I think facebook (or better its users) is more responsible for the misinformation of both candidates which is causing this deep hate between fractions.
We can't agree on everything and that is actually a very good thing but we need dialog not outright dismissal of the 'other' side. You can not label an entire group crazy, you need to understand why they have a certain opinion or view. Only then we can find common ground and solve problems. In fact you may be surprised how similar people from opposed sides actually are when you remove this pile of garbage blocking everyones view.
Regardless of political views I think Bernie Sanders talked very well about the overlap in Bernie voters and Trump voters in the Colbert interview [1] [2]. (Yes, I know, liberal media)
And in a rare moment of actually being funny, SNL managed to also poke fun at both/neither side, making what I think was good political commentary about the American working class and the issues never addressed by campaigns (prior to this one) [3].
> “We have to be careful of that, Steve. You know, we have to keep our talented people in this country,” Trump said. He paused. Bannon said, “Um.”
> “I think you agree with that,” Trump said. “Do you agree with that?”
> Bannon was hesitant.
> “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ” Bannon said, not finishing the sentence. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”
What could Bannon possibly have meant by this besides wanting to deport them en masse?
Mass deportation is ethnic cleansing, in case you didn't know.
Trump is saying that we have to keep the talented people in the country.
Bannon disagrees that we should keep the talented people in the country, but he doesn't want to say it to Trump's face, so he says a bunch of code words for "whites only society."
There's only one way to make a whites only society. It's ethnic cleansing. Trump happens to have already brought discussions of mass deportation to the mainstream.
Mass deportation is a type of ethnic cleansing, by the way. It's right in the definition. There is no leap of logic there.
As an aside, Bannon is significantly overstating the percent of CEOs who are Asian.
Making assumptions based on ambiguous statements is dangerous. He does not use the words "mass deportation" he does not even say explicitly that he disagrees with Trump. Instead of agreeing he nuances his position first, noting the percentages (which I agree sound a bit far from reality) that cause him to not flat out agree.
The furthest you can take his words is that he is of the opinion that the government should do something about there being a disproportionate amount of non-American born in SV power. There are lots of ways he might think that might be corrected, some of which are not even unfair or racist. To assume the very worst is not constructive.
That "disruption" means killing off capital flow in Silicon Valley. People follow the money. Why would it be desirable at all to do that unless you're a racist ideologue?
In all democracies, policies that you're running on have to have effects before the next presidential election to assist in the reelection campaign. Ending visa programs will not significantly change demographics until 5-20 years down the line. Unless you think that Stephen Bannon will end democracy before the next election, ending visa programs will not be enough for him.
If you say the same thing about blacks ("there's not enough black programmers/entrepreneurs") or women ("there should be more women in Silicon Valley"), you're a champion of social justice. But if you say this about whites ("white people are underrepresented"), all of a sudden you're Hitler.
I guess the hardest thing is being aware of your own bias.
Fake news is just a nicer word for propaganda. Maybe what we saw happen on Facebook was a reflection of our society and the US political system? Even if Facebook changes something, 4 years from now we are still facing a 2-party oligarchy with a strong grip on control. I had hopes for a better 3rd party showing with all of the negative campaigning, but it turns out that America can't get enough of the major party candidates. It's like a reality TV show played out on social media. Life imitating art?
I deleted (vs deactivated) my personal facebook account in the run-up to the election. The cost/benefit math wasn't worth it anymore. Too much wasted time and energy with little room for critical thinking or diversity of opinions. I doubt I'll rejoin anytime in the foreseeable future. No judgement to folks who are still on it, it's just not for me.
I feel much less anxious and more at peace without facebook than I ever did with it. I'm encouraged to make more time for face-to-face and phone conversations.
If someday I am responsible for marketing or customer service, I would consider using facebook for business purposes to communicate with customers. But I'd let someone else manage it who enjoys social media.
I am left wondering if facebook just had its myspace moment? Was that peak facebook? If so, what's next in line?
That's a good point, though it could be an AND too. Push an agenda and make money. We can't easily know the actors, but the motivation is similar to grab power or its surrogate money.
Hilarious. The "wrong" candidate gets elected and suddenly half of the Internet is involved in a debate about media and news sources and apparently huge amount of them are "fake news sites".
What happened to the "vouch" button? This seems like an interesting, non-spam, somewhat tech related (well and politics, but something about the role or perceived role of tech companies in politics) article. Not sure if I agree with it, but it doesn't seem deserving of a flag.
HN has been one of the more civilised corners of the Web, and I've commented on that specifically.
In the past days and weeks, but most especially since November 8's election, the tone as soured considerably, and I'm seeing active and non-derailed discussions such as this getting flagged.
(I'd submitted the link myself, only to learn it was a dupe.)
HN relies on the wisdom of crowds -- my suggestion would be to consider crowds only a first approximation of wisdom. The site Advogato -- an old-school online forum from the late 1990s -- had the idea of a trust graph. I'm not sure that's an ultimate solution either, but the idea that you exercise specific judgement, overriding user actions, seems to be coming back into vogue.
Under any circumstance I really don't like the idea of a huge corporation like facebook to begin censoring private conversations and beginning to shadow ban people based on their naivity in regards to what they share etc.
Facebook is not a company that should indulge in what is truthful and what is not. It should preferably be a medium to keep in contact and discuss links with friends and not much more. I already think that there is too much filtering of what ends up in my facebook feed.
Technology does amplify problems, yes. But it also amplifies the solutions. If your problem didn't have a decent solution in the first place, then yes, you will just have a bigger problem.
I'm not sure how this is something directly related to Facebook. I think misinformation spread has been a problem that was amplified with the easier access to the information in general.
Maybe this is like the problem of modern warfare. Modern bombs tend to affect people en masse (citation needed, yes, please bear with me) and with nuclear weapons, the problem of civilians getting hurt/killed got amplified. The problem was (hopefully) solved by understanding the consequences of using extreme force over time, especially the chain reaction that can be triggered.
What I'm trying to say is, maybe, we need to create a solution which we can "amplify" with the technology, and that is not just Facebook's responsibility. However, them being the "nuclear weapon" of the social media, yes, they do share the burden.
You might want to look at Techno-Fix: why technology won't save us or the environment. There's the problem of unintended consequences, a/k/a "bite-back".
When you look at the numbers Trump got same number of votes that previous republican candidate got. Hilary got significantly less votes than Obama. So if there's any role of social media it's not about giving Trump supporters a voice. It's about poisoning Hilary and election in general for people who would otherwise go and vote against Trump.
The 100 million votes are in easy reach and clear to read. The 7 million are scattered all over the place and includes all the difficult cases where you need to decide whether the vote is eligible or not, and is clearly readable or not, etc.
> “We probably have about 7 million votes left to count,” said David Wasserman, an editor at Cook Political Report who is tracking turnout. “A majority of them are on the coasts, in New York, California, and Washington.
> What’s with the delay? Several states, notably California and Washington, have liberal absentee and mail-in voting laws. California, for instance, allows residents to submit ballots up to three days late (although they must be postmarked on or before Election Day). These provisions have made alternative voting pretty popular, and the ballots a bit harder to count. California alone has more than 4 million votes pending; Washington is waiting on another 700,000.
Still, they were not in the ballot boxes where the majority votes are. That checking of postmarking date of an absentee ballot, one by one, is what makes things slow for those kind of votes.
If i understand correctly, Trump became president because of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Apparently the people responsible for these false stories first tried anti-Trump stories and they weren't shared that much. Then they tried Anti-Hilary stories which were shared more so became more popular.
Facebook can't win here. When they have humans more in the loop of selecting news stories, they get blamed for bias. When they remove the humans, they are blamed for AI which isn't perfect. Yes, Facebook can improve how it selects news stories, and they are working to do that.
I take a fundamental issue with the core thinking behind this post. It seems to be: "the voters should not be allowed free communication between themselves - it needs to be policed and curated for them. They should preferably get most/all of their information and political opinion from big media.
Some telling parts from the post:
"Facebook’s viral and social mechanisms allow the amplification of content well beyond its original media budget, thus exacerbating the issue."
"A thousand “Hillary Clinton is a crook” “opinion pieces” probably don’t fall into your count of fake news per se (even though, it’s worth pointing out that their very title would constitute libel and is a lie). And opinion pieces are much, much harder to police. "
Fb makes all if its money by separating people into neat little echo chambers and making them feel warm and cozy and in possession of the Truth. Basically driving a number of wedges into the society. A _little_ blame would be in order, I'd think.
Mark Zuckerberg built the worth of Facebook convincing advertisers it can influence people to buy their brand, yet why all the sudden does Facebook's influence not apply to deceptive news?
Remember Upworthy? It had misleading clickbait headlines and within one week it was gone from the Newsfeed. Facebook has the skills to fix this.
It has been said the media has a liberal bias. Conservative media denies that global warming exists. Liberals and the overwhelming majority of scientists accept it does. Can you name one issue where conservatives and scientists refute liberals?
From that post:
"Our goal is to show people the content they will find most meaningful, and people want accurate news."
People might say they want accurate news, but what many really want is news that supports their views, i.e. confirmation bias.
Traditional papers try to give you a balanced mix of news. Of course, they don't always get it right. Before the TV and the internet, they used to enjoy stable monopolies: one newspaper per city (see the section "We Buy Some Newspapers ... Newspapers" in Warren Buffet's 2012 letter to the shareholders http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2012ltr.pdf). To get to that monopoly, it helped to have good independent journalism. Once they had established their monopoly, the culture often remained (e.g. the board of editors defends its independence). That culture is still largely intact today, even though their margins are under heavy pressure from the internet.
Facebook has a commercial incentive to feed you posts that you will click on. With their detailed user profiles and immediate feedback, the result is predictable: in the case of the election, you will get positive stories of your candidate, and negative stories of the opposite candidate.
Facebook faces some big ethical challenges, and I'm not sure how to fix them. In the mean time, I think we should cherish existing newspapers. If they disappear, without being replaced by something as good or better, we will miss them badly. The president-elect has been bashing them during the election, and is continuing to do so. If you don't have a subscription yet, I suggest you seriously consider subscribing to the NYT or WaPo.
Seems easy to blame Facebook for this. I don't like how he called out their algorithms, probably not even knowing how they work. Meanwhile Twitter is just banning alt-right accounts openly, and no one gives a shit.
We can't agree on everything and that is actually a very good thing but we need dialog not outright dismissal of the 'other' side. You can not label an entire group crazy, you need to understand why they have a certain opinion or view. Only then we can find common ground and solve problems. In fact you may be surprised how similar people from opposed sides actually are when you remove this pile of garbage blocking everyones view.