Not counting Facebook's chief flack, the Wall Street Journal invited eleven people to write about Facebook this weekend. Of those, ten essays were entirely negative. Only one, by David French, made the bog obvious point that whatever we do, we don't want the government deciding what does and doesn't show up on our news feeds.
The other ten are uniformly in agreement that Facebook has roughly the same societal value as heroin. Was the Journal really unable to find anyone to make a few obvious points in Facebook's defense? I realize some of these are going to seem almost childishly obvious once I put them down in words, but here are a few examples:
- Number 1 by far: The vast, vast majority of Facebook has nothing to do with politics. As my mother puts it, "It's puppies and kittens." People get a great deal of pleasure from this.
- Facebook has a lot of users. Does this give them a lot of power? Yes indeed. It also gives them a lot of reach, which most people find very useful. If you want to catch up with an old friend, Facebook's size makes it more likely that you'll find them.
- There is no evidence that Facebook or Instagram are bad for teenage girls. Just the opposite. On a wide variety of topics, teens say that Facebook and Instagram have been very helpful.
- If you want to organize a group to fight breast cancer or racism or loud leaf blowers, Facebook is a great platform. People do this a lot!
- On a more political topic, Facebook is great for organizing GOTV operations. Research has confirmed this.
- Facebook has focused a very public spotlight on the kind of pathological extremism that's existed for many decades (at least) in the United States. You may not like seeing this, just as you might be queasy about watching a surgeon at work, but the alternative is to remain in blissful ignorance about what's going on out there. I'll vote for knowing about this stuff so it can be fought, thank you very much.
This list is not meant to be exhaustive. Nor is it mean to deny that Facebook has a bad side. That's a different list, one that we're all familiar with these days. This list is the flip side.
So does the good outweigh the bad? I remain agnostic. But you have to at least acknowledge the good before you can claim to be drawing a rational conclusion about all this.
I happened to run across this piece by Michael Moore
https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-moore-on-the-iraq-war-the-liberals-backed-it
reviewing how the "liberal" media such as the NY Times as well as "liberal" politicians such as Hillary Clinton swallowed the lies of the Bush administration and supported the Iraq invasion. He points out that
"I know it's hard to remember, but when this war started, there was no YouTube, no Facebook, no Twitter, no way for you to bypass the media lords so you could have your own friggin' say. Too bad for the bastards, those days are over."
Trump is so bad that the MSM have actually relaxed their bothsiderism somewhat - and also since Trump is not really imperialistic had no occasion to support invasions during his administration, although the MSM were down on Biden for finally pulling out of Afghanistan.
Is it really true that the new media could counteract the combined pro-war propaganda of the political and media establishment? Could war be averted if there were another 9/11?
Well the bloggers essentially won 2006 for the Dems so maybe.
I rate Michael Moore's taek 4 Pinocchios since he didn't make sure to note that Iraq II was Hillary's war, & she gulled W. into signing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
“The dirty secret of Facebook—and Google, too—is that these mega-companies are just advertising platforms. That’s it. Google gets 60 percent of all revenue through search-based text ads—literally the same product that launched the company. (Another 10 percent of the company’s revenue comes from YouTube ads.). For Facebook, that number is 98 percent. That’s right: 98 cents of every dollar Facebook earns comes from advertising.
That’s the entire business.”
So let’s get this straight… we put up with this nonsense over advertising revenue. So some idiot can sell you junk you don’t need.
Humanity is violent, hateful, and generally nasty. Facebook etc. exploit that for fun and profit. What’s not to love about it?
The bad side is genocide, mass murder, hatred, and social dysfunction. If it were a car it would be recalled and the maker would sued into bankruptcy.
Sure… not all the cars explode on impact. Good grief.
As a former heavy user of hard recreational drugs, I object their comparison to Facebook. That evil social media program is far more dangerous than anything I ever did.
We put up with it because that's apparently what people want. TL;DR: If you take out this dealer, it's only a matter of time until another dealer is matched to the demand.
It is a lot different. Dealers do not need network effects to be useful, they just need a source. Anyone can be a deal. So dealers are like dandelions, they pop up no matter what you do.
Facebook is only big because of network effects, you have to be big.
Dealers pop up because no scale needed to succeed. Facebook is more like a car company.
If I were to feed you an ordinary 25 g cookie laced with 100 mg of ricin, it would likely kill you. During one of the radio news shows (I wasn't paying a lot of attention, so I don't know who) made a similar point while pushing back against Zuckerberg's claim that less than 1% of Facebook content is problematic. It doesn't take very much poison to do a lot of harm, so getting Facebook's poison levels down to 1% is not nearly enough.
Absolutely. Even if most users are grandma and the kids it only takes 0.000005% to, say, riot at the Capitol and try to take out Nancy Pelosi & Mike Pence.
It is like saying guns everywhere are fine because only a tiny percentage of gun owners murder people with their guns. Open carry!
Isn’t there research from years ago suggesting Facebook makes you depressed? I remember Matt Yglesias opining that Z should shut it down because it makes people depressed and messes with politics. I think by this point most of us have realized getting in touch with elementary school classmates is pretty much useless. You’re better off getting to know the people around you better.
That said, seems to me the proximate issue is should FB have been allowed to buy Whatsapp and Instagram? Even from a pro-FB position, seems to me the answer is no. If you love Facebook, you should want it to face more competition so it improves, not gobble up all competition so it ossifies and tries to fool you with opaque security settings, which is what has made it close to unusable.
> we don't want the government deciding
So, we don't want a social consensus as to what is and isn't reasonable to publish. Excellent. So stop whining about Facebook.
Apparently Mr. Drum the libertarian is now in favor of kiddie porn. We don’t want the government telling us…
Republicans love watching 10 year old boys putting on floor shows
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The ability to group up us equally as useful for bad things. It's a wash at best.
And 100% IGNORANCE WAS BETTER. Why?
1. We CAN'T fight the extremism. We've shown we have no fucking idea how to stop it. Meanwhile it continues to grow.
2. Before Connection you feared social opprobium for airing your bigotted views. Now you can easily associate with like minded people and amplify your voice and power without suffering consequences. As non-white guy I'd prefer people grumbling behind my back to groups of fucks brandishing guns in my face.
And once again, plenty of places place criminal limits on hate speech and still have robust debate and free societies. More free than ours because you have less intimidation. If we survive I'm glad coming generations seem to be willing to put a stop to it.
At this point, Facebook ought to start engraving your defense quotes onto platinum plates, encrusted with diamonds.
Your Facebook feed is NOT going to be puppies and kittens unless the algorithms figure out you like puppies and kittens. Everyone's feed is different and all based on algorithms designed to figure out what it is that's going to keep you most engaged into Facebook.
But that's not the point. The point is even if you keep selecting puppies and kittens facebook will force feed you stories to enrage you not just puppies and kittens but will suss out which side you are on and try to enrage you with animal cruelty and Karens behaving badly or Qanon crap even if you only want puppies and kittens.
How about no algorithm so if you like puppies and kittens you search on Youtube?
What are the positive attributes of the individualized feed?
Sorry, that was meant as a general comment, not a reply to your comment.
Forgive me for asking, but, is anyone demanding that Government regulate speech on Facebook?
You see, I thought it was mostly a matter of making Facebook responsible for the speech that was published on their platform, by way of modifying Section 230.
But eh, maybe I was wrong and David French really thinks people want Government to regulate speech on Facebook?
Decent people don’t use fb. Apparently Mr. Drum is not a decent person anymore.
There is no need to censor or regulate fb. It is there to expose the character flaws of its users and defenders. They shall be exploited and conned. Good for them.
Sure, fb can help GOTV.
But it's SO much better at getting out the propagandists, haters & insurrecionists.
I don't care what they call it, I seldom used it & got off it years ago.
But I must use WhatsApp to maintain contact with those I know in Tehran, which makes it possible for my information to be available to fb/meta. I didn't agree - it's another of those if-you-use-it-you-agree-to-our-terms deals.
That makes me firmly in favor of limiting ownership of such platforms.
facebook has never made even one great album.
All the greatest rock n' rollers (& also Clapton) have done junk.
Layne Staley > Mark Zuckerberg
Ergo, heroin is more socially redemptive than facebook.
There was a reference to poison in a cookie that made me want to extend it to nonpoisonous ingredients. Even though sugar isn't considered poison, it's regulated, along with every other ingredient in a long list. What regulation exists in a convoluted algorithm designed to stuff you full of fluffy Marshmello goo that isn't even listed in some rarely read list?
Also candy corn is an abomination.
I'm not sure teen girls self reporting to an internal study geared towards maximizing their own profits is as clear as your bullet point makes it sound. So here's a reasonable writeup from a researcher giving more background as to how FB makes publicly released studies hard to do (Atlantic story w/ free access via MSN)
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/we-need-to-cut-a-window-into-facebook/ar-AAQ7OQ9
Facebook writes the algorithm, people fight about regulating the algorithm, making it 'transparent'.
How about banning algorithms. Nice bright line. Anyone can post anything, just like anyone can write what they want in a blog. (Copyrighted content, child porn, etc. excepted of course.) That's it (Facebook already does that).
If you want to see kittens and puppies search for them out, There is no need for anyone to analyze your past web use and point stuff your way, and that is the source of the whole problem.
Yes, neo-nazis will post, but their content won't be fed to people via an alogorithm
Kind like Facebook 2003. Kind of like the old days of blogs (I remember Calpundit). People had blogrolls, put links in their posts, but your ISP stayed out. Facebook is like a super-meddling and super-intrusive ISP that just tries to get everyone riled up with algorithmically-driven feeds. We wouldn't have tolerated that, we shouldn't tolerate this.
This weekend a conservative meme came across my feed that once stripped of its in-joke references was nothing more than a photo of two conservatives speaking to one another with the text overlay of “You should kill Joe Biden”.
Of course, I reported the post and of course Facebook has responded that it’s within their “Community Standard”. I appealed and got the same results.