Facebook Knifes Its Own Analytics Tool to Hide Its Ben Shapiro Problem

I dropped Facebook, Twitter, and IG because I saw the mind control.

I originally thought I was more powerful than the red notification symbol. I was wrong.

Now I'm off it.

I may need to hide my HN points next...

NYT link in the article is incorrect. Here is their reporting: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data....

Reading those comments, it's startling how people basically argue "but I like Ben Shapiro and so do others so he must be good right?".

No, everything the man says is biased and purposefully leaves details out in order to skew conclusions. Those unaware of the data left, out cannot possibly know that it was left out. Yet people will desire a conclusion, at the moment of listening. Desperation through poverty will do that to people. Not limited to finances.

I speak in an absolute, because why the fuck not.

This is what Plato meant when asking "do we have free will?".

How can one's will be free, if you make decisions based on incomplete facts? Not only that, but incomplete by design, the designer have done so with premeditated intent, for the express purpose of steering the reaction of those listening.

And once you've become convinced, you're unwilling to go back. It made sense once... and that feeling sticks.

Its almost as if people are so distrusting of the MSM they are more interested in reading alternative sources, even if most of those sources are also flawed.

I don't blame them for turning their backs, I also have zero trust in MSM's ability to report the facts without unacceptable levels of political bias, although I'm not turning towards 'right wing' sources as my alternative.

This is a symptom of a greater schism in society and won't be fixed by tech censorship, fact checking, nor algorithm tweaks. This isn't some small minority of people who can simply be squelched.

The more they tighten their grip, the more people will slip through their fingers.. eventually to decentralized, uncensorable platforms. When that happens people will really start to regret these centralized platforms acting as the arbiters of truth and misinformation as these people will now be out of reach and even more prone to radicalization.

I predict the current approaches being used to censor and silence people on the internet will be viewed as one of this century's greatest mistakes.

Seems like the right decision, hide the data and ignore the problem. /s

> CrowdTangle’s engagement data has shown for quite some time that links from ultra-right commentators like logic troll Ben Shapiro, former NRATV goon Dan Bongino, and bloviating Fox News host Sean Hannity

These are just mainstream Republican pundits. What exactly makes something ultra-right? As far as I can tell, these three are basically just liberals. Are liberals considered to be ultra-right now?

The article seems to take it as a de facto problem that this content performs better, and is evidence of Facebook itself being complicit in it. My own interpretation is that Facebook is actually a left leaning company, and that they're taking down the analytics because they're ashamed that "right wing" content does better on their platform.

I'm not sure I see the problem, beyond what we already know, which is that political echo chambers on social media are cancer. Do you think the same author looks at Twitter and thinks of it as an ultra-left cesspool? I highly doubt it. The only "Ben Shapiro problem" is that the author, and Facebook, don't like Ben Shapiro.