
Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match - dsr12
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/world/asia/facebook-sri-lanka-riots.html
======
Bucephalus355
There are two types of internet based attacks. The first is “cyberwar” or the
kinetic attacks that cause real world destruction. This is the kind the US has
always been fascinated with and excelled at.

The second kind is the more broad “cyberwarfare” which encompasses the
political / psychological. The eastern countries (Russia, China, etc) have for
a long time always been more deft at political and psychological offensives.

What if cyberkinetic attacks aren’t the best way to kill millions? What if
simply enflaming tensions over Facebook, leading to revolutions and more ”Arab
Springs” will kill tens of millions more?

Facebook could have been a better company, but they chose not to be, over and
over again. They are a threat to peace and a catalyst for war and must be
stopped.

~~~
methodover
What, specifically, is Facebook doing wrong today? How could they improve?

~~~
rhizome
_What, specifically, is Facebook doing wrong today?_

They make it easy to do bad things to a lot of people at once.

~~~
fvdessen
They make it easy to communicate to a lot of people at once. Whether those
communications are good or bad is in the eye of the beholder.

Expecting our communication channels to sort out the good from the bad is how
we get to Chinese levels of censorship.

~~~
rhizome
It's also why you don't make it that easy. What if there was a device that
could beam Facebook directly into a person's head, would you agree there
should be some access control on that?

------
volgo
I think a very inconvenient and ugly truth is slowly dawning on Facebook and
society in general: connecting people at mass is bad. Facebook may go down in
history as the next Big Tobacco or Big Fast Food that touted new innovation as
a mass utopian relief, only to be later debunked as charlatan science

Zuckerberg has always touted Facebook's core mission as "connecting people
throughout the world." The mission is so fervent you get socially deranged
executives like Boz who boast about "connecting people at all cost... even if
someone gets killed or bullied" [paraphrased here]

Technologies change throughout the ages, but human societies in general don't.
Like it or not, part of what makes a society work is that the people you
interact with have some similarity with you culturally and that interactions
have costs - in the form of reputation.

If you lie everyday, you'll be known as the liar. If you are prone to anger
attacks, people don't want to be near you. If you set a fire in your village,
you get condemned or thrown in jail. The threat of social stigmatization helps
regulate bad behaviors.

Facebook completely strips away all of that. It forces human beings to
interact in an unnatural and inhumane way, which is that almost anyone in the
world is allowed to attack your conscience and upset you. Your immediate
circle is suppose to be small and protective, whereas Facebook opens you up to
attack on all sides, putting you at the whim of whatever the public is
feeling. You're assaulted with ideas and emotions you cannot possibly process
fast enough as a human being.

It's situations like these where a fair amount of liberal arts training can
help engineers like Zuckerberg understand that human beings are not
statistical models. Your data set may suggest that the more "connections"
people make, the more satisfied they feel. Just like mice who find out that
pressing the lever and getting an injection of chemical feels very very good.
It completely ignores what it means fundamentally to form a coherent society.

~~~
joe_the_user
_I think a very inconvenient and ugly truth is slowly dawning on Facebook and
society in general: connecting people at mass is bad. Facebook may go down in
history as the next Big Tobacco or Big Fast Food that touted new innovation as
a mass utopian relief, only to be later debunked as charlatan science._

Wow, it is amazing to see how many people have come to this incredibly
pessimistic view (I say this from other hn posts as well as this one).

It's been a long time since people lived in villages where each person's
propensity for lying or not could be easily discerned. And it indeed took a
while for people to reach the point that they could relate to strangers
without either attacking them or allowing them to take advantage of them.

This progression has been necessary for the civilization that we know (for all
it's goods and ills).

It's worth noting social media arose in the US at the point that a lot of
immediate associations were decaying (see Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone).
Social media has fullfilled a lot of the functions of things like the bowling
leagues whose decline Putnam documents. Certainly social media has been
problematic but it has essentially been where the socialize part of society is
going (not to mention a lot the problems that the article and the parent
imagines comes from social media in particular are actually problems of
society in general). In anything, of the social medias, Facebook has done the
most work in creating an interface to your friends in particular rather than
the world at large (does the parent know he can keep non-friends from seeing
or commenting on his feed? It might solve some of the problems he rails
about.)

The thing is I suspect that the today's Facebook haters don't share an urge to
return to the 100-person band societies that the primitivists I once knew
idolize. Instead, I think they imagine a society where socializing will simply
generally stop and people will give up the idea of friends entirely or that
some small bubble they're can be exception to this.

~~~
krapp
>Wow, it is amazing to see how many people's has come to this incredibly
pessimistic view.

It's amazing to see how many people ostensibly a part of "hacker culture" come
to this view.

What's gone wrong here is not that "connecting people at mass is bad," but
that those connections were supposed to subvert and tear down the systems of
centralized authority and information control set up by governments and the
media... but we've just replaced one set of suits with another, and now we
pretend the internet only has a few channels the way television used to.

I'm all for ending the quasi-monopoly that Facebook and other big sites have
on the public's awareness, but please let's stop implying that the problem
with the web is its power to connect people.

~~~
azernik
> those connections were supposed to subvert and tear down the systems of
> centralized authority and information control set up by governments and the
> media

...even when those systems would _help_. The problem isn't _just_ that we've
"replaced one set of suits with another", but that this new set doesn't care
enough to actually _use_ their power. Throughout this Sri Lanka saga, for
example, Facebook didn't have either an office in the country or any
Sinhalese-speaking moderators, and didn't respond to the government's appeals
until, a week or two into the violence, they blocked Facebook and suddenly the
company realized its precious market share was in danger.

------
elangoc
As tempting as it is to believe this story's premise that Facebook is
bullying?/neglecting? smaller countries and then fit that into the larger
backlash against social media, I think it's very misleading to believe that
actually applies in Sri Lanka's case.

In fact, Sri Lanka has a history of majoritarian ethnic violence, up to and
including genocide, against ethnic nationalities and minorities within the
country.

Sinhalese also committed organized violence against Muslims in 1915. There
were riots in 1958 because Tamils protested the use of the Sinhalese on
license plates (following 1956 when Sinhalese replaced English as the only
official language of govt, disenfrachising all Tamil govt employees). Tamils
were killed in 1974 at the international Tamil conference in Jaffna, the Tamil
cultural capital. And of course, the official war between 1983 - 2009 was one
drawn-out genocide against Tamils by the 99% Sinhalese military and 95%
Sinhalese police force, "ignited" by Sinhalese "mobs" using govt voter lists
to burn Tamil homes and business along with killing Tamils, while the police
were deployed everywhere but stood by and watched.

I get the tech-relevance of Facebook here, but this story is trying to take
the latest ethnic atrocity from country that's already systemically racist,
and somehow shoehorn it into the larger narrative of social media, corruption,
and politics.

Maybe this is Sri Lanka's attempt at distancing itself from the Cambridge
Analytica exposé that Channel 4 did undercover, where they posed as a
middleman working to swing the recent SL local elections in the favor of an
opposition chauvinist strongman who oversaw the crescendo of genocide against
Tamils in 2009 ([https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-
of-...](https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-
trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica))

I find the Sri Lankan government a very unsympathetic, persistent, complicit
actor in the violence within its borders. It's not like Facebook and Cambridge
Analytica were around to cause all the racist violence since 1915.

~~~
azernik
There is a new, democratic government in the country, which seems to have
worked very hard to tamp down the tensions (even when that meant working
against majority views).

~~~
elangoc
Calling yourself a democracy doesn't excuse persistent, depraved, inhumane
behavior like this: [http://tamilguardian.com/content/sri-lankan-officers-
involve...](http://tamilguardian.com/content/sri-lankan-officers-involved-
human-rights-abuses-identified-new-itjp-report)

------
imh
People have always hated each other and unsubstantiated rumors/gossip/fake
news have always been around too. Something about the volume of information
and the speed at which it propagates makes things like twitter and facebook
extra dangerous, but it's happening on whatsapp and surely text/email too. It
just happens faster digitally and the pub/sub model seems to be especially bad
for inflamed tensions.

I don't think we should blame the medium through which people share these
things, but I hope we get to understand the dynamics and psychology of why
digital pub/sub makes things so much worse than IRL 1-to-1 communication.

------
DoreenMichele
First, moderation is an after the fact reaction. That is insufficient.
Facebook needs to take more responsibility for educating people about pitfalls
of the internet as well as informing them of best practices on social media in
the countries it is essentially invading.

Second, I'm appalled that these moderating positions remain unfulfilled on the
excuse that they are trying to fill them in a physical location where few
people speak the language in question. Facebook needs to immediately make such
positions open to remote workers with the requisite language skills. It needs
to immediately develop a program for remote moderation where any language
specific roles can be filled wherever they can find native speakers.

Third, the rest of the world needs to figure out how to fight fire with fire.
The rest of the world needs to start aggressively developing best practices
for using Facebook as the solution to the problem it is creating in such
places.

I have no idea what that would look like. But if Facebook is the way
information is spreading, then Facebook is one of the ways antidotes to these
deadly viral events should also be spread.

------
textmode
"In Sri Lanka, it keeps families in touch even as many work abroad."

"It provides for unprecedented open expression and access to information."

"But where institutions are weak or undeveloped, Facebook's _newsfeed_ can
inadvertently amplify dangerous tendencies. _Designed to maximize user time on
site_ , it promotes whatever wins the most attention. Posts that tap into
negative, primal emotions like anger or fear, _studies have found_ , produce
the highest engagement, and so proliferate."

What if there were applications or websites that allowed families to keep in
touch even as many work abroad. [There are.]

What if there was a computer network that provided access to information.
[There is.]

What if the computer network provided for open expression. [It does.]

What if the problem is none of the above.

What if the problem is "Facebook newsfeed" that serves no justifiable purpose
other than to "to maximize user time on [a single web]site" where family
member behaviour is recorded and family members are easily targeted by
advertisers who pay the owner of the website for this "service".

Who conducted the studies re: primal emotions.

Has Facebook conducted such studies.

Do _families_ need a "Facebook newsfeed" to keep in touch even as many work
abroad?

Does _Facebook_ need a "newsfeed" and other tactics to keep family members on
Mr. Zuckerberg's website _longer than they need to be in order to keep in
touch_ , so they will view/click more ads and generate more behavioural data.

Are the needs of families and the needs of Facebook "aligned".

~~~
azernik
> Has Facebook conducted such studies.

I strongly doubt it. I suspect they have a system that measures "engagement"
with individual posts and promotes those that score highly, and it just so
happens that those tend to be hateful or tribal ones.

------
prepend
I guess I just assumed that Arab Spring back in 2010 was the US using social
media. But not really very useful to chat conspiracy any more, although that’s
not stopping NYTimes.

Also funny that they are singling our Facebook as the match instead of the
other social media players. You can likely wreak havoc with Twitter and Google
ads as well. Lots of ways a bad actor can misinform.

~~~
duskwuff
> Also funny that they are singling our Facebook as the match instead of the
> other social media players. You can likely wreak havoc with Twitter and
> Google ads as well.

Those services don't have the kind of reach in Sri Lanka that Facebook does.

~~~
prepend
Google has 98% of search in Sri Lanka ([http://gs.statcounter.com/search-
engine-market-share/all/sri...](http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-
market-share/all/sri-lanka)). But Facebook has massive usage over Twitter.

------
duskwuff
At this point, what's clear to me is that it is _criminally irresponsible_ for
Facebook to continue operating in countries where they have no local presence,
no active communications with local authorities, and no ability to effectively
moderate content. Their passivity is literally killing people.

~~~
734786710934
The difficulty is that in many cases it's the local authorities who are the
ones spreading the inflammatory content and their requests for moderation are
actually requests for censorship.

~~~
duskwuff
And if that's the case, the most responsible thing Facebook can do is to _get
out_.

~~~
ggg9990
By that logic, shouldn’t any company whose services could be politically
consequential get out? Then doesn’t that deny the population the tools they
could use to influence their country?

~~~
azernik
They should stay in the market only if they're willing to put in the effort to
make sure their political effects are neutral or positive. Facebook clearly
isn't willing to do that.

First, do no harm.

------
panarky
Also in the Philippines: "How Duterte Turned Facebook Into a Weapon with a
Little Help from Facebook"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-
rodri...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodrigo-
duterte-turned-facebook-into-a-weapon-with-a-little-help-from-facebook)

------
matchagaucho
The issue here is propaganda is no longer controlled by state-run television
and radio.

Whether we like it or not, the mobile Internet inflection point has happened
and there's no turning back.

Anyone with basic literacy skills and the economic means to distribute bad
information can spread propaganda and incite others on millions of mobile
devices instantly.

And if it wasn't distributed on Facebook, the misinformation would most
certainly find it's way through other channels (Twitter, Viber, WhatsApp).

~~~
azernik
Because Facebook doesn't care enough about certain markets to actually
moderate, it means propaganda is no longer controlled by _anyone_. This is, in
practice, extremely dangerous.

------
amyjess
This is reminding me a scary amount of the role of radio in the Rwandan
genocide.

~~~
anigbrowl
Absolutely. And it is weaponized to that end in numerous jurisdictions. Turns
out that all the work done on sales, growth hacking, virality and so on
deployed in the service of commerce is even more effective in the political
domain which is completely emotion-driven.

A fascinating example of an ongoing campaign is the "Qanon" conspiracy theory
which has been running since late last year. The mysterious 'Q', who
supposedly holds a top-level security clearance within the executive branch of
the US government, issues (via the 8chan imageboard) frequent brief and
cryptic clues, exhortations, and warnings about the 'gathering storm;,
postulating that most political news is misleading and that the administration
is secretly investigating a vast conspiracy of pedophilia that reaches to The
Highest Levels of society. If you remember the 'Comet ping-pong' CT where a
guy went to a DC Pizzeria and fired shots into a ceiling attempting to free
abused children imprisoned in the basement (the building didn't have a
basement), think that but on a national scale and with all sorts of other,
darker implications. There's a large and extremely active community devoted to
interpretation of these clues and crowdsourced information gathering on a
grand scale.

~~~
noonespecial
The interesting thing about Qanon isn't Qanon itself. The account just spews
out vague randomness continuously. It could just be a markov chain generator
connected to the text of news sites.

Its the first derivative of the feed that's scary. There's a whole bunch of
"cloud-spotters" convinced that they are seeing patterns in the madness and
recompiling bits of it into a conspiracy theory narrative. If all the
downstream see is this derivative output, you end up with a collection of "Q
is real!" believers.

Its just a fascinating emergent phenomenon, if not for its very real political
consequences.

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't know whether it's random or not. It could be a Markov chain generator,
and much of the 'content' is just recycling obvious contemporary events to
give it a veneer of veracity, but it does seem to drop some genuine leaks from
time to time. A journalist friend of mine monitors the feed and the
surrounding community and I'm sure glad that I don't have to keep up with it
myself. I check in on it once every week or 10 days and frequently wish I
hadn't.

------
michaelgrosner2
Move fast and break civilizations.

------
billfruit
I cannot read the whole article due to the paywall, but from what I infer the
article is trying to tell that Facebook is not doing enough to suppress
incendiary content. But isn't that asking Facebook to be a censor and arbiter
of suitability of content. It may well seem to people and the mainstream media
from Western democracies that Facebook is acting irresponsibly, but out here
in the third world where our freedoms and liberties are not so strongly
enshrined, Facebook and their ilk are valuable channels to speaknout against
oppression by governments. I fear what measures Western people and Govts force
upon Facebook etc on grounds of greater responsibility for content, will
effectively grant more power to repressive governments to censor legitimate
dissention.

Moreover the Western MSM seems to think that Facebook and other social
networks should bear greater responsibility since people seems to be getting
more and more of their news through the social networks. In that regard,
perhaps it is the media houses who is trying to protected their vested
interest, who want to perpetuate their role as gatekeepers of information. I
think the time for gate keepers is past, they should be evolving towards a
model where their focus is not news gathering and reporting, rather it is
establishing/publishing trust measures for news items circulaing in social
networks/internet.

------
contravariant
In this analogy would the internet be oxygen?

~~~
azernik
There's actually a great analogy in the article:

> “We don’t completely blame Facebook,” said Harindra Dissanayake, a
> presidential adviser in Sri Lanka. “The germs are ours, but Facebook is the
> wind, you know?”

