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Comment by wly_cdgr | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is very far from perfect, but it brings a lot of good to the world as well. I met my partner of almost five years thanks to Facebook's friend recommendation algorithms. I had never met them outside of Facebook and we didn't have any friends in common outside Facebook either. In fact, when we met, we lived on opposite coasts.

I will always be grateful to Zuck & Co. for that, and for the hundreds of other friends I've made on Facebook - people of all ages, backgrounds, professions, and nationalities - people I never have, and almost certainly never WOULD have, met in "real" life. In my experience & opinion as an 8+ year high volume shitposter, Facebook is the best site in the world for dating and for expanding your social horizons/circle

And I say that as a former frontend lead at Ghostery, lol

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I think the question is, how do you keep the good and get rid of the bad? I think there's a lot of great things that social media has done to connect people, but all too often it's only a shallow or artificial connection. I think the other problem is that social media will make you find people "like" you. Humans have always sought that out, but there was always some variance that allowed us to remember that others unlike us were still human. Now, with connections possible the world over, we ironically are more likely to only interact with individuals that share our opinions because it's a lot easier to find people like that when you can search the entire world for it. That leads to otherization of any who doesn't share that opinion. So, how do we create social media that keeps that potential for connection you are talking about, but does it in a meaningful way where individuals are exposed to more than an echo chamber?

Don’t read political posts from sources you do not know/trust?

I don't use Facebook so I'm only going by what I've seen from screenshots or over someone's shoulder. Isn't one part of the misery political posts from people you do know? e.g., extended family or old friends going off the deep end?

Don't be FB friends with your crazy family! Be FB friends with cool strangers

Anyone capable of that level of introspection is unlikely to be someone who is on the wrong end of misinformation. If the solution is for everyone to identify misinformation and to block it, then the criticisms of social media platforms are legitimate. Only those who are the least likely to be effected would be the ones opting out.

We live in a world where nearly _all_ information fed to the public is misinformation. Except in one case it's due to FB and in another it's 5 dudes who own the entirety of US (and large chunk of the world's) "free" press. In this narrative-rich, (nearly) fact-free environment, aside from the obvious asinine bullshit that's easily seen through, the "misinformation" becomes simply something you don't agree with. The benefit of this is that it's no longer just 5 dudes that control the manufacturing of public consent. At a minimum it's 8 now (add Zuck, Pichai and Dorsey to the mix). With any luck, these 8 might start stabbing each other in the back.

There is a book called “Hate Inc.” by Matt Taibi in which the author inadvertently argues that manufacturing consent is no longer profitable and news outlets are now in the business of manufacturing dissent.

Well, whether they manufacture consent or dissent depends entirely on what party currently controls the White House and the Congress. So he's half-right. I'm a big fan of Taibbi's writing, and especially his books. "Griftopia" was pretty good, too. He's a rare breed - a liberal who is also willing to criticize liberals when they deserve it.

It’s just like YouTube. They need to tweak the algorithms for quality, not just quantity. Those are hard decisions for them because it will cost money in the short term. Ultimately governments will slap them down, which will cost much more.

I always think of one scene in Cool Runnings: a gold medal is a wonderful thing, and if you're not enough without it, there's no way you'll be enough with it.

Facebook gives you what you want, and it's up to you what you make that.

Proof by anecdote

Did you get confused and think "There is so much hate, arguments, misinformation, angy, and harmful messaging on FB platforms." was data?

If you keep up with current affairs the past few weeks have shown that FB’s alleged problems are supported by data which is disregarded by it’s leadership

For example:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.0271...

https://bmcresnotes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1310...

https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-t...

Facebook's own research: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22701445/facebook-instagr...

It's nice - and of course timely - that there are some heartwarming feel good stories in this thread.

But the plural of anecdote is not science. And the science is pretty damning.

Papers 1 and 3 are about correlating _duration_ of FB usage with happiness. Look at the papers referenced here [1] for the same effect as applied to TV. These papers, sans the new controversy over the mental health of young women on Instagram, _don't_ actually point to any stronger of a conclusion than "consuming large amounts of media is correlated with bad mental health".

I'm not saying that FB and this huge corporate capture of the internet is _good_, but making arguments like this doesn't actually make coherent sense.

[1]: https://buddingpsychologists.org/binge-watching-mental-healt... (I didn't read the article, but I did skim the referenced papers)

If it agrees with my priors it's objective fact. If else, it's an anecdote

Not a proof. But a useful anecdote.

No one is doing large scales studies of how many people meet their partner on FB, so anecdote is all we have for that.

Most of the criticisms are also anecdotes, but you seem fine with those.

It's just my experience, but I am not very special or unusual, so it would be surprising if many people haven't had similar experiences

This is a case where an anecdote is proof, at least a partial proof.

If the proposition is "Facebook brings at least some good to the world". A single confirmed anecdote of Facebook bringing a single good thing to the world is a proof. In the same way that all you need to prove that black sheep exist is to show a single black sheep.

The proposition is "Facebook brings a lot of good to the world" is a bit trickier, we need to define "a lot", but it can still be proven by "a lot" of anecdotes.

It is not a generality we are trying to prove, so we don't need to have data representative of the general case.

The part about Facebook being the best for dating is stated as a personal opinion.

How do you date on Facebook? I barely ever use it these days, but I would never connect with strangers on there.

I feel like I'm missing something here.

Friend randoms and get to know them over time through public wall interactions; switch to DMs if things are clicking

I've sent thousands of FB friend requests to strangers suggested by the algo; the vast majority accept. I have met some of my favorite people in the world this way. Also some huge assholes/crazies, of course. Sometimes they are the same people

Why would you want a complete stranger to see all your personal stuff?

facebook drove your other options to suicide

man and here I thought they just blocked me

Facebook may bring “a lot of good to the world”, but it brings a lot of bad, too. Is it worth the tradeoff?

Yes. The same is applicable to every social networking site.

Or media or practically everything else

I for one just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your Ghostery humor. That's pretty good. ;)

"Facebook is the best site in the world for dating and for expanding your social horizons/circle"

Maybe for boomers and some emerging markets. It appears to be losing popularity very fast among younger folks in most Western countries. Not that alternatives are much better IMO, Twitter in particular is even worse.

Nothing beats going out and talking to real people. It gives you a competitive advantage over the masses that are too lazy to socialize in real world.

I'm a boomer; that may well be a fair point

I do think Facebook has something really valuable over in person interaction: you can observe how a potential SO interacts with a wide variety of other people

Also, I like that it's async. But that's more of a personal preference

Imagine that you could maybe met someone better if you have not settled for FB recommendation.

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