They intentionally protect right wing bad actors like Breitbart because they along with their milder counterparts (Ben Shapiro, etc.) continuously score the top posts of the day on the network.
In the end, I think the main issue here is that algorithms are designed to show you what you're likely to engage with. FB actually does have pretty good tools to limit what you see in your feed. Making use of the "Hide this Post" (or whatever it's called) on my own FB feed has all but eliminated all political ads or any of the stuff in my feed that I'm not interested, i.e. anything that's not about my friends' lives. That functionality needs to be MUCH more prominent, IMHO. The ease of sharing and retweeting also means that little or no effort is required to propagate whatever you come across.
Even without the algorithms, people will essentially do that work themselves. There's a reason Fox News, Breitbart, and these types of "news" sources are popular. People are comfortable when their beliefs are reinforced and not challenged. I don't think this is a conscious action, but it happens nevertheless.
My anecdote here is my father-in-law. He's glued to Fox News, right wing podcasters, and the like. He's as up to date on every bit of news propagated by those sites as anyone I know that's regularly on Facebook.
That is proof of nothing. If the stereotype that "only old people are on Facebook" is true, and old people tend to be more right leaning, then it would follow that the top posts ranked by # likes or # views would skew toward their interests even with a completely neutral ranking scheme.
The fact that FB allows for certifiably false information to be broadcasted on their network will be their downfall. We’ve never had a decentralized network of information with no fact verification with global reach. Now we’re seeing the consequences
I think you have to put more responsibility on Facebook here. It's very much a centralized network. It's just that the people behind the network don't want the duty of being good stewards of it. Based on their actions and inaction, their values don't seem to go much further than "ad money printer goes brrrr."
They want the money and influence that comes with scale but none of the responsibility for it.
Sounds like most of all the social media companies.
> Now we’re seeing the consequences
As with all of 'Big Tech', this road to hell was paved with 'good intentions' with thanks to those very smart engineers and scientists who created these cool technologies but with the unintended consequence that it can be (ab)used by bad actors.
They tried their best to control it or 'regulate themselves', but I guess the 'Big Tech' story will ultimately end in the US supreme court.
The title is exceptionally provocative. I do not want to defend Facebook per se. However, blaming Facebook as an entity seems over-simplistic (feel free to correct that view or possibly unpopular opinion).
Look at it this way: A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy? Suppose things would work out in a utopian manner. In that case, such platforms should lead to a better-informed society and, therefore, a better democracy.
Suppose one party in an election can take advantage of social media to nudge their voters. Why shouldn't the other party do so?
Where do we draw the line regarding what is allowed and what is not? I guess there is some work to be done regarding what constitutes information warfare legally speaking.
> A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy?
The problem is that the platform does not make all information available equally. Instead, it uses algorithms to prioritize displaying certain information over the other (sometimes in direct contradiction with the user's wishes, where their friend's posts are ranked lower in the feed in favour of some unrelated bullshit).
Ultimately the problem is not just Facebook but the whole business model of advertising and engagement. Now this normally wouldn't be that big of a deal if people were aware of it and alternatives existed, but people seem to be oblivious to it (and the mismatch between their interests and Facebook's) and network effects make starting an alternative impossible (plus Facebook would abuse copyright laws to shut down any alternative services that would interoperate with them).
How do you solve the problem of displaying information equally? There is already so much noise out there anyway; Facebook recognized the need for a filter like a newsfeed. Facebook is incentivized to keep people on their platform and, therefore, the filter is not designed for the end-user. But that is still Facebook playing by the rules.
If enough people are not happy with that, then they should switch to another platform with a better filter.
>Facebook recognized the need for a filter like a newsfeed.
Typical Facebook: there's a problem of their own making and try to solve it by introducing more Facebook. I think Facebook is rotten because they keep dancing around the root of their problems: scale. If Facebook were to scale down connections by increasing the friction between people and groups so that individuals were nudged into interacting nearly exclusively with real-world personal contacts, then there would be little need for a technical filter. People's own social filters would take care of that for them.
But you're right. That would be against Facebook's financial incentives because that would make them less valuable to advertisers. They wouldn't have the power to move audiences anymore if the audience is moving itself.
Discourage the production of noise, or don't include it in the user's newsfeed unless he explicitly followed that source? Keep in mind that most "noise" and clickbait is produced because it is itself funded by advertising and "engagement".
Have some rules that ban publicly posting clickbait or any kind of commercial, for-profit content (that will not be an issue for a network that supposedly wants to connect you with your friends), enforce them and watch the problem disappear by itself. Keep in mind that a large chunk of the content being posted on Facebook with total impunity would've quickly earned you a ban on most forums back in the day and this is how those forums kept spam, hate & off-topic content at bay during their existence and nobody made a big deal out of it.
The problem is that obviously Facebook will not do that, not because of any kind of moral/ethical concerns about "free speech" or anything but because clickbait being around keeps the people spending more time on Facebook, generating more revenue for Facebook. The algorithm recognizes that and will keep giving more of such content to the user since it's continuously being rewarded with the resulting engagement.
Forcing Facebook to change its rules by law could work but is impractical, but a better solution would be to change the law so that while the current Facebook rules are legal per-se, the consequences of those (and the content they allow people to post) would hold Facebook liable (any illegal post automatically considers Facebook as an accomplice of the underlying crime, whether it's scams, drug deals/resale of stolen property or hate speech). This would quickly force Facebook to clean up their act and discourage their users from posting such content.
> this normally wouldn't be that big of a deal if people were aware of it and alternatives existed
I would disagree with this. What makes it so dangerous is using big data and algorithmically driven “improvements” in time on site and engagement is exploiting subconscious weaknesses in our brains to do this.
You can design an optical illusion to trick our visual perceptions to the point that even with we know for a fact what is happening, we can’t “fix” our perception in our brain. Imagine if you built an entire interactive space of optical illusions that were iterated and improved millions of times over so that a person was physically incapable of determining accurate visual data about the world around them.
This is what is happening in our digital spaces. It is becoming physically harder and harder to disengage from those digital spaces, not because of individual moral failings, but because our reward centers are being continually bombarded by illusions that warp our perception.
The argument is more nuanced than that. It's not about "making information more accessible".
The problem is that the social media architecture as it is, is optimizing for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need eyeballs to sell to advertisers, so all A/B tests and all algorithms are constantly being changed to increase the amount of time people spend on the platform, join the platform or engage with others on the platform.
This pressure, as has been extensively studied, has lead to the system promoting content that it predicts will lead to many likes/retweets/engagement. But, there's no pressure or incentive on the algorithms to promote health or true engagement.
What happens? People get infected with false worldviews, get shown things that will have them engage with the platform, but which are not true. They are shown things that piss them off to drive engagement.
This is not "information sharing" this is a machine that is optimized to have people spend time on its pages, no matter what it has to show on that page to get people to do that.
However, nothing is preventing Facebook from doing this. Facebook is incentivized to act as you describe. I do not see it as Facebook's responsibility to act in another way. Governments need to regulate this behavior.
If people start to understand the way Facebook is manipulating them, then there is also an opportunity for another platform, which does not do so, or to a lesser extent.
To not actively push malignant content just because it gets views?
Everyone in this world bears responsibility to one another. Of course there should be regulation to prevent the circumstance, but to the extent we want a livable world it is also all of our responsibility to not be degenerates.
Facebook is being a degenerate and shrugging it off as “well it’s not MY responsibility to not be a degenerate!” feels hopelessly lost and without any critical introspection or thought at all.
Yes, I do not think so. I expect Facebook's goal to be to maximize shareholder value within the bounds of regulations.
I do not expect an entity such as Facebook to behave in any other way.
From Facebook's perspective, the current value system is possibly distorted, for example, because of a lack of competition. Suppose another social platform would enter the picture, and users would flock to that platform because it has a greater social responsibility. In that case, it might become Facebook's best interest to be more socially responsible as well.
However, that has not happened yet. It is making me believe that the burden to solve this issue is with regulators, not Facebook.
Consider an aircraft company that wants to sell comparably cheap but dangerous products that cut corners and have hacky solutions to core engineering problems. Short term profit for shareholders is the only thing that matters, forever and always.
The aircraft company has three categories of options:
A) don’t murder people and take the time and energy to get it right. Maybe they’re less competitive some years than others
B) The aircraft company can be a ‘neutral’ actor and still try to cut corners, but leave the regulator alone to actually do its job. Note this is in the company’s long term interest because the success of the air travel industry depends on its long term track record of safety and consumer confidence that planes are thoroughly designed to not smash themselves into the ground at 500 mph.
C) The aircraft company can lobby heavily, get special government treatment, corrupt the regulator, and arrange things such that they can sell the deadly plane and try to get away with it. It’s all about the Benjamins, as they say; just not any Benjamins in the plane of course.
Now imagine that aircraft company not only has the money to lobby aggressively, but also controls what many, many consumers see on a daily basis, can show advertisements to the entire population for free, runs algorithms that promote ‘engaging’ (shocking, manipulative, emotionally salient, regardless of accuracy) content.
And when people say "Facebook" the really could (and maybe should) be using "Mark Zuckerburg" instead. He has complete control of Facebook and no one can remove him from that position. Mark Zuckerburg is responsible for what Facebook does more than almost any other CEO of a public company, I would think.
Malignant content is very hard to define. If I shared videos of mexican gang violence, people would end up calling Facebook headquarters and saying "get this off my feed.".
Even though the content getting visibility is a success of overcoming local Mexican censors who are silencing voices talking about the issue.
This happened. Mexican videos went viral, and when people in the UK woke up, they called their friends at FB and the material got removed.
Also - Wouldn't Any algo that starts filtering for malignancy, have to become a sort of MR. Rogers algo?
I guess, how would you define malignancy? By intent?
I, for one think that, "understanding manipulation" is an oxymoron. If you really understand then it's not really manipulation, right?
All these web platforms have grown through strategic optimizations for engagement. It's simple. But the tactical mecanisms they use to achieve this permanent engagement are complex and adapt constantly. Otherwise they wouldn't be good for the purpose. The point is not to keep you engaged once. It to keep you engaged at their (platform's) will.
You are right that it's not Facebook job to be less good at what they propose to do. But it is everybody elses job to determine if we want them (and others) to keep doing these things.
>I, for one think that, "understanding manipulation" is an oxymoron. If you really understand then it's not really manipulation, right?
It sounds like someone never teared up at the moment when the music swells in a sappy dramatic movie. The human brain is weird. We can know we are receiving a placebo and still receive a benefit from the placebo effect[1]. Just because we can understand that we are being manipulated doesn't mean we can fully control it.
> If people start to understand the way Facebook is manipulating them, then there is also an opportunity for another platform, which does not do so, or to a lesser extent.
This assumes that a platform which behaves more ethically or is better aligned with the public good can actually compete financially with a company like Facebook. If Facebook financially benefits by not acting in the public interest, what makes you think a competitor who is acting in the public interest is able to compete? The whole point of the problem is that being a bad actor is incredibly profitable in this case.
This statement:
> nothing is preventing Facebook from doing this. Facebook is incentivized to act as you describe. I do not see it as Facebook's responsibility to act in another way.
and this statement:
> If people start to understand the way Facebook is manipulating them, then there is also an opportunity for another platform, which does not do so, or to a lesser extent.
are inherently contradictory because Facebook is explicitly incentivized to misbehave, as you mention, meaning that any competitor trying to compete whilst acting in the public interest will never succeed. If acting in the public interest was profitable, Facebook would do it.
You could say the same about gambling, which is something else people actually want, but society sees fit to regulate due to its second-order effects. (like gambling addiction destroying families)
"Newspapers optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need subscriptions to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all headlines are constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who read their articles."
"Magazines optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need subscriptions to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all covers are constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who read their articles."
"Television stations optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need viewers to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all programming is constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who tune in."
"Radio stations optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need listeners to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all programming is constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who tune in."
Earlier the media market was able to make the case of "free speech" and we had no way of arguing that this cycle was true or not. At the old rate of content, the harms were less prominent and the system seemed to balance itself out (although the behavior of certain media outlets indicate that it was a problem even then.)
Markets force optimization, and for media firms the optimization force is engagement. This has been a problem from before and its the same problem now, except at a content sharing speed which the old arguments were not built for.
I see the argument repeated quite a bit. I think it's easy to read this and think "Nothing new, just more of the same, maybe a little worse now". I don't think that's quite right though. A television station can only broadcast 24 hours of content a day. A newspaper can only have so many editions per day, and each edition has a limited number of pages. The same is true of television and radio. But the common factor among all of them is that there is a common reality that everyone is looking at, and there is scarcity because of that: the publication has to choose what will appear each day to the readers/watchers it serves.
The ideal formula is to draw a large group of people in with really engaging content, and then show them advertisements that are likely to be effective for the group of folks drawn to the content. This presents a three-way tradeoff:
1. Write about stuff folks want to read about (but don't make it so outlandish that you ruin your credibility!)
2. Show effective advertisements alongside that content (but not so much you drive them away!)
3. Show enough variety to draw in a large crowd (but still know your target demographic!)
Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio all faced this dynamic and had to make the right tradeoffs to survive.
But there is no common "Facebook" published each day. We can't say "Hey, did you see the top story today on Facebook?" Each article can target a tiny segment of the population and be designed just to keep only those folks engaged. And there's no need to tie a particular advertisement to a particular piece of content, advertisements and content can be selected in realtime based on models of the user's behavior. And drawing in a large crowd is easy, since there's content and advertisements for every tiny group that any entity is interested in targeting. The scarcity that forced reasonable tradeoffs in other mediums simply isn't present on social media. This is a huge difference that isn't captured at all in the "optimize engagement by any means necessary" argument.
Put another way: the problem isn't that incentives are different, it's that the tools available now remove scarcity that previously shaped the entire industry.
I think the core difference is the level of tailoring and the automation of that tailoring. Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio have all had the same incentives in the past, but architecturally the approach was one to many. At first the internet was more of the same, but today social media companies construct optimized engagements for each individual, automatically and very effectively. This is a one-to-one optimization.
Furthermore, social media supercharges the engagement by piggybacking on our social nature - people are usually responding to stuff their friends posted or commented on. This both allows disinformation to be received as more truthful (my friend sent it, why would they lie?) and simply makes it more compelling (I get to be happy/sad/outraged with my friends).
Put it all together and it really is different than before. It's fine to compare it to historical changes in media. I don't agree that it's just more of the same though, the differences make this a whole new animal.
Suppose humans are biologically disadvantaged in an arena of information abundance. Suppose it turns out we are hopelessly vulnerable. Suppose it turns out desires and our biases our meta-cognitive processes leaving us wide open to being exploited by ruthless actors driven by hidden agendas.
I still think it is not Facebook's responsibility to decide the best way to filter information for people because their incentive is to keep people on their platform. Those incentives do not necessarily align with providing unbiased opinions and views.
Therefore, there should be rules dictating what is allowed and what is not. Facebook or a commercial entity should not decide these rules.
Sounds like obesity in Western societies (oh sll right, America).
Seems like if you make food with massive amounts of salt and sugar balanced to mask each other in the recipe you can trick humans into overconsuming it, insatiably, until they die.
> A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy?
That's not what Facebook does. Their algorithms don't just make information more accessible. They make you want to keep using Facebook, and the psychological levers they pull to accomplish that have side-effects on society at large.
The promised age of information has quickly devolved into the age of misinformation.
Holocaust denial? Vaccine misinformation? Anti-mask propaganda? These things can and do cause real harm to society. To Facebook's credit, they have since banned these, but only after the ideas had spread significantly.
The point is that the story of Cambridge Analytica was mostly a story of Facebook in the first place. CA did engage in some lies and deception to get read access to data that shouldn't have been allowed. But the actual social harm they're accused of causing - micro-targeting ads at specific named individuals - is a deliberate and still available Facebook product offering called "custom audiences". If you've ever gotten your email on a political mailing list, you're likely being targeted in the same way Cambridge Analytica was trying to.
>Cambridge Analytica was mostly a story of Facebook
Cambridge Analytica was a story about mass stupidity. Where millions of people all clicked "I allow this random company to have access to everything my account can see, including everything my friends have made public to me." CA was millions of people being careless with privacy, because they didnt care and just wanted to play a quiz. Even if facebook had explained the decision better than it did (I thought it was pretty clear if you read it) people wouldnt have read it.
In a sense, but I think most people would say that the inevitability of such stupidity is why we need to build systems that protect ourselves from it. Few people can think through all the implications of all the data they hand out.
But lets be clear, Cambridge Analytica's proposed models did not work.
Speaking as a data scientist with a background in psychology and social media advertising, using the Big 5 traits and likes is pretty useless for prediction of anything except the Big 5 traits.
Additionally, targeted advertising and small audiences rarely work well together, which is why almost all FB advertising guides tell you to make your audiences as broad as possible (if 1/1000 people convert, the model needs 20-50 conversions per week to keep going, then micro-targeting won't work).
All of the data science stuff from CA was mostly a distraction from what SCL actually did, which was video politicians in compromising positions and blackmail them.
Targeted ads in politics seem like one possible line; Dem SC candidate Jamie Harrison has been fairly open about how mobilizing voters who lean right to vote for third party candidates will help him win. With a few ads like "[3rd party candidate] is TOO CONSERVATIVE for Congress!" delivered to the right audiences, you could swing margins meaningfully [his campaign has paid for such targeted Facebook ads]. It's disgusting bad faith, but it's in the bounds of the game for now, so not doing it is foolish.
Allowing users to post content to share privately with a small group of family or friends or even sharing publicly to anyone that comes across it is not the threat. The threat is the platform collecting data secretly about its users, then sharing that data via API or selling access to analysis of that data is a threat.
>A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy?
It's not about accessibility. It's about amplification that's gone wrong with Facebook. Facebook amplifies click-baity and emotion-driven content that is usually highly misleading and biased. The growing dominance of misleading and biased content/opinions is a threat to democracy.
> The algorithms platforms use to recommend content should be heavily regulated. ... More ambitiously, a wholesale restructuring of the platform ecosystem may be required.
I agree with the premise of the article but I'm not sure anything new is being said here and the conclusion is lacking substance. What would regulations of algorithms look like? What does restructuring of the platform ecosystem entail? Requiring all social media companies implement ActivityPub? What are the author's opinions on how any of this would come to fruition?
Restricting who may purchase which ads would be a start. Placing a financial value and further fines on misusing personal data would continue to hinder the attack vector. Ie not just hippa/PII.
I'm not sure I understand your question, but the dictator would be the onewho decides what is and isn't acceptable, and it's a trait of dictators that they don't pay much attention to checks and balances. Of course, any dictator worth their salt will immediately ban any expression of discontent with said dictatorship. Similar to how in Thailand it's an offense to criticise the monarchy.
In my opinion a simple regulations would target notifications and feeds:
1. You can't enable content notifications by default. (unless it's system or performance related one) users have to manually turn them on
2. You can't nudge users to enable notifications.
3. You have to enable switching off notifications easily
4. By default feeds have to be strictly time-based. No 'recommendation engines' by default. No exceptions.
5. Related to 4. No paid posts. Advertiser can buy banner ads, interstitial, but those should not be presented as posts. Should be clearly marked and displayed distinctively from feed content (content I get because it specifically looked for and followed)
I think the points above will take us back to social media of 10 years or so ago. But if it not suficien, here's another one:
6. Platform cannot recommend accounts to be followed. Follows need to be discovered actively by user
> 4. By default feeds have to be strictly time-based. No 'recommendation engines' by default. No exceptions
Yes! Only recently twitter have reenabled this “feature” - I can now safely browse without some algorithm showing me things that enrage me.
It’s a much nicer place to be now.
EDIT I’m quite happy wrt (5) how twitter to the promoted adds. They’re clearly labelled and easy to block if I don’t like them. The algorithm soon learns what to show if you take a zero tolerance approach.
0. Platforms may not customise information presented to an individual user based on knowledge the platform has about that user.
I guess the issue with that is how far do you go - a webmail client could be considered to be customising what each user sees, because each sees different email. However it's the level of personalisation which is the root of the problem. Perhaps instead:
0.b) Platforms may not customise advertising material presented to an individual user based on knowledge the platform has about that user.
Easy to formulate as a principal - much harder to execute in principle - we have actual data protection laws at this point in time that should in principle negate a lot of this but they’re openly flauted all the time!
Here is count of categories in transparency reports for 3 firms (full list at the end):
* Online harms paper: 24/22 harms
* Facebook, 10 harms (1)
* Twitter 12 (2)
* Reddit 8 (3)
Here's a paper from May 2020, which focused on hate speech detection using SA. The intro lays out the case for clearer, more compatible categories:
"the lack of clear definitions of key categories is a critical issue. The authors argue that
researchers use different, sometimes theoretically ambiguous or misleading terms for equivalent categories."
Which brings us to the problem of secrecy in tech firms.
------
What we know about how the firms work, is based on leaks and people who break NDAs. Reasons range from:
1) It's a trade secret
2) An open list means attackers will use new words
3) It exposes their approach to criticism.
To whatever. Researchers are likely recreating the wheel. The question is whether the information on the "public square" needs to be released and made open.
This punts the question on regulating algos, to after we figure out what algos are working on in the first place.
After that, maybe you can start talking about algorithms which curate, ban, promote, profile anything that humans do.
---------------------------
(1) FB harms: Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity, Bullying and Harassment, Child Nudity and Sexual Exploitation of Children, Dangerous Organizations: Terrorism and Organized Hate, Fake Accounts, Hate Speech, Regulated Goods: Drugs and Firearms, Spam, Suicide and Self-Injury, Violent and Graphic Con
(2) Twitter harms: Hateful conduct, Abuse/harassment, Sensitive media, Promoting suicide or self-harm, Violence, Illegal or certain regulated goods or services, Non-consensual nudity, Private information, Impersonation, Child sexual exploitation, Civic integrity, Terrorism/violent extremism
(3) Harassment, Minor Sexualization, Violent Content, Involuntary Porn, Controlled Goods, Private Information, Impersonation, Ban Evasion
Giving users full control and transparency about what categories the algorithm puts them into and if they desire, turn all algorithmic content delivery off and just give me content I'm subscribed to as it comes in. For a start.
This is all among the reasons why so many tech enthusiasts have fled to - or at least spend more time on - places like the fediverse, tildeverse, gopherspace, gemini, etc. I count myself among them; I've been spending lots more time on these other places, and tons less time on conventional social networks. But - with maybe the exception of the fediverse - where are the non-tech folks going? Or, is it that the non-tech folks have no alternatives and either put up with the garbage, or simply diminish their overall use/exposure, I wonder?
The non-tech-oriented folks in my life who have become frustrated with newsfeed-style social media have mostly diminished their use by reverting to techified variants of classic comms: Chat (SMS with GIFs), zoom calls, (pre-covid) involving themselves socially with the world around them. I get the sense that overall they're spending less time staring at the internet.
I think the key insight that many people have reached after ~20 years of social media use is that, while there's a dopamine-feel of communicating and socializing, you're actually just consuming entertainment, so why not split the issues and make both your entertainment consumption and your socializing more direct and intentional.
I suspect that pattern is also part of why the social media systems that are successful in the modern era are those that deemphasize content in favor of social interaction (whatsapp, discord) or deemphasize social interaction in favor of content consumption (instagram, tiktok)
fediverse = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse (Also, some people might have heard of Mastodon which is probably the most popular - though by far not the only - software used on the fediverse.)
tildeverse = there isn't a wikipedia entry, but the following website is a good example = https://tildeverse.org/
Google gave the world a fantastic search engine (is there anything comparable to Google Books when it comes to full-text search across all books?), a web browser with fantastic dev tools, a great space for hosting videos online, and it has been driving innovations in the web development space (web components, browser APIs) for a number of years. I think it's been great.
Even with multiple networks, how would it be meaningfully different from our current scenario?
1) Network issue: Social Media depends on network effects. Advertisers go to the largest network. The new networks will eventually recreate another singular network which has the majority of consumers.
2) Content is always under selection pressure to be engaging. The most engaging, (not the most factual) content/formats survive.
I have often wondered: if Brexit and the 2016 presidential election had gone differently, would we still have this panic surrounding social media?
To me, a lot of it feels like people can't believe that a thinking human would ever vote for "the bad guys", so they go searching for some other explanation. It must have been some sort of brainwashing, that's the only reason someone would ever fall for their obvious lies!
Curiously, I very rarely hear people who complain about social media admit to it influencing their own political decisions, it's always their opponents who are being led astray.
My thoughts are that most people's political views are shaped by the media they consume. For a large portion of the social elite, these views are shaped by their education and by the class views espoused in publications like the New Yorker, NYT, etc.
These prestige publications no longer have the influence they once had on other social classes because these social classes have access to a wide variety of new media enabled by the internet, and this loss of control is what's shocking to the political/social elite.
I think something along these lines must be what's happening because in terms of actual policy, Trump isn't that different from someone like Pat Buchanan.
Pat Buchanan is generally regarded as a political extremist. And yes, I'm very familiar with him based on his own speech and writing, not someone else's characterization of it.
Perhaps because he hasn't run for office in a quarter century? And while I find many of his views odious, he's more coherent and restrained in his rhetoric than Trump - he is a fixture on a weekly TV roundtable political TV show called *The McLaughlin Group if you want to sample his communication style.
> My thoughts are that most people's political views are shaped by the media they consume.
Are you sure it's not the other way around? I believe people's political views shape what media they consume. I agree with your point that wider availability plays a role, but I see it mostly in giving people a choice. If you only have one choice in media, you can either not read news or read that one. If you have multiple choices, you can choose whichever seems to make the most sense to you.
People don't want to feel like they are reading an article by someone who has no clue about the matter at hand, which it often feels like when they come from a very different ideological background, they will seem to have things backwards, focus on irrelevant details and completely miss the actual reasons.
You would, eventually there would be some other trigger event which would make it clear that things arent normal.
Theres been a fundamentaly change in how information in society is organized, in terms of reach, scale, scope and frequency - and all the data analysis and nudging it entails.
At some point that vortex would create some event that would set off conversation and fear as the average person begins to discuss what is going on/
I assume you are referring to stories like this[0] where the UK's Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently found that "Cambridge Analytica models were exaggerated and ineffective". Presumably you don't think that there could be any bias in the ICO's investigation, despite the UK government now being run by Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, all senior members of the Vote Leave campaign group.
Regardless of any bias, there is the question of whether the ICO had the data it needed to judge CA's models sufficiently. We have a whistleblower claiming that Vote Leave "attempted to destroy evidence"[1] and photographic proof that "Storage crates were removed from Cambridge Analytica's London headquarters today (pictured) but it is not yet known who has ordered them to be taken away"[2]. In fact, CA were given at least a week's notice to prepare for the search warrant[3], a privilege not afforded to most criminal suspects.
You might think that there is nothing suspicious about all this, and that even a fair examination of CA's practices would clear them of any influence over the outcome of the referendum (and you may also think that all online advertising is a waste of money, because it can't influence people's decisions and opinions), but please do not glibly state without a citation that the story about them is "unravelling".
90% of the ICO's funding comes from companies paying the Data Protection Fee. Accusing them of being beholden to government is a hollow and unsubstantiated cheap-shot.
I don't think that the source of the ICO's funding is particularly relevant. The office is subordinate to the government, and the role of Information Commissioner is one that is appointed by the Crown, which in practice means the executive (i.e. senior figures from Vote Leave).
It just so happens that the current Information Commissioner was appointed in July 2016, just one month after the June 2016 EU referendum. Perhaps pointing out that strange coincidence is a cheap-shot too.
> You might think that there is nothing suspicious about all this, and that even a fair examination of CA's practices would clear them of any influence over the outcome of the referendum (and you may also think that all online advertising is a waste of money, because it can't influence people's decisions and opinions)
I think that you should stick to factual claims rather than trying to infer my mental state from my comments.
I'm sorry if it sounded like I was trying to put words into your mouth, I was merely trying to account for any possible objection.
Hopefully my point would have worked just as well if phrased: "Even if you think that there is nothing suspicious about all this... (and even if you think that all online advertising is a waste of money...) I think that a claim of the story unravelling requires at least a citation".
My aim was for people on different sides of this issue to have a chance to present their cases, so that we didn't give the impression that this was a settled matter that everyone agreed on.
If you do think there is something suspicious about CA's actions, and/or you think that online advertising can influence the way people vote, then I'm pleased that we agree on some premises at least.
The Guardian is a bigger threat to democracy than Facebook. At least Facebook allows some level of political dissent. The Guardian is non-stop one-sided political propaganda masquerading as news.
Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube.
While it's true that there are multiple platforms, there are a small number of platforms that are really widespread, and each one of them is centralized.
I don't know that a federated social network (eg Mastadon) would solve the particular problem at hand. There would be other benefits though, and it's possible that a federated social network would at least mitigate some of the problems. It's idea at least worth consideration.
> Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube.
I think it's not about technical centralized/decentralized but about who decides what can be read. Pre-social-media: journalists are selected by companies based on political alignment and are controlled by their editors, only journalists get published, average people cannot communicate with each other at scale, journalists/media companies have total control over information and thereby over the perception of reality.
Social media changed that. You can no longer just put an embargo on a story and expect people not to learn about it, as was made very obvious in Germany at new year's eve 2015. The news will spread via social media and there's nothing you can do about it short of shutting down the communication networks.
Federated social networks take that a step further by also removing Facebook's centralized control from the system, but that's a minor step, because Facebook doesn't interfere with their users that much. At least that was true, the Hunter Biden thing might be a taste of what's to come.
That report goes on to reiterate on one of the major points of the CA scandal, that executives of the company explicitly sold themselves as nefarious kingmakers willing to deploy blackmail and honeypots for a client in order to manipulate elections.
> All of this does not diminish the nefariousness of Cambridge Analytica and SCL. In fact, arguably the most egregious aspect of the company was their work in countries other than the US and UK. In an undercover sting, Channel 4 filmed CA CEO Alexander Nix boasting of the firm’s willingness to engage in unethical tactics including honeypots, bribes, blackmail and entrapment to swing an election.
To your point, the story largely was fake news because they failed to achieve their objective as election manipulators, not because they were wrapped up in some conspiracy theory that accused them of misbehavior. They were caught on camera going around to powerful people and telling them that they could manipulate elections and that absolutely cannot be overlooked.
There's an immensely wealthy market for this kind of service, and just because one player overhyped themselves and got caught up in a scandal that largely turned out to be nothing doesn't mean that someone else won't try again.
The last 20 years have seen enormous strides -- in no small part due to social media -- in a number of progressive movements. The unfiltered nature of the web let all ideas be shared freely. Now that the left believes they have the numbers they would like to throw the filters on.
Regulation of how speech is presented is a regulation of speech and shouldn't be restricted.
The authoritarian streak I see from people I might agree with on policy is terrifying.
Behind Facebook lay an event bigger threat to our democracy: a population lacking the educational foundation necessary to build informed opinions on issues by seeking and critically evaluating available sources of information.
I'd argue that the issue is the fundamentally incompatible model of news and competition. We didn't know this before the internet, but now that we can actually measure engagement for crazy content vs real content, I'll make the argument.
In essence, FB/Twit have the same issue as old school cable networks.
Markets drive competition which drives optimization. In the case of news and media, the optimization force is engagement. The market rewards engagement over "truth".
People will rather watch sports or reality TV than watch boring news. You can see it in media studies of headlines, and we now have empirical data on submissions to reddit and engagement being related to sentiment/modification of headlines.
So news talks about the most sensational content it can find (Man bites dog). As sensational news gets boring, you get more "breaking news" to cut through the ennui.
I hope its not too much of a stretch to argue that barring any upper limit, this system will optimize itself to self mockery. At least I don't see how publicly owned firms can afford to optimize differently.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadThey intentionally protect right wing bad actors like Breitbart because they along with their milder counterparts (Ben Shapiro, etc.) continuously score the top posts of the day on the network.
Even without the algorithms, people will essentially do that work themselves. There's a reason Fox News, Breitbart, and these types of "news" sources are popular. People are comfortable when their beliefs are reinforced and not challenged. I don't think this is a conscious action, but it happens nevertheless.
My anecdote here is my father-in-law. He's glued to Fox News, right wing podcasters, and the like. He's as up to date on every bit of news propagated by those sites as anyone I know that's regularly on Facebook.
They want the money and influence that comes with scale but none of the responsibility for it.
> Now we’re seeing the consequences
As with all of 'Big Tech', this road to hell was paved with 'good intentions' with thanks to those very smart engineers and scientists who created these cool technologies but with the unintended consequence that it can be (ab)used by bad actors.
They tried their best to control it or 'regulate themselves', but I guess the 'Big Tech' story will ultimately end in the US supreme court.
Some people are crazy and they should not have a platform.
Look at it this way: A social platform that makes information more accessible to people is a threat to democracy? Suppose things would work out in a utopian manner. In that case, such platforms should lead to a better-informed society and, therefore, a better democracy.
Suppose one party in an election can take advantage of social media to nudge their voters. Why shouldn't the other party do so?
Where do we draw the line regarding what is allowed and what is not? I guess there is some work to be done regarding what constitutes information warfare legally speaking.
The problem is that the platform does not make all information available equally. Instead, it uses algorithms to prioritize displaying certain information over the other (sometimes in direct contradiction with the user's wishes, where their friend's posts are ranked lower in the feed in favour of some unrelated bullshit).
Ultimately the problem is not just Facebook but the whole business model of advertising and engagement. Now this normally wouldn't be that big of a deal if people were aware of it and alternatives existed, but people seem to be oblivious to it (and the mismatch between their interests and Facebook's) and network effects make starting an alternative impossible (plus Facebook would abuse copyright laws to shut down any alternative services that would interoperate with them).
If enough people are not happy with that, then they should switch to another platform with a better filter.
Typical Facebook: there's a problem of their own making and try to solve it by introducing more Facebook. I think Facebook is rotten because they keep dancing around the root of their problems: scale. If Facebook were to scale down connections by increasing the friction between people and groups so that individuals were nudged into interacting nearly exclusively with real-world personal contacts, then there would be little need for a technical filter. People's own social filters would take care of that for them.
But you're right. That would be against Facebook's financial incentives because that would make them less valuable to advertisers. They wouldn't have the power to move audiences anymore if the audience is moving itself.
Discourage the production of noise, or don't include it in the user's newsfeed unless he explicitly followed that source? Keep in mind that most "noise" and clickbait is produced because it is itself funded by advertising and "engagement".
Have some rules that ban publicly posting clickbait or any kind of commercial, for-profit content (that will not be an issue for a network that supposedly wants to connect you with your friends), enforce them and watch the problem disappear by itself. Keep in mind that a large chunk of the content being posted on Facebook with total impunity would've quickly earned you a ban on most forums back in the day and this is how those forums kept spam, hate & off-topic content at bay during their existence and nobody made a big deal out of it.
The problem is that obviously Facebook will not do that, not because of any kind of moral/ethical concerns about "free speech" or anything but because clickbait being around keeps the people spending more time on Facebook, generating more revenue for Facebook. The algorithm recognizes that and will keep giving more of such content to the user since it's continuously being rewarded with the resulting engagement.
Forcing Facebook to change its rules by law could work but is impractical, but a better solution would be to change the law so that while the current Facebook rules are legal per-se, the consequences of those (and the content they allow people to post) would hold Facebook liable (any illegal post automatically considers Facebook as an accomplice of the underlying crime, whether it's scams, drug deals/resale of stolen property or hate speech). This would quickly force Facebook to clean up their act and discourage their users from posting such content.
I would disagree with this. What makes it so dangerous is using big data and algorithmically driven “improvements” in time on site and engagement is exploiting subconscious weaknesses in our brains to do this.
You can design an optical illusion to trick our visual perceptions to the point that even with we know for a fact what is happening, we can’t “fix” our perception in our brain. Imagine if you built an entire interactive space of optical illusions that were iterated and improved millions of times over so that a person was physically incapable of determining accurate visual data about the world around them.
This is what is happening in our digital spaces. It is becoming physically harder and harder to disengage from those digital spaces, not because of individual moral failings, but because our reward centers are being continually bombarded by illusions that warp our perception.
The problem is that the social media architecture as it is, is optimizing for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need eyeballs to sell to advertisers, so all A/B tests and all algorithms are constantly being changed to increase the amount of time people spend on the platform, join the platform or engage with others on the platform.
This pressure, as has been extensively studied, has lead to the system promoting content that it predicts will lead to many likes/retweets/engagement. But, there's no pressure or incentive on the algorithms to promote health or true engagement.
What happens? People get infected with false worldviews, get shown things that will have them engage with the platform, but which are not true. They are shown things that piss them off to drive engagement.
This is not "information sharing" this is a machine that is optimized to have people spend time on its pages, no matter what it has to show on that page to get people to do that.
However, nothing is preventing Facebook from doing this. Facebook is incentivized to act as you describe. I do not see it as Facebook's responsibility to act in another way. Governments need to regulate this behavior.
If people start to understand the way Facebook is manipulating them, then there is also an opportunity for another platform, which does not do so, or to a lesser extent.
To not actively push malignant content just because it gets views?
Everyone in this world bears responsibility to one another. Of course there should be regulation to prevent the circumstance, but to the extent we want a livable world it is also all of our responsibility to not be degenerates.
Facebook is being a degenerate and shrugging it off as “well it’s not MY responsibility to not be a degenerate!” feels hopelessly lost and without any critical introspection or thought at all.
I do not expect an entity such as Facebook to behave in any other way.
From Facebook's perspective, the current value system is possibly distorted, for example, because of a lack of competition. Suppose another social platform would enter the picture, and users would flock to that platform because it has a greater social responsibility. In that case, it might become Facebook's best interest to be more socially responsible as well.
However, that has not happened yet. It is making me believe that the burden to solve this issue is with regulators, not Facebook.
Consider an aircraft company that wants to sell comparably cheap but dangerous products that cut corners and have hacky solutions to core engineering problems. Short term profit for shareholders is the only thing that matters, forever and always.
The aircraft company has three categories of options:
A) don’t murder people and take the time and energy to get it right. Maybe they’re less competitive some years than others
B) The aircraft company can be a ‘neutral’ actor and still try to cut corners, but leave the regulator alone to actually do its job. Note this is in the company’s long term interest because the success of the air travel industry depends on its long term track record of safety and consumer confidence that planes are thoroughly designed to not smash themselves into the ground at 500 mph.
C) The aircraft company can lobby heavily, get special government treatment, corrupt the regulator, and arrange things such that they can sell the deadly plane and try to get away with it. It’s all about the Benjamins, as they say; just not any Benjamins in the plane of course.
Now imagine that aircraft company not only has the money to lobby aggressively, but also controls what many, many consumers see on a daily basis, can show advertisements to the entire population for free, runs algorithms that promote ‘engaging’ (shocking, manipulative, emotionally salient, regardless of accuracy) content.
Malignant content is very hard to define. If I shared videos of mexican gang violence, people would end up calling Facebook headquarters and saying "get this off my feed.".
Even though the content getting visibility is a success of overcoming local Mexican censors who are silencing voices talking about the issue.
This happened. Mexican videos went viral, and when people in the UK woke up, they called their friends at FB and the material got removed.
Also - Wouldn't Any algo that starts filtering for malignancy, have to become a sort of MR. Rogers algo?
I guess, how would you define malignancy? By intent?
All these web platforms have grown through strategic optimizations for engagement. It's simple. But the tactical mecanisms they use to achieve this permanent engagement are complex and adapt constantly. Otherwise they wouldn't be good for the purpose. The point is not to keep you engaged once. It to keep you engaged at their (platform's) will.
You are right that it's not Facebook job to be less good at what they propose to do. But it is everybody elses job to determine if we want them (and others) to keep doing these things.
It sounds like someone never teared up at the moment when the music swells in a sappy dramatic movie. The human brain is weird. We can know we are receiving a placebo and still receive a benefit from the placebo effect[1]. Just because we can understand that we are being manipulated doesn't mean we can fully control it.
[1] - https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/03/placebos
This assumes that a platform which behaves more ethically or is better aligned with the public good can actually compete financially with a company like Facebook. If Facebook financially benefits by not acting in the public interest, what makes you think a competitor who is acting in the public interest is able to compete? The whole point of the problem is that being a bad actor is incredibly profitable in this case.
This statement:
> nothing is preventing Facebook from doing this. Facebook is incentivized to act as you describe. I do not see it as Facebook's responsibility to act in another way.
and this statement:
> If people start to understand the way Facebook is manipulating them, then there is also an opportunity for another platform, which does not do so, or to a lesser extent.
are inherently contradictory because Facebook is explicitly incentivized to misbehave, as you mention, meaning that any competitor trying to compete whilst acting in the public interest will never succeed. If acting in the public interest was profitable, Facebook would do it.
The problem with the problem is that seems to be what people actually want by definition
That's what a society is.
Sometimes what people want, and what will keep society from coming apart at the seams differs.
"Magazines optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need subscriptions to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all covers are constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who read their articles."
"Television stations optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need viewers to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all programming is constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who tune in."
"Radio stations optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need listeners to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all programming is constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who tune in."
Earlier the media market was able to make the case of "free speech" and we had no way of arguing that this cycle was true or not. At the old rate of content, the harms were less prominent and the system seemed to balance itself out (although the behavior of certain media outlets indicate that it was a problem even then.)
Markets force optimization, and for media firms the optimization force is engagement. This has been a problem from before and its the same problem now, except at a content sharing speed which the old arguments were not built for.
The ideal formula is to draw a large group of people in with really engaging content, and then show them advertisements that are likely to be effective for the group of folks drawn to the content. This presents a three-way tradeoff:
1. Write about stuff folks want to read about (but don't make it so outlandish that you ruin your credibility!)
2. Show effective advertisements alongside that content (but not so much you drive them away!)
3. Show enough variety to draw in a large crowd (but still know your target demographic!)
Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio all faced this dynamic and had to make the right tradeoffs to survive.
But there is no common "Facebook" published each day. We can't say "Hey, did you see the top story today on Facebook?" Each article can target a tiny segment of the population and be designed just to keep only those folks engaged. And there's no need to tie a particular advertisement to a particular piece of content, advertisements and content can be selected in realtime based on models of the user's behavior. And drawing in a large crowd is easy, since there's content and advertisements for every tiny group that any entity is interested in targeting. The scarcity that forced reasonable tradeoffs in other mediums simply isn't present on social media. This is a huge difference that isn't captured at all in the "optimize engagement by any means necessary" argument.
Put another way: the problem isn't that incentives are different, it's that the tools available now remove scarcity that previously shaped the entire industry.
Furthermore, social media supercharges the engagement by piggybacking on our social nature - people are usually responding to stuff their friends posted or commented on. This both allows disinformation to be received as more truthful (my friend sent it, why would they lie?) and simply makes it more compelling (I get to be happy/sad/outraged with my friends).
Put it all together and it really is different than before. It's fine to compare it to historical changes in media. I don't agree that it's just more of the same though, the differences make this a whole new animal.
What now?
Therefore, there should be rules dictating what is allowed and what is not. Facebook or a commercial entity should not decide these rules.
Seems like if you make food with massive amounts of salt and sugar balanced to mask each other in the recipe you can trick humans into overconsuming it, insatiably, until they die.
Sounds like it's the same with information.
That's not what Facebook does. Their algorithms don't just make information more accessible. They make you want to keep using Facebook, and the psychological levers they pull to accomplish that have side-effects on society at large.
Holocaust denial? Vaccine misinformation? Anti-mask propaganda? These things can and do cause real harm to society. To Facebook's credit, they have since banned these, but only after the ideas had spread significantly.
Cambridge Analytica was a story about mass stupidity. Where millions of people all clicked "I allow this random company to have access to everything my account can see, including everything my friends have made public to me." CA was millions of people being careless with privacy, because they didnt care and just wanted to play a quiz. Even if facebook had explained the decision better than it did (I thought it was pretty clear if you read it) people wouldnt have read it.
Speaking as a data scientist with a background in psychology and social media advertising, using the Big 5 traits and likes is pretty useless for prediction of anything except the Big 5 traits.
Additionally, targeted advertising and small audiences rarely work well together, which is why almost all FB advertising guides tell you to make your audiences as broad as possible (if 1/1000 people convert, the model needs 20-50 conversions per week to keep going, then micro-targeting won't work).
All of the data science stuff from CA was mostly a distraction from what SCL actually did, which was video politicians in compromising positions and blackmail them.
It's not about accessibility. It's about amplification that's gone wrong with Facebook. Facebook amplifies click-baity and emotion-driven content that is usually highly misleading and biased. The growing dominance of misleading and biased content/opinions is a threat to democracy.
I agree with the premise of the article but I'm not sure anything new is being said here and the conclusion is lacking substance. What would regulations of algorithms look like? What does restructuring of the platform ecosystem entail? Requiring all social media companies implement ActivityPub? What are the author's opinions on how any of this would come to fruition?
Nobody walks into a shop and asks for a pack of '20 Right Wing', or '20 Menthol SJWs'
1. You can't enable content notifications by default. (unless it's system or performance related one) users have to manually turn them on
2. You can't nudge users to enable notifications.
3. You have to enable switching off notifications easily
4. By default feeds have to be strictly time-based. No 'recommendation engines' by default. No exceptions.
5. Related to 4. No paid posts. Advertiser can buy banner ads, interstitial, but those should not be presented as posts. Should be clearly marked and displayed distinctively from feed content (content I get because it specifically looked for and followed)
I think the points above will take us back to social media of 10 years or so ago. But if it not suficien, here's another one:
6. Platform cannot recommend accounts to be followed. Follows need to be discovered actively by user
Yes! Only recently twitter have reenabled this “feature” - I can now safely browse without some algorithm showing me things that enrage me.
It’s a much nicer place to be now.
EDIT I’m quite happy wrt (5) how twitter to the promoted adds. They’re clearly labelled and easy to block if I don’t like them. The algorithm soon learns what to show if you take a zero tolerance approach.
0. Platforms may not customise information presented to an individual user based on knowledge the platform has about that user.
I guess the issue with that is how far do you go - a webmail client could be considered to be customising what each user sees, because each sees different email. However it's the level of personalisation which is the root of the problem. Perhaps instead:
0.b) Platforms may not customise advertising material presented to an individual user based on knowledge the platform has about that user.
More strictly regulate the data brokers as well, and ad dealers.
Given how new this field is, and how many different disciplines are looking at it, we need a common set to work on. "Online Harms", was the broadest set of terms I found. (UK Gov - https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-whi...)
Here is count of categories in transparency reports for 3 firms (full list at the end):
* Online harms paper: 24/22 harms
* Facebook, 10 harms (1)
* Twitter 12 (2)
* Reddit 8 (3)
Here's a paper from May 2020, which focused on hate speech detection using SA. The intro lays out the case for clearer, more compatible categories:
"the lack of clear definitions of key categories is a critical issue. The authors argue that researchers use different, sometimes theoretically ambiguous or misleading terms for equivalent categories."
https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.lrec-1.838/
Which brings us to the problem of secrecy in tech firms.
------
What we know about how the firms work, is based on leaks and people who break NDAs. Reasons range from:
1) It's a trade secret 2) An open list means attackers will use new words 3) It exposes their approach to criticism.
To whatever. Researchers are likely recreating the wheel. The question is whether the information on the "public square" needs to be released and made open.
This punts the question on regulating algos, to after we figure out what algos are working on in the first place.
After that, maybe you can start talking about algorithms which curate, ban, promote, profile anything that humans do.
---------------------------
(1) FB harms: Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity, Bullying and Harassment, Child Nudity and Sexual Exploitation of Children, Dangerous Organizations: Terrorism and Organized Hate, Fake Accounts, Hate Speech, Regulated Goods: Drugs and Firearms, Spam, Suicide and Self-Injury, Violent and Graphic Con
(2) Twitter harms: Hateful conduct, Abuse/harassment, Sensitive media, Promoting suicide or self-harm, Violence, Illegal or certain regulated goods or services, Non-consensual nudity, Private information, Impersonation, Child sexual exploitation, Civic integrity, Terrorism/violent extremism
(3) Harassment, Minor Sexualization, Violent Content, Involuntary Porn, Controlled Goods, Private Information, Impersonation, Ban Evasion
Giving users full control and transparency about what categories the algorithm puts them into and if they desire, turn all algorithmic content delivery off and just give me content I'm subscribed to as it comes in. For a start.
I think the key insight that many people have reached after ~20 years of social media use is that, while there's a dopamine-feel of communicating and socializing, you're actually just consuming entertainment, so why not split the issues and make both your entertainment consumption and your socializing more direct and intentional.
I suspect that pattern is also part of why the social media systems that are successful in the modern era are those that deemphasize content in favor of social interaction (whatsapp, discord) or deemphasize social interaction in favor of content consumption (instagram, tiktok)
I'm a tech person and I've honestly never heard of these places. Perhaps I don't need social media that much.
Also, not sure if you're interested in learning about the other places...if so, here goes (if not, please ignore):
gopherspace (well this is quite old) = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)
fediverse = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse (Also, some people might have heard of Mastodon which is probably the most popular - though by far not the only - software used on the fediverse.)
tildeverse = there isn't a wikipedia entry, but the following website is a good example = https://tildeverse.org/
gemini = https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
1) Network issue: Social Media depends on network effects. Advertisers go to the largest network. The new networks will eventually recreate another singular network which has the majority of consumers.
2) Content is always under selection pressure to be engaging. The most engaging, (not the most factual) content/formats survive.
To me, a lot of it feels like people can't believe that a thinking human would ever vote for "the bad guys", so they go searching for some other explanation. It must have been some sort of brainwashing, that's the only reason someone would ever fall for their obvious lies!
Curiously, I very rarely hear people who complain about social media admit to it influencing their own political decisions, it's always their opponents who are being led astray.
These prestige publications no longer have the influence they once had on other social classes because these social classes have access to a wide variety of new media enabled by the internet, and this loss of control is what's shocking to the political/social elite.
I think something along these lines must be what's happening because in terms of actual policy, Trump isn't that different from someone like Pat Buchanan.
Are you sure it's not the other way around? I believe people's political views shape what media they consume. I agree with your point that wider availability plays a role, but I see it mostly in giving people a choice. If you only have one choice in media, you can either not read news or read that one. If you have multiple choices, you can choose whichever seems to make the most sense to you.
People don't want to feel like they are reading an article by someone who has no clue about the matter at hand, which it often feels like when they come from a very different ideological background, they will seem to have things backwards, focus on irrelevant details and completely miss the actual reasons.
Theres been a fundamentaly change in how information in society is organized, in terms of reach, scale, scope and frequency - and all the data analysis and nudging it entails.
At some point that vortex would create some event that would set off conversation and fear as the average person begins to discuss what is going on/
I assume you are referring to stories like this[0] where the UK's Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently found that "Cambridge Analytica models were exaggerated and ineffective". Presumably you don't think that there could be any bias in the ICO's investigation, despite the UK government now being run by Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, all senior members of the Vote Leave campaign group.
Regardless of any bias, there is the question of whether the ICO had the data it needed to judge CA's models sufficiently. We have a whistleblower claiming that Vote Leave "attempted to destroy evidence"[1] and photographic proof that "Storage crates were removed from Cambridge Analytica's London headquarters today (pictured) but it is not yet known who has ordered them to be taken away"[2]. In fact, CA were given at least a week's notice to prepare for the search warrant[3], a privilege not afforded to most criminal suspects.
You might think that there is nothing suspicious about all this, and that even a fair examination of CA's practices would clear them of any influence over the outcome of the referendum (and you may also think that all online advertising is a waste of money, because it can't influence people's decisions and opinions), but please do not glibly state without a citation that the story about them is "unravelling".
[0] https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/3...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/26/the-cambridge-a...
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5521893/Warrant-sou...
[3] https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/03/informatio...
It just so happens that the current Information Commissioner was appointed in July 2016, just one month after the June 2016 EU referendum. Perhaps pointing out that strange coincidence is a cheap-shot too.
I think that you should stick to factual claims rather than trying to infer my mental state from my comments.
Hopefully my point would have worked just as well if phrased: "Even if you think that there is nothing suspicious about all this... (and even if you think that all online advertising is a waste of money...) I think that a claim of the story unravelling requires at least a citation".
My aim was for people on different sides of this issue to have a chance to present their cases, so that we didn't give the impression that this was a settled matter that everyone agreed on.
If you do think there is something suspicious about CA's actions, and/or you think that online advertising can influence the way people vote, then I'm pleased that we agree on some premises at least.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/facebook-allies-with-u...
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/01/twitter-suspends-acc...
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/20/ciad-a20.html (As for the R’s, I saw but can’t find a clip of John Bolton bragging about helping R’s elect people with similar pedigrees.)
https://www.corbettreport.com/psychographics-101/
https://www.corbettreport.com/the-cfr-loves-domestic-propaga...
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how-us-flooded-the-wor...
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/13/the-victory-of-percept...
From 2007 BTW: https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=1941
Definitely, decentralized/democratized media (Facebook, etc) is very difficult to do well and today seems to require centralized censorship.
But that can't be the right solution. And neither can going back to centralized media.
While it's true that there are multiple platforms, there are a small number of platforms that are really widespread, and each one of them is centralized.
I don't know that a federated social network (eg Mastadon) would solve the particular problem at hand. There would be other benefits though, and it's possible that a federated social network would at least mitigate some of the problems. It's idea at least worth consideration.
I think it's not about technical centralized/decentralized but about who decides what can be read. Pre-social-media: journalists are selected by companies based on political alignment and are controlled by their editors, only journalists get published, average people cannot communicate with each other at scale, journalists/media companies have total control over information and thereby over the perception of reality.
Social media changed that. You can no longer just put an embargo on a story and expect people not to learn about it, as was made very obvious in Germany at new year's eve 2015. The news will spread via social media and there's nothing you can do about it short of shutting down the communication networks.
Federated social networks take that a step further by also removing Facebook's centralized control from the system, but that's a minor step, because Facebook doesn't interfere with their users that much. At least that was true, the Hunter Biden thing might be a taste of what's to come.
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802636
> All of this does not diminish the nefariousness of Cambridge Analytica and SCL. In fact, arguably the most egregious aspect of the company was their work in countries other than the US and UK. In an undercover sting, Channel 4 filmed CA CEO Alexander Nix boasting of the firm’s willingness to engage in unethical tactics including honeypots, bribes, blackmail and entrapment to swing an election.
To your point, the story largely was fake news because they failed to achieve their objective as election manipulators, not because they were wrapped up in some conspiracy theory that accused them of misbehavior. They were caught on camera going around to powerful people and telling them that they could manipulate elections and that absolutely cannot be overlooked.
There's an immensely wealthy market for this kind of service, and just because one player overhyped themselves and got caught up in a scandal that largely turned out to be nothing doesn't mean that someone else won't try again.
Regulation of how speech is presented is a regulation of speech and shouldn't be restricted.
The authoritarian streak I see from people I might agree with on policy is terrifying.
In essence, FB/Twit have the same issue as old school cable networks.
Markets drive competition which drives optimization. In the case of news and media, the optimization force is engagement. The market rewards engagement over "truth".
People will rather watch sports or reality TV than watch boring news. You can see it in media studies of headlines, and we now have empirical data on submissions to reddit and engagement being related to sentiment/modification of headlines.
So news talks about the most sensational content it can find (Man bites dog). As sensational news gets boring, you get more "breaking news" to cut through the ennui.
I hope its not too much of a stretch to argue that barring any upper limit, this system will optimize itself to self mockery. At least I don't see how publicly owned firms can afford to optimize differently.
Louder for the people in the back.
When Facebook "helps" elects Obama - a well executed maneuver by a savvy politician on his ascendancy https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-... https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-ob...
When Trump benefits: scandal, uproar, a gross violation of American Norms