Facebook Screwed Us All | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Screwed Us All

motherjones.com

44 pointspseudolus26 comments

I firmly believe it is the individual's responsibility to determine the veracity of the information they consume, to the best of their ability. If the platform of information isn't Facebook, it's some other medium of communication. Why should Facebook be responsible for the content its users post, assuming the content is legal? Then again, some will argue that we should make "Fake News", "Inflammatory Opinions", and "Hate Speech" illegal, but I do not believe any governments should be interested in policing the speech of its peoples. I say this as an American, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

It's also the individual's responsibility not to ruin their lives with drugs, or develop heart disease due to poor diet and exercise. People on average have poor impulse control for anything that's even a little addictive.

I'm not suggesting that regulation is the answer here, or always the answer. But, the case of moral blame is not the same as describing the problems of large portions of the population. So what if we all agree it's the individual's fault that obesity has been on the rise for decades? Does the blame here modify the severity of the problem, or prescribe an outcome? How useful is moral blame really, when it comes to societal problem?

What good does blame serve? If there is only moral blame -- as opposed to legal blame -- then the only recourse is at the individual level. Accordingly, I no longer use Facebook (or Instagram).

When it is a matter solely for the individual, that's fine.

If an "article" claims that exercise and vegetables are bad for you and that Brawndo is nutritionally complete, then it's tough luck for the idiot who chooses their lifestyle based on that post.

On the other hand, when the "Dey Turk Er Jurbs" crowd are persuaded to get the (metaphorical or literal) pitchforks out, then the tough luck falls on other people, regardless of the commitment to truth that those unlucky people have.

It is not my responsibility or even within my power to determine the veracity of what other people read, but other people can make decisions based on misleading content that have a negative effect on my life.

It is a tricky question, how to deal with "bad" content without putting too much power to define "bad" into the hands of either a nefarious or an incompetent actor who could make the problem worse. But you're just shrugging and blaming those who have been lied to for not spotting the lie.

Turns out determining what’s true or not is hard. Hence why journalism and investigations are needed in the first place.

That presumes journalists seek neutrality; which is not quite the case. Not even talking implicit bias, but world view.

It's not actually journalists per se that are the problem. They are the data collectors after all.

You still have a source of coercive influence making the act of journalism possible. Editor's want a spin, networks want truth massaged to optimize viewer metrics, to keep the financials healthy, so on and so forth.

Truth/neutrality is not highly incentivized in our current social structure.

Sorry. I just don't have time to independently verify the veracity of everything I read, hence why I put my faith in people like The Guardian. It's like suggesting that instead of verifying SSL certs against a CA, I should like each cert fingerprint up in a phonebook to see if it matches.

This is why I also said "to this best of their ability". This includes such methods as relying on a trusted source.

Fair enough!

It's also the individual's ultimate responsibility to feed themselves and find shelter and healthcare. But lots of societies believe that, acting through government, they should provides a safety net.

(I know in some parts of the world that's a controversial statement.)

Why shouldn't society work for the benefit of the more vulnerable? Whether it's those unable to provide their own healthcare or able to verify their own facts (for example, in situations where Facebook is literally the only access to corroborating information)?

I think the issue at hand is different because it's a question of censorship. You'd be infringing on the liberties of others and a central authority would be deciding what's ok and what's not.

You could make the argument for whether or not Facebook should be that authority but the analogy of government providing a safety net does not hold up.

Different governments work in different ways. The political process isn't perfect everywhere (or anywhere) but they can be diverse.

Facebook _is_ censoring and editorializing, full stop. Should societies not even attempt to fight back?

And you are infringing on the liberties of others when collecting taxes to distribute as food stamps.

"Never infringe on liberties" is not a workable plan. The question is when those infringements are worth it.

People will seek confirmation more than truth, even journalists. But I think the main problem here with Facebook et al is “virus-like” propagation.

The platform is optimized for engagement and thus “virality” rather than “organic” spread and diffusion.

If anti-vaxx sentiments remained in its tiny circle and didn’t spread beyond, that would be good.

This is a pretty pathetic rehashing of all the rumors and innuendo, totally lacking any self doubt. This isn't journalism, it's sci-fi fiction, and it's not even good.

With Facebook's recent Ad Revenue earnings and the various news organization layoffs, it sounds like money is shifting from standalone sites and into the Facebook platform. Imagine this was the Facebook dream all along, but it seems without balance and incentive for creators to earn, content could begin to suffer.

As with every anti-Facebook article I have ever seen, multiple 'like on Facebook' buttons are clearly visible. The first is right under the header. The second is on a sticky div that appears when you scroll down a bit, and which is the most prominent part of the div. Then, at the end of the article, there is a very large Facebook button, which not only has the logo, but the words "SHARE ON FACEBOOK" in capital letters.

> It’s not just spreading phony stories everywhere—it’s killing real news.

It is spreading #AlternativeFacts.

How do I convince friends and family to stop using Facebook?

I think you just lead by example by quitting it yourself, and giving a good explanation why if asked. It's a personal choice to stop using it. Don't want to risk annoying your relatives.

You know what other technology has existed wherever Facebook causes disruption? The Internet. The Internet is the real enemy here. Down with the Internet! Also electricity. Down with electricity!

I think that's a false equivalence for two reasons.

1) The Internet has not existed prior to Facebook in all markets, or even at the same time. Internet.org brought Facebook to e.g. India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org

Recently there was an HN thread about Internet use in the Phillipines. There were some very interesting observations about zero-rated data policies that subverted net neutrality so that basically Facebook was the one of the only Internet resources that one could access.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19073824

2) They are completely different things. The Internet is a federated carrier. Its actively disinterested in the content (although there are questions of net neutrality challengin that). Facebook has taken a proactive approach to marketing, expansion, collecting data about its users and ediatorializing.

True, but the issues the article discussed could also be directed at the internet in general. No one is curating everything on the internet, and through email fake news can easily become viral.

Facebook makes it easier for such things to occur, but the virality of fake news and mob organization is in general due to internet technologies. If not Facebook, maybe it would have been AOL or MySpace, or some other enterprising social network.

Picking out Facebook seems to be scapegoating a particular company for the ills of global communication. Before the internet age we had newspapers and pamphleteers and the like which similarly spread fake news and instigated the mobs.

On the other hand, Facebook might have a unique opportunity to help educate people on how to think critically about the news they see.

I think the real issue is that Facebook has a whole lot of money, so now people can start suing Facebook and get their hands on some of that filthy lucre.

> Just picture a reasonably proximate scenario: It’s the winter of 2020, and Donald Trump—having lost reelection by a margin closer than expected—is in full attack mode, whipping up stories of runaway voter fraud. Local protest groups coalesce around Facebook posts assailing liberals, murderous “illegals,” feminists. (This is basically what happened in France last year with the “anger groups” that birthed the yellow vest protests.) Pizzagate-style conspiracy theories race through these groups, inflaming their more extreme members. Add a population that is, unlike those of France and Nigeria, armed to the teeth, and the picture gets pretty dark.

Wow, that's poetic. I can practically feel the hate emitting from my screen.

I thought Mother Jones just said they had a problem with fake-news three paragraphs up. And then they decide to speculate about the future in which a bunch of wackadoo right-wingers are running around gun-murdering people because they didn't like the election results, full-on civil war (instigated by the Republican voters, no doubt, that's what we chose to run with in this article).

Sure, conservatives probably aren't reading MJ, but I don't understand how anyone feels comfortable with caricaturing people to this extent.

> This is no hypothetical. It’s precisely what Vladimir Putin’s minions, and the Trump campaign and its allies, did in 2016. And why not? Facebook showed them the way, dispatching staffers to campaigns to make sure they knew how to get exactly the messages they wanted in front of exactly the people most susceptible.

By the way, if you follow through the links on this one, Facebook also dispatched staffers to Clinton's campaign. But it definitely sounds more sinister to compare Trump to Putin than Trump to Clinton.

I subscribe to MJ, and I would consider myself a mildly converted liberal. That said, I read MJ with a very strong filter. I like their content, I like that they bring to light perspectives I had not considered. But I do not EVER forget what I’m reading, and keep the outrage in check.

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