Sometimes I wonder that when we shower criticism on Facebook about privacy concerns, we're missing the forest for the trees. The bigger issue I see is the sheer amount of eyeballs trained exclusively to Facebook's content.
What does it mean for society when Facebook can demote a challenging but important article (say, of war reporting) in your newsfeed so it can promote your friend's Wedding photos, because an algorithm says that challenging articles cause people to leave FB, reducing page views and ad revenue?
Media has always been that. Why, during a military coup, is the first thing that is attacked are the TV stations? Control the message, control the culture.
It is fascinating to see the Internet (and in this case Facebook) displacing the multi-billion(trillion?) media estate. I remember the dot.com bubble where the media claimed that statements that the Internet would make them obsolete was crap. 20 years ahead of its time I guess.
The policy question is similar to the phone system one, is it in the people's best interest that their be a standard phone system? And if so, can you regulate it sufficiently to avoid abuses? Those were the questions surrounding the original Bell network in the US. What does a monopoly look like in the Internet world, and do we, can we, regulate it? Pretty important questions.
We ultimately decided landlines needed to be subjected to pretty stringent regulatory requirements in return for their monopoly (before ultimately breaking them up). Hopefully the same will happen to Facebook if they retain market share in 20 years.
I defer to you, but my take would be that the government simply declined to fight it on anti-trust grounds between ~1910-1970.
On the other hand, I don't think you can ignore Bell Labs or the fact they they did build some amazing infrastructure. Would the world have been better off on the whole with more competition in AT&T's heyday?
Which turns out be the general argument against centralised authority. Autocratic rule, monopoly power, monoculture agriculture, etc. You've only got one system, one set of preferences, one set of decision algorithms, often with its own preferences (even if unconscious, though very often not), determining outcomes for all.
Any wealth or power imbalance tends toward this result.
Honestly? I'm not. I personally browse a few news sites, hacker news, etc, but I'm in the minority.
Facebook is doing a very fine job of being the first place people hear about stuff happening. It's one website, and it will give you exactly the news you care about- big stories side by side with your friends' random musings. They've aggregated all information that a person cares about in one place, personalized, custom-fit, nothing you don't care about.
I'm not calling that a good thing, but I do think it's true.
There's a MacDonald's in every city in the planet, and it's literally killing us from how unhealthy it is, but good god I keep going back every now and then. Same idea as Facebook.
You may have a point about facebook, but I have to disagree about McDonald's. Many, many people eat tons of McDonald's and live to a ripe old age, including Warren Buffet, my great aunt (now 103), and countless others.
Yes, you can make a strong argument that eating ONLY McDonald's is unhealthy (though others have done the opposite in various documentaries), but if you're going to say that McDonald's is "literally" killing us, you'll need to back it up with a mountain of evidence. Anecdotes aside, the places with the greatest longevity also tend to have a lot of McDonalds restaurants. The top McDonald's eating countries (per capita) outside the US are Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Hong Kong, Canada and France—some of the longest living people in the world!
If they're "literally" being killed by the food, it sure takes a long time to do its damage!
Its how some people get all those things. Not people who care enough to get their news directly from a number of sources, instead of via the Facebook filter.
Even if you don't get your information from Facebook, if enough people do, then Facebook can influence the outcomes of elections which directly affect your life. If you are a plumber who doesn't use Facebook, and Facebook promotes a bunch of content that foments anti-plumber sentiments, you may be attacked on the street by an angry mob of Facebook users.
It is not possible to design your life so that you completely avoid the influence of an entity as large and powerful as Facebook, just like the citizens of most countries cannot design their lives in a way that fully avoids the influence of the U.S. government.
to be completely honest, having the time and energy to stay well-informed on current events from a variety of sources is a privilege. working-class and poor people have neither the time nor mental energy to peruse a variety of sources. the reason i say this is not to tell you to "check your privilege", by the way. it's to make the argument that facebook's shaping of the zeitgeist primarily affects the impoverished and working classes - the people who bear the brunt of all policy decisions, the people who need to be well-informed the most.
Looking beyond Facebook for news and reporting on diverse topics with balanced viewpoints is a "privilege"?
On what can you possibly base this claim? This is why Internet.org and the walled garden got nuked. This is what we really mean when we talk about network neutrality. You type a URL into the address bar and press enter, and the page you requested loads.
While certainly there are populations where internet access is not readily available, that doesn't appear to be your argument. "working-class and poor people have neither the time nor mental energy to peruse a variety of sources" is a bizarre claim I can't quite get my head around.
> "working-class and poor people have neither the time nor mental energy to peruse a variety of sources" is a bizarre claim I can't quite get my head around.
Consider the possibility that this difficulty lies not with the claim, but with your head.
The real value of money is that you can use it in place of time. The less of it you have, the more time you must spend on dealing with problems that you could make go away much more quickly and easily otherwise. The converse is also true.
That's why people say that it's a privilege to be able to gather a balanced view of the world. I would not say the same, because the rhetoric of privilege is inseparable from personal attack, and making people feel uneasy and defensive is inimical to worthwhile discourse. But when people use that lazy cliché in this context, that is what they mean.
> the rhetoric of privilege is inseparable from personal attack
Is this a generational point of view? I don't think that the word "privilege" is "inseperable from personal attack. To me, this very much fits into the definition of a privilege as "a benefit enjoyed by a person, beyond the advantages of most". Access to and time to read a broad variety of news sources is very much a benefit enjoyed by some people, beyond the advantages of most. I don't see how there's any personal attack implicit in that...
I've observed people to respond very badly when I use it, and as best I can tell, that's why.
I speak to communicate with people - that's communicate with, not talk to, and if you're unclear on the distinction, any dictionary with etymological information will serve you.
Talking about other people's opinions, behaviors, and beliefs in terms of privilege makes communicating with them harder instead of easier. So it's not worth my while to do.
> The real value of money is that you can use it in place of time.
This is true to a point, but you stretch it to an absolutism. As if, a lack of money by definition means a lack of time, which is most certainly false. In many ways, having more money increases demands on your time, and this can hold true up through even Larry Page levels of wealth.
Working-class and poor people; many often hold a much more balanced world-view than the wealthy or elite. And yes, many of them used the internet to access diverse viewpoints mixed with their life experience in order to help arrive at those viewpoints.
I think net worth is very loosely correlated with some of the things you seem to think net worth is strongly correlated with.
I love Hacker News! I can't imagine where else it might happen that a Silicon Valley startup founder would explain to a mouthy unlettered Mississippi redneck what it's like to be poor or working class. Thank you for that!
Aparently not enough to curb the sarcasm, ditch the personal attacks, or think twice about your preconceived notions before posting.
Now, your self-description is quite colorful, but seems to only support my claims. It almost sounds like you're saying that a diverse group of people do actually have the means to discuss complex topics and critically analyze diverse viewpoints beyond whatever Facebook's algorithm might choose for them.
And thank you bobcostas55 for bringing data to the conversation upthread.
But if this is what you call "communicating with people not just talking to them" I'll just step out now.
Sorry to say, yours is the first direct reply in years of HN I've regretted not being able to downvote.
Well, I was about to write out a long and detailed reply about how having more money means also having more choices, and how I think there is a substantive difference there which you overlook. I further intended to point out that I'm actually very unusual among my cohort, and that it is inadvisable to draw general conclusions about that cohort on the basis of what I say about myself or how I say it.
Before I could get more than a few words into all of that, though, I got an email from my father, who told me that my distant cousin who nearly died when his meth lab blew up is in fact permanently paralyzed in the lower half of his body, and between that and other injuries will almost certainly require lifelong care.
I may be a sarcastic asshole of a redneck, but I am also an amazingly fortunate redneck. I have made a successful career in software engineering, which enables me to earn more in a year than both my parents combined. A lot of that I send back home. I cannot send enough. I do not make enough. In that light the perspective you express strikes me as thoughtlessly facile. I did a poor job of expressing that in my last comment, which was written in the heat of the moment. Perhaps this one, with the benefit of reflection, will make it more clear.
It's a shame you are unable to downvote that comment, if you feel it is warranted. Perhaps someone else will step up and do so.
The bad idea that a free walled garden is better than nothing, or that it's worth sacrificing network neutrality in order to increase overall access.
And to give a little more background, Facebook was trying to get free "internet" access away in India, but it wasn't really internet access it was actually just a Facebook walled garden. The local population organized and ultimately the government rightly told them to piss off.
Because being able to access a diverse set of viewpoints on the Internet is not, actually, a "privilege" but rather the central point of the whole affair.
No, the people making the policy decisions need to be better informed. It doesn't much matter if you suffer them and don't have the time to go campaigning your grievances. The sword cuts on both sides: the poor don't have political power because they don't have the luxury needed to wield it, not because they are uninformed of the state of affairs.
FWIW, I read that as: The poor people are the ones who elect the people making the decisions to those decision-making posts. In that sense, the voters are the ones who need to be informed on the issues _(and_ on where the candidates stand on the issues), in order to be able to vote for candidates who know and care about the same issues the voters do.
All the examples you cite are essentially one-to-many communication channels, where you expect to hear one viewpoint from the getgo. Whereas Facebook dishonestly promises many-to-many, but all you get is the same old one-to-many.
> What does it mean for society when Facebook can demote a challenging but important article (say, of war reporting) in your newsfeed so it can promote your friend's Wedding photos
That Facebook is a social networking platform that some people incidentally use to try to relay news of general public concern, not an online public affairs platform with an incidental social networking function?
It's still mostly a social networking site, and to the extent "serious" content threatens the social networking aspect, Facebook has an interest in placing limits.
Lots of people have an interest in doing things that are bad for other people generally. That doesn't actually mean the rest of us should be okay with it.
> The rest of us can, but the question is to what extent the rest of us are or will in the future.
Look, if people aren't going to choose news-focused sites over social-networking-focused sites, then existing social-networking-focused sites that bait-and-switch their users into a news-focused experience are just going to lose to actual social networking sites, starting the problem back at zero.
I don't think you need to force-feed hard news to people. People who would read it will seek it out - the sorts of people who are content with what FB serves up are the kind of people who didn't read newspapers before the web and were content to get their news from daytime television.
True in general, but not relevant in this particular case. Facebook is still a social networking site with an incidental public affairs use, and not the other way around.
Why would a social networking platform prioritize wedding photos over news? Is the news less "social"? Aren't weddings news? You're begging the question here.
wedding photos keep you on facebook, which means more time spent on facebook -> more ads server & more behavior tracked. If you click the news, it will take you away from facebook.
If we follow your logic, it seems like a valid response would essentially be a social network disconnected from a company with a profit motive. The closest thing we had to that was diaspora[0], although it doesn't seem very successful.
Previously Usenet. Which died under, ironically, trolls, antipornography drives, and copyright enforcement.
There was the WWW itself, at least for a time, though there are elements which tend toward centralisation, largely discovery, discussion, authentication, and directory.
Tim Berners-Lee and others have recently announce Solid.
In my opinion, the whole idea of social networking is flawed. I don't need a network where people are interconnected ("webbed" together), I just need individual contacts and ephemeral groups. Ok, one can say that this implies that people are connected, and that multiple connections implies network, but the way this works on the Internet just doesn't feel right to me, especially with Facebook and so on. The elements of permanence and interconnectivity are just not done right. But as to how they should be done then, I haven't a clue.
> What does it mean for society when Facebook can demote a challenging but important article (say, of war reporting) in your newsfeed
I think it means absolutely nothing. I use Facebook so I can see how my friends are doing, not to find news articles to read (unless it's an article my friend just shared, and even then only maybe). I don't think many people use facebook to get their news and nowhere else.
> I don't think many people use facebook to get their news and nowhere else.
And yet enough people do that it's a real and recognized problem to the point that HN discusses it every couple of weeks. HN in itself being a similar echo chamber.
People get news from what they look at. There's no such thing as "news". It's all eyeball based. The source with the most eyeballs is considered The News.
That is what you say when you're making a distinction between "editorial" content and "news." Jon Stewart was saying "My show is obviously editorial content, not fact-reporting objective journalism." As a way of objecting to other sources who claimed to be providing fact-reporting objective journalism when they were actually providing editorial content. AKA "Fox News" vs "Comedy Central."
> I don't think many people use facebook to get their news and nowhere else.
Actually, nearly 50% of American adults use facebook as a news source [0]. Not that this means they don't have other sources, but it seems very likely that increased consumption of news via facebook is cutting into consumption from other sources. Anecdotally I've noticed that trend in my own news consumption, to my chagrin.
My biggest gripe with facebook is that we have given them, a company that earns money by knowing as much as possible about us, and important role in deciding how we interact with society and the people around us.
I believe you have to be a special kind of crazy not to acknowledge that as a problem. Or, considering their big user base, a very general kind of crazy.
> What does it mean for society when Facebook can demote a challenging but important article (say, of war reporting) in your newsfeed so it can promote your friend's Wedding photos, because an algorithm says that challenging articles cause people to leave FB, reducing page views and ad revenue?
Couldn't a newspaper that uses algorithmic metrics (or any kind of metrics or surveying) end up making a similar editorial decision for similar reasons? Journalists have worried about independence of editorial and advertising for somewhat analogous kinds of reason for a long time, and also about whether their news outlets were doing the most important journalism vs. journalism with the greatest mass appeal.
When there were two reasonably good newspapers in virtually any city (or 3, or 9, or in some cases 30 or 40), there was a readily available local alternative to the editorial decisions of any one paper, though other factors (political machine, major advertiser, mob) might have similarly restricted what was covered.
But those days are gone -- many cities in the US have only one major daily, and it's often stopped trying. Local radio and television, as well as national broadcasts, are abysmal.
What I'm noticing today, at least in print media, is a staggeringly widespread mediocrity and lack of relevance. Actually, that goes beyond print to broadcast (radio and television), and many mainstream online sources.
The saving grace, at least for now, are competing, largely non-mainstream sources, which carry information that is less likely to be carried. Yes, some sites cater to eyeball-attracting, outrage-inducing bogosities, but others actually contain solid content.
My local paper has had little if any coverage of international trade pacts which treaten to rewrite major elements of laws across multiple countries, but I can find detailed information at, of all places, Buzzfeed. Or The Intercept. Or The Guardian. Or Pro Publica. Or your EFF article -- one of the best explainers I've found, and some colourful infographics to boot (they've been in heavy play, and largely my only content, at Google+, as Google are among the sadly far-too-many tech companies promoting the TPP, TTIP, BITS, and TiSA).
Something is badly wrong with media, though, and globally. It's not a whole lot that's not been warned about for a long, long time -- Eric Blair (George Orwell), Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Neal Postman, Jerry Mander, I.F. Stone, and others cautioned about it. Oh, and Walter Lippman and Noam Chomsky. But is it ever getting flagrant.
I'd even be modestly satisfied with algorithmic placements, so long as they were different algorithms, possibly rotated, and with some sortition blended in for random perterbations.
Facebook's a problem, and a large problem, but not the only problem.
Taking the US as an example, I think the concern is that there is 1 Facebook, vs 50+ state / regional news papers to get competing viewpoints. Yes, many of the sources of news on Facebook are themselves different news websites.
The point here is that this is all being funneled through one filter. And many media / news companies may disappear over time so the issue could become worse.
Number and variety of sources of information is the distinction.
I think your analogy would apply if there were many "Facebooks". But there is only one.
While is stays an algorithm optimizing for usage, I'm not concerned.
The moment is squires extra optimizing targets, that's a problem. What is more troubling is that we can't even know when that changes (if it didn't already).
> What does it mean for society when Facebook can demote a challenging but important article (say, of war reporting) in your newsfeed so it can promote your friend's Wedding photos
You'll be a hell of a lot healthier since the war photo is pointless(Exactly what's the point of reseeing the photo... to remind you war is bad?) but your friends count.
You are assuming people will "resee" it. But people need to have seen it for the first time somewhere in order for that to happen. A lot of people don't know this picture, or have idea what impact it has, and if Facebooks censorship remains unchallenged, a lot of important pictures will remain unseen by a growing proportion of people.
This specific people may escape that fate, as it's important enough to be in history books - I believe I first saw it in primary school - but handing Facebook the power to hide important parts of history from a huge proportion of people is dangerous.
“Kim is saddened by those who would focus on the nudity in the historic picture rather than the powerful message it conveys”, writes spokesperson Anne Bayin to Dagsavisen.
Kim Phuc says that it has been painful to see the picture, but that it represents an important moment in history.
“She fully supports the documentary image taken by Nick Ut as a moment of truth that captures the horror of war and its effects on innocent victims”, writes the Kim Phuc Foundation in a statement.
> "Facebook is for the pleasure and benefit of the whole world, myself included, on a number of levels."
Wrong. Facebook is for making money. If providing users with pleasure or benefits makes them money, then that's lucky for the users.
> "Facebook has become a world-leading platform for spreading information, for debate and for social contact between persons. You have gained this position because you deserve it."
Also wrong. The second sentence, I mean.
I agree with the intent here. I agree with the outrage at Facebook. The author of this piece, too, seems to understand the futility of this open letter, and I do think it's a good thing that he's making the statement regardless. I just think that maybe he's being too generous to Mark and Facebook.
I don't know if I agree with the outrage at Facebook. They are out to make money. They can make more money if they avoid controversy and keep their site a place that brands like to be associated with. It results in corporate censorship for sure, but is it Facebook's responsibility to provide a censorship free platform?
I fully agree with people taking note and becoming aware that Facebook is simply a business providing them a service and not a benevolent social network uniting the world.
But until people are willing to get upset enough about issues like this to leave Facebook, they really have no incentive to change. It's a reflection on society more than on one company. Like it or not, we use Facebook because we like it, it provides a service we're happy to consume. If we're happy and the advertisers are happy why would they care about these sorts of things?
a) the network effects that make people join the network even if they wouldn't want to on their own
b) Facebook's own agressive strategies of bringing users into their network without conscious choice - e.g. the acquisition of whatsapp or the internet.org initiative.
At this point it's more like some property shark who'd buy up half the city's apartment blocks, then proceed to cut services and raise the rents - and when people complain, respond "well, for some reason all those people chose to rent my apartments, so they must approve of what I do"...
Point A is especially important. I quit four years ago, and I constantly get bombarded by people trying to get me to come back onto it. I have a few friends who've resisted and never gotten an account, but they are also constantly goaded about it.
We SHOULD be outraged at entities that, because they are purely out to make money, end up shaping the world in ways we'd rather it not be. That's a perfectly natural thing to be outraged by; that they are in fact incentivized to do the thing we are outraged by is just another thing to be outraged by!
This also applies to non-for-profit institutions such as the Wiki Foundation. Jimmy Wales is well known for censoring content. Any resource that is used by a huge percent of the human population for information is going to shape/reshape. We have to be vigilant.
I think the outrage is perfectly fine. The only thing that's going to sway them is public opinion and outrage that can have an impact on their revenue stream.
Exactly because they can make more money by avoiding controversy there is every reason to be outraged and make it known - it is the one channel we have to make it worth it for them to listen and consider changing their policies, by making it costly for them to ignore it.
> But until people are willing to get upset enough about issues like this to leave Facebook, they really have no incentive to change.
They will have an incentive to change if e.g. advertisers start worrying about their image if they advertise on Facebook too. Causing outrage and creating a debate around whether Facebook is damaging our society is a way of making Facebook a less attractive advertising channel as well.
> They can make more money if they avoid controversy
Removing that picture for being pornographic should be much more controversial than the controversial pornographic aspect. The latter is really an US-centric notion.
Ideas of "Shareholder primacy" and the that the sole role of directors of corporations is to "maximise shareholder value" are coming under fire lately, but they're still a pretty good rule-of-thumb for a Company Director about how to avoid investor lawsuits. There "may" be other desires and motivations the shareholders have which would influence the decision making philosophy of the company leadership, But if you had a decision to make where you could choose to "make Zuckerberg richer" or to "have Facebook assist in that humanitarian cause Mark once talked about while high at Burningman", which do you suppose you'd have an easier time defending if anybody ever called you on it?
You're right - it's often extremely damaging. But we've ingrained it into capitalist society in the same sort of ways as casual racism and everyday sexism. Pretty much completely socially acceptable, and often easy to participate in unintentionally even when you're trying not to...
I don't see where anyone is discarding integrity. Not all content is appropriate for all sites. Beyond that, while this is a famous picture, what most people think they know about it is wrong, so it's not really adding much to the public discourse.
>I don't see where anyone is discarding integrity.
It takes integrity to defend a principle in lieu of doing the expedient thing of instilling a "zero tolerance" policy. One that you can define so broadly that you never have to suffer the PR backlash that will eventually result when someone takes advantage of these freedoms and does something abhorrent.
>Not all content is appropriate for all sites.
But I thought that all content is appropriate for all sites. Don't all people fit into size 36 jeans, like cheesecake, ride unicycles, and love to go hiking? I quite like your negate the absolutes game.
>Beyond that, while this is a famous picture, what most people think they know about it is wrong, so it's not really adding much to the public discourse.
That is a rather banal statement. It is obvious that the argument isn't about one particular picture, but about defending freedom of expression.
Nobody complains, nothing is likely to change, things stay the same. I'm on the side of complaining. You?
>It takes integrity to defend a principle in lieu of doing the expedient thing of instilling a "zero tolerance" policy.
If you start from the position that kind of content belongs on FB, then sure. But not of you don't. And I don't.
>But I thought that all content is appropriate for all sites. Don't all people fit into size 36 jeans, like cheesecake, ride unicycles, and love to go hiking? I quite like your negate the absolutes game.
And I quite like your pointless reductio ad absurdum. The point is Facebook is a site with a purpose, these kinds of articles are at best tangential to the site's purpose, and it's perfectly reasonable for Facebook to say "This content will make some people uncomfortable, and they're not coming to our site to be made uncomfortable." I would have thought my point was obvious.
>That is a rather banal statement. It is obvious that the argument isn't about one particular picture, but about defending freedom of expression.
Nobody is saying this guy doesn't have the right to express himself. The argument he's trying to make is he has some sort of moral right to put content he likes on a site created, owned, and operated by someone else for a purpose other than disseminating news. He doesn't.
This is why news organizations have their own web sites.
>Nobody complains, nothing is likely to change, things stay the same. I'm on the side of complaining. You?
Not me. I think Facebook made a perfectly reasonable decision here, and I'm not interested in change for its own sake.
You seem to have put a fair amount of effort into this declaration of principle and partisanship on behalf of an advertising company that wants to monetize everybody in the world. I hope it was worthwhile.
I have no doubt you can't understand why anyone would disagree with you, but maybe you can stretch a little, intellectually, and try to see other viewpoints.
I think I understand where you're coming from. It's possible I am wrong about that, and how would I really know? I don't think anything you've said is inaccurate, if that means anything. I do think that the organization you so capably defend is not worthy of your effort in so doing. But on reflection I'm not sure what purpose I thought I would serve in saying so.
Why can a drug maker jack their prices up 100x? Because it's profitable.
Why do gas companies raise their prices when there's an impending disaster (hurricane, blizzards, etc.)? Because they can.
Capitalism is great in a different aspect: it provides a form of unaccountable eugenics. Your parents were poor, and went to a public school that wasn't funded well. That travels along with life, leading to a harder life for you. Less money for the essentials, and perhaps health insurance.
There's nobody out there with a knife going to kill you; it's more of ling-chi or death by a thousand cuts. And the culmination amounts to moralizations like "You should have went to better school", or "Its your fault not getting a better job", or insults of "Lazy".
But your lifespan is shortened; there's less everything for you. And society has no one to blame except you. Well, other than every other actor who causes tiny bits of pain and suffering... but not enough to quantify. Not like they could sue, anyways.
I agree with you the first three stanzas of your post, but is this what is wrong with "capitalism", or is this what is wrong with "the way we are currently doing capitalism" ?
Capitalism, the economic theory as posited by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations" fails when stuff approaches infinity.
We already have a taste of it with the internet, where it's 'Create once, share everywhere'. The idea of scarcity is forced via legal tools, where scarcity means little.
And now, with cheap solar, leads to cheap/free energy. And robots are creating more and more goods. And we're on the cusp of a level 4 vehicle automation systems. As this trend continues, many things will approach 'infinity' the same way they do already online.
What does that mean? It means that people could have the requirements of life provided as a citizenship right: food, water, shelter, electricity, internet, plus a bit more. Unlike the older socialism and communism systems, that required people be slaves to the state and work in prescribed manners, robots and computers could be the provider of these essential resources.
And that starts looking at post-capitalism systems. Would there be money? Of course. Some resources would still be rare. But this idea of "go to work so you can eat and survive" would no longer be hanging over people's heads like a guillotine.
Taking a very narrow legal view, you're correct. Surely, however, we can make more sophisticated judgements than "legally it's OK, therefore morally it's OK".
Law is ideally not different to morality. The same ethic measures should apply to both. The law is supposed to codify morality. It can capture only so many aspects of daily life, so there is a personal responsibility for everyone to account for the cases not explicitly mentioned. Law is also negotiable, that's why parliament literally means discussion.
Surely you wouldn't support working slaves to death just to make a profit? Or murdering people to sell their organs? You wouldn't do either of those things even if there were no law stopping you, right?
I'm posting mostly just to make the chorus louder. This was a well-thought out, articulate criticism of Facebook's policy.
It's relevant to free-speech, art, censorship, the means of production, etc., and the fact that Facebook plays a role underscores their power, and why this matters.
It a slippery slope when policy fails to achieve an appropriate, nuanced perspective.
There are some good arguments, but I think the post really boils down to "our community guidelines don't match Facebook's; here are good arguments why our guidelines are what they are; we really want to use Facebook; we think news sites (and only news sites) should have exemptions from the community guidelines."
Given the wide variety of news sites and media companies, I don't think Facebook will give blanket exemptions. But Facebook has been willing to make small changes to the guidelines ( e.g., breastfeeding), so perhaps we can look at this as an opening offer in a negotiation.
I wonder what the solution to this is. From what I know about reviewing reports about content, it's basically a case of someone reporting the post, then the report being farmed to reviewers, then the reviewers can check the post and I optionally the context to either kill the post or leave it alone.
That means your post is one of hundreds this person sees that day and their guidance is likely "no genitalia, no nipples, and definitely never any naked children". So they act accordingly.
So what's the ideal path from here? Do you educate them about art? What's the line after that? Is this photo ok? What about the famous album cover? What about private party pictures? Etc. Can we even describe a reasonable line? Do we expect them to reverse image search every single photo for context? (Not many people could recognise that photo on its own) How many more people would be needed for clarification? What's the incentive to get them?
I really don't get why sites don't think this way. If you take the hands-off route, you can deflect a lot of criticism: "We don't endorse it, we just let people post what they want". But as soon as you censor, or curate, or promote one item/subject, you become responsible for everything else on your site. Why add extra load on yourself?
> I really don't get why sites don't think this way
Because they lose revenue. In Facebook's case because advertisers have demonstrated time and again they won't spend money when their products are associated with controversial content. It doesn't matter how nuanced or obtuse the reason for the controversy.
That sounds plausible. I guess I don't see how FB can't throw their weight around. Sure, smallrandomsite.com can't fight advertisers, but FB should be able to.
If you don't moderate what the users post your service becomes a child porn host in a surprisingly short ammount of time is the common fear, and I think its also what generally happens. Though behadings and general gore from shitposters is probably what triggers most censorship programs.
I guess I didn't say it, but I meant don't filter out anything except for legally-required stuff. If they have to comply with the law, I can understand that.
Advertisers hate this approach, unfortunately. This means that if a site is primarily trying to make money, such an idealistic approach will fall to the wayside. Reddit is the most spectacular example of this, moderation by the administrators has in recent years stepped far away from the original approach of leaving up all legal content.
Or you could even let them tag content as inappropriate for those who only want to see fluffy bunnies and have an "give me an unfiltered view" option for everyone else.
I am 100% behind letting the user decide what they want to filter out. If beheadings offend you, filter them out! If tan-colored books offend you, filter those out as well!
I guess it's weird to me that some people can't just "filter" and move on.
I've once had the displeasure of clicking on a misleading facebook group title and seeing one of the worst pictures I've ever seen, an atrocity that I couldn't get out of my head for days. I reported it. Some idiots just want to shock others, I don't get it.
I know that there are companies in Europe that only do the verification of the reported content, and the employees cannot say that they work for facebook, but in a way they do.
Facebook - context oblivious censorship on the other hand - reality-bubble forming curator algorithms on the other. Somehow the term "negative feedback loop" comes to mind every time Facebooks mechanisms to filter and market content is brought forth.
I don't think internet search engines should try to be helpful. Guessing what the recipient would like to see removes chance for serendipity and creates and information bubble with a radius given by the algorithms parameters... and then, for what is brought out, they remove the too-saucy bits. This is worse than censorship.
Depends on what function you want the trending news feature to serve. If you want an unbiased view of what's currently popular on FB, this is better. If you want real, noteworthy news the this is probably worse.
They did this previously. The problem was that this disqualifies most news outlets operating on the fringes of reality. Since this includes most of the favorite news sources of tea-partiers it obviously can't stand. I don't particularly like the Democratic party, but any news site labeling itself as "right wing news" is for nutters. Facebook censored those sites and the nutters got angry and that's how we got here.
Google News covers plenty of "right wing" news. One can only think FB is intentionally letting quality fall in order to show they really had to do something.
>'I don't think internet search engines should try to be helpful'
I agree but the results need to be helpful in so much as they need to be context relevant. Google serves up any old cr*p, hardly ever related to what I'm looking for.
Of course, the flip side of that is for the result to be context relevant the search engine needs to know you which could be privacy infringing etc.
Except the lord is not free to decide as he pleases. Governments around the world have been putting pressure on FB to censor certain kinds of content. Most of them also have a narrower definition of "free speech" compared to the US. The German government especially has been involved in this, pushing the social network to censor "hate speech". This has prompted FB to hire German company Arvato to handle reports of inappropriate content. These also seem to be the people that newspaper was dealing with.
So you are saying that Mark Zuckerberg is a dictator and no one has the freedom to leave his rule?
This is so different, if you don't like Facebook use a competitors service. If a good one doesn't exist that lines up with your moral aspirations create one. But under Saddam and Gaddafi, you don't like them, keep quiet or you might disappear, if the wrong person over hears you.
The product manager for Google Plus just punched a hole in his hat.
On a serious note, there were platforms that used to dominate discourse on the internet before Facebook. Usenet, ICQ, AOL, Myspace.
Now there are alternatives. Medium for blogging; Reddit and 4chan for discussion; Twitter for sharing breaking news, trolling celebrities, and complaining about customer service; LinkedIn for connections and keeping in touch; Pinterest for sharing photos and links; Snapchat for sharing photos and videos; et cetera. I have a few friends, particularly in the 25-and-below generation, who don't have a Facebook but are very active on Snapchat or when it was trendy, Vine.
Don't forget countries where Facebook is a minority player. Weibo, Renren, WeChat, VKontakte are examples of thriving social networks that could possibly grow beyond their borders.
social networks are a natural monopoly, you want everybody to be on the same one. So if you want to avoid the centralized authority problem, you need to define it as a network of many nodes communicating via open protocols. Sort of like email. This is how Diaspora and GNU Social work.
For those who don't understand why this is relevant: the important point is that Facebook was never, is not, and will never be meant for dispersing information and fostering meaningful discourse. Its only raison d'être is entertainment and generating revenue for its shareholders, so it's rather pointless to try to fight their arbitrary rules.
If you are trying to bring up meaningful discourse on Facebook, you're not getting the right audience, because Facebook is all about reinforcement of the user's existing believes and world views.
I have friends and ex-colleagues who hold different political views than me. I virtually never see their posts on Facebook, because algorithm and machine learning. And I'm aware of that fact when I use Facebook.
Afterposten is in the media business, they understand the unwritten rules. Call me a cynic, but I feel that the only point of their open letter is to sound righteous and generate publicity.
> Its only raison d'être is entertainment and generating revenue for its shareholders, so it's rather pointless to try to fight their arbitrary rules.
How does it do that without users? I was taught, anyone with any interest in the operation is a stakeholder. If easy dispersion of information is their offer to users, they should be liable for that. If they aren't, the user should either seek support from the government to hold the debtor (facebook) accountable in an anti-trust issue, or consequently reevaluate the offer, if the original intent can not be expected anymore.
Since FB uses advertisement, which is controversial, this is not a clear cut case to me. Because of multiple share holders, facebook has to arbitrate the interests in their own interest. This is also controversial in the question of delivering the best experience regardless of the advertisement. The advertisement just makes it so much more complicated, because it often times borders on deception, if not fraud.
I wonder how monopolized publishing is these days. If you want to get the message out about something, how much are you at the mercy of a few distribution channels and how much do we have an open ecosystem that gives everybody equal rights? I am honestly not sure.
How important is it to be on Facebook? On Twitter? On Reddit? On HN? Indexed by Google? Have connections to the Huffington Post?
If you have something interesting to say, can those forces stop you? Or will it spread because it is interesting?
If you make great art, will it become popular just because it is great? Or does it depend on your marketing skills?
Could we have technology that makes interesting, helpful content spread no matter what?
Do we have to invent some kind of "internet voting" system to accomplish this? Can blockchain technology help with this?
It certainly makes it a lot more difficult to get the message out about something without those channels. And if those forces don't like what you're saying, it becomes much harder to find for other people.
Popularity depends a lot on your marketing skills too. If you can 'figure out' the secret to success on social media sites, or how to get your site's SEO to be good, that helps a lot more than the quality of the work at the moment. Unfortunately.
Not sure if you can make interesting, helpful content spread no matter what. Seems like it could be a challenge to have any system to find interesting content that isn't dependant on any third party services or search engines. And even more of a challenge to get people to use it.
A VIP reason to have popular alternatives to services like those provided by the likes of Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter that are not controlled by monster corporations.
Also, I think the actual problem isn't these corporations, it's ultimately the governments of the world.
Even if the major social networks allow something highly controversial to remain, sooner or later they may be required by the government to take it down. Even someone as big as Apple will have trouble standing their ground, as was shown recently.
The government and the law is what's supposed to protect people's right to information and free speech, yet they are also the ultimate source of censorship.
You shouldn't really try to sum up Facebook in a single sentence any more than you would do the same with the internet as a whole. The truth, of course, is much more nuanced than a short sentence permits.
For instance Facebook allows me to communicate with friends and family I wouldn't otherwise be able to communicate with (at least not as efficiently). I can't see that being bad. As a matter of fact it's something I derive a great sense of satisfaction and wellbeing from.
I wish people would stop kidding themselves that Facebook is the same as the Internet as a whole. Facebook is just one service you happen to use. Some of your friends happen to use it too. Please don't pretend that cutting it off would mean you couldnt communicate with your friends anymore. You and your friends are resourceful. You would find another way. The Internet is a big place with many pipes for you and your friends to use.
As a matter of fact I communicate with some people who I would almost certainly have no way of communicating with or, in fact, knowing if they are alive or dead.
(I moved a lot as a child)
I get your point that it's not the only solution to this problem. But it is currently the best choice, even if only because of the network effect.
>I wish people would stop kidding themselves that Facebook is the same as the Internet as a whole.
I never said that. That's ridiculous. I said it's complex enough that summing it up in a single dismissive sentence is probably disingenuous.
>Please don't pretend that cutting it off would mean you couldnt communicate with your friends anymore.
I have five privacy tools on this browser: uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript, and a free VPN. It was quite tedious to go through each of them before I figured out it was an HTTPS issue.
HTTPS is oppressive to those who cannot afford computers powerful enough to run the cyphers on so many connections. Try browsing on a 66mhz bus pentium some time.
The slowest pentium can do about 2 megabytes per second of AES+SHA. The fastest is more like 10. That should be more than plenty when compared to how long it takes to render the same amount of data.
And how much does that computer cost? An Arm SoC is not much...
> If you take the liberty to challenge Facebook’s rules, you will be met – as we have seen – with censorship.
You are in Marks living room. He has asked you not to bring certain kinds of photos to his place. You did anyway so he took the photo from you. You brought another copy the next time. Now he is getting angry with you.
Maybe you should meet at your place in the future? Or maybe you shouldn't be friends with Mark at all.
Unfortunately it is still his. When people sign up, there is a line hidden somewhere that says "This is my living room and you agree you stay here on the condition that you will agree to whatever I might ask you in future".
In a way, some physical metaphor like this one drives the point home well. Though Mark might not say bluntly that "You are in my living room, just adhere to what I order you", he is actually saying something like "I'm not permitting this in my living room because it is an inconvenience to other people".
The ugly truth is 1.3 billion people are guests and no matter how big they are they have to agree with the host.
It seems that the analogy breaks down badly when the "private property" is treated 99.9% of the time as a public property, and the entire world is invited (except for those with important political messages that don't go well with advertising).
I'm not saying Facebook isn't Mark's to do with as he pleases, but... something isn't right here.
Don't confuse Facebook with the Internet. One has terms and conditions and policies and moderators and shateholders, the other does not.
If our governing authorities took measures to pull such photos from the web, then we'd have a problem worth protesting. If Facebook.com pulls the photo and points to its policies as the reason... then simply publish the photo elsewhere.
> But, dear Mark, you are the world’s most powerful editor.
If we want to treat Mark as the editor to Facebook, then he wants to tailor its content to the type of audience he wants to attract and business he is in.
Would Teen People or Vogue print a picture of napalmed children on its cover?
Well, it can, but it does still make a weird line in the sand
You can be naked for the following reasons: Breastfeeding, Satire, Comedy, Artistic (but only photos of art), educational, and surgery (but only reconstructive)
but being naked because you didn't exactly have time to grab clothes while fleeing from being burnt up, is too far on the nudity scale?
But why do you get to question Facebook's idea of morality? If you don't like it, don't use the service. To question someone's morality solely due to it being different than yours is, bluntly, a waste of time.
I don't know if this is a good analogy but should the phone company be able to tell you what you can have conversations about? What makes FB different? Yes there are alternatives. There are also multiple phone companies.
I can guess some differences. FB conversations are semi-public, phone conversation are generally not. Except AFAIK except for ads you have to opt into most info in FB. To get news from this source you have to have joined/liked their group. So you opted in. Maybe some friend shares the post but you opted into friending them.
I'm not saying FB should or should not limit what you can post. Only that it's interesting to consider other examples. Why should the phone company not be allowed to ban certain topics but FB should?
> But why do you get to question Facebook's idea of morality?
well, its literally a discussion on facebook's morality. Its a bit hard to talk about that without questioning it.
> To question someone's morality solely due to it being different than yours is, bluntly, a waste of time.
I'm not trying to change facebook here, I don't care /that/ much. I saw a discussion ("its facebook's morality") that I wanted to contribute to ("But its a weird sense of morality innit?"). Isn't that what discussions are for?
Why complicate it? Morality is upto the individual entity whether it is a person, or a business, or a govt-body. For example, I believe there are still 'dry' counties in the US. They have decided that a no-alcohol policy is the morality they want to have within their town. I say fine, and I can accept that or move or try to change it... totally up to me. And as long as their morality does not infringe upon my rights to have my own morality, and that is certainly the case with this Facebook example, then it's all good.
There's quite a bit of difference between corporations and people which means that granting corporations "personhood" is quite... crazy, IMO. In particular, almost all corporations are (almost by definition) asocial, don't care about what their peers think of them, etc. etc. They're basically sociopaths. Besides that they are (when big enough) effectively invulnerable to judicial sanctions, etc. etc.
But we allow this to happen across society. The Catholic organisation, for example, has it's own morality. And it is completely accepted that you should not join that church if you do not agree with that morality.
> But we allow this to happen across society. The Catholic organisation, for example, has it's own morality.
That's true, but the Catholic church only imposes it's will on Catholics. It may certainly try to influence non-Catholic people towards its views, but... let's just say that it's been met with "limited success".
The problem with (large) corporations is that they have the power to impose their wills almost without regard.
I suggest they do a bait and switch make the headline be about a lipstick or a boy band then hit the reader with the horrors of bombing 12 year old little girls with Napalm.
Soon, people will start to realize that for actual information, news, and debate, you have to venture outside of Facebook, just like you have to venture outside of TV for those things currently in the US (not a single actual news program available on broadcast or cable but plenty of "News" entertainment programs). Otherwise you're just processing mindless drivel that you already agree with and that you already know. Which is exactly the state of being Zuckerberg and other people trying to push garbage products onto people prefer. Until then, our society will probably just keep pretending that Facebook is something other than brain junk food because most people don't want to admit to themselves that they are being controlled and manipulated, and most people simply just don't give a fuck about news, history, historical photos, or anything beyond petty celebrity gossip or other such nonsense (that's why those things are pulled from timelines).
Between this and stuff like youtube's ideas of "advertiser-friendliness" [0][1] the major websites are shaping up (down?) to be so. freaking. spineless.
You tell me when I can open a segregated lunch counter, or refuse to bake a gay wedding cake, and I'll consider your argument to have merit. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time until Facebook and company are brought to heel under that "public accommodation" approach.
> You tell me when I can open a segregated lunch counter, or refuse to bake a gay wedding cake, and I'll consider your argument to have merit. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time until Facebook and company are brought to heel under that "public accommodation" approach.
And of course, only those who are unpopular are brought to heel. No-one is forcing the UNCF to give scholarships to poor white children …
The author of the article is asking whether or not it is good that one of the world's main channels of information is controlled by a large company that can and does do whatever it wants with the information. Once a company becomes large enough and controls enough of our lives, the fact that it technically can do whatever it wants becomes "immaterial" as you say. That makes this story more significant than just "water is wet." Like it or not, we don't live in a libertarian society.
What you wrote lend itself to several interpretations, most rehashed to death already.
What then is this point that is so grand ? How can we come to know the secret, I'm curious!
Unless it's -"Don't use Facebook", because we already know we can do that, and unfortunately it doesn't appear to actually solve the problem except under unreasonable assumptions, and then the next thing will likely have the same problems anyway until we as a society decide. Decide under what rules corporations must act when they become big enough that their (currently legal) censorship has as great effect as almost any states censorship would have. A censorship that for the most part is illegal in quite a few countries.
It will probably always be more lucrative to censor and invade users privacy, until we either create some rules and possibly laws, or get the entire society to display an emergent behaviour that strongly punishes that kind of behaviour.
Both of these need good writers that explain and inspire those that will either spearhead creating those rules, or educate the public to create a social norm strong enough. Snark however will get us nowhere, fast.
Censorship is their right. They are under no obligation to hold views that align with SJWs.
Free expression cannot be had on Facebook. If you want that, Facebook is not the forum.
That people feeled entitled to free expression on a closed ecosystem controlled by one company is ludicrous.
The question should be, where should people move to discuss things openly, not "how can we make Facebook think like us". Not least of which, because who "we" are is not consistent, and more fluid and ever changing.
Essentially, looking to Facebook is royally missing the real issue. Central rule of the exchange of ideas.
Agreed. You've nailed it actually. I'm not sure why your comment would be voted down. I think people believe Facebook.com is an open platform without rules, regulations, moderation and the certain influence of advertisers and stakeholders. One way to cause investors to frown is by disappointing the wholesome family-friendly, advertisement clicking userbase. Nudity is traditionally the domain of the unwholesome. Sad but true.
This is how it works. Sure FB has a right to remove stuff, but if their users don't like it, they're going to potentially lose users and money. This article is a user telling FB that they don't like what they're doing.
What does it mean for society when Facebook can demote a challenging but important article (say, of war reporting) in your newsfeed so it can promote your friend's Wedding photos, because an algorithm says that challenging articles cause people to leave FB, reducing page views and ad revenue?