Social media bubbles may threaten democracy

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/democracy-never-faced-a-threat-like-facebook

by evilsimon • 9 years ago

180 129 9 years ago

Nobody writes hyperbolic headlines like Bloomberg.

P.S. For all those taking this seriously, I deliberately wrote it as a hyperbolic phrase. I am fully aware that other organizations do hyperbole better than Bloomberg.

Original title: Democracy Never Faced a Threat Like Facebook

dgfgfdagasdfgfa3• 9 years ago

Here is a small sampling of new york times articles on democracy:

1861: Is Democracy a Failure? http://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/14/news/is-democracy-a-failur...

2014: Why Democracy is Failing https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/opinion/why-democracy-is-...

2016: Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is-donald-...

2017: Democracy in America: How is it Doing? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/upshot/democracy-in-ameri...

2017: Checking Democracy's Pulse: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/upshot/checking-democracy...

2016: How Stable Are Democracies? 'Warning Signs Are Flashing Red' https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-li...

2016: How Republics End https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end...

ghostbrainalpha• 9 years ago

Thanks for putting that list together.

The article from 1861 is fascinating.

emodendroket6• 9 years ago

If every year since 2014 has been comparable to 1861 then things are much more serious than I imagined.

dredmorbius4• 9 years ago

With a bit more digging (I'd like to see if there's something between 1861 and 2014), this is worth a post on its own right.

zghst3• 9 years ago

CNN and Washington Post have quite a lead on Bloomberg, just wait until they start campaigning

dang3• 9 years ago

Ok, what's a word that's the opposite of hyperbole and a verb? We've done that to the title above.

I haven't read this article, but Bershidsky tends to be one of the less hyperbolic pundits, so this is a good time to remember that major-media article writers don't write the headlines.

gavanwoolery• 9 years ago

Social networks are just a mechanism for sharing stuff. Fake news could spread any which way, and has even in the pre-social-network-era. Remember when "fake news" was spread in email chains? Or...you know...propaganda in general?

Edit: that said, I think there exists a big problem in attempting to filter these items. How do we determine what is fake vs what simply goes against our preexisting (mis)conceptions?

Edit 2: best course of action might be that a wide diversity of ideas gets a chance to be seen (i.e. show stuff outside of your bubble), rather than trying to artificially manipulate proliferation.

jitix• 9 years ago

That's true but social networks are more ubiquitous than emails and print media. Also, in an email chain the person has prior knowledge that the news is fake. The same is not true of social media feeds.

enraged_camel• 9 years ago

I'd say the bigger problem is the way Facebook props up and emphasizes popular shares.

Imagine if those chain emails from your crazy uncle were always displayed prominently at the top of your inbox depending on the number of forwards.

dilemma• 9 years ago

The real problem is that Facebook is controlled by a single person, who is planning to use it for their own political goals.

dgfgfdagasdfgfa3• 9 years ago

Ehh, acting like these companies need to actively filter isn't a great scenario either. I think we need more visibility into what our neighbors are discussing so we can't echo chamber quite as easily.

toufka• 9 years ago

If we go back to some philosophical roots, Facebook as a company and those who control it (may) effectively have a monopoly on the "marketplace of ideas". This doesn't mean they are abusing that power, nor that the monopoly is complete. But it is an influential force in that old 'marketplace' - a notion that gave birth to the first amendment. The marketplace of ideas is a critical component of our democracy.

This hints at mechanisms to deal with such a monopoly (were it to arise) in analogy to how the government has protected its people by dealing with economic monopolies (sometimes creating them deliberately, sometimes monitoring them, and sometimes breaking them up when they abuse that position, etc.).

maxhq• 9 years ago

And the problem is that Facebook has dozens of scores about our personality which allow them to individually steer and control people. What you share is not what all your "friends" see. They see what Facebook decides to show. Plus what else Facebook decides is helping to keep your friends happy with the platform. Facebook is not like Wikipedia, a platform for all to freely and transparently share, no it's only purpose is to bind us to the platform and get willing ad targets.

_rpd2• 9 years ago

The complaint appears to be that it is difficult to engage in traditional "assertion-rebuttal" debate via facebook advertising. My understanding is that all campaigns are free to target any demographic, so a "best foot forward" competition is still possible. It seems to me that the shift in debate model is more a threat to a particular political marketing specialty than to democracy as a whole.

mattnewton• 9 years ago

A possible counter argument is unlike television advertising buys, the targeting is incredibly specific. The chances of you being able to match your opponents targeting are much smaller, which leaves slices of populations hearing only one side.

And like the article points out, the inefficiencies (from the campaign's point of view) of the current targeting may be doing an overall service to democracy by giving populations a message they wouldn't otherwise hear.

There is a lot of hand waving in this argument but I'm convinced we should attempt to solidify what effects are there and whether we find them valuable before dismissing it.

ThrustVectoring2• 9 years ago

The problem isn't that it's a mechanism for sharing. It's that all previous mechanisms for sharing did not have central control mechanisms that discriminated based on content.

The postal service cannot prioritize letters that encourage banning abortion. Telephone companies cannot subsidize conversations about organizing unions. Facebook, on the other hand, can exert control over how visible a post is based on whether or not it, say, supports Donald Trump.

dragonwriter3• 9 years ago

It's that all previous mechanisms for sharing did not have central control mechanisms that discriminated based on content.

Many previous mechanisms for sharing do have such central control mechanisms, and exercise them far more enthusiastically than does FB. Dead tree print outlets are a mechanism for sharing with such features. Meatspace social clubs are a sharing mechanism with such features.

Facebook may be unique in the degree of it's reach for a sharing mechanism with the capacity for centralized editorial control, but it is not historically unique in being a sharing mechanism which features the capacity for centralized editorial control.

dude01• 9 years ago

Changes in quantity can be changes in quality. That is, yes, facebook is the same as forwarding emails, but it's orders of magnitude easier to share and view content.

losteric• 9 years ago

What's with this new trend of "how do we know what's fake or real?!" - am I going crazy or was this stuff was taught in high school? This is why we wrote papers, to learn critical communication skills (as writer and reader).

We determine what is fake in the same we we always did. Sanity checking the authors, validating for self-consistency, cross-checking evidence, searching for conflicting interests, and evaluating probable accuracy based on those factors.

The paradigm shift is the Internet as a whole: democratizing dissemination of information. Facebook, email, same thing.

We're now flooded with noise from random anonymous un-credentialed entities, unable to track and filter out low-signal sources. The public is the new broadcast medium... the narrative becomes whatever resonates strongest with some subpopulation, rapidly spread through the wires by people who never critically analyze agreement.

Old news institutions at least held some degree of credibility... plenty of faults, from simple mistakes to missed coverage to occasional outright propaganda (generally corporate) - but there was accountability. John Doe wrote for The City Times, you learned to ignore the bad reporters and institutions, and if we go back far enough you could actually talk to them in-person.

Every democratization comes with a social challenge of creating norms to maintain order. Political democracy is a work in progress, economic democracy currently not viable, I guess this signals it's time for us to face information democracy...

csixty4• 9 years ago

It used to be urban legends, and I'm not talking like Bloody Mary stuff. I'm talking about relatives at the dinner table saying "Did you hear they did carbon dating on a chicken bone and it said it was millions of years old. Guess that disproves evolution!" and when pressed for a source, well, they heard it from someone. But now with Facebook we're exposed to so much more of it, and so much of it is crafted to mislead.

We all went through those lessons in high school, but for a lot of people they just didn't sink in. And they still don't. Talk to a high school teacher about how their students use Wikipedia.

anothercomment3• 9 years ago

My experience with fake news on social media so far was that somebody always stepped up to point out it is fake.

No such mechanism in traditional media. In my country sometimes news outlets can be forced (by law) to publish a correction of a false story, but it is usually done in small print and gets hushed over.

Alex3917• 9 years ago

Given that Mike Bloomberg will likely be running against Mark Zuckerberg to be the next president, this seems a little self serving.

emodendroket6• 9 years ago

A future in which I'm choosing between Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, and Trump doesn't sound very inspiring.

zghst3• 9 years ago

Let’s play pick your billionaire!

metaphorm• 9 years ago

no it doesn't, but I'm picking Bloomberg every time.

mosdave• 9 years ago

A reality in which the mention of Zuckerberg as president doesn't get you laughed out of the room doesn't sound very inspiring.

fullshark2• 9 years ago

First: Likely? I wouldn't be surprised if it happened but likely is a bit of a stretch given how many variables are at play.

Second: I doubt whoever wrote this even considered that possibility for a second, and I'm sure Mike Bloomberg has absolutely no idea this article even exists.

ameister143• 9 years ago

Bloomberg won't run. He'll be too old. Zuckerberg sees to be touring around gearing up for a political campaign, but if he actually has to campaign something tells me he won't be very successful.

6stringmerc• 9 years ago

...and Capitalism never faced a threat like the Bloomberg Terminal, but here we are.

throwaway-12094• 9 years ago

Bloomberg and friends are just panicked over the fact that they're losing control of the narrative, which is really their main product.

twsted• 9 years ago

Yep, they are panicked by a single giant corporation with billions of users that earns money collecting data from everyone.

Me too.

throwaway-12094• 9 years ago

6 people controlling your bubble is still better than 5. Especially if the new guy is at war with the old guys.

makomk2• 9 years ago

Pretty much. You don't see nearly so much panic about the Twitter filter bubble because journalists consider it home, even though it's no less filter-bubbly and even though there's been no end of bogus claims that have spread virally through it - a surprising number of them started by real journalists.

nickik• 9 years ago

Nazi schmazi ... Facebook is the real problem say Wernher von Braun.

emodendroket6• 9 years ago

Nonsense. Scurrilous newsletters are older than the republic and were once the primary way people got their news. The "fake news" story has been way overblown.

Armisael162• 9 years ago

Did you actually read the article? They aren't worried about fake news; they're worried about ads that the other side can't respond to because they can't even see them.

emodendroket6• 9 years ago

Scurrilous and nakedly partisan, then.

marcosdumay• 9 years ago

I don't agree that "politics is different from business, so rules for targeted messaging should be different to protect democracy". I don't agree at all.

If targeted messaging can enable fraud on the democratic process, it can just as easily enable fraud on economical processes. All the issues pointed at the article apply just as well to a seller/buyer relationship.

Maybe we should work into regulating those opaque robots.

good_vibes• 9 years ago

Doesn't matter. People are addicted to social media like people in the 60's with cigarettes.

kinkrtyavimoodh• 9 years ago

Welcome to the Hacker News Daily FB Bashing Thread Bingo

[x] I deleted my FB account 5 years ago and couldn't be happier

[x] FB is literally cancer

[x] Zuck called his users dumbfucks

[x] I haven't been to FB in months but I miss out on being invited to Events by my friends

[x] Zuck called his users dumbfucks

[x] Zuck let his news editors be biased against the right

[x] After news editors being fired, FB's news AI picks up news based on numbers instead of what I want to see

[x] FB invades your privacy to show you relevant ads

[x] FB doesn't show me relevant ads

[x] FB is for high-school drama

[x] Zuck wants to be the President. All this is just theatre.

[x] FB makes ghosts profiles of people not on the platform. This makes me feel like punching Zuck

[x] FB makes ghosts profiles of people not on the platform. This makes me realize the futility of avoiding FB, so I joined it

[x] Remember, Zuck called his users dumbfucks

rogual• 9 years ago

Welcome to the argument-by-way-of-bingo-card bingo

[x] Disparages arguments without actually addressing them

[x] Adds nothing to the discussion

pc862• 9 years ago

I think the point is that the "discussion" around the above points specifically is nearly identical every time it happens, and usually involves the same people. Almost everyone benefits when we just ignore the above points.

RodericDay• 9 years ago

This isn't a bingo it's just a checklist.

ihuman• 9 years ago

Its 1-dimensional bingo.

thrillgore• 9 years ago

[x] Posts that add nothing to the conversation but get a lot of attention and credit

[x] Comments that Hacker News is caught in the morass that befell Reddit

dang3• 9 years ago

Please don't do this here.

praneshp• 9 years ago

your comment might be unpopular, but I just wanted to say nice username. I haven't come across that word in years!

zitterbewegung3• 9 years ago

The problem with these filter bubbles is the fact that entities like Facebook encourage them and they are fundamental to their platform. To increase engagement in these platorms makes it really easy to just create a filter bubble. When Facebook becomes your primary information source you begin to unfollow or shut off topics. Since you seek social approval from your friends it makes you want to argue less with others. Also, gaining likes encourages you to perpetuate the filter bubble with a narrative that your friends approve. In contrast when you consume news from news outlets although you may have a bias on which news outlet you read its quite different in the fact that they may publish things that aren't necessarily found in your filter bubble. On the other hand most people don't like having their core beliefs challenged in any way. If you present them that information they are more likely to just not listen. This is what fake news targets because no one in your filter bubble will challenge your beliefs and they can tell you whatever you want to hear.

davidivadavid• 9 years ago

It's funny because I think exactly the opposite. One of the main reasons I don't read my Facebook feed is because it's bombarded by content I find infuriating for a variety of reasons (lots of low-value entertainment-related stuff, political content I don't agree with, etc.). I wish Facebook were a filter bubble that only served me content I like, then I wouldn't have to curate my RSS feeds myself.

rhizome2• 9 years ago

[640x480 gradient image with pithy sentence]

T-hawk• 9 years ago

To make a Facebook feed palatable, embrace the "Hide All From" option. Whenever you notice a piece of junk from a source page name that you've seen before, just kill everything from that source. Most chronic oversharers are only really broadcasting content from fairly few sources (the 90% rule) and it's not all that hard to mute most of it that way. I spend 10 minutes a day reading through the feed and get most of the interesting personal news from people I actually want to seee, and little of the crap. For the worst oversharers, unfollow them.

Swizec4• 9 years ago

Since you seek social approval from your friends it makes you want to argue less with others.

Since gaining entry into the US middle/professional class I have been informed numerous times that disagreeing with one's friends is impolite.

I miss the times when I could say things like "No, what you're saying is dumb" without drawing shocked stares. It was a simpler often better time.

I'm told it is particularly inappropriate to disagree with your girlfriend's mum and tell her she's spouting rubbish. Especially at a cordial thanksgiving dinner.

But if you can't argue with people and test each other's ideas, then what's the point of keeping them around?

knieveltech• 9 years ago

If your friends think you're being rude when you offer a counterpoint to their opinions it's time to find better friends.

gozur88• 9 years ago

I argue with my friends all the time. To the point one of the wives threw up her hands and said her husband and I were like an old married couple.

But FB is different. It's like being in a big ballroom with all of your friends and acquaintances standing around watching you argue with one of them at the top of your lungs. It feels somehow boorish.

dragonwriter3• 9 years ago

Since gaining entry into the US middle/professional class I have been informed numerous times that disagreeing with one's friends is impolite.
I miss the times when I could say things like "No, what you're saying is dumb" without drawing shocked stares.

I think you may be mistaking cultural norms about the manner of expression of disagreement with a cultural norms against disagreement generally.

“I think, if you consider X, Y, and Z, that you would find that it's more case A than case B” may get a different reaction than “No, B is dumb.”

lordCarbonFiber• 9 years ago

Much like another reply to this comment; your sentiment is one I've heard frequently, but never comes along with any supporting data. It certainly feels like a reasonable statement; but anecdotally doesn't seem to jive with what I and friends have seen.

Furthermore, I find it hard to accept that if there are bubbles on social media they are materially different than the natural geographic and social bubbles from the pre-internet age. Again another topic light on actual data to make more informed conclusions.

zitterbewegung3• 9 years ago

You make a good point. I created my hypothesis based on my own anecdotal information. I think I should try doing some community analysis on a social network to test my hypothesis. https://snap.stanford.edu/data/ looks like a good data source to try this out.

utexaspunk4• 9 years ago

Eh, people have lots of friends that hold different beliefs than them. The problem with Facebook is it offers no way of registering your disagreement beyond commenting and starting a conversation which will have no depth because the lack of real comment threading renders any real dialogue impossible.

Since most people don't feel like repeatedly getting involved in pointless debates with their friends, and are frustrated seeing posts they disagree with without any simple way of voicing their disapproval, they either use Facebook's tools to filter out those posts or just unfollow that friend entirely.

The most misguided consumer and propagator of fake news will still mostly just see likes of their friends who are also misguided. They might get a brave friend chiming in here or there to disagree, but their comments are easily dismissed because they will have no depth. The majority of their friends may disagree, but they'll never know because those who disagree (if they haven't filtered/unfollowed them already) have no good way to show that they disagree. Facebook as it is currently designed mostly just serves to affirm whatever the user wants to believe. That's where the bubble effect comes from.

ameister143• 9 years ago

I seem to recall that actually the social networks create the opposite - a feeling that outliers are more normal than they are - for example that if you're a pedophile, you are alone until the internet where you suddenly have a community telling you that you are the normal one. It's not just your shame to hide anymore, you've got a support group telling you you're right. I don't remember where I read about that, it was years ago, but it seems more logical than targeted ads having a significant effect.

Now, regulated communities where karma allows you to hide opinions you disagree with so nobody can see the debate, that's a problem. It's one of the reasons people were so surprised this election.

Balgair• 9 years ago

So let's try to fix it. How though?

The only (poor) idea I have is to have a 'value' button or something. Click it if you think the comment has 'value' but is not necessarily something you 'like'. Yeah, I know, it'll be gamed and just turn into yet another thing to express downvotes with, but maybe it'll work.

Any other ideas?

Still, FB is totally dominant and they could change it in a day if they wanted to and people would come back without any other issues.

zitterbewegung3• 9 years ago

I don't know if you can fix it. Part of the problem is that people don't want to be challenged with opposing views and that is part of the human condition.

geebee• 9 years ago

I read pretty widely in what I would call mainstream media, progressive and conservative (within limits).

I don't want to get my news from Facebook, so I routinely ask to "see less" of almost all politics, especially regarding Trump. There's almost never anything I wouldn't have learned about by reading mainstream news.

Here's the remarkable thing - this doesn't seem to be affecting my feed at all. I get as much politics as ever. I couldn't tell you how many times I've informed Facebook not to show me Trump news, and it's still there, lots of it. I'm starting to wonder if maybe pushing the "show less" button is akin to replying to a spammer to please don't send any spam, or perhaps pushing on a button next to a crosswalk that actually doesn't do anything, but makes people less likely to jaywalk by giving them the illusion of control.

Why am I even on the site? Well, I'm on Facebook because I like hearing about the various musical, theater, and arts events any of my friends and acquaintances are involved in. I'm not delighted that Facebook essentially controls our communication with each other - there was a time this tended to happen on the open web, rather than within the walls of a corporation, but I guess that's a topic for another day.

chrisallenlane2• 9 years ago

Here's the remarkable thing - this doesn't seem to be affecting my feed at all. I get as much politics as ever. I couldn't tell you how many times I've informed Facebook not to show me Trump news, and it's still there, lots of it.

During the peak toxicity of the election cycle, I unfollowed a lot of sites/sources/people on Facebook. For a while, it worked.

Eventually, though, I simply lost that ability. For the last few months, if I click "unlike" or "unfollow" on some source I'd like to be rid of, nothing happens. I'm literally unable to unfollow content on Facebook now.

If you Google around, you'll see that this is a common problem that people have been reporting for years.

This makes me wonder if this is a bug, or if, perhaps, the Facebook algorithm simply refuses to allow me to have fewer than N number of connections to other nodes or something.

mistermann• 9 years ago

http://www.fbpurity.com/

zghst3• 9 years ago

I don’t understand the whole isolation argument. Facebook connects people like never before. People will always be involved or connected to their community but FB gives people much insight to global trends. What’s really dying is a monopoly by elites, Zuckerberg has too much power and is rumored to start a political career so I expect this is a preemptive strike.

rhizome2• 9 years ago

Can you remind us what the value of "insight to global trends" is for a typical FB user?

ameister143• 9 years ago

A monopoly by elites is dying? I see entirely the opposite. Magnates haven't been this powerful for over 100 years.

jancsika• 9 years ago

From the article:

In the run-up to Thursday's U.K. election, a group called Who Targets Me recruited 10,000 volunteers to install a browser extension that registers targeted messages, ranging from Facebook videos to Google search ads. The group calls them "dark ads" because they are so hard to monitor: They've been targeted to specific local constituencies, gender and age groups.

Has anyone gone the other direction with either a browser extension or app to essentially give permission to MITM the content and metadata input into, say, Facebook and Twitter? In other words, get the data for 10,000 users input and then test what inferences can be made based on metadata, content, and a combination of the two.

Kiro• 9 years ago

I'm not so worried about all this filter bubble and fake news panic. People have always filtered themselves from other opinions anyway. It's just a fundamental flaw in humans.

fullshark2• 9 years ago

It's never been this easy, or arguably this necessary to filter information given the information overload necessitating it.

cbanek• 9 years ago

Is the threat really facebook or an uninformed therefore easily misled electorate?

What I can't believe is that people actually believe some of the stuff on social media.

dragonwriter3• 9 years ago

Is the threat really facebook or an uninformed therefore easily misled electorate?

They are two mutually reinforcing threats, not mutually exclusive alternative threats.

samlevine• 9 years ago

Facebook is worse than Fascism and Communism? Seriously?

sp3322• 9 years ago

Neither of those words are mentioned in the article, so... Huh?

dredmorbius4• 9 years ago

You might care to look into the history of mass communications and the demagogic, fascist, Communist, and anti-communist political movements of the past century or two.

Fascism is very closely aligned with the rise of radio, cinema, and phonographs, as well as public address systems in which many thousands of people could hear a single speaker.

Communism much the same, as well as very cheap publishing -- Chairman Mao's Little Red Book (official title, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, is one of the two most widely reproduced books in all history (the other is the Bible, and it's not clear which is the more published).

Father Coughlin and Joseph McCarthy were both tremendously boosted by radio. Rush Limbaugh has the largest radio audience in the United States, at about 26 million weekly listeners (NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered come in second and third at about 14.5 million apiece).

The history of dramatic changes to social structures and systems due to changes in media and epistemic is older than history itself -- it was one of those changes (writing) which started history.

Elisabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, and Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, particularly address this.

quotemstr• 9 years ago

Ah, so the real problem is that pesky free speech is too free.

The proper response to social ills is almost never to add rules about what people may or may not say to each other.

sp3322• 9 years ago

Facebook has already added those rules. The discussion now is whether to force them to reveal what the rules are, and maybe dial them back a bit.

utexaspunk4• 9 years ago

I think Facebook could actually be really great for democracy, but for a couple of huge flaws:

First, the lack of a real threaded comment system. When replies below the first level all appear at the same depth, it becomes extremely difficult to have a real back-and-forth debate and nigh impossible to read/participate in someone else's discussion. It is not conducive to substantive dialogue.

Second, the lack of a dislike/downvote, particularly an anonymous one. When one shares something they agree with and only see that some (if any) of their friends like it, they might figure that the rest just didn't see it. Very rarely will someone register their disagreement with a comment because, even when you're receptive to discussion, a real discussion cannot be had because of the aforementioned shitty comment system. Worst of all, when you disagree with most of what a friend posts (and aren't the type to carry on pointless arguments all the time, or don't feel comfortable sharing your disagreement), having no way to easily register your disapproval, you quickly tire of seeing their stupid posts in your feed and the temptation is to unfollow them, further insulating them from dissent.

If people who post crap saw that many of their friends gave it a thumbs down, they might not think themselves right all the time. If you could hold a real back-and-forth discussion with someone and have it be readable by others, and see everyone's approval/disapproval of those comments, you might feel more inclined to participate. The conversations would better reflect the opinions of one's social group. There would still be some bubble effect, but it would be greatly moderated because hardly anyone has only friends who agree with them about everything and their friends who disagree would have a way to make their disagreement known by engaging in a substantive conversation or at the very least in the form of adding a dislike to their post.

chrisallenlane2• 9 years ago

First, the lack of a real threaded comment system.
Second, the lack of a dislike/downvote, particularly an anonymous one.

I don't know. I agree that Facebook's commenting mechanism is ill-suited to deep discussion, but isn't the mechanism you're describing more-or-less exactly what exists on Reddit? And people are certainly able to self-segregate into bubbles on Reddit.

And for that matter, at least anecdotally I'd say that most of the political "discussion" that occurs on Reddit is low-quality, in that it tends to devolve into users shouting "fascist" or "cuck" at each other. (Some subreddits are better than others, admittedly.)

I suppose that Reddit users typically don't know each other in meatspace, though, and that Facebook is (mostly) different in that regard. Maybe that would make a difference. I don't know.

utexaspunk4• 9 years ago

Yes, the anonymity (most) users enjoy on Reddit is interpreted by some as freedom to be assholes or trolls. Even then, especially in the more heavily moderated or off-the-beaten-path subreddits, you get some very high quality conversations. It's not uncommon to see threads of multi-paragraph comments going back and forth many comments deep. I think Facebook's lack of anonymity already goes a long way toward keeping things civil there, and what little shitposting does happen there would probably get downvoted and possibly hidden by default when below a certain threshold if FB had that capability.

makomk2• 9 years ago

The fundamental problem with the idea that microtargetting people with different promises is an existential threat to democracy, I think, is that people tend to compare with their friends and notice this and that it makes for a really juicy viral news story when they do because people do not like finding out they've been tricked. Also, as far as anyone can tell Trump's campaign didn't actually do it - they tuned their message based on feedback from monitoring the response to it and carefully targetted who they paid money to promote it to, but everyone got the same message.

ivanhoe• 9 years ago

Well, it's not a problem with Facebook, it's a problem with people and our society, Facebook is just serving their customers' needs. If you tolerate only one point of view, if you accept and get engaged in only one line of political discussions, and actively avoid and try to shut down anything and anyone with a different point of view, entirely detached of any self-criticism, then of course that it's exploitable to serve you false news (and much more BS than just news). People deliberately choose to live in these info bubbles because it's easier on them emotionally. When nobody questions your views you are always right.

Also, it's quite easy to avoid this trap by listening and reading what other people are saying and writing, trying to understand them, and by always fact checking their claims, but also your own beliefs. But it takes some mental effort to do this. Therefore, most of people are not ready to do this, they don't care. You can't fix this without fixing the society first, and not Facebook.

anothercomment3• 9 years ago

"threaten democracy" as in "people may vote for somebody I don't like".

paulddraper• 9 years ago

This comment seems flippant, but it's right. I'm mean, you could say it subverts logic, or threatens minorities, but IT DOES NOT threaten the existence of democracy.

Remember even the proponents of democracy (e.g. American Founding Fathers) were also rightfully fearful of it.

This IS democracy. It just might not be democracy that generates informed decisions.

anothercomment3• 9 years ago

In my country (Germany) I don't get the impression that the official news sources (state sponsored media and established newspapers) are impartial. At the same time massive efforts to censor social networks are underway, camouflaged as "fighting hate speech". Hate speech is conveniently vague and boils down to "disagreeing with the official party line". There are no courses to appeal against this censorship, in fact, no real accountability for the people doing the censoring.

To me therefore such articles are merely a smear campaign in support of impeding censorship.

I really don't see how the public is supposed to be better informed without social media. In some countries it is even worse, when the people who get elected for government also happen to be the owners of the major media outlets (like Berlusconi in Italy).

I think I also saw a paper debunking the filter bubble thesis (as in people still get so see other viewpoints), but I am too lazy to Google it.

Even without social media, people create their own filter bubbles by only consuming media that aligns with their views. I suspect in the US, Democrats rarely watch Fox News?

obiefernandez• 9 years ago

I think it's already too late for the USA. You have three main groups, and all have achieved near total epistemological closure: - Conservatives: Liberals are evil - Liberals: Conservatives are evil. And morons. - Apathetic Middle (everyone else): Politics are stupid and we don't give a fuck.

Don't really see a solution for any of this. It's like we're three different tribes doing our best to coexist. And it's not really working very well.

sien• 9 years ago

The book Everybody Lies gets into actually looking at the data on this and comes to a different conclusion:

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/maybe-internet-isnt-tearing-us...

What data tell us:

"In the United States, according to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the chances that two people visiting the same news site have different political views is about 45 percent. In other words, the internet is far closer to perfect desegregation than perfect segregation."

and more:

"PROBABILITY THAT SOMEONE YOU MEET HAS OPPOSING POLITICAL VIEWS On a News Website 45.2%

Coworker 41.6%

Offline Neighbor 40.3%

Family Member 37%

Friend 34.7%"

luord• 9 years ago

I found that, at least in my experience, social media feeds do indeed become echo chambers easily. It's almost an impulse to unfollow someone in twitter or unfriend someone in facebook when they post something one doesn't like. I had to start consciously reminding myself that I should want to hear every point of view so I can make more informed decisions.

Maybe, as with everything, the solution is more education. In this case: "yes, that person posted something you don't like. You should still read it, else you might risk becoming unaware that people who disagree with you exist, which could distort your view of the world, at least a bit."

kradem• 9 years ago

May threaten democracy

This way, repeated, sounds weird, not just dumb as it was at first...

ryanx435• 9 years ago

I would consider yn it's own bubble.

This is mostly because of the flagging system and mods like dang removing or censoring comments and submissions that don't agree with their silicon Valley based belief system (possibly the location of the most liberal/progressive beliefs in the world today).

They use the excuse that the offending items are written in an abusive or hateful manner or they "don't contribute to the discussion", but the truth is that different regions of the world and different cultures have different standards for politeness, so it just ends up filtering out different opinions.

dredmorbius4• 9 years ago

HN's not perfect, and tends to favour certain views, but it's got a fairly high S/N, and the moderation in particular is IMO very well-placed.

In the past week or two, I've placed a front-page article (which drew the criticism that other significant stories are being ignored), and an admonition from @dang for a comment on another story. I've also had numerous submissions go nowhere (everything can't be first).

Additionally, if you think there's a particularly good or bad post or comment not being appropriately addressed, emailing HN directly (hn@ycombinator.com) typically generates a quick response.

You're part of the voice here.

smsm422• 9 years ago

I've just read this article:

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/in-seattle...

titled "In Seattle, is it now taboo to be friends with a Republican?". Somehow, I don't think Facebook is to blame for this. Rather Facebook just provides tools to ensure the bubble.

Social media bubbles may threaten democracy

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