Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?
nymag.com
nymag.com
Excuse me, what? As an advertising company, you don't ensure the integrity of a sovereign nation's election. You can at most abstain from unduly interfering with it (and of course you should, it's not particularly laudable or supererogatory).
At most he/they took sides and interfered.
On the other hand it's hard to enforce election silence on social networks.
What if I only saw this political article because someone else promoted it? What if was one-sided or even false? How does Facebook detect that?
There are no easy answers to "keeping propaganda off Facebook" or twitter, while allowing people to talk politics.
Advertising on Facebook is a specific, paid mechanism for delivering messages to an identified target audience segment, that is completely distinct from their social content sharing features. Heck, you might not remember it, but there was a time when there was no advertising on Facebook at all.
Regulating that specific mechanism is well within the purview of the FEC, and can be done without interfering with the ability of Facebook users to share content with their own network of connections.
Do I need to mention the nirvana fallacy again? ;)
Maybe I'll phrase it differently: don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I take the point about paid ads, but that does not cover all of "propaganda" any more.
I suggest that it is very possible that Facebook, with its access to something like 1 billion MAUs, needs to be regulated, and regulated possibly differently than companies before it. The FEC has some rules for political ads with respect to the Internet, but I am in favor of revisiting those to see what rules need to be established for the greater good of the public
>There are no easy answers to "keeping propaganda off Facebook"
It appears that Russians bought $100,000 worth of ads, so that is some place to start looking that is wholly different than a discussion on politics of users.
This is HEAVY intervention. Specially if it is more specifically to "russian".
So, just to restate my position, if what Facebook meant by upholding the integrity of elections amounted to preventing foreign nationals (non-Germans) from buying political ads on their platform, I'm all for it.
I totally agree with it! Now I ask you, do you agree? Because US institutions bought a lot of political ads in the past years when the Brazilian government was overthrow. Now guess which side did these institutions support? :)
Another recent article that I can't stop thinking about also covered the malign naïveté of Facebook -- "Zuckerberg's Preposterous Defense of Facebook" by Zeynep Tufecki [0].
The entire thing is so well reasoned it's hard to choose just one snip, but here's one:
For those of us who are tolerant of a wide range of ideas and arguments, but would still like deception and misinformation to not have such an easy foothold in society, Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments do not inspire hope...
Since Facebook has no effective competition, we can look forward only to being lectured on being more tolerant of "ideas" we don’t like, and to smug talk of the false equivalency of "both sides."
By the way, thank you for "supererogatory", I didn't know there was a word for "good but not morally required to be done".
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/persuasion-and-contro...
(BTW, regarding "supererogatory" = "good even beyond what's required" - awesome word, isn't it, and I've been looking for an opportunity to drop it into a sentence :-)
Facebook has grown so big, and become so totalizing, that we
can’t really grasp it all at once. Like a four-dimensional
object, we catch slices of it when it passes through the
three-dimensional world we recognize.
> Facebook has grown so big, and become so totalizing, that we can’t really grasp it all at once. Like a four-dimensional object, we catch slices of it when it passes through the three-dimensional world we recognize.
Formatted for mobile readers.
But what had been presented as a democratic town hall was
revealed to be a densely interwoven collection of parallel
media ecosystems and political infrastructures outside the
control of mainstream media outlets and major political
parties and moving like a wrecking ball through both.> But what had been presented as a democratic town hall was revealed to be a densely interwoven collection of parallel media ecosystems and political infrastructures outside the control of mainstream media outlets and major political parties and moving like a wrecking ball through both.
Tip to HN commenters: don't indent block quotes and break them up into lines. That is for code formatting, and it makes the quote hard to read on a mobile device.
Instead, put the quote all on one line in this format without indenting it:
> *Quote here.*
If the quote consists of multiple paragraphs, I like to follow the above formatting for each paragraph separately. Put a blank line between each paragraph so they don't run together.
And then be sure to check the format after commenting. It should look like the quote near the beginning of this comment. If it doesn't look right, edit to fix it. And no, you do not need to add an "Edit: fixed formatting" note. That would be silly, just fix the thing.
HN's comment formatting options are rather meager, so this is about the best we can do.
Thanks!
I'd rather see either the CSS fixed (to pre-wrap or whatever the directive is), or actually have real motherlovin' blockquote support. But I'm not holding my breath.
(Lists would be another nice add. Markdown...)
> But if Facebook is bigger, newer, and weirder than a mere company, surely his trip is bigger, newer, and weirder than a mere presidential run. Maybe he’s doing research and development, reverse-engineering social bonds to understand how Facebook might better facilitate them. Maybe Facebook is a church and Zuckerberg is offering his benedictions. Maybe Facebook is a state within a state and Zuckerberg is inspecting its boundaries. Maybe Facebook is an emerging political community and Zuckerberg is cultivating his constituents. Maybe Facebook is a surveillance state and Zuckerberg a dictator undertaking a propaganda tour. Maybe Facebook is a dual power — a network overlaid across the U.S., parallel to and in competition with the government to fulfill civic functions — and Zuckerberg is securing his command. Maybe Facebook is border control between the analog and the digital and Zuckerberg is inspecting one side for holes. Maybe Facebook is a fleet of alien spaceships that have colonized the globe and Zuckerberg is the viceroy trying to win over his new subjects.
Firstly, it seems to me that it could potentially poison his brand overseas. Everyone knows that Facebook can potentially exert a lot of influence in very subtle ways. How many countries would want most of their citizens under the potential influence of a company owned by the president of a potentially hostile country? It could cause Facebook to be banned in some countries (like it already is in China).
Secondly, it could be argued that the owner of Facebook already has more power than the US president, so it would be a step down. After all, Facebook has influence over more people than POTUS. And considering the subtle ways we can be manipulated by social media, it can surely be argued that he can influence people more directly and more powerfully than POTUS.
So it seems to me that becoming President gains him nothing but aggravation and stress, and stands to lose him valuable overseas business.
People create their own social bubbles outside of Facebook, Facebook then gives those social bubbles a way to communicate (messages, images, etc.) online - that's it. If Facebook started trying to do more manipulation, i.e. tried to change peoples minds or something, then people would likely stop using Facebook, because it would no longer be subtle.
Power is not measured by “users.”
If yes, then Facebook must necessarily be powerful by the same metric.
If no, why not?
In any case, even if the MSM effectively shapes public opinion, the POTUS commands the armed forces.
Is that fair? Or do I not understand your point?
Opinion manipulation is a powerful thing. Something that, in this country, won't be fought with guns.
I agree with would be outrageous if they were used against US corporations -- but who is proposing that???
I guess I don't understand your point.
What actions do you think Zuck could take which would demonstrate that he has more power than Trump?
And, why do you raise the hypothetical of Trump shutting down Facebook? In particular, it's my understanding that many of Trump's foes are blaming FB for his win.
As to actions that Zuck could take to show that he has more power than the POTUS? As I mentioned, constructive power and destructive power are of different natures, so that the power of an artist building a great sculpture is not really comparable to the power to smash that sculpture with a hammer.
Nukes are indeed powerful, but media organs have started wars before.
Remember the Maine!
History is your guide, the tactics have not fundamentally changed. The process isn't certain, and, as in many cases, the principle ingredient is disinhibition, recklessness, or ignorance.
And if not Zuckerberg, the next new-media mogul to hold the attention of a few billion eyeballs. More, I might add, than any media empire in history.
Uber agrees to send in my name a “Pay me £7.23 for that shared ride” to my Facebook friends, but not to people for whom I can’t prove I know well enough. Tinder shows shared relations with strangers. That is a powerful web of features unlocked thanks to this. That’s why building an API was such a key early change of what Facebook was.
Typically, Twitter does something similar to Facebook on the surface (a news feed) but is not planning on serving as an authentication layer, so they do a lot less to address grievers, inauthentic accounts and lately, unwanted political influence.
The News Feed was the first key feature, built internally and it boosted the business model that Facebook has started leveraging: targeted advertising. But neither the News Feed, not advertising is the core of Facebook — no more than ads are at the core of Google.
Google wants to leverage artificial intelligence to organise the world’s information. That your friends matter to you and that you trust them more, and that you want computers to tell who they are is what’s at the core of Facebook; the recent pivot to communities is clearly in that line: you also trust and are willing to help people that you might not have met before because you belong to certain groups, communities.
Ads are a simple and effective way to finance both projects. Because management had to place ad-focused people high up, they took over a bit of the attention, but leaders at both companies know to focus on the end-goal.
I can easily imagine Facebook making more money from transaction fee, or distributing 3D-content; I can imagine Google making more money similarly (typically, CPA is kind of that). Both have tried, and the results were underwhelming, and will most likely try again.
"Are you bothered by fake news, systematic misinformation campaigns and Facebook “dark posts” — micro-targeted ads not visible to the public — aimed at African-Americans to discourage them from voting? You must be one of those people “upset about ideas” you disagree with.
Are you troubled when agents of a foreign power pose online as American Muslims and post incendiary content that right-wing commentators can cite as evidence that all American Muslims are sympathizers of terrorist groups like the Islamic State? Sounds like you can’t handle a healthy debate.
Does it bother you that Russian actors bought advertisements aimed at swing states to sow political discord during the 2016 presidential campaign, and that it took eight months after the election to uncover any of this? Well, the marketplace of ideas isn’t for everyone."
"I read it on the internet, so it must be true."
Everybody would know I was joking, yet all of this is only an issue precisely because people are insufficiently critical of the things they read. But I'm leaving off an important part of that sentence: ... people are insufficiently critical of the things they read when such things confirm their own biases. People believe what they believe because they believe that is the most logical view to have. That causes people to turn off their filter when seeing something that confirms that belief.
Somebody censoring a belief or attaching an appeal to an arbitrary authority declaring it false isn't going to change people's minds. If anything, it could very well strengthen their resolve as they feel as though they're being oppressed or attacked. There needs to be more cordial debate and discussion between differing groups. I am not suggesting promoting a false balance, but rather pointing out that what we have now is a false balance. So many topics are optically homogenous - which gives participants and readers a gross misunderstanding of reality and leads both to less questioning of their own views, and a lack of understanding of how anybody could ever disagree with them.
When Facebook launched the real name policy and its limited scale ensured a certain amount of accountability.
These days with advertisement, constantly changing algorithms promoting user content and global scale spanning all types of legal frameworks and enforcement bodies there is no real accountability. Facebook is a tool with incredible power and access to the power is poorly guarded. Zuckerberg may be all powerful but even worse he is enabling anonymous bad organized actors to wreck havoc. An accident that was waiting to happen and of course it did.
But
Everyone (trapped) employed in the credit fuelled consumption economy needs the farm to exist.
Asking Zuckerberg to clarify the role of the farm is pointless. It's like asking why a gigantic herd of wildebeest are required for the Serengeti to exist.
If you want a consumption culture that gives you, your iPhones and Star Wars movies you need the farm. Whether its called facebook or is run by a Zuckerberg is in an irrelevant point.
The consumption-based segment of the economy has existed for much longer than social networks or the internet:
https://jobenomicsblog.com/consumption-based-economy/
Also countries with post-industrial economies are a mix of service and consumption. There is no economy that is solely consumption based.
However, in the interviews, I came under the impression that Facebook knows very well what they do, where they are going, and what their 7-year plan is.
It's just that corporations don't market that as their image, but prefer to cultivate an image they deem more likeable to attract customers. I'll bet that Mark knows this, and what his company is doing quit well even though at some things, they seem in disarray.
No, it’s not: giving advertisers relevant audiences is useful; offering customers the possibility to say “me buying a vacuum cleaner was not because I was starting a collection” serves a similar purpose: showing ads to people interested by them. (On a related note: If you sell a vacuum cleaner, please don’t use retargeting.)
> The only two I could think of that might feel obligated to make the same assurances are Diebold, the widely hated former manufacturer of electronic-voting systems, and Academi, the private military contractor whose founder keeps begging for a chance to run Afghanistan. This is not good company.
No words on whether Diebolt, and the hundreds of private computer security companies who protect government services are good companies.
> At 2 billion members, “monthly active Facebook users” is the single largest non-biologically sorted group
Well, I’d wager ‘Internet users’ is larger…
> For most Facebook users, these meticulously constructed and assiduously managed challenges are the only access they’ll ever have to Zuckerberg’s otherwise highly private personal life.
The fact that I know his chidren’s names (and have seem a dozen pictures of the eldest) but I don’t know the names of most of my colleagues’ child kind of defeats that point.
> Maybe Facebook is a state within a state and Zuckerberg is inspecting its boundaries.
Something tells me that the author is American. What could it possibly be?
http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/09/election-interference-is-...
which seems to hit the nail on the head.
The question does even X know Y? Implies that X is somehow out of touch, and not knowing Y, but maybe they do - surprise!
The question Does even X not know Y? Implies we would expect X to know Y, but what if even X does not?
The question Doesn't X even know Y? Implies that X is stupid and doesn't know a lot of things, but can it be that they are so stupid that they don't even know Y!?!?
On edit:
The question Does X know even Y? Implies they are knowledgable about a lot of things, but Y is such a rare and mysterious subject that we would be surprised if they did but what if they do know Y!?!
Consider "Does anyone know Y?". Depending on how it is said, it could be either a straightforward question about whether anyone knows Y, or with an upward inflection on "anyone" it could mean "I doubt anyone knows Y, but it's possible someone does."
With that same inflection on a person's name, "Does even Person know Y?" has the same meaning as your "Does even X not know Y?"