How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/

by 7d7n • 5 years ago

128 60 5 years ago

ilamont• 5 years ago

The algorithms that underpin Facebook’s business weren’t created to filter out what was false or inflammatory; they were designed to make people share and engage with as much content as possible by showing them things they were most likely to be outraged or titillated by.

I find it interesting that this article does not even mention some of the other platforms that have also grown off this strategy, and have contributed to the societal problems named in the article.

I joke with my wife that you can innocently watch a YouTube press conference featuring our moderate Republican governor discussing COVID policy one day, and before you know it you're being recommended videos by rabid anti-vaxxers and QAnon deep state conspiracy theorists.

It's not just a Facebook problem or an "AI" problem, it's a platform problem which requires wider solutions than the broken internal approaches described in this article.

TheJoYo2• 5 years ago

Platforms that stick to chronological order are growing without the influence of this strategy.

Mastodon has been doing very well by simply offering the Email of social media.

Nextgrid• 5 years ago

I agree that chronological order and more generally not overriding user's preferences to maximize engagement would solve this problem.

I disagree that Mastodon (or other federated alternatives) are a good example of this because these projects don't have a business model to support, so obviously they don't have to care about maximizing engagement.

I'm not saying maximizing engagement is a good idea, or that engagement-based business models are a good idea, I'm just saying that comparing a platform with an incentive to make money to one that does not doesn't answer anything.

throwawayboise• 5 years ago

Outside of HN I have never heard or seen anyone talk or write about Mastodon. For the general pubic, it doesn't exist.

ggggtez• 5 years ago

I think it's worth pointing out that Facebook isn't the only platform, though I don't think every article needs to cover all social media equally. This article does a deeper dive on one particular company's issues (and the company that's widely acknowledged to have known about the issue the longest, and done the least to fix it).

There are other articles that tackle this topic for YouTube [1]. But as far as I know, we're still waiting on any expose that shows that YouTube had done extensive research into the issue and opted to do nothing to continue growth. That dubious honor seems to be reserved for Facebook at least for now.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/02/12/youtube-chann...

[In 2017,] YouTube limited recommendations on those videos and disabled features such as commenting and sharing. But it didn’t remove them. The company said the crackdown reduced views of supremacist videos by 80%.

contemporary3432• 5 years ago

"In 2017, Chris Cox, Facebook’s longtime chief product officer, formed a new task force to understand whether maximizing user engagement on Facebook was contributing to political polarization. It found that there was indeed a correlation, and that reducing polarization would mean taking a hit on engagement. In a mid-2018 document reviewed by the Journal, the task force proposed several potential fixes, such as tweaking the recommendation algorithms to suggest a more diverse range of groups for people to join. But it acknowledged that some of the ideas were “antigrowth.” Most of the proposals didn’t move forward, and the task force disbanded.

Since then, other employees have corroborated these findings. A former Facebook AI researcher who joined in 2018 says he and his team conducted “study after study” confirming the same basic idea: models that maximize engagement increase polarization. They could easily track how strongly users agreed or disagreed on different issues, what content they liked to engage with, and how their stances changed as a result. Regardless of the issue, the models learned to feed users increasingly extreme viewpoints. “Over time they measurably become more polarized,” he says."

Facebook has repeatedly shown that it will maximize its bottom line and growth (in particular, as measured by engagement metrics) above everything else. Fair enough, they're a for-profit corporation! I just can't really take seriously their claims of 'self-regulation'. They simply can never be trusted to self-regulate because it's just not in their interest, and they've never shown meaningful actions in this regard. They will only respond to the legal stick - and it is most certainly coming.

contemporary3432• 5 years ago

Another key quote that explains the fundamental misalignment of incentives at the employee level - you're rewarded for increasing engagment metrics. So why do something that might decrease it?

"But anything that reduced engagement, even for reasons such as not exacerbating someone’s depression, led to a lot of hemming and hawing among leadership. With their performance reviews and salaries tied to the successful completion of projects, employees quickly learned to drop those that received pushback and continue working on those dictated from the top down."

cosmodisk• 5 years ago

It's funny how probably less than 50 people in one private company can have such a great impact on hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

eplanit• 5 years ago

Very interesting. The parallels with FB (et al.) and tobacco company history is remarkable.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

Someone will have to explain to me how is that any different than a tabloid, or even a legacy newspaper/news broadcast.

The more shocking it is, the more eyeballs it attracts and the more add revenue it gets.

athenot• 5 years ago

Tabloids come at most daily. They don't create patterns of continuous engagement throughout the day (unless linked to by social media).

News broadcast is a better analogy but still not as addictive as something that continually reaches out to you throughout the day.

strangeloops852• 5 years ago

Two main differences: Scale and transparency.

The scale of reach is tremendous, faster and optimized in a way newspapers/media could only dream of.

It's also not publicly clear what is being widely disseminated and to whom, other than when outside parties analyze what's happening within Facebook on a given day (and this has limits).

carabiner• 5 years ago

FB didn't invent clickbait, but they made it way more insidious. Tabloids didn't go viral like FB posts do. Just as guns and nukes don't kill people, but they do make it easier.

Really, I see Facebook as the A-bomb of virality and fomenting extremism. It is devastatingly effective. That's why they've made so much money. Much more than the NYTimes or National Enquirer or Drudge Report. It's not just another media source, it's a game changer at harnessing people's attention and outraging them as quickly as possible. At scale, with 1 billion users, this has world-changing effects.

ihumanable• 5 years ago

Several other commenters have noted differences, but I have one that I think is significant.

Tabloids, newspapers, news broadcasts are a single artifact delivered to many people. They have the same incentive to sensationalize, this is tempered though by the fact that they leave a public record that people can discuss, scrutinize, and will ultimately impact their reputation.

When a paper consistently prints outlandish stories of bat-boys and lizard-ufos, everyone can see that and the paper will get a reputation as being a rag.

In contrast, the feed of posts you see on your facebook (or twitter, or instagram, or other social media feed site) is tailored to you. There's no opportunity for other people to see the crazy thing that hit the front page and write blog posts critiquing it, give talks debunking the methodology, etc.

The algorithm can show your eyes, and your eyes alone, a steady stream of posts that are right on the edge of what you will find acceptable and engaging. The public at large won't know what is on your feed or even the feeds of powerful actors in society like politicians, billions, and celebrities.

It's like we are all accessing our own personal newspaper everyday, whose stories have been tailored to be as interesting as possible to us, but without any accountability or scrutiny besides what we bring to the table. You are welcome to see something that confirms your world view and either accept it as gospel or do the leg work to prove or disprove it.

What we are finding though is that when people are presented with things that confirm their beliefs, they tend to accept them. This isn't really earth-shattering or even surprising. The ramifications of having a population constantly consuming a stream of media tailored exactly for them is something are starting to understand.

loveistheanswer2• 5 years ago

Someone will have to explain to me how is that any different than a tabloid, or even a legacy newspaper/news broadcast.

Speed, scale, pervasiveness, profitability, automated algorithmic microtargeting based on individual psychological profiles.

The more shocking it is, the more eyeballs it attracts and the more add revenue it gets.

It's the same concept, just taken to a never before seen technological extreme.

synaesthesisx• 5 years ago

This is spot on. Advertising companies like Facebook, self-optimize for one thing only: user engagement/impressions.

rapind2• 5 years ago

The self regulation argument is ALWAYS bullshit. If a company loses business by self regulating then a competitor may come a long and eat their lunch. We shouldn’t expect it, and shouldn’t be disappointed when it doesn’t happen.

This is what the public (government) should be responsible for. That way regulation is uniform (at least one can hope) across the industry.

tim333• 5 years ago

They will only respond to the legal stick - and it is most certainly coming

But how are you going to legislate the engagement / polarisation tradeoff?

ctocoder• 5 years ago

When the 1st Facebook API was released, I helped build the largest application called SuperWall. The way to increase virality and activity on the wall, was to allow a copy paste virus to perpetuate throughout the network. The DAU with this virus that "Zuckerberg is going to delete your account if you do not log in" kept DAU and virial growth at peak levels.

Facebook could do this too and get the same results. More DAU more money.

adjkant• 5 years ago

Despite the title, this is very much more than fluff and would highly recommend reading it in full.

syamilmj• 5 years ago

You could go on Facebook with no opinion on anything and leave an extremist.

barbazoo3• 5 years ago

The same way you could be on Facebook and not being radicalized at all. At the end of the day it's people who chose to be misinformed, who chose to not question, not look elsewhere, not to be skeptic about how content is making them feel. Facebook just shamelessly takes advantage of people's shortcomings, for profit.

aidenn0• 5 years ago

I mean, if I walk up to random people at a bar and tell them that their mother is a whore, anybody who punches me does so of their own free will, but I'm not entirely free of culpability for the violence.

eigenket• 5 years ago

I would agree with the statement:

At the end of the day it's people who are more easily misinformed, who do not question, do not look elsewhere, are not skeptical about how content is making them feel

What is your reasoning for declaring that this is a matter of "choice"?

temp8964• 5 years ago

It's not fair to just blame Facebook though. Twitter, reddit, CNN, FoxNews, all have the same kind of behavior.

It's also not fair to just blame the media. How about the politicians? Any major political leader dare to elaborate a balanced view at all?

It seems to be deeply rooted in partisan politics.

andrepd• 5 years ago

Same thing with YouTube. Anecdote: yesterday I popped open youtube to see a video of the President of my country drooling during a state visit. After the 20s video was finished my recommendations were immediately flooded with links for the far-right party's propaganda channel on youtube, complete with inflammatory titles and fake news. For fuck's sake, how much longer will we put up with this? How much longer will we let our political process be undermined so that private companies can make a few more pennies?

coldcode• 5 years ago

When your founder and CEO makes growth the only thing that matters, everything else is not important. If selling people lies makes more money, sell more lies, etc. If Facebook charged people $1 a month per account, and deleted all the ads, the data selling, the lie promotions, etc, 95% of their company could be laid off. They would also make less money for sure, and that's something Zuckerberg could never support.

mooneater• 5 years ago

Killer article here by Karen Hao, hard hitting ending.

Wonder what fb thought they were getting into here with MTR!

sodality22• 5 years ago

♪We know it's not right♪

♪We know it's not funny♪

♪But we'll stop beating this dead horse♪

♪when it stops spitting out money♪

kaycebasques• 5 years ago

Tangentially related, this quote is from Bo Burnham's song about the formulaic-ness of pop music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsCdP-Q_HXI

Edit: actually regarding formulaic-ness I'm thinking about Country Song. Repeat Stuff is about how pop songs just repeat the same lines now, as you might guess from the title

https://youtu.be/y7im5LT09a0

sodality22• 5 years ago

Yep! His songs are really funny. Very sad he sort of retired but I'm happy he's working on what he enjoys, with the movie he directed.

strangeloops852• 5 years ago

One take-away I had from reading this excellent and detailed article is the fundamental tension in Facebook's approach to moderating content:

They rely on a hammer to catch what is objectionable or misinformation, but optimize for engagement maximally with everything else. However the hammer misses plenty of newly emerging inflammatory content (for example, anti-Rohingya content would look very different from anything prior), and this content gets maximally amplified because the overall newsfeed algorithms optimize for engagement.

An alternate approach would be to sacrifice engagement overall (perhaps only a little!) to reduce the very real and negative consequences of undesirable content that slips past the detection algorithms (which it always will). I suspect some of the fixes that were proposed, but never implemented, effectively did this. But they were shot down because, well, the top-line engagement numbers would dip.

thitcanh2• 5 years ago

Has anyone ever looked at history and figured out that humans are pretty damn awful? Facebook is just a catalyzer just like Twitter is. Every platform has their own disgusting self-centered bubbles and that’s not because of the platform.

The bar to get banned from any online platform is pretty high. Just look at how long it took for the most prominent Twitter offender to get rejected.

You can ban all public forums you want, then people will just continue sharing BS on WhatsApp without you even noticing.

The problem isn’t Facebook but people. Governments should punish people, not outsource the policing to companies.

sneak4• 5 years ago

Governments should punish people, not outsource the policing to companies.

Governments shouldn't be in the business of deciding what is truth and what is "misinformation", and they certainly shouldn't be punishing people based on the outcomes of such determinations.

Otherwise, we'd have to ban the church and jail all the priests.

shkkmo2• 5 years ago

Governments are already in the business of deciding many truths. It is called the court system.

There are people who are deliberately spreading misinformation to make money. I think that we absolutely should be investigating and prosecuting such people. We simply lack the policing resources to effectively combat online fraud, online bullying, and online extortion. I think we need a fundamental restructuring of policing on our society to make this feasible.

thitcanh2• 5 years ago

They should and they already do. Spreading misinformation can be classified as terrorism. Saying that there’s a man in the sky should be ok; Asserting that there are chips in vaccines is a matter of public safety. Someone will avoid getting the vaccine and die as a consequence of that post.

As for the punishment, it could be as simple as community service or losing access to public benefits for some time.

“Doctors are killing people with the vaccine?” Ok, find and pay for your own doctor, you’re not welcome in public hospitals.

Layke1123• 5 years ago

Banning the church and jailing all priests is likely to be a net positive effect on society. I have failed to see any religious institution that solves the problem of stable empires or societies. Maybe it's about time we treat delusions of religion like we do all other delusions.

everdrive• 5 years ago

The problem isn’t Facebook but people.

I think there's some truth to this, however someone could easily try to use the same argument for different topics. "People are awful, the problem isn't heroin, it's people." There's some truth to that too, but frankly, if we could magically remove 100% of heroin from the world things would be slightly better. In other words, it's clear that Facebook is making this worse, even if we carry most of the blame.

jbpnoy6fifty• 5 years ago

It's the same idea behind "guns don't kill people, people kill people" juxtaposition. The idea is that both play a role in the problem, not just one scapegoat. People tend to point fingers, but there is always a statistical correlation, between both entities catalyzing fuel to the fire.

loveistheanswer2• 5 years ago

Has anyone ever looked at history and figured out that humans are pretty damn awful?

Humans can be awful, and they can be wonderful.

Facebook is just a catalyzer just like Twitter is. Every platform has their own disgusting self-centered bubbles and that’s not because of the platform.

Pretending like system design has no effect on user behavior is just silly.

sneak4• 5 years ago

Why does everyone seem to be convinced that the spread of misinformation is somehow suddenly a problem? It has been widespread for centuries in our societies and with the exception of a few cases (say, Galileo, crusades, et c) it hasn't really consistently caused any major issues.

This feels very much to me like a "something must be done!"

helloworld11• 5 years ago

The mainstream media remains furious about Trump having won unexpectedly right under their noses in 2016 and couple with this their general disdain for social media platforms or anything at all that steals their power to impose their notion of authoritative opinion to get the current rage over the largely invented demon of misinformation. To make "misinformation" into an even bigger boogeyman, we have a large progressive, left, woke-oriented subset of the population that largely gets pandered to by the main media outlets increasingly polarizing towards absolute intolerance of anything against their cherished dogmas and being more than happy to have a convenient label for even very moderate divergent arguments. It's noteworthy that so much of the supposed issues around the misinformation debate focus entirely on painting all right-oriented opinion as part of the extremes, while visibly ignoring how much polarization in the other direction also exists towards its own extremes.

andyxor• 5 years ago

A better question is how MSM got addicted to spreading misinformation.

'Hate speech' these days means 'speech I hate and want silenced'. Freedom of speech protections exist for this exact reason.

Why should a social media app engage in political censorship and selecting right vs. wrong opinion?

ldbooth• 5 years ago

amazing how the salary changes the employee's perspective.

it has been said elsewhere: engagement = addiction

dial up the addiction, dial up the profit. "Regulators! mount up"

throwitaway1235• 5 years ago

Stop trying to police what people think. It's disgusting.

threesmegiste• 5 years ago

Again facebook news. Tricky as always. There is only one evil in big tech. Others are angel. Dont say they all same. These kind of frequent news will guide you. And you start to say “ X is also evil i know but not much like facebook”. And that what they want us to think. On safari you dont need to run faster than lion. Just dont be the last among runners. When somebody talk about privacy, sentences start with Facebook and the rest is unimportant. Basic media manupilation and psychology.

blendo• 5 years ago

“I think what happens to most people who work at Facebook—and definitely has been my story—is that there’s no boundary between Facebook and me,” he says. “It’s extremely personal.”

How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation

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