
Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News - drallison
https://mondaynote.com/facebooks-walled-wonderland-is-inherently-incompatible-with-news-media-b145e2d0078c#.wwomvztbo
======
andrewvijay
> We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read
> about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching
> people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on
> being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to
> connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful
> and engaging.

Simply incredible. They are asserting themselves only as a business and not
emotional influencers. The emotional influences that facebook brings in people
is very powerful. I have seen so many of my friends just vanishing from my
feed and almost all of my feed is filled with a couple of pages that I
see/interact often. The bubbles are getting incredibly smaller that its very
worrying.

A very good example that I saw is the `demonetisation of higher denominations`
in India. I was shocked to see the amount of ignorance my close friends showed
on how the poor people of our country were left to suffer. So many never read
any sort of arguments against the govt's move. They read only pro posts. They
were quite visibly upset when being told about how 70+ people have died
because of this and all that. I saw a bubble being burst with my own eyes.
When there is no way to argue then its not a democracy at all. It favors
fanatics because hate/fear spreads faster than love/acceptance.

Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit.

~~~
welanes
> They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional
> influencers...The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is
> very powerful.

The same could be said of TV networks, Spotify, Twitter, Google photos.

We are the catalyst that turn stories, music, photos into emotional reactions.
We control the dials. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to step outside our
bubbles. Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs,
interact with that information and you'll see more of it.

If we're not seeing it, it's probably because we don't want to.

My online shopping recommends groceries for me based on my past purchases. If
I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of
orange juice who is ultimately responsible?

Facebook is not a window to the world. It's a mirror of ourselves. Perhaps
there should be guidelines on how to consume information - and I thought
school served that purpose - but to expect a social network (a blank slate
that you populate with your interests) to provide one a healthy dose of
diverse opinion is to deny ones agency and responsibility.

~~~
grive
> Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with
> that information and you'll see more of it.

That's precisely the problem with it. I'd like to read more on extremists
groups and see how and why they exists, what kind of people they are, why do
they think the way they do, what their fight is in our society. This is the
first step to build a dialog.

However, "liking" their pages is out of question. I will not support them, I
will not help them further their propaganda, their hateful rhetoric. I would
like to understand them, but in no way do I want to support them.

In that sense, Facebook actively discourage dialog and openness to other
ideas, because the only way to receive these ideas is also to make them more
relevant than they ought to be.

There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit
different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population, other ways
of life within our own society. In that regard, Facebook is useless because it
is not interesting for their business.

Reddit can work, but Reddit also has unpenetrable walls sometimes. However, it
is already much better than Facebook or Google.

~~~
welanes
> There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit
> different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population

Twitter is the app for that. Set up lists of different individuals so you can
switch between different viewpoints in two clicks. No need to follow anybody
on your list.

It's actually fascinating to do so. Watch 'the reality' of a current or
political event contort as you switch from 'Liberal', 'Conservative',
'Regressive Left', 'Alt-Right' streams of thought.

 _In fact, that would make an interesting website. A Twitter version
of[http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed](http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-
feed-red-feed) _.

~~~
vasaulys
I'm surprised that more people don't know about lists, it seems like Twitter
doesn't promote it as much as they should.

~~~
twoquestions
Weird, I don't even know about Twitter Lists, but then again I don't use
Twitter much. It would be very convenient!

------
bionsuba
Hideo Kojima keeps getting proved right:

    
    
        But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second.
        Preserved in all its triteness.
        Never fading, always accessible.
        The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths.
        You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result.
        All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt.
        The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems.
        Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum.
        They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.
        The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh.
        No one is invalidated, but nobody is right.
        Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth."

------
NeutronBoy
Facebook censor news!

 _Facebook removes human censors_

Facebook allow fake news on their platform!

One a serious note: Fake news is a different problem to news 'bubbles'
designed to create positive emotions. Sure they're closely linked, but you can
have either without the other. I read this article and it seems to switch
between them both. I appreciate the viewpoint but I found it hard to follow.

~~~
rtpg
I feel like this isn't talked about enough.

Facebook was curating trending topics! It had dealt with fake news! And we
complained, and let the floodgates open.

I wonder what fake news traffic looks like when comparing to the date where FB
stopped curating.

~~~
fullshark
Not everyone complained, just conservatives who thought they were being
censored.

------
DanielBMarkham
It's interesting when Zuck says that "...We’ve gone from a world of isolated
communities to one global community, and we’re all better off for it..." he's
exactly wrong. FB has created much more stronger community segmentation.

Were you that weird guy in your village who believe aliens built the pyramids?
Before, you'd have to interact with those villagers. They'd have to interact
with you. Neither of you would like it, but they might be reminded to be more
compassionate to others. You might be reminded that the vast majority of
people think you're a nut. Both of these effects are socially worthwhile, yet
unpleasant.

But not anymore. Now you can log into Facebook from the comfort of your house
and instantly be in a community of ten thousand other people who think aliens
built the pyramids. You can share videos, pictures, links, theories, and
generally rant about how stupid most people are.

The villagers? Dude. You don't exist anymore. After a few years of that, most
of the villagers probably wouldn't even believe people like you exist. After a
decade or two the next generation would think of you as being sick, dangerous,
and in need of societal intervention.

This is a really, really bad thing we're creating. Yes, you can make a cute
and useful app that lets people communicate. But don't rationalize and
bullshit your way into thinking that somehow you are changing the world. What
you're doing is ignoring centuries of mankind learning how the species gets
better over time in favor of making a few bucks with advertising. Dressing it
up and trying to sell it like it's nirvana is evil.

~~~
Insanity
> bullshit your way into thinking that somehow you are changing the world.

Yet in the paragraphs before that you are speaking about how facebook _is_
changing the world.

Apart from that minor (mistake?) thing, I do agree with you fully. Using
facebook is a good way to surround yourself with people who think and do
exactly as you do, which is not beneficial.

Same goes for other types of social media, but you can break it easier with
for example twitter. You can follow people with different ideas than yourself
and be challenged by their view, which is a healthy thing to do. I feel like
the treshold to that is lower on twitter than on facebook. But then again, I
am not a facebook user myself since a couple of years ago, and that experience
might have changed.

Though on the flipside, it can also be used for good. Not because you are into
some kind of weird belief that will be reinforced by others, but for example
imagine that you want to learn esperanto, there might be facebook groups full
of people doing the same and it might help you learn it with greater ease.

------
herbst
This is just getting more stupid everday. Facebook is no and never was a news
platform. It is a crappy social network and only reflects your inner friend
circle.

Why anyone and especially facebook should care about fake news is beyond me.

~~~
gdulli
Well here's why _someone_ should care about fake news:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-
police-respond-to-report-of-a-man-with-a-gun-at-comet-ping-pong-restaurant/)

I won't answer whether that entity should be Facebook. But when people start
getting shot at and transparently disreputable demagogues start getting
elected I would say the conversation at least has to begin.

~~~
herbst
So lets censor everything that some entity thinks is false on the whole
internet? This shit grew on reddit and 4chan, 2 of the last places i want to
see government censorship.

Also nobody was shot, the other article i read in the morning clearly
mentioned that he only shot upwards and was not trying to actually hurt
anyone.

Seriously if people are stupid enough to do such shit there are different
issues to be solved. If people are scared of people wearing and using weapons
then they should no be so easily available for example.

The only solution against stuff like this without fixing our society would be
complete censorship & government control. I hope this is not really what you
suggest.

~~~
gdulli
No one has mentioned the government here except you. Without giving in to
totalitarianism, there's plenty of room for Reddit or Facebook to make some
effort towards doing the right thing out of a sense of responsibility and
decency. They're not obligated to let human garbage use their service as a
platform.

It's in a site's best interest anyway. Imagine if normal adults weren't so
embarrassed to admit using Reddit.

~~~
herbst
They did. Not sure if you followed the pizzagate laughfest. But they actually
did, but they had a really hard time to net make it censoring. All they could
really do was banning people that abused the rules, what they did (even 4chan
did that mind you).

But why would Reddit be allowed to decide which conspiracy theorie can be
discussed? Seriously, i dont want to live in a world where the few semi open
platforms we still have decide what we are allowed to talk about and what not
when no laws are broken anyway.

------
twhb
Going on a tangent for a moment, please don't take it as a comment on
Facebook, Facebook's culpability, what Facebook should do, etc.

Say we have a Facebook alternative X which implements no filter, makes no
effort to garner views and shares (let's elide financials for now). Say X,
like Facebook, has news published on it, which users may subscribe to and
receive. Is it not true that most users will more often follow news sources
they're interested in, effectively self-filtering? Is it not true that news
sources are financially motivated to appeal to said users by self-filtering,
or even manifesting as multiple brands with different biases?

And finally, say there's no X, and each news source has its own separate
channel to its users - like websites or newspapers. Are both of the above
effects not still true?

Back to Facebook, we need to figure out what a solution looks like before we
tell Facebook which direction to turn.

~~~
fullshark
Sounds like Twitter. We've seen this thought experiment play out!

------
moomin
The broader point is that this analysis applies not just to Facebook, but
Twitter and Reddit as well. Engagement is a revenue driver and veracity isn't.

What's worse, the same applies to regular news as well as aggregators. It
always has to a certain extent, but improving technology, changing social
attitudes and razor-thin margins have weaponised this.

But we're not even finished there: the US and the UK are geographically
sorting their populations by political affiliation. Want to see a political
bubble? Look outside.

~~~
pjc50
> geographically sorting their populations by political affiliation

Gerrymandering doesn't help; but the idea that "all politics is local" is very
old, and the reason we have geographical representatives rather than national
PR in the first place.

~~~
moomin
Yes, but it's getting much, much worse. Republicans simply don't want to live
in Democrat areas and vice versa. They don't explicitly think that, they just
see that certain areas make them feel comfortable and stay there.

It's heading to the point where these groups won't even meet.

------
exwebtina
"Trump campaign made use of fake news" NPR tracked down one of them -
Democrat.
[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-
finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs)

~~~
jwtadvice
The sickening thing this election, and elections prior, was the use of fake
news by the Democrats and by the Republicans, in a media industry that gets
paid by political campaigns to mass-influence audiences with pre-strategized
series of stories.

The entire information industry is sick. It's extremely efficient at serving
it's customers. It's customers are a maelstrom/cacaphony of interests trying
to make broad base emotional and misrepresentative appeals to purposefully
uninformed audiences.

The information industry does NOT provide a paid service to customers seeking
to understand the world. The information industry provides a paid service to
industries and parties seeking to influence the world.

Trying to run a partisan political line, blaming one political party (who
spend incredibly SMALL amounts compared to the other strategically
politicizing news) is looking perpendicular to the problem, and falling prey
to its continuance.

Fake news? The Iraq War justifications. The Jessica Lynch stories. The fake
army letters sent by Bush Administration PR firms. The echo chamber from the
Obama Administration on the Iran Deal that they've BRAGGED about. The horribly
inaccurate coverage of the Syria proxy war. The whitewashing of politically
sensitive topics, like the genocide by our allies in Bahrain. Conspiracy
theories about Putin and hogwash misinformation like "Putin and Trump are best
friends." US coverage of the Chinese economy ("Will China fall?!") while they
were slated, instead, to be welcomed into the Special Economic Basket at the
IMF. The fake news coverage about the Snowden Documents.

It's just... so frustrating to see people promulgate on HN one-sided,
politicized and irresponsible finger-pointing, as though propaganda and mass-
media disinformation were a partisan issue.

------
vivekd
To be fair, if an individual's primary source of news is facebook, it doesn't
seem like such an individual would be all that informed about the world around
them with or without facebook.

~~~
ibejoeb
That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if facebook is a more or less effective
force-feeder of perspective than traditional media. The instantaneous, self-
affirming discourse that goes on, I think, is probably more compelling.

------
norea-armozel
I think the biggest issue I have with fake/spun news isn't the election but
the fact that many fake news articles are used as an excuse by those who
believe them for their actions. For example, I've seen all kinds of people buy
into the transgender women being sexual predators in public restrooms thing.
And every time a spun or fake news article alluding to such shows up they just
use it as a bludgeon to say, "see your kind are sick perverts that need
_help_." What's worse is when it's a representative or some other government
official that can submit legislation or regulation on such matters. I wish
there was a legal obligation for all legislators to provide evidence for their
suggested laws the same way police and DAs have to do the same for their
actions. Maybe then this wouldn't be a concern for me but the fact that this
isn't the case means either I or someone else like me has to constantly take
the role as activist to talk these idiots out of the most insane laws they can
cook up on such matters. Hell, the same happens to some extent with liberals
who are scared of guns, looking for any excuse to submit total bans on
firearms. Anyways, this is the real problem with fake/spun news and not the
current excuse of Trump's win (dude won because he pulled a smart gamble on
the Rust Belt, I just wish the DNC would admit it and move to fix their
strategy there).

------
earthly10x
That's yet another reason why it's the next AOL.

~~~
jacobush
How I hope this will come to be

------
ivanhoe
How is this different from news sites? They also earn the most of money from
advertisers and the main criteria for those advertisers are page views. We
still completely lack a viable internet business model that would strongly
encourage the quality and not quantity...

~~~
tmalsburg2
> How is this different from news sites?

I thought that was very clear from reading the article. FB tailors the feed to
each user making sure that they don't see things that they may not like. In
contrast to that, news sites cater to large segments of the population and
they have to in order to be economically successful. The result is that news
sites will always present us with some amount of material that is contrary to
our personal world view.

~~~
douche
> FB tailors the feed to each user making sure that they don't see things that
> they may not like

To be honest, they do a really terrible job at this. No matter how many times
I flag the Kardashian-story-of-the-week as offensive or inappropriate, they
keep showing up in the news feed.

~~~
jacobush
Maybe it's paid for. Who the heck knows?

------
794CD01
Another article that avoids talking about the root cause because it's too
unpalatable. Blaming facebook is misguided. Free speech is inherently
incompatible with news.

~~~
fullshark
Care to elaborate? I'm willing to accept the idea that market forces /
consumer demand is inherently incompatible with the news but free speech?

~~~
794CD01
Most people have preferences for belief that prioritize other factors above
truth. They are served by false or misleading news. Any attempt to distinguish
this "fake news" from real news is contradictory to free speech.

In short, people don't want news. News has to be forced on them, which is
anti-freedom.

In theory, you could also address this by making sure reality aligns with the
ideal state of every person who consumes news, but come on.

~~~
fullshark
Yeah I agree with this. The problem is people want their biases confirmed and
don't actually want news. One solution is the gov't "regulating" the news to
make sure the people get their informational vegetables which is clearly a
violation of freedom of the press/speech.

------
dpandey
A huge part of the story seems to be around confirmation bias (people like
reading stuff that supports what they already believe).

While confirmation bias is a fact of life, reading fake stories to confirm
your bias is not something that anybody wants to do, regardless of how
irrational the bias is. Facebook obviously doesn't want to be seen as having
influenced the election so they're unwilling to say anything that admits
responsibility. But Zuckerberg has shown boldness and maturity as one of the
best CEOs time and again, and I'd expect them to start filtering out fake news
before the next presidential election. This is not an issue that's going to go
away because it's going to get worse and it's going to get a lot more
attention now that everyone knows about it.

A core part of Facebooks stand is that they don't want to be seen as taking
editorial responsibility (they can't afford to). Part of the problem there is
precisely defining 'fake news'. For example, if I am a conspiracy theorist and
I write a blog about how NASA never landed a rover on Mars, should Facebook
delete it? At what point does irrational writing turn to fake news?
Anecdotally we know that the article that claimed an informer who reported on
clintons emails was murdered was obviously false. Or that the pope didn't
endorse trump. The key is to build a framework that allows a company like
Facebook to flag these without being seen as editors.

It doesn't sound like a problem Facebook can't solve. And it has to. There's
no escaping it now because political and public opinion are both going to
pressure them. And it'd be unwise to ignore them.

UI wise, a clean way to do this might be to put a red banner on a corner of
the article with the words 'possibly false'. So Facebook doesn't delete the
article, but labels it and you can challenge it if you want. It's going to be
hugely discouraging to fakers.

~~~
pyrophane
> But Zuckerberg has shown boldness and maturity as one of the best CEOs time
> and again

In what respect?

~~~
dpandey
Facebook is the only social network (if you discount Linkedin) from 2005
that's not just existing, but thriving today. All the other social networks
that succeeded (except for SnapChat - which also has an incredible CEO) are
owned by Facebook. And he made bold bets by acquiring them for unbelievable
amounts ($1B Instagram, $18B Whatsapp). While companies like Twitter and
Pinterest have essentially stagnated, Facebook keeps growing and growing, and
so do all their acquisitions. And they have incredible product momentum
despite their size. They have incredible revenue momentum.

This is not accidental. Zuck has shown amazing maturity and judgement in not
just making the right decisions but convincing those founders to accept his
offer. He turned down a billion $ acquisition offer early on, and bought
Whatsapp and Instagram in bold bets and tried really hard to buy SnapChat.

= boldness in making the right big move

= maturity/good judgement in making good decisions

------
Super_Jambo
My personal view is that low regulation advertising is simply not compatible
with Western Democracy. If you don't regulate away emotive and brand
advertising you're corrupting all the systems that are supposed to regulate
our societies (for brevity "advertising" refers to brand and emotive
advertising in the below).

The basic idea of how information flows & control works in western market
driven democratic republics:

People -> Government -> Markets <\- People

The People Elect their Government. The Government controls the rules of "The
Market". The People decide what they want in their day to day lives, demand it
from actors in "The Market". Those who fulfill these needs are rewarded and
copied. Information moves from consumers to market actors rapidly, this
information is hard to fake.

This is very much how markets that don't have much advertising work, take
rice, wheat, logistics. Success demands you provide a better product at lower
cost. People can easily compare products so you _must_ compete on price, the
companies get very efficient they make stuff people want cheaply.

What does advertising do to the above system? Firstly your market starts
rewarding the best liars and cheats. Make cheap crappy sewing machines whilst
buying out previously good sewing machine brands and running their name into
the dirt? FANTASTIC! HUGE REWARD! DO MORE OF THIS. Make soft drinks of dubious
health value but persuade people that their consumption is necessary to their
social lives? FANTASTIC! HUGE REWARD!

If this wasn't bad enough the advertisers are able to give away entertainment
and news content for free. Most people do not want to pay for things and
aren't aware how subtle and pervasive the lies are. So most people lap this
free information up, so now the advertisers hold the purse strings on every
media channel out there. The advertisers control the people, the advertisers
control the market.

Adverts -> Government -> Market <\- Adverts.

The final negative impact is the huge swaths of people who are working
incredibly hard at a net loss for society at large. People who aren't working
making things other people want. People who are working at making other people
want things they otherwise wouldn't. Wonder why we aren't working 15 hour
weeks as predicted by Keynes? Blame all the people making adverts and everyone
who's making content funded by those adverts.

Fake news & Facebook are the latest and worst examples of this corruption. But
really it's just a symptom of the underlying disease. After we've perfected
mechanization and economies of scale large profits require you fool people
into making bad decisions. Doing this is lucrative and since our markets are
evolutionary optimizing machines we are going to see it get worse unless we
take action to stop it.

~~~
snrplfth
> Wonder why we aren't working 15 hour weeks as predicted by Keynes? Blame all
> the people making adverts and everyone who's making content funded by those
> adverts.

Keynes was speaking relative to the conditions of the day, though. The real
GDP per capita of the UK in 1930, when he wrote, was $5400. You wouldn't have
to work for very long to make that kind of money, as an average UK worker.
I've worked 20 hours a week at a below-average wage and considered myself
quite a bit wealthier than your typical low-middle-class Briton of 1930. The
big differences are that "normal" living standards have risen so fast, and so
much unpaid work (largely housework and time-consuming chores) have been
automated.

How do you actually know people are fooled? Your subjective opinion of their
best interest? How can you usefully distinguish good advertising from bad
advertising? How do you know that people are "persuaded" to act against their
own self-interest - and not that they simply have preferences you don't like?

------
SuperPaintMan
Just as a curiosity, the feeds shown through FBs various channels are
different. I've switched to the mobile site after using the dedicated app and
noticed much less random things-tangentially-interesting in my feed but with
more of a focus on my immediate friends. It's surprisingly made FB a much more
enjoyable medium for me as I can keep tabs on the personal lives of a few
close members in a fairly chronological view.

Anyone know possibly why there is these differences or can explain exactly
what's going on here?

------
edblarney
I do not accept the author's premise that 'personalized curation' inherently
implies 'false news'.

------
john_mac
There really is an alternative - crowd curated news by Virwire -
[https://virwire.com](https://virwire.com) \- bypasses the whole media bias
thing with good old wisdom of the crowds. (shameless plug, I'm the developer)

------
rimantas
The urge to flag any post that has "Walled X" in it gets stronger every day.

~~~
oska
Because the premise is invalid or because the ensuing discussion is low
quality?

------
hanso
Arguments occur to be weak. Some reasons are given, but cannot be said to
appear to be complete. Verdict: arbitrary gossip.

------
Ygg2
I have a huge problem with this article. I don't think anything it says cannot
be applied to people using Internet without Facebook or Google.

Internet is the filter bubble. Facebook is just its latest upgrade.

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Media is the filter bubble :-)

------
tmptmp
I am not a fan of FB but it must be understood that FB is not a news agency.

Another thing to consider here is: FB may be wallgardened, but what about the
mainstream news organizations that are sold out to various parties? (e.g.
Saudi Islamists have many huge investments/shares in many mainstream news
organizations)

Many mainstream news organizations are worse than FB when it comes to spread
lies and propaganda in the name of news. We can already feel the influence of
Saudi money in the US mainstream media. The mainstream US media is suppressing
any criticism of Islam under the flimsy arguments like racism and
islamophobia. This is already creating a suffocating atmosphere for true
liberals.

A factor to note here is even though the mainstream news organizations claim
that they are liberal and left-leaning, they act like barbaric people when it
comes to Islam. I do not see any criticism of Islam (e.g. horrendous treatment
of women, homosexuals in Islam) in the mainstream media. Not even the
discussion of problematic aspects of Islamic scriptures has any place in the
mainstream media.

Why should a common man trust the mainstream media news media?

Then you see that it's the social media (FB, whatsapp, twitter, reddit etc)
that gives the people what they think is needed to be
reported/argued/discussed.

e.g. FB (along with many other social media sites) has helped lot of people to
learn the dangers posed by Islamism.

How and why someone as lowly as Trump got elected? This may be very complex
topic to analyze as there are many contributing factors but one factor played
very important role in his win is the "outright dishonest approach by
mainstream news media towards the issue of dangers posed by Islam".

Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about
Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]

I have learnt over the years to not trust many of the pseudo-liberal news
organizations like NY times, Guardian etc. e.g. When Charlie Hebdo people were
killed by the Islamists, most of these left-leaning pseudo-liberal news
agencies were/are very much partial and acted like outright sold-out to
Islamists (Saudi funders) when it comes to deal with news related to the
vicious and barbaric aspects of Islam and various Islamic cultures.

We must also understand that it's finally the reader's responsibility to
filter all news, whether it's from FB or from other established news
agencies/organizations.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M)

~~~
matt4077
> am not a fan of FB but it must be understood that FB is not a news agency.

It doesn't matter what Facebook calls itself. It has power, and responsibility
follows.

> The mainstream US media is suppressing any criticism of Islam under the
> flimsy arguments like racism and islamophobia

I believe there's plenty of it in the news. Syria has been a top story for
three years running. Everyone knows how Saudi-Arabia treats women. Everybody
knows who was responsible for Charlie Hebdo.

Beyond that, it's not in the news because (a) it's not "new" and (b) there is
nothing gained from a collective mob against islam. Bombing doesn't help.
Being condemned by Americans also doesn't change a single mind in the mideast.

Instead, you get the opposite. How many stories have we had about muslims
being forced off airplanes because they spoke Arabic or "looked like a
terrorist". Of course they're usually professors of philosophy who grew up in
the UK and studied at Harvard.

------
anabis
I think people are being unreasonably demanding of FaceBook.

Fake-news, I can see the problem.

However snobbishly trolling with risque art and historical pictures, and
slamming FB because the overworked mods were not sophisticated enough to
recognize them seems like bullying to me.

~~~
jerluc
How can you find yourself at all sympathetic toward Facebook in this context?
This is not about saying Facebook's moderators are doing terribly, the whole
point here is to point out the fact that Facebook has a major conflict of
interest when it comes to the issue of fake news, and they've avoided
admitting that fact entirely.

~~~
anabis
As I said, I agree with stomping out fake-news.

But its like death with thousand cuts. I think the users should drop the
demand for art and historical stuff.

------
mozumder
Social media sites always end up turning toxic. The problem is that they give
a voice to all the mindless idiots of society.

These people should never be given a voice. There is no justification for
that. Voices should always be edited and filtered by higher powers.

The common opinion is worth nothing, since we already know what it is, so why
repeat it?

~~~
jerluc
I think the ultimate issue specifically with Facebook is not that you
shouldn't give people voices online, but rather that when the voices form
small, tight-knit echo chambers with zero outside challenge, the outcome can
be disastrous. I believe this is why the author calls it a "walled
wonderland".

~~~
intoverflow2
To me this is actually an argument against extensive moderation mozumder is
suggesting.

Echo chamber is still an echo chamber even if you like the sound of the
echoes.

