What I don't get is dumb companies who post a link to their FB(or some other social media) page on their site:<p>1. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No.<p>2. When people like/follow your page, they are trapped by FB(or some other social media) and you can only reach them there. If you're banned or they pull bait-and-switch on you, like Facebook did, you've wasted all this time building user base for Facebook and not building your business.<p>3. You can't even reach them on Facebook, because you now have to pay Facebook to reach people that have already liked your page.<p>4. Posting on social media wastes a lot of time and money(tools + people).<p>- Compare this to getting an email address from your visitors:<p>1. You are in control of your list.<p>2. You can reach them anywhere & anytime almost for free.
Hm... the alternative explanation is, people were always dumb, Facebook (and internet in general) just makes it more apparent by giving us more oportunities to display our stupidity.
There have already been studies showing that frequent visits to FB make a person more unhappy in their overall life. Now this. So, a major worldwide internet power -- that is, a single company -- that is trying to disrupt so much of global life (India, anyone?), with the interesting side effect that it makes people unhappy <i>and</i> less intelligent. If you had heard this "reality" 20 years ago, you wouldn't believe the future could be so dark.
As a search provider, DuckDuckGo tries to prevent the "gated community" syndrom:
<a href="http://dontbubble.us/" rel="nofollow">http://dontbubble.us/</a>
It would be interesting to study Simulacra and Simulation when it comes to social media and memes.<p>People tend to align themselves with other people and communities who share similar beliefs. You can often see this where people Like and Share these meme images with some "profound" message (eg. "A real man/woman ...") when they like, agree with or find interesting for some or other reason.<p>So, what IMO would be interesting to see is how these things changes their world view and self-image. Are they replacing the reality of life with a simulacra (the meme; Social Media "friends" I supposed can be argued to be another simulacra)? How much more likely are they to like/share to share posts from others who they perceive to have similar world-views, even if they know very little about the topic? How likely are they to defend ideas which they only have by virtue of their social connection to other people?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation</a>
That's a ridiculous headline to derive from analysis of published article with title "The spreading of misinformation online".<p>Sure the idea that Facebook makes us dumber might have some truth in it. But it cannot be fairly evaluated unless one proves that the alternative Network Television or Grandma email forwards were not making us even more dumber before Facebook rose to prominence.
Probably not a small nitpick, really, but the article explains not that we're dumber by using Facebook, but that we are less informed. I think that's an important distinction not only because people tend to conflate knowledge and intelligence/aptitude, but because we should worry as much about spending long amounts of time doing things that provide not even nominal information to keep our brains pliable and receptive to new knowledge and new ways of thinking.
Reddit too. I just wrote 500 words without using any logical fallacies backing up my assertions with scientific studies from trusted sources, why does my comment have -12 points without a single person taking the time to refute my position in a comment?<p>I believe managed, licenced hunting in Africa supports conservation efforts, there is no reason ever to spank or hit a child, all children should be vaccinated, and pitbulls are dangerous.<p>So, most people have unfriended and/or blocked me on Facebook. Now I live in a bubble. I'm not bothered by people who don't agree with me. I'm bothered by people who can't debate these topics without getting riled up. The African hunting topic ended with someone threatening my little sister. I can understand the business decision behind letting people live in a bubble.
What most people forget about networks like Facebook (or twitter for that matter) is that just a misinformation can spread quickly, corrections of that information can to.<p>What FB have helped with is to make sure that neither newspapers nor politicians will be able to communicate in a vacuum.<p>What we see now is the first steps of a more enlightened society not a dumber one because dissent both gets normalized and much better access to minds it didn't before.<p>Of course there is going to be people who think alike or people who only befriend people who think exactly like them. But the second they want to spread their gospel outside their groups they are going to be met with a lot of other perspectives and thats a good thing.
For all its faults, old fashioned broadcast media was better in a way. It spread information to you whether you agreed with it or not. Having a strong opinion on anything was rare, because for all you knew you where alone with your views. You where not exposed to as many like-minded people. There wasn't this feedback loop where you decided what information to spread on to that group of people, and they decided what to spread back to you.
In Germany, vast parts of Facebook have become one big ugly hate fest. I've read so much utterly terrible crap in the past few days (in the aftermath of the NYE events in Germany), that I'm still sick to the stomach. People are completely resistant to any facts contradicting their favorite narrative and flagging is useless (moderation is a joke). Same for YouTube btw.<p>edit: typos
I guess it's also amplified by the fact that people tend to accept things as true by default, until it's proven otherwise. In other words, insertion of data is the way cheaper then its invalidation and probably happen much more frequently thanks to social media.
Yes, everybody has always been like this, but tech has changed the social nature of interaction. It's not just Facebook. Any online community (including HN) has a desire to limit conflict -- you want people enjoying themselves and contributing. That means "Don't show me stuff that I disagree with"<p>There's a natural conflict of interest. In the real world, we are forced to live with and confront those of widely varying opinions. Many times this is a huge pain in the ass. But it's good for the species overall. Over time, initially unpopular and ugly opinions get vetted: about one in a 100/1000 turn out to be a critical evolution in the way all of us think about ourselves.<p>In the virtual world, no such limits exist. We cannot afford to have the 1% folks who destroy discourse, so we just magically make them not exist. People share and promote emotional things which the vast majority can agree on. Instead of the outliers driving change, we begin to norm down those farther and farther out on the bell curve.<p>So people turn inward to their phones and tribes. We physically live next to each other, but we don't actually live with each other. Instead of a diverse and accomplished species, we are slowly becoming one large, comfortable mob.
What social networks bring is the explosion of the hierarchy of information that mainstream media and politicians imposed on us for decades.<p>That's why a lot of media/politics criticizes social networks because it questions their role and place in the society.
> Can anything be done?<p>Should anything be done?<p>Entertain the possibility that what is observed is not really about the "facts," but intragroup signalling serving to maintain group cohesion.<p>But yeah, since we all hate those groups...
So the study confirms that people naturally trust what their friends are posting, which then confirms that trust is what bonds friends together.<p>I view Facebook as a means to strengthen existing "physical" friendship, rather than a place to get unbiased information. So in that sense this is neither surprising, nor detrimental. Imagine what will happen if your friends start correcting your political views...<p>For less biased information, please refer to twitter. And please don't mix Facebook friends with twitter followings.
Few years ago Facebook was supposed to work with media to improve the activity feed. But from my perspective it is just became as bad as it can be, it gives me no relevant information and 80% of it is garbage. When close friends post something interesting, it does not get promoted and rapidity falls in the bottom. Filtering out noise in annoying so I end up not using Facebook as I used to.<p>What describe the article is not a Facebook problem, it's an Internet problem, Google and Youtube make you as dumb as Facebook does.
Actually, I've noticed that when people post misinformation in the form of a link to an article, FB often has some "See also" items posted below it that debunk the story.
Facebook annoys me so much, I've stopped using it. It really is like an addiction. We've outsourced our feelings of belonging to Facebook. We want to be careful with that.
This was made true by the founder of facebook calling his own users "dumb fucks" <a href="https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mark%20zuckerberg%20dumb%20fucks" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...</a>
> Once people discover that others agree with them, they become more confident -- and then more extreme.<p>And then the example plus explanation.<p>> Arriving at these judgments on your own, you might well hold them tentatively and with a fair degree of humility. But after you learn that a lot of people agree with you, you are likely to end up with much greater certainty<p>This mechanism is considered extreme? Why? When a lot of people agree with me on some issue then naturally I'll be more confident in expressing my views.<p>So what if Facebook pairs tin foil hat wearers together so they can share their views? I doubt that they'll start believing that they are now the mainstream.<p>I suspect that the writer of this article just deeply resents the fact that persons with out of the norm beliefs or thoughts can now effectively organise and exchange ideas which in turn directly threatens the journalists monopoly on creating the mainstream narrative.<p>It is a good thing that ideas and views from other perspectives are now widely available online. You now can watch RT and then CNN or FOX and conclude that basically all of these channels are just feeding us propaganda crap with different goals.