Hacker News Reader

Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

It seems people want to eat their cake and have it too.

Close down FB. Why? Because they provide a platform to all ideas, noble, vile and in between. But we want to democratize the internet and give people a voice (but only those voices we at the moment approve of). But big media wants preeminence and don’t want to be usurped by diffused news sources. Who’ll establish lockstep narratives?

FB should become a platform. I don’t see it working as an impartial moderator of what’s right. I don’t see it working ala Wikipedia federation. The only way I see it working is devolving moderation to groups similar to Reddit or Flickr. Also have basic enforcement of local national laws (depending where the group is from) so if you’re from Russia but venture into s US group, don’t complain and vice versa.

View on HN

> Close down FB. Why?

Because they violated a lawful summons. Sovereign Parliaments in multiple countries issued summons to Facebook for Zuckerberg and Sandberg. Multiple times, they pulled a bait and switch. In the United States, this would be like blowing off Congress and then one’s contempt hearing in court.

> FB should become a platform

What does this mean? And what does a democracy do when Facebook refuses to show up to provide critical information for that discussion?

Blocking Facebook is extreme. Large financial penalties, and possibly criminal proceedings against Zuckerberg and Sanders for wilfully evading summons, are more apt. But the need for something to be done in reaction to such brazen lawlessness seems necessary. And keeping all lawful options on the table when considering a response is prudent.

Don't forget the filter bubble. This is probably one of the most harmful aspects of modern media consumption.

The bell has been rung. If FB shut down tomorrow another filter bubble would take its place. It’s what news consumers, in particular politics junkies, want.

But... they don't.

It is, however, what advertisers want. Because "enragement", "stickiness", etc.

It is merely what consumers fall for.

I suspect you meant "engagement," but "enragement" does seem accurate!

Both! Angry people get engaged so that they can tell you they're mad.

All online communities create their own filter bubbles. You think HN isn't a bubble?

Not that I'm saying it's right, but that's the way it is.

> If FB shut down tomorrow another filter bubble would take its place

If nothing more is done than shut them down then yes, the market's incentives wouldn't change. If those incentives are changed, however, lasting effects can be produced.

If Facebook were pursued under antitrust laws, as some are suggesting [1], it would set an precedent. Similarly, laws like GDPR (one among many options) could change the incentives around hoarding data and using it to target users with exploitative ads.

There are solutions. But they require debate. That requires Facebook's senior leadership show up to summons.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...

FB's network effects took years to develop as did its targeted ad-based business model, which the root of these misinformation issues.

Yes, another filter bubble might replace it, but certainly not overnight. Society and policymakers would then have some breathing room to decide how best these tools should be regulated, so the impact of misinformation campaigns can be minimized.

It sounds like you may be assuming that targeted advertising is the (or the main) reason filter bubbles exist. I claim that there's a more fundamental reason, namely the fact that most people don't like hearing facts or opinions that contradict their worldview.

To be sure, targeted advertising definitely supports filter bubbles, but I contend that even without any targeted advertising, if you give people a choice about what information they consume and a sufficient variety of sources from which to choose, they will end up effectively creating their own filter bubbles.

Yes, I agree. Even if social media had never taken off and everyone got their news via RSS, I believe filter bubbles would still exist.

Don't give up. There are lots of things that we do as a society for the greater good. We need to stay out of filter bubbles for the greater good.

Nothing modern about it. Your friends, the village tavern you go to, printed media, traditional media. Filter bubbles have always existed. Facebook is not the first nor the worst.

There is nothing modern about seeking non-dissenting opinions. What is modern is how easy and automatic it is. If you aren't convinced, a simple google search will bring up plenty of research papers on the topic.

Did they summon Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook? Was it about Facebook the company, or Mark's personal affairs? I think it is obviously about Facebook, and it seems to me to be the exclusive perogative of Facebook to be represented by whomever they choose.

So if Poland summons you into their parliament, you would go with no objections and consider that normal. What if Saudi Arabia summons you?

If FB or anybody else doesn't like Saudi Arabia (or any other country) to the point of not answering a summon, they can quit doing business there. Even FB can't have its cake and eat it too.

Why should Canadian parliament be able to summon a US citizen? Should other countries like China Turkey or Armenia be able to summon them as well? And should hacker news delete your profile if you do not follow 'lawful summons' to after talking about a certain square or genocide.

It seems people want to eat their cake and have it too.

But you could make exactly the same point about Facebook (and Youtube, and Twitter). They want the protection from liability that comes from being a common carrier, like the phone company or the post office, but they also want to take positions on current affairs, like a newspaper or a TV station. They must be made to choose which one they want to be.

People definitely want to close FB for multitudes of reasons beyond being a platform for divisive speech.

FB certainly is guilty of collecting user data and using it unscrupulously and gathering it unscrupulously. But they can enact laws rather than grandstand and make it out to be a threat to democracy. It’s a threat to the established parties yes, but I’m not yet sure it’s by itself a threat to democracy,

The CA stuff was overblown and had very little impact. The bad thing behind the CA fiasco was sharing people's data the way they did (though that was neither new, nor hidden, that’s their stock in trade).

Yes, I'd say the people who invest(ed) in Facebook are much bigger threats to democracy than the site itself is.

"But we want to democratize the internet and give people a voice"

There is a huge difference between "freedom of speech" and "freedom to others attention". The core rot in facebook is not that it allows people to say whatever they want, its that facebook promotes and amplifies what people says algorithmically in ways that are harmful. There are plenty of restrictions on "free speech" as implemented in the US, adding restrictions around algorithmic ranking based on engagement metrics should be an easy pill for the legal system to swallow.

> Close down FB. Why? Because they provide a platform to all ideas, noble, vile and in between.

No, because they're monetarily incentivized to be harmful to individuals and societies.

federated alternatives to "Big media" already exist, in usable form for the average user. Signing onto Mastodon is barely any different than signing onto twitter. The only thing that's missing is a coordinated effort to actually move everyone out of the silos.

We can democratize discourse without having facebook in the loop who has the exact same incentives that big media has to monetize and curate what we say. Big Tech is no more democratic or acting in our interest than big media just because they've got a juicero machine in the office and a ping pong table in the lobby.

One can be sure if that Mastodon reached Facebook scale, there would be a stream of shock-horror stories about manipulation and unintended consequences.

The thing about the anti-Facebook sentiment is it seems split between those angry about the things Facebook hasn't stopped and those angry about the things Facebook has stopped. I don't think the later group understands that approach strong enough to shut down Facebook would quickly set it's sights on shutting down or controlling other broad platforms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com