
Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate - minimaxir
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/07/facebook-does-not-benefit-from-hate/
======
diego
They benefit from engagement. Turns out hate is a large part of engagement.
Writing an article to say it isn't so does not make it true.

~~~
consumer451
> Turns out hate is a large part of engagement.

My personal experience makes me agree with you. I would even take it further.
Hate, or "punching down" is the easiest way to drive engagement. Is anyone
aware of any research that may confirm or deny this? My search skills have
failed me.

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hangonhn
I had to Google it to confirm but Nick Clegg is the same guy who was the
Deputy Prime Minister of the UK under David Cameron. I'm super curious about
how that came to be -- what skillsets and talents a former Deputy Prime
Minister of the UK provides to a company like Facebook.

~~~
burkaman
He's friends with a lot of people in the UK government and Facebook doesn't
want to pay taxes there:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/08/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/08/facebook-
uk-tax-bill-sales-margaret-hodge)

------
paulgb
There's been a number of stories of companies putting FB ad buys on hold on
the front page recently[1], and a recurring HN response has invariably been
"this will accomplish nothing". I'd like to point out that this is a 180 from
Zuckerberg's "arbiter of truth" position from before the advertiser boycotts:

> they don’t want to see hateful content, our advertisers don’t want to see
> it, and we don’t want to see it. There is no incentive for us to do anything
> but remove it.

[1] e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23646852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23646852)

~~~
multiplegeorges
Not really, a few sentences later he reiterates their commitment to leave
hateful (but not hateful enough!) stuff up.

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floatingatoll
Tech social media confuses "free expression" with "amplified expression".

If you're going to leave hate-filled posts by a world leader up on your
platform, but it's also okay to restrict amplification of those posts.

Twitter understands this and has begun restricting amplification in various
ways. Will Facebook next do the same? This post suggests that they will not.

~~~
ricardo81
I think social media typically 'amplifies' the worst facets of people in
general, and Facebook have built a business model around it. At least the
public posts, widely shared or large groups. I'm sure most people in their
small groups behave better.

------
burkaman
Facebook doesn't even remove groups that people use to encourage and
coordinate actual real-life murder: [https://popular.info/p/murder-exposes-
facebooks-boogaloo](https://popular.info/p/murder-exposes-facebooks-boogaloo)

~~~
throwawaysea
By my understanding, the boogaloo thing is mostly a meme used as a joke about
prepping, like for "SHTF"
([https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SHTF](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SHTF)).
For example, "I need [some flashy firearm] for the boog". There are some
people/groups who have co-opted that branding and are actually intending
violence, but those are in the minority. That's why the Facebook announcement
specifically takes a nuanced approach in identifying only a subset of those
groups as problematic. From [https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/banning-a-
violent-network-...](https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/banning-a-violent-
network-in-the-us/):

> This network uses the term boogaloo but is distinct from the broader and
> loosely-affiliated boogaloo movement because it actively seeks to commit
> violence.

This is also why a lot of the articles attacking Facebook for hosting boogaloo
content are plain wrong. To many they come off as unhinged fake news simply
because they don't see that the most common use of 'boogaloo' is as a joke.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
The boogaloo crowd is the exact type of crowd to say "oh it's just a joke"
just before committing acts of violence. They know as well as anyone that
being ironic will attract those who have the same beliefs unironically.

------
mattmiller
Facebook benefits from outrage. Outrage leads to engagement and virality. Hate
correlates to outrage.

------
yalogin
Well if we were to believe they don't benefit from hate, we need proof. For
that we need numbers. So unless they start implementing some filters for hate,
we will not know the impact. In reality, we all know they do benefit from it.
I would say its on them to prove they don't benefit, not using rhetoric but
using numbers.

------
burger_moon
In a way they don't benefit from hate. How many people here quit fb _because_
of politics and toxic communities?

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MrBuddyCasino
Unpopular opinion: FB is just the scapegoat.

First they claimed 100k$ worth of Russian ads made Trump win the election,
when 1B$ from Bloomberg didn't move the needle.

In the age before social media, left- and rightwing could pretend the other
side doesn't exist. This has changed, and things have gotten more divisive as
a consequence.

------
asdff
If hate keeps people using the site, they benefit from hate.

~~~
bryan_w
But why would people use a site makes them mad?

~~~
asdff
Why do people go on /r/asktrumpsupporters and ask the same questions for the
past 5 years? It's cathartic. You get an adrenaline rush from arguing, and
satisfaction if you feel you've proved yourself right. It is the same primal
emotions from our childhood schoolyard argument days creeping back into adult
life.

Very interesting psychologically how facebook is tuned to tap into these
primal and tribalistic tendencies, but also very terrifying how wired we are
for this.

------
sharkmerry
Perhaps I am naive. It seems they do benefit from hate, in that negative
emotions drive more engagement.

IF they truly didnt want to benefit from hate, they would find a way to not
always rate negative engagement (arguing) as "engaging".

~~~
foobiekr
Official denials are actually confirmations.

------
fred_is_fred
Yes it does. People love to post rage and hate inducing posts because they get
replies and likes, and Facebook serves more ads.

------
Abishek_Muthian
And the News websites are claiming sensational headlines don't get them more
clicks.

I would like Facebook to put the money where the mouth is and remove featured
image, title from the shared URL and show an image of 'Summary' of the article
from og:description tag i.e. forcing people at-least to read a bit about the
content.

------
jasonv
Been wondering if FB and other socials could move away from engagement volume-
based advertising.

Perhaps "low max # ads a day" kind of thing.

It would hurt revenues, to be sure, but seems that Facebook already has
outsized revenues per employee count. And certainly, Zuck's share valuation is
a bit on the high (and possibly unsustainable) end.

------
sub7
Nope, they benefit from the systemic robbery of your time and attention while
giving you almost no value in return.

------
mrkramer
Facebook's userbase is a mirror of human society if you want to fix Facebook
fix society first.

~~~
dumbfoundded
The problem is with how facebook amplifies messages. By showing you the posts
you're most likely to engage with, Facebook encourages polarization. In normal
society, if you hold a hateful, minority opinion like deeply racist beliefs,
you're more likely to be presented the majority opinion. Facebook allows you
to disappear into a world where you only are exposed to people that agree with
you.

~~~
throwawaysea
I agree that Facebook encourages you into echo chambers. I think that's even
more true of Twitter. Reddit is also like that. In my experience YouTube is
better in this regard than the others, but perhaps also problematic. The users
of these platforms don't make this easy, however. As an example, if you try to
cross the "party lines" and engage on a post in a Facebook group you may not
be aligned with, you will be met with ridicule and vitriol, rather than
neutral intellectual discussion. A flood of reactions will occur. Memes/gifs
will be used. People will use phrases like "OK Boomer" or call you a "Karen"
or accuse you of being a "Communist" or "White supremacist" or whatever else.
It's not pleasant.

The other, bigger risk, is by engaging outside the echo chamber you also need
to expose yourself to actions outside of Facebook. First, your social circle
may observe your comments or what you like and that may have social
consequences in a world where no one is allowed to harbor differing opinions.
Worse, people do doxx others, try to shame them in 'real life', get them
fired, and so on. This is a particularly common practice on the left side of
the American political spectrum (see 'cancel culture',
[https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/opinion/cancel-
culture-682272](https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/opinion/cancel-culture-682272)).
There is little psychological safety even on anonymous platforms like Reddit,
so I think it would be much harder for anything but echo chambers to form on a
platform that requires de-anonymization like Facebook.

------
cbron
> Importantly, Facebook helped people to get accurate, authoritative health
> information.

Surely the author experienced some form of cognitive dissonance while typing
this out.

~~~
madaxe_again
The Author is Nick Clegg, ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats in the U.K. -
he’s a career politician, so this is kinda second nature.

------
VBprogrammer
I was hoping to see some kind of commitment to return any profits from ads
which are later decided to be hate speech, or close to hate speech, to worthy
causes.

In fact it doesn't really address the "Facebook profits from hate" point other
than perhaps implying that they spend more money on preventing it than they
gain from it.

------
tzvsi
"This piece originally ran in AdAge."

So, this article is meant for advertisers. Profits over people.

~~~
paxys
Advertisers are people too, my friend.

~~~
jfengel
No, advertisers are the only people. Everybody else is the product.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
You are on fire with the analogies today!

------
mrweasel
>Facebook does not profit from hate. Billions of people use Facebook and
Instagram because they have good experiences

I'm fairly sure that the racists, Nazis, conspiracy theorists and pedofiles
are have a great experience communicating with like minded people on Facebooks
platforms.

More interestingly I very excited to see if companies like Coca Cola, Lego and
Verizon will see any change in sales after boycotting Facebook for 30 days. If
their sales remain largely unaffected it will change the whole premise for a
large number of companies and challenge the existence many "online ad
agencies", which do little more than manage social media accounts.

------
untilHellbanned
Michael Jordan does not benefit from basketball.

~~~
lostgame
Better example: ‘Google does not benefit from stealing user data.’ :P

Jordan doesn’t even play ball anymore. :3

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Facebook owns a website.

Jordan owns a basketball team.

~~~
lostgame
Did not know he owned a team, hehe! Just knew he wasn’t playing anymore. Shows
you how much I know about basketball. :P

------
throwawaysea
Obviously, Facebook does not benefit much from "hate speech". The majority of
content on Facebook and the associated advertising/revenues are from other
types of content. The broad generalizations made by the Twitter mob and news
media about Facebook being 'built' on hate or 'profiting' from hate is
hyperbolic. That said, I think it is fair to say that Facebook, Twitter,
Reddit, and YouTube all benefit from engagement. And engagement is often built
on emotion, particularly negative emotions like outrage.

Personally, I wish Facebook would simply not give credence to complaints about
'hate' and only censor content that breaks the law. If someone doesn't like a
certain page or group or whatever, they can just choose not to follow them. It
is very simple. Therefore, what the anti-Facebook crowd is asking for is not
about their own experience. It's that they want no one else to be able to
harbor certain views or opinions or even to discuss them. That's dangerous,
and the vague and ever-expanding label of "hate speech" disallows
conversations that need to take place on controversial topics.

Given that there it is easy to curate one's own feed and experience on
Facebook, the motivation of this activist mob is simply to stifle others'
freedom of speech. The fact that they are doing it by pressuring a large
private organization (instead of a public one) does not make it any better,
even if it is legal. It is still unethical and immoral from my perspective,
because freedom of speech is _that_ fundamental to our society. Today in the
US, there is a ubiquity to attempts from mobs stifling speech using labels
like "hate speech". This must be met with fierce opposition in all situations,
big and small. If not, it will eventually bleed into more and more of our
society. We're already seeing it in absurd situations like Stephen Hsu's
resignation (see [https://www.thecollegefix.com/scholar-forced-to-resign-
over-...](https://www.thecollegefix.com/scholar-forced-to-resign-over-study-
that-found-police-shootings-not-biased-against-blacks/) or
[https://quillette.com/2020/07/01/on-steve-hsu-and-the-
campai...](https://quillette.com/2020/07/01/on-steve-hsu-and-the-campaign-to-
thwart-free-inquiry/)).

------
rp00
I’m not convinced hate speech is real and I’m certainly convinced that hate
speech is not violence.

I fucking hate Facebook.

------
empath75
> We’re a pioneer in artificial intelligence technology to remove hateful
> content at scale.

This is everything wrong with social media in a nutshell. This isn't a problem
that can be solved with artificial intelligence. You need human beings
enforcing human standards of decency.

Keep in mind, that Facebook's 'artifical intelligence' algorithms
automatically created lots of white supremacy groups and promote white
supremacy content, and allowed advertising targetted at white supremacists.

Throwing more AI at a problem created and exacerbated by ai isn't going to
solve it.

~~~
zpeti
And you think humans will do a good job at correctly assessing pieces of
content on the sliding scale of “hate”? When one moment it’s fine debating
gender issues and a moment later it’s hate speech? For 35,000 people?

This is an impossible problem, both for AI and humans. Any suggestion that
this will be solved is pandering bullshit to the NYT crowd.

~~~
commandlinefan
It's becoming increasingly clear that "hate" is a dog-whistle for "not
explicitly left-wing". Which is unfortunate, because yet another useful word
is being stripped of meaning.

