Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus group
americamagazine.org
americamagazine.org
One preliminary solution seems fairly simple, and Zuckerberg is in a somewhat unique position in that he has the power to implement it on a large scale: stop feeding people an endless stream of ad-stuffed trash media selected by an algorithm maximizing for clickbait factor and nothing else. I genuinely believe that it's poisoning people's minds and doing significant damage to our society. Of course, it is making them money, so it will not change (in fact it will probably get worse).
It is not written in stone that a profitable enterprise must be compatible with the "greater good" (for lack of a better term). Some things are inherently destructive. Facebook takes a lot and gives nothing back. The idea of handing over the reins of our society to some outgrowth of its current model is as terrifying as it is hilarious in its blind arrogance and ignorance.
In fact, FB is probably a detriment to my livelihood if anything.
Perhaps you have the mental context and farsightedness to just not log on. But, you still have to deal with the large scale socio-political consequences of the fact that billions of others can't resist logging on, can't resist the clickbait, or don't understand why they should.
Ditto "fake news", ditto Twitter disinfo hysteria, ditto any source of information, especially online. At some point the people have to take responsibility for, and validate themselves, what they read and believe.
Working through the haze of media manipulation is an extremely complex task. It requires a ton of interest, time, effort education, IQ and mental discipline. Most people don't have a chance to resist society-wide campaign of lies; they're absurdly outmatched.
This is the same reason we have enforced pension plans, etc. You could just say people should save their own money. That would work fine for me and you. But most people just don't have the mental context to delay gratification that long. Their brains are not adapted and not equipped for the modern world.
So it's wrong to feed them socially-destructive lies, for the same reason it's wrong to feed a dog well-labeled poisonous meat.
Who is it that determines which news is "real" and which is "fake"? The scientific establishment is a truly wondrous achievement of humanity, but it's not perfect and the idea that there are facts that are 100% verifiably completely obviously definitely true is just flat wrong (and a scientist or historian would be the first to tell you that!). There are plenty of "conspiracy theories" that turned out to be absolutely true (see: the intelligence community's activities throughout the Cold War, e.g. MKUltra). There are plenty of "well-known facts" from the past that we now consider nonsense (e.g., look at the 50s-70s and take your pick from all the things we "knew" about race, gender, and sexuality). I truly don't understand how people think that giving the status quo the power to enforce itself will somehow lead to a misinformation-free utopia. You can pick examples of these theories that (probably) don't have any likely value or credibility, but that's not very helpful without a plan for how exactly this would be separated from the stuff that has societal value.
(And all of that is ignoring the inevitability of the gatekeeper's selectively using this power to their advantage)
It should be borne in mind that quite a lot of misinformation - particularly historical controversy, or intelligence community activities - is not an "honest mistake", but the result of deliberate misdirection and outright fabrication. It's impossible to measure, and difficult to overstate, the toxic effect this has had on the public discourse, and it continues to this day[1].
I draw a distinction between open mindedness, in the scientific sense (where there is a correct answer that we just haven't found yet), and "truthy relativism" (where everyone's "opinions" and cockamamie stories are afforded equal weight). To be sure, it's tricky to come up with objective criteria to differentiate between the two that can be blindly applied without common sense - but I reject that the difference doesn't exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_John_Dasch...
I signed into Spotify with my FB page years ago, and now my entire musical personae is tied to my FB account. This [1] is the closest I've come to finding directions on how to do it, and eventually I will, but right now...it's just so damn easy to stay logged in. Agreed that FB at this point in my life is a detriment, but they've locked themselves into other parts of my life that are not. They know this...that was their plan.
[1]https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts-and-Subscriptions/...
Sometimes I really should just ask instead of trying to do it all myself. Good to know. Facebook Free come this weekend.
Oh come on. If you don't like alcohol, don't drink it. Lots of people choose not to. As someone who drinks it a lot, it's not required or necessary to live or work, unlike other substances I consume (coffee, Archer Daniels Midland, Costco).
In fact, alcohol is probably a detriment to my livelihood if anything.
I'm not sure if this is the core of the problem, if at all. Most of what you see on facebook are links shared by your network. If your "friends" are sharing and re-sharing clickbait fake news, you see clickbait fake news. This is evident in groups on whatsapp where there is no algorithmic intervention and it is still an endless stream of misinformation (in most diverse groups). This also mirrors real world echo chambers.
If you do have have some suggestions for solving this problem, it would be great to discuss here.
I'd be happy if a Facebook2 came around to only do what Facebook did, but I'm pretty sure no one would sign up since everyone is already on Facebook anyway.
These days I try only to connect to messenger, there I can keep in touch with friends without the "news feed" functionality.
Except FB's said [0] that the four main factors for what you see are who posted, age of article, article type, and interactions. The last factor is key as FB wants articles to draw eyeballs in order to sell ads. Thus, it sounds like the algorithm doesn't produce newsfeeds that are representative of what a majority of friends are reading v. that of a select, active few. I think the parent is arguing that FB could turn this off and improve newsfeed information quality at the cost of lower revenues.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/06/ultimate-guide-to-the-news...
2. Maintain a public bug list not on software issues but social issues being created by social networks. These cannot be solved by software developers and need expertise from many other domains.
3. Look at Wikipedia, Stackoverflow/Stackexchange, Apache , Linux etc where contributing members of the community all have agendas. Yet they are kept in check. There is huge institutional experience here baked into these platforms on how to deal with competing (unconstructive/damaging) agendas. Bring people on board from these kind of orgs and experts in sociology, ecology, behavioral psycology that oversee fixes to "society effecting" bugs.
4. There needs to be a long term plan for media so they arent just pandering to the lowest common denominator. Journalists must be certified and ranked on quality every year.
Then how would they make money?
Plus I'm not convinced ads are the thing killing media. People are. Anyone is a journalist these days.
I don't see how Facebook or their CEO is to blame. MySpace could've been in the same position had they continued to innovate. Networking with friends and strangers online is one thing the internet was built for.
I read the manifesto, and I don't understand the outcry in response to that.
I understand the outcry against the pervasiveness of Facebook. It can be annoying if you use it too much. That said, If there were a better media alternative, people would use that instead.
People become "journalists" because there's money in it, through ads. Ads pay the same whether your article is worth reading or terrible blogspam. Said people realize that, and go with the least effort/profit maximizing strategy which is buzzfeed level articles, partly because ad providers will pay anyways, and partly because deontology isn't a matter to themAds keep paying the same, and other people see "journalists" make money this way. It's a vicious cycle. Journalists from reputable sources are salaried, and usually don't have to resort to this tactic.
Facebook is one hundred percent to blame. By reaching so many users and being so prominent in all those users' lives, they are directly responsible if they choose to stuff trash quality articles, which directly influence opinions, in there because it's the more profitable option.
People are dumb, and faillible. It's incredibly easy to sway their opinion one way or the other. You are, I am, we all are easily influencable. All that's different is the amount of fact checking that's done after.
So what? Most of the internet runs on ads.
> Facebook is one hundred percent to blame. By reaching so many users and being so prominent in all those users' lives, they are directly responsible if they choose to stuff trash quality articles, which directly influence opinions, in there because it's the more profitable option.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to define "trash". Once you begin censoring "garbage", you introduce bias.
This is the reason our country has free speech. It's the only practical way to keep us from revolting.
Imagine if Facebook were owned by Trump or Bannon and they were removing "fake news". You would be even more upset, right?
> People are dumb, and faillible. It's incredibly easy to sway their opinion one way or the other. You are, I am, we all are easily influencable. All that's different is the amount of fact checking that's done after.
I agree. Do you learn better through your own experience or when someone tells you what to do all the time?
Which is an entirely other story, that in my opinion is even worse. But the point is in the entire paragraph. Most of these people do not become journalists to bring accurate and researched reporting. It's purely pecause there's money in it. Potentially lots. The guy working for the NYT and the guy working for Buzzfeed have two very, very different definitions of deontology.
>I think you underestimate how difficult it is to define "trash". Once you begin censoring "garbage", you introduce bias.
Removing obvious lies is a start. Which, for a start, would remove a good part of breitbart, infowars, and a few left leaning journals. And it's fine! Truth is not biased.
>This is the reason our country has free speech. It's the only practical way to keep us from revolting.
Your usage of free speech has been widely criticized in the entire world and no European country would trade their free speech for yours, for example. It could also be argued that a good old revolution might have made your country better. Dusting off that woefully outdated constitution, reworking your political system, etc. instead of worshipping it as some shining star.
>Imagine if Facebook were owned by Trump or Bannon and they were removing "fake news". You would be even more upset, right?
If they are _actual_ fake news (i.e. not what Trump considers fake news, but proper lies, or voluntary misdirection), I wouldn't give a damn as long as it is done on both sides.
>I agree. Do you learn better through your own experience or when someone tells you what to do all the time?
If it's something I actually want to learn? Myself. If it's something I don't really care about? Eh, I might let other people tell me about it. And that's the dangerous part. I have limited time and ability to do fact checking. It takes someone five minutes to type up a "Hillary Clinton doesn't enjoy poptarts and eats children" story, and an order of magnitude more for me to debunk it for everyone. Enough of those articles and it effectively overtakes truth in people's minds. That is the exact same thing in Facebook feeds. People are getting bombarded with articles, some accurate, many not. You simply cannot fitler them. Especially if you're not aware they are false. Critical thinking skills are one part of the solution. But until everyone is properly trained (and then the methods of propaganda will have evolved), for the good of society, people particularly vulnerable to it must be protected.
Also, let's not forget that a good majority of people are told what to do all the time, at leas tat work. It wouldn't be suprising that part of this behavior is translated to their personal time, which includes getting informed.
You definitely underestimate the difficulty of identifying bias. Words imperfectly define truth. Words can be ambiguous, even when you have a video recording. Reporting is always a bit biased, and if you filter topics at a macro level, that can introduce a huge bias.
> Your usage of free speech has been widely criticized in the entire world and no European country would trade their free speech for yours, for example.
Well guess what, Europe gets to be more liberal because it doesn't need to invest in as big a military as the US does. Our alliance held off opponents like fascism and Russia for awhile. It seems to be breaking down. Nobody appreciates the value of the alliance or why it was made.
/r/ShitAmericansSay
There's so much wrong here I don't know where to begin. First off, that's not the subject at hand, your point has _literally_ nothing to do with free speech in the US. But if you want to go into that, sure, let's go. America's oversized army and its need to wag its dick around is nothing to be proud of. The US military is as big as the combined 25 next countries, and they're all allies. Do not disguise american imperialism under the guise of protecting the world.
America threatened to pull out of NATO, and Europe reacted immediately, pushing for a european army. The biggest threat around is Russia, and it would be crushed by an european army. It's nobody's wish, but that's what would happen.
You held off fascism? Where? WW2? Yeah, so did Canada, the UK, Russia, etc. It's callied the Allied side, not the American side. Every european is grateful for the US presence, but let's not pretend the US is the sole reason for victory.
You held off Russia? On the threat of nuclear weapons? Good, we're all grateful. But that was the only threat, as the russian army was in shambles after WW2.
Alright dude. I said "our" alliance. It's been a joint effort that appears to be ending.
Have fun picking up the pieces as nationalism continues to rise in Europe.
Crap takes a few different forms. I have friends that post an excessive number of cooking videos and cute animal gifs, which has close to zero informational value, but on the other hand I enjoy the simple things in life too. More worrying crap come sin the form of poorly-written news or analysis articles that are shared and often written in good faith, but which are misleading and require either time and effort to debunk, or an acceptance that some of your friends are credulous fools. This is aggravating but it's also unavoidable in a free society with a free press - people are going to disagree in good faith and some of the time and arguments are inevitable.
The third kind of crap is the most worrying, where people deliberately troll and spread rumors for either quick profit or to injure others. This can often tip over into hate speech, and unlike most people I think the first amendment saw that the solution to unwanted speech is more speech fails in this domain, because many of the participants are not acting in good faith, and leverage the idea of unlimited speech as a means to curtail the liberties of others rather than in pursuit of any equitable outcome.
This interview might provide an interesting insight into the (pre-facebook) psychology of deliberately slanted news. I apologize for the source and the annotations; the original interview is from a media career site called Journalism Jobs (where I first came across it) but it's from 2003 and the original page has vanished off the website: http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Weekly_Standard_Matt-Labash_c...
If you don't want to read it's basically a really cynical industry conversation where Labash, a conservative writer, opines that finding a cohort of angry people and pandering to them is a really easy way to make money. This could just as easily be applied to other political fringes.
> People are dumb, and faillible
There's the real problem.
Another would be government funding. Many countries still do this for national broadcasters and to compensate music artists (a tax on owning TVs and a tax on recorded media). That option carries its own obvious problems, but it is an option. It's just not the option that would give IPO in the sky stock return opportunities.
I agree that it's not the ads themselves that are killing media. The problem is how ad revenue forces Facebook and newspapers to heavily optimize for time spent on site, and the end result is the "filter bubble" where you get more content you like, and less content you don't like.
You might as well take away net neutrality if you want the government to influence Facebook via funding and whatever else comes with it. That would be a giant thumb on the scale.
I think that assumes that the truly valuable content on facebook is the "trash content" people are sharing.
If I'm speaking for myself, I love status updates, baby photos, dinner photos, and the mundane content created by my actual friends.
If I could never see another "shared article" I think I'd be OK with that. I wouldn't like facebook less because of that, I think I'd probably like it more.
If they make money off selling adds around the stuff I'm paying attention to, then they could still make money without driving the news and quiz sharing.
Ignorance and the lack of critical thinking are probably more responsible here than Facebook.
I'm not a big fan of FB and don't have any ownership interest in it. However I think it's largely politically neutral and that Zuckerberg is just a bit out of his depth with the manifesto as opposed to being wickedly cynical - even though most people would peg me as a radical leftist.
the phenomenon that Facebook exemplifies is a real problem, and it's why I've been arguing in general terms for the destructiveness as capitalism as the only driving force in development and the superiority of protocols to platforms, so as to preserve a truly open and inclusive internet rather than one built around the extraction of economic rents. But I regard FB as a symptom rather than a cause, and try to save my anger for the people who are actively working to strip people of their rights and liberties as opposed to those who merely profit from applying technology to the existing but often unethical way of doing business.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/facebook-bends-t...
> That’s the average amount of time, the company said, that users spend each day on its Facebook, Instagram and Messenger platforms (and that’s not counting the popular messaging app WhatsApp).
So that's not Americans it's users, and it's not FB, but I am hopeful that it's Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which I perceive for now are "task" based communications and sharing apps, not the "spam my friends and family with my political beliefs" stuff I don't want in nearly the amount that FB shovels at me.
You had me scared there for a moment, but I bet you are more right than wrong in your basic point It's probably the prime source of news in the western world. This is not to be underestimated.
You probably don't gather enough information before jumping to conclusions. I am sick to the back teeth of people assuming disagreement must be a result of ignorance, doubly so for people whose idea of rebuttal is citing a single data point and extrapolating absurd conclusions from it.
Judging by the Facebook feeds of people I know, there seems to be plenty on Facebook.
I thie problem is less stamping out extremist views -- which as you point out is impossible -- but the maintstreaming of those views. And that mainstreaming is done at least partially via the Facebook sharing mechanism.
I've been hearing this from a lot of people lately, but every time I do, I can't help but think we've got it backwards. People aren't becoming worse because of clickbait and fake news. Clickbait and fake news are becoming worse because of people.
Long before there was Facebook, plenty of people bought and read magazines and newspapers like the National Enquirer and the Daily Mail. The only difference now is that those people, just like everyone else, have access to much more of that content thanks to the internet. Taking that content away from those people isn't going to make them smarter. It's just going to make them angrier and more determined to seek that stuff out.
In my opinion, the only real solution is improving education, but no one wants to talk about that because that's the hard way. It's much easier to demand that certain news sources be censored or that certain news aggregators impose a bias against them, but that's a very dangerous road to travel down. Today, people are talking about sources like banning Breitbart and The Daily Caller, which is well-meaning, but how long will it be before people start talking about banning sources like The Intercept or The Guardian? There are certainly plenty of people in both political parties that would gladly slap the labels of "clickbait" and "fake news" on them as well.
This "bad" content is coming from everywhere, too. Recently, most of the factually-inaccurate content has been coming from, or has been in support of, the alt-right. But in the past a lot came from the far-left as well, and there's always inflammatory agenda-driven propagandist content come from extremist groups of all types. Every group with an agenda to push can easily slide from fact-based content to exaggerated content to outright false content in an attempt to be heard, and that's much easier today than it ever used to be.
Education would help, but only if the sources of the content people are seeing can be identified and judged by them. I have an even more difficult solution: integrity, self-control, and professional restraint on the part of the content producers. I think we lost that when news became entertainment, and I have little hope that we'll ever get it back.
I'm not advocating government control, but that's definitely where Trump is heading with his "FAKE NEWS media... is the enemy of the American People!"[1] He's trying to go down the path of many tyrants, discrediting all sources of information except for those run by or blessed by the state. The way content is distributed today, with so much noise and so little clarity, directly feeds into Trump's agenda that it's all illegitimate except for the sources that he's personally vouching for.
I don't really know what the solution might be. Google's been able to develop very good algorithms for identifying spam, mostly in email but also in Google Voice and their web search results. They've also got pretty good classifiers that can automatically tag content. Maybe Facebook, Twitter, and other sharing sites need that kind of algorithm to tag everything that's posted. Fake news would have a much harder time getting distributed if it had a big "FAKE" label applied to it. The devil's in the details though; we already know how Facebook's Like buttons get gamed, and we wouldn't want that for tagging. Tagging should be showing you the information you don't want to know, but need to know.
[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/83270829351663206...
We have a representative government, which means that the fundamental evaluation a voter must make is whether or not they trust a candidate. Humans are innately very very good at this, and it doesn't require much education to get right. Mostly what it would require is convincing people to vote for the representative that they trust the most, rather than any particular issues, which are likely to be far too dynamical to really evaluate.
It is true there has always been an appetite for trash. It's also true that the forces of industrial psychology and sociology have never before been so mobilized to maximize consumer behavior and minimize critical thought.
It's not one or the other -- it's both.
Yes, but now there's a difference: a zero-cost, near-zero-friction platform for fake news distribution. Today's fake news peddlers don't have to pay for space at supermarket checkout counters and newsstands, or pay for paper and ink. They just have to throw their product onto the platform and from there it literally distributes itself.
In other words, Facebook disrupted fake news.
You should read it then. Naturally facebook is the best bet at fixing the problems facebook are having. The manifesto seems like a quite well thought through vision for how to do that.
It exactly points out all the things people dislike about Facebook, filter bubbles, censorship etc., discusses the various approaches, pros and cons, and how they plan to proceed.
I don't really get how people are so upset about it. Maybe it's because it's so long that no one reads it, and thus have much stronger opinions.
"In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.
For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and families. With that foundation, our next focus will be developing the social infrastructure for community — for supporting us, for keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all."
"Our greatest opportunities are now global — like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding, lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest challenges also need global responses — like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community."
Can anybody translate these to their real intentions?
Facebook generates revenue by selling ad space on its website.
Ad space that is surrounded by attention grabbing content will generate the most revenue, thereby maximizing shareholder value.
At the lowest common denominator, negative emotions such as outrage and fear draw attention.
Facebook has no incentive to remove or alter this content in any way, other than to avoid illegal content that could produce lawsuits.
Fake news is not illegal.
If you don't want to consume the same questionable news as the lowest common denominator, pay for a subscription to a news service. Otherwise don't use Facebook for anything more than a photo sharing/messaging platform.
Dis-aggregate the pieces of the platform. If you can't do that, then avoid the whole service. There are plenty of alternatives for each piece.
This is a complex question and there are no easy answers.
^The mantra of every authoritarian dictatorship. If the people lack the information to manage their own well-being, it is our job to inform them, not subjugate them.
Subjugate: to make someone or something subordinate.
Does your statement not fit the definition? Forcing someone out of their inalienable rights because they don't pass an arbitrarily dictated exam is to make them subordinates or untermensch. Epistocracy was a common method used to prevent blacks from voting in the southern United States.
What about the people who get to determine what the test questions are? Are they not by default held at a higher standard than the rest of the population?
What precisely is the question?
The treatment for misinformation and disinformation is genuine, accurate information.
Censorship and regulation of information is absolutely the wrong way to handle it. If you ever grant any government the power to be final arbiter over what truth is, you deserve what will surely happen to you next.
In the "food" and "drug" cases, the state does this because large corporations have far more resources available to be applied to the goal of fooling people into consuming something that might be harmful to them, than people have available to figure out they were fooled.
The "news" case, though sometimes being similar to that, is also often very different: private individuals can be sources of news, news is often delivered without cost to the reader, and even news that is sourced from commercial institutions often reaches the majority of its readers through redistribution, without attribution, by private individuals (e.g. word of mouth; posting paraphrases on Facebook; etc.)
So, leaving alone whether the same principle could apply to "news" (or whether it's consistently trumped by free speech concerns, etc.), the implementation of such a policy would be quite different, perhaps different enough as to make it unfeasible. That is a complex question.
Also the USA would not exist if it were not for fake news. It was the arrival of printing presses in Boston which allowed political groups to create fake news to inflame the revolution[1], so it's not always clear fake news is a bad thing (I'm English but I think the creation of democratic America is one of the greatest common goods the world has seen, though i'm sure we can debate that).
[1] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penguin_History_of_the_Uni...
Yes! We could call it the Department of Truth, seeing as we don't have government ministries in the US.
The question is this: Do you support fake news or do you support the construction of a censorship apparatus? For me, there is a very easy answer.
At the same time, it's also clear that fake news is being used to justify all sorts of political things that are leading to intensified divisions and hatred (on /both/ ends of the spectrum) which is leading society down a different slippery slope, but one that's slippery all the same.
I'm not sure what you mean by bringing up a hypothetical "censorship apparatus that allows only fake news" -- my contention is that you cannot "beat" fake news without a censorship apparatus. Of course you can have a "good" censorship apparatus that only allows things you believe are good and true or you could have a "bad" one that only allows fake news. I'm sure yours would be very, very good indeed. But I think it's much better not to play that game at all.
I think you are viewing censorship apparatus as on a good -> bad spectrum. There is also the spectrum of the scale of censorship. For example: HRC's "sex ring" (obviously false facts misrepresented as the truth) is fake news that should be suppressed. But on the flip side, we obviously don't want a USSR-style control of the press, where the wrong word/opinion can land you in the gulag.
You seem to think that because any kind of censorship apparatus can be subverted for nefarious means, you should have no censorship apparatus at all. But I'll counter that that in itself is a form of intellectual laziness: Should we not explore the possibility of building a decentralized apparatus with appropriate checks and balances, that keeps the bare minimum of "fake news" out of general circulation? The answer may be no, but we should at least explore it.
You're right, I do see censorship as categorically a bad thing and not worth exploring. I think if you did manage to create some sort of light-touch, objective, fact-based system of fake news suppression it'd be hijacked by ideologues faster than you could believe. But that's a place we can agree to disagree.
So, we're talking about government regulation of speech. And that already exists, for good reason. Incitement to violence, threats of violence, defamation, child pornography are all instances of it.
All of those regulations exist because the damage done to society by these forms of speech has been deemed outweighing the benefits to society that would result from inclusion of it.
If that is true for fake news is arguable. I happen to believe it is, you seem to think the right to speech outweighs the damage.
But I'm not sure if that's what we're talking about here. Are you arguing that the value of being able to have fake speech outweighs the damage it does, or are you arguing that all forms of speech, including the currently outlawed ones, should be free and no restrictions whatsoever should apply?
Related, the question of a "censorship apparatus" is also open to interpretation - we're settling current restrictions mostly through courts & law enforcement. I would guess the answer if you consider that a censorship apparatus is influenced by what you think about current speech regulations.
Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.
I think suppression of public communication by a monopoly corporation like Facebook does count here. And to be clear, yes, I am arguing that the value of being able to have fake speech outweighs the damage it does. As soon as you begin on the mission to suppress "fake" speech, you have to elevate some person or institution to the role of deciding what is fake and what is real, and that's far too much power to give to anyone. That power must remain with the individual, as imperfect as we all may be.
And even there, we have made that determination e.g. for speech inciting violence. That's a fairly well-defined case, so I assume that's why we all agreed we're OK with that.
As a thought experiment - or, really, to help me understand - what if we declared "fake news" as "intentionally wrong in substantial facts" and had a very clear definition of substantial, and what counts as intent?
Second thought experiment: What if you could still say whatever you wanted, but "fake news" simply wouldn't be content that's promoted into people's streams? Is that still censorship? After all, you can still say whatever you want - but individuals won't have to hear you when they haven't consented?
(I happen to believe that the core issue isn't the fact that there are fake news, but the fact that the various social media ranking algorithms violate consent by injecting things they deem interesting. I.e. it's not about speech, per se - it's about the fact that the platforms allow third parties to inject themselves into conversations unasked)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That is not a definition of censorship. Nice try, though.
Regarding your first thought experiment, we already have that in the form of libel law. If you have standing to show that you are harmed by what is said and can show it to be intentionally and substantially wrong, you have a good case. Who brings the suit against general purveyors of fake news in your thought experiment? The United States Government?
The bigger problem is that when you move beyond the trivial, the dumb garbage that some people believe because it suits their biases and they don't care to find the truth, you quickly get into territory where people simply cannot agree on the facts. I believe that the truth can only be arrived at in an environment that allows free inquiry and open discussion. If you really think that the truth is a clean thing, and can't name at least a half dozen "open questions" in current world affairs, then you are not paying attention.
As for the definition of censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...
First sentence: "In general, censorship in the United States, which involves the suppression of speech or public communication, raises issues of freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution". I apologize if my short-hand of "first amendment definition" was misleading - it's not defined in the 1st, but the 1st is definitely the basis of legal handling of censorship.
So now we have two competing wikipedia definitions. Looking at the National Coalition Against Censorship, the first amendment still seems relevant: http://ncac.org/resource/what-is-censorship
I think the case can be made, at least, that there are different definitions of censorship, none obviously invalid.
"If you really think that the truth is a clean thing"
In many cases, no. In many other cases, yes. There are things that are verifiably true or false. I'm not interested - for the purposes of discussing fake news - with the open questions. But for the purpose of experiment #1, I am interested in verifiable falsehoods. The dumb garbage. What if the government could and would sue for that? (N.B.: It's a thought experiment. I'm not advocating for that approach)
I also still think that experiment #2 leads in a better direction. Falsehoods will always exist, but there's nothing that says we need to make it easier to propagate them, under your or my definition.
One reason I want separate the easily proven falsehoods is that the people who fall for that stuff are not very persuadable anyway, and the damage to the body politic is not very great, and I think that the real goal of the censorship crusaders is to shut down competing worldviews.
Being sued or prosecuted by your government for "propagating falsehoods" would be awful obviously. What else is there to do with that thought experiment than to recoil and place it in the bad outcomes bin?
The thing about recommender systems really is an interesting question and a legitimate gray area but I'm personally not interested in pursuing it at the moment. In fact I'm going to stop replying to this thread, but if you think theres a way to incorporate some sort of unbiased veracity estimate into such a system, by all means go for it.
volume, perhaps.
> Do you support fake news or do you support the construction of a censorship apparatus?
in one sense, there isn't really any difference.
To your second point, that's just nonsense.
I do think that's a big part of it. However, there is some aura of authenticity that comes from social media postings that link to official looking sites. Not for people that are somewhat internet savvy, but there is a group that's being somewhat fooled in way they weren't in the past.
having grown up in small towns, no fudd i knew had a computer, much less an aol account. (and this was in the era of aol discs clogging the mail system.)
> To your second point, that's just nonsense.
"fake news" is censorship through displacement and delegitimization.
censorship is "fake news" by virtue of providing incomplete or distorted information (eg, lies of omission).
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/myth-maximizing-share...
So the article you link to strengthens the point of the parent that facebook is not in business for the public good but for private interests that are strongly at odds with public interests.
> Lazonick discusses how we evolved from a society in which corporate interests were largely aligned with those of broader public purpose into a state where crony capitalism, accounting fraud, and corporate predation are predominant characteristics.
On the contrary, aligning anyone's interests with those of the broader public is often against the natural state of things. There are many ways for groups of people, whether they're corporations or marauding bands of knights, to benefit at the expense of the broader public. In fact, straightforward theft, fraud, violence, oppression, slavery, monopolization, deception, sabotage, and other anti-competitive practices are historically among the easiest and most common ways to profit.
"Businesses thriving by creating value for everyone" is not a natural system. The only reason capitalism works at all is because we have a strong government that enforces laws and regulations to make most alternative forms of profit illegal. So of course we should expect an arms race, where businesses attempt to find loopholes where they can profit without creating value. The monetary incentives are too high for people not to try.
Nature doesn't love us, that's why we've spent so long killing it and getting away from it.
The major difference is a tiny company interacts with other companies largely the same way individuals do. Large companies have far more complex relationships.
So is avoiding ecological collapse e.g. by depleting all natural resources. Yet, for each actor individually, person or company, there are higher incentives to harvest from the commons. This is a called 'tragedy of the commons'. Most popular economic strategies and certainly most corporations act in their own interest.
In the case of Facebook and fake news, that means doing whatever yields more advertising revenue.
In the short term, you're right. In the long term, you aren't. The long view is that people will get tired of reactionary content, and as that happens the credibility and utility of Facebook as a platform will drop, as will its profits. Since Mark has control of Facebook, he has the advantage of being able to operate on long time horizons (and has demonstrated his ability and willingness to do that). So he (and Facebook) have every incentive to fix this issue, and it seems like they're working hard to try and get it done.
I am unaware of a service which really aggregates multiple view points in a fair way because such a thing is impossible.
I can link you to a few longer form journalism papers/magazines, but any conservative would decry them as biased.
We could link to some traditionally conservative outlets, but they'd be decried as neo-conservative, out of date and biased.
As offensive as it might be to you, in society and news, opinion is all there is.
"But facts MATTER" you might retort, but no, they don't. Only opinions about facts matter.
Because what power does a fact have if it's not accepted as true? None. What power does a falsehood have if it's accepted as true? All of it.
There is no fair and rational way to separate opinion and fact.
After a fifteen years of using news aggregators, RSS aggregators, aggreagtors like memeorandum.com and polurls.com, and social aggregators like digg, then reddit, and social media services, I have not found what you want.
I have thought about making it, and I have ideas on how liberals and conservatives can use a single website to organize the news into strands and voice their opinions on the validity of that organization WITHOUT the normal animosity and viciousness that is normal, but I've never sat down to really create it.
For instance, lets say Trump creates an executive order demanding that a wall between Mexico and the US be built by 2018. Both the right, and the left, will write thousands upon thousands of articles about how this will be great for the country, and terrible for the country. The truth like most things, may lie somewhere in between the extremes. Your news aggregator would allow you to read articles about the wall, as written by both conservatives, and liberals.
Then, you'd at LEAST be reading the differing opinions. The problem is, I doubt many people would want a service like this. Like it or not, human beings seem to enjoy the comfort of their solidified beliefs. It's far easier to digest your right wing, or left wing news, rather than digesting BOTH. People don't really want to change.
See, the thing is, people aggressively self-bubble so if you natively show them both sides, they will stop using your service.
There may be a minority of less-political and more-rational folks who want that, but I've discovered trying to get people to use polurls.com that people don't want side by side.
If you do side by side, you create cognitive dissonance when "their side" "appears" "wrong", and the easiest way to solve that cognitive dissonance is to close the tab and not return.
>Then, you'd at LEAST be reading the differing opinions. The problem is, I doubt many people would want a service like this. Like it or not, human beings seem to enjoy the comfort of their solidified beliefs. It's far easier to digest your right wing, or left wing news, rather than digesting BOTH. People don't really want to change.
Exactly, which is why I envision a system of silos where you can have your biased lunch and eat it too, but whose tools allow us to measure opinion and biases, and which can attempt to bring down some of the barriers between bubbles through a variety of surfacing techniques.
Give people what they want and the tools to classify THEIR bubble, and in the process, keep other bubbles and ideas just on their edges, visible in the periphery...
Combatting cognitive dissonance self-preservation is a problem worth solving though, ugh.
Says I'm liberal, I may get articles that criticize Trump's immigration plan, and the articles would show how well received the plan is to the right.
I don't work for them, I've just found their published lists useful.
You could also do it as a debate where two respectable, well-informed and well spoken people debate following strict rules. Pretty much the opposite of a US Presidential debate. Without it being a live debate, both would have time to give their statements plenty of thought and consideration. They could then take the time to make sure it is well written.
Given any particular topic, people typically want is to know what to do about something, or at least (it's lazier cousin) how to feel about it. Ideally, we would all individually start at raw data and end on drawing our own conclusions about how to feel about issues. The vast majority of us rely on some type of 'packaging' stage where raw facts get bundled in an easier to understand manner i.e. news orgs.
This is the mechanism that modern media has really thrown a wrench into. We've achieved a level where we can go from start to finish, turn that firehose of data directly into emotions without any need for thought. The old speed bumps: rational discourse, verification have not been able to scale in the same way.
I would love to hear how others are tackling the difficult job of being informed in this particularly contentious time
If the only way to remain objective about the populace is to remove one's self from public, that includes making a living off others. Those (other) people who are to become your cattle, your cash crop, your money tree. Then MarkZ has become the anti-theses of objectionable and to top it off I really don't follow his line of thought, except as far to see it's all about his little cash crop of humans.
And then the real fun begins for us
Well, the opposite is true as well, and more likely I think: By removing yourself from public, you lose any true bearing on what it's like to be a member of the populace. How can you be objective about something you don't understand? How can you be objective about a society you have no real understanding of?
a) Depends on your country
b) Even if it's not, it's highly immoral.
You have the world's largest television and the tangible ability to promote powerful, positive ideas over mere distractions. Your goal shouldn't be to digitize the tabloid aisle and put it on my forever buzzing handheld computer.
All the clickbait, fake stories, trolling, mindless advertisements, contrarian articles, political hyperbolic narratives and conspiracy theories are analogous to a lot of other wasteful pursuits of thinking and existing that are perfectly acceptable by today's culture.
Connect the world in uplifting ways. Cater to our higher ideals not our base emotions.
I would also add there are far better channels to get intellectually stimulating material than FB and their news feeds.
I've tried multiple times to try and set up my FB news feed to be more centered on technology and development news. Unless I was really diligent, it was just turn back into gossip and trash within a few months. I just gave up and sought out other avenues for this kind of news.
None of this stops me from also watching 'prestige television' or keeping up-to-date with current events. People like Jon Stewart and Jon Oliver have managed to bridge the divide between news and entertainment, and I don't see why social media should be any different.
I don't think those are good examples for escapades outside our bubbles, as they are decidedly left-leaning, with a left-leaning viewpoint on the issues they cover, and for mostly a left-leaning audience.
The publicly funded channels have been showing brain dead game shows and sports while arguing that if they did not do this, the zombies^Wviewers would be lost to the commercial channels.
Perhaps that's Facebooks defence here. ;-)
I was just reading a book by William F Buckley from 1959 about early American conservatism. Many of the points sound straight out of modern day partisan media:
- Liberal Bias in newspapers and universities: Buckley specifically cites NYTimes, NYPost, WaPo, and other prominent papers at the time all exhibit a noticeable liberal leaning. He also included a number of examples in higher education, especially at elite universities.
- Liberal Mania: Buckley noted that the hardcore liberals have a habit of grouping up on anyone who dares to become a prominent public proponent for Conservatism. They try to get them fired or formally reprimanded by authorities (such as by congress leaders). He also notes a level of smug/elitism. A view point that the left believe they have discovered the correct ideology and anything else is heresies.
- Opponents = Hitler: This was the left's favouritve label for right leaning opponents. He shared a story about how Eleanor Roosevelt famously labeled McCarthy-ism as Hitler-ism. When challenged by a reporter on this label she was asked if she would make the same comparison for this Soviet diplomat she had a known positive relationship with. But she refused - despite the fact he played a leading role in Stalin's purges. It was something reserved for the right.
This was written 58 years ago.
Whether these generalizations are true or not, it's funny how history repeats itself.
Newspapers in the US are overwhelmingly and verifiably leftist[0].
Out of the 46 major newspapers in the US, 41 of them endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, several endorsed Gary Johnson, and only 1 endorsed Donald Trump. [1]
[0]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-leads-trump-and...
[1]: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/clinton-trump-ne...
Even then I'm not sure that argument could be made.
At most you should be comparing MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC vs Fox News, or Mother Jones/The Nation vs National Review.
> the Democratic Party received a total donation of $1,020,816, given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), while the Republican Party received only $142,863 via 193 donations
Yes, if your standard for leftism is Joseph Stalin's Soviet Russia.
But that's like saying, "The right by American standards isn't actually on the right according to world standards, where the right wing == Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy."
It seems spot-on to me.
It's, "Leftists often dismiss diversity of thought with personal slurs."
To the left, virtually every opponent is a sexist, islamophobic, xenophobic, homophobic, intolerant, racist bigot.
This tactic, along with identity politics, are prime reasons why so many people voted for the current President of the United States.
Moderates have more in common with each other in rhetorical style, but more in common with their own sides extremes in substantive policy positions. The idea of a strong policy center is a persistent myth that is popular specifically because both sides find it useful to pretend that their moderates are that center, rather than because it is actually true in any substantive way.
(I don't personally believe the two parties produce solutions of equivalent quality at this point. Democrats have demonstrated much greater awareness of the deep problems in our governance. But I spend a lot of time trying to understand the Republican perspective and I can generally understand where they are coming from, even if I disagree.)
Only in the trivial definition where "fiscal conservatism" means government should spend money only on those things that are important for government to do, and tax no more than is needed to do that.
OTOH, the left and right (even the moderate left and right) have fairly divergent views of what government should do.
> and free market solutions
Even moderates on both the left and right tend to favor wide areas of government-run programs for "good" things, and of absolute prohibition of "bad" things (with overlapping, but conflicting, definitions of what is "good" vs. "bad"), rather than market-based solutions. ("Free market based solutions" is somewhat incoherent: "free market" is a single, universal state; were it achievable by policy at all, it would be exactly one solution, you can't have multiple of them.)
> while ensuring people in poverty are taken care of.
Even moreso than "fiscal conservatism", this is only a point of disagreement if it has no coherent definition, so that it is equivocation. Sure, the and the right would agree with the phrase, but mean radically different things by it.
The free market can be contained and guided. Governments set the platforms on which the free market operates, and it can be manipulated much like water can be poured into different shape cups. Water doesn't stop being water when it's poured into a different container... The free market can absolutely be leveraged into efficient solutions for societal problems. We do it all the time. If you want to think of the free market as a singleton then you'll have to include all interconnections and energy exchange throughout the entirety of the universe, which happens to include the human forces which are capable of regulating small parts of itself the way any other sustainable system does.
A market can be, but a free market is specifically one that is free of government intervention to "contain and guide" it.
I don't think that's actually true. If it is, I'd love to be proven wrong.
What is the right's equivalent of SIXHIRB[0]? What are the labels conservatives regularly use to shut down debate and engage in ad hominem?
[0]: The labels the left commonly uses against the right: sexist, islomophobic, xenophobic, homophobic, intolerant, racist, bigot.
And conservatives, on average, are older.
For example: far more young people voted Hillary, far more 45+ yr olds voted for Trump:
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/13D5D/production/...
The distribution for Bernie is probably even more young.
Additionally, there are ~3x major 24/7 news networks leaning left and only 1x that is right. Online newspapers have a similar distribution.
So it's easy to believe that hyper partisan nastiness is more popular on the left. But I'm not sure that's the case. Otherwise I'd be much more inclined to agree with you.
I'm neither mainstream left/right but regardless I've noticed a definite trend on the internet towards left wing slander and villianization of anyone on the right. But I associate that with the media distribution bell curve pushed far to the left.
Especially on places on Twitter and Reddit which largely regurgitate media to validate peoples views and the subsequent hive-mind that generates.
A ripe, and quite fair ground, might be the 2 recent Women's Marches.
- The (leftist) Women's March (for abortion, LGBT rights, etc.)
- The conservative Women's March for Life (against abortion)
Do we see equal amounts of slurs and vitriol at each march? One might examine the signs held by protesters, the videos taken, the violence that occurred.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/12/18/many-in-emerging-and-dev...
Study: "Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements"
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2911177
You'll likely hear about more vitriolic protests on the left. Again this is mostly influenced by media coverage - protests don't necessarily translate to being representative of whole populations. Protests are largely something young people do (which means more liberal) and the kind of extreme protest tactics that get in the press push more people away than helps - so it's not necessarily drawing wide support, even from within the party.
The media also loves a good protest, regardless if only 100 people show up. Which is again further tilted by media biases.
There's also the generalization that the left is better at organizing while the right quietly shows up in strength at the voting booth. The exception to this rule recently was the Tea Party, which largely took a page out of the left's political handbook and created a visible protest 'movement'. But again that's the exception.
Some people on the right like to joke that people at protests are all unemployed or students, while the conservatives are all adults too busy working or taking care of a family.
So I'm not sure how much you could gather from looking at protests or issue movements. It's possible that young people are just less mature and don't know better than to use slurs and vitriol, which is reflected in group dynamics. Not to mention education and social class.
It's doesn't have too much that is as pointedly specific as the SIXHIRB meme. If I had to pick what Americans conservatives tend to use that's kind of equivalent to SIXHIRB, it would be either allusion to country ("real American" type memes / unpatriotic / traitor) or allusions to certain stereotypes (such as "elites" or "hippies").
It's interesting in the Oxford link though that "bigot" and "racist" are hurled from both sides of the fence roughly equally.
The difference is cadence. Do conservatives label virtually all our opponents with slurs? No. But the inverse is true: the left almost invariably labels its opponents with SIXHIRB.
For example, go to FoxNews.com and find articles about leftists. Is there name calling? How often?
Now do the same on HuffingtonPost.com and find articles about conservatives. Is there name calling? How often?
Yes. That is, for any opponent of the right, you'll find someone on the right that has labelled them with a slur for their politics.
Of course, many on the Right see themselves as individuals and the Left as a single faceless collective, so while they will take it as "the Left" using a slur if anyone on the Left does so, they will dismiss it as an isolated subgroup if someone on the Right, but not the whole Right, does so for a particular target on the Left. (The same is true in reverse, of course.)
How would you suggest the left approach minority voter suppression? Racially biased criminal justice systems? The rise of religion and race-based hate speech and hate crimes? Perpetual Republican attempts to control what women can do with their bodies? Republican attempts to teach Christian creationism and abstinence-only sex ed in public schools?
Hell, how about painfully irrepresentative gerrymandering? Disproven and destructive economic policy? The predominantly conservative military-industrial complex? The financialization of power? Global climate change? Environmental catastrophes? The dismantling of government institutions that serve millions of Americans?
How should the left expose people to their subconscious biases in a way that causes change? I agree calling everyone "racist" doesn't help but at least it gets the message across.
By that measure, the best way to expose people to their subconscious bias about abortion is to call them murderers of innocent children.
Sure, it gets the message across. It just doesn't help public discourse, and it furthers the divide between Americans of different political viewpoints.
As for your political points, you asked "how should the left address [list of perceived wrongs]." Answer: that's for you to figure out. But if you simply resort to name-calling and personal attacks, we in middle America will keep voting for people who oppose you. Speaking for myself, if the left persists in personal attacks and identity politics, I'd be glad to vote for Donald Trump for a 2nd term.
Another instance: I listed out several plainly-worded, well-known, evidence-supported societal issues based in race, religion, and gender and your response is to simply call them "perceived wrongs". You're clearly an intelligent person and I'm sure you can understand how many on the left make the logical leap from ignorance of systemic bias to racism. If you're a white person living in middle America you most likely aren't exposed to even half of the day-to-day issues that come up when we don't acknowledge and account for tribal ideologies. Ignoring these problems increases volatility for everyone. Vote for Trump again if you want but don't be surprised if we elect a literal communist after him...
Yes, because you perceive them to be real wrongs, and we do not. I find most of them to be very good and progress for our society towards an upright, life-honoring and wise civilization.
>> How would you suggest the left approach minority voter suppression?
Voter suppression? You mean like requiring identification for voters like many western nations already do? We find it insulting to minorities to say they're being supressed by asking for identification.
In a fair system, each person gets 1 vote. Identification helps ensure that. It's not suppression, it's ensuring fairness.
Most of your other issues are likewise based on false assumptions.
Choice quote:
"[Universities in particular have] a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve."
Wouldn't want to paint with too broad a brush now would we.
With that being the standard, how can I _not_ think they are being sexist? Seriously, tell me what signals I should use to counteract these official policies, and conclude that in fact the people speaking them are not sexist? (the case is much the same for other injustices I see all around me)
Maybe you should try doing the work to convince them, rather than assuming your position is "correct" and everyone who disagrees is wrong. Or, you can choose to "not listen".
>With that being the standard, how can I _not_ think they are being sexist?
Who is they?
The problem is that you're defining terms wrong. To you, "If someone disagrees with my ideas on gender equality, they are sexist."
It's like me saying, "If anyone disagrees with me about abortion, they're child murderers."
See the problem?
Not everyone who disagrees with you needs an ugly label. I'd be glad to talk to you about why we conservatives rationally oppose radical theocratic Islam. But not if you're just going to demonize me with an "islamophobe" label, I'll just avoid you and vote for people who institute conservative policies.
I've heard people tell me they oppose radical Islam and want to kick all muslims out of their city. Their reasoning: Sharia law has already taken over many cities in the US, and if Muslims are allowed in their city, they will take over their government. Is this your reasoning?
Peter Thiel supported Trump and these people wanted Zuck to fire him. That is absolutely ridiculous. Now, it is a democratic/free speech right to make a demand public but then there will be consequences. The consequence here was the mass consolidation of votes against the left.
Even Sam Altman's recent piece suggests that people overwhelmingly voted "against left" rather than "for trump".
I know bunch of Profs who got fired or cornered for nothing other then their support of one opinion v/s the popular leftist opinion.
You don't have a majority of American citizens. You don't have a majority of people living in America. You don't have a majority of American voters. You don't have a majority of people who voted in the 2016 presidential election. You have a majority of electors in the electoral college, but they are the opposite of silent. Their votes are published online for the world to see. They make public protest votes. Their lack of silence is how we know who won the election. 'Silent majority' could not be more wrong as a description of what is going on here.
Speaking as someone who identifies as radical leftist: I disagree with this. That the "center of America" (same as for rural areas in Germany, which also heavily tend to vote conservative/right) has been vastly ignored by the left is a fact. While gerrymandering is certainly a problem on state-level elections, it is not so much a problem on US-wide elections and certainly the state borders have not been "gerrymandered" to result in the voting power differences that in turn resulted in Trump becoming president.
The left parties, not just in the US, but also especially in Germany have for long left their roots as parties of the workers and instead shifted their focus to what one may call "the urban elite". While in Germany with Mr. Schulz there is a hope that he may win back the votes of former core SPD or Left party voters, I am not sure if the Democrats will be able to do the same in the US.
I disagree with this premise. Many of the signature policies of the "left" were specifically intended to address the issues facing "middle America" - the ACA/Obamacare was intended to address rising health care costs, Clinton was pushing a retraining program for workers in areas where jobs have migrated from, and both Sanders and Clinton were arguing for increasing access to tertiary education via free/discounted programs.
I also think it's interesting that these areas complain they are "abandoned" by the left while continuing to elect Republicans. Blaming the Federal government (ostensibly "left" despite the Republican controlled House and Senate for the last 6 years) for the failings of State politicians and Governors, who have at least as much impact in your daily life, is another example of how absurd politics has become. We need to break the partisan nature of politics and start electing people who are interested in building a city/county/State/country for ALL of their constituents via compromise.
(disclaimer: the following may be inaccurate due to the fact that I'm a German and don't get reports on every activity of Clinton)
From what I've seen in news reports, Trump has made a habit during his campaign to appear not only in contested swing states but also in areas where many jobs have been lost - be it due to the closure of coal mines, huge factories or whatever - and promised people to "make them great again" and "make their voices being heard". Clinton however focused on swing states and the DNC shot down the Sanders campaign.
In Germany, it's the same - old miner towns or rural areas rarely get visits from campaigning politicians, except when there's a beer fest or a really huge factory opening. This is where that "we're abandoned" complaint comes from - it's not that local politicians abandon the population in these areas, it's that state/country politicians rarely turn up, and as a result the "abandoned" areas rarely get any media attention outside local newspapers (we don't really have the ultra-local TV stations like in the US). And if they do get mass media attention, it's mostly in the form of some TV team turning up and filming stuff like that abandoned houses get squatted by homeless people and the entire area gets dragged down by filth; not exactly what makes one proud of living in such areas. While Democrats and left-wings don't do anything, the right-wingers at least promise "we will help you", and that is - even if they don't have the slightest thought of keeping good on their promises - enough for the population to vote for them.
On a sidenote, that is what really scares me about Trump. As bad as it is, but he is the first politician in long times to publically show "I am doing, to the letter, exactly that what I promised in my campaign", and people will vote for him and his party AGAIN because of this, while ignoring that what he promises is backwards, false loads of dung.
There are many reasons why Trump won and Clinton lost - the perception that the left has abandoned Trump supporters likely had some impact but the bigger story there is why there is that perception not that the DNC has abandoned Red states (Clinton loss has even been attributed to her campaign efforts in traditionally red states - http://www.npr.org/2016/10/18/498376750/is-hillary-clinton-r...).
It didn't need any wild claims from Trump to dominate the media coverage, the email stuff was way more than enough that could be exploited to drown out her media presence. Any candidate with a bit more sensible advocates would have cancelled the run early, but Clinton decided to stick and hope for the best, instead of letting Sanders take the run and ride the waves of support among young people.
That's no excuse for ignoring smaller towns but to be fair voters outside of cities have tilted hard toward Republican representation since the 80's. Should Democrats try to win them back? Yes, of course. Should they abandon their metropolitan base to do so? Depends on the party's goals. Should liberal policies be blamed for every shitty economic situation outside of cities? No, not when the representatives they vote for generally make life harder for them.
I also disagree when it comes to gerrymandering affecting state elections. Gerrymandered states are "brainwashed" by their representatives into voting for similar politicians. They assume everyone around them thinks a certain way because why else would Republicans (or Democrats) keep being elected? Obviously that party is better! They also implement voting restrictions, education policies, economic systems, etc. that benefit their parties. Lobbyists from industries that their parties support them in elections. The entire power infrastructure of that state is organized to promote the continued dominance of that party. It's a gross abuse of democracy.
While true, that does not help the hundreds of thousands of people left to rot in deteriorating cities like Detroit, Flint, or to stay in Germany, the Ruhrpott cities. They are the voting base of the right-wingers, and unless we left-oriented people don't offer anything except "oh, it is the way it is, move to the cities or be damned", that won't change. Not to mention that "move to the cities" is often impossible because rents are at an all-time high.
> Should Democrats try to win them back? Yes, of course. Should they abandon their metropolitan base to do so? Depends on the party's goals.
There's nothing contradicting between supporting the left-leaning metropolitan bases and the rural areas. Many people in the rural areas don't give a flying f..k about gay marriage, LGBT equality or whatever, they just want to be heard and have a perspective on life that's beyond social security - and the Democrats as well as German left parties have made the potentially fatal mistake to ignore this.
When entire campaigns revolve around said topics and have NOTHING to offer for those not in metropolitan areas, there is no surprise that people in rural areas tend to think "the damn lefties only care about gays and pot, but what do they offer to me personally?!". It would imho not require much to win back their votes - a couple visits to show "we did not forget you", support from the state-level party leadership for the local politicians and their worries (this is lacking so hard, it's painful - and it leads to people not engaging in parties at the local level, because a typical local politician has nothing to decide/change as a result), and that's enough to prevent that "we're abandoned" feeling.
Gay rights were a difficult fight over the last few decades. You can look at it now and say people don't give a flying fuck but the same was not true 20 years ago. 30-40 years ago it was womens' rights. 60 years ago it was black rights. Look at abortion today - probably one of the most significant drivers of Republican voters right now. That's not something Democrats will budge on (for many scientifically validated reasons) and it's not something Republicans will budge on (for primarily religious reasons). That becomes a sticking point that blocks other issues from moving forward. Another example is business regulation. Various small businesses feel constrained beyond what they think is necessary, but Democrats require consumer and environmental safety. It's very well possible that businesses are overburdened by unimportant regulations but Democrats think they're just complaining about not being able to poison the environment or rip people off, so they shut down.
Headliner Democrats visiting rural areas would help but I don't think that's the only requirement. We need to plow through the roadblocks before rural areas will see any improvement.
That was all well and reasonable when state power was large and federal power was relatively small, but now that the opposite is true and states barely matter with the federal government superseding and deciding nearly everything the premises for that compromise no longer hold.
But this will likely never change; the power given to the smaller states is enough that they can prevent any modification to the rules, and the rules radically favor keeping them in power, so there is no incentive for them to ever give it up besides some sense of doing the right thing even if it isn't politically advantageous which is a sentiment that sadly doesn't really exist anymore in American politics.
The left is the majority. It lost because it didn't play as dirty as the right.
Republican 63,153,387
Democratic 61,776,218
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...
In fact the executive branch has grown significantly in power largely because of the ever growing pageantry of the elections. Everyone puts responsibility for all economic and social issues on the president. This eventually becomes a self fulfilling reality as we saw with Obama who signed more executive orders than anyone. The pressure is significant.
When in practice the executive branch is in fact quite limited outside of offering an ideological leadership and his cabinet/court picks.
I hope this is the ultimate result of the Trump Presidency. That executive power is further reduced rather than emboldened.
This is how the founding fathers envisioned the political system. They didn't want an unlimited amount of power left to the whims of one man.
But it seems everyone continually sees the problem as merely the wrong person rather than improving the system itself. The never ending belief that it will be better next time!
Either way I've learned to be less pessimistic - despite the mounting hysteria these days - largely because the system still somewhat reflects it's intention. As we saw when the only really bad policy (Muslim ban) was shut down from within party ranks by a Republican in the judicial branch.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.
Doesn't trip off the tongue quite so nicely, but it has the benefit of being true.
If you don't like someone's ideas make better ones. It's not zuckerbergs fault people liked one persons ideas over another.
Yes, the US truly is one of the last bastions of free speech, believe it or not. Many other countries, including my own, can imprison you for things you say.
EDIT: Why the heck the downvote?
Now you can disagree with me on the reality of "fake news" but you cannot disagree that it is a political issue pushed mainly by left/liberal organizations and the dem party (later backfired because trump snatched it away from them), and facebook is legitimizing their argument by saying "yes, we realize that this is a thing and we will do something about it."
A fake news means the news is entirely made up and/or modified to address political propaganda. First real fake news are totally made up. Those are 100% definition of a fake news: President Trump just met yeukhon is a fake news because I didn't meet him. I made it up.
Then comes the propaganda type of fake news. Prime example is editing audio record and remake it so certain words are omitted. That's also fake news.
I don't think we need to drag leftist / rightist belief into this topic. Fake news are concrete and they exist long before 2016 election. But with people able to access the Internet, this platform allows fake content to spread like a disease. It used to be newspaper and TV are the source of truth for many, but now people rely on social media to get their news because there is no penalty for reporting on fake ad made up fakes.
Then why is everyone worrying about it only now?
> It used to be newspaper and TV are the source of truth for many, but now people rely on social media to get their news because there is no penalty for reporting on fake ad made up fakes.
Is there a sudden increase in such people in 2016? How many US users did fb add in 2016?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/247614/number-of-monthly...
It seems like facebook added 12 million users in 2016 to their base of 219 million users (in North America). Doesn't seem to be a game-changing increase in social media usage to me.
So, it looks like this is clearly a response to the left's allegation of "fake news" to certain tabloid-like websites like breitbart, in the wake of trump's win.
> First real fake news are totally made up.
I don't agree. Stuff like https://twitter.com/NubianAwakening/status/78773062551616716... is also "fake news". It is reporting about certain true events, but it is mixed with misleading opinions and lies.
When I said we don't need to drag it in I meant in our discussion here. But Trump's constant use of the blackslash "[y]ou're a fake news" took the issue to not only a nationwide level, but also international.
It used to be that we complain about a thing or two for a week, and no one remembers. Now we see that every day on FB news feed, Twitter newsfeed, whatever. Everyone in the family is busy checking and chatting the latest embarrassment the POTUS is making. This is now Internet viral, a new Internet sensation that won't die until Trump is out of office, because he just won't stop fueling. Internet was boring back then, with a few interesting videos but now, this is a whole new level.
I urge you to be be really open-minded that every day every year life is different from previous. Regarding the NubianAwakening tweet - that's exactly what I meant by the second type of fake news. It's fake because it modified or take things out of context, mix and match and tweak the truth.
[1]: https://www.democracynow.org/2006/4/6/fake_tv_news_widesprea...
(on sidenote, I absolutely hate this left-right split. Being anti-authoritarian liberal, I'm finding myself being drilled into from both sides. Its crazy how easy internet makes it for people to radicalise and turn to groupthink.
Zuckerberg is clearly talking about community and not governance.
Additionally, throwing around terms like "authoritarianism", "feudal" and "dictator" does nothing to engage Zuckerberg's points, or advance his own agenda. Rather, it simply clouds the conversation with personal assumptions, judgments, attacks, etc.
I'm old enough to remember when Bill Gates was depicted as a villain on a daily basis. This appears to have a similar tone.
Today, I'm not sure we could have a better fiduciary than Bill Gates through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Had he distributed ownership of Microsoft in a way similar to what the author suggests of Facebook the Global Community would have lost out, big league[0].
[0] NB: Trumpism intentional for the sake of humor.
I am fascinated by this expression. What on Earth does this mean?
Virtual worlds have very real problems.
Democracy should exist with the government, not with corporations.
Also, yes, they were trying to garner support and interest. Probably.
I do not use FB and I still have friends, family, fun and a happy life.
No regrets.
Democracy cannot exist without a free press.
No. Why is this a result of not using Facebook? I cannot vote for changes to take place in Facebook. I do not benefit from its billions of dollars of market share. I have no say about the privacy policies. There is no democracy in FB.
I could have the above if I a) were already wealthy and owned a large portion of shares, b) were Mark himself, c) a member in Congress enacting legislation on social media websites.
Creating groups, organizing leadership roles, etc. on FB is not without restrictions. The company is known for suppressing certain messages [1], closing accounts, etc. It cannot claim to promote democracy and at the same time, censor what its leaders want.
Democracy must remain with the government, where people have power. My rights granted to me without concern for wealth, status, etc.
Facebook is not media, neither is it democracy.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/norway-accuses-facebook-of-cens...
I was responding to "Democracy should exist with the government, not with corporations.".
Democracy needs corporations - particularly, a media free from government control (unless somehow you think we can manage a not-for-profit media that's not a corporation...I'm not sure how that would be funded)
This piece is all over the place, but this is the thesis I'd say. The actual implementation of this seems doomed to fail, writer likely doesn't believe this anyway and wants to argue that Zuckerberg doesn't really care about democracy I'd guess.
Even if they don't use that power, it is a power that should be checked because it can be abused without our knowledge.
Google and Twitter are in similar positions.
The only question is whether this would impact facebook's appeal and competitive advantage, but intuitively , it doesn't seem so.
The surest solution is many competing "facebooks" rather than one large one.
It breaks down when everyone only listens to those who agree with them, of course...
For the most part, feed algorithms are tailored to show you whatever will keep your eyeballs on the screen. The idea that your conscious desires prevail in the realm of allocating your attention has been pretty well debunked by psychology and cognitive science.
But if I understand correctly, I see what my friends post (and repost). And I also see what Facebook sends me that isn't from my friends, based on my likes and dislikes. But talking specifically about what my friends do that I see, each one of them becomes a curator - at least to me. And I become a curator to my friends.
First time I have got a suggestion on my mobile for Google+ article to read (I am not using Google+ at all) was I think right after the presidency was won by Trump - the article was highly critical of him. Then within a week, I have got another two suggestions for similar articles that were critical of him. And then nothing again. No suggestion since then.
Now, as being a person that does not follow any mainstream media, no TV news, etc. this smelled like outright propaganda. Forcing their corporate views on to me. I might not be supporter of Trump, but I can think on my own, and I want to judge a President based on their actions rather than media storm started by media companies that lost credibility during the elections.
It's highly unusual occurrence.
http://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-...
I never heard gerrymandering until after the 2016 election. It is scary how minority can still win the district election. So first fix that hole, and even getting rid of Electoral College, then we can talk about vote's value.
Cooperative platform seems to be a thing for this journalist. My reading is some socialism in this writing.
> would be to distribute that stock among the people who made it valuable in the first place: Facebook’s users. Like the British retailer John Lewis Partnership did for its employees, the stock could be held in a trust that users directly control and have the opportunity to benefit from.
I am going to say this is tough to do. Employee != users. Granted, there are fake accounts, how do you deal with that? You can't have a fake employee because that's a fraud.
> On the other hand, users might then have at least a seat in the boardroom when decisions are being made about what to do with their valuable, personal data now locked up in the platform.
Same argument above. Users can actually participate if they purchase stocks, but sure the entry cost is high.
I completely agree users should have influence in how a company runs and creates product, i.e. this is how a successful business should be, listen to users and take in the good advice. Let us supposed FB allows users to vote on features and how Facebook should run, then some malicious organization could create a lot of fake accounts to influence the outcome. Are we going to now required everyone to give out passport / proper government ID and verify our online status? Otherwise, how can you take these voting seriously? This is exactly what driving people away from Facebook the fact so many people are paranoid about their online privacy and identity. This is different from taking a user survey and asking WOULD YOU LIKE. Internet is fighting against fake news.
Until there is a solid solution, sorry, it's just idealism. The ideas are exciting but please give me a concrete implementation.
Really, it's ridiculous that voting districts maps are drawn by political parties at all.
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/jud...
The electoral college is intended to give a fair say to minorities. It's a way to prevent a majority from completely overruling a minority.
Certainly in other democratic society the leader is elected from within a party after the majority party controls their version of Congress.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/the-electoral-college-was-ex...
Here's Wikipedia. I think we can agree it's a better source. Federalist Paper 68 describes explicitly why the electoral college was designed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68#Hamilton.27s...
Edit: also, wikipedia addresses the slavery agenda just above where I cited it. Note the three fifths compromise, which benefited the slaveholding states under the EC, and the actual reasons for the EC given in the section I referenced.
> The interests of slaveholding states may have influenced the choice of the Electoral College as the mode of electing the president. James Wilson proposed a direct election by the people, but gained no support and it was decided the president was to be elected by congress. When the entire draft of the constitution was considered, Gouverneur Morris brought the debate back up and decided he too wanted the people to choose the president. James Madison agreed that election of the people at large was the best way to go about electing the president, but he knew that the less populous slave states would not be influential under such a system, and he backed the Electoral College. Another factor here was the so-called Three-Fifths Compromise, which gave added power to the slaveholding states under the Electoral College which they would not have had under any likely form of popular vote.[1]
This is clear recognition that the electoral college was seen as amenable to the interests of the less populous slave-holding states. The 3/5 compromise increased the number of representatives for slaveholding states relative, and number of representatives is a factor in the number of electors to the college.
Moreover, simply because Hamilton claims something in a Federalist paper does not mean it was the only consideration in the support of an electoral college. Wikipedia (incidentally, no, I do not agree it is a better source at all) even supports this point by noting that Madison supported direct election, as did James Wilson and Governeur Morris. Madison noticed that the slaveholding states would not consent to such a method of election.
Your claim could not be more wrong and you are twisting the evidence to unequivocally deny an argument there is very real evidence for.
For reference: http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
I fail to see how whatever chaos is happening is Zuckerberg's fault.
I'm unhappy with the populist media, and how difficult it has become to tell truth from fiction.
That said, Facebook is just a tool. Blaming Facebook is just like blaming the media.
> Our society will reflect our collective values only if we engage in the civic process and participate in self-governance. There are two distinct types of social infrastructure that must be built:
> The first encourages engagement in existing political processes: voting, engaging with issues and representatives, speaking out, and sometimes organizing. Only through dramatically greater engagement can we ensure these political processes reflect our values.
> The second is establishing a new process for citizens worldwide to participate in collective decision-making. Our world is more connected than ever, and we face global problems that span national boundaries. As the largest global community, Facebook can explore examples of how community governance might work at scale.
> The starting point for civic engagement in the existing political process is to support voting across the world. It is striking that only about half of Americans eligible to vote participate in elections. This is low compared to other countries, but democracy is receding in many countries and there is a large opportunity across the world to encourage civic participation.
> In the United States election last year, we helped more than 2 million people register to vote and then go vote. This was among the largest voter turnout efforts in history, and larger than those of both major parties combined. In every election around the world, we keep improving our tools to help more people register and vote, and we hope to eventually enable hundreds of millions of more people to vote in elections than do today, in every democratic country around the world.
> Local civic engagement is a big opportunity as well as national. Today, most of us do not even know who our local representatives are, but many policies impacting our lives are local, and this is where our participation has the greatest influence. Research suggests reading local news is directly correlated with local civic engagement. This shows how building an informed community, supportive local communities, and a civically-engaged community are all related.
> Beyond voting, the greatest opportunity is helping people stay engaged with the issues that matter to them every day, not just every few years at the ballot box. We can help establish direct dialogue and accountability between people and our elected leaders. In India, Prime Minister Modi has asked his ministers to share their meetings and information on Facebook so they can hear direct feedback from citizens. In Kenya, whole villages are in WhatsApp groups together, including their representatives. In recent campaigns around the world -- from India and Indonesia across Europe to the United States -- we've seen the candidate with the largest and most engaged following on Facebook usually wins. Just as TV became the primary medium for civic communication in the 1960s, social media is becoming this in the 21st century.
> This creates an opportunity for us to connect with our representatives at all levels. In the last few months, we have already helped our community double the number of connections between people and our representatives by making it easier to connect with all our representatives in one click. When we connect, we can engage directly in comments and messages. For example, in Iceland, it's common to tag politicians in group discussions so they can take community issues to parliament.
> Sometimes people must speak out and demonstrate for what they believe is right. From Tahrir Square to the Tea Party -- our community organizes these demonstrations using our infrastructure for events and groups. On a daily basis, people use their voices to share their views in ways that can spread around the world and grow into movements. The Women's March is an example of this, where a grandmother with an internet connection wrote a post that led her friends to start a Facebook event that eventually turned into millions of people marching in cities around the world.
> Giving people a voice is a principle our community has been committed to since we began. As we look ahead to building the social infrastructure for a global community, we will work on building new tools that encourage thoughtful civic engagement. Empowering us to use our voices will only become more important.
yeaaaaa no! that's not what democracy means.
> Ownership is also about economics. It is about who benefits. Right now, Facebook is in the process of absorbing huge swaths of the global advertising market, lots of our life-giving communities and now much of politics and media—funnelling the profits mainly to the founders, early investors and other large shareholders.
-.-
> This billionaire’s refusal to recognize the rise of authoritarianism as a symptom of economic inequality and insecurity is startling
Authoritarianism? Sick usage of $5 words... anything to back that claim up with? Inequality is not to be confused with inequity... They are not synonyms.
To the author:
Mark makes a whole lot of sense if you consider the fact that he is talking about a generation that considers sharing a Facebook post to be political engagement. You have to view things from that perspective. You can bash his skull off if you so wish for saying what he believes, but he would not have had that opinion had it not been supported by our shitty behavior as a generation.
Hurling insults and labels is the primary way of having a political discourse these days - prime example being the two general election candidates (basket of deplorables anyone?). This phenomenon can even be seen in this very article you wrote. Now, where do you think the best place to have such eloquent political discourse is? The answer to that is rather simple: Facebook of-course with Twatter being a close second combined with all other social networking sites such as HN.
He understands his audience and he understands this upcoming generation. You can all raise your pitch forks and talk about the awesomeness of democracy and the evil of large corporations. But in reality, every single one of us is contributing to this mess. Mark is merely someone who is capitalizing on our collective moronic behavior. And I personally cannot fault him for that.
case in point: your post.