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Comment by exogeny | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe there's an actually a debate at all about what's going on here.

There are multiple sources indicating that conservative sites work in concert to amplify, at best, specious content and at worst, complete misinformation.

Facebook selectively enforces discipline on these sites because:

1. Conservative information (Fox News, Charlie Kirk, Breitbart, etc.) is consistently shared more than other content

2. They don't want the optics of making it seem like they're censoring conservative voices because they're afraid of the blowback, so they're hiding behind the veil of "It's not our job"

3. They don't want to lose the ad spend running up to the election season nor do they want to lose the vanity metrics of DAU/MAU/etc because they're a publicly traded company

Zuck is a feckless coward, full stop. And while I don't know his personal political leanings, this non-policy certainly has the earmarks of Thiel and Joel Kaplan all over it.

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I have a completely unfounded theory that the coalition constituting the current "right wing" are a cherry picked selection of the most easiest to advertise to people in society.

Furthermore the actual goal of a "right wing media" is to collect reliable, large, consistent easy to sell to audiences for advertisers and isn't necessarily committed to any particular agenda.

Also political opinions and grandstanding is cheap content, expensive journalism isn't required, so it keeps the costs low.

All the other consequences, just like they are for tobacco and oil companies, are swept under the rug. This is the content associated with the lowest cost, best audience, highest profit business model.

I sold bumper stickers in the early 2000s, all kinds of politics. The conservatives were easier; larger volume, longer time window (they sold over a longer time), the ramp up time was shorter, and the stickers were way easier to come up with. Much easier business.

Again, this is all from in my head, I'm not a researcher and don't have a paper trail here, but it's a fun idea and seems to match reality.

Those aren't even all separate points. At the end of the day, Facebook is beholden to republican (not really "right wing" per se) advertising dollars more than it is to spending on opposing points.

This is just for demographic reasons: Facebook has to compete hard for eyeballs among young/urban/techie/minority users. Those folks are fickle with their tastes and willing to try more platforms. And they're less sensitive to advertising in general. Facebook has lots of them, but they certainly aren't dominant in that market.

But old white folk? They're all on Facebook. Really, they're ALL on Facebook. Facebook probably has 90%+ of all social media advertising revenue in this demographic. And they skew heavily republican.

So who's interests are they going to serve? When Facebook's executives feel pressure to put their fingers on the fact check scale, in which direction are they going to tilt it?

Facebook make an irrelevant amount of money from political advertising.

If they didn't really believe that it was important to allow on their platform, then they would have banned it years ago, as it causes them nothing but bad press and blowback.

I'd want to see numbers about that before I believe it; I don't think it's true. Certainly from looking over the shoulders of my older relatives, political and issue ads make up a very large percentage of the paid content they see.

Yeah, for less than 25% of each four year period, and only in swing states (so I suspect probably Florida and Ohio get most of it).

Seriously, I definitely saw some numbers (maybe from the FT) and it was like less than 1% political advertising revenue. That's maybe 10-15 times smaller than gaming, and maybe 30 times smaller than ecommerce.

Also, note that pages have posts that look incredibly like ads (the Sponsored thing is pretty subtle), so it can be hard to actually measure which (of any) of the posts are ads.

> is consistently shared more than other content

That is a surprise. Is there data that this has also been the case before the increased efforts to moderate content?

All criticism aside, I think Facebook does a better job at providing a platform for users. Yes, I don't like a lot of content either, but if I compare it to Twitter, I think FB did much better.

The reason (basically) is because Republicans in the states trend older and by extension, less technically savvy. Since content that both incites strong emotion and allows that person to represent themselves a certain way tends to be the most shared, highly clickbait/inflammatory/misinformation right-wing content rules the roost.

1) Why is this? Is it because both sides share it vs just typical echo chamber sharing? I know it's not "shared more because more people believe it" as the US is pretty close to 50/50.

I don't have data to answer how much of what causes this, but certainly there seem to be some very savvy ad strategy decisions on the Republican side such as this: https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1290739595278028800

TLDR is that if you know certain subjects will get your base talking about something else that you aren't allowed to promote (such as a conspiracy theory), you promote the hell out of real news stories about those subjects knowing your base will a) share and b) discuss the conspiracy theories in the comments.

It's a very clever way to use money to boost the conversation around untrue claims, while technically neither the ad buyer nor seller are responsible since it's the users doing the lying. And I don't know what the solution is, fact checking every user comment isn't feasible..

(speculation) Because right now, one side loves Trump/Shapiro/Crowder/etc... and the other side just hates Trump (majority don't care either way, of course). Notice how nobody is focused on the Dem side anymore? So of course these pages get more engagement if everyone is over there.

Ha. And here I actually respect Zuck for not banning all the conservatives like Jack did. They just tried to cancel Facebook, so, why the hell would Zuck give into demands now?

> I actually respect Zuck for not banning all the conservatives like Jack did.

Woah, twitter banned all of the conservatives? How did Trump take being banned?

You can't see that Twitter slants far left?

"slants far left" and "banned all conservatives" are incredibly different claims. If you mean "slants far left", but say "banned all conservatives", nobody is going to take anything you say you seriously.

So what you are saying is that facebook itself acts like a neutral platform without boosting, demoting, or censoring certain political posts, right? If so I do not see what the issue is with that.

> Facebook selectively enforces discipline on these sites because:

Does facebook enforce discipline on sites from the other site that spread misinformation? (e.g. snopes) If not I do not think that it is really selective.

Considering https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24079172 for example it does not seem that they have a right wing bias.

The issue of 'amplifying narratives' is not at all exclusive to any 'side' and the misinformation is everywhere, it just takes on different forms.

I believe that the issue of the 'right wing side' in this case is possibly as you've indicated - in that there is just more sensitivity around it.

The Valley is Left/Anarcho/Libertarian with 'traditionally minded' immigrants, and so there's more suspicion in certain camps of legit bias on 'one side'. I think this is where the sidedness of the issue might derive.

As to the materiality of it ... who knows ...

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