[HN Gopher] Inside Facebook's Data Wars
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Inside Facebook's Data Wars
Author : tysone
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-07-14 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The Facebook post this article links to[1] paints a pretty
| different picture. The table "Top US Publisher Domains by Reach"
| suggests a pretty balanced mainstream news diet to me.
|
| Also, I was quite surprised at the apparent popularity of Steve
| Harvey who apparently, by reach, has the third most popular
| Facebook page behind "The Dodo" and "Rick Lax" neither of whom
| I've ever heard of.
|
| 1 - https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/what-do-people-actually-
| se...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/zK9hn
| [deleted]
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Facebook really isn't going to do anything real to counter their
| disinformation and right-wing propaganda problem, since it is
| their major content driver and money maker. Until they are forced
| by by the government to change they will continue to pay lip
| service since it is their cash cow.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| It's a self inflicted problem. The reason this content is so
| popular is because it feels subversive (and, separately,
| trolling is more fun than virtue signaling).
|
| The way we measure political alignment is so weird. Maybe
| instead of "left vs. right," the scale should be "reactionary
| vs. contrarian" - how do you consume and perceive information?
| A second axis could be "lurker vs. contributor" - do you mostly
| consume information, or also produce it?
|
| These seem like meaningful differentiators in the context of
| online discourse, and how it ultimately shapes real-world
| opinion.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Is disinformation and right-wing propaganda their problem? I
| run in really deep left circles and I can tell you my Facebook
| page is full of disinformation and left-wing propaganda. It's
| horrifying to see what people on both sides believe but it
| doesn't strike me as a Facebook problem as much as a human
| problem.
|
| I don't see people complaining about Twitter, mostly because
| they agree with the propaganda that's being spread there.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Every month consistently the top shared links on Facebook are
| from right wing pundits trying to stir up rage, unfortunately
| the rightwing echo chamber is much much more of a thing and
| dominates Facebook.
|
| https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10
| reilly3000 wrote:
| At any given time 15-18 out of the top 20 stories are Ben
| Shapiro and others. Its definitely a money-maker, and also at
| an existential level they feel republicans are less likely to
| regulate them than democrats. Ironically the right has seen
| themselves as the victims in this arrangement and seeks to
| force their moderation to allow extremism.
| prezjordan wrote:
| They're playing the ref - and they're doing a fantastic job
| of it.
| WisNorCan wrote:
| _" These executives argued that Facebook should selectively
| disclose its own data in the form of carefully curated reports,
| rather than handing outsiders the tools to discover it
| themselves. Team Selective Disclosure won, and CrowdTangle and
| its supporters lost."_
|
| Anyone who has worked with data knows that you can torture the
| data show anything you want. Disappointing given all the talk
| from Zuck and team about taking disinformation seriously.
| hamburglar1 wrote:
| "Anyone who has worked with data knows that you can torture the
| data show anything you want." Couldn't this cut both ways
| though?
| WisNorCan wrote:
| Sure and that happens. Journalists will cherry pick data to
| tell the story they want. But there is a difference.
|
| If the data is out there someone can dispute the journalists
| characterization. If Facebook controls all the data and
| presents the story, there is no way to verify their
| characterization.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Up to this day I am wondering for most social media sites
| how much of their daily active users is actually bots. I'd
| like to find a way to verify that.
| mateo411 wrote:
| Well, that's pretty easy to do.
|
| 1. Get a job on a social media site.
|
| 2. Join the bot detection team.
|
| 3. Create algorithms that measure if a user is a bot.
|
| 4. Create daily reports on the number of bots detected.
| schuyler2d wrote:
| I believe Zignal (which is sort of CrowdTangle for
| Twitter) provides a variable in their API for "likelihood
| they are a bot" which is direct from Twitter -- so
| Twitter often knows the account is a bot, but much less
| often takes action.
| stirfish wrote:
| They will never tell you how many bots are on a platform
| because advertisers don't want to show ads to bots
| yuliyp wrote:
| They do reveal how many fake accounts they think they
| have.
|
| From Facebook's 2020 Annual Report
| (https://investor.fb.com/financials/sec-filings-
| details/defau... page 4):
|
| > In the fourth quarter of 2020, we estimated that
| duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 11%
| of our worldwide MAUs. We believe the percentage of
| duplicate accounts is meaningfully higher in developing
| markets such as the Philippines and Vietnam, as compared
| to more developed markets. In the fourth quarter of 2020,
| we estimated that false accounts may have represented
| approximately 5% of our worldwide MAUs. Our estimation of
| false accounts can vary as a result of episodic spikes in
| the creation of such accounts, which we have seen
| originate more frequently in specific countries such as
| Indonesia and Vietnam. From time to time, we disable
| certain user accounts, make product changes, or take
| other actions to reduce the number of duplicate or false
| accounts among our users, which may also reduce our DAU
| and MAU estimates in a particular period. We intend to
| disclose our estimates of the number of duplicate
| andfalse accounts among our MAUs on an annual basis.
| minorityreport wrote:
| >> Sure and that happens. Journalists will cherry pick data
| to tell the story they want. But there is a difference. If
| the data is out there someone can dispute the journalists
| characterization.
|
| Does it actually happen though? The media controls most of
| the narrative, including what goes into legislative
| discussions. The "paper of record" becomes history while
| everything else goes into a vast firehose of tweets which
| get washed away by the dominant narrative.
|
| Real recent example. NYTimes June 21, 2021:
|
| "How Big Tech Allows the Racial Wealth Gap to Persist"
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/us/politics/big-tech-
| raci...
|
| So according to the NYTimes, "big tech" allows a racial
| wealth gap. Consider that this is the _only_ industry where
| Asians, Indians, and others are actually allowed to
| consistently and widely climb ranks into senior management.
|
| The ultimate irony is -- _this is coming from the NYTimes_
| -- a small group of mostly white, rich, people in Brooklyn
| and the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- with almost zero
| diversity at the executive ranks -- is saying this.
|
| Further, there is no discussion about the FAANG exams,
| hiring committees, etc -- or the fact that the authors hire
| on no objective measures themselves -- they are mostly
| hired based on which elite private school they attended.
|
| So what happens? We end up with congressional
| investigations on big tech monopolies (worth looking into)
| but ignore obvious monopolies like my mobile phone
| provider, my healthcare providers, etc -- places that
| charge a pound of flesh and have no competitors.
| mdoms wrote:
| No one considers NYT a "paper of record" anymore. That
| may have been the case 8 years ago, but they have gone
| totally off the rails since, and everyone knows it.
| [deleted]
| hairofadog wrote:
| I find 'everyone' to be a pretty dubious source. But I am
| sincerely curious: is there a publication you consider to
| be a "paper of record"?
| stirfish wrote:
| >So according to the NYTimes
|
| Here's the report that the NYTimes is reporting on.
|
| https://www.conference-board.org/press/mind-the-gap-
| June2021
|
| >The ultimate irony is -- this is coming from the NYTimes
| -
|
| >with almost zero diversity at the executive ranks
|
| >the authors hire on no objective measures themselve
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > Does it actually happen though? The media controls most
| of the narrative
|
| You can't be serious.
|
| I can list a litany of topics--the dangers of sugar,
| smoking, carbon emissions--where corporations, through
| their vast war chests, lobbying connections, and pliant
| journalists, have more than successfully controlled the
| narrative.
|
| Facebook isn't the victim here. Not by a _long_ shot.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs,
| replied, lamenting that "our own tools are helping journos to
| consolidate the wrong narrative."
|
| Apparently the "narrative construction" wasn't up to code :P
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(page generated 2021-07-14 23:01 UTC)