Facebook Whistleblower Speaks, Shares Documents on Deliberate Lies and Disregard of Misinformation, Contacts US Regulators (cbsnews.com) 151
An Iowa data scientist with a computer engineering degree and a Harvard MBA has come forward as the whistleblower leaking damaging information about Facebook to the Wall Street Journal — and that's just the beginning. They've now also filed at least eight complaints with America's Securities and Exchange Commission, "which has broad oversight over financial markets and has the power to bring charges against companies suspected of misleading investors," reports the Washington Post. To buttress the complaints, the whistleblower secretly copied "tens of thousands" of pages of internal Facebook research, according to a report tonight on the CBS News show 60 Minutes, which summarizes her ultimate conclusion: "that the company is lying to the public about making significant progress against hate, violence and misinformation.
"One study she found from this year says 'We estimate that we may action as little as 3 to 5% of hate, and about 0.6% of violence and incitement on Facebook. Despite being the best in the world at it." Another internal Facebook document admits point-blank that "We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world."
60 Minutes points out that Facebook "has 2.8 billion users, which is 60% of all internet-connected people on Earth."
[Whistleblower Frances] Haugen told us the root of Facebook's problem is in a change that it made in 2018 to its algorithms — the programming that decides what you see on your Facebook news feed... "One of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement, or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions... Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money."
60 Minutes reports that Facebook was even contacted by "major political parties across Europe," according to leaked internal documents which say the parties specifically complained that a change Facebook's algorithm "has forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook... leading them into more extreme policy positions." (Or, as 60 Minutes puts it, "The European political parties were essentially saying to Facebook the way you've written your algorithm is changing the way we lead our countries." The whistleblower sees their position as "You are forcing us to take positions that we don't like, that we know are bad for society. We know if we don't take those positions, we won't win in the marketplace of social media." Haugen says Facebook understood the danger to the 2020 Election. So, it turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation — but many of those changes, she says, were temporary. "And as soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me." Facebook says some of the safety systems remained. But, after the election, Facebook was used by some to organize the January 6th insurrection....
After the attack, Facebook employees raged on an internal message board copied by Haugen. "...Haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?"
The whistleblower will now appear Tuesday before a U.S. Senate Commerce consumer protection subcommittee — and has already shared some of their documents with Congressional offices probing Facebook, according to the Washington Post. "It's important because Big Tech is at an inflection point," the whistleblower's lawyer tells the newspaper. They argue that ultimately Big Tech "touches every aspect of our lives — whether it's individuals personally or democratic institutions globally. With such far reaching consequences, transparency is critical to oversight.
"And lawful whistleblowing is a critical component of oversight and holding companies accountable."
"One study she found from this year says 'We estimate that we may action as little as 3 to 5% of hate, and about 0.6% of violence and incitement on Facebook. Despite being the best in the world at it." Another internal Facebook document admits point-blank that "We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world."
60 Minutes points out that Facebook "has 2.8 billion users, which is 60% of all internet-connected people on Earth."
[Whistleblower Frances] Haugen told us the root of Facebook's problem is in a change that it made in 2018 to its algorithms — the programming that decides what you see on your Facebook news feed... "One of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement, or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions... Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money."
60 Minutes reports that Facebook was even contacted by "major political parties across Europe," according to leaked internal documents which say the parties specifically complained that a change Facebook's algorithm "has forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook... leading them into more extreme policy positions." (Or, as 60 Minutes puts it, "The European political parties were essentially saying to Facebook the way you've written your algorithm is changing the way we lead our countries." The whistleblower sees their position as "You are forcing us to take positions that we don't like, that we know are bad for society. We know if we don't take those positions, we won't win in the marketplace of social media." Haugen says Facebook understood the danger to the 2020 Election. So, it turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation — but many of those changes, she says, were temporary. "And as soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me." Facebook says some of the safety systems remained. But, after the election, Facebook was used by some to organize the January 6th insurrection....
After the attack, Facebook employees raged on an internal message board copied by Haugen. "...Haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?"
The whistleblower will now appear Tuesday before a U.S. Senate Commerce consumer protection subcommittee — and has already shared some of their documents with Congressional offices probing Facebook, according to the Washington Post. "It's important because Big Tech is at an inflection point," the whistleblower's lawyer tells the newspaper. They argue that ultimately Big Tech "touches every aspect of our lives — whether it's individuals personally or democratic institutions globally. With such far reaching consequences, transparency is critical to oversight.
"And lawful whistleblowing is a critical component of oversight and holding companies accountable."
Lawful whistleblowing? (Score:3)
Seems to me that the whistleblower is revealing Facebook trade secrets about things that may be skanky, but aren't illegal. So I doubt there's any actual whistleblower protection here, though I'm sure the SEC complaints are to attempt to invoke it.
Re:Lawful whistleblowing? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a crime, and the SEC is the government body that will prosecute it.
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It's illegal to make untrue statements to your investors.
It is only illegal to make materially false statements. Lying to investors is legal if it doesn't affect their ability to make money.
Re:Lawful whistleblowing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lying to investors is legal if it doesn't affect their ability to make money.
If this is actually true, this is the most batshit-crazy thing about capitalism.
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If this is actually true, this is the most batshit-crazy thing about capitalism.
What do you suggest then?
Should we put everyone who has ever been untruthful in prison?
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If I'm investing in a company and they lie to me about how they are conducting business, then yes. I want them thrown in prison.
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If I'm investing in a company and they lie to me about how they are conducting business, then yes. I want them thrown in prison.
Do you know what "materially false" means?
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If I'm investing in a company and they lie to me about how they are conducting business, then yes. I want them thrown in prison.
Do you know what "materially false" means?
I think it would be helpful of you to clarify the distinction you are making between "lying" and "materially false", since clearly the latter is a form of "lying".
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I can only guess that non-materially-false "lying" is meant to provide the wiggle room for what reasonable people would actually consider "white lies". Untrue statements meant to promote some kind of positive image, prediction of future success, or something which is fundamentally a matter of opinion, but presented as a fact.
In plain language, lying is making a statement about something asserting something to be true when in fact it is not true or unprovable. "Materially false" seems to be a standard that
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If I'm investing in a company and they lie to me about how they are conducting business, then yes. I want them thrown in prison.
Do you know what "materially false" means?
Yes, I think that translates to "bullshit loophole-speak", according to basic rules of profit and loss and Common F. Sense, but hey who's actually using math anymore to calculate value? That's sooo 20th Century. If you're popular, you're worth billions while posting financial losses every year. 21st Century Capitalism baby! And they say it's a house of cards. Pfft. What do "they" know? They're probably not even on Tik Tok. Followers is the new currency, and narcissism is king.
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Perfect. So you do believe prison should be used for non-violent offenses.
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What do you suggest then?
Should we put everyone who has ever been untruthful in prison?
Oh right, I didn't realize it was you [slashdot.org] again.
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If this is actually true
It's ShanghaiBill. Of course it isn't true.
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If this is actually true
It's ShanghaiBill. Of course it isn't true.
Indeed; didn't realize at first I was responding to a known troll [slashdot.org].
Re:Lawful whistleblowing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lying to investors is legal if it doesn't affect their ability to make money.
If this is actually true, this is the most batshit-crazy thing about capitalism.
It's not batshit crazy at all. It's just a oneliner phrased to trigger emotions in you.
Lying in a way that doesn't cause those who have dealings with you any harm or loss at all - is pretty universally not illegal, either in law or in practice.
A CEO declares in a speech: "We are selling our car in all the largest European countries - France, Italy, Germany, Spain. Oh, I love France, I was on just on holiday there next to a farm and tried some amazing pate". But the CEO lied - the CEO didn't have pate, but instead tripes.
A person sells a graphics card online. The person writes: "I have only used it to play CSGO and Call of Duty". But the seller lied - in reality, they used it to play hentai games.
So - legal (allowable) in terms of contract (civil) law, or legal in terms of criminal law?
Criminal investigations are costly, and punishments are costly. With a limited amount of resources, it makes sense and has been the choice of democratic societies worldwide to prioritise pretty much any other crime above victimless lying, or not make victimless lying criminally punishable at all.
Contract law is based on loss. You can get compensated if you have suffered a loss, either directly or indirectly. But "doesn't affect their ability to make money" is a powerful statements, and excludes the possibility of losses.
What it rather illustrates is neuroticism about capitalism.
What would be the name of this alternative social system where victimless lying is punished criminally, or obliges the liar to pay a civil penalty to someone - a civil penalty not connected to their loss, because they have none? Where are these examples of brave anticapitalists who have lied in a way that has harmed none, caused no loss directly or indirectly, and been punished for it by their peers? Who have been jailed or fined?
There is none - it exists independently of capitalism, because it would exist in any other implemented system as well. I write "implemented system", because the imagined systems where it would be also wouldn't be implemented.
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You can be guilty of lying to regulators. It may have nothing to do with incurring loss - regulation requires a baseline of transparency so regulators can make sound decisions, something economies place value upon, legislatively speaking.
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The problem with this line of reasoning is that it places the burden of proving harm from deception on those deceived, rather than having those with at the very least a duty of reasonable care having the burden of proving its harmlessness. To be clear: it's fine if to that burden to be light; but as is it's pretty much absent.
And that's a problem, because such harms are very diffuse, tricky, delayed, and otherwise hard to pin down, so it's easy to get away with.
At issue isn't really the ability to express
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Pinning down where any given lie has cost decision making efficiency takes effort, and you're not always going to succeed, and you're often going to spend more effort years later nog just debunking the lies but then also trying to reconstruct how some specific knock on three-steps removed effect was harmful. If you look around, it's easy to see lies everywhere, all the time, and many are constantly harming people's decision making.
It matters where you place the burden of proof - and proving a lie is hard en
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Lying to investors is legal if it doesn't affect their ability to make money.
If this is actually true, this is the most batshit-crazy thing about capitalism.
Stock market gains during a global pandemic that shuttered entire industries? The entire concept of NFTs that makes the billionaire world of art laundering and CDO schemes look tame by comparison? Ireland floating on trillions in tax havens? IPOs worth billions when companies lose hundreds of millions and may never actually make a profit?
Lying to those who accepted massive risk and invested anyway, is nothing compared to that kind of corruption.
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Lying about making money only on rage is a materially false statement. That rage is going to keep boiling over, and the result will be government action that greatly reduces Facebook's income.
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It's illegal to make untrue statements to your investors.
It is only illegal to make materially false statements. Lying to investors is legal if it doesn't affect their ability to make money.
Your phrasing about "the ability to make money" is not only stupid, it is specious. That's not the standard for anything. That's like saying, "If they're still alive they weren't harmed." It is just absurdly stupid, even for you.
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I think that's the big takeaway: that Facebook made blatantly false statements to investors
But the statements that are being talked about here don't seem to be the ones that might have lost investors money. Oh, I'm sure that a lot of what FB says is engineered lies - for example, the spiraling singularity of nonsense and falsehoods surrounding video content and audience counting in their ad network. But this political stuff seems to be a sidebar, at best. Plus, if you can believe what this person is saying at face value, FB is only guilty of not telling investors "hey, we tweaked the knobs to mak
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It's not a trade secret. It's just the choices that they made.
Trade secrets aren't just whatever you say you want to keep secret. Nor can illegal acts be trade secrets.
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The pages of "internal research" this person copied were Facebook's intellectual property, not simply "choices that they made". Judging from the complaint, it seems to have conferred an economic benefit. And Facebook has attempted to maintain its secrecy. This would a
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You can't wave your hands at "intellectual property," it has to be something akin to a formula that other people don't know.
When it is just your business decisions, those aren't secrets. You want to keep them secret, you can try to keep them secret, you can make people sign contracts that say you're agreeing to treat them as secrets, but none of that makes them actual "trade secrets" unless it is something that only you know, and where only you knowing it is the source of the value.
To say otherwise would be a bit like saying I didn't steal a trade secret by stealing the KFC original recipe
You're doing the thing wh
If you believe Facebook will face consequences (Score:2)
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Yea, I predict this guy is going to have a fatal "accident" or spontaneously commit suicide in a locked room without any cameras.
Facebook should flag it but it cant be forced to (Score:2, Interesting)
I really despise the anti-vaxxer disinformation, but I don't really think its Facebooks obligation to police it, but it should do so. Its the equivalent of a public square so therefore you don't hold the owner of the public square liable for what is spoken there. But the anti-vaxxer lies also fall under first amendment. Yes facebook could and should try to flag this disinformation, and it can do so, but it is not obligated to.
There are other ways using counter-disinformation, such as having counter-disinfo
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Its the equivalent of a public square
No. Facebook is a publicly traded corporation and that's all it is. No equivalencies are applicable or required. Whatever laws are applicable to it should apply and be enforced. Full stop.
Until such time as the internet is freely and readily accessible to all, Facebook or any other entity which operates on it for profit are not a "public square."
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Until such time as the internet is freely and readily accessible to all, Facebook or any other entity which operates on it for profit are not a "public square."
Until such time as college is freely and readily accessible to all, the University Quad will no longer be known as a public square...
Until such time as admission and parking is no longer charged, the county fairgrounds will no longer be known as a public square...
Until such time as transportation is freely and readily accessible to all, the literal public square will no longer be known as a public square....
The reality is, there are lots of "public squares" that happen to be run by publicly traded corp
Re:Facebook should flag it but it cant be forced t (Score:5, Informative)
The information you see on Facebook is curated by Facebook for Facebooks interests.
Or to put it another way on Facebook you see the information that Facebook has determined will result in the behavior Facebook wants.
Re:Facebook should flag it but it cant be forced t (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not at all the public square.
In the public square, you see and hear everyone, and everyone has equal ability to be heard.. Facebook explicitly chooses what to show you.
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Facebook explicitly chooses what to show you.
*Based on what you tell it what you want to see*
I told Facebook I don't want any political garbage on my feed. Guess what I don't see? I *do* see lots of posts about architecture and old computers.
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You can't explicitly tell FB what you like, only what you don't.
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It's not at all the public square.
In the public square, you see and hear everyone, and everyone has equal ability to be heard.
But that's just not true. If I'm in the public square saying my piece, there's nothing stopping you and ten friends from drowning me out by shouting louder, or standing in a circle round me holding up bigger signs so mine can't be seen. The professional activist types literally give and take classes on how to make the public square unavailable to voices they don't like, and it's motivated by the same sensibilities that do that in professional, academic, and government circles. Operations like Facebook have
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If I'm in the public square saying my piece, there's nothing stopping you and ten friends from drowning me out by shouting louder, or standing in a circle round me holding up bigger signs so mine can't be seen
The level of effort required to make your sign completely unseen, or drown you out completely, is very high. Westboro Baptist Church had to have their 6-ish people met by hundreds for it to be effective. Even then, people were still able to discern that the Westboro Baptist folks were still there.
If you want to attempt to real-world what Facebook is doing, it would not be like gathering 100x more people to counter-protest like you're claiming. It would be one guy picking you up and throwing you in an unm
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It's not at all the public square.
(The Public) "Wait, what was 'social' media created for again?"
(Facebook) "Shut up Product and get back to work."
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And on Facebook, you don't have the right to speak. You have to pay Facebook, or you have to produce something their algorithm will put in front of people.
Bringing a megaphone doesn't require you to change your message. Getting views on Facebook does.
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I see you reply as A/C to cover for your poor reading skills.
Hint: Which user was the one claiming Facebook was the public square? It starts with an E, not a J.
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Facebook it's a crappy newspaper where most journalist aren't paid and some are paying to write content, and advertisers are paying for their infomercial
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No, it's like a neighbour seeing you with a Meatlover's pizza, then pasting "meat is murder" slogans on your windows.
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I really despise the anti-vaxxer disinformation, but I don't really think its Facebooks obligation to police it, but it should do so.
Exactly. And I would go a bit further in saying that if we don't want social media magnify dumb or hateful speech that hurts society, we should raise better citizens (better as in morally and intellectually better) than expecting FB to do social police work (or forcing it with our laws to do what we should be doing through our government and our own collective and individual behaviors.
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right after an election he supposedly won in a landslide.
You're the first person(?) I've seen claim it was a landslide.
The next "Snowden" (Score:2)
This is a pro-censorship campaign (Score:2)
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It absolutely is, and both sides want it. The right wing rabble, dullards that they are, imagine if only Facebook would let them post whatever they want all would be well. This is censorship as Facebook is a private company, they can moderate or edit whatever the fuck they want on their servers and their software.
The left wants it, because they want more direct censorship. "But muh first amendment doesn't apply, private company!", is what they'll screech, even while applying direct political power and the f
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The left wants it, because they want more direct censorship. "But muh first amendment doesn't apply, private company!", is what they'll screech...
Sometimes you're so ignorant it should be painful. It was a conservative Supreme Court of the United States who ruled that the private property rights of the corporation overrides any public interest in this matter. You got exactly what you wanted. Now live with it.
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Yes, it is. If we go down the path of censorship we might be heading toward a state like communist China.
But if we don't, government is already embracing the hate speech. So we might be heading down a path like nazi Germany.
I suppose the goal should be to discredit falsehoods, first and foremost. But who can be trusted to identify falsehoods, and who pays them to do the identification?
Re: This is a pro-censorship campaign (Score:2)
Exactly. "Hate speech" is simply speech I hate. Instead of having FB censor, why not just empower the individual user to filter out what they want and don't want. Then it's not censorship.
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Because the people who like hate speach can still form a little clique together and egg each other on to do some ethnic cleansing or shoot up a black church. It doesn't matter if you specifically caneilter out hate speech, you can still become the victim or target of it in the real world as a result of what happens online.
Political parties admit PR takes precedence (Score:1)
"The European political parties were essentially saying to Facebook the way you've written your algorithm is changing the way we lead our countries."
If you're a political party, and you change the way you lead your country from a better way to a worse way -- something you believe and declare yourself, behind closed doors, is a worse way -- because you feel this is necessary for your PR and public messaging to be successful and retain power, then you are a pretty terrible political party.
If Facebook's algorithm is one factor that twists you to change your leadership of the country to the worse in order to have successful PR messaging -- how infinitely ma
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If you're a political party, and you change the way you lead your country from a better way to a worse way -- something you believe and declare yourself, behind closed doors, is a worse way -- because you feel this is necessary for your PR and public messaging to be successful and retain power, then you are a pretty terrible political party.
Because taking the high road and getting voted out of office because someone else stirred up rage instead is the perfect way to enact your agenda.
There's countless contact surfaces between the party and the population
And social media is significantly more powerful than those others.
They are basically declaring themselves a PR apparatus first and foremost, driven by whatever successful PR demands, and pursuer of sane policy and communication in a distant second row.
Well, you've caught up to politics from the 1980s.
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Because taking the high road and getting voted out of office because someone else stirred up rage instead is the perfect way to enact your agenda.
Yes, the political parties had prescience that this was their only hope of victory. Abandoning their principles and personal convictions in order to succeed on PR was absolutely and completely necessary, not something they chose just based on a possibility and in order to gain a small extra chance at power.
And social media is significantly more powerful than those others.
Unsourced, as no source is provided - and obscurantism, as statements outside social media becomes part of social media, and vica versa - there is no strict boundary.
Well, you've caught up to politics from the 1980s.
And this is why, any time a political
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And so will just about any religion or political party. After all, they are the "good people."
And sometimes "good people" *MUST* counter the "bad people" by any means available.
This is covered within a variety of religious texts and plans of many political parties throughout the world.
This mentality creates wars.
Thanks Facebook!
The forest for the treez (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement, or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions
Top Democrats and Republicans put their hands in their pockets, look elsewhere, and whistle innocently while walking away.
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Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement, or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions
Top Democrats and Republicans put their hands in their pockets, look elsewhere, and whistle innocently while walking away.
A two-party system specifically designed to divide and create division, is the primary reason for 90% of that polarizing divisive content. Of course they're going to act innocent. So did cigarette companies. For decades.
This is the primary reason the two-party system needs to die. It does not represent The People at all anymore. Not even close, no matter who wins an "election" or who is in power.
TL; DR - "Democrats" and "Republicans" is being sold as the reason to justify American politics when in rea
Really? (Score:1)
"60 Minutes points out that Facebook "has 2.8 billion users, which is 60% of all internet-connected people on Earth."
60%?
I thought only 50% had an IQ of under 100.
Re: Really? (Score:2)
So, the solution? (Score:1)
Because even if Facebook had moderation systems that were 100% effective, people (and states) could still spread hate and misinformation by tweaking them into FUD and dog-whistling.
Instead of saying "let n*ggers drown on t
Re: So, the solution? (Score:3)
A very peculiar kind of town square (Score:2)
The town square argument holds up only if a town square gave megaphones only to the most dangerous liars and invited the most gullible people to come and listen with promises of free (legal) drugs. It's legal, but do we really want to ignore the problem?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t... [wsj.com]
Pity it wasn't a Facebook Misinformation... (Score:2)
... Whistleblower.
Like how the FB Editorial team "Trended" smear articles from new "news" websites with no traffic and no content history during the Trump/Hillary Election in order to influence the election. ... or How about an information suppression Whistleblower who could report on Israeli Military's embedding into the moderation team that blocks eyewitness footage and accounts of the ethnic cleansing and murder of Palestinians, and then uses that information to kidnap the poster in the middle of the nig
Facebook goes offline (Score:2)
Facebook promptly has a network meltdown and isn't expected back up until this evening. Funny how that works.
My last post was related to an important anniversary today (4 October 1957). The Facebook censors promptly slapped a COVID tag on my post since it mentioned Sputnik, though any idiot could tell it's not the Sputnik their AI had in mind.
...laura
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That's what they're posting on several internet outage sites, like this one [downdetector.ca].
...laura
Neoliberalism in a Nutshell (Score:2)
Re:This shit still? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This shit still? (Score:5, Insightful)
It will hurt Facebook.
We can but hope. They do have a lot of money though, and the US Government is very corrupt, so I wouldn't be so sure.
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...20-30 years ago, people used to hope that the US government will step in to fix things...
That is certainly true for Europe, but people who live in Central America were always terrified of the US government, because the US government tended to fund things like death squads if they voted for the wrong people.
Re:This shit still? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg are gangrene and its associated foul smelling discharge.
The body is our functioning democracy.
They've completely infected the body's right leg.
Do you cut off the leg to stop their insatiable spread to save the patient? A choice that's irreversible?
Or hope that the leg can be salvaged and a cure is applied in time?
Unfortunately we've waited too long to neutralize it. They've become too powerful, as have media and advertising in general.
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Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg are gangrene and its associated foul smelling discharge.
The body is our functioning democracy.
They've completely infected the body's right leg.
This is probably the best three-line summary of Fecebook I've ever seen. Although I'd perhaps change "right leg" to "right-hand extremities".
Re:This still? (Score:2)
It will hurt Facebook.
I got six million dollars that says otherwise. [observer.com]
Re:This shit still? (Score:5, Interesting)
This has a lot of parallels to tobacco companies. It will hurt Facebook.
I admire your optimism.
Re: This shit still? (Score:1)
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There's a difference between providing a platform that allows fraudsters to post and deliberately preferring to show those fraud-filled posts.
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One of the most important developments of civilized society was from going from everybody "knowing" somebody is a witch being good enough to instigate remedial action, to having a judicial system in which we demand evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of such.
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Haugen told us the root of Facebook's problem is in a change that it made in 2018 to its algorithms — the programming that decides what you see on your Facebook news feed...
It seems the easy solution is for FB to just turn off the news feed option. Who really goes to FB for news anyway? It seems the news feed would either show you news items that match your stored preferences or show you the stories that seem to elicit the most controversy.
If people already know the items shown in the news feed are filtered to either pander to their confirmation bias or evoke anger and controversy, why would they continue to feed the FB monster with more ad money?
FB should be a service to pr
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Umm, I hate to expose your ignorance here, but Facebook's "News Feed" is where the posts from your friends and family show up, not an exclusive set of posts from news organizations. If you don't look at Facebook's "News Feed", then you will get zero information from any of you friends unless they send you a private message.
Re: Slippery slope of censorship (Score:2)
Not exactly true. You can check your friends' feeds to see what they've posted. But you have to go one by one.
Personalisation for $$$ is the root cause (Score:3)
The trend of tech companies to personalize the information presented to individuals is the root cause.
As defined by the tech companies: "Personalisation is taking what we know about a person and their digital behavior at a given point in time and then determining and delivering the next best experience in order to have a positive impact on business objectives."
But what personalisation is really all about is obtaining continuously better knowledge of individual user psychology, cognitive biases and trigger p
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Yeah, it's time to hold the audience responsible for their own bad behavior. I'm not concerned what motivated them. The choice to believe bullshit should have consequences. You can't fix things by "baby-proofing" the planet
Re:Slippery slope of censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
> Yeah, it's time to hold the audience responsible for their own bad behavior.
Rather than just promoting stories of similar interests, Facebook tweaks its algorithm to also promote stories that are more polarized, violent, overstated or just plain made up.
It's not the audience's behavior that caused Facebook to bias people feeds like they did.
> I'm not concerned what motivated them.
I can agree with that, the reason Facebook is doing this, profit or whatever, is not at issue here.
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:-) Yes, you're very funny. But the audience must be held responsible for their bad behavior regardless of what they see on Facebook.
"The devil made me do it" is not a valid excuse. Maybe to the moderators it is, but not to me!
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> Yes, you're very funny. But the audience must be held responsible for their bad behavior regardless of what they see on Facebook.
It's not an issue of customer responsibility and even if it was responsibility is never one sided.
Facebook changing their algorithm was kind of like if a bottled water company after years of serving loyal customers starts adding a subtle addictive substance to the drink without telling anyone. The audience is expecting stories of like interests from similar demographics, not
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"The devil made me do it" is not a valid excuse. Maybe to the moderators it is, but not to me!
Straw man?
But whatever. I lost a sentence in my last comment after "See above" : I think Facebook needs to me more upfront and transparent.
Re:Slippery slope of censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
harms individuals, groups, or society, then you need to be held accountable.
The MSM proffered up the RUSSIAN COLLUSION hoax for years. That wasn't just misinformation, it likely affected at least one election. There are people today that still believe the lie (they'll mark this "Troll"). Politicians claimed but never showed "smoking gun", repeated by the MSM as part of the effort.
I'm not a fan of the former president, but this crap about "dangerous misinformation" is just political speech censorship, dressed up as "fact checking".
If it was just this one Clinton Operation, you might be able to get away with it, but there are a long series of MSM "misinformation" stories that I can recite: "Mostly peaceful protests", "Covington HS Boys", "Lab Leak hoax", "Jussie Smollet" and the latest attempt, Kelli Stavast's "Let's Go Brandon".
Censorship in the guise of labeling "misinformation" that which is true, and actively not labeling "misinformation" that which is false are functionally the same: Propaganda.
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"alt-right sockpuppet"
ROFL LMAO, all you can do is toss ad hominems and strawmen. That's all the left ever does. Its like they think they win by calling names.
Found the Clintonista. (see, I can do it too!)
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Clintonista
Rush Limbaugh's ghost called... he wants you to stop sucking his bloated, treasonous KKK-shit corpse's cock now.
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"Uranium One" is... oh look, another fake conspiracy theory [factcheck.org] that inbred alt-right Rushsucking "dittoheads" like to toss around.
It may be that individuals and companies sought to curry favor with Hillary Clinton and even influence her department’s decision on the Uranium One sale. But, as we’ve written before, there is no evidence that donations to the Clinton Foundation from people with ties to Uranium One or Bill Clinton’s speaking fee influenced Hillary Clinton’s official action
Re:Slippery slope of censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
"Mostly peaceful protests"
When thousands protest, and dozens are violent, "mostly peaceful" is accurate.
Give me a fucking break. When media purposely tries to claim and frame violent protests that they support as "mostly peaceful", they are purposely manipulating the reality by claiming that there is no violence with bullshit bias verbiage.
Let's put this an accurate way; you will never hear them report these protests as "sometimes violent", or even mention that they are sometimes violent. No, they will claim them as "mostly peaceful" to convey that "fact", while conveniently ignoring any harm or even death that occurs.
Meanwhile, if even one death occurs that is against their agenda, "deadly" political heads and headlines roll. You call THAT shit accurate reporting?
If you're going to report, then report the fucking facts, not some biased bullshit. And this goes for BOTH sides of politics. I'm not shilling for any "side", I'm shilling for truth.
Re: (Score:2)
Give me a fucking break. When media purposely tries to claim and frame violent protests that they support as "mostly peaceful", they are purposely manipulating the reality by claiming that there is no violence with bullshit bias verbiage.
As an example, that protest where a police station was burned down? Here's the guy who has been charged [theguardian.com] with starting that fire. He's a Texan who traveled to Minneapolis because of the chaos. He was not a protestor, nor supporter of BLM.
You're insisting that every protestor there is just like him, which isn't the smartest position. Or true.
Again, when thousands are protesting, and a handful are violent, the protest is "mostly peaceful".
Let's put this an accurate way; you will never hear them report these protests as "sometimes violent", or even mention that they are sometimes violent
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Hrm...doesn't look like zero resul
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Facebook is a bicycle for stupidity.
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The totalitarian would employ a thousand well-paid infiltrators to target a knitting circle, if they thought this was useful to gain power.
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With the volume of total societal discourse going on in Facebook, your argument is tantamount to saying the same thing about the very air we're breathing.
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Re: What this sounds like... (Score:2)
You cannot, CANNOT prejudge content without making a value judgment in doing so. In a public opinion forum, that's a non-starter, full stop, because people are different and they simply will never agree. The only solution is free speech.
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Health 'mis' information like the virus may have come from a Chinese lab? I mean until that was un-de-misinformation'd this year, of course.
So a bunch of dimwitted unarmed rednecks forcing their way into the capital is 'danger to democracy' but I'm going to guess ACTUAL PLACES ATTEMPTING SECESSION or mobs burning and looting whole neighborhoods = not dangers to democracy?
You know that information being true isn't based on what you happen to politically agree with?
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Fine.
Then every user should receive every single post in the same order as a continuously "doom scrolled" feed.
Because that's the only way to really reach your goal of every voice being heard.