
Facebook Screwed Us All - pseudolus
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/how-facebook-screwed-us-all/
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andonisus
I firmly believe it is the individual's responsibility to determine the
veracity of the information they consume, to the best of their ability. If the
platform of information isn't Facebook, it's some other medium of
communication. Why should Facebook be responsible for the content its users
post, assuming the content is legal? Then again, some will argue that we
should make "Fake News", "Inflammatory Opinions", and "Hate Speech" illegal,
but I do not believe any governments should be interested in policing the
speech of its peoples. I say this as an American, so take my opinion with a
grain of salt.

~~~
everdrive
It's also the individual's responsibility not to ruin their lives with drugs,
or develop heart disease due to poor diet and exercise. People on average have
poor impulse control for anything that's even a little addictive.

I'm not suggesting that regulation is the answer here, or always the answer.
But, the case of moral blame is not the same as describing the problems of
large portions of the population. So what if we all agree it's the
individual's fault that obesity has been on the rise for decades? Does the
blame here modify the severity of the problem, or prescribe an outcome? How
useful is moral blame really, when it comes to societal problem?

~~~
andonisus
What good does blame serve? If there is only moral blame -- as opposed to
legal blame -- then the only recourse is at the individual level. Accordingly,
I no longer use Facebook (or Instagram).

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gfosco
This is a pretty pathetic rehashing of all the rumors and innuendo, totally
lacking any self doubt. This isn't journalism, it's sci-fi fiction, and it's
not even good.

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jefe_
With Facebook's recent Ad Revenue earnings and the various news organization
layoffs, it sounds like money is shifting from standalone sites and into the
Facebook platform. Imagine this was the Facebook dream all along, but it seems
without balance and incentive for creators to earn, content could begin to
suffer.

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caiocaiocaio
As with every anti-Facebook article I have ever seen, multiple 'like on
Facebook' buttons are clearly visible. The first is right under the header.
The second is on a sticky div that appears when you scroll down a bit, and
which is the most prominent part of the div. Then, at the end of the article,
there is a very large Facebook button, which not only has the logo, but the
words "SHARE ON FACEBOOK" in capital letters.

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0xmohit
> It’s not just spreading phony stories everywhere—it’s killing real news.

It is spreading #AlternativeFacts.

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izzydata
How do I convince friends and family to stop using Facebook?

~~~
artursapek
I think you just lead by example by quitting it yourself, and giving a good
explanation why if asked. It's a personal choice to stop using it. Don't want
to risk annoying your relatives.

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yters
You know what other technology has existed wherever Facebook causes
disruption? The Internet. The Internet is the real enemy here. Down with the
Internet! Also electricity. Down with electricity!

~~~
afandian
I think that's a false equivalence for two reasons.

1) The Internet has not existed prior to Facebook in all markets, or even at
the same time. Internet.org brought Facebook to e.g. India.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org)

Recently there was an HN thread about Internet use in the Phillipines. There
were some very interesting observations about zero-rated data policies that
subverted net neutrality so that basically Facebook was the one of the only
Internet resources that one could access.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19073824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19073824)

2) They are completely different things. The Internet is a federated carrier.
Its actively disinterested in the content (although there are questions of net
neutrality challengin that). Facebook has taken a proactive approach to
marketing, expansion, collecting data about its users and ediatorializing.

~~~
yters
True, but the issues the article discussed could also be directed at the
internet in general. No one is curating everything on the internet, and
through email fake news can easily become viral.

Facebook makes it easier for such things to occur, but the virality of fake
news and mob organization is in general due to internet technologies. If not
Facebook, maybe it would have been AOL or MySpace, or some other enterprising
social network.

Picking out Facebook seems to be scapegoating a particular company for the
ills of global communication. Before the internet age we had newspapers and
pamphleteers and the like which similarly spread fake news and instigated the
mobs.

On the other hand, Facebook might have a unique opportunity to help educate
people on how to think critically about the news they see.

I think the real issue is that Facebook has a whole lot of money, so now
people can start suing Facebook and get their hands on some of that filthy
lucre.

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isoskeles
> Just picture a reasonably proximate scenario: It’s the winter of 2020, and
> Donald Trump—having lost reelection by a margin closer than expected—is in
> full attack mode, whipping up stories of runaway voter fraud. Local protest
> groups coalesce around Facebook posts assailing liberals, murderous
> “illegals,” feminists. (This is basically what happened in France last year
> with the “anger groups” that birthed the yellow vest protests.) Pizzagate-
> style conspiracy theories race through these groups, inflaming their more
> extreme members. Add a population that is, unlike those of France and
> Nigeria, armed to the teeth, and the picture gets pretty dark.

Wow, that's poetic. I can practically feel the hate emitting from my screen.

I thought Mother Jones _just said_ they had a problem with fake-news three
paragraphs up. And then they decide to speculate about the future in which a
bunch of wackadoo right-wingers are running around gun-murdering people
because they didn't like the election results, full-on civil war (instigated
by the Republican voters, no doubt, that's what we chose to run with in this
article).

Sure, conservatives probably aren't reading MJ, but I don't understand how
anyone feels comfortable with caricaturing people to this extent.

> This is no hypothetical. It’s precisely what Vladimir Putin’s minions, and
> the Trump campaign and its allies, did in 2016. And why not? Facebook showed
> them the way, dispatching staffers to campaigns to make sure they knew how
> to get exactly the messages they wanted in front of exactly the people most
> susceptible.

By the way, if you follow through the links on this one, Facebook also
dispatched staffers to Clinton's campaign. But it definitely sounds more
sinister to compare Trump to Putin than Trump to Clinton.

~~~
mikestew
I subscribe to MJ, and I would consider myself a mildly converted liberal.
That said, I read MJ with a very strong filter. I like their content, I like
that they bring to light perspectives I had not considered. But I do not EVER
forget what I’m reading, and keep the outrage in check.

