGBT youth group started acting
| politically, well then I guess they would be a political
| organization then but that isn't a very meaningful
| statement.
|
| The core of the issue is when you have political
| figureheads very carefully craft a narrative where all
| LGBT existence is political. You can't host A support
| group for trans kids because people who see the mere
| existence of trans individuals as a political threat
| label it as indoctrination. You can't host a Christmas
| for LGBT folks who aren't accepted because it will be
| labeled stealing their children away from their families.
|
| The fact that you consider all activities queer folk do
| to be adjacent to politics is so frustrating. It's not a
| coincidence the root post used LGBT youth group as the
| ambiguous example and not a book club.
| Talanes wrote:
| >Apparently what make a social club for LGBT people
| political or not is how "normal" it is.
|
| In the context of outside perception it partially is. The
| more normalized LGBT culture is, the less bigots you have
| who immediately label anything LBGT as political.
| Spivak wrote:
| Amen, but it sure does suck that we have to wait for that
| doesn't it?
| h2odragon wrote:
| Facebook doesn't decide, they just enforce.
|
| Some shadowy group of "our betters" does the deciding, and
| somehow these decisions appear in TV personalities with
| remarkable swiftness.
|
| "Sociology isn't a hard science" is a cover story.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| I don't want social media enforcing anything either,
| especially if it comes from the elitists or our government.
| The latter breaks all sorts of constitutional amendments.
| They're using a middle man to claim they're not stomping on
| the constitution.
| astrange wrote:
| It's because people yell at them on Twitter. This isn't
| "shadowy".
| 41209 wrote:
| Isn't it known that Facebook is aware the more enraged you are,
| the more engaged you are.
|
| You have an entire outrage culture of if it bleeds it leads, you
| can either be a part of this or not.
|
| In the last few years I've had to cut out most social media and
| online dating because it made me very miserable. With the time
| I've gained back I've improved my career, dated absolutely
| amazing people, and found more peace. Feeling good about yourself
| is free, but if you feel good about yourself you don't need to
| argue on Facebook about things which ultimately affect you very
| little if at all.
| code_duck wrote:
| Their systems either work like that by intention or as a side
| effect. Perhaps they get more engagement by showing me content
| I don't like.
|
| I grew frustrated enough to entirely stop using Facebook around
| 2016. I would unfollow, block, hide posts and indicate lack of
| interest in anything political, and then the next items on the
| next refresh would be the same sort of political topics from
| people I didn't even know were on my friends list. Meanwhile,
| the content I actually wanted to see such as conversation and
| events in the life of my friends hardly ever came up.
|
| I assume that Facebook's system is sophisticated enough to
| conclude that if I have hidden, removed friends, and blocked
| people repeatedly as actions related to certain political posts
| that I don't wish to see more of the same.
| nradov wrote:
| I love Facebook. It makes me feel good. It's the best way to
| publicly share my nature photography, and keep up with distant
| friends and family. The key is to "hide all from" pages for
| news, politics, memes, etc so they don't show up when your
| friends share posts. If I wanted to read biased garbage from
| the likes of Breitbart or the New York Times I would follow
| those pages myself.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Its not normal. Its not natural. Its not good for you. When
| you check facebook its activating the same brain areas as
| someone who is addicted to gambling having a pull on a slot
| machine. These addictive aspects are well documented and
| intentional.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted? It's okay to like Facebook,
| folks.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Because this post is like someone coming to an AA meeting
| claiming it's okay to go into a bar because he loves eating
| peanuts, drinking carbonated water while reading a book in
| a corner booth.
|
| There's always someone in these threads who is like "hey, I
| have a healthy use of facebook, why don't you ?". This
| conversation has been done to death.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Probably because Facebook is full of dark patterns and
| slowly tries to force this kind of content back onto you
| all the time so you're constantly fighting a riptide of
| ads, political garbage, and memes when all you want to see
| if updates about the lives of friends and family.
|
| I know that I have trouble fighting that riptide. My family
| doesn't stand a chance. Too many friends and family members
| who are too old to fight that effect have been slowly
| polarized politically because they're helpless against
| Facebook's engagement metrics.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean you're just describing social media. Facebook the
| company makes plenty of user-hostile decisions but "the
| majority of content that people on Facebook share are
| memes and political garbage" isn't really something
| Facebook did except by being a platform where people who
| post that stuff can find an audience.
|
| I mean I guess Facebook could mod memes and political
| content out of existence but the backlash against such an
| action would probably be worse.
| cvwright wrote:
| Social media doesn't have to be awful. The current
| platforms are awful because they work for advertisers,
| not for users.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| When there are people using your data to exploit the less
| intelligent more easily terrified portion of your
| countries citizens using targeted groups run by nation
| states that can only be described as adversarial to your
| country, it's a bit beyond "this is just what social
| media is". Facebook knows exactly what is being done
| using their platform and their CEO has given it tacit
| approval. There is a reason why I and a not insignificant
| portion of engineers wont consider working there.
| macintux wrote:
| Many people feel Facebook is, collectively, a strongly net
| negative on society as a whole.
|
| If it were simply a place to keep in touch with family and
| friends, and to find local business, etc, I think it'd be a
| fantastic resource and a net positive.
|
| Unfortunately it has instead contributed to the devolution
| of a common understanding of truth, a common set of values,
| in favor of the outrage machine, mostly pushed by
| Facebook's algorithms.
|
| So not only is it destructive, Facebook has actively
| encouraged that destruction.
|
| So, many people feel it's not actually okay to like
| Facebook, any more than it's ok to like the proliferation
| of drug dealers on street corners.
| redonkulus wrote:
| ELI5 how do you know it's being downvoted?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Posts turn grey if downvoted enough. It seems to have
| rebounded now, though.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I agree that the "Hide all from" is important for making
| Facebook more tolerable. I do the same, but I wish I didn't
| have to. It seems for every new friend I add, there is a new
| round of "Hide all from" that I have to do.
|
| "Hide all from" is necessary, but not sufficient. Facebook
| still uses their algorithm to chose what to show you. It's
| harder to choose what I want to see when that's going on.
|
| I also wish there was a way to filter out specific topics
| that people post about, such as sports and politics, and
| block categories of things like "attempts to promote multi-
| level marketing products", but unfortunately it's either
| block the person wholesale or let all their posts show.
| There's an option to "See less from" a friend, but I have no
| idea what that does. Once again, I have to hope that the
| algorithm does the right thing.
|
| I did notice that there was a way to block just a person's
| stories, which saved me from blocking a family member. She
| posts incessantly about the makeup she's selling via an MLM,
| but fortunately she does it only through stories.
| EGreg wrote:
| This is the inevitable result of Capitalism.
|
| Journalism adapted to being disrupted by the Internet, by
| serving one sided audience with one sided outrage articles. The
| market selects for those. If FOX news admitted liberals weren't
| that bad, they would lose much of their audience.
|
| And social network algorithms select for "engagement" which
| once again prioritizes ones sided outrage clickbait.
| api wrote:
| It's a result of capitalism, but only because capitalism is a
| "greedy optimization algorithm" that opportunistically hones
| in on whatever works consequences (and sometimes ethics) be
| damned.
|
| The root cause is that humans have a powerful negativity
| bias. I once heard someone who'd been an editor at a major
| paper say that negative articles get as many as _thousands of
| times_ more clicks than positive articles. It would be very
| hard for any media business _not_ to prioritize negativity
| and conflict. They would not survive.
|
| I've seen it myself. I once penned a very combative blog post
| about the usability flaws in IPv6. It got hundreds of times
| more hits than anything else I have ever written _combined_.
| The big difference seemed to be the negative, combative,
| snarky tone. If you write like a snarky narcissistic asshole,
| you get 10-100X the attention. (I ended up taking it down
| because I didn 't like the tone after thinking about it for a
| while.)
|
| This bias likely has an evolutionary root. "If you mistake a
| bush for a lion, you're fine. If you mistake a lion for a
| bush, you're dead." We came of age in an environment of
| scarcity, predation, and conflict, and are hard-wired to pay
| close attention to anything that even remotely smells like a
| threat or induces negative emotions.
| EGreg wrote:
| I think the biggest reason isn't even the evolutionary
| root, but people's tendency to chime in when they disagree,
| whereas they MAY hit the like button if they agree.
|
| I would even say the number of comments shows how
| controversial something is while the amount of likes shows
| how uncontroversial it is.
|
| Comments take more effort than hitting a like. You want to
| add your 2c and before you know it, others want to address
| what you said, too. And you get endless repetitions of the
| same arguments buried deep in chats and threads.
|
| Finally, there is nothing more addictive and compelling
| than the notification "Someone just replied to your
| comment"
| api wrote:
| > people's tendency to chime in when they disagree
|
| Take away that and the tendency of people to want to show
| off how "verysmart" they are and you'd have to shut down
| HN.
| cvwright wrote:
| This is not necessarily the result of capitalism.
|
| This is the result of people wanting something for free.
| Which normally is like the opposite of capitalism.
| EGreg wrote:
| No. That's factually wrong.
|
| Under capitalism, news agencies are privately owned, and
| have to pay employees. They compete for advertising and
| subscription revenue.
|
| Thus, they are subject to market discipline and the market
| selects for clickbat outrage articles that are widely
| shared. When it comes to subscriptions, the for-profit news
| organizations cannot afford to tell both sides of the
| story. If FOX News hosts regularly admitted that
| progressives are decent people and single payer systems may
| have some good sides , they'd lose their audience. If Daily
| Kos said that conservatives have a point in this or the
| other thing, their readers would be frustrated/triggered
| and move elsewhere.
|
| Facebook selects for more engagement and sends
| notifications because if they didn't, then another network
| would become #1.
|
| The point is... capitalism drives us into echo chambers and
| distracts/interrupts us at dinner. It is a tragedy of the
| commons where the commins is human attention and decency.
|
| On the other hand, science, wikipedia and open source
| software do not have a profit motive. There is competition,
| yes -- to be the first to contribute to the snowball of
| free information. This is actually collaboration. Our news
| can be done this way.
|
| Look at https://rational.app to see what I'm talking about.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Outrage is the tool that FB, Twitter, Fox News and CNN use to
| sell more ads. They won't stop because it is insanely
| successful. This is why we need taxing of digital advertising.
| This the root of all this evil. We need to make these behaviors
| a _lot_ less profitable.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| I share your conclusion. The feed is so horrendous these days,
| the only choice is to be part of it, or not. Having left the
| app over a year ago, I don't feel I'm missing anything. Anyone
| who wants to be part of my life can text, call, or e-mail (you
| likely can speculate who these people are before leaving FB,
| and you'll be right in retrospect). It's nice to not know, and
| save catching up for IRL. I am told I'm a "bad texter", but
| truthfully I 110% prefer when people tell me their stories in
| person, because texting misses out on the non-verbal aspects.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I deleted it too!
|
| I still talk to the same people I was talking to before and
| eliminated a bunch of B.S.
|
| Literally zero loss to my life.
| afavour wrote:
| I feel as though a comment similar to this appear on every
| Facebook-related topic. And don't get me wrong, you're
| absolutely right! I've also cut out Facebook from my life as
| much as I can and I'm happier for it.
|
| But "everyone just needs to cut out that bad stuff!" doesn't
| really work on a societal scale. Not to sound hyperbolic but I
| do feel as though the social media era has caused widespread
| addiction to the dopamine hits these apps provide and I don't
| think everyone is going to stop doing it just because someone
| tells them it would be good for them to do it. IMO society is
| far better off for the concerted campaigns that were fought
| against smoking. Maybe something similar is needed here.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm sure we can have both. A call for collective action and
| change through regulation or legislation.
|
| For many it would be very easy to just cut down on social
| media or stop altogether and find alternatives for the few
| things that are good about fb. I did it and I surely don't
| have any more willpower than the average person. For the
| rest, let's help them make the right choice to break the
| circle of addiction, talk to your friends, talk to your
| family, maybe reconsider what's important for you and whether
| you need that job at a company that makes many people's lives
| miserable even if it pays well. On top of that, let's try to
| convince lawmakers to introduce legislation and regulation.
| You need to do all the things, and everybody needs to,
| otherwise nothing will change.
| andreilys wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what legislation and regulation would
| yield positive effects with no negative
| externalities/regulatory capture that prevents any new
| companies from competing with Facebook?
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Delete facebook, the company?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm obviously not an expert but what I can imagine is
|
| - requirement of social media companies to correct the
| record and show people where they were the target of
| misinformation
|
| - childhood development informed minimum age requirement
| for social media use
|
| - banning of ultra-specific targeting the way it is done
| right now
|
| - banning of political advertising
|
| The list goes on and, again, obviously I'm not an expert
| in all the externalities, I just see a problem and would
| like to see it addressed. I have suggestions but am open
| to other suggestions. Anything that's not "the market
| will fix it".
| andreilys wrote:
| _show people where they were the target of
| misinformation_
|
| Ah perfect, let Dorsey and Zuck be the arbiters of truth.
|
| That definitely has not backfired during covid right? As
| I recall both platforms suppressed any mention of a lab
| leak theory as "conspiracy".
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Ah perfect, let Dorsey and Zuck be the arbiters of
| truth.
|
| That's not what I said. It could very well come from an
| independent organization. Fb and others would just be
| responsible for putting it in front of the people's eyes
| that they have shown disinformation to. Is that a perfect
| solution? Probably not but what the hell else are we
| gonna do?
|
| What do you suggest we do instead?
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Regarding trying to get individuals to change their
| behavior: I mean, a lot of social media posts are just
| people reposting things from meme groups, maybe adding a
| sentence or two here.
|
| If those reposts get no, 1, or 2 likes - which is what I
| see a lot when occasionally browsing people on my friends
| list manually from time to time (as they've been
| unfollowed) - then no one's even reading your reposts or
| opinions. Why are you doing this? Is this even fun to you?
|
| People might not think of what they are doing because they
| are bored, or trying to avoid situations, but maybe if
| explained to them exactly what they are doing and how
| pointless it is--maybe they will change.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Not only that, but putting the responsibility on the
| individual is a classic narrative used by companies to pass
| buck onto the consumer. It's basically a divide-and-conquer
| tactic, because it undermines the concept of taking
| collective action.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| How does "everyone should use Facebook less" undermine
| collective action? Isn't it a call for collective action?
| pessimizer wrote:
| You don't collectively use facebook less, you just use
| facebook less. Things that are collective actions require
| some sort of coordination and planning.
| cvwright wrote:
| Yeah collective action would be moving your friend group
| onto an alternative platform. Which is what we should be
| doing.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Because it suggests that the only course of action
| against these kinds of practices requires individual
| choices to not use Facebook.
| dabbledash wrote:
| But it's not a call for coercion.
|
| People can't be trusted to make decisions for themselves
| because cigarettes / alcohol / social media / sugar /
| pornography is addictive. And since their bad choices
| have negative consequences on third parties because of
| health care costs / bad politics / family breakdown, we
| should get to tell them what to do.
| 41209 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| I consider social media to be largely harmful, but so is
| beer and soda. Life is too short to be angry about what
| others chose to do.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| So you're against age limits on alcohol purchases? You're
| against banning or limiting advertising tobacco products
| in public spaces?
| dabbledash wrote:
| I'm against treating adults like children, but I'm ok
| with treating children like children.
| eloisius wrote:
| It's the "reduce, reuse, recycle" of this generation.
| slipframe wrote:
| This was a fine enough message until corporations got us
| to forget that it was meant to be _applied in that
| order_. Reduction of consumption is paramount, but bad
| for corporate profit, so corporations promoted the idea
| of recycling being just as good if not better than
| reduction.
| handrous wrote:
| "The medium is the message".
|
| The message of the current Web is the death of local
| journalism, deep moats of pillaged user-data protecting
| monopolists, internationally "democratized" propaganda, and
| no privacy anywhere.
|
| If you want to change the message, the medium will have to
| change.
| [deleted]
| gooeykabuki wrote:
| What did you change your dating strategy to?
| cvwright wrote:
| People use FB as a dating site?
| gaws wrote:
| > Isn't it known that Facebook is aware the more enraged you
| are, the more engaged you are.
|
| It is. With how much Facebook makes and spends on "consultants"
| and lobbyists, do you think the company cares?
| ixacto wrote:
| Got rid of all social media after COVID and political chaos of
| the last year. Just too much now and a waste of time.
| samename wrote:
| How did you find amazing people to date?
| clockwork123512 wrote:
| I had a similar experience to 41209 on quitting online dating
| and drastically reducing social media, and developing better
| relationships in my life.
|
| I spent more time on private Discord/Slack channels of hobby
| groups, clubs, and a non-profit as a volunteer. I felt better
| spending time and energy with people I've grown to care
| about, versus worrying about the attention of strangers via
| online dating optimization (nice photos that tell a story,
| worrying about the wording of the biography, and being overly
| clever with the chat messages) or, frankly, semi-strangers
| with loose connections on social media.
|
| Dating a co-volunteer is almost like dating a coworker, but
| without the potential harm to your career. Just like a
| workplace, you tend to share similar interests and
| similar/complementary skillsets. It's also natural to
| approach another person, and ask to hang out or work on
| something independently of the organization. These
| relationships also seem more stable than people I'd meet
| through online connections.
|
| These people are amazing to me, though it's more precise to
| say that I enjoy interactions with these people more than
| people I meet through online dating. I'm less likely to run
| into people who play games, e.g. who optimize response times
| and lengths to messages. It feels human, versus my
| experiences with online dating.
|
| The main caveat is to avoid dating fellow
| volunteers/contributors when either of you are in a position
| of power (relatively less impact as no pay is at stake, but
| poor communication can still cause a negative organizational
| environment). I also avoid getting to know anyone with the
| intention to date them when I first meet them; though I don't
| hesitate to show interest in them as a person, and have
| created valued friends along the way. I moved to make it
| romantic, if I think we can work out long term (similar age,
| medium-term plans, and compatible personalities).
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| I'm another data point of overusing Facebook then deleting it
| entirely, after downloading all my stuff for archival purposes.
| I quit Twitter as well. Really, the only social networks I use
| today are a couple of old chatboards I've been on for years,
| LinkedIn rarely, and HN.
|
| One realizes after a while that most of these platforms, while
| seemingly benevolent and innocuous, actually thrive on turmoil
| and strife.
|
| You are not the customer; you are the product. Turn these
| things off and starve the beast. There's a place for social
| media and online discussion, but it has to be used judiciously.
| Don't let it take over your life.
| tqi wrote:
| > Citizen Browser consists of a paid nationwide panel of Facebook
| users who automatically send us data from their Facebook feeds.
|
| Is this much different from Cambridge Analytica's "This Is Your
| Digital Life" (other than being a browser extension rather than
| an API)?
|
| From the site (https://themarkup.org/citizen-
| browser/2021/01/05/how-we-buil...): > To protect the privacy of
| panelists, we automatically strip potential identifiers from
| their captured Facebook data. The raw data we collect from them
| is never seen by a person and is automatically deleted after one
| month.
|
| So they say. CA's data was governed by a TOS, that didn't prevent
| them from abusing it.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I hope to see the fall of facebook in my lifetime.
| mabub24 wrote:
| Facebook have repeatedly shown that their official "word" is
| pretty well as good as doodoo, so I'm surprised anyone would
| think they would hold themselves to a "promise" over their
| bottom-line.
|
| It's likely that, seeking to lessen their exposure to political
| attention of a sort they don't like, of the kind critical to
| their business/way of making money, Facebook simply over-promises
| with the expectation that the next thing that catches attention
| will divert attention away from them and the idea of them
| actually following though on those promises.
| notional wrote:
| Of course, why would they stop. Their cash cow in the US is right
| wing politics and political groups.
|
| This twitter accounts posts the top 10 FB links everyday, and
| everyday the list is usually 9/10 or 10/10 right wing politics
|
| https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10
| barbazoo wrote:
| TIL that many people seem to follow Ben Shapiro. That makes me
| sad, most he does is talk fast and put people down.
| esyir wrote:
| The right probably feels the same about AoC. And the left
| tucker Carlson. The list goes on.
| barbazoo wrote:
| But they weren't on the lists that I saw.
| esyir wrote:
| I'd say that that's more a reflection of the overall
| political alignment of that community you've seen rather
| than anything else.
|
| Just as how reddit swings left, and thus comes with
| massive aoc/whatever figure the right likes to hate
| support, that community on Facebook swung right and thus
| has a higher rate of "left hates this guy" Support.
|
| AoC was selected as the example due to her "dunking on
| the right" reddit popularity thats analogous to the
| "destroyed with facts and logic" Shapiro crowd.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > that community on Facebook
|
| That twitter account captures "the sources of the 10 top-
| performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages every day,
| ranked by total interactions.", it's not just some part
| of Facebook. This is Facebook.
| esyir wrote:
| Yeah, it is. I did check that twitter feed afterward. I
| didn't edit as it doesn't really affect the point I was
| making. People just love dunking on their enemies.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Themarkup.org sure has a lot of anti fb post on HN. I agree with
| them, but I sense an agenda.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| I think there's a much larger need for anti-facebook posts than
| pro-facebook posts by the media. You don't need to be 50%
| positive about any company to be fair and unbiased, some
| companies are just kind of evil.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Yup: they don't like Facebook. (There's a reason for that...
| Facebook isn't exactly likeable.)
| madhadron wrote:
| Last time I checked (over a year ago now) the pipeline that
| checked for political ads in Washington state, which Facebook is
| not allowed to run, remained broken. A lot of stuff is like this.
|
| It's probably not a question of Facebook policy directly, but of
| no one internally seeing any juicy line item on their performance
| review to justify working on it.
|
| If you want motion from Facebook, you have to make it hurt so
| that someone can play hero for their performance review. Germany
| imposed large fines for Nazi related content showing up during
| elections a few years ago, and the fines were large and per
| impression. That got dealt with.
| notacoward wrote:
| > no one internally seeing any juicy line item on their
| performance review
|
| Pretty much. There are countless pipelines producing ad
| placements and feed recommendations, or flagging some kind of
| content. Each one might have produced a good result at one
| time, getting someone a good review, but that time is long gone
| and probably so is the person. Nobody wants to mess with it
| lest they trigger a loss of engagement/revenue. Safer to just
| keep adding more.
|
| There are thousands of people at Facebook, both data scientists
| and moderators, sincerely trying to fight the good fight. I
| respect their efforts, but there's no way they can win against
| a multi-billion-dollar physical manifestation of technical and
| organizational hubris.
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