[blakesterz]

Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I've read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I've never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don't think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots/fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doing the same. It also seems like the loudest people (and bots) are the most toxic and get the most engagement. It's people, all the way down, and there will always be a bunch of people doing the wrong thing. Those people will be highly incentivized and motivated, while the rest of us will just be looking for something to read.

(Also, maybe interesting, the author of this is the executive editor of The Atlantic, not just some reporter.)

[soupfordummies]

The fix is easy and it's simple -- stop using them! Normalize it. Encourage others to do the same. Make it "cool" to not be on them/"lame" to use them.

I struggle to see how personal FB/IG/Twitter use is anything other than a net negative at this point. And it's gotten a lot more so over the last several years, IMO.

[Diederich]

> stop using them

Very quick thought experiment. FB had about 70 billion in income in 2019, and 2.7 billion monthly users. That's $25/user/year.

So maybe transition FB to a paid platform? In return, no advertisements, no tracking, no 'adversarial' feed algorithms.

I know that a large chunk of monthly FB users would not pay, and that a lot of the problems aren't from the algorithms, but rather with the groups and communities people form themselves, and what people share with each other.

I post pretty rarely on FB, and when I use it, I only look at particular people's pages, so I'm not (directly) subject to the dreaded feed.

As some others have said, using it as described, my personal FB experience is pretty positive. To be clear: I do manually follow a wide variety of people, across the socio-political spectrum. There is a certain amount of noise but the signal is much higher. And I will naturally tend to stop following people who primarily share/reshare toxic crap.

[listless]

I’m 100% on board with this. It seems to me that the only way out is if we reject these things on a cultural level. Being on social media should be a disgrace.

[jackcosgrove]

If social networks discourage you from participating, then they really are Doomsday machines, according to the intent of a Doomsday machine.

[WildParser]

Problem is - by removing sane people the thing will become even more insane... And most people there are unable to notice - they form democratic majority - nowadays things can accelerate downhill very fast.

[OminousWeapons]

The solution to some of these problems is obvious: ban collection of data for advertising purposes and ban targeted, cross platform advertising. You would still be allowed to advertise, but ads would have to function like magazine ads effectively where the only targeting is by site interest. This would force these social media companies (and many others) to change their business model and actually charge users directly for services which would not only shrink the user base but would make running a bot farm increasingly unaffordable at scale.

[pjc50]

While we're spitballing suggestions: make automated systems liable for publishing recommendations to extremist material.

You can argue that s230 protects them just hosting it for other people. However, if Facebook suggests you join "Islamist Kill-The-Infidels And Cake Recipes" because you're into cake, that's entirely their speech.

[gfody]

> Those people will be highly incentivized

not if we don't incentivize them - we just need a social media platform to not be an advertisement platform

[m12k]

What if we got rid of "sharing"? Like, what if I could only read posts by my direct contacts, but there was no way for ads or posts from "friends of friends" (e.g. the bot that my conspiracy-obsessed uncle follows) to show up in my feed? Limit the reach of bots and echo chambers.

[nobody9999]

>not if we don't incentivize them - we just need a social media platform to not be an advertisement platform

Which is why we need to make decentralized, federated, non-commercial social networks dead simple to set up and use (shameless plug[0]).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270070

[runawaybottle]

Again, this is just thinking about the problem incorrectly. You think people are vain, reactionary, signaling-obsessed, shallow and gossipy because Facebook put a fucking ad system on their website?

[ben_w]

I don’t. People were clearly already vain, reactionary, signaling-obsessed, shallow and gossipy, and the ad system isn’t (by itself) the part that makes Facebook an existential threat.

The misaligned A.I. which drives engagement — or whatever the precise metric is — with no regard for anything else, and optimises that metric ruthlessly with continuous variations to tease out the most effective way to maximise eyeball-seconds, that’s the problem.

The paperclip factory doesn’t hate you, it’s just that you’re made of stuff that can be used to make more paperclips.

[oarsinsync]

No, but Facebook will deliberately "optimise for engagement", regardless of whether the engagement is positive or negative for the user or society, because ads.

Facebook wasn't the cesspit it is today when your news feed actually showed you your friends updates in chronological order.

Hell, it was better still even before the GD news feed even existed.

[runawaybottle]

I guess I just don’t understand the argument. For decades everyone knew commercial breaks were just that, no one was being influenced by 30 second ads on TV. The stuff that influenced people back then is the same stuff that influences people today, social pressure and desire to fit in/attain status.

Facebook ads, if anything, should be a distraction from social pressure. People are creating the social pressure to express yourself, and it’s now manifesting in shallow ways (too much pressure). Ads is not what’s causing this.

If there’s any argument to make, and maybe I’ve been missing this the whole time, maybe you guys are saying platforms like Facebook abstract you into a living Advertisement. Thus, you must behave like an advertisement (get attention at all costs), and that is the core of their ad system, you, like a human battery in the matrix.

But, there’s no argument to be made if you realize you’re jacked into the matrix and can leave. If you’re aware, you can bounce.

Do we bear no responsibility at all here for how we behave?

[oarsinsync]

> I guess I just don’t understand the argument. For decades everyone knew commercial breaks were just that, no one was being influenced by 30 second ads on TV. The stuff that influenced people back then is the same stuff that influences people today, social pressure and desire to fit in/attain status.

TV programming in the past was optimised for engagement as well. There were extremely limited slots, so each slot had to appeal to the maximal number of people. This resulted in content that was generally relatively bland and inoffensive.

Fast forward to today, and digital 'slots' are limitless. Each user gets their own personalised view. No longer do you need to optimise for what appeals to the maximal number of people as a group. Instead, you optimise for what results in continued engagement by each individual.

It turns out the vast majority of us are stupid (myself included) and are easily manipulated through negative / divisive / controversial content.

The revenue model hasn't changed. It's the content delivery that has.

So to your point, I agree, ads aren't the problem. To my point, Facebook as it exists today is the problem.

[AlexandrB]

> Do we bear no responsibility at all here for how we behave?

If all the infrastructure around you is intended for driving, it's tough to blame you for not walking instead.

Either software design has a real impact on how users behave and interact with a system or it doesn't. If you concede that design can impact a user's behavior, then it becomes a question of "how much" and the ethics of how to use that power. The irony is that by placing the burden on users to counteract the tendencies that are openly being encouraged by the software we absolve ourselves of our responsibility as designers, engineers, and architects to consider ethics in our work.

Do we bear no responsibility at all here for what we build?

[gfody]

> Do we bear no responsibility at all here for how we behave?

as described in tfa, the ad infrastructure is maximizing controversy and devisiveness when it optimizes for engagement. it's like inciting a mob - the instigator is more culpable than the members

[earthboundkid]

No, but FB/Twitter promote people who are vain, etc. because they drive traffic.

In a system like Google Reader or FB/Twitter before algorithmic feeds, you just see what your friends post in roughly chronological order. It still has the problem that people like to post junk, but there's a natural limit on it. Algorithmic feeds however promote "hot" content, which is pretty much inevitably emotionally driven. There are a lot of possible fixes, such as rate limiters and manual review of high performing content, but they all come down to the same thing: don't let sheer virality be the driving metric. The best way to decouple virality is just to make advertising against algorithmic feeds illegal.

[matthewdgreen]

This is the kind of writing that seems hyperbolic until you actually think about what's at stake. I think if you give serious consideration to the global implications of a worst-case civic outcome in the United States -- the world's largest economic and nuclear power -- you realize that terrible outcomes are possible, and maybe even likely.

I mean it's not like the bad outcomes are theoretical here. We've grown up in a blessed time, but we have relatively recent examples of how civic dysfunction can lead to genocide and massive world wars. The risk this time is similar except that (1) political destabilization is visibly happening in many nations at once, and (2) the tools of warfare and genocide are orders-of-magnitude more powerful.

[Taikonerd]

> I don't think there is a fix really.

Maybe not a "fix" per se, but one big step could be a ban on infini-scrolling in websites. I think having to click on "page 2," scroll to the bottom of the page again, click on "page 3," etc, would introduce enough friction to get people to stop a little earlier.

(My own personal rule on Hacker News is that I never go deeper than page 2. That helps me not spend all day on HN) ;-)

[bsenftner]

Limit public posts. One can engage with individuals directly all they want, but there is a limit on the number of public posts one can make, and they are scrutinized for misinformation before going public. This will drive the creation of "discussion/topic groups" in an effort to get around the public posting scrutiny, but placing a limit on the size of a discussion/topic group halts that effort.

Such changes will be required by law. FaceBook is a controversy engine, and as such they will fight tooth and nail to maintain as much controversy generation capability as they can, because that is what drives engagement there. It is certainly not friends sharing their days.