
How to Fix Facebook - gk1
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/technology/how-to-fix-facebook-we-asked-9-experts.html
======
myf01d
Let's keep talking more about this big nothing burger "Russia's intervention"
and ignore that Facebook is now actually all about injecting irrelevant posts
into users' timelines that are sponsored while burying stories and links of
pages that don't pay. Facebook now doesn't let you reach even 5% of your fans
until you pay. Facebook's business is all about injecting posts by those who
pay, even if the Russians did that (I believe they didn't), they just did the
only thing upong which Facebook model exists aka pay to reach the target.

~~~
ForHackernews
> pay to reach the target.

Isn't that how ads work? Why is this any more controversial than Google's
paid, targeted ads?

~~~
Spivak
I think the parent is claiming that FB has blurred the line between organic
and sponsored results and is pushing paying customers higher in a user's
organic timeline higher than those that don't.

~~~
myf01d
Yes, I am sorry if that wasn't clear, I am not talking about sponsored ads, I
am talking about ordinary posts, Facebook now doesn't let you reach more than
5% of your fans unless you pay, then they show a little by little depending on
your spending. I used to have many active popular pages myself and I felt the
difference over the past 3 years, what's happening in Facebook now is
disgusting to say the least

------
notacoward
Waiting for the companion piece: How to Fix the New York Times. Also, maybe,
How to Fix Ignorant Pundits.

Before you fix something, you have to identify what "fix" means. What's
fixing, and what's breaking? How do you make a distinction of evil awful
manipulation that must be stopped at all costs, that doesn't also include
socially positive activism, journalism, or other legitimate kinds of speech?
That's the issue the pundits should be grappling with, before they offer
laughable suggestions like "make it a public benefit corporation".

I happen to believe that a return to corporate charters that actually meant
something, that required some public benefit to balance the public harm of
limited liability, would be _fantastic_. However, saying we should only do
that for one company is like a bill of attainder. We haven't done it for
financial companies, where it more clearly makes sense. We haven't done it for
oil companies. We haven't done it for the media companies like the one that
owns NYT. What's a coherent argument for making this one exception to a long-
held principle of leaving the market alone?

------
pdog
From the article, suggestions include:

* Requiring verification of real names for people. (Kevin Kelly)

* Firing at least half of the leadership team and replacing them with people of color. (Ellen Pao)

* Becoming a public benefit corporation. (Tim Wu)

~~~
judah
>> "Facebook needs to replace its focus on engagement quantity with
interaction quality. To really do that means replacing at least half of the
leadership team and board with underrepresented people of color who are
informed and value diversity and inclusion"

This seems to suggest that only people of color are able to focus on
interaction quality. She is suggesting that people should be fired based on
the color of their skin. That is racism.

~~~
michaelt
I think what the article is actually trying to say is leaders place a higher
priority on problems that impact them personally.

If the mayor drives an F-150 truck, potholes will be less important than big
parking spaces. If she drives a supercar, the reverse will be true.

That's not to say a truck-driving mayor is incapable of understanding the
supercar driver's perspective. Just that limited resources mean trade-offs
always have to be made, and some combination of the power of dogfooding to
inspire improvements, the power of self-interest, and the simple fact you see
your own problems more often than other problems mean truck drivers will end
up coming first. It's just human nature.

Some people would say changing the composition of leadership is easier and
bound to be more effective than trying to change human nature.

~~~
judah
That's still discrimination based on the color of a person's skin, regardless
of perceived intentions.

I remind folks that Dr. King's vision was that people be judged not by the
color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

------
amelius
Probably the easiest and quickest fix is to change its monetization scheme.
The dependence on ad-income creates perverse incentives, such as collecting
data, tracking users all over the web, making users addicted, and promoting
click-bait posts.

~~~
vog
Wait, what?! How could changing the income stream of a corporation ever be the
"quickest fix"? Almost from the very beginning their business model was
_designed_ to sell ads. How could anyone change that with reasonable effort,
in such a large corporation? And how could that ever be "quick"?

Moreover, considering that Facebook is profitable and developes exactly into
the direction their founders and investors envisioned, I don't see what to
"fix" here. Facebook is working _exactly as intended_.

In that regard, "fixing" Facebook is like "fixing" the _rm_ tool to not delete
files.

~~~
amelius
My use of the words "quickest fix" is sarcastic. I don't think anyone can fix
Facebook by making small changes, hence the radical suggestion.

------
rdlecler1
I’m still surprised that anyone uses Facebook with any kind of regularity.
Anyone I know who used to use it has uninstalled the app. We also tried
Facebook advertising a couple of years ago and all we got were clicks from
India and the Philippines. Maybe it works for some people but it doesn’t work
in my sandbox.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
That can happen with Facebook advertising, but it takes less than 5 mins to
set up the parameters to avoid that. Facebook allows for an incredible amount
of control in targeting who you want to send ads to, but it's on you to set
that up.

You can hate on them for a lot, but lack of effectiveness as an advertising
tool..... _that 's not really fair_.

Until they blocked me, I used to run advertising campaigns targeted at SINGLE
INDIVIDUALS. Ie... "Hey Bill Gates, is it time to invest in Startup X?"

~~~
simonpure
Curious why you got blocked for spending money with them. Care to elaborate?

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
It's against their Terms and Conditions to target a single specific individual
with an advertising campaign.

There are still some tricks you can do to get around it... which they also
don't like, and that is what got my account pulled.

 __This story is embarrassing and stupid... I know. I wouldn 't do this again.
__

The ad that got me in trouble was for a real estate agent. He showed a high
net worth individual a home that cost ~ 10 million. We made an ad that said
"Hey Jeff, could you see your family living here? - and it had a picture of
the house." They wanted me to Photoshop pictures of his kids playing in the
yard, but I drew the line there. Still Jeff submitted a complaint which got me
banned because it wasn't the first violation.

Everyone talks about how "creepy" ad tracking technology is, but both Facebook
and Google are stopping marketers like me from doing the "really creepy" stuff
we would like to be doing.

~~~
Multicomp
This is cool to read. Any other TalesFromMarketing that you'd care to share?
Always nice to hear about the activities on the other side of the (advert)
curtain.

------
kensey
Disappointing to see a co-founder of Wired pushing the "real names fix things"
meme. We had that discussion with G+ how many years ago? It did nothing but
generate negative press for Google until they quietly half-buried it long
after it was possible to salvage any goodwill from doing so.

Facebook actually _has_ a real-names policy, but they enforce it very
spottily, and there's a reason why.

The only truly workable real-name policy is the jwz one:

"1\. Stop deleting peoples' accounts when you suspect that the name they are
using is not their legal name. 2\. There is no step 2."

------
etiam
Personally I have long considered Facebook a deceptive, manipulative, evil
company and inherently an enemy to liberty and human dignity.

But, that should be at least broadly clear to anyone who bothers to look at
what Facebook does.

Maybe we should instead be asking, what is wrong with a society that places
this much reliance on an entity whose interests are clearly at odds with the
interests of the public, and how do we fix _that_.

------
basch
Eli Pariser has the best answer in this article.

>what if Facebook optimized for how much value an article or video or game
gave us weeks or months afterward?

Facebook needs a second page that isnt the newsfeed or trending. That isnt
"give the people what they want" as much as "this is good for you." It needs
strong editorial discretion. It could still be algorithmic, just one that
prefers a certain type of voter.

If I look at the sites below, its obvious that a focused team of more like
minded people can output something MUCH more coherent than the "everybody gets
what everybody wants" style newsfeed.

[https://redef.com/charts/shared/total](https://redef.com/charts/shared/total)

[https://www.aldaily.com/](https://www.aldaily.com/)

[http://www.drudgereport.com/](http://www.drudgereport.com/)

[https://www.techmeme.com/river](https://www.techmeme.com/river)

Facebook needs a "Front Page" that you can toggle to that isnt the Custom
Newsfeed. It should be the same for everyone, it should be important stuff, it
should be beneficial to society. Maybe teams of people should be allowed to
compete with it.

I have said it before, they should combine Groups and Interest Lists. Groups
should be able to subscribe to sources, have their own ingestion queue, and
teams of voters should be able to determine what shows up in the group page
feed.

(people might wonder why I single out drudge as a good example. It is a water
cooler. It is the same for every viewer on the planet. It gets people TALKING
about the same things, it creates dialog within the community. Sure its also a
filter bubble, I understand the dissonance.)

------
imartin2k
Everyone asked seems to assume that Facebook is fixable. Is there a law of
nature that guarantees fix-ability?

------
tyingq
I don't know if this is just my unique bubble, but I don't know many young
people that use Facebook. They may have an account, but it's largely dormant.

Curious if they will come back to FB when they are older, or if something else
fills the void then. That is, once they've "grown up", FB might be more
attractive to find their old friends from school that have since scattered, or
older relatives they know are there.

~~~
basch
facebook has always been targeted towards older people. when you go off to
college and meet strangers. when youre away from your old friends and want to
stay in touch. when you work on a desktop and want your chat app to work in a
browser and your phone.

------
billysielu
delete it. /thread

~~~
mrarjonny
I am not going to lie, I still use facebook for its ubiquitous nature. It is
kind of a glorified email to stay in touch with some family and friends who
have made it a primary form of communication. I really do think it has become
too big for its britches though, and is expanding to the point of not being
able to support its own weight. It is a mess, and I wouldn't miss it ever so
slightly if we just went back to having photos of my nieces and nephews
Halloween costumes emailed directly to me rather than posted on facebook.

------
zghst
Only one person had a solid answer, Ro Khanna.

------
joshcam
Many issues needing improvement or rebuilding can be traced to a common root
concern... transparency!

------
twsted
I'm afraid it can not be fixed.

------
notyourday
Oh that's easy. Buy enough shares to have operational control of facebook and
you can do whatever you want with it.

Otherwise, until facebook cannot make money doing what it is doing it will
continue to do what it is doing. No politico/journalista whining would change
that.

~~~
jonknee
> Buy enough shares to have operational control of facebook and you can do
> whatever you want with it.

That's impossible thanks to the dual-class share structure that gives
Zuckerberg complete control of the company.

~~~
notyourday
Of course it is possible. It just involves getting one's hands on the shares
of Zuck's class.

The point is that all of the whining coming from journalistas/political
class/guides/policy wonks etc is nothing other than whining of the former
jocks who got de-throned.

~~~
jonknee
> The point is that all of the whining coming from journalistas/political
> class/guides/policy wonks etc is nothing other than whining of the former
> jocks who got de-throned.

Or that it might be a serious problem to have a global scale company that has
perfected shoveling content to people so well that it can be hijacked to
shovel lies into whole countries. It's probably worth talking about. The fact
that it's controlled entirely by one person is just another wrinkle.

~~~
notyourday
Sure, except that NYT and Co had the microphone for over one hundred and fifty
years during which it went from "All the news that fit to print" to "All the
news that fit, we print" with observably disastrous results. So pardon people
who aren't quite interested in hearing its whining.

~~~
jonknee
The NYT has this article because the US Senate is bringing Facebook in to
testify today. If the NYT went out of business tomorrow this would still be a
topic of discussion.

------
ghostbrainalpha
Interesting, this article has been shared to Facebook 514 times so far.

------
tyu100
Not on Facebook personally but the NY Times jihad against them (and the
'Fearsome Four' (yuck)) is getting a little bit tiresome, especially when a
large part of the root of the Times' disdain is that they are direct
competitors for ad dollars.

Their moral high ground on Soviet and Russian influence on the news isn't that
impressive either given that they still haven't renounced the Pulitzer given
to Walter Duranty for his explicit lying about the Holodomor so as to not
impede the Communist movement.

~~~
IBM
There's no "jihad" against tech companies from the NYT. What you're seeing is
called critical coverage. The NYT's business model is also clearly focused on
subscriptions and it has been for a few years. Trump being elected has done
more for the NYT's bottom line than any ad could.

