
Social media bubbles may threaten democracy - evilsimon
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/democracy-never-faced-a-threat-like-facebook
======
zitterbewegung
The problem with these filter bubbles is the fact that entities like Facebook
encourage them and they are fundamental to their platform. To increase
engagement in these platorms makes it really easy to just create a filter
bubble. When Facebook becomes your primary information source you begin to
unfollow or shut off topics. Since you seek social approval from your friends
it makes you want to argue less with others. Also, gaining likes encourages
you to perpetuate the filter bubble with a narrative that your friends
approve. In contrast when you consume news from news outlets although you may
have a bias on which news outlet you read its quite different in the fact that
they may publish things that aren't necessarily found in your filter bubble.
On the other hand most people don't like having their core beliefs challenged
in any way. If you present them that information they are more likely to just
not listen. This is what fake news targets because no one in your filter
bubble will challenge your beliefs and they can tell you whatever you want to
hear.

~~~
Swizec
> Since you seek social approval from your friends it makes you want to argue
> less with others.

Since gaining entry into the US middle/professional class I have been informed
numerous times that disagreeing with one's friends is impolite.

I miss the times when I could say things like "No, what you're saying is dumb"
without drawing shocked stares. It was a simpler often better time.

I'm told it is particularly inappropriate to disagree with your girlfriend's
mum and tell her she's spouting rubbish. Especially at a cordial thanksgiving
dinner.

But if you can't argue with people and test each other's ideas, then what's
the point of keeping them around?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Since gaining entry into the US middle/professional class I have been
> informed numerous times that disagreeing with one's friends is impolite.

> I miss the times when I could say things like "No, what you're saying is
> dumb" without drawing shocked stares.

I think you may be mistaking cultural norms about the _manner of expression_
of disagreement with a cultural norms against disagreement generally.

“I think, if you consider X, Y, and Z, that you would find that it's more case
A than case B” may get a different reaction than “No, B is dumb.”

~~~
Swizec
> “I think, if you consider X, Y, and Z, that you would find that it's more
> case A than case B” may get a different reaction than “No, B is dumb.”

I have been told that this also is impolite in many situations. My usual
approach is asking questions. People get upset when they don't have answers
because they aren't used to having their beliefs questioned and don't think
defending them should be necessary.

~~~
watwut
In general, people don't like to be questioned even when they have answers.
Sometimes people just want to have thanksgiving dinner without being put into
defensive and having to argue every minor point.

When to argue and when not to is as important as knowing how.

~~~
Swizec
It's more like "No girlfriend's mum, I will not buy into your essential oils
pyramid scheme. No I promise you a homeopathic medicine cannot treat both
cancer and the common cold. Yes even if it did help your friend's friend of a
friend's sister's dog walker. But thank you for telepathically healing my
parrot. He was in good health both before and after"

Ya know?

Do I get to vocally disagree with stuff like that even though it's
thanksgiving?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Depends. Is their enjoyment of the meal more important at that moment, to you,
than you vocally expressing your view?

Write them a letter the next day. Ring them, meet up?

Sometimes we need to celebrate our commonalities, our shared humanity
regardless of deep differences.

Perhaps demonstrate your dissent softly and postpone your opposition.

~~~
Swizec
Is my enjoyment of the meal more important at that moment, to me, than their
vocally expressing their views?

Maybe. Perhaps it's best we all just keep quiet and don't say anything for
fear of opposing each other.

Or maybe the whole point of having meals together is having interesting
conversations.

------
gavanwoolery
Social networks are just a mechanism for sharing stuff. Fake news could spread
any which way, and has even in the pre-social-network-era. Remember when "fake
news" was spread in email chains? Or...you know...propaganda in general?

Edit: that said, I think there exists a big problem in attempting to filter
these items. How do we determine what is fake vs what simply goes against our
preexisting (mis)conceptions?

Edit 2: best course of action might be that a wide diversity of ideas gets a
chance to be seen (i.e. show stuff outside of your bubble), rather than trying
to artificially manipulate proliferation.

~~~
dilemma
The real problem is that Facebook is controlled by a single person, who is
planning to use it for their own political goals.

~~~
dgfgfdagasdfgfa
Ehh, acting like these companies need to actively filter isn't a great
scenario either. I think we need more visibility into what our neighbors are
discussing so we can't echo chamber quite as easily.

------
throwaway-1209
Bloomberg and friends are just panicked over the fact that they're losing
control of the narrative, which is really their main product.

~~~
twsted
Yep, they are panicked by a single giant corporation with billions of users
that earns money collecting data from everyone.

Me too.

~~~
throwaway-1209
6 people controlling your bubble is still better than 5. Especially if the new
guy is at war with the old guys.

~~~
659087
Not when the 6th guy controls more bubbles than the other 5 combined, and more
than any government in history.. and also happens to have direct access to
most of the private communications of the people on that platform.

Bloomberg doesn't know what you said to your mother earlier today, probably
doesn't have a list of everyone you know, and doesn't know where you went for
lunch today.

~~~
throwaway-1209
Bloomberg has something better, as far as narrative peddling is concerned: it
is perceived as reputable.

~~~
659087
The vast majority of Facebook users accept the things Facebook presents to
them as fact.

Very few of them would ever see a Bloomberg article unless it showed up in
their feed (which is something Facebook's black box has final say over).

~~~
throwaway-1209
>> The vast majority of Facebook users accept

And 86% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Do you have any data to
support your claim?

~~~
weirdstuff
If you're going to ask for data, you should have offered some first yourself,
upthread, where you made a claim or two.

------
obiefernandez
I think it's already too late for the USA. You have three main groups, and all
have achieved near total epistemological closure: \- Conservatives: Liberals
are evil \- Liberals: Conservatives are evil. And morons. \- Apathetic Middle
(everyone else): Politics are stupid and we don't give a fuck.

Don't really see a solution for any of this. It's like we're three different
tribes doing our best to coexist. And it's not really working very well.

------
luord
I found that, at least in my experience, social media feeds do indeed become
echo chambers easily. It's almost an impulse to unfollow someone in twitter or
unfriend someone in facebook when they post something one doesn't like. I had
to start consciously reminding myself that I should want to hear every point
of view so I can make more informed decisions.

Maybe, as with everything, the solution is more education. In this case: "yes,
that person posted something you don't like. You should still read it, else
you might risk becoming unaware that people who disagree with you exist, which
could distort your view of the world, at least a bit."

------
6stringmerc
...and Capitalism never faced a threat like the Bloomberg Terminal, but here
we are.

------
utexaspunk
I think Facebook could actually be really great for democracy, but for a
couple of huge flaws:

First, the lack of a real threaded comment system. When replies below the
first level all appear at the same depth, it becomes extremely difficult to
have a real back-and-forth debate and nigh impossible to read/participate in
someone else's discussion. It is not conducive to substantive dialogue.

Second, the lack of a dislike/downvote, particularly an anonymous one. When
one shares something they agree with and only see that some (if any) of their
friends like it, they might figure that the rest just didn't see it. Very
rarely will someone register their disagreement with a comment because, even
when you're receptive to discussion, a real discussion cannot be had because
of the aforementioned shitty comment system. Worst of all, when you disagree
with most of what a friend posts (and aren't the type to carry on pointless
arguments all the time, or don't feel comfortable sharing your disagreement),
having no way to easily register your disapproval, you quickly tire of seeing
their stupid posts in your feed and the temptation is to unfollow them,
further insulating them from dissent.

If people who post crap saw that many of their friends gave it a thumbs down,
they might not think themselves right all the time. If you could hold a real
back-and-forth discussion with someone and have it be readable by others, and
see everyone's approval/disapproval of those comments, you might feel more
inclined to participate. The conversations would better reflect the opinions
of one's social group. There would still be some bubble effect, but it would
be greatly moderated because hardly anyone has only friends who agree with
them about everything and their friends who disagree would have a way to make
their disagreement known by engaging in a substantive conversation or at the
very least in the form of adding a dislike to their post.

~~~
chrisallenlane
> First, the lack of a real threaded comment system.

> Second, the lack of a dislike/downvote, particularly an anonymous one.

I don't know. I agree that Facebook's commenting mechanism is ill-suited to
deep discussion, but isn't the mechanism you're describing more-or-less
exactly what exists on Reddit? And people are certainly able to self-segregate
into bubbles on Reddit.

And for that matter, at least anecdotally I'd say that most of the political
"discussion" that occurs on Reddit is low-quality, in that it tends to devolve
into users shouting "fascist" or "cuck" at each other. (Some subreddits are
better than others, admittedly.)

I suppose that Reddit users typically don't know each other in meatspace,
though, and that Facebook is (mostly) different in that regard. Maybe that
would make a difference. I don't know.

~~~
utexaspunk
Yes, the anonymity (most) users enjoy on Reddit is interpreted by some as
freedom to be assholes or trolls. Even then, especially in the more heavily
moderated or off-the-beaten-path subreddits, you get some very high quality
conversations. It's not uncommon to see threads of multi-paragraph comments
going back and forth many comments deep. I think Facebook's lack of anonymity
already goes a long way toward keeping things civil there, and what little
shitposting does happen there would probably get downvoted and possibly hidden
by default when below a certain threshold if FB had that capability.

------
sien
The book Everybody Lies gets into actually looking at the data on this and
comes to a different conclusion:

[https://www.wired.com/2017/05/maybe-internet-isnt-tearing-
us...](https://www.wired.com/2017/05/maybe-internet-isnt-tearing-us-apart/)

What data tell us:

"In the United States, according to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the chances that two
people visiting the same news site have different political views is about 45
percent. In other words, the internet is far closer to perfect desegregation
than perfect segregation."

and more:

"PROBABILITY THAT SOMEONE YOU MEET HAS OPPOSING POLITICAL VIEWS On a News
Website 45.2%

Coworker 41.6%

Offline Neighbor 40.3%

Family Member 37%

Friend 34.7%"

------
makomk
The fundamental problem with the idea that microtargetting people with
different promises is an existential threat to democracy, I think, is that
people tend to compare with their friends and notice this and that it makes
for a really juicy viral news story when they do because people do not like
finding out they've been tricked. Also, as far as anyone can tell Trump's
campaign didn't actually do it - they tuned their message based on feedback
from monitoring the response to it and carefully targetted who they paid money
to promote it to, but everyone got the same message.

------
Kiro
I'm not so worried about all this filter bubble and fake news panic. People
have always filtered themselves from other opinions anyway. It's just a
fundamental flaw in humans.

~~~
fullshark
It's never been this easy, or arguably this necessary to filter information
given the information overload necessitating it.

------
anothercomment
"threaten democracy" as in "people may vote for somebody I don't like".

~~~
paulddraper
This comment seems flippant, but it's right. I'm mean, you could say it
subverts logic, or threatens minorities, but IT DOES NOT threaten the
existence of democracy.

Remember even the proponents of democracy (e.g. American Founding Fathers)
were also rightfully fearful of it.

This IS democracy. It just might not be democracy that generates informed
decisions.

~~~
anothercomment
In my country (Germany) I don't get the impression that the official news
sources (state sponsored media and established newspapers) are impartial. At
the same time massive efforts to censor social networks are underway,
camouflaged as "fighting hate speech". Hate speech is conveniently vague and
boils down to "disagreeing with the official party line". There are no courses
to appeal against this censorship, in fact, no real accountability for the
people doing the censoring.

To me therefore such articles are merely a smear campaign in support of
impeding censorship.

I really don't see how the public is supposed to be better informed without
social media. In some countries it is even worse, when the people who get
elected for government also happen to be the owners of the major media outlets
(like Berlusconi in Italy).

I think I also saw a paper debunking the filter bubble thesis (as in people
still get so see other viewpoints), but I am too lazy to Google it.

Even without social media, people create their own filter bubbles by only
consuming media that aligns with their views. I suspect in the US, Democrats
rarely watch Fox News?

------
emodendroket
Nonsense. Scurrilous newsletters are older than the republic and were once the
primary way people got their news. The "fake news" story has been way
overblown.

~~~
Armisael16
Did you actually read the article? They aren't worried about fake news;
they're worried about ads that the other side can't respond to because they
can't even see them.

~~~
emodendroket
Scurrilous and nakedly partisan, then.

~~~
Armisael16
That doesn't matter in the slightest. Democrats can still turn on Fox News and
see what the pundits are saying (I assume they have multiple people watching
24/7, actually). They can't do that with Facebook - they're guessing at what a
profile needs to be to get ads/stories, and they're guessing at when they're
done.

~~~
emodendroket
They can, but how many people do that anyway?

------
ivanhoe
Well, it's not a problem with Facebook, it's a problem with people and our
society, Facebook is just serving their customers' needs. If you tolerate only
one point of view, if you accept and get engaged in only one line of political
discussions, and actively avoid and try to shut down anything and anyone with
a different point of view, entirely detached of any self-criticism, then of
course that it's exploitable to serve you false news (and much more BS than
just news). People deliberately choose to live in these info bubbles because
it's easier on them emotionally. When nobody questions your views you are
always right.

Also, it's quite easy to avoid this trap by listening and reading what other
people are saying and writing, trying to understand them, and by always fact
checking their claims, but also your own beliefs. But it takes some mental
effort to do this. Therefore, most of people are not ready to do this, they
don't care. You can't fix this without fixing the society first, and not
Facebook.

------
samlevine
Facebook is worse than Fascism and Communism? Seriously?

~~~
dredmorbius
You might care to look into the history of mass communications and the
demagogic, fascist, Communist, and anti-communist political movements of the
past century or two.

Fascism is very closely aligned with the rise of radio, cinema, and
phonographs, as well as public address systems in which many thousands of
people could hear a single speaker.

Communism much the same, as well as very cheap publishing -- Chairman Mao's
Little Red Book (official title, _Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung_ , is
one of the two most widely reproduced books in all history (the other is the
Bible, and it's not clear which is the more published).

Father Coughlin and Joseph McCarthy were both tremendously boosted by radio.
Rush Limbaugh has the largest radio audience in the United States, at about 26
million weekly listeners (NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered come
in second and third at about 14.5 million apiece).

The history of dramatic changes to social structures and systems due to
changes in media and epistemic is _older_ than history itself -- it was one of
those changes (writing) which _started_ history.

Elisabeth Eisenstein, _The Printing Press as an Agent of Change_ , and
Marshall McLuhan, _The Gutenberg Galaxy_ , particularly address this.

------
jancsika
From the article:

> In the run-up to Thursday's U.K. election, a group called Who Targets Me
> recruited 10,000 volunteers to install a browser extension that registers
> targeted messages, ranging from Facebook videos to Google search ads. The
> group calls them "dark ads" because they are so hard to monitor: They've
> been targeted to specific local constituencies, gender and age groups.

Has anyone gone the other direction with either a browser extension or app to
essentially give permission to MITM the content and metadata input into, say,
Facebook and Twitter? In other words, get the data for 10,000 users input and
then test what inferences can be made based on metadata, content, and a
combination of the two.

------
ryanx435
I would consider yn it's own bubble.

This is mostly because of the flagging system and mods like dang removing or
censoring comments and submissions that don't agree with their silicon Valley
based belief system (possibly the location of the most liberal/progressive
beliefs in the world today).

They use the excuse that the offending items are written in an abusive or
hateful manner or they "don't contribute to the discussion", but the truth is
that different regions of the world and different cultures have different
standards for politeness, so it just ends up filtering out different opinions.

~~~
dredmorbius
HN's not perfect, and tends to favour certain views, but it's got a fairly
high S/N, and the moderation in particular is IMO very well-placed.

In the past week or two, I've placed a front-page article (which drew the
criticism that other significant stories are being ignored), and an admonition
from @dang for a comment on another story. I've also had numerous submissions
go nowhere (everything can't be first).

Additionally, if you think there's a particularly good or bad post or comment
not being appropriately addressed, emailing HN directly (hn@ycombinator.com)
typically generates a quick response.

You're part of the voice here.

------
smsm42
I've just read this article:

[http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/in-
seattle...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/in-seattle-is-
it-now-taboo-to-be-friends-with-a-republican/)

titled "In Seattle, is it now taboo to be friends with a Republican?".
Somehow, I don't think Facebook is to blame for this. Rather Facebook just
provides tools to ensure the bubble.

------
cbanek
Is the threat really facebook or an uninformed therefore easily misled
electorate?

What I can't believe is that people actually believe some of the stuff on
social media.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Is the threat really facebook or an uninformed therefore easily misled
> electorate?

They are two mutually reinforcing threats, not mutually exclusive alternative
threats.

------
quotemstr
Ah, so the _real_ problem is that pesky free speech is _too_ free.

The proper response to social ills is almost never to add rules about what
people may or may not say to each other.

~~~
sp332
Facebook has already added those rules. The discussion now is whether to force
them to reveal what the rules are, and maybe dial them back a bit.

------
zghst
I don’t understand the whole isolation argument. Facebook connects people like
never before. People will always be involved or connected to their community
but FB gives people much insight to global trends. What’s really dying is a
monopoly by elites, Zuckerberg has too much power and is rumored to start a
political career so I expect this is a preemptive strike.

~~~
rhizome
Can you remind us what the value of "insight to global trends" is for a
typical FB user?

------
good_vibes
Doesn't matter. People are addicted to social media like people in the 60's
with cigarettes.

------
Alex3917
Given that Mike Bloomberg will likely be running against Mark Zuckerberg to be
the next president, this seems a little self serving.

~~~
emodendroket
A future in which I'm choosing between Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, and Trump
doesn't sound very inspiring.

~~~
mosdave
A reality in which the mention of Zuckerberg as president doesn't get you
laughed out of the room doesn't sound very inspiring.

~~~
dredmorbius
Given the present reality, I'd be concerned about the last laugh here.

------
marcosdumay
I don't agree that "politics is different from business, so rules for targeted
messaging should be different to protect democracy". I don't agree at all.

If targeted messaging can enable fraud on the democratic process, it can just
as easily enable fraud on economical processes. All the issues pointed at the
article apply just as well to a seller/buyer relationship.

Maybe we should work into regulating those opaque robots.

------
kradem
May threaten democracy

May threaten democracy

May threaten democracy

May threaten democracy

This way, repeated, sounds _weird_ , not just _dumb_ as it was at first...

------
nickik
Nazi schmazi ... Facebook is the real problem say Wernher von Braun.

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
Welcome to the Hacker News Daily FB Bashing Thread Bingo

[x] I deleted my FB account 5 years ago and couldn't be happier

[x] FB is literally cancer

[x] Zuck called his users dumbfucks

[x] I haven't been to FB in months but I miss out on being invited to Events
by my friends

[x] Zuck called his users dumbfucks

[x] Zuck let his news editors be biased against the right

[x] After news editors being fired, FB's news AI picks up news based on
numbers instead of what I want to see

[x] FB invades your privacy to show you relevant ads

[x] FB doesn't show me relevant ads

[x] FB is for high-school drama

[x] Zuck wants to be the President. All this is just theatre.

[x] FB makes ghosts profiles of people not on the platform. This makes me feel
like punching Zuck

[x] FB makes ghosts profiles of people not on the platform. This makes me
realize the futility of avoiding FB, so I joined it

[x] Remember, Zuck called his users dumbfucks

~~~
rogual
Welcome to the argument-by-way-of-bingo-card bingo

[x] Disparages arguments without actually addressing them

[x] Adds nothing to the discussion

~~~
pc86
I think the point is that the "discussion" around the above points
specifically is nearly identical every time it happens, and usually involves
the same people. Almost everyone benefits when we just ignore the above
points.

~~~
rexpop
I would read the fuck out of a comprehensive blog post neutralizing the above
posts.

~~~
pc86
There's no neutralizing "I deleted Facebook 5 years ago and never felt
better!" posts. You either like FB or you don't. You want it, or you don't.
The comments like that provide as little value as the check list above. I
would argue they provide _less_ because all they do is kick off an anti-FB
circle jerk in the subthread, which kicks off the pro-FB responses, and so on.
That's what I meant by the fact that they're the same arguments every time.

------
microcolonel
Nobody writes hyperbolic headlines like Bloomberg.

P.S. For all those taking this seriously, I deliberately wrote it as a
hyperbolic phrase. I am fully aware that other organizations do hyperbole
better than Bloomberg.

Original title: _Democracy Never Faced a Threat Like Facebook_

~~~
dgfgfdagasdfgfa
Here is a small sampling of new york times articles on democracy:

1861: Is Democracy a Failure? [http://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/14/news/is-
democracy-a-failur...](http://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/14/news/is-democracy-a-
failure.html)

2014: Why Democracy is Failing
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/opinion/why-democracy-
is-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/opinion/why-democracy-is-
failing.html)

2016: Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is-
donald-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-
a-threat-to-democracy.html)

2017: Democracy in America: How is it Doing?
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/upshot/democracy-in-
ameri...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/upshot/democracy-in-america-how-
is-it-doing.html)

2017: Checking Democracy's Pulse:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/upshot/checking-
democracy...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/upshot/checking-democracys-
pulse.html)

2016: How Stable Are Democracies? 'Warning Signs Are Flashing Red'
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-
li...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-
democracy.html)

2016: How Republics End [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-
republics-end...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-
end.html)

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Thanks for putting that list together.

The article from 1861 is fascinating.

~~~
dgfgfdagasdfgfa
There was discussion on HN about it here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12878337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12878337)

