> It calls up a torrent of hate speech and misinformation with the right hand while trying to clumsily moderate with the left.

Not a Facebook employee (or supporter for that matter), but I'm curious if you consider this an issue of Facebook or of social media in general.

Not saying it's OK for FB because everyone does it, but you generally see the same dynamic of the "torrent of hate speech and misinformation" on Twitter, on Reddit, on Youtube even (personal experience: I have a family member that was radicalized by misinformation on the internet. It was all on Youtube, she had never even used Facebook).

I've noticed that people go a lot harder on Facebook than on other tech companies. I think Facebook's reputation is well deserved, but I do think that reputation should be shared with really all social media in general.

>I'm curious if you consider this an issue of Facebook or of social media in general.

I think that a lot of people who had the privilege to be on the Internet before the age of engagement-maximizing algorithms feel that the overall mood was less inflammatory and the prevalence of intentional misinformation much lower. Because these algorithms can reward people who are willing to be misleading or abusive to attract attention, there is a concern that these kinds of misbehavior are encouraged by the application of engagement-maximizing sorting to user-generated content.

Facebook participated in the arms race to develop these algorithms much as the Turks and Hungarians developed the use of single-user firearms (arquebus/matchlock) in warfare, by necessity of competition, but are no less responsible than anyone else. The fundamental challenge is whether these algorithms must be fundamentally modified or restricted to prevent their tendency to support bad actors or whether, as the platform operators seem to be insisting, the problem can be managed by post hoc content moderation without limiting the behavior of the algorithm.

Because there is a wall of trade secrets and a sense of geopolitical competition, regulators have not been able to manage this situation in a manner that yields satisfactory results. So we lament this situation where Facebook appears to be chasing profits at the expense of the political stability of modern democracies, and while Google/Reddit/Twitter may be similarly responsible, this article happens to be about Facebook.

I'm not on Twitter, but I am pretty active on Reddit. I think the manipulation is particularly, egregiously bad on Facebook.

For example, I'm not sure how I got bucketed in the "anti-masker" cohort, but over the past couple weeks I've noticed that I'm pushed a torrent of articles along the lines of "Look at this brave person serving the school board!", showing a person going on a rant about how masks are the work of the devil and how great that is.

I kind of like it, because it's given me a window of "the other side" of my social media bubble. I think the thing Facebook is particularly nefarious at is that, the way the feed works, it makes it seem like of course everyone agrees with you, except that idiot crazy uncle who you eventually have to unfriend, because all you see are seemingly "random" posts that enforce your own viewpoints.

>I kind of like it, because it's given me a window of "the other side" of my social media bubble. I think the thing Facebook is particularly nefarious at is that, the way the feed works, it makes it seem like of course everyone agrees with you, except that idiot crazy uncle who you eventually have to unfriend, because all you see are seemingly "random" posts that enforce your own viewpoints.

True, though I think the same thing applies to Twitter and YouTube. You see what seems like random things from a huge variety of random people that all happen to affirm your worldview.

I believe Jack Dorsey has mentioned some vague plans to try to address the bubble problem. And I believe I may have been temporarily placed into a YouTube beta test where they tried to include videos unrelated to things I've seen before (I seem to recall an explicit notice about this, and a request for me to give feedback). So, I think they're probably trying, kind of. (I don't use Facebook and never have, so can't comment, there.)

reddit, as far as I know, doesn't do user-specific recommendations in their submission sorting (besides what they choose to be default subreddits), so you have to go out of your way to form a little bubble for yourself. Which many people do, but at least they have some awareness that they're explicitly setting it up to be that way.

That said, especially as of the past 5 or so years, most sites out there have skewed pretty unilaterally right or left, and I believe all or nearly all of the default subreddits currently have a pretty homogeneous political stance. It's not as insidious as the recommendation-based per-user bubble formation other sites have, but it might have a similar effect, especially if someone mostly just looks at their front page and doesn't subscribe to more than a few subreddits besides the defaults.

While I find antivax schoolboard patchy-blond-hairdye rage moms to be boring and dull, I’m quite happy for social media platforms to work like that and show you content you want from actual people posting that content. And I don’t think either the “Facebook and Twitter shows you a pure bubble” or “Facebook intentionally elevates internet rage and arguments to mine engagement” are exactly true, partially as they’re contradictory. If you want to see posts you disagree with, which many absolutely do (a significant number of top Reddit subs are r/screenshotsofpeopleidontlikebeingidiotslmao) you see it, and if you don’t you don’t, and if you just want random unmoderated unfiltered content you can have that too.

Yeah, I generally agree with you. Youtube and Twitter have the same issues, and I think Reddit too. (Does TikTok?) I don't know if the extent is as broad. Or how possible it is to use each platform for its purpose without running into those problems.

added: I remember when Facebook switched from showing a chronological timeline to "the algorithm". That turned out to be a monumental paradigm shift.

> (Does TikTok?)

Not yet, but give them time :)

More generally, social media may be an amplification of crazy people, but it doesn't create the crazy people (pick the side you don't agree with for a definition I guess).

Like, all of this stuff is sortof vaguely like what happened when the printing press got invented, and when literacy became more widespread. It's people, rather than technology, driving these changes.

> added: I remember when Facebook switched from showing a chronological timeline to "the algorithm". That turned out to be a monumental paradigm shift.

So, assume that 10% of your friends are responsible for 90% of the content. Is it really a better experience to see all of their content in your feed rather than some of their content plus some other people?

Let's not have a false dichotomy between the "chronological firehose" algorithm and the "maximize engagement" algorithm. The problem you cite could be addressed in many ways.

At the very least, you could be transparent about what the algorithm actually is, or even gasp give the user control over it.

Like, neither of us know what FB's ranking model actually optimises for. I suspect that it's engagement rates, but that's just from a user perspective.

> The problem you cite could be addressed in many ways.

Can you suggest some?

You are totally right. I have seen some posts on some networks that brand themselves as the guardian of free speech. Well if we took them to a Facebook Twitter proportion the same problems will arise very soon. So just may be the problem is with the people too.

If those current big techs were to disappear, would people stop their nonsense and sometimes hated behavior?

I am starting to believe that is not just bad company management or moderation, we definitely have bad actors on those networks too.

The problem is complex

There's isn't a platonic ideal of social media to argue for/against though. Pandora's box has been opened and we can't unopen it. If Facebook magically disappeared tomorrow, people would still take their phone-computer out of their pockets and send messages, thoughts, pictures, videos to their friends and family. Socializing through multimedia technologies. Where there are platforms that don't have the same problems as Facebook, (but also don't have the same reach as Facebook), what is actually inherent to social media, and what is because it's built on top of late-stage capitalism? Hate speech and radicalization hit an inflection point in the 1940s, hopefully we can avoid the same in the 2040s.

Note that moderation is not part of the business plan. FB was pretty much dragged kicking and screaming into that function.

I recall that their approach to that was outsourcing it because I read that article that was going into how some of the employees working for the company doing the moderation were losing their minds by being the mental sewage treatment facility of social media

Yeah... that's pretty late in the narrative.

Go back farther. The original plan was no moderation.