
Is Facebook capable of adapting to the world it created? - zelias
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/magazine/can-facebook-fix-its-own-worst-bug.html
======
clydethefrog
Observations from this article:

\- Zuckerberg denied he is running for president in 2020. I wonder what is the
reason of his postelection tour in America and his big PR team. [1] I don't
think it's possible to be both Statesman Zuck and Silicon Valley engineer
Zuck. As the article says, you cannot be concerned with only quantifiable
outcomes and at the same time propagate fuzzy human ideas like ethics,
judgment and intuition.

\- Facebook's motto of Move Fast and Break Things seems to be replaced with
Break Things and Test Results. The News Feed has turned into a Skinner box to
study the daily behaviour of more than a billion people.

\- I get very overstimulated looking at the picture of their newsfeed office
for a few seconds - bravo for people being able to be focused and able to
write code in that environment!

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-
team...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team-runs-
mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-page)

~~~
ithinkinstereo
> Zuckerberg denied he is running for president in 2020.

That's a common tactic. I'm all but sure he plans on entering politics. In
addition to his recent tour of America and big PR team, he also recently
renounced his atheism. That, imo, is a big tell.

Trumps win this fall is going to open the door for many other billionaire-
celebrities. He basically proved that name recognition alone can take you very
far.

This is why you see people like Mark Cuban mulling a campaign.

Zuck has name recognition - arguably more than Trump - is less _blatantly_
offensive, and has a treasure trove of data. Not to mention a natural
marketing/communications/propaganda platform. He also has a seasoned team of
lobbyists at his disposal. Oh and he's loaded, too.

~~~
michaelchisari
Zuckerberg lacks the charisma. His run will be more Carson than Trump.

He severely lacks the oratory skills of Obama, the fiery commitment to
economic justice of Bernie, the decades of government experience of Hillary,
or the Barnum-esque showmanship of Trump.

Trump is the first non-stateman to win, and he did it by keeping the cameras
on him at all times, and competing against a wide field of primary candidates
that split the vote. And also by appealing to some base desires that
Republicans have only dog-whistled in the past.

And the left is much less friendly to a billionaire with eyes on purchasing
the presidency than the right. Why would anyone pick Zuckerberg in 2020 when
they could pick someone like Warren or Booker?

I'm not saying he won't run, but I think it's delusional to think he can win a
primary, let alone the presidency.

~~~
ithinkinstereo
1) He has name-recognition. This carries you very far. Who doesn't know Zuck?
He even had a hit movie made about him.

2) He has money. Doesn't need to waste time raising funds. He can also take
Trump's line and say he is independent, not in the pockets of big money doners

3) He has access to possibly, the best voter database, and a platform to
communicate and drive home his messaging (remember, some say that Trump's win
was due to massive FB analytics and targeted ad campaigns)

4) He is likely already in bed with the "establishment". I'm sure he has deep
connections to the intelligence agencies and local, state, and federal
government. Not to mention of course, the media.

5) He is young and likely more appealing to the millennial generation, who
will be more deeply entrenched in society by the time he runs. Certainty more
appealing than say Booker or Warren.

> And the left is much less friendly to a billionaire with eyes on purchasing
> the presidency than the right. Why would anyone pick Zuckerberg in 2020 when
> they could pick someone like Warren or Booker?

Warren and Booker are pretty discredited IMO. It'll be hard for Warren to win
the Bernie votes, given her disloyalty and lack of action during the
primaries. I had such high hopes for her, but she really let the power and
possibility of a presidential run corrupt her. Her who shtick was this
fearless, independent, populist. That image came crashing down this election.
If she would have publicly backed Bernie early on, he might have taken the
nomination. It's obvious to all that she only backed HRC to kiss-ass to the
establishment and curry favors for either a VP nom or to secure her
"successor" status to Hillary. Compare her actions to someone like Gabbard.

Booker is similar discredited, given his non-transparent lobbying for a
variety of corporate elites.

The main problem for Zuck is his young, rich, tech, Jew shtick makes me
persona non-grata for alot of blue collar voters in the key swing states. But
who knows, the next generation of those voters, who grew up on FB/Instagram,
may not find him so unappealing as their parents.

I think he has a pretty good shot. I def agree that his main weakness is his
lack of charisma and perceived fakeness / always-scheming persona, but thats
something that can be changed with the key handlers, messaging, and media
campaigns.

~~~
username223
> He even had a hit movie made about him.

In which he was the villain.

He has more or less zero people skills, but truckloads of money, and creepy
amounts of personal information. IMHO his best bet for being elected President
would be to straight-up purchase a major party's nomination, then buy the
necessary votes in swing states. Let's say it costs $1b to buy a party's
nomination. Florida was won by about 100,000 votes in 2016, and he can
probably target persuadable voters using FB's data. Can he buy those people's
votes for another billion (i.e. $10k apiece)?

~~~
fatjokes
Not just any kind of villain---the angry, rejected nerd villain. Villain or
hero, nobody really wants to get behind that.

~~~
ithinkinstereo
Well a lot of people got behind Bernie, who has that whole, old-man-get-offff-
myyyy-lawwwwn-socialist-curmudgeon, image going.

I think a team of handlers could prob mold Zuck into presentable shape.

------
clumsysmurf
The thesis of this article explores the idea:

"After studying how people shared 1.25 million stories during the campaign, a
team of researchers at M.I.T. and Harvard implicated Facebook and Twitter in
the larger failure of media in 2016."

This is one problem, but according to Nicholas Carr the problem might be
deeper and more fundamental : "free-flowing information makes personal and
cultural differences more salient, turning people against one another instead
of bringing them together."

[http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/04/21/how-
technology-c...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/04/21/how-technology-
created-global-village-and-put-each-other-
throats/pu7MyoAkdyVComb9aKyu6K/story.html)

~~~
cubano
Well of course..It's the echo chamber effect that's been discussed since the
90's.

I didn't read the article because, frankly, I have no interest in Zuck's
pointifications​ ... He created a 900lb gorilla and sometimes the beast is
gonna wreck havoc. Nothing with the deep social significance of FB can skate
through culture without ripping up a few roads.

I think it's much ado about nothing and is nothing but the new normal.

------
bigato
All I wanted from facebook regarding that problem on how to deal with news on
my timeline was one option to hide all shared links and content and show only
my friend's original content. When I want news I know where to find them and
it's not on facebook.

~~~
propter_hoc
News on Facebook is a real problem, because the news stories that get shared
on Facebook are things that people get really upset about. Donald Trump got
tons of press because he deliberately and repeatedly said the most outrageous
things.

I've now individually hidden every major news source (BBC, CNN, etc...). Huge
improvement to my Facebook experience. While I still get ads from companies,
my Facebook feed has been entirely purged of Donald Trump and mass murders.

~~~
bigato
Every time someone shares something from some source, I block the source. It
improves the experience indeed, but people never cease finding different
sources.

------
supernumerary
Bernard Stiegler and a bunch of French philosophers have been writing about
this idea of 'Algorithmic Governmentality' which I think is a useful way of
discerning Mark Zuckerberg's intentions, press releases, denials etc aside.

"I would like to show that with algorithmic governmentality, what we face is
precisely a crisis of the regimes of truth. To my mind, we are less facing the
emergence of a new regime of truth than a crisis of regimes of truth. A whole
range of notions are in crisis: the notions of person, authority, testimony."

More here if you're interested: [https://iainmait.land/pdf/Rouvroy-
Stiegler.pdf](https://iainmait.land/pdf/Rouvroy-Stiegler.pdf)

~~~
chillingeffect
looks like a great contemporary read.

Buckminster Fuller talked about the same thing in Cybernetics. He made the
proposal that a feedback formula such as PID would lead to utopia when applied
to government... but as many note, the problem is less about distribution of
quantifiable resources than managing conflicting values.

------
losteverything
Good info in article. Name / age of news feed head and 99.9% belief to name
one thing.

I also came away still believing even more how we are still better off now -
even with some fake news- than the time of Walter Cronkite and the pre cable
networks. All you had was whatever THEY decided you should know. One of two
newspapers with editors that chose for you.

Even as a news junkie in my pre teens I wondered why they chose what they
chose. Thus, by default , what they chose was important.

Now people choose and we just don't like the results, especially the old
school hardcore journalists.

To the people working at FB NF, do not let old school editors change your
"user decides" algorithms. And never put a human in an editing position.

Remember, it's JUST news.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I think the Internet and competition from social media has made journalism
better, as you can no longer buy up every local paper when Twitter and
Facebook and Blogger make journalists out of anybody, and as a result the news
companies have to work extra hard to justify their subscriptions.

In addition, mainstream US newspaper subscriptions have been booming since the
election with readers demanding unprecedented oversight over this new
administration and its addiction to blatant lying. In a way, fake news made
real newspapers great again.

~~~
AlexandrB
> I think the Internet and competition from social media has made journalism
> better, as you can no longer buy up every local paper when Twitter and
> Facebook and Blogger make journalists out of anybody, and as a result the
> news companies have to work extra hard to justify their subscriptions.

Why would you need to buy up anything when you own the entire platform people
consume their news on (e.g. Facebook)? Sure anyone can be a journalist, but
unless Facebook's algorithms like what you're writing you might as well be
yelling at a wall. I think the internet's golden age of information freedom is
quickly coming to a close with the re-centralization of content publishing and
discovery into a handful massive, privately-owned platforms.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _In the span of a few months, the Valley has been transformed from a
> politically disengaged company town into a center of anti-Trump resistance
> and fear_

Is this true? As a Valley-raised New Yorker who visits frequently, Silicon
Valley seems politically sleepy. Conversations are vibrant as ever. But action
is slim.

~~~
derefr
I would guess that the "action" of SV-ites would show up more online than in-
person. Building websites that send letters to congressmen, things like that.

------
AndrewKemendo
My guess is that this discussion wouldn't even be happening if Hillary had
won. Is my instinct correct there?

The whole article basically paints Trump supporters in the same light as
terrorists and Nazis - nothing unfamiliar in discourse certainly - but
certainly not a neutral stance.

I mean basically all of this "introspection" and everything surrounding
facebook "investigating" fake news etc... came, not from FB, but from the
MIT/Harvard study as well as from either side of the aisle shouting fake news
and news bubbles.

~~~
snowpanda
This article and (one-sided) discussion is simply an extension of the Ad
Hominem filled election cycle. Anyone who doesn't believe Trump is a dictator
must be a nazi, racist, sexist, reads fake news, doesn't understand how
(insert topic) works etc.

------
pc2g4d
That picture of the newsfeed floor makes working there look like a nightmare.

~~~
artur_makly
oh look at least they have a Black Lives Matter poster.

------
squozzer
This is why establishment politicians were so scared of Trump's victory -- it
may well have triggered a celebrity apocalypse in DC, a city sometimes
referred to as Hollywood for the Less Attractive.

At least we haven't reached the point where the armed forces are auctioning
the Presidency.

------
blurrywh
OT: The article's cover picture is a masterpiece.

Reminds me of 'Spirits that I've cited // My commands ignore.' (Goethe)

