[nopriorarrests]

Honestly, americans who are thinking in all seriousness that "we can have democracy or we can have Facebook" are just deluding themselves.

I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries? From what I know, Facebook makes some real euros there, so adoption rate is quite high, but still, democracy is not "under attack" in these countries because of "automated newsfeed".

Consider these countries as a control group for "facebook being bad for democracy" test.

Maybe US should take a hard look into a mirror and accept the fact that it is very polarized country, not very cohesive society, with very little common ground (if any at all) between different factions, and facebook just shows this fact.

Don't blame the mirror for what you see in it.

[gjulianm]

> I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries? From what I know, Facebook makes some real euros there, so adoption rate is quite high, but still, democracy is not "under attack" in these countries because of "automated newsfeed".

Yes it is. Polarization is increasing in a lot of countries, and there is heavy criticism. But while US news are exposed to the rest of the world, news from EU countries aren't as much. That's why you don't see "Facebook is damaging democracy" takes from EU countries. At least from what I see in Spain (I can't speak for other countries because I don't read french or german or dutch news) the debate on Facebook (and other social media platforms) effect on democracy is growing bigger each day, specially now with the COVID pandemic.

[CaptainZapp]

Brexit?

I certainly can't prove it, but I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't have happened without Facebook.

The thing is that it's the first time were you can really microtarget bigots, racists and xenophobes. And that's what makes it frightening. Especially when everybody nowadays has his own brand of reality.

Note: Despite the fact that I think Brexit is a devastatingly bad idea I don't mean to imply that leave voters are bigots or racists. Brexit is just a great example about undue influence on a referendum.

E: Removed redundancy

[rjsw]

> Note: Despite the fact that I think Brexit is a devastatingly bad idea I don't mean to imply that leave voters are bigots or racists.

All the bigots and racists did vote leave though.

[tonyedgecombe]

There was a strong racist undertone to the campaign. In my family we used to joke about my kids grandparents being mildly racist. The leave campaign helped turn that up a notch.

[pjc50]

Sadly Brexit is a product of the "mainstream" rightwing media in the UK who've been lying about Europe for decades. Remember the UK media are explicitly political; Johnson was even employed as a journalist for a while on a higher salary than the one he gets as Prime Minister.

[zepto]

Exactly.

I live in California, and recently had a conversation with a family member in The Hague.

She was telling me about her frustrations with Anti-Maskers and Covid-deniers she has been arguing with locally.

Apparently these are not just US political issues.

[nopriorarrests]

Honest question -- do you think that without Facebook there will be no tensions between anti-maskers and people who insist on wearing masks everywhere? Is FB really to blame here?

[zepto]

Yes.

I think it’s a huge amplifier of what would otherwise be fringe ideas.

In the absence of FB, there would be tensions, but no battleground.

[HarrisonFisk]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...

[hkai]

Yes. The progressives were fighting against the mask mandate imposed by the lynching-friendly Republican mayor of SF. They were saying that mask mandates are unscientific, and turned out to be right:

> A study then in 1919 concluded that mandatory mask mandates did not make any difference on epidemic

[ryandrake]

Without Facebook and the self-amplifying validation bubbles it produces, being "anti-mask" would be seen as just as ridiculous as being an anti-vaccine or a flat-earther. There wouldn't be tensions at all because the fringe group wouldn't have any other way to grow to the point where there could be "tensions".

[throwaway2245]

There seems to be a relatively large covid-denial movement in the Netherlands compared to the rest of Europe, and focussed on The Hague in particular. The administrative capital is a good place to protest when the whole country is around an hour by train.

But, the politics is quite different from the US. Some restaurant and bar owners threatened to stage a protest and re-open against the law, giving six weeks notice that they might do this. This has since been defused.

https://nltimes.nl/2020/12/02/restaurants-bars-defy-dutch-ba...

[solaarphunk]

Russia, and many populist/extremist political campaigns, literally manipulate European elections by employing content farms to push out controversial content. Internet Research Agency, Cambridge Analytica, etc.

How do you think populist leaders gain such a large voice so quickly in those EU countries? You're kidding yourself, if you don't think the same tactics are being deployed in Europe, and amplified via platforms like Facebook.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20191007IP...

[nopriorarrests]

>How do you think populist leaders gain such a large voice so quickly in those EU countries?

There are two options here.

1. People are not really happy with current status quo so they are looking to choose alternative leaders via elections, just as expected in democratic countries.

2. Some bad guys post bad stuff on Facebook and, like, 30% of german voters read it and march to election booth like zombies to vote the way bad guys said them to vote (for Alternative for Germany).

Well, you can pick which theory survives the Occam Razor test better.

EDIT: And oh, wrt to "a large voice so quickly" -- when a lot of stuff happens quickly (i mean, between 1 or 2 elections) -- yes, a lot of people can change their minds quickly. Turbulent times, you know. In stable times people change their minds slowly.

[solaarphunk]

In case 2. you're being a little disingenuous by oversimplifying the issue.

The issue is that when "bad guys post bad stuff", it gets amplified because its engaging, and can really distort people's reality and nudge their belief systems. Have you taken a look at Cambridge Analytica? This was their playbook. There's a reason those people were paid a lot of money, and received a ton of scrutiny.

As for case 1. Yes, people are not happy with the status quo, but they can be convinced that the reason they are not happy is because of something that's difficult to prove, and creates an "us vs. them" mentality. Think antisemitism in WW2, or anti-immigration, more recently.

[kritiko]

IRA was totally overblown in terms of its impact. See Thomas Rid's Active Measures.

Andrew Bosworth, former head of FB ads, has been pretty critical of Cambridge's claims as well: "In practical terms, Cambridge Analytica is a total non-event. They were snake oil salespeople. The tools they used didn’t work, and the scale they used them at wasn’t meaningful. Every claim they have made about themselves is garbage. Data of the kind they had isn’t that valuable to begin with and worse it degrades quickly, so much so as to be effectively useless in 12-18 months."

[8ytecoder]

It’s easy to scapegoat than actually solve a real problem. This is a well tested way to win elections.

[pjc50]

To me it seems like both of these are true? There is a lot wrong with the status quo, so people go looking outside that for solutions. They run into charlatans offering quick, easy, convenient, and disastrous solutions.

It's strong parallels to those people who've found a valid but isolated problem with the medical establishment then immediately jump off the deep end into completely untested nonsense from quacks which they've heard from Youtube. "Collodial silver" and all that.

[sonotathrowaway]

Are you under the impression that 30% of the vote is insignificant? What if I told you that Hitler never won more than 37% of the vote in free and fair elections?

[nopriorarrests]

30% is HUGE, and this is why I do not buy the idea that you can get such percentage of votes because of some evil state actor who posts ads on facebook, with independent press, TV, all being available and popular as well.

If some party got 30% of votes in Germany, stop blaming facebook and 'state actors'. Germans are better then this, they are not zombies, and they have a lot of information sources to pick up news/opinions from.

[pjc50]

> Germans are better then this

If they're voting for the Nazis again, maybe they're not better than this.

[nopriorarrests]

OK, agree. But then, don't shift the blame to 'malicious state actor'. This is their decision and they own it in full.

[fwsgonzo]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43301643

Especially Russia would have a lot to gain from Trump being re-elected. It would have been crazy if they didn't put all hands on it. And the same can be extended to friendly candidates in other countries.

[nopriorarrests]

Yeah, I know. Russia would have a lot to gain from:

-- Trump being re-elected

-- Yellow Vests riots in France

-- Brexit

-- Alternative for Germany party rise in Germany

and all of these happened because of Facebook+Russia.

Sorry, but this is just Q-Anon level global conspiracy theory adopted for progressives. :-(

[solaarphunk]

How do you explain the Internet Research Agency then? What purpose do they serve?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

[nopriorarrests]

Stealing goverment money under the premise of "we will rule the world comrade, so please allocate 100 million dollars to us ASAP" and pocketing it to buy London properties, obviously.

And of course, 50K out of 100M will be really allocated to buy some shitty FB ads to make screenshots and present it to higher-ups.

[crakhamster01]

It's really interesting that people still bring up Cambridge Analytica as a driving force in elections both abroad and domestic. Earlier this year, the UK's ICO concluded after a 3 year long investigation that Cambridge Analytica had no impact on the Brexit vote, and really was no different than your run of the mill marketing agency (just with better PR spin)[1].

But no one has picked up/amplified that story. After the 2016 elections, NYT/WSJ/The Atlantic/etc. ran article after article pinning the outcomes of the US and UK elections on Facebook, despite having no evidence of this outside of testimonies from some former CA employees. Anyone with a background in adtech knew that these allegations were full of shit, but the narrative was too good to pass up.

Now, conclusive investigations have debunked these claims, but it's 4 years too late and the idea that FB/CA caused the problems of the past few years is ingrained in everyone's mind.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/no-evidence-that-cambridge-a...

[twox2]

Platforms like FB are just a tool for abuse in your example. If not for FB it would just take place on different platforms or through different channels. This is the price we pay for an interconnected world, killing Facebook will not save "democracy" - whatever that is.

[fwsgonzo]

What makes you say that Facebook isn't doing those things in other countries? It really is. It's so easy to get caught in a web of scary news that agree with something you were already thinking, and never letting go.

I have friends and family members who will blame random problems on completely unrelated things like "new walk-way in large city" or "beheading in france". Meanwhile they will vehemently deny or state that real issues are overblown.

[rmrfstar]

> Don't blame the mirror for what you see in it.

Agreed, Facebook is just exploiting weaknesses that already exist in American minds. Those problems exist elsewhere, but have not advanced as far.

There will be a silver lining in the Facebook case though. We're going to see a lot of emails and depositions that end the "Mark Zuckerberg is a uniquely competent person who earned an empire through ability" myth. That's good enough for me.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Thank you for saying that. The deposition will definitely be illuminating. Unlike his performance in front of congress, it will not be judged by public opinion ( and technically inept congressmen ) and will have real consequences should he chose to lie.

[detaro]

> I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries?

On what basis do you believe it isn't?

[nopriorarrests]

I haven't seen a single article even trying to suggest that politics in Germany or Netherlands is affected by Facebook is any way. (And for USA, you can see such articles on HN front page any other day, btw).

The only gripe EU is having with Facebook is about privacy violations, as I can see.

[detaro]

HN frontpage and US news sources aren't a good indicator for what's happening in countries that dare to not speak English.

It's maybe not to the same degree, but political polarization, filter bubbles and conspiracy theories made worse through FB and other social media totally are a topic here. EDIT: I guess hate speech legislation is in a similar corner and does appear on here too.

[kerng]

Europe isn't that different and its quickly getting worse in nearly every country, and of course also beyond country borders with things like Brexit.

[esja]

It's sowing discord everywhere, because the design is the same everywhere, and humans have the same psychological vulnerabilities everywhere.

Maximum profit requires maximum engagement. This requires creating filter bubbles and prioritising emotional content. From there, the social fracturing is inevitable... only the topics differ from country to country.

[macspoofing]

>I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord"

Because it's not Facebook.

Notice that in US, one side (Democrats, media conglomerates and their 'journalist' employees) are pushing for Facebook to censor, de-platform, or 'rank down' independent, conservative and progressive outlets. It is this group, author of the post included, that keeps calling Facebook, YouTube, Twitter (and even first amendment) divisive or undemocratic as a cynical, self-serving strategy to move the needle in their direction (for Democrats, it means more political power, for media conglomerates, it means less competition for eyeballs, and more revenue).

Meanwhile conservative and progressive outlets are calling for less Facebook censorship because they see themselves under constant attack, even when they report factually correct news.

[graeme]

The far right and far left have surged globally, the old center has collapsed. The far right has had more successful surges, to be clear.

Are you American by any chance? You may be committing the same mistake you complain of.

The neonazis have made great gains in Germany, Brexit happened. The far right northern league came to power as part of a coalition, with a leader who called for mass cleansing.

A Hindu nationalist party is in power in India, buoyed by whatsapp chain messages. In France, Macron came out of nowehere: he is a centrist but this still shows a collapse of the old structures. His biggest threat is a fascist.

Bolsonaro, a Trump admirer is in power in Brazil. The president of the phillipines, Duterte, boasts of summarily executing drug dealers. Authoritarians rule in Hungary and Poland.

[whimsicalism]

> facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands or, say, Germany, or other EU countries

I'll be honest, I have trouble believing you live in the EU if you're claiming something like this.

[brnt]

> I wonder why facebook usage isn't "sowing discord" in Netherlands

But it is? Antivaxxers are at an all time high here, the Pietendiscussie is inflamed on both sides primarily through social media. My plumber-neighbour is an excellent source for learning what the latest conspiracy theory is on his Facebook feed.

If you don't see it, you probably meet people from a narrow slice of society. I certainly see that these kinds of experiences are vastly different between my friends-circle, all former fellow university students, or my villages neighbours, a tiny place far from the urban centres of the Netherlands. My family is a bit in between, again correlating with age.

I absolutely think Facebook is making this country worse. It's the main method of how corona-disbelievers are keeping rates up by encouraging each other to ignore 'rules'.

[joshxyz]

Another angle here is the amount of people communicating and making a living thru facebook, particularly in third world countries (i am born in, and still living in).

The accessible value in tapping the network effects of FB as a communication platform is quite an okay amount of democracy.

But on the other hand I think the polarity in US (and large countries like RU and CH) is quite relative to the size of their countries.. is there any science to that lol

[dyeje]

Yes, there are problems in the United States but I do believe Facebook is accelerating the polarization significantly. We have widespread belief in voter fraud based on no hard evidence. This was simply not even conceivable 4 years ago. Just because there's a fire burning already doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to those who pour gasoline on it.

[bitwize]

We had widespread belief in Trump-Russia collusion despite no hard evidence too. There's a word for a baseless conspiracy theory that implicates the right: "fact".

[sonotathrowaway]

I’m not sure that you’re very well informed - your opinion is that theories of trump Russia collusion were baseless? Is that what you believe the Mueller report said?

[bitwize]

It did say that they couldn't find hard evidence of collusion, yes.

But "baseless conspiracy theory" is practically a term of art. There was sufficient evidence of election irregularities in key battleground states to at least warrant a proper investigation. The same media companies which reported Trump-Russia collusion as hard, settled facts, however, rushed to call any suggestion of fraud a "baseless conspiracy theory" and reassured us that the 2020 elections were absolutely airtight, which -- I don't know what you have to be smoking to believe that last bit.

[speeder]

I am from Brazil, and here Facebook is a problem too...

We even have our supreme court doing blatantly inconstitutional things because they are upset with Facebook (and Whatsapp).

Also during the Gamergate debacle, there was some high profile news about a "gamergater" that sent actual death threats to people (many people falsely claim to have received death threats), when police caught the guy, it was a Brazillian leftist troll, that thought it would be hilarious to watch whatever was going on in Facebook and try to outviralize viral posts by doing whatever would stoke more controversy (in this case, pretending to be right wing, sending death threats to left wingers, and watch the two sides fight).

[piva00]

But Facebook is affecting Germany, the Netherlands and here in Sweden where I live. Most of the voters for SD (Sverigedemokraterna) follow the same pattern as Trumpists in the US: regurgitating bullshit spread through Facebook (and to a lesser extent YouTube) which became a firehose of lies, impossible to keep up with to be disproven. People fall into that hole more often than I imagined and I'm glad that the education system here is decent enough to allow the majority of the population to see through this farce.

It still affects society, it still sows discord and I'm not sure how you are unaware of this if you are making such claims...

[EGreg]

It’s more than facebook.

It’s CAPITALISM.

People have to always preface any criticism of it by saying “there is nothing at all wrong with capitalism, but...”

But no, the actual ECONOMIC SYSTEM and the incentives and constraints it exerts on institutions and organizations is responsible for what is happening. It selects for the current types of organizations and outcomes by its very nature.

You see, both our news and our social networks are driven by a profit motive and face market competition. Thus they are forced to adapt to changing circumstancss in certain ways:

Act 1. Journalism was disrupted by the Internet, and survived by adopting the FOX News model of locking in an audience and being biased, showing one part of the story.

MSNBC explicitly did it, while CNN jumped the shark after the Malaysian Airlines flight, realizing it can lock in audience. One sided clickbait outrage articles are the norm. There is some attempt to have journalistic integrity and policy focus at Vox and NowThis, but then you also have MotherJones, OccupyDemocrats, DailyKos and more on the left. You have all kinds of independent podcasts like TYT network, Kyle Kulinski, David Pakman, Majority Report, etc. And similarly for the conservatives, libertarians, etc.

We are divided also because giant corporations like Sinclair Television bought up all the local stations and outlets, resulting in this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

No really, watch it. It’s black mirror level, and you can see the capitalism at work here. Top down control by a small group of people, disseminating to everyone under the banner of “free speech”.

Act 2. Social networks are in a race to the bottom for advertising dollars.

So they adapt by desiging algorithms to maximize your “engagement” and attention on their platform.

Capitalism leads to a tragedy of the unmanaged commons, where in this case the commons is human attention. There is a reason that you salivate at notifications like Pavlov’s dogs. You’ve been conditioned to look at that screen light up during dinner. It’s NOT just about a slot machine dynamic. It’s that - if Facebook doesn’t get your attention every so often, then LinkedIn or Twitter would.

The solution is changing the economic model for news and social media.

Yes I said it. But let me use less triggering words than capitalism and socialism.

We need more projects built on collaboration instead of competition.

Wikipedia instead of Britannica

Workd Wide Web instead of America Online

Open Source Software instead of closed source commercial software

Cryptocurrency instead of banks

Creative Commons instead of Copyright

Prizes for Open Source Drugs instead of Patent System and IP

And so on. Not only would it make the system cheaper, it would make it far more effective and less divisive. People would be able to build on each other’s work, without threats.

This is already how peer reviewed science has worked, and for all its flaws it has produced tremendous progress. Scientists are careful not to overstate things. Titles are “boring” and descriptive rather than sensational.

Compare that to the “free speech” where money - and yes, audience size - determines which ideas get pushed in one direction. Clay Shirky spoke about this 15 years ago:

https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_institutions_vs_collab...

So how would it work?

There would be a wiki-like site for news. People around the world would upload their own videos and raw media.

Then each news story would be edited and re-edited by mutually distrusting parties, checks and balances, similar to Wikipedia’s talk page.

The final result would be published only after a delay, when most parties have had a chance to challenge all the claims they needed, with well sourced claims of their own (each claim would have its own page).

That way, the world can make up its own mind by using the collaboration of the crowd, on issues like what’s happening in Saudi/Yemen, with China and Uyghurs or whether Assad gassed his own people after winning with conventional weapons. As well as on issues of religion, science, health policy, and so on.

We are building something like this as a reference implementation. The domain will be Rational.app

If you want to be involved you can email me at “greg” at the domain qbix.com. I am happy to welcome people on the project who know Javascript or PHP and who believe something like this is needed. This would be an open source project.

[api]

Very good point. There are a ton of legitimate criticisms of Facebook, but you can’t blame FB for American anti-intellectualism, rampant gullibility, and the failings of the two party system.

Americans have for decades been gullible fools who never read below headlines and fall for tabloid trash. This “post-reality” thing that is culminating with stuff like Qanon has also been cooking for decades, nurtured by trash TV, dumbed down religion, and new age word salad.

In the past only mass media had the privilege of being able to lead this mass of morons. Now that has been democratized, allowing DIY YouTube and Facebook personalities to take advantage of America’s rampant foolishness.

The solution has to start with an broad spectrum social movement to raise the quality of discourse in the culture, a kind of big tent anti-bullshit movement. We need to replace hard line partisan intolerance with intolerance for intellectual junk food. Liberals, conservatives, and anyone else should start promoting all content of any perspective so long as it is well written, well reasoned, and credible, and rejecting BS from their own side as well as others.