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.
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but we're in blame-the-platform culture (Score:2)
- 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
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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.
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Contradiction prevents privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Why would one think they could or should not be?
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Well it stands to reason that all races, creeds and cultures are susceptible to the allures of authoritarianism, Jewish people included.
Re: This is helarious (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect right-wingers are less authoritarian than lefties these days. "Defunding police" is just a ruse for an authoritarian replacement (at the federal level).
We can fix local police.
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"How do I tell everyone I don't know anything about leftist police reform demands and instead soapbox about what I have been told they believe"
Re: This is helarious (Score:2)
Sounds like "I can't argue, so instead I'll deflect."
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Well you were the one who made a positive claim that "lefties want federal authoritarian replacement of the police" with zero evidence.
Lets first and look at what Joe Bidens police reform plan is, or is he not "the left"?
https://joebiden.com/justice/ [joebiden.com]
Lot's of community policing measures, incarceration reform, training and other reforms.
There was the popular "Eight Can't Wait" campaign? Maybe they are one's leading that charge?
https://8cantwait.org/ [8cantwait.org]
No, still no federal takeover there....
Maybe this is somethin
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Well you were the one who made a positive claim that "lefties want federal authoritarian replacement of the police" with zero evidence.
Well, let's see. Is Pelosi expanding her own private police force out across the country?
Yes.
https://reason.com/2021/07/08/... [reason.com]
Maybe those dangerous left wing hellholes that defunded their departments took part in this plot?
Have you seen the trend in murder rates since they started reducing police funding? Not to mention other serious crime.
Then of course there are the parts of San Francisco losing pharmacies because you can't run a viable business where shoplifters are never prosecuted.
Community funding? That's nice, it'll help with the burial costs.
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It's only "Pelosi's police force" if she remains House Majority leader... nor does that amount to anything close to a "Federal takeover of policing". I don't particularly like expanding the USCP but maybe someone will FOIA the records of threats members of Congress have received, or maybe certain people shouldnt make it so easy for them to justify such expansions of power.
Do you have evidence that murder rates are up specifically in those cities? Causation to your correlation?
https://www.theguardian.com/us [theguardian.com]
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It's closer to a Military takeover. https://americanmilitarynews.c... [americanmilitarynews.com]
Those "insurgents" were nobodies. If you believe THAT was an actual insurgency you really are a dullard. 2 billion dollars to track down some grandmas and a couple morons with maga stickers on their trucks?
You think maybe those resources could be used to find child predators, but no, we gonna go find internet trolls, and people googling election audits, ivermectin, vitamins, and jeffrey epstein theories. Awesome. *Clap hands sarcastic
Re: This is helarious (Score:2)
I read the other day that Steven Crowder got 8.2 million views for his election night coverage. While CNN got 9.1 million. Fox got 13.6 million. MSNBC got 7.3 million. ABC/NBC/CBS got 12.1/9.1/7.3 respectively. I'm surprised those were so low. I'd be pissed if I were big media too.
So, being conservative == needs cleaning up?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"...?
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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
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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
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Ah Rasmussen, no better place for conservatives to get their copium from. Ringing those landlines only and never really publishin certain methodologies will get you...certain results.
https://apnews.com/article/nor... [apnews.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/08... [cnn.com]
Got any other pollsters who had similar numbers? Some others seem to disagree, putting the % of Democrats at less than 10%.
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.... [thomsonreuters.com]
https://morningconsult.com/for... [morningconsult.com]
It's dangerous to say the election is stolen after all those legitimate
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all the court cases in all the states and all the districts came out with the same conclusion
Don't try and gaslight us. Plenty of court cases highlighting election irregularities of various forms have been won. For instance State officials have been found in court to have broken election law.
repeatedly said the election was conducted fairly, as has just about every single Democrat politician
Don't try and gaslight us. Nancy fucking Pelosi herself bleated on about the election being stolen.
That is not to say those groups are not violent but your claim that they are the most requires some evidence.
As evidence I'd like to offer over 500 violent riots in the US last year from Antifa and BLM, with over 30 deaths and thousands of businesses burned down.
Which right-wing attack has done damage remotely close to d
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Please share with the class these "irregularities" and if any of them, any, come close to to the level of declaring the election fraudulent or rigged.
Sure I don't like Pelosi's "hijacked" tweet either. It was dumb and irresponsible. Now you go and say the same for the ex-president and every member of congress who is saying the same right now..
Anybody that believes in binary gender. Show me someone who was banned for just saying that and not lacing it with blatant transphobia.
Anybody that believes in t
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Please share with the class these "irregularities" and if any of them, any, come close to to the level of declaring the election fraudulent or rigged.
Well, here's one: https://eu.detroitnews.com/sto... [detroitnews.com]
Here's another: https://rfangle.com/politics/t... [rfangle.com]
I'm looking forward to the audit results in Arizona and Georgia too.
Now you go and say the same for the ex-president and every member of congress who is saying the same right now..
No. What I've said all along is that there is far too much evidence to pretend everything was hunky dory.
Pelosi got a two year FBI investigation into her concerns. She and her entire party are fighting tooth and nail to prevent any investigation into the November results.
That all by itself tells me a full and thorough investigation is needed,
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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
Re: So, being conservative == needs cleaning up?? (Score:3)
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.
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Re: So, being conservative == needs cleaning up?? (Score:2)
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.
They resonate because they're manipulators (Score:2)
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.
Re: They resonate because they're manipulators (Score:2)
As with your comment-peer, you haven't countered the point, you've actually confirmed it. You must show how their IDEAS are wrong, that's why people are tuning in to them.
Information Control System (Score:3)
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.
Clarity (Score:3)
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.