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Comment by glial | Hacker News Reader

Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player, hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc.

Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure (personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.

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How about hating the player and the game?

The game is shit, yeah. But so's this anyone who enthusiastically said "yes, I would like to find ways to monetize people's desire to talk with each other, and do not care in the least if this involves being paid to spread disinformation, or making ad view money off of pushing people towards insane viewpoints".

Yes, this includes Google. This includes Twitter. This includes every damn online service that decides its primary customer is advertisers, not users.

And how much exacy are you willing to pay per Google search?

I started to think about this and now I find myself wondering if “internet search” is one of those things that should be a public good, funded by everyone’s taxes. Like libraries - their mission is pretty much the same as Google’s stated mission “make all the world’s information accessible”. Just take it out of the realm of commerce entirely.

I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it seems right:

If public libraries did not exist in this day and age, and someone floated the idea, they would be laughed at and/or fought in the courts of law and public opinion. "It would cause authors to starve! It's socialist/communist! There is no reason I should fund your perverse taste in books!" etc.

It is considered axiomatic in Europe, but in the US even things like public schools and public fire brigades are not controversial to some segments of the population.

Internet search should be a public good, as should internet service, and email service , much like public schools and the postal service; but it won't happen any time soon just because it makes sense.

I think the reason it will happen in some form, sooner or later, is the fact the US is the de-facto hegemon of the internet by being the jurisdiction of Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS and Microsoft. The NSA+FBI+CIA are able, by decree through NSLs, to read and rewrite the personal communication of probably 90% of the world population, as well as shape their search results. FB has already shown they can affect mood of population at large (in an experiment they did without consent and of which they were proud at the time!) - and they will surely cooperate with governments if "asked" (In the "speak softly and carry a large gun" sense of asking, but likely even without it).

At some point, likely after being burned by this (but possibly before), governments will likely setup a local hegemony if only to deleverage the US. Russia and China already did.

That's a thing people want. If you ask most people who have been pushed toward insane viewpoints how they feel about said insane viewpoints, I'm sure 99% of them would say it's great.

Who are we to deny the validity of their feelings?

What kind of moral values do you hold (if any) if your whole plan was to just create a page on which you can 'rate women'?

How can anyone justify working at facebook, knowing perfectly well what they do.

It just shows more that money seems to quiet a lot of consciences. And look at all that amazing tech you could work on!

Werner von Braun worked also on awesome rocket tech back in the day...

Nearly every immature teenager of both sexes has stack-ranked their sexual interest in peers when gossiping with friends. Yes, a teenager hacking together a website that does such publicly is worse because of how it magnifies the behavior and its consequences at scale. But is that so beyond the pale that the individual is deemed incapable of ever holding favorable moral values?

> don't hate the player, hate the game

We can hate both. There needs to be both personal accountability as well as proper regulations.

In this case it's appropriate to hate the player.

There is nothing in the ad revenue ecosystem which requires indulgence in or tolerance for sociopathic, amoral, unethical, or duplicitous behavior.

Complicity. Complacency. Collusion.

That's what participation is today.

Ignorance may no longer be pleaded.

You're implicitly arguing that Facebook should be a censor. Censoring at scale is a fool's errand. Change the incentive structure. Make Facebook operate by subscription, make timelines linear, etc. You'll never stop people from spreading dumb shit online, but you can stop it being willfully propagated to maximize engagement.

Your suggestions are still independent of personalized advertising. The thing your suggestions would reduce is engagement, which would reduce revenue from any kind of advertising, not just personalized ads.

In my mind the problem isn't personalized ads per se, it's the incentive for Facebook to increase engagement -- which is shared by personalized and non-personalized ad revenue alike. I have the same issue with ad-driven news organizations of any type - how can you trust what they're saying, if they're just trying to keep you watching till the upcoming commercial?

But this is absurd. We can’t give them a free pass and believe the fact that they can’t moderate content. They want all benefits of being this global giant, but none of the responsibilities. If you can’t moderate and provide a clean environment, maybe we should break them up or restrict their power, because it’s obvious they can’t handle it.

How would you suggest they go about moderating content (assuming they should)? They currently have an army of human moderators who are emotionally scarred from seeing terrible images all day long - and of course, those images were public on Facebook until reported by someone.

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