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Comment by donmcronald | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem is Facebook doesn’t want anyone to have a negative experience because those people disconnect, at least temporarily.

I can go on Facebook, praise Hitler, and get likes. I think that skews peoples’ perception of what’s acceptable and what’s not. Maybe Facebook needs a way to give negative feedback.

It’s such a hard problem though. The quantity over quality friend groups everyone has now makes it difficult to trust others. When I was growing up, if one of my good friends disagreed with me it was a good indication I needed to reevaluate my opinion. I think that’s been lost.

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I’m not sure that is really facebooks problem. If I saw you praising Hitler, I’d unfriend you, so it’s not like there isn’t social consequences on Facebook.

I think the real issue is the users. I mean, Facebook makes it easier to find people who are like you and believe the things you do, but Facebook didn’t make you believe the earth was flat.

The fact that people believe the earth is flat shouldn’t be blamed on social media, because it’s a much bigger problem than that. Those people have managed to grow up wrong, with terrible education and horrible life choices, and maybe they find each other in groups on Facebook but they sure weren’t made this way by the internet alone.

I think Facebook has some responsibility because they're such a large platform. The problem is constant positive reinforcement of everything, even things that are unacceptable. Part of the reason those people grow up "wrong" is because they're growing up on social media where the feedback they get is unnaturally skewed to agreed with them.

I don't think it's intentional, but I think it's going to be impossible for Facebook to solve with watered down feedback like the "empathy" button. They need a way for people to express disagreement, but it's going to be difficult to do that without reducing engagement, so it probably won't happen.

Nobody believed all this nonsense before Facebook/Youtube, dumb people had the good sense to defer to others. This is absolutely new and caused by these tech conglomerates, it is not inherent in people.

We optimized the hell out of user engagement, and created these closed loops where you just swim in nonsense for years. The marketing teams loves it, shareholders love it. Nothing foreign or unpleasant penetrates the engagement loop. Keep growing those numbers. What's the content? Hmm? who cares?

This issue doesn’t depend on conglomerates (unless you’re implicating all companies developing the Internet); it’s going to happen when these people get online whether it’s on Facebook or incel forums. It’s a very unfortunate side effect of global peer-to-peer communication as enabled by the Internet.

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