Why is that Facebook's fault if they are just the middle man for their users (both on the content creation side and the content consuming/engagement side)?
This isn't just a problem with Facebook and Twitter either, its an issue in modern journalism as well. Basically anything that is funded by advertisement will fall into this trap.
Meta is not breaking any legal law circa 2023, but history will bucket it along with asbestos/cigarette businesses
Probably because we generally associate responsibility with choice.
Are users also responsible for their own choice to create and respond to engagement-optimized posts? Sure, but that’s an orthogonal concern to Facebook’s own choice and the responsibility they bear for it.
"I don't like the content that ends up on + promoted through algorithms on Facebook, therefore, they should be responsible"
It's not their content, and they aren't the ones engaging with it.
They are pushing it because users post it and then engage in it.
Say we got rid of Facebook tomorrow. This exact same problem would happen at another company/platform unless there was heavy intervention/moderation (which to my understand, Facebook absolutely already does some level of moderation?). What's that equivalent to? I'm not a "free speech advocate" or anything like that but what you're asking for is censorship instead of asking users to bear the responsibility of the content they consume.
Regarding users bearing responsibility for what they consume - I have seen others report running into this and I have as well - no amount of feed grooming keeps the controversial content off my feed for a meaningful amount of time. I actively unfollow / snooze content I don’t want to see, but Facebook has countered this by adding “suggested for you” items to my feed. It’s impossible to only see my friends’ updates. I must be exposed to content selected by Facebook as a cost of using Facebook.
Most people use the word censorship to refer to banning some specific kind of content: banning what. Meanwhile, the discussion around Facebook is usually around how they measure and reward content, not what the content is.
If you're actually being sincere in this discussion, I think you may not see how engagement is just one particular kind of how and it's not a given that social media sites optimize for it. It was an innovation that some sites introduced because it benefited their business model and it caught on for a while. But it wasn't universally adopted, needn't be used at all, and is becoming less fashionable among both sites and users. Facebook's a bit behind the game on restructuring away from it though, possibly because of over-investment and momentum, or possibly because of being a closely-held company that can be philosophically stubborn.
I am.
> Meanwhile, the discussion around Facebook is usually around how they measure and reward content, not what the content is.
I thought the original point was "divisive content gets promoted and Facebook doesn't stop it/encourages it".
Promoting that content is the "how" that Facebook has chosen to do and continues to do, and something that isn't a given for operating a social media company. That's what they're being held responsible for.
their content delivery/ranking algorithms prioritize (from my understanding as just a general person in the public who has never seen what's probably millions of lines of code across many different internal private systems at Meta) user engagement over all
If the algorithm is spitting out content that we're all critical of (because it's divisive, bad for mental health, etc.), why are we not acknowledging that it's just a side effect of
1. user input + 2. user engagement to that input = 3. ranked content delivery algorithm
If Facebook went away tomorrow, another platform would fill its place. Humans have shown that they like to doom-scroll on their phone and are ok being fed ads in the mean time because social media scrolling is basically the equivalent of an electronic cigarette for the brain in terms of dopamine delivery.
Because humans have chosen to prioritize the shittier meanier grossier nastier content, Facebook's "models" have been trained on that. Why are we criticizing Facebook's models that we basically played our own individual role in building?
Practicality and precedent. We can effectively regulate the algorithms a countable number of companies use in their products, but can't effectively make people not susceptible to doom-scrolling (nicotine, heroin, gambling, whatever).
> If Facebook went away tomorrow, another platform would fill its place.
Not if the troubling practices were illegal or too expensive to operate. It would be a pretty dumb investment to bother. Instead, new platforms would pursue different techniques for content presentation and profitability, just like existing competitors already do.
What does regulation of Facebook's algorithm look like to you? Promote specifically which types of content less/not at all? Obviously "politically divisive/disinformation" but who gets to be in charge of that/classifying what is/isn't disinformation/divisive?
A site that optimizes for content that people heavily interact with (engagement) is different than a site that prioritizes the relationship type between users (friends original content > public figure OC > shares > etc) or positive response (upvotes), etc
None of these many other systems rely on discerning the specific nature of content or making sure it’s of some certain arbitrary moral character. But they each lead the network as a whole to favor different kinds of content and so the experience for users ends up different. And it’s already known that social media sites can be successful using these other techniques.
I think that's hit the nail on the head. In a neutral environment, a user would be shown a feed of friends posts with ads mixed in for their demographic.
In an optimised for engagement environment, a user is shown posts that are known to increase engagement and quite often those posts are inflammatory.
This engagement environment is much more likely to expose people to extreme views
It’s a bit like saying a drug dealer has no accountability because it’s the user who buys the drugs. In this case FB is well aware of the consequences of their actions, and even worse, their total inability to do anything when it’s not in a dominant language. This has had profound consequences in places like Myanmar and India where disinformation spreads like wildfire and leads to the killing of people. You’d think they’d step back and go “whoa, this isn’t what we intended for FB to be” and do something about it. The opposite has happened.
What came first though, the chicken or the egg?
What came first, the content in an unbiased fashion and then the algorithms were trained on which content generated best engagement and it got promoted
or
did Facebook just behind the scenes start pushing bad content on a whim with no backing information? I don't think that happened
They’ve done a search over the space of things that drive engagement with the site and have written a feed/content sort algorithm that optimizes for those things. They could just as easily choose to optimize for something else - like number of heart reactions only - but they choose not to because that would presumably result in lower engagement and thus less eyeball time and thus less profit.
Not calling Meta a news company, just making a comparison re: curation and how it can transform the inputs into something else.
They didn't post/create the content, and they prioritize what users engage with the most.
Why do they deserve blame?
They just incentivized it. Your argument is akin to "Yes your honor, I paid the assassin, but I didn't murder that man. The assassin did!"
> Why do they deserve blame?
Because the algorithms aren't neutral.
If Facebook let you follow who you wanted and showed only that content in chronological order, you'd have a leg to stand on. But they are tampering with the flow of information in ways that increase engagement artificially using psychological manipulation.
It's fine if you're content to let them hide behind their algorithms, but you're wrong both in a moral sense and likely soon in a legal sense.
Mind you this is not a question of "just doing fiduciary duty". It could very well be argued that not fomenting fear and extremism in its userbase is good for business and the brand. Yet it chooses to be evil.
And it's obvious why. Facebook is dying. There are almost no "regular" posts and people on there anymore. They're desperate to maintain some sort of engagement even if it means making the platform a gathering spot for the KKK.
from a business perspective, if Facebook decided to shut its doors tomorrow from a moral/ethical standpoint, wouldn't somebody else just fill the gap?
There's clearly a "need" for this kind of platform in society from a capitalism standpoint.