
How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us - jf
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/
======
tzakrajs
Quit using it. Let's go back to the way the internet used to be, y'know with
instant messaging and a multitude of cultures that have their own ecosystems.
Let's stop consolidating all of this information and wealth in the hands of
people who don't give a shit about what makes us different (unless it sells an
ad).

~~~
fzeroracer
Go back to what, the AIM and Myspace domination? Before Facebook it was
Myspace that was the juggernaut of the social media sphere.

As the number of people that can freely access the internet grows, you see
them focusing around a single social media platform. That's because social
media strongly benefits from centralization, it's easier to talk to family and
friends if you don't have to manage fifty different accounts.

The idea that there was a 'multitude of cultures' before Facebook is just
wrong. There was the main social media platforms and a bunch of niche
offshoots. That's why this is such a tricky problem to fix because even if
Facebook vanished tomorrow, eventually there would be another platform which
absolutely everyone would circle around.

~~~
JoshMnem
Not AIM and MySpace, but things like XMPP, where you could use one chat client
and connect to your own Jabber server, Twitter, and Google chat.

One solution is open, decentralized protocols.

The article addresses that a little bit here:

> ...the internet platforms were able to pursue business strategies that would
> not have been allowed in prior decades. No one stopped them from using free
> products to centralize the internet and then replace its core functions.

~~~
fzeroracer
It's a solution to a separate problem. You need to make something easy to use
for the masses, you need to make it safe from bad actors and you need to
actually advertise it.

It's easy to talk about open and decentralized protocols but social media is a
popularity contest, not one based off the best or most free platform. As the
article mentions nothing was and nothing is stopping them from capitalizing on
open and free products, followed by gutting and replacing them.

~~~
JoshMnem
They build their products on open technologies and then attempt to extinguish
the open technologies.

XMPP, RSS/Atom, and HTML are three examples of EEE in modern times.

\- XMPP => proprietary chat that locks users in

\- RSS/Atom => algorithmic news feeds that lock users in

\- HTML => AMP -- if you want distribution, they tie your hands with markup
and monetization restrictions

\- etc.

------
TAForObvReasons
> we should consider that the time has come to revive the country’s
> traditional approach to monopoly. Since the Reagan era, antitrust law has
> operated under the principle that monopoly is not a problem so long as it
> doesn’t result in higher prices for consumers. Under that framework,
> Facebook and Google have been allowed to dominate several industries—not
> just search and social media but also email, video, photos, and digital ad
> sales, among others—increasing their monopolies by buying potential rivals
> like YouTube and Instagram. While superficially appealing, this approach
> ignores costs that don’t show up in a price tag. Addiction to Facebook,
> YouTube, and other platforms has a cost. Election manipulation has a cost.
> Reduced innovation and shrinkage of the entrepreneurial economy has a cost.
> All of these costs are evident today. We can quantify them well enough to
> appreciate that the costs to consumers of concentration on the internet are
> unacceptably high.

With the current deck of politicians, it is highly unlikely that anything will
be done to address this

~~~
cookiecaper
Hyper-restrictive copyright and network access laws (coupled with aggressive
interpretations a la the RAM Copy Doctrine) are the key overlooked components
that have allowed the net to devolve into a giant AOL-Keyword-ized walled
garden.

Fix these laws (which doesn't necessarily mean abandoning their core concepts)
and the floodgates will open with fresh competition. This is never discussed
because these legal mechanisms undergird a _massive_ part of the tech and
media industries. It is better to fix the anti-competitive mechanisms at the
source than to use the anti-trust kludge to break down people who have simply
exploited them too well.

~~~
dreamfactored
Underlying driver for this is that an unregulated market favours economies of
scale and network effects and therefore trends towards monopolies. This is
particularly pronounced and accelerated on digital platforms.

------
grinsekatze
“Fixing yourself” automatically fixes the “Facebook problem”. Because then,
Facebook will be completely irrelevant to you.

~~~
DFHippie
The question isn't whether Facebook is relevant to you. It's whether it's
relevant to 300 million other people.

If a problem as 300 million causes, you still have a problem if you cut that
down to 299,999,999.

~~~
harryf
Society has always been manipulated. Facebook has nothing on religions for
example.

The real question is whether an individual checking out from Facebook harms
themselves in some way e.g. less able to find work? We just need to make sure
Facebook never gets endorsement as some kind of identity / passport.

~~~
DFHippie
> Society has always been manipulated.

True. And people have always murdered each other. But when millions of people
are murdering each other we call it war.

My body is fighting some millions of germs right now. If you add an order of
magnitude or two to that I'll be sick. Or dead.

A camel can carry a lot of straw. Enough straw can crush a camel.

At some point we have to deal with the problem.

------
eadmund
> When citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in
> June 2016, most observers were stunned. The polls had predicted a victory
> for the “Remain” campaign. And common sense made it hard to believe that
> Britons would do something so obviously contrary to their self-interest.

Y'know, I suspect that Leave voters thought leaving _was_ in their self-
interest — or at the very least that voting 'Leave' send a message which was
in their self-interest.

What I find perhaps most interesting here is how the narrative about political
campaigns has changed in four and eight years. When Mr. Obama won twice, his
campaign's adroit use of the Internet was praised by the media; when President
Trump (for whom I did _not_ vote) won, his campaign's — and other actors' —
use of the Internet has been reviled by the media.

I think all of this is just due to psychic aftershocks from the 2016 election:
folks just can't believe that their candidate lost, that they live in a
country which rejected her. The sad fact of the matter is that Mrs. Clinton
was _easily_ the worst candidate that the Democrats have put forward in a
generation — she makes Mondale, Dukakis & Kerry look charismatic! Pretty much
any Democrat in the country could have won the election — heck, Tim Kaine (the
Democratic vice-presidential candidate) would almost certainly have won
handily.

My own theory is that outside meddling in the U.S. election was intended to
weaken Mrs. Clinton's administration. I don't think anyone expected Mr. Trump
to win.

> It reads like the plot of a sci-fi novel: a technology celebrated for
> bringing people together is exploited by a hostile power to drive people
> apart, undermine democracy, and create misery. This is precisely what
> happened in the United States during the 2016 election.

You know, there were an awful lot of folks who felt pretty similarly in 2012.
I don't think many of them tried to undermine the freedoms of association &
speech, although perhaps some did.

~~~
foobarbecue
> Mrs. Clinton was ... [not charismatic]

I've never understood this line; she always seemed charismatic to me.

I'm curious -- can you name a female politician you consider charismatic?

~~~
eadmund
> I'm curious -- can you name a female politician you consider charismatic?

I hate to say it, but the first example which leaps to mind is Mrs. Palin.
There's no _there_ there (as anyone who watched her vice-presidential debate
performance would know) but she was, at the time, quite charismatic.

Senator Gillibrand might count, but I've not seen her speak often enough to
have an opinion.

Certainly with someone like Baroness Thatcher one knew that she had a brain,
and she was keen to use it, but I don't know if she was _charismatic_. I don't
think that's a word anyone would apply to Mrs. Merkel, either. Maybe Indira
Gandhi? I don't know enough about her to know.

~~~
foobarbecue
What do you think of Elisabeth Warren?

~~~
eadmund
I think that Sen. Warren had more charisma before she entered politics (this
is probably true of Mrs. Palin, too). There's certainly a strong group of
people for whom she has quite a bit of charisma today, but I don't think that
they're a terribly large electorate (although they are probably
disproportionately represented in the media, which will certainly help her).

She's certainly smart, but that's not the same as charisma.

------
fortylove
I quit Facebook around Christmas time. Felt weird at first, but overall it's
been a position experience. The Chrome blocker plugin I use to enforce my
quitting keeps a count of how many times I've attempted to visit it. I'm in
the 40s now. If I spent 2 minutes per visit, then I've saved 80 so far!

~~~
pcurve
I blocked reddit. I can still use it via incognito mode if it contains useful
information while doing Google search result. What I've learned is that, I
wasn't really addicted to reddit as much as my bored fingers were. I don't
miss it.

I also blocked cnn.com, and couple other sites that I habitually go to. I may
even add HN to the list. Sure there are some gems to be found here, but I find
myself coming here more to read comments and headlines. It has essentially
turned into reddit for me.

~~~
fortylove
For me it was/is the same thing- bored fingers go cmd-t + faceb... + enter out
of habit

------
tankenmate
This quote sums up, for the most part, how the system is gamed; "People tend
to react more to inputs that land low on the brainstem". Maybe parents and
schools should teach kids more about how not to respond in such a fashion.

~~~
kleer001
I get the impression that well meaning teachers, parents, guardians, friends,
strangers, and everyone else HAS been trying very hard for a very long time.
Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, you think they were trying their darndest?

The problem is that even if we give ourselves well meaning instructions that
will benefit ourselves in the medium to long term, invariably we will come to
betray ourselves.

Personally I think it stems from a censor-breaker strategy that emerges from
the complexity of the limited hardware we have that needs to quickly solve
real world problems.

~~~
jessaustin
In my experience teenagers are often better at ignoring "lower brainstem"
attacks than their "teachers, parents, guardians," etc. Much like a DOS
attack, ignoring this shit early and often is the dominant success strategy.

~~~
kleer001
I'd be very interested in your experience as that goes against what I
understand about human neurocognitive maturation as echoed by insurance rates,
suicide rates, violence, teen pregnancy, etc...

------
mlinksva
Search for 'tax' finds one instance:

> This allowed the platforms to centralize the internet, inserting themselves
> between users and content, effectively imposing a tax on both sides.

Sadly this does not contain the obvious fix: tax ads.

~~~
chrislloyd
I'd love you to go into more detail with this proposal. How would taxing ads
be different than just taxing corporations?

~~~
maxxxxx
I like the idea. Ads could be treated as pollution.

~~~
tzahola
Ads _are_ pollution. Information pollution.

------
tarkin2
Facebook's monopoly is a problem because, increasingly, Facebook's dopamine-
driven tools replaces traditional civic society. They're easier. They're
superficially more pleasing. They're often addictive. And any company in
control of the sphere in which people congregate and interact then controls
/how/ we congregate and interact. And if you control how we congregate and
interact then you control how we exert control on those who we chose to rule
us. As soon as you change that quality, quantity and ability you change the
whole basis of society. And therefore how that society presses its current
rulers and chooses its future rulers. And this is happening and has happened.
And it may not be for the best.

------
jessaustin
I wish TFA had opposed Facebook for the right reasons and in the right way. It
really is a massive waste of our collective thought and attention, but
apparently that's only bad because then we voted for the guy that the TV
talked about _all the time_. (You know another era in which we voted exactly
as TV told us to vote? Before the internet existed! Oh Facebook you have
ruined us!) Also apparently the answer is to expand FCC's role until it
defends Facebook against all competition in precisely the manner in which it
has long defended Bell Telephone against all competition. Democracy in action!

(And Google? Does TFA actually contain an argument against Google, or did he
just mention it a bunch of times? Oh right, they stopped funding a think tank.
To a Washingtonian that would probably constitute a high crime. Out here in
flyover country, that doesn't even rate a "meh".)

If the author really wanted to help, rather than insert himself and his
cronies into the regulatory state, he'd be getting Sanders and Warren on a
reality show with Snoop Dogg and Mama June, right away. Or he could act like
what he claims to be, a "technology investor", and start funding the
innovations that will eat the heart out of an increasingly old and ungainly
Facebook. It's _interesting_ that he made such a big deal about his visionary
investment in Facebook without bothering to tell us if he is still invested.
(Which, obviously, he is, which is why he wrote TFA about this wonderful
"movement" which coincidentally totally aligns with Facebook's interests.)

------
marenkay
"Dear diary, here is how I repeat what thousands of people have been saying
about Facebook/Google/etc. for years."

I am wondering how someone seemingly oblivious to what Facebook is can be a
successful investor.

~~~
aaron-lebo
I'd agree, it was obvious what FB and Zuckerberg were from the beginning. But
we all see what we want to and what we allow ourselves to see, so it's
commendable that they are seeing it now and speaking against it.

~~~
marenkay
It is human nature. We all grow up and regret mistakes. Most often in public
for the sake of showing how we have grown.

------
misterbowfinger
> All software platforms should be required to offer a legitimate opt-out, one
> that enables users to stick with the prior version if they do not like the
> new EULA. “Forking” platforms between old and new versions would have
> several benefits: increased consumer choice, greater transparency on the
> EULA, and more care in the rollout of new functionality, among others

Interesting. Although if this applied to all software platforms, I suspect
startups are going to be hit a lot harder than the big co's. Maintaining this
level of "forking" seems like a nontrivial engineering task.

> Eighth, and finally, we should consider that the time has come to revive the
> country’s traditional approach to monopoly

Feels unclear how this would help. It feels difficult to craft anti-trust laws
that big co's can't reason their way out of. But IANAL, so please correct me
if I'm wrong here.

------
svilen_dobrev
hmm. if one grasps the basic idea behind this (recently top-HN-ed) weird-
machines+exploitability stuff:
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx7/6245516/6558478/08226852.pd...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx7/6245516/6558478/08226852.pdf?tp=&arnumber=8226852&isnumber=6558478)
and extrapolates "weirdness" further from hardware/OS/application into a
social-network-as-system... there might be many ways to hack it to do
something useful for someone. How about Machiavelly-as-a-service, anyone?

------
log_base_login
Pretty long article that I doubt most will read in its entirety, if at all.

It was, however, a good read about social engineering, and I've summarized the
points made and the solutions proposed below:

>Fear and anger produce a lot more engagement and sharing than joy.

>The result is that the algorithms favor sensational content over substance.

>Continuous reinforcement of existing beliefs tends to entrench those beliefs
more deeply, while also making them more extreme and resistant to contrary
facts.

>The Russians appear to have invested heavily in weakening the candidacy of
Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary by promoting emotionally charged
content to supporters of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, as well as to likely
Clinton supporters who might be discouraged from voting.

>We also have evidence now that Russia used its social media tactics to
manipulate the Brexit vote.

>A team of researchers reported in November, for instance, that more than
150,000 Russian-language Twitter accounts posted pro-Leave messages in the
run-up to the referendum.

>[B]ad actors plant a rumor on sites like 4chan and Reddit, leverage the
disenchanted people on those sites to create buzz, build phony news sites with
“press” versions of the rumor, push the story onto Twitter to attract the real
media, then blow up the story for the masses on Facebook.

>Facebook and Google responded by reiterating their opposition to government
regulation, insisting that it would kill innovation and hurt the country’s
global competitiveness, and that self-regulation would produce better results.

>Polls suggest that about a third of Americans believe that Russian
interference is fake news, despite unanimous agreement to the contrary by the
country’s intelligence agencies.

Solutions proposed:

1) [I]t’s essential to ban digital bots that impersonate humans

2) [T]he platforms should not be allowed to make any acquisitions until they
have addressed the damage caused to date, taken steps to prevent harm in the
future, and demonstrated that such acquisitions will not result in diminished
competition.

3) [T]he platforms must be transparent about who is behind political and
issues-based communication.

4) [T]he platforms must be more transparent about their algorithms.

5) [T]he platforms should be required to have a more equitable contractual
relationship with users.

6) [W]e need a limit on the commercial exploitation of consumer data by
internet platforms.

7) [C]onsumers, not the platforms, should own their own data.

8) [F]inally, we should consider that the time has come to revive the
country’s traditional approach to monopoly.

~~~
thisacctforreal
I suspect people worried about these issues are a bit more likely to make time
& muster attention to read the articles on the topic.

This article was at the very end of my one-sitting article-reading endurance,
but it had enough of a flow for me to finish with only a bit of skimming near
the end.

Thank you for preparing a great summary :)

~~~
log_base_login
You're welcome!

After reading a few paragraphs I realized it was going to be largely
anecdotal, so I figured paring it down would save some people ten or twenty
minutes. I agree, however, that the flow made it more manageable to enjoy.

------
pimmen
This year is election year in Sweden and we know the Russians spread
disinformation during the Finnish election through social media. They’ve had
plenty of practice for taking on our small country.

Denmark, Norway and Finland have a populist, far right party in their
respective government coalition, Sweden and Iceland are the only Nordic
countries that have resisted. I fear this will stop being the case. The Sweden
Democrats are already polling highly and something bad, anything, wether it’s
a recession after this long bull market or a politically charged murder could
quickly be blamed on immigration and spread like wildfire on social media by
people who love simple answers to complicated questions.

~~~
qbaqbaqba
Aren't you overestimating facebook influence and underestimating the real
life? If "evil Russia" is spreading misinformation isn't it a great
opportunity for traditional media to expose and correct the misinformation?
Censorship will mate the matter only worse.

~~~
pimmen
I don't really think I am underestimating it, we can see a clear connection
between supporters of Trump (and other far-right populist politicians) and the
disinformation they've received from Russia. I'm not suggesting Russia started
the angry movements that are dismissive of experts and government officials to
begin with but they could potentially swing other people to join the already
existing movement.

We already know this is possible. The media has managed to influence elections
multiple times, so has celebrities and religious officials (in Sweden, one of
our most beloved children's books authors is credited with influencing the
1976 election a lot) and Facebook makes the angry person with a catchy meme as
influential for a few weeks.

The thing is that too many don't trust traditional media even when it's
revealed Russia were influencing elections. As the piece stated, more than 30%
of Americans believe Russian meddling in the US election is fake news, even
though the US intelligence community has no doubt they were involved. 30% is
absolutely enough to swing an election.

So, I'm not really suggesting censorship, neither is the opinion piece linked
in the OP. Let Facebook be responsible for the defamation resulting from these
malicious posts and you can bet your ass they'll throw money at stomping out
this problem.

------
pipio21
It is obvious for reading just a few lines of this article that the author is
extremely biased in support of Clinton and Democrats and he only cares about
media manipulation when he loses. If media manipulation in his side it doesn't
matter.

I am not American and from my point of view Democrats totally own media
attention in the US. They own the artists and famous people space, they own
most important TVs and newspapers and so on.

In fact Trump won because of their support, as they only talked about him in
preelection time, as they believed Trump was way weaker than other Republican
candidates.

Now this man is socked not because Facebook is a manipulation media, like TV
or Newspapers, but because other entities could control it as well as they
can.

For this man it was obvious that Hillary was going to win (because they
control most media) so it was a big surprise that people could actually vote
on their own in a democracy system.

The day they lost the election he wants to talk with Zuckerberg to "make them
aware of the problems" of facebook not being a totally biased platform like
the New York times or Washington Post is.

Again as a non American I don't want to be manipulated by either side. I don't
want to be forced to go to a WWIII just because some people can't deal with
losing a democratic election or because some guy impulsive action.

So it looks to me that the best solution is to design alternatives to facebook
that are not as centralized and to start using them even if they are not as
good.

~~~
jessaustin
I wish we Americans were sensible enough to implement the suggestions you make
here. I'm not optimistic about that, however.

------
spiraldancing
Just curious ... show of hands, how many people here have never been on
Facebook?

~~~
jessaustin
I created an account once, in "incognito" mode, but I only sent one message
and never posted anything... It turned out that someone who couldn't be
emailed or telephoned because he "was only on Facebook" also didn't respond on
Facebook. Shocking!

------
noncoml
Give me one good reason on why we need Facebook.

~~~
ThomPete
Gossip, life, entertainment, procrastination. Nothing wrong with that at all.

------
teaneedz
I stopped reading after so many I's in just the beginning. It's an all about
"me" piece.

~~~
simsla
I agree the article is incredibly long (him establishing his credentials is
almost an article onto itself), but I assure you that the article is not just
about him. :-)

One of the other commenters gave a succinct bulleted overview. I recommend you
check it out, if you're interested in what the article was actually about.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092602)

------
sam0x17
People still use facebook?

------
erAck
Facebook never fixed me so I didn't have to fix it. No account. Ever.

~~~
erAck
Who's nerve did I hit that it got voted down?

~~~
pmlnr
The nerve that you're responding to the title, not the article.

------
disposablename
Nuke it from orbit.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments here?

------
thegasman
The author justifies his desire to regulate facebook with election outcomes he
finds personally unpalatable. (u mad, bro?)

Yes, visceral content has high engagement. But is this really new information?

How can you recommend content regulation without exacerbating the problem?

------
ram_rar
Its been 1.5yrs since, I had uninstalled FB app from my phone due to battery
usage and havent used it since. Most of my friends are on WhatsApp and we have
groups for each occasion like roadtrips/ bdays etc. I follow few on my friends
on Instagram, which I occasionally see before making my next travel plans. Its
feels more appropriate to share in the right context, unlike FB which feels
like a public restroom.

~~~
659087
> WhatsApp

> Instagram

You're still using and supporting Facebook services, then.

~~~
ram_rar
Those 2 services are a lot better than Facebook newsfeed, which is basically a
pile of garbage!

------
Yetanfou
Don't use Facebook or any of their properties like Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.
Just as important, tell others not to use Facebook (et al). Tell your children
not to use Instagram and Whatsapp (they won't care about Facebook as that is
'for older people'). When someone proposes using Facebook to plan something
point out that Facebook is not the right venue for such activities, use email
instead. If your neighbourhood wants to start a 'Whatsapp group' tell them to
use an alternative (Telegram comes to mind). If your local council wants to
communicate through Facebook just tell them to quit doing so as they have no
business pushing their constituents towards any commercial entity, let alone
towards Facebook. Just steer anyone and everyone away from Facebook (and
similar companies for that matter but Facebook is the one to kick to the curb
first). Don't be a zealot and bring up this subject when there is no call for
it but don't be shy to voice your opinion when it is warranted. Make sure to
be able to answer questions as to why Facebook should be shunned.

Yes, you do run the risk of being seen as a Don Quichote who probably even
uses Linux but so be it.

~~~
pmlnr
Don't this, don't that - geez. Tell what TO do, what TO use. Saying not to
without solutions is completely useless noise.

~~~
Yetanfou
Smokey told you not to play with matches. Way back in time one of your
ancestors told another of your ancestors not to play in the crocodile-infested
Limpopo river. Frank Zappa sings about some parents warning their children to
watch where the huskies go and not to eat that yellow snow.

Sometimes it is necessary to warn people about something. They can make up
their own mind about what to do instead, it is not as if the internet is
useless without Facebook (et al) after all? Do you really think it is
necessary to tell people what to use instead of Facebook when the options are
so abundant and clear, not to mention the fact that they were around when
Facebook was naught but a glint in the eye of whomever M.Z. got the idea from?

