It would be great if folks could think beyond questioning the business model in terms of what (controversial content) increases user attention and think about questioning the model itself: using the internet to sell attention. There is nothing that demands the internet must be used this way.<p>The big tech companies like to combat the possibility of any such thinking by invoking people's fear of change. Something like "The internet would not be as you know it today if advertising decreased." The reader is supposed to think, "Oh my gosh, what a scary thought." However the internet as we know it today is not necessarily the best the internet could be. That should be obvious. Tech employees are having a crisis of conscience.<p>Tech companies and their investors want everyone to presume the way things are now is the best possible outcome. That is because they know they have a money printing machine (see, e.g., Tucker Bounds quote) so long as the internet remains open for unregulated advertising. They will keep advancing this idea that the internet would suck without unregulated ads, but there is no evidence that is true. No one can predict the future. Tech company spokespersons try to paint a picture of a possible future where web users would have to pay for using websites. There is nothing that indicates that would be the outcome. Tech companies do not control the internet. They do not own the internet. Tech companies might die without advertising, but websites might flourish. Both commercial and non-commercial. People might find relief from excessive screen time. The mom and pop retailer or SMB/SME are not going to charge customers to use their websites. Users will continue to pay access fees to ISPs. "The tech industry" !== the internet. It uses the internet to advance its own interests (these may be aligned somewhat to those of advertisers, but they often conflict with the interests of users). Tech companies must use the internet for advertising or face an existential crisis. That is not true for users. We can use the internet for whatever we want. We pay for it. Generally, advertisers do not pay our internet access fees.<p>We pay for access to a network that tech companies usurp to sap our attention for a fee, paid by advertisers. We do not get a cut of those payments. The whole system is incredibly one-sided and should be questioned. It is far from ideal.
> In one alleged incident, Tucker Bounds, a Facebook communications official, dismissed concerns about the platform’s role in 2016 election manipulation. “It will be a flash in the pan,” Bounds said, according to the affidavit, as reported by the Post. “Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks they will move on to something else. Meanwhile, we are printing money in the basement, and we are fine.”<p>Sounds like a really positive environment to work in. Lots of solid, meaningful contributions to the planet.
I think that the media is overusing the term "whistleblower". There are many of wrong things happening at big companies (FB, Google, Amazon) and you are not really a whistleblower by bringing this up. Media labelling those people as "whistleblowers" feels like encouraging conformity in a place that needs changing. But I guess they get more clicks when they put "whistleblower" in the headline.
Given all the concerns that FB is a threat to democracy, it’s fascinating to look back at 2008’s glowing praise for Barack Obama’s use of social media to propel him to the presidency [1].<p>And without Twitter there would be no Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Whose ascension is a huge win for American democracy.<p>It is so easy to paint social media as the bad guy, when meanwhile it has been responsible for some of the most transformative global popular movements in recent times. E.g. Arab Spring<p>I feel we don’t talk enough about the rotten underlying dynamics that make the US society so vulnerable to Russian interference, demagogues, and conspiracy theories. Social media is weaponizing these awful dynamics, but it’s feeling like so much “blame the messenger”.<p>FB has literally been asking to be regulated for years now. (And yes, cynically, it’s also smart to get the government to help you dig your moat.) But I’d be surprised if new sm rules alone are the answer to the societal rot and division, precarity and poor education that defines so much of American culture.<p>_
1. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm...</a>
Really I haven’t seen any crisis despite the newspapers printing “the end is nigh”<p>facebook is as full of bots and personality quizzes as it ever was, it doesn’t need whistleblowers to make it irrelevant<p>If I was any more cynical I’d bet that the whistleblowing is a ruse — if so, whomsoever leaks the data revealing the conspiracy could become the first meta-whistleblower, blowing the whistle on fake whistleblowing!
I agree with Jimmy Dore —- real whistleblowers are imprisoned and hunted (Snowden, Assange). This is a fake whistleblower. “I’m blowing the whistle that Facebook didn’t censor enough!” The government wants to transfer the massive power to shape speech (by blocking posts and adding clever little Orwellian “misinformation” tags) from SV to itself directly.
Limited hangout disinformation whistleblower from FB counterintelligence would be a great way to weaponize the current "FB hatred" of the mass public to control the narrative to fit FB agenda. Would such a tactic be beyond their capacity or morality to achieve?
We've seen how in the 2020 election, social media worked to prevent Trump from winning. So of course, most of the emphasis on Facebook being biased will be on the 2016 election. In the 2020 election, well, Facebook tried to be a good guy by suppressing the right, but was stymied by the evil forces of Trump and by their own unwillingness to stop the right by enough.<p>It would be great if more oversight of Facebook would lead to Facebook just not interfering in politics at all and maybe giving up on "engagement", but that's not what the government and "whistleblowers" are trying to do. It's a power struggle to make sure that the right people make Facebook political in the right way.
I don't really know how this is surprising or a crisis. I assumed this was going on. I mean Facebook is full of genius level intellects and only an idiot could miss the garbage that shows up in 99% of the feeds on Facebook (political/pandemic conspiracy and made up memes). There is literally no way they weren't discussing it internally. Now everyone is pearl clutching? That period was over a decade ago, if not longer. The US government isn't going to do anything about this except hold more hearing where old white men think about how this affects the tubes the young folks are using these days. Maybe the European governments will accomplish something.
I wonder how <a href="https://vimeo.com/636460268" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/636460268</a> matches up to this? Tyler Cowen seems to have a slightly more sane response to a lot of this.
So much scripted drama while everybody involved is on the same page and wants and regulation and more censorship of FB:<p>Facebook wants regulation for itself to kick the ladder down for future competitors, the current "whistleblowers" want it for FB because of personal idelogical leanings toward modern identity politics, the legacy media corporations want regulation applied to FB hoping that it will somehow save the former's outdated business model and the Biden administration wants it in order to manufacture consent in the face of falling popularity ratings and to keep those pesky allegations of election fraud down (except for their own allegations against the opponent).
Haven’t looked into the details of this supposed crisis, but I’m guessing that the outrage is from the free press over the unjustified suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in order to influence a democratic election. Am I right?
The conflation of 'the political left's perception of reality' with 'the truth' is outrageous, and nothing more than an attempt to censor views that conflict with the political left's agenda, which corresponds with polls showing registered Democrats are increasingly gravitating toward authoritarianism:<p><a href="https://rumble.com/vnwyhz-the-mountain-of-data-showing-how-authoritarian-democrats-have-become.html" rel="nofollow">https://rumble.com/vnwyhz-the-mountain-of-data-showing-how-a...</a>