[boplicity]

The problem doesn't have anything to do with policing speech. The problem is the intentional propagation and promotion of inflammatory speech. It is one thing to allow hate speech, it is another to increase it's prominence because it is "more engaging." Facebook does just that.

[whatshisface]

The newspaper + money + printing costs system has done that for generations. If you want engaging information to stop being spread more than less-engaging information, then you're going to have to come up with a way to stop more engaging newspapers from printing more copies than less-engaging ones.

[whakim]

Yes, newspapers have been printing/selling the equivalent of clickbait and "fake news" for as long as newspapers have been around. People like this and it gets a lot of eyeballs. Newspapers like USA Today/New York Post/Daily Mail etc. do this to at least some degree and do pretty well for it.

That being said, many of the top-circulating newspapers[1] don't trade on simply reporting the "most-engaging" information. People read the WSJ or NYTimes because they're trustworthy and tend to have a high standard of journalistic integrity, deeply investigate issues and challenge powerful interests. (If you don't believe that's true you probably don't read the WSJ or NYTimes, which makes my point for me...)

Facebook and social media in general does the former, not the latter. And then combines it with algorithms that target content at those most likely to be engaged by it, leading to a cesspool of polarization, echo chambers, and inflammatory arguments.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Unit...

[dannyr]

There is a big difference between a newspaper and Facebook (with over a billion users) spreading misinformation.

This is like comparing a match stick to jet fuel.

[dmix]

As long as you never click on a comments button or scroll down on any page, which is basically what Facebook is in reverse.

The comment sections on NYT (apparently the "good" paper) is one of the worst places on the internet. Yet I'm totally okay with it existing because I understand stupid people exist, no matter how much (highly selective) censorship we allow to exist.

Not to mention the serious decline in quality of actual NYT content which seems to select heavily for this commenting audience. I've been reading them for well over a decade and the decline is obvious and full of misinformation daily. There's no winning this fight through letting some random minimum wage moderator FB or Twitter hires, with zero appeals process, or any transparency, and obvious biases, deleting a few articles or comments that offend the type of people who live in the bay area or whatever American city they hire in.

[dannyr]

Except that Facebook use algorithms to promote posts to its billion users.

[whatshisface]

The comparison is between Facebook and the entire system of market pressure acting on thousands of newspapers, not between Facebook and one newspaper.

[im3w1l]

Do you have any evidence that "inflammatory" opinions are disproportionally prominent compared to the fraction of people who hold said opinions?

[Barrin92]

Yes, we have that research from Facebook itself, which they promptly shelved.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-divisio...

"“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” one slide from the presentation read. The group found that if this core element of its recommendation engine were left unchecked, it would continue to serve Facebook users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.” A separate internal report, crafted in 2016, said 64 percent of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook only did so because the company’s algorithm recommended it to them, the WSJ reports."

[im3w1l]

The Verge cites WSJ. WSJ mentions "a presentation" but doesn't include it. What little they cite is not very substantive. "more and more divisive content" this is vague and omnious, and not even very likely. These algorithms will reach an equilibrium.

WSJ further mentions that "some proposed changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users and publishers"

To me this is a sign that the presentation was made by a partisan inside of Facebook. All in all, I don't think this is very confidence inspiring.

We would really need some third party to do a better job of investigating this.

[Barrin92]

You gotta be kidding me. You know as well as I do that we're never going to get comprehensive third party access to Facebook data.

When even internal research suggests that their platform drives division your conclusion is they're overstating their case, people who are on facebooks payroll?

That's like Enron publishing internal research about corruption and someone going "well I guess these guys are partisan"

[im3w1l]

I've worked in ranking myself and seen how the debates go from the inside. I would not take a conclusion like this at face value, no. If they had included some data, maybe.

What you would likely have to do to determine this as an outsider is sample a number of people, ask them for opinions on stuff, look at their feeds. See if certain opinions are overrepresented. Look at correlation between opinions they have and opinions they see while you are at it.

[3131s]

It would be nice to know the answer to these sort of questions. When using online services, and especially enormous ones like Facebook, it's always good to ask yourself "why am I seeing this?" or "how did I get here?".

[wolco]

Couldn't that comment apply to all social media. What is popular is what is deemed quality and other things like it get promoted.

[ryan93]

Every one knows it's either trump saying fake tough guy stuff; or it was an actual order for the military to shoot looters. In which case people need to know so they can stay safe.