'Facebook Is What's Wrong With America' (cnn.com) 208
The Salesforce CEO and owner of Time Magazine, Marc Benioff, sees a common thread for what ails America today: deception that is allowed to spread like wildfire on Facebook. "This digital revolution really kind of has the world in its grip. And in that grip, you can see the amount of mistrust and misinformation that is happening," Benioff told CNN. From a report: "Look at how it is affecting the world. You can talk about the political process. You can talk about climate. You can talk about the pandemic," Benioff said. "In each and every major topic, it gets connected back to the mistrust that is happening and especially the amount of it being seeded by the social networks. It must stop now."
"Some of these social media companies, especially Facebook, you can see that they don't really care that their platform is filled with all of this disinformation," Benioff said. The tech billionaire called for Congress to crack down on Facebook's disinformation problem. "I own Time and I am held accountable for what is produced on my platform," Benioff said, adding that CNN and other media outlets are also held accountable. "In regards to Facebook, they are not held accountable. So they do not have an incentive from the government. That has to change." Benioff urged Congress to review existing laws to try to stop the "level of deceit" happening on social networks.
"Some of these social media companies, especially Facebook, you can see that they don't really care that their platform is filled with all of this disinformation," Benioff said. The tech billionaire called for Congress to crack down on Facebook's disinformation problem. "I own Time and I am held accountable for what is produced on my platform," Benioff said, adding that CNN and other media outlets are also held accountable. "In regards to Facebook, they are not held accountable. So they do not have an incentive from the government. That has to change." Benioff urged Congress to review existing laws to try to stop the "level of deceit" happening on social networks.
Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The people reading it are the problem.
When the general public is lazy, disengaged, gullible, ignorant, and franky, stupid far more often than not, it doesn't matter what social media does or how it works. The public will still be lazy, disengaged, gullible, ignorant, and stupid.
Trying to censor Facebook isn't a solution. It's just a way of changing who is in control.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
What he is saying is:
1. Facebook should be censored
2. People who agree with me should do the censoring.
The problem is that we live in a democracy. Once you do #1, you can't ensure #2.
Don't give the government any power if you aren't comfortable with Donald Trump exercising that power.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that your "democracy" concentrates far too much power in one person with far too few checks and balances. And so do your corporations.
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The problem is that your "democracy" concentrates far too much power in one person with far too few checks and balances.
Does it? For all the bluster and pomp and big plans for big changes, I’d argue that Trump was ineffective in actually changing much of anything, thanks in large part to the checks and balances in place.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it? For all the bluster and pomp and big plans for big changes, I’d argue that Trump was ineffective in actually changing much of anything, thanks in large part to the checks and balances in place.
Trump 2020/2021 was the practice run. What it changed was not the actual facts on the ground. Instead it allowed the mad republicans to identify and target the decent republicans. Many right wing, republican, judges stood up for American democracy and did not allow the vote of the American people to be overrulled. Some Republican politicians did too. These people are now being targetted and will be replaced. Next time round the structures of Republican decency which clearly were still in place in 2020 will have been eliminated.
That's the same process that we have seen in other countries worldwide where typically there have been brief interludes of ineffectual counter-reaction before there was a switch to more or less effective dictators who took over the media and all sorts of other things, like Orban or more specifically Kaczynski.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue that part of it started back with Newt Gingrich's Contract On America. He came in with his group of "don't compromise with Democrats" and ousted the more moderate Republicans. Trump was just the continuation of that path.
[John]
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I'd argue that part of it started back with Newt Gingrich's Contract On America. He came in with his group of "don't compromise with Democrats" and ousted the more moderate Republicans. Trump was just the continuation of that path.
[John]
I would guess you are right he was one of the key people, though there are were probably some earlier and there are definitely others after him. The worry is that, instead of understanding that it's an ongoing process people think it's just something that has always been. There is a definite critical tipping point right now where people are happy to break laws to support their side and that percentage is increasing. Watch who the comments like "don't take any powers you wouldn't be happy to give Trump" and
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd argue that part of it started back with Newt Gingrich's Contract On America. He came in with his group of "don't compromise with Democrats" and ousted the more moderate Republicans. Trump was just the continuation of that path.
Gingrich was also, as far as I saw anyway, the first prominent Republican to fully embrace Postmodernism/Relativism, disregarding fact in favor of subjective feelings. Do you remember this exchange?
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Violent crime is down. The economy is ticking up.
NEWT GINGRICH: It is not down in the biggest cities.
CAMEROTA: Violent crime, murder rate is down. It is down.
GINGRICH: Then how come it’s up in Chicago and up in Baltimore and up in Washington?
CAMEROTA: There are pockets where certainly we are not tackling murder.
GINGRICH: Your national capital, your third biggest city—
CAMEROTA: But violent crime across the country is down.
GINGRICH: The average American, I will bet you this morning, does not think crime is down, does not think they are safer.
CAMEROTA: But it is. We are safer and it is down.
GINGRICH: No, that’s just your view.
CAMEROTA: It’s a fact. These are the national FBI facts.
GINGRICH: But what I said is also a fact.
GINGRICH: The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics that theoretically may be right, but it’s not where human beings are.
CAMEROTA: But what you’re saying is, but hold on Mr. Speaker because you’re saying liberals use these numbers, they use this sort of magic math. These are the FBI statistics. They’re not a liberal organization. They’re a crime-fighting organization.
GINGRICH: No, but what I said is equally true. People feel more threatened.
CAMEROTA: Feel it, yes. They feel it, but the facts don’t support it.
GINGRICH: As a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel and I’ll let you go with the theoreticians.
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What? How does that make them left of the left? That just makes them liars. Nothing to do with where they sit on the political spectrum...
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Does it? For all the bluster and pomp and big plans for big changes, I’d argue that Trump was ineffective in actually changing much of anything, thanks in large part to the corporations
.
Fixed that for you.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people have no real choice in their leaders, despite all the elections.
Indeed. It was outrageous how corporations were able to just buy the presidency for Jeb Bush.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say you're an optimist.
Democracy in America is dead, and has been for decades.
We're well into the Kubler-Ross model of mourning.
Obama was the "denial" stage, where we thought that an elected leader still cared for the people.
Trump was the "anger" stage, and that some people still think he was an effective leader shows that some Americans are still in this stage.
Biden is the "bargaining" stage, where we're trying to give away democracy in exchange for a return to "the way things used to be."
Somewhere between "depression" and "acceptance" is where we'll start to see the breakup of the United States and the resultant war, which will not end well.
Re:Facebook is [the SPAM] (Score:3)
Any thread that started as an attempted apology for Facebook was unlikely to be productive. Still, better than the typical AC FP drivel.
My personal cure for Facebook (as mentioned previously) was a 5-minute limit, enforced with a timer. Engagement borken [sic] but still kept a (thin) link to old friends and coworkers.
My main beef with Facebook these days is the SPAM. Lots and LOTS of spam being routed though Facebook now. Most of it is from the same game, easily recognized by the anti-Jew filler embedded in
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Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah Americas democracy is a bit arcane in this day and age.
It was a glorious experiment. It really kicked off the wave of democratization that happened in the time since, but time has shown the blueprint to have some serious flaws.
Allowing politicization of the judiciary was a terrible mistake. It most modern countries, judges joining political parties would have corruption police kicking in doors. In the US its *expected*, and that has got to change as fast as humanly possible. Having judges interpret constitutions along the ideological lines of political sponsors trashes the separation of powers.
Further, both the office of president and the houses of congress need to be reworked to get rid of the electoral college and replacing the "Whoever gets most votes wins" with a preferential voting system or one of the variations of it, to remove gerymandering and let the minor parties get a seat at the table. Theres no good reason why voting for the Libertarians, Greens, Labor party or whatever should split the vote of your least worst option. If I want to vote Greens, it shouldnt mean my vote gets thrown away if its a contest between democrats and republicans. Especially if the mainstream party I dislike the most is up to some truly diabolical shit. We need to break up the duopoly and replace it with a truly democratic-republic system.
Oh and remove the power of deciding an impeachment outcome and give it to the supreme court. You can still keep initiating it internal to the houses of power (Ie if either hose votes impeach, it goes to the supreme court). There shouldnt be one type of justice for us, and another type for then. Lady Justice is supposed to be blind.
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One of the biggest fails of the US constitution is that it didn't place any limitations on political parties. It pretends they don't exist, and you can see the results now.
No (Score:5, Interesting)
What he is saying is: 1. Facebook should be censored; 2. People who agree with me should do the censoring.
No. He's saying Time Magazine has to follow editorial standards, because it's a publication and can be sued for libel if it doesn't. Facebook doesn't have to follow editorial standards, because of Section 230. But 52% of Americans now get their "news" from Facebook [wikipedia.org], more than any other publication.
Facebook is pretending that people are free to choose to read whatever they want. Meanwhile their algorithms inundate users with recommendations, notifications, and advertisements that send them on a dopamine-fueled rampage of taps, swipes, and stares into a never-ending-rabbit-hole-to-hell. They have no interest in differentiating fact from fiction, because the moment they do, their crack dealers will have no more product to push.
And so, he's saying, why is he the one being punished?
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I do not think you understand at all what you are talking about. Do you know what libel even is? You don't seem to.
Have you ever read the editorial section of Time, or of any major newspaper, or watched any of the editorial segments on CNN? Or for that matter, Fox?
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
can be sued for libel if it doesn't. Facebook doesn't have to follow editorial standards, because of Section 230.
I do not think you understand at all what you are talking about. Do you know what libel even is? You don't seem to.
Section 230 is the section of the communications decency act which means that sites are not responsible for the content their users produce. Facebook's content is produced by their user, but they are the ones which choose which bits who gets to see. This means that Facebook gets to express damaging, libellous opinions without legal scrutiny. They just choose someone else's opinion which matches what they want to say and then promote that.
Have you ever read the editorial section of Time, or of any major newspaper, or watched any of the editorial segments on CNN? Or for that matter, Fox?
That's actually almost a more important point. You can see what CNN or even Fox News say. If they lie you can respond and answer it showing that they did. With Facebook you never get to see other people's feeds. Worse, Facebook knows exactly what level and type of manipulation each person will accept. This allows them to push targeted misinformation with no comeback and nobody able to counter it. See the recent story about how they will start using the newsfeed to burnish their own reputation.
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You seem to be entirely missing the point.
Libel is only applicable **when disparaging an individual**. It is totally irrelevant in all other cases.
CNN could do a story tomorrow on prime time news that said that COVID vaccines give you x-ray vision, and there is absolutely nothing you or anyone else can do about it. CNN, Fox, Newspapers, and all other news media in fact run editorials constantly that spout half-truths and complete lies. You can't sue them for any of this. If you think you can, you are sorely
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Libel is only applicable **when disparaging an individual**. It is totally irrelevant in all other cases.
Even ignoring my key point about the ability to answer back, there are other standards such as Tortious interference [wikipedia.org] which CNN has to worry about. Further, if they really did keep lying and people could actually show that then that would build up pressure for the law could be changed. Facebook never gets to that stage because they don't send the messages to people that would take action against them in the first place. They target only people who will be easily manipulated.
Re: No (Score:3)
In the USA the first amendment would prevent legal changes. Youâ(TM)d need a constitutional amendment that mandates the media present objective facts and clearly indicates opinion. Good luck.
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In the USA the first amendment would prevent legal changes. Youâ(TM)d need a constitutional amendment that mandates the media present objective facts and clearly indicates opinion. Good luck.
There are limits. Tortious interference and libel still exist in the USA though they have much stronger limits than in my country (and IMHO, good). However I do think that we may be getting to the stage where the USA needs to seriously look at the first amendment, or maybe more it's interpretation and at least clearly understand that commercial communications from companies and foreign governments are not "speech". The EU / Universal Declaration of Human Rights definition of "freedom of expression" is st
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IMO legislate it so that once your user base exceeds one million daily users, you lose your section 230 protection. That would allow, for example, somebody who followed anti-vax advice on facebook and ended up in the hospital can sue facebook for damages. That allows companies like facebook to be held accountable, yet at the same time, that doesn't give the government permission to censor anything.
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Facebook is a big problem, but lets not pretend that preposterous and obviously false stuff isn't put out by publications and broadcasters. As long as "Fox News" is operating it's very hard to draw a clear line between online misinformation and the worst of the ne
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It's not about winning, it's about being able to sue them. It still costs them money and reputation even if you don't win..
Facebook? You can't even sue.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:4, Funny)
Don't give the government any power if you aren't comfortable with Donald Trump exercising that power.
Or, to put it into terms his supporters might have less trouble understanding:
Never give the government enough rope to fashion a noose, because the next administration might feel like having a hangin'.
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Well, maybe hanging an administration or two might be the solution to the problem. The only problem I see is that the cases where it had been tried hasn't exactly led to any improvement...
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Maybe instead we should admit that we need a government and that it has to do things, and maybe focus on making sure people won't vote for the kind of assholes whose only objective is to destroy the government in order to prove that it doesn't work?
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Maybe instead we should admit that we need a government and that it has to do things, and maybe focus on making sure people won't vote for the kind of assholes whose only objective is to destroy the government in order to prove that it doesn't work?
It's a good idea but it'll never be implemented. They plutocracy/oligarchy have no interest in that.
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Being blunt: It's dangerously naive to look at where things are now, and to think we can magically change how everyone thinks so they only elect "good" candidates to power in a handful of years.
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The problem isn't the ease of spreading misinformation.
The problem is that a disturbingly large fraction of people aren't mentally vaccinated against it with an effective dose of critical thinking skills and common sense.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem is that a disturbingly large fraction of people aren't mentally vaccinated against it with an effective dose of critical thinking skills and common sense.
So... we need a few weeks of enforced quarantine until we vaccinate them?
I'm all for that.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Did social media tell you that social media played no part in making people gullible and ignorant? And you believed it?
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The tinder of decaying education and traditional media (not to mention other public institutions) certainly laid a foundation for social media to throw their accelerant on. Recall that it was NBC who gave our last president his start, on reality TV show called "The Apprentice", and then Fox News gave him his first taste of politics when he suddenly became a forensics expert specializing in birth certificates. Grandma didn't get on Facebook until after both these things happened.
Not to say that social media doesn't have an effect on retardating the populace... I would still recommend to stay away from all of it, although I know the majority can't give up their YouTube fix. And so I know the only remedy is education. But, for many Republicans the mantra is "education is bad", "Boko Haram", as they say in North Africa. Or for the slightly less retarded, they tell you for-profit education is better than public education. Just like for-profit healthcare!
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Many people were always gullible and ignorant, it's just that previously only the established media cartels were in any position to influence a significant number of people.
People haven't become any more gullible or ignorant, they are just now being misled by a different group - and the previous group doesn't like the shift in power.
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People haven't become any more gullible or ignorant, they are just now being misled by a different group - and the previous group doesn't like the shift in power.
I'm not one of the "previous group" but I don't like the shift in power either.
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People are never just gullible. Everyone is gullible towards those they trust and highly critical towards those they distrust.
People simply trust the wrong people.
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Are you trolling, or do you honestly not understand the difference between (1) playing a part in something and (2) creating it?
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is the problem; they are tapping into inbuilt behavioural hacks to encourage engagement that have a side-effect of spreading misinformation.
Arguing that the people are the problem is like building steps with 1 metre drops, then blaming the people for subsequent injuries.
Shutting down Facebook will stop the monopolisation of these hacks.
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Re: Facebook isn't the problem (Score:4, Funny)
I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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This is the same argument that people make about guns. While in a sense the argument is correct people ARE the ones pulling the trigger. But they make that argument in such a way to make it seem like guns aren't dangerous at all, which is objectively false. Yes, large segments of the population are low intelligent, selfish, & often harmful. But before the internet and social media, those people's reach and influence was restricted.
So what's the solution? Well, censoring isn't really the answer. Bu
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Guns are the same. Someone who is well educated and properly trained is perfectly safe handling a gun, and there are many legitimate use cases why someone might want or need a gun. The problem is when guns get into the hands of people who are not responsible and safe to use them.
The same thing can be said of cars, cars are extremely useful and there are many practical use cases for them but they can also be used to kill or injure people either through incompetence or malice.
Someone who is properly educated
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point here. You can't just say "Someone who is properly educated" and wipe your hands like you got it all figured out. The problem is that there are A LOT of poorly educated or just straight up irresponsible people in the world, far more than a most are comfortable acknowledging. The internet and social media has illustrated this fact beyond a doubt. So how can you just put something dangerous out there and just say "well us properly educated people know how to use these tools properly"? What outcome do you expect to come from that statement?
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This is something the founders and framers understood well. Democracy is EXACTLY like a gun. Its powerful tool in the right hands its down right dangerous and irresponsible in the grasp of the masses.
What is being left out of the debate here is people did not come to the American colonies because they wanted to vote! They came for economic opportunity, the right to enjoy their private property and personal gains, the right to practice their faith, in a nutshell they came for individual liberty.
The first go
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Facebook is not pulling the trigger. What they do, though, is to put a stack of loaded guns into a kindergarden class and tell the kids that they should try out those new and exciting toys.
They don't kill the kids, but you want to tell me they didn't fully know what's gonna happen?
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Facebook is not pulling the trigger.
Of course they are. It's their algorithms that are feeding people the misinformation.
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That's more akin to telling kids where the trigger on the gun is and what some other kid said about them when they weren't listening.
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It's not. It's straight up manipulation. Your analogy would be more appropriate if you said "It's akin to someone telling a kid that a gun actually shoots water and not bullets, then tells them to play a joke on mom and make her all wet". It's mindful and deliberate.
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course no one could ever accuse you of being lazy, disengaged, gullible, ignorant and stupid. /s
Who watches the watchers? Who is enlightened enough to pass judgment on what constitutes enlightenment? That's the rub. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there's no dispute about matters of taste. You can't illuminate a spotlight with a flashlight. Pick your old fashioned aphorism, those old dudes knew what they were talking about.
Free speech needs to be free -- especially from the Morality Police.
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The people reading it are the problem.
When the general public is lazy, disengaged, gullible, ignorant, and franky, stupid far more often than not, it doesn't matter what social media does or how it works. The public will still be lazy, disengaged, gullible, ignorant, and stupid.
Trying to censor Facebook isn't a solution. It's just a way of changing who is in control.
I completely disagree with everything except censorship not being the solution.
The problem with these systems is that they are engineered from the ground up to exploit people for profit. They are intentionally designed to promote poor governance and shitty behavior just so dumb fucks like Zuckerberg can make money.
You wouldn't go to a country full of Nazis and conclude the problem with the country is the shitty people in the country. Humans are the same everywhere. What makes the difference in outcomes ar
Re:Facebook isn't the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet before Social Media^wCancer, you never saw the kind of completely absolute inmates-running-the-asylum insanity that is now completely de jour. Let's not forget: A double digit percentage of Americans actually believe that Hillary Clinton runs an international child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza shop that doesn't have a basement, to name just one of the most obviously insane bits of bullshit that won't stop circulating. And before dismissing this as stupid but harmless, hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead because of anti-vaccine fucktards.
Social cancer has reduced the barrier for anyone to have a megaphone to absolutely nothing, and allows them to yell at absolutely everyone. Before social cancer, traditional media (even Fox News) that could talk to everyone had some standards in terms of not giving airtime to actually-insane lunatics, and internet media that let anyone talk had a limited audience (and generally one far less receptive than average to completely retarded bullshit).
What has to be changed is all kinds of debatable, but I don't think anyone (except perhaps Facebook, which is happy to enable Nazis as long as they can sell ads to Stormfront) thinks that where things sit is acceptable in terms of public discourse.
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The individual people are a second-order problem. The first order problem is that Facebook has an incentive to divide and incite people, which amplifies fringe ideas. Facebook advertisers love the division, but they love the engagent it creates even more. Advertisers don’t really care what generates the engagement— be it videos of puppies or baseless conspiracy theories as long as they think they have a way of addressing the market.
Ultimately censoring Facebook won’t work. You don
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Re: Facebook isn't the problem (Score:2)
No, when so many people are reading it, the it's indeed Facebook that's the problem.
An analogy: screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theater; it's the one who screams, not the mov that listens, that's the problem.
Back to Facebook & Co: when your business model consists of manipulating attention by any means necessary, nothing being off limits, then you are responsible for what it gives.
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Fuck, this post and actually this whole thread is so fucking stupid.
it doesn't matter what social media does or how it works.
You're so far off the mark it's not even funny.
When will you people see that facebook is actively brainwashing their readers by amplifying and crystallizing 'opinions' that make them the most money.
It's facebook that is the base problem, not the people using it.
Facebook has hoards of psychologists that literally work on making their product mess with peoples heads. It is their fucking business model.
They don't give a shit if their platform
Yeah that's the ticket (Score:2)
It wouldn't actually be big tech trying to be social engineers and gas lighting the world.
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Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey! (Score:2)
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Sorry, no handouts.
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Democracy needs people to play nicely... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly we don't - and FB is amplifying the breakdown of decency, by allowing crazy ideas to remain largely unchallenged. Of course this is central to the business model; let people say whatever they want. And it also allows the holders of weird views to find fellow believers,..
Yet to complain too much about the problem is to give a free pass to politicians who have long known that the right lies will get them elected. Yes, Trump took this to a new level, but all politicians have done it for a long time; Lincoln's mixed messages on slavery are an ancient example.
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by allowing crazy ideas to remain largely unchallenged
I don't quite see that, crazy ideas are challenged all the time. Our government is running a campaign against COVID misinformation, what is that apart from challenging crazy ideas? It just that some people don't believe the person doing the challenging. I have yet to see any analysis on if the crazy ideas are more or less than in the past. It maybe Facebook just makes them more visible.
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That is “Too Little, Too Late.”
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If you consider Facebook to be social media then it is people talking. They share news items , a lot of them from mainstream news organizations. But mainly it is like any social talk, fast and sloppy. It can lead to wild out of control mass hysteria. But also legitimate. It is social interaction and social organizing.
In a large part the objections to facebook are that the people who want to control public perception complain that they are failing. In a large part this is about power, not about getting thing
No shit, Sherlock (Score:5, Insightful)
"I own Time and I am held accountable for what is produced on my platform," Benioff said, adding that CNN and other media outlets are also held accountable. "In regards to Facebook, they are not held accountable.
I don't even know where to start. For one, the content in Time is produced by your employees at your behest for your purposes. Of course you're being held accountable!
Facebooks content is produced by their users, for reasons of their own. Facebook merely serves as the mechanism that allows the users to communicate. Nobody with sense ever referred to Facebook as an unimpeachable source.
By the way, what do you mean by "held accountable"? Time has published plenty of whoppers over the years, and I don't see anybody in jail over them. What consequences are you proposing for Facebook?
Re:No shit, Sherlock (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebooks content is produced by their users, for reasons of their own.
To an extent. Your friends' content is self-generated. But the FB-generated content in your feed is targeted, and that algorithm is at the mercy of Zuckerberg, who has known, detailed right-wing leanings. Who is holding Zuckerberg accountable?
Time has published plenty of whoppers over the years, and I don't see anybody in jail over them.
"Accountability" for periodicals usually means retractions; if publishers value their reputations as publications. Accountability doesn't have to mean "jail."
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As soon as facebook starts moderating or choosing what content to promote to any extent beyond what is required of them by law, it becomes responsible for content because it's acting in an editorial capacity.
If content is purely user controlled, then the host is not responsible for it.
Re: No shit, Sherlock (Score:2)
for reasons of their own.
No, the reason why Facebook content is delivered is ultimately Facebook's - to make money for the company. It's just better disguised.
How is accountability assessed? (Score:3, Insightful)
He says CNN and Time and other media outlets are held accountable. How? What is their accountability when called out. Is it that the media he chooses to reference has never been in a position to be held accountable.
I'm no fan of Facebook, but what are they supposed to do? I do think it's on them to solve their inability to handle their scalability, not the scale to produce and deploy content, but the ability to review, score and handle the content. AI is not cutting it.
I also don't want accountability arbitrated through the lens of someone like Marc Benioff.
* Hunter's laptop is Russian disinformation
* Oklahoma hospital beds are overcapacity due to Ivermectin overdoses (and calling it horse paste when it's a common human drug -- and I have no idea if it works and don't care, but that didn't happen)
* Border agents are whipping migrants
* We stopped an attack on the Kabul airport with a drone strike
* No Americans will be left behind
* Vaccinations don't work
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I'm no fan of Facebook, but what are they supposed to do? I do think it's on them to solve their inability to handle their scalability, not the scale to produce and deploy content, but the ability to review, score and handle the content.
It's not on them unless someone forces it to be. They, and all the others from Google to Twitter, are getting along just fine without worrying about having some method to "review, score and handle the content". In fact, they even have a law - "Section 230" - which says that they don't have to bother with any of that.
Re: How is accountability assessed? (Score:3)
I'm no fan of Facebook, but what are they supposed to do?
It's a catch 22. Something like Faceboon cannot exist and not be destructive to society. It's monetizing people's attention, and this inherently works better with outrage and dissent. (It's the reason why bad word of mouth spreads 10x faster than good one.) They always have to skate the thin line of outrage bordering, but just bordering, destruction and lies. Otherwise if they don't, who ever comes along and does it, takes their business away because they receive more user attention to monetize.
To do that s
Trying to Break Crack Addiction That IS Facebook (Score:2)
One of the appealing parts of it is you get the feeling, probably incorrectly, that you can have a voice outside of your own world. Isn't that why people post to boards like it. It really is just a fancy bulletin boards. And bulletin boards and news groups were at the forefront of the non-military non-academic internet. Probably for the same reason. Anyway, like Slashdot, it wastes too much time. Need to find a better hobby. :)
Re: (Score:3)
There is a very distinct difference. On here, I can engage in a discussion with people around the world. Like I do with you right now. We can exchange ideas, challenge each other's ideas, and I can find someone with a different position than me who will challenge my world view and allow me to get a reality check with my positions. Are they as solid as I think they are? Does the other person have a valid argument that I can't just brush aside?
Is my position correct?
That doesn't happen on Facebook. First, Fac
Facebook Is What's Wrong With America (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook Is What's Wrong With America
No, a large subgroup of the US populations that is composed of people who are badly educated wilfully ignorant and incapable of critical thought and who therefore believe everything they read on Facebook is what's wrong with America.
Re:Facebook Is What's Wrong With America (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah - it's Twitter (Score:2)
Duh (Score:2)
Duh
12 former intel officials warned Congress that ... (Score:3)
12 former intel officials warned Congress that cracking down on Big Tech could benefit China.
The twist: every person who signed the letter has ties to the major tech companies. Seven of them work for a PR firm that represents Google.
https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
Welcome to now (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to... now. We have finally reached that utopia where the vast majority of the population are all online and interconnected. And the ability to interface has been dumbed-down to the point that anyone can post, comment or re-share with the greatest of ease. Nearly no thought or effort is required, thus nearly no thought or effort is usually applied when using social media.
We had this problem 15 years ago, but back then it was with email. At least for that subset of the population that were online and had email. You know - where people would forward the email to all their friends, because Bill Gates was "testing email" and would send them a dollar for every person they sent the email to?
The writing was on the wall back then. There is a significant portion of the population that is either too gullible, or lazy, or simply can't be bothered to actually think before they interact online. And now... well, it's vastly worse, because a thousand times more people are online, and it's a thousand times easier to post and comment.
Each mass comm breakthrough leads to revolution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Telegraph killed the pony express within 18 months of the start, allowed Lincoln to follow the battle reports daily, and the battlefield commanders in the Crimean Peninsula knew about the troop ships departing English and French ports weeks before they arrived with their troops! Saddam Hussein saw bombers leaving the aircraft carriers on CNN, but he was not the first commander to learn about enemy troop movement by from news media!.
Radio allowed Presidents to have fireside chats and get so much of name recognition, FDR won four elections straight.
Television changed perception and politics. For millions of years human brain evolved to believe, "what you see more often probably happens more often". Then came instant-replay. Sitting in the air conditioned living room, munching snacks, we have watched more lions chasing antelopes than any Kalahari bushman had ever seen in his entire life.
Takes a while for population to get adjusted to the new mass media. Criminals take advantage of new breakthroughs much faster the law or law abiding citizens. Mainly because criminals engage in risky behavior and explore the limits.
Here be dragons (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a multi-faceted problem, and I highly doubt the domain of the problem is just Facebook. Benioff is a human being with his own biases, and we know that magazines and newspaper media have been hurt by the rise of social media, so even if he's trying to be objective, we're going to need him to take extra care in spelling out a list of inaccuracies including pretty much indisputable proof of their inaccuracy. Otherwise it's too easy to believe he's just saying "I don't agree with what they're saying and I want the government to stop them from saying it." Of course there's misinformation. There's always been misinformation. Some of the stuff we accept without question right now *must* be misinformation if history is any guide.
Truth and fiction is not the problem, it's basic communication skills that have deteriorated because we don't have to develop them anymore. I have recently observed direct acquaintances of mine get into spats with family and friends and it's all happening over social media and/or other electronic communication like email. They're coming to me to ask what they should say because they want to "win" the argument. This is the wrong goal... when there's a disagreement we need to focus first on listening. I implored them to just call the other person and talk, but nobody was comfortable actually speaking by voice anymore. Real relationships, including familial relationships, were ruined by a lack of basic communication skills. Even though you don't agree with someone, you will never get as angry at them if you hear them explain their side of the story in their own voice, or better yet, face to face.
Democracy was never meant to lead us to a society where everyone agreed on some common truth. It was always expected that people would disagree. It is the human condition to disagree and to be disagreeable. The system we've put together is one that allows us to coexist peacefully in spite of the fact that we're always going to have disagreements. We're always going to dislike other people in our country. That's inevitable. It's OK. They already took that into account when the system was designed. That's why fundamental rights like the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so on were written into constitutions.
Why is online communication becoming the defacto way of communicating? It's because nobody has to listen. You can block the people whose opinions you don't like. You can surround yourself with digital voices that are comfortably predictable, and accepting of you (as long as you don't stray too far from the agreed upon worldview). You can get someone fired because they once wrote something you didn't like 20 years ago when they were a dumb undergrad, and you can do it from such a distance that you never consider that they're a real live human being, just like you.
I think the Earth is over 4 billion years old, but I have a good friend who has spent hours trying to convince me it's 6000 years old. I listened. I wasn't convinced, but it was an interesting conversation. He's still a good friend.
I think getting vaccinated is a good idea, but I have a (different) friend who's a big anti-vaxxer. I listen to his reasons and I try to understand what he's talking about. He's still a good friend.
Just go talk to people you wouldn't normally talk to. Talk with people who have strong opinions you disagree with. And really try to listen. Do it with the expectation that you might be wrong about something.
So it's not just Facebook, it's all the fire-and-forget one-way media, like inflammatory editorials in newspapers, talking heads on TV, good old talk radio, and yes, it's social media too, including Slashdot. But it's a hyper-connected world with no real connection. Stop getting so hung up about the fact that someone is wrong on the internet. Just agree to disagree. Then go make a real connection. We could fix this whole mess if we just sat down and talked.
Education (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly - the issue is with education.
If people's minds were educated to defend against more or less obvious falseness, Facebook / Fox News / Breitbart / RT / Your favourite disinformation source wouldn't have the impact they actually do have.
From what I read, the US education system looks quite as broken as its Health or Social (In)Security, and needs serious overhauling.
Good luck with that.
Symptom, not cause (Score:3)
I dislike Facebook as much as anyone. I log into my account maybe every 2-3 years, because some family members just cannot conceive that Facebook is not the who fscking Internet.
However. Facebook is not actually the problem, it is a symptom. It fulfills a perceived need for these people, and if it didn't exist, they would take over some other social media, or forum, or old UseNet group, or whatever.
What is the fundamental problem? IMHO the answer is simple: education. Public education in the US has been dumbed down so far that it is nearly useless. When I went to elementary school, back in the age of dinosaurs (1960s, 1970s), many teachers already catered to the lowest common denominator. The classes moved at the pace of the slowest students. With NCLB (No Child Gets Ahead), with mainstreaming special needs children, with each subsequent well-meaning program this has gotten worse. Now you have high school districts that allow people to graduate who are functionally illiterate.
An uneducated populace can be easily misled. They are used to accepting predigested pap, instead of thinking for themselves. You cannot cure people like this. All you can do is education future generations. Put rigor back into the schools. Fail students who cannot keep up. Most importantly: You have to find ways to develop social pressure to do well in school. Look to Asia: they may carry this too far, but they have the social tools to do this. In the US, you have the opposite: inner city black culture that thinks doing well in school is "acting white".
Not to dodge the hard question: what do you do with the people who permanently fail out of normal school? They still need perspectives and jobs. Lower level trade schools. Training via formal apprenticeships.
The issue is Section 230 (Score:2)
We don't and shouldn't have government telling us what we are allowed to say and read. And things folks thought were true often turn out later to be false, especially when it is about politicians/said by politicians (Clinton on Lewinsky, Flowers, etc).
Section 230 is the issue as it is too broad. It was written at a time when the issues was transmitting email from basically one person to another and it was *JUST* transmission to specific addressees. But things like Facebook and twitter are broadcast media
The only person accountable is YOU (Score:3)
You are the rude person who believes in cancel culture and classifying anything that you don't agree with as misinformation. Yep
Thankfully, despite the liberal attitudes of the people who run Facebook, the First Amendment isn't just about free speech. It's about the right to offend and say things other people don't agree with. This is why, when Facebook shut down things that didn't fit their progressive bias, people just went elsewhere. Log onto any of the other social platforms and you will see it all there. There is nothing in any legal document that says I can't say things that are wrong. If I stand on a street corner and shout out that one plus one equals three, there is not anything anyone can do. Other than shake their heads and ignore me.
Libel is always a recourse if something meets the standards of lying. But 'misinformation' has been around a long time, just look at religion. Anti-vaxers have been working that line of reason for decades. Moral standards are always in flux. One person's music is another person's trash.
The real problem with this country are the attitudes of people who feel they have a right to not be offended by what someone else says, so they use cancel culture to shut it down. These are the intolerant asshats that are ruining this country.
Take gay marriage. According to some,.if you are for it, you are enlightened. If you are against it, you are homophobic. Simple thoughts for simple people to justify their vigilantism and not have to actually think for themselves. Let's just ruin the career of everyone who disagrees with us. If someone donates to the 'wrong' charity, they must be banished. If someone says something that doesn't follow the opinions of a group of people, shut them down.
Here's an idea that I follow
John Cleese has an excellent video about being offended where he points out a simple truth. To paraphrase, do you know what happens when you are offended? NOTHING! It's a choice to be offended by what someone says.
It's not Facebook and misinformation that is doing it. Somewhere along the way people forgot that it's OK to disagree with someone. It's not necessary to be offended just because someone has a different opinion. Especially if that person is a complete stranger that someone will never meet.
If a movement started where people were treated with dignity no matter how much of an idiot someone may think they are, we all just might get along just fine.
Like we used to before rudeness became a national obsession and so many starting fighting for any reason to get likes and followers by being outrageous and rude.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Trump really exposed them for what they are.
Donald Trump? Do you mean the same Donald Trump who lied about being Time's "Man of the Year"?
Or maybe the Donald Trump who lied about how many times he had been on their cover? [theguardian.com]
Heres the really funny bit:
In January, in a controversial speech at CIA headquarters, he boasted that he had “the all-time record in the history of Time magazine” for appearances on (genuine) covers. In March, in an interview with the magazine itself, he returned to the subject, saying: “I assume this is going to be a cover too, have I set the record? I guess, right? Covers, nobody’s had more covers.” Trump has not had the most Time cover appearances. At the time of his Time interview he had 11, a long way behind Richard Nixon’s 55. According to Time’s own count, he has now appeared on its cover 14 times.
But go on, tell me all about how great he is.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And Hitler changed German's borders more in less time than anyone else in history. What's your point?
911 scam Doh! (Score:2)
Perhaps you should call 911 and report a psychiatric emergency.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Fox and Breitbart are just as wrong as CNN and Time.
This is a false equivalency. CNN and Time did not tell their viewers or readers that the 2020 election was "rigged," and push for sedition. CNN and Time have not been telling their viewers or readers that COVID-19 is a hoax, nor actively try to convince news consumers that they shouldn't get the vaccine, even while the parent company makes the vaccine mandatory for employees. CNN and Time may have their flaws, but they're not nearly the same as Fox and Breitbart.
Re: (Score:2)
Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment, would Fox and friends be negligent if they said COVID was an overstated problem? Would they be lying if they said that press coverage of COVID helped the Democrats disproportionately?
Like most things, there is an ounce of truth to what they are saying, and the balance pushes a position. The same is true for much of the news coverage as well as political policy and wedge issues. Understanding why the “other side” thinks the way they do is impor