
Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World - throwawayffffas
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/facebook-democracy.html
======
AlexandrB
This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict
posts we'll see:

> Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media.

> Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship
> in a tough time.

> Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost.

> A call for regulation.

> A call for a free-market solution.

> A post from someone who works in marketing about how "that's where the
> audience is so we _have_ to give them money".

> Personal story about eerily accurate targeting.

> Personal story about how the targeting is totally inaccurate.

> Humblebrags about how long ago one hasn't used Facebook - "I haven't used
> Facebook since 1914, when the Kaiser went to war."

> Pointing out that traditional media is just scared because they're being
> disrupted.

> Something about "Facebook" being a black mark on one's resume.

I just wish there was something we could do other than repeatedly argue about
the nature/scope/cause/solution of the problem, but the US political process
is pretty broken.

~~~
sleepysysadmin
Facebook is being targeted by cancel culture because of their refusal to
entirely ban republicans off their platform.

~~~
throwawayffffas
I will assume good faith, and point out that cancel culture's main weapon is
Facebook. That's where they gather all their outrage and yield it against
their perceived enemies.

~~~
luckylion
Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in
line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about
dog being abandoned".

~~~
binxbolling
Cancel culture is not primarily anywhere. For as long as humans have existed
we have wanted to persuade our peers to avoid some things and embrace others;
we have wanted some voices amplified and some quieted; we have wanted people
to face the consequences of their actions and to reap what they've sown.

That's all cancel culture is at its root. It's been rebranded in America's
asinine culture wars so we can pretend there's some insidious new threat to
free speech while the real threats go perpetually unchallenged.

~~~
chrisco255
Clearly a difference in magnitude can be a difference in kind altogether. The
ability for disparately frustrated individuals to all echo chamber their way
into a fever pitch that affects the news cycle and the political cycle is
quite new.

Twenty years ago, an insensitive (and probably intoxicated) comment at a bar
would be forgotten about the next day. Today, someone says the wrong thing on
the internet and a pitchfork mob is ready to cancel their humanity forever.

Has this sort of witch hunting occurred in human history? Yes, but we
typically taught these lessons as cautionary tales of the hysterical past, not
blueprints for the 21st century.

------
burlesona
Money quote at the end:

> Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways,
> Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic
> byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the
> waste. It’s an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.

~~~
smitty1e
Source of 1619 project says what?

------
glial
Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player,
hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their
customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc.

Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure
(personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.

~~~
egypturnash
How about hating the player _and_ the game?

The game is shit, yeah. But so's this anyone who enthusiastically said "yes, I
would like to find ways to monetize people's desire to talk with each other,
and do not care in the least if this involves being paid to spread
disinformation, or making ad view money off of pushing people towards insane
viewpoints".

Yes, this includes Google. This includes Twitter. This includes every damn
online service that decides its primary customer is advertisers, not users.

~~~
sollewitt
And how much exacy are you willing to pay per Google search?

~~~
egypturnash
I started to think about this and now I find myself wondering if “internet
search” is one of those things that should be a public good, funded by
everyone’s taxes. Like libraries - their mission is pretty much the same as
Google’s stated mission “make all the world’s information accessible”. Just
take it out of the realm of commerce entirely.

~~~
beagle3
I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it seems right:

If public libraries did not exist in this day and age, and someone floated the
idea, they would be laughed at and/or fought in the courts of law and public
opinion. "It would cause authors to starve! It's socialist/communist! There is
no reason _I_ should fund _your_ perverse taste in books!" etc.

It is considered axiomatic in Europe, but in the US even things like public
schools and public fire brigades are not controversial to some segments of the
population.

Internet search _should_ be a public good, as should _internet service_ , and
_email service_ , much like public schools and the postal service; but it
won't happen any time soon just because it makes sense.

I think the reason it will happen in some form, sooner or later, is the fact
the US is the de-facto hegemon of the internet by being the jurisdiction of
Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS and Microsoft. The NSA+FBI+CIA are able, _by
decree_ through NSLs, to read and rewrite the personal communication of
probably 90% of the world population, as well as shape their search results.
FB has already shown they can affect mood of population at large (in an
experiment they did without consent and of which they were proud at the time!)
- and they will surely cooperate with governments if "asked" (In the "speak
softly and carry a large gun" sense of asking, but likely even without it).

At some point, likely after being burned by this (but possibly before),
governments will likely setup a local hegemony if only to deleverage the US.
Russia and China already did.

------
tasuki
Facebook helps me stay in touch with people I might not otherwise stay in
touch with. It brings value into my life.

~~~
mtalantikite
Would you not be able to stay in touch with them without Facebook? I deleted
Facebook a number of years ago and still seem to be in touch with family and
friends.

Personally I think facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp should be broken apart.

~~~
AnonC
I’m completely against Facebook and agree with the sentiment to break up the
company, but the fact that you’re in touch with family and friends without
Facebook says more about those people...it may not be the same for the GP or
many other people where the people in their lives have a lot going on and
prefer these platforms for convenience because “everybody is there”.

We can’t achieve change at a rapid pace by dismissing the experience of
others.

~~~
mtalantikite
I mean it’s not like I’m handwriting letters over here (although I do do that
from time to time). Between FaceTime, email, signal groups, and regular
calls/text messages I’ve kept the close people close in my life. I understand
people are sort of lazy and want to be where everyone else is out of
convenience, but if that place is actively ruining the world I think we should
expend a bit of personal effort to not let that happen.

------
BrandonM
I've recently been thinking about the parallels between social media and the
Tower of Babel. Maybe ancient societies were onto something when they warned
us of the dangers of everyone communicating with one another. Perhaps there's
something more robust about a dispersed humanity where a message can't be
distributed to everyone.

~~~
saeranv
That's an interesting thought. Instant communication seems to pair badly with
our inherent bias towards novelty and bigotry. In the past, we had gatekeepers
(i.e media) that were educated enough to edit and contextualize communication
to control that bias. Increasing the ability for everyone to communicate with
one another has really unleased the worst of humanity.

~~~
BrandonM
Since you mentioned media's role, Matt Taibbi recently argued[1] that the
media has somewhat recently departed from norms that were followed throughout
the 20th century. To ensure the widest audiences possible, the CBSes and later
CNNs of the world largely aimed to report stories from a "neutral" perspective
(really a centrist perspective). Taibbi argues that in the last couple
decades, though, even major media outlets have carved out biased perspectives
to inspire more loyalty in smaller sets of people.

Point being that I think you're right that the media played an important role
in contextualizing mass communication and controlling bias. Not only does
social media disintermediate mass communications, the intermediaries
themselves are now ignoring roles they historically performed.

[1] [https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-
era](https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era)

------
Galactasm
By the same logic couldn’t you also blame cell phones and the internet? And
the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the
dissemination rate of information?

~~~
jameskilton
No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so
problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself
fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to
understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar),
and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to
build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize
and connect with each other.

~~~
Galactasm
If Facebook had acted morally according to your definition, wouldn’t some
other less moral company step in with their own version which would be more
popular (I guess because it’s engineered to be maximally viral rather than
promote... social well-being) because free market. Which following that train
of logic to me implies that social media basically should be regulated. What
do you think?

~~~
jameskilton
"If I didn't do it someone else would" is a bit of a straw-man argument and
rarely actually true. But to be fair Twitter exposes and presents some of the
same problems. I'll admit it's a very hard problem because for Facebook to
actually try to fix itself would, by necessity, also reduce its ability to
generate revenue. I hate the "decentralized" bandwagon but in a case like
this, providing something less centrally controlled would most likely be a
huge improvement, but that itself is a very difficult problem too.

Or, to put it succinctly: it's a people problem, and people problems are hard.

------
PragmaticPulp
TL;DR: Recap of several recent revelations and reports about conspiracy
theorists and bad foreign actors using Facebook as a tool to spread their
messages. No suggestions for how to address the situation.

These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions
at all for how to address the issues.

~~~
throwawayffffas
My personal 2c on how to fix this is make everyone liable for what's on their
website, regardless of who wrote it. I don't care if that breaks youtubes,
facebooks, twitters and reddits business model.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
How would that help if posting conspiracy theories and misinformation (other
than libel) isn't illegal?

~~~
throwawayffffas
I think it would help get rid of the most toxic stuff. Most of the conspiracy
theories that are actually harmful for society are definitely crossing libel
lines. Compare for example Roswell conspiracies against QAnon.

One is the goverement is hiding aliens in area 51, definitely not libel, not
conductive to outrage, not dehumanizing political opponents, it does not
actively harm national unity.

QAnon on the other hand claims Democrat figureheads are eating babies in
satanic orgies, definitely libel, greatly harmful to national unity.

I furthermore think that just the liability would be great enough to
completely change the face of this platforms, they would be on the defensive
things that are not libel would definitely be censored.

------
jackdh
non paywall -
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/facebook-
democracy.html)

------
ponker
I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. When you think about
connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than
more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of
dollars doing it.

Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can
be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building
something of nuclear-weapons-bad level, he became the comic book villain that
we know today.

~~~
AnonC
> I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy.

Nope. [1] He didn’t start out that way. He just kept misleading people quite
well every step of the way.

[1]:
[https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/](https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/)

------
haunter
>The most disturbing revelations from Zhang’s memo relate to the failure of
Facebook to take swift action against coordinated activity in countries like
Honduras and Azerbaijan, where political leaders used armies of fake accounts
to attack opponents and undermine independent media.

Same happened in Hungary and the EU can't give a flying fuck. But honestly I
don't blame Facebook, the destruction of independent media is a complex
problem not just a political one (adaptation of the market driven by Facebook
and Google for example). Especially in East Europe, former soviet block where
the kind of venture capitalism of the west/US never really existed. And like a
vassal you have to pledge allegiance to the government either formally or
informally.

