How to fix Big Tech and Social Media

[HVC]

its weird how something that started to get college students laid turned into something for old people and angry conservatives.

[The Brain]

its weird how something that started to get college students laid turned into something for old people and angry conservatives.

People grow up.

[Syt]

Facebook's products 'harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy', whistleblower tells Congress

I think the most shocking part of the Frances Haugen's testimony is that most news sources are treating it as a revelation rather than something that's blindingly obvious.  For this reason I don't think Congress will do anything more than grandstand.  It cannot possibly be news to them that Facebook stokes division.

Well Republicans think FB foments divisions by censoring conservative opinions.

[Jacob]

Facebook's products 'harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy', whistleblower tells Congress

I think the most shocking part of the Frances Haugen's testimony is that most news sources are treating it as a revelation rather than something that's blindingly obvious.  For this reason I don't think Congress will do anything more than grandstand.  It cannot possibly be news to them that Facebook stokes division.

Yes and no.

I think that when we are talking about how big organizations - and indeed countries - "know" things collectively and act on them there's a sort of slow progress that goes something like this:

[People directly affected experience it]
--> [people with an interest have convincing theories and specific proofs]
--> [it is widely and hotly debated (often with plenty of innacurate information in the mix)]
--> [it is no longer hotly debated but is generally "widely known"]
--> [it is officially registered as known and actionable by the decision-makers in the organization].

Sometimes that progress goes very fast. More frequently it's quite drawn out. And in many cases it gets stuck and never progresses.

I think this "testifies in front on Congress" thing is part of process for the last step. Whether or not they act on it is a different matter of course.

[Eddie Teach]

its weird how something that started to get college students laid turned into something for old people and angry conservatives.

People grow up.

But it only took ten years.

[viper37]

its weird how something that started to get college students laid turned into something for old people and angry conservatives.

People grow up.

But it only took ten years.

Closer to 18 years.  After the first million, these kids became conservative very quickly.

[Eddie Teach]

Facebook is 18 years old *now*. It's been the domain of old folks for a while.

[The Brain]

its weird how something that started to get college students laid turned into something for old people and angry conservatives.

People grow up.

But it only took ten years.

Probably all the GM food.

[Jacob]

Probably all the GM food.

You think player food would be better?

[grumbler]

Probably all the GM food.

You think player food would be better?

Well, yeah.  The GM doesn't have time to prepare tasty nosh, being busy preparing the campaign.

[The Brain]

Probably all the GM food.

You think player food would be better?

Player one is ready now.

[Tamas]

Don't worry in Hungary they managed to make online content/news providers largely responsible for the contents of user comments under their articles. It has successfully saved most of online Hungarian spaces from the worrying influence of unfiltered personal opinions. I am sure there's a way in America as well to suffocate online public discourse.

[Syt]

Can we get Kirk to engage Zuckerbot to engage in a debate and cause it to short-circuit?

[Savonarola]

Facebook's products 'harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy', whistleblower tells Congress

I think the most shocking part of the Frances Haugen's testimony is that most news sources are treating it as a revelation rather than something that's blindingly obvious.  For this reason I don't think Congress will do anything more than grandstand.  It cannot possibly be news to them that Facebook stokes division.

Yes and no.

I think that when we are talking about how big organizations - and indeed countries - "know" things collectively and act on them there's a sort of slow progress that goes something like this:

[People directly affected experience it]
--> [people with an interest have convincing theories and specific proofs]
--> [it is widely and hotly debated (often with plenty of innacurate information in the mix)]
--> [it is no longer hotly debated but is generally "widely known"]
--> [it is officially registered as known and actionable by the decision-makers in the organization].

Sometimes that progress goes very fast. More frequently it's quite drawn out. And in many cases it gets stuck and never progresses.

I think this "testifies in front on Congress" thing is part of process for the last step. Whether or not they act on it is a different matter of course.

That's a good point.  With the exception of the cybersecurity issues everything in Haugen's testimony was previously covered in the news.  One wouldn't have had to have been a Facebook employee to have made her testimony (and she was a cybersecurity manager, so she wouldn't have had direct knowledge of most of the things she testified about.)  The significance, though, is that she provided internal memos that demonstrated Facebook was aware of the problems that they cause and chose to bury it.  (While it would have been much more shocking to learn the Facebook was unaware of the problems it was causing), that might be a significant step to changing public perception.

(And, though it is against my natural inclinations,) to be fair to Congress this is new territory for them.  Can they regulate social media algorithms?  Is it desirable that they have this ability?  If we regulate, say, Instagram because it damages the self esteem of young women, shouldn't we also regulate other things that exacerbate body issues like Hollywood movies, Barbie dolls and Glamour Magazines?  This isn't something they can't act quickly on.

[DGuller]

I do think that we're in a novel territory here, so precedents and ideals should at least not be uncritically accepted.  Sometimes the technological abilities upset the balance of issues so much that old arguments cannot be recycled. 

For example, when it comes to privacy, some people claim that one has no right to privacy in a public space.  Maybe it made sense in 1950, when a network of CCTV cameras with facial recognition software couldn't essentially map out all your movements, and the only invasion of privacy most people potentially faced was being a person of interest for a PI.  Now that the government could retroactively be that PI on anyone they choose to take interest in, the very debate changes.

The same concept applies to social media and their algorithms.  Human minds obviously always had vulnerabilities, and human fell pray to manipulators all the time.  That didn't happen frequently enough to outweigh the risks of controlling speech that could zombify people.  However, manipulation of such vulnerabilities has literally become science in the last decade, and now there are ways to create alternative reality for people by microtargeting that doesn't require monopoly of information.  Democracy relies on having sufficient number of people having a sufficient grasp on reality, you can't have debates without having commonly accepted facts.  Maybe it's time to be worried about more than just yelling "fire" in crowded theaters.