How Mark Zuckerberg Learned Politics | Hacker News Reader

How Mark Zuckerberg Learned Politics

wsj.com

22 pointsjkuria7 comments

> Forging relationships with political leaders, media personalities and activists is now critical to Facebook’s continued primacy in social media.

Where has the WSJ left the "capitalism is good, let the markets decide" attitude?

But, maybe it is just stating the reality that Facebook is a damaging influence in any democratic country and its only way of survival is to interfere with the normal democratic process.

> Mr. Zuckerberg has lectured Facebook’s broadly left-leaning staff about the need to understand that their user base is more conservative

That is a tricky statement. In the end Facebook can, and does, create isolated bubbles for different ideologies. So, even with a majority of progressive users of their platform, there is still room for the most extremist users to get their own bubble and generate revenue. Even worse, increased tensions between groups and heated partisan debates help with "engagement".

> she disagrees with certain Facebook decisions about political content, including the move last spring not to take down a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that had been manipulated in a way that made her appear to be drunk, according to people familiar with the matter.

Facebook provides biased information and lies to increase views. No democracy can sustain for long that propaganda machine. Democracy is founded on the idea that "informed" voters cast their ballot to the best of their knowledge. Feed the masses with doctored videos and manufactured news by external powers and democracy will suffer a blow.

I like social media, there is a place for social media in the world, but probably not for the vision that Facebook is trying to impose.

But what is not providing biased and incorrect information, by mistake or knowingly? Could you call NYT, CNN, Fox news, or a random blog, or a random local FM station

No, everyone is biased, even if they try hard not to be.

The only reasonable way to handle it is to show a wider spectrum of views, so that readers could form their own picture. Not to trust the readers is sort of to not respect them.

I think that its a matter of degree. All sources are biased but not to nearly the same degree.

Are readers trustworthy? This is like the “rational” investor argument, which has usually proven to be an unhelpful simplification of economics in reality.

After all, on Facebook when left to their own devices Myanmans decided to commit genocide.

"To realize that people are foolish is nothing to be proud of. To realize that you yourself are the people, too — well, there's some reason for a bit of pride in this realization" (R. Akutagawa, quoting from memory.)

Or, one could cynically say that the media attacks on Facebook are largely about discrediting their competitor, and that elites don't like not being able to control the narrative.

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