Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict posts we'll see:

> Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media.

> Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship in a tough time.

> Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost.

> A call for regulation.

> A call for a free-market solution.

> A post from someone who works in marketing about how "that's where the audience is so we have to give them money".

> Personal story about eerily accurate targeting.

> Personal story about how the targeting is totally inaccurate.

> Humblebrags about how long ago one hasn't used Facebook - "I haven't used Facebook since 1914, when the Kaiser went to war."

> Pointing out that traditional media is just scared because they're being disrupted.

> Something about "Facebook" being a black mark on one's resume.

I just wish there was something we could do other than repeatedly argue about the nature/scope/cause/solution of the problem, but the US political process is pretty broken.

Check out represent.US . The fundamental issue in much (not all) of American politics is the "company -> lobbying -> legislation -> company" feedback loop, and Represent.US is taking steps to address it. They're running pro-voting campaigns ahead of this election, and have had 114 wins across cities and states over the last few years. You can get involved by volunteering (https://represent.us/volunteer/) or by donating. I don't work there, just love their work.

Shoot, I haven't used Facebook, not just since 1914, but since Frederick the Great marched into Silesia. (You can see that I, too, date stuff by the Hohenzollerns.)

I do wonder whether we'd be having this conversation if Clinton had won Florida and Michigan in 2016.

Facebook is being targeted by cancel culture because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.

I will assume good faith, and point out that cancel culture's main weapon is Facebook. That's where they gather all their outrage and yield it against their perceived enemies.

Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about dog being abandoned".

Cancel culture is not primarily anywhere. For as long as humans have existed we have wanted to persuade our peers to avoid some things and embrace others; we have wanted some voices amplified and some quieted; we have wanted people to face the consequences of their actions and to reap what they've sown.

That's all cancel culture is at its root. It's been rebranded in America's asinine culture wars so we can pretend there's some insidious new threat to free speech while the real threats go perpetually unchallenged.

Sure, but at least my impression is that the current iteration of it is different. I can't recall a time in my lifetime (made it past 40 a few years ago) that deplatforming on ideological grounds by non-state groups was that pervasive in the West.

There's been the red scare in the decades between ww2 and my birth, but that seemed more like a "threat to the system" kind of thing, this feels more religious, with individual small-time sinners being exposed and hunted down, not the deep state pulling levers to blacklist hollywood actors they suspect of having sympathies for communism.

Clearly a difference in magnitude can be a difference in kind altogether. The ability for disparately frustrated individuals to all echo chamber their way into a fever pitch that affects the news cycle and the political cycle is quite new.

Twenty years ago, an insensitive (and probably intoxicated) comment at a bar would be forgotten about the next day. Today, someone says the wrong thing on the internet and a pitchfork mob is ready to cancel their humanity forever.

Has this sort of witch hunting occurred in human history? Yes, but we typically taught these lessons as cautionary tales of the hysterical past, not blueprints for the 21st century.

I think you are right that twitter is their main thing indeed. Though I think that most of the arguments against facebook can be easily applied to twitter too. And any action against facebook would be regulatory in nature and probably hit twitter too. I think this discussion is more appropriate about social media not a specific platform.

What do you think? Is there enough of a difference between the way the platforms handle disinformation and calls to violence to distinguish them?

I don't have a strong opinion, I'm not really active on either platform. I have an account on FB, but never actively used it.

From what I read, it appears to me that Twitter is more outspoken about their policies (which are also stricter than FB's) but gives a bit more lenience to people politically aligned with their employees. FB's approach seems to be to have fewer rules but apply them more consistently, and not care as much about their employees' political ideology (which might also explain why FB is massively profitable and Twitter is not).

Twitter feels less like a neutral platform than Facebook, but I wouldn't say that they hand-pick who's allowed to post (and what they can post) either, so they're also not a publisher. I don't know anyone that was ever banned from FB, but I know a few people who were banned from Twitter, which might suggest that Twitter enforces their rules more, but on the other hand, my impression is that Twitter brings out fundamentalist aggressiveness in people, so that may lead to more bans as well.

Have you watched social dilemma yet?

Facebook is the main weapon, but because of my point. Though, Twitter used to be the main weapon until they banned conservatives.

I ask if you've seen social dilemma because it's not about facebook vs twitter. It's all of the above and especially why tiktok is a national security threat. Also why there's bipartisan support in banning tiktok.

obvious from the barrage of media hitjobs in just a couple of days

There is no such thing as cancel culture, just like there is no such thing as the Q behind Qanon. The reason why is because these concepts are memes held in the collective consciousness of humans (and now AI because we trained them on our crap).

No one person or organization exists to "cancel" things. It's a thing that happens, like nuns all meowing together at the same time. It's a phenomenon of nature, or mind, but not at an individual organization or at a personal belief level.

In other words, people may be "for" "cancel culture", but the growth and life of the phenomenon itself is empty of meaning in the individualist sense. Also, because things like Facebook enable these memes to form, your statement could easily be rewritten:

> Facebook is being targeted by mass thinking on their platform because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.

Now we see the truth of the matter, which is that Republicans support the Tragedy of the Commons for their own gain.

>There is no such thing as cancel culture, just like there is no such thing as the Q behind Qanon.

While cancel culture is a derogatory term and nobody flies that flag. The terminology still touches on a real thing. As for Q. Q is horoscopes. They have larger numbers of predictions, most of which are wrong.

>No one person or organization exists to "cancel" things. It's a thing that happens, like nuns all meowing together at the same time. It's a phenomenon of nature, or mind, but not at an individual organization or at a personal belief level.

JKRowling and the book burning would tend to disagree with this.

>In other words, people may be "for" "cancel culture", but the growth and life of the phenomenon itself is empty of meaning in the individualist sense.

I don't understand this. How can people be for it and not for it?

>Also, because things like Facebook enable these memes to form, your statement could easily be rewritten: >Facebook is being targeted by mass thinking on their platform because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.

I'm not sure I necessarily agree that is my position. Though we could fork into a side discussion into the reality that social media represents society and that thinking is what is happening. The only way forward is more thinking and longer discussions. The absolute antithesis of the situation is censorship.

>Now we see the truth of the matter, which is that Republicans support the Tragedy of the Commons for their own gain.

I'm not American. I'm an objective observer. The problem isn't tragedy of the commons at all. We need more thinking and more discussion.

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