Facebook forced troll farm content on over 40% of all Americans each month
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I don't even like Facebook as a company and never used it but I find myself defending because it is such obvious complete bullcrap.
Would you expand on this? It's not at all clear to me who you believe is "pushing an agenda" or who is "gaming the system."
That may very well be my own reading comprehension issue, but I'm still a bit confused. If you'd help me out, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!
As for who has an agenda? Media Conglomerates. Neither e.g. the New York Times nor Fox nor other broadcasters, newspapers, magazines and other publications are neutral observers because Facebook crowds their space. Facebook is in the same market they are, and so they have an obvious and terminal bias when reporting on Facebook. And not just Facebook: you can easily observe this between different papers and broadcasters who call each other out.
I can't answer for the other commenter, but presumably media companies. Gaming the system meaning lobbying the government indirectly.
Your posts can be traced back to you, your feed is chronological and moderation is back in your hands.
Propaganda is a HUGE issue, and I’m sure anyone won’t be able to spot every case of misinformation.
But everything could be back in your hands. Nobody can _FORCE_ content on you, you are in control of your own experience.
I wish that too. And I even upvoted you for that.
Unfortunately, there are significant hurdles/barriers to entry for most folks.
First among those are asymmetric internet links. It's great that I can stream HD video while pulling down well-seeded torrents, while I apply updates to a dozen VMs without an issue.
But I can't support (and I don't have the static IPs) more than a few connections to my systems.
That's an important, and often overlooked, driver towards greater centralization.
My current plan gives me (based on speed test data) ~225Mb/s download and ~12Mb/s upload.
Obviously (multi)Gb/sec symmetric connections would be ideal, as well as easily supported by FTTP.
If enough folks have those, there's no shortage of federated, self-hosted alternatives out there -- as you helpfully pointed out.
An easily installed, self-hosted platform, combined with the requisite consumer bandwidth could certainly provide enough leverage to move folks off Facebook, et al.
Sadly, I won't hold my breath.
Is it as easy to get an FB like functionality with a click of a button? If not, that isn't going to work. Average Joe Schmoe isn't going to just self-host an instance, even if he knew how to do so. Also, if there is a competing service to Facebook, it better have everything that Facebook offers, except for the recommended and sponsored content. That includes most importantly being able to connect with old friends, acquaintances and contacts seamlessly. Does Mastodon allow for all that with just a click of a button?
If not, then programmers should just stop whining about how they wish people were more like them and instead actually build something that can be used by Joe Schmoe.
I've tried various Mastodon clients before. I couldn't figure much out of how to use them in 5 minutes and the UI was crap so I just ditched them. Even if it were a good experience, the fact that I have to go through hoops to set up an instance, then get all my friends from Facebook or Whatsapp or whatever to join me in using it, is enough deterrent that makes me not bother with it (and no, we don't use Facebook either). One app that seems to be getting this concept right, but not fully there yet, is Telegram.
> As The Times’s Kevin Roose noted on Twitter about Facebook’s reaction to the Journal pieces: “It’s just such a weird tactic. Like if Chipotle was getting criticized for having salmonella in its guac or whatever and the CEO’s response was like “well, scaled food production has had many benefits for humanity, including freeing us from being hunter-gatherers.”
It's a good point! It would be nice if Facebook actually addressed any of their issues instead of kind of hand-waiving them away with platitudes of, "yeah, well, we're really not all bad."
This is direct harm. I am so sick of this issue being framed in terms of “oh no, people sharing an opinion I disagree with”. And if you want to open that can of worms, how about the “foreign influence” funding and investing in manufactured consent by every major push media outlet that doesn’t give Americans any voice at all to respond, or the same money funding one-sided moderation on once-free forums? Apparently not an issue. But organic shared content, oh that’s so terrible.
In every facet of life now, it seems that thought crime is actively persecuted while real violence and theft is dismissed as irrelevant. That’s an unsustainable social doctrine.