
The high modernism of social media companies - cperes
http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/04/11/the-disturbing-high-modernism-of-silicon-valley/
======
DanielBMarkham
_When confronting the utopian side, by contrast, the relevant question becomes
sharper: Should these companies even exist at all?_

I am coming towards this conclusion as well. As _individuals_ , the easier and
more frictionless our communications with others, the greater our
opportunities to live, love, learn, and collaborate. As a _species_ , we have
evolved to live in small social groups with radically different norms and life
patterns. That's a survival and evolution benefit, not a bug. As long as we
can remain peaceful and not harm one another, we want the maximum possible
diversity in humanity, not some utopian norm for the entire species.

We have a wonderful example of large numbers of people instantly communicating
with one another. They're called mobs. Because at some point in scaling, and
it happens probably between 75-500 people, powerful emotions are the only
thing that can sustain the instant feedback loop we've created.

We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it.

~~~
makomk
What you're basically saying, I think, is that there shouldn't be any easy way
for ordinary people to communicate directly with each other and organise
politically. That it's too dangerous to allow them to do this without the
press acting as gatekeepers first. That certainly does seem to be the
underlying subtext of a lot of the recent criticism of Facebook. It's also an
astounding line of thinking, because it basically says that it's politically
unacceptable, even a danger to democracy, for ordinary people to actually have
power and not just the illusion that they do.

(Edit: to be fair, I should probably add that the press wouldn't be the only
powerful institution that has the ability to enable or gatekeep activism and
organising, just one of the most important. The more fundamental difference is
whether you need to have one of those powerful institutions backing your
cause.)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thanks for your comment because I am not saying that at all.

All I'm saying is that a certain amount of friction is a necessary part of our
survival as a species. I'm not making any comments about the press or people
organizing or any of that.

Some message boards, including HN, have a delay between the time you read a
comment and when you are allowed to form a reply. This cuts way back on flame
wars. It's also a nice example of purposely introducing some friction for a
larger good.

I don't know how much friction is needed or where it should go. I'm just now
reaching the conclusion about Facebook and social media. This utopia they've
all been preaching is actually a dystopia, a horrible thing indeed. I'm
nowhere near having any thoughts about a solution.

~~~
wpietri
One interesting book in this context is Neiwart's "Alt America". [1] Neiwart
is a journalist who spent decades tracking the armed US fringe, including the
"patriot" militias, sovereign citizen movements, conspiracists, and white
supremacist groups.

It's his view that the alt right didn't come out of nowhere. Instead, the low-
friction communication of the Internet allowed these formerly scattered,
always-falling-apart groups to connect and recruit in ways that were
previously impossible.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that the rise of the alt-right happened
when social media companies in some sense took friction _negative_. In the
world of websites and blogs, you at least had to actively seek the next site,
the next writer, the next article. It wasn't much work, but it was at least a
little.

Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter were eager to give you an endless stream of
content, so as to maximize User Active Minutes metrics. So their algorithms
would pull up anything that they thought you'd be interested in. The theory
being that any engagement must be good, which implies that total obsession
would be best.

In retrospect, that theory seems to have some flaws.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
If you'd like to join me in speculating a bit, let's take an imaginary look at
ten years from now.

Good news! AI has advanced enough that it is now possible for you to have a
customized bot that handles all of the crappy and mundane parts of life:
scheduling travel, getting groceries, making sure the house is clean, and so
on. The bot learns about you and is able to anticipate your needs.

And because we have this tech, we also have bots that will play your emotions
like a finely-tuned fiddle. Think Elvis never died? Afraid that lizard-people
in the government are controlling your thoughts? Well, now there's a bot that
will find others like you and deliver to you a continuous stream of
information confirming your beliefs -- and warning you of the dangers lurking
out there.

Now guess which of these bots makes more money for its creators, the one
scheduling airline flights or the one keeping you emotionally-connected with
400 people just like you and making sure that all of you are living a dramatic
life on the edge where you're fighting the bad guys?

~~~
wpietri
Definitely. It's the kind of manipulative dystopia that might have been
designed by timeshare salesmen and propagandists. But the weird part to me is
that conscious design seems basically unnecessary. It's dystopia metastasized.

I've interviewed the occasional person looking to leave Facebook, and one of
the surprising things to me is how small everybody's job is. They're all
optimizing micro-metrics for micro-gains, with very little thought as to the
systemic impact. Those micro-metrics in turn roll up to plausible-sounding
things like revenue, DAU, time on site, and engagement. Yay engagement! How
could that be bad?

But I've never heard anybody from Facebook, employee or exec, say, "Gosh,
could we be acting like tobacco company execs or slot machine designers?" They
don't even seem to understand addiction as a topic, let alone a concern. It's
very much as Upton Sinclair said: "“It is difficult to get a man to understand
something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

~~~
michaelfeathers
I think it's because we don't understand systems as well as we should. This
article
([http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article207841309.ht...](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article207841309.html))
is a decent intro to what modeling shows about engagement and polarization.
The paper it refers to
([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.06009.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.06009.pdf))
goes way deeper.

------
mark_l_watson
After reading his books Deep Work and Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You, I feel
like Cal Newport has become sort-of a guru for me, not pure computer science,
but the larger view of how to live a good life.

I am sharing this article with friends and family to maybe help them
understand why I don’t want to use social media, rather, I want to talk on the
phone, email directly, and travel to see people.

I manage a machine learning/AI team so I am not against technology, but
technology truly needs to serve human needs.

------
DataWorker
Well Zuckerburg didn’t create the thing because he had some deep belief in
high modernism or connecting people. People lie to themselves about their
motivations. That’s a messy human thing too.

~~~
megaman22
Am I the only one that remembers that back in, oh 2006ish, one of the core
features of Facebook was a hot-or-not picture rating game? Or that one of the
other big features was "poking" people?

Whatever Facebook has become, it started out as a MySpace clone, without
custom CSS, created by some Ivy League young men. Mythologizing it into some
world-changing, higher purpose origin story is asinine.

~~~
jmh530
I was a relatively early adopter to Facebook, though not Harvard- or Ivy
League-early. It didn't have a hot-or-not style rating at that time. Poking
was a feature, but I'm not sure it was ever that popular.

~~~
icebraining
It's a site that predates Facebook: _Facemash used "photos compiled from the
online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and
asking users to choose the “hotter” person"_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#FaceMash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#FaceMash)

~~~
megaman22
It was definitely still part of Facebook when it started rolling out beyond
colleges to high school students around 2005/2006\. I remember people spending
way too much time rating randos in study halls back then.

~~~
organsnyder
Are you sure that wasn't hotornot.com or something similar? I've been on
Facebook since back when it was still segmented by college (connections with
people at other colleges were clunky), and I don't recall it ever having a
built-in "hot or not" feature.

~~~
nicholasnorris
I think I recall what he might be talking about. I remember several third
party apps within Facebook that served a similar function being popular back
in the early days of Facebook. It's totally reasonable that someone might
fuzzily confuse one of those for core features after a decade or so.

------
JasonFruit
Again with blaming Facebook and Google. Why not blame ourselves?

We aren't acting as adults: we can't look at something shiny and say, "I want
it, but it would be bad for me, so I'll leave it alone." At least some of the
dangers of these things are obvious: unnatural levels and kinds of sharing,
contrived, manipulative reactions, vast potential for privacy violation and
misuse of data, and tons of time lost without compensation of any kind. Why
don't we all refuse?

I didn't, and I should have. I've recently dropped Facebook entirely and am
paring back my reliance on Google. Looking through my Facebook data download,
I'm shocked at my foolishness, especially in the first couple years: I was old
enough to know better! I hope I've learned my lesson, and that others do too,
before we seriously mess up our society --- if we haven't already.

~~~
ahel
Adults aren't infallible nor manipulation resistant just because they are
adults. It's true that we can do better but criminalising semi-aware victims
doesn't help. Bias and gamification and manipulation and curiosity and herd
mentality are a thing.

~~~
JasonFruit
Note that I wrote, "acting as adults;" there's a difference between _being_ an
adult and _acting_ as one.

------
common_
Facebook and Zuckerberg will tell you that they disagree with Boz's comments.

He wasn't fired.

He wasn't demoted.

He was _promoted_.

His responsibilities were _expanded_.

If that's not a silent endorsement, a message to the rank and file about where
the company's values stand, I don't know what is.

~~~
sjg007
I agree. They claim that the Boz memo was effectively a straw man argument.
However, after reading the memo in total and the fact that they subsequently
deleted it does not give the appearance of impropriety to that claim. As an
organization I don't believe Facebook had any corporate values outlining their
position either.

------
nickysielicki
This is not so different from the arguments behind what motivated the
Unabomber. One key difference is that Ted Kaczynski saw it as necessarily
political.

People should read Kaczynski's manifesto. It's rough at parts, but it's really
an interesting perspective.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/longterm/unabo...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm)

~~~
131012
An ideology that requires killing random people always seems flawed to me.

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
This is a nonsensical comment. He used bombs to gain the notoriety to get
published in the New York Times.

------
cubano
_From this perspective, the user is merely a pawn in the game of revenue
projections and market expectations._

I've been in the IT/software game since the mid 80's, where fresh out of
engineering college I started my first software company, writing add-ons to
BBS's in C using btreive as our database and I'm not sure if a "user" has ever
been anything but...

~~~
rout39574
I respect your profit orientation, but it's disingenuous to suggest it's the
only path.

Next door to you, the folks in what we're currently calling the FLOSS
community were trying to arm and empower those same users, instead of
constraining them.

------
ponderatul
Again, reminds me of
[http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html).

It's funny, even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal started I made a
presentation at a local meetup, comparing Zuckerberg to Escobar. The title is
more attention-bait than anything, but I found it especially relevant in
current times.

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mrR4tE7KSjpy7U4NnBqH...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mrR4tE7KSjpy7U4NnBqH-B8En21jDz4mcZfK3pi6qoY/edit?usp=sharing)

------
SCdF
Wasn't that memo a rhetorical device by the author to raise that kind of
opinion (one he does not agree with) as a conversation point inside Facebook?

I don't like Facebook as much as the next person, but being willing to write
things in that style and get discussions going sounds really healthy to me.

------
sigi45
Have the same thought quite often when google io is happening.

It was and is still typical to be shown something cool and useless which works
perfect in San Francisco and thats it.

I think only 1 or 3 years ago, they talked about google services which have a
light version so countries like india or areas with low bandwith can use them
properly.

Not shit sherlock.

Android got bigger and fatter than after ages they announce go.

Nexus Q? 'this device has high end cpu etc. and for only 300$' and it should
be in every room? Srsly?

The mindset of an silicon valley developer who has everything on hand, trusts
his/her environment etc. is a very unique experience. I would compare it to an
university. You working and living with your pals. After all lots of conflict
potential things are gone: No one has to clean up, no one has to make meals,
there is probably no theft and everyone earns more than enough money.

Than there is google io and protesters outside.

While google has an huge impact, facebook only does data handling. And it has
such a huge responsibility which shouldn't be even allowed on our earth. But
who are those pepoloe who build it? Those are anyone and noone. You don't need
to pass any ethical moral test to become part of it.

------
nyxxie
Disturbing High Modernism? More like disturbing high mindedness. The author
here is making claims that can be summarized to "I don't like Facebook and
it's different from how we've usually done things, therefore we need to get
rid of Facebook-like services."

The author, in other words, is trying to argue that, because they think that
_other people_ can't handle Facebook's "frictionless communication", no one
should be able to use it because it'll do _something bad_ to society. What
that bad thing is isn't clearly specified, instead the author only claims that
"tribalism, authoritarianism, extremism, disinformation, and hyperbolic
outrage" has increased on these platforms, and implies that they think this
outweighs the positives these platforms have also provided or that this is a
change relative to how a world without Facebook would operate.

The author makes no concrete or quantifiable argument in this piece, only
parrots the opinions of others they consider authorities. This text is the
same sort of technopanic rhetoric that was used by luddites to oppose things
like the printing press and electricity. We can argue about the ethics behind
Facebook's method of funding itself, but the author here is conflating that
with an argument against free communication.

~~~
_bxg1
> What that bad thing is isn't clearly specified, instead the author only
> claims that "tribalism, authoritarianism, extremism, disinformation, and
> hyperbolic outrage" has increased on these platforms

[gestures broadly to the western world in 2018]

------
ssivark
Carlos Bueno expresses the general problem brilliantly:
[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/09/priest-guru-nerd-
king/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/09/priest-guru-nerd-king/)

(Excerpts below)

Corporations do not want to legislate, let alone enforce, more of humanity’s
behavior than they need to. They have better things to do. The universe isn’t
going to dent itself. But because they are outpacing traditional governments
in their ability to predict & shape human behavior, they walk right into
stupidly impossible situations over and over again. Software isn’t eating the
world so much as larping it.

The governance problem is not about dealing with governments as such, but
about accidentally adopting or creating arenas of human behavior that you then
have to govern, with “externalities” that don’t remain external. Starting a
ride-sharing service? Congratulations, you’re now an urban planner. Want to
disrupt shipping logistics? Get ready to do your part to curb terrorism and
slavery.

The problem of governance arises wherever “move fast and break things” runs
right into an older saying: “you broke it, you bought it”.

Sometimes things blow up squarely on your turf. Think about what it takes to
enforce a social network “real names” policy across hundreds of cultures. One
account per person, one person per account, authentic names as used in real
life. Zuck’s buddy Calvin can post pictures of himself holding pounds of weed
but he can’t use the name he’s known by, Snoop Dogg.

------
gringoDan
This reminds me of the religion of "dataism" found in Yuval Noah Harari's
_Homo Deus_. We're moving towards a world where the free flow of information
is valued above all else.

This religion was foisted upon us...I think we need to consider more whether
or not we choose to accept it.

Bill Gates's notes on _Homo Deus_ : [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Homo-
Deus](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Homo-Deus)

~~~
arikr
What's your name / anywhere I can read more from you? Your HN comments seem
pretty interesting. Feel free to send me an email arikrockefeller@gmail.com

------
oflannabhra
The quote from the memo that really irritates me is

> The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is
> fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products.

This is such a load of crap. The natural state of the world is actually very
connected (whether we consciously assent to it or not), and specifically,
humans are one of the _most_ social species. Humans have deep societal and
psychological needs for interpersonal interaction.

What Facebook does through "engagement" is replace richly rewarding and deeply
needed face-to-face interaction with a _veneer_ of connection. Actually,
Facebook's effects are even more insidious--it addicts us to a "feeling" of
connectedness with dopamine hits, which prevents us from even realizing we
aren't getting what we need.

Facebook is not a community, it is software. Software can enhance what is in
the real world (ie, real community), but it cannot replace it. Zuckerberg's
new world order of community is a mirage, and cults have been built on lesser
falsehoods. The article's link between that mirage and the modernism that gave
rise to communism is not theater.

------
shimfish
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and
bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”

~~~
makomk
One of the other big criticisms of Facebook and other social networks is that
they're "filter bubbles" which make sure people don't see any information or
viewpoints from outside their own social circles and perspectives. The main
unifying aspect that the "filter bubble" criticism and the "connecting people"
criticism seem to have in common is that both involve Facebook taking away
some control of the culture from the press, the media, and other powerful
groups and giving it to the populace; other than that, they should be
contradictory.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The main unifying aspect that the "filter bubble" criticism and the
> "connecting people" criticism seem to have in common is that both involve
> Facebook taking away some control of the culture from the press, the media,
> and other powerful groups and giving it to the populace

No, it's giving it to a new powerful group, specifically, Facebook. Just as
Stalin stated, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will
vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count
the votes, and how,” so, too, is it true of social media; power doesn't lie
with the people who can press “Like” (etc.), it lies with the people who
select and continuously tweak based on observed effect the algorithm by which
Likes and similar actions are used to shape the flow of information to and
between users.

~~~
manjushri
>power doesn't lie with the people who can press “Like” (etc.), it lies with
the people who select and continuously tweak based on observed effect the
algorithm by which Likes and similar actions are used to shape the flow of
information to and between users.

Interesting. So no matter how much apparent power is gained by people
connecting politically on social media, the "(wo)man behind the curtain" who
controls the platform and it's algorithm will by default always be more
powerful?

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, if your power comes from someone else and continues only as long as they
choose to maintain it, the person directing power to you has the greater
power.

------
avree
Somewhat unrelated, but it's quite aggravating to see the memo-writer (and the
author of this article, by extension), using "de facto" good instead of "ipso
facto" good.

If you choose to use flowery expressions, particularly Latin ones, you should
at least be accurate.

------
bobthechef
What does it mean to "connect everyone"? It seems like a meaningless
statement. Not only is it not feasible in the literal sense, but wholly
undesirable.

------
DanAndersen
Anyone curious about the "High Modernism" referred to in this article should
definitely read Scott Alexander's review of "Seeing Like a State" [0]. It sums
up some of the attitudes of the High Modernists involved in things like
architecture and urban planning in the 20th century:

>First, there can be no compromise with the existing infrastructure. It was
designed by superstitious people who didn’t have architecture degrees, or at
the very least got their architecture degrees in the past and so were
insufficiently Modern. The more completely it is bulldozed to make way for the
Glorious Future, the better.

>Second, human needs can be abstracted and calculated. A human needs X amount
of food. A human needs X amount of water. A human needs X amount of light, and
prefers to travel at X speed, and wants to live within X miles of the
workplace. These needs are easily calculable by experiment, and a good city is
the one built to satisfy these needs and ignore any competing frivolities.

>Third, the solution is the solution. It is universal. The rational design for
Moscow is the same as the rational design for Paris is the same as the
rational design for Chandigarh, India. As a corollary, all of these cities
ought to look exactly the same. It is maybe permissible to adjust for
obstacles like mountains or lakes. But only if you are on too short a budget
to follow the rationally correct solution of leveling the mountain and
draining the lake to make your city truly optimal.

>Fourth, all of the relevant rules should be explicitly determined by
technocrats, then followed to the letter by their subordinates. Following
these rules is better than trying to use your intuition, in the same way that
using the laws of physics to calculate the heat from burning something is
better than just trying to guess, or following an evidence-based clinical
algorithm is better than just prescribing whatever you feel like.

>Fifth, there is nothing whatsoever to be gained or learned from the people
involved (eg the city’s future citizens). You are a rational modern scientist
with an architecture degree who has already calculated out the precise value
for all relevant urban parameters. They are yokels who probably cannot even
spell the word architecture, let alone usefully contribute to it. They
probably make all of their decisions based on superstition or tradition or
something, and their input should be ignored For Their Own Good.

The result being, of course, the creation of hideous planned cities that no
one wanted to live in.

[0] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-
like...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-
state/)

------
spacenick88
disturbingly

------
triviatise
I think the author completely misunderstood the Boz quote. I interpret it as
him questioning the core belief that connecting people no matter the
consequences is right.

~~~
amsilprotag
The cited fragment does suggest that interpretation, that the de facto
goodness should be scrutinized. But the entire memo frames terrorism and
bullying as unfortunate side-effects which must be tolerated for the sake of
ever greater connectivity.

\--- [Newport quote in brackets] ---

Andrew Bosworth June 18, 2016

The Ugly

We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the
ugly.

We connect people.

That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it
even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide.

So we connect more people

[That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing
someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on
our tools.

And still we connect people.

The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything
that allows us to connect more people more often is _de facto_ good.] It is
perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we
are concerned.

That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!).
It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.

That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable
contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay
searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in.
The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.

The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is
fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The
best products don’t win. The ones everyone use win.

I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of
working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no
mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because
it is doing great work, that’s why we get to do that great work. We do have
great products but we still wouldn’t be half our size without pushing the
envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends
on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones
made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing.

In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we
believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren’t losing out
on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That’s our imperative. Because
that’s what we do. We connect people.

