My personal feed is not the issue here. The issue is how reactionary material keeps popping up in the feed of people who are susceptible into rallying behind it. The target area is so vast the you are bound to influence a lot of people. And the nature of the material only belonging to personal feeds makes scrutinizing by third parties impossible. All of this culminates into a really dangerous propaganda machine, especially since the platform is used by people who only go there to keep in touch with friends and family.
Not moderating facebook is criminally negligent and is putting our democracy in a woeful danger.
> My personal feed is not the issue here. The issue is how reactionary material keeps popping up in the feed of people who are susceptible into rallying behind it.
Wait, how do we know you are not susceptible to rallying behind the content in your feed?
Has the content in your feed been approved? Only cat videos and family pictures?
Sorry, I should have been more accurate: “No single user’s personal feed is at issue here”.
Sure if everyone would magically know whom to block and what to ignore, then we wouldn’t have an issue. But that’s not the case here is it? If a large number of people get constant posts with reactionary content without any scrutiny or fact checks we wouldn’t know any better then to get behind it. That is kind of how propaganda works. And that is exactly what is going on in the personal feed of millions of facebook users.
All we’re asking is that facebook will lower prominence of false or hateful content, add fact checks with lying content and counter reactionary content with scrutiny. Facebook is being grossly negligent by allowing the current state to continue, and—given how pervasive the platform is—facebook is currently harmful for our democracy.
Assume that Facebook is based in Alabama and 90% of its employees are conservative Christians. The employees could think its criminally negligent to allow FB posts on abortion and LGBT. You think only you're right, they think only they're right.
I see your point, but I don’t think its entirely accurate. First of all, LGBTQ+ rights are human rights, speaking against those is kind of sick and anyone does so is wrong and should be scrutinized. In a world where facebook doesn’t see that, then it is our duty to protest them and hopefully get them shut down for spreading hate speech.
But that is only a shallow—albeit correct—take. A deeper take is that you must consider the quality of the content and the pervasiveness of the lie its spreading. A anti abortion content that just states “I believe every fetus has the right to life” is not not as harmful as content that calls every person that has had an abortion a “murderer” or spreads some falsehoods about what the act of abortion entails. In this flip reality facebook would have the full right to add fact checks on content that would say something like: “There are no negative consequences to abortions”, or “If you think you are straight, you can fix that by calling...”.
> My personal feed is not the issue here. The issue is how reactionary material keeps popping up in the feed of people who are susceptible into rallying behind it.
What you are basically arguing is that people are too stupid to handle free speech.
This reading is not the most charitable, but what I read is basically this:
You personally do not have a problem, but other less smart people are susceptible to this effect, and because each person is seeing only their own feed no one of their betters can check up on them.
That sounds to me more like arrogance and exactly the kind of issue people rebel against when they mention they don't like experts.
Sorry, that was my fault. What I meant—and what I should have said—is: “No ones individual’s feed is the problem”, but I felt it was stronger to take a personal stance.
Giving the advice that you can be you can curate your own feed, and that is somehow a solution to the fact that millions of people are bombarded with reactionary misinformation is disingenuous at best.
Not moderating facebook is criminally negligent and is putting our democracy in a woeful danger.