
Can Facebook Be Fixed? Should It Be? - furcyd
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/opinion/facebook-chris-hughes.html
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JumpCrisscross
Social media with an ad-based business model inherently incentivises
maximizing engagement in both time and intensity. The time incentive leads to
addiction. The intensity incentive leads to promoting hyperbolic content. (The
latter almost always leads to divisive, angry content.)

Breaking that incentive structure is tough. It would mean substantially re-
building the company, perhaps down to its business model, corporate
organization and management. (It almost certainly requires breaking WhatsApp
and Instagram off as separate companies.)

~~~
ben_jones
Media with an ad-based business model inherently incentives maximizing
engagement in both time and intensity. The time incentive leads to addiction.
The intensity incentive leads to promoting hyperbolic content. (The latter
almost always leads to divisive, angry content.) Breaking that incentive
structure is tough. It would mean substantially re-building the company(ies),
perhaps down to its business model, corporate organization and management.

Fixed a couple typos.

To be literal though, I agree with your point but I find a massive irony in
News having the same inherent flaws as social media while also leading the
charge against Facebook etc. It's all rotten.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I find a massive irony in News having the same inherent flaws as social
> media_

News is broadcast, _i.e._ few to many. If the _New York Times_ or _Wall Street
Journal_ or _RT_ say something insidious, everyone has a chance to call them
out on it.

Social media is closer to P2P. Content is selectively targeted over the social
graph. Platforms' ad models further microtarget along ideological lines. This
makes it difficult or even impossible to know what someone in another domain
is seeing, which makes responding in a timely manner practically impossible.

(Also, mass media is nowhere close to social media when it comes to the
prevalence and intensity of addiction.)

TL; DR The problems mass media has with addictiveness and hyperbole are
amplified on ad-driven social media platforms.

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throw7
Facebook is a "Public Square"? Please. Call a spade a spade... it is a "Walled
Garden". If you don't like how the roses are starting to smell, well, step
outside the gates, no one is keeping you in:

[https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674](https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674)

~~~
supercanuck
Facebook is tracking you online, even if you don't have an account

[https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-tracking-you-even-if-
you-d...](https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-tracking-you-even-if-you-dont-
have-account-888699)

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caiocaiocaio
Between the title and the first paragraph, there is a prominent 'like on
Facebook' button, so the subtext is pro-Facebook no matter what is written in
the article.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Or maybe it underscores the point that using Facebook is an uncomfortable
requirement for many people and businesses, no matter how much they might hate
it?

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robertpelloni
IMO there is very little need for the friends mechanism on Facebook. I think
you should just add people you are interested in, and they add you if they are
interested in you, and there should be no confirmation whether you were added
or not. That way there is less of the toxic clique behavior possible where you
unfriend or refuse to friend someone, no popularity contest or friend counts,
and the current behavior of seeing friend-only posts would still function if
you mutually added each other. The way it is designed seems to me to invite
drama and is a big problem. Please change it, Mark!

~~~
saghm
Seems pretty similar to the Twitter model, which still produces plenty of
toxic behavior

~~~
robertpelloni
Yes, minus follower counts and the ability to see followers/follows. There is
no practical reason I can see to have those features. I consider Facebook to
be a useful public utility like a modern white pages and I wish the design was
just a little different.

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RedneckBob
Someone needs to create a new social network that will import the data blob
that Facebook creates when users request all their data.

In fact, this new social network will automatically request all your data,
download it, and import it for you if you enter your Facebook credentials.

Double fact, this new social network runs on top of a blockchain and you keep
the keys and from this point forward, you control access to your data and all
future data added to the site.

If you control the keys, its your data. If you don't control the keys, its not
your data.

~~~
laurex
Why do you want a 'new social network'? As in a place where you're primarily
signaling to strangers or acquaintances, as opposed to, say, just a way to
have actual relationships with people who you actually want to have a
relationship (plus events, of course)? It feels like what's missing from
Facebook isn't simply data privacy, it's a fundamental premise about
relationships and discourse, but I'm curious if I'm missing something.

~~~
davidivadavid
What would you call that "way to have actual relationships, etc."? It's a
social network. Just one of a different kind.

I think Facebook understands that very well, or at least Zuckerberg does, and
that's why they're taking that turn towards community, reflected in their new
mission statement and new initiatives.

People don't give Facebook enough credit sometimes, and I'm saying that as
someone who almost never uses their services. They know what an ideal social
network would be. Now it remains to be seen if they can pivot the current
behemoth into that ideal in a viable, profitable way. Short of that, they'll
probably get "disrupted" sooner than later.

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jakelazaroff
My favorite comment:

 _> Zuckerberg’s power seems quintessentially American to me and reveals the
fundamental contradiction at the heart of our economic model: compete until
you succeed, but if you succeed too much you’re being anti-competitive. Free-
market fundamentalists should be rejoicing at the success of Facebook, Amazon
and Google. They represent the holy grail at the end of the Darwinian quest.
Isn’t this perfection? What could go wrong? There’s no better time to wake up
and realize we’re in bed with the Devil. — Mark Holmes, Twain Harte, Calif._

This is what happens when deregulation is taken to the extreme. Facebook is a
company that breaks laws, flagrantly violates our privacy, buys or clones all
its competition, and offers mere tokens of recompense when people use it to
influence elections or coordinate genocide — but also experiences virtually no
repercussions for its actions, because it's making investors money.

~~~
beagle3
Free markets and democracies are good at a lot of things, but self
preservation is NOT one of them -- in fact, if practiced at the extreme, it is
basically guaranteed that a sufficiently large winner-takes-it-all will take
over {free-market,democracy} and dismantle it.

That's why you need all kinds of checks and balances and regulations.

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unicornporn
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/11/big-
te...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/11/big-tech-
progressive-vision-silicon-valley)

