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Businesses Facebook

Inside Facebook's Data Wars (nytimes.com) 37

Executives at the social network have clashed over CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data tool that revealed users' high engagement levels with right-wing media sources. From a report: One day in April, the people behind CrowdTangle, a data analytics tool owned by Facebook, learned that transparency had limits. Brandon Silverman, CrowdTangle's co-founder and chief executive, assembled dozens of employees on a video call to tell them that they were being broken up. CrowdTangle, which had been running quasi-independently inside Facebook since being acquired in 2016, was being moved under the social network's integrity team, the group trying to rid the platform of misinformation and hate speech. Some CrowdTangle employees were being reassigned to other divisions, and Mr. Silverman would no longer be managing the team day to day. The announcement, which left CrowdTangle's employees in stunned silence, was the result of a yearlong battle among Facebook executives over data transparency, and how much the social network should reveal about its inner workings. On one side were executives, including Mr. Silverman and Brian Boland, a Facebook vice president in charge of partnerships strategy, who argued that Facebook should publicly share as much information as possible about what happens on its platform -- good, bad or ugly.

On the other side were executives, including the company's chief marketing officer and vice president of analytics, Alex Schultz, who worried that Facebook was already giving away too much. They argued that journalists and researchers were using CrowdTangle, a kind of turbocharged search engine that allows users to analyze Facebook trends and measure post performance, to dig up information they considered unhelpful -- showing, for example, that right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino were getting much more engagement on their Facebook pages than mainstream news outlets. These executives argued that Facebook should selectively disclose its own data in the form of carefully curated reports, rather than handing outsiders the tools to discover it themselves. Team Selective Disclosure won, and CrowdTangle and its supporters lost. An internal battle over data transparency might seem low on the list of worthy Facebook investigations. But the CrowdTangle story is important, because it illustrates the way that Facebook's obsession with managing its reputation often gets in the way of its attempts to clean up its platform. And it gets to the heart of one of the central tensions confronting Facebook in the post-Trump era. The company, blamed for everything from election interference to vaccine hesitancy, badly wants to rebuild trust with a skeptical public. But the more it shares about what happens on its platform, the more it risks exposing uncomfortable truths that could further damage its image.

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Inside Facebook's Data Wars

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:15PM (#61582723)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • So if right-wing commentators are getting higher engagement than mainstream news sources;
      - which is a fact about facebook's users (and how they tribally organize and align),
      - not a fact about facebook's technology,
      why would anyone blame the platform?

      And yet blaming the platform (the messenger, as it were) is what is done these days.

      So it's understandable that facebook is gun-shy about being transparent with what's going on on their platform, because they'll be blamed viciously long before anyone does a vali
      • by znrt ( 2424692 )

        And yet blaming the platform (the messenger, as it were) is what is done these days.

        the messenger is not just the messenger here, that's the whole point.

        that content thrives because it is promoted by an algorithm that optimizes for "engagement" which results in feeding outrage. literally. tfa explains this quite well, actually, i will asume you have honored the fine tradition not to read it, but it's a pretty good read.

        in short, this isn't really about them promoting "right", it's about them promoting "bigot", which happens to overlap with "right". and is toxic for society.

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:33PM (#61582769) Homepage

    Facebook is all about the absence of privacy. Their entire business model is founded on the idea of near total transparency for their customers. Given that business model, it is hypocritical to deny other's access to their own business data.

    It is not surprising that Facebook choose to be hypocritical. It just confirms that they are my definition of corporate corruption - publicly stating one thing while believing and acting on the opposite philosophy.

    It is kind of like a tobacco executive outlawing smoking in his office.

  • by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:38PM (#61582787) Homepage Journal

    ...showing, for example, that right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino were getting much more engagement on their Facebook pages than mainstream news outlets.

    ...the CrowdTangle story is important, because it illustrates the way that Facebook's obsession with managing its reputation often gets in the way of its attempts to clean up its platform.

    So, it is only the fact that conservative voices on social media are garnering more attention than mainstream media that is something "bad" and needs to be cleaned up!?!?

    My God, how slanted can this article be?

    We have extremes on BOTH sides of the aisle, that absolutely do not represent the majority in this country, yet are so vocal that they are tearing things apart, and silencing those with any moderate, traditional value or dissenting voice.

    Are those that are on the left that are pushing violent action, just as dangerous as those on the far right that are doing the same thing?

    And think what you will about Shaperio of that Bongino guy...but those guys are hardly promoting violence in the US.

    Geez if this is the way FB feels, does this not put forth the at least this one major component of social media we have is biased and has an agenda if only conservative voices are examples given of things that "need to be cleaned up"...?

    • Moderates don't often feel the need to control the dialogue. Extremists are very motivated to control the dialogue and do so as much as they can.

      One thing that extremists on both sides have in common is a disinclination to give any platform at all to the other side, which (in their minds) includes anyone who doesn't share in their own extremism. So they happily drown out the voices of moderates as much as they can.

      And the moderates tend not to fire back with equal enthusiasm, being as they are moderates.

      S

      • The difference today is one side of that equation seems to have far more extremists today than the other.

        While the right wing believes every member of the Democratic party is part of the "extreme left" the fact is the amount of actual extreme leftists (What I would classify as the Marxist-Leninist and anarchist types) are really less than 10% of the party and even then they have more presence on Twitter than in real life. Most Democrats are still pretty center to center-left but there are growing amounts o

        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          the amount of actual extreme leftists (What I would classify as the Marxist-Leninist and anarchist types) are really less than 10% of the party

          The rest merely believe in imposing federal control over state voting laws, nullifying the second amendment and, going by their actual documented actions, using the organs of state to monitor and harass political opponents.

          Who gives a fuck whether they're considered 'extreme left' or not, there are a lot of Americans who very firmly disagree with all of those things and are not remotely extremist themselves.

          Not every Republican is a nazi klan member

          Well no, the Republicans were never the party of the klan and the nazi party policies were far too so

    • Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson and Dan Bogino all resonate because they have something substantial to say. The left never gets this. It isn't about the "messaging" it's about whether you have actual messages.

      • Confirmation bias is not evidence of an actual message, just an awareness of the biases that need to be confirmed to keep the audience engaged. Nobody said they aren't good con men. These guys all purvey specious bullshit dressed up enough in rhetorical tricks, misdirection and misinformation to make it sound plausible. One could argue they have made that their business model. From a purely academic examination of rhetoric it is interesting, if it weren't for the fact that a bunch of people are using it
        • You don't sound like someone who has ever listened to these guys, curiously. Your critique is all about form, not substance. If you reread my original comment you will note that that is precisely the thing I said the left "never gets"; and you are confirming that.

          What you need to do to counter the point is to show how WHAT they say is insubstantial, not HOW they say it. And, no, saying it's all just Jedi mind tricks and rhetoric isn't on point.

      • of emotions.

        they're pied-pipers of the ignorant.

        They're a circus act, and draw in the suckers born every minute with well-honed sensationalism and shock tactics.

        Fixed that for you.
  • by BardBollocks ( 1231500 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:47PM (#61582815)

    Ever since Facebook started inserting content into the platform that wasn't user generated.

    Facebook IS being used to sow division. It's hard to notice the stuff that matters amongst the stuff that is jammed into your feed.

    Unfortunately, without the ability to perform analytics.... we can't find out for ourselves.

  • by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:59PM (#61582857) Homepage Journal

    Which is not so valued at Facebook, and lots of other media outlets, but for understandable reasons.

    Now, to the real point... Facebook used to thrive on engagement, the more the merrier, clicks and hits, connections, page views, all this generated revenue. Nowadays, though Facebook has more than enough revenue, and market dominance, and so it can indulge in managing the user base.

    Managing the user base to suit desires, meet goals, promote causes.

    Admitting that unwelcome thought purveyors and their ideas could be successful is unwelcome. It challenges thoughts and ideas Facebook might not want to be promoted. Maybe just Facebook's friends, allies, or supporters might not want that. Or their allies. No matter, these unwelcome purveyors are minimized, obscured, even banned outright sometimes. Certainly seems like editorial control.

    But it's not so simple as 'misinformation' or merely 'hate speech'. These are terms are applied with abandon, to some, who see them applied improperly to their favorites. Needless to say those in opposition either don't care or agree with these derogatory labels.

    All I would have expected from Facebook was a fair and open platform. Certainly we can expect controversies from time to time, but it seems that these are common. And the current news that there are efforts underway to exercise prior restraint against some thoughts and ideas is disturbing. I've found that the free exchange of ideas has led me to reject several theories and ideas that have proven, in hindsight, ridiculous. I'm not smarter, just more demanding. I just wish my government would let me figure these out. Their ideas are not uniquely endowed with brilliance and excellence.

"You'll pay to know what you really think." -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

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