[jqpabc123]

Facebook is primarily a propaganda organization.

It's main objective is to influence, manipulate and subvert the user's judgment and convince them to buy something --- be it physical product or ideology. To further this objective, it has developed an incredibly detailed psychological profile of each individual user using deeply personal info willing surrendered by the user themselves.

It's skill at doing this is what it promotes to it's real paying customers --- mostly advertisers. Users are not their "customer", they are just the marks being manipulated.

As board member Peter Thiel put it, "I'd rather be seen as evil than incompetent". Evil is obviously more profitable.

[jorgesborges]

> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has argued that only companies as large as Facebook have the resources to fight misinformation, election meddling and harmful content.

Look, they’re not a propaganda machine! I’m so thankful we have them to “fight” against “misinformation”. I read that and my blood began to boil. Evil is the perfect description of such disgusting, deceitful pandering.

[user3939382]

We should stop using the term misinformation and call it untruth. This deobfuscates what’s really happening, which is that:

Extreme wealth and power has caused some self-appointed Deciders of Truth to band together and decide that anyone who does not pledge allegiance to anything they decide is true will be cast out of society as much as practically possible.

I remember reading Plato’s The Republic when I was young and coming away with the impression that arriving at the nature of truth was very complicated and nuanced. Apparently these tech CEOs and their buddies in government have decided to simplify everything for us proles.

[ViViDboarder]

Do you really believe there is no such thing as a lie?

I don’t want to trust Facebook as an arbiter of anything because their motivations do not align with anything other than personal profit, but people do completely fabricate things and present them as true.

[SpicyLemonZest]

There's such a thing as a lie, but "misinformation" isn't a synonym for "lie". Efforts to fight misinformation are almost always understood to encompass misleading information - that is, information that's literally true but is used to advance an argument the misinformation checker doesn't think is valid.

[Dracophoenix]

The problem still remains as to who gets to determine what constitutes "misleading".

[user3939382]

At least with COVID, one day the same idea can be “misinformation” and the next it’s a blessed fact from the Deciders of Truth. Originally it was misinformation that masks protected you from COVID. So no it’s not as simple as a “lie”.

[newswasboring]

> We should stop using the term misinformation and call it untruth

Or just call it what it is. Lies.

[sofixa]

I think the difference between untruth and misinformation is the intent. The latter is on purpose in order to shape a narrative and mislead people. Misinformation is Trump and related people claiming the election was stolen from him - it's blatantly untrue, easily debunkable, and there's an obvious interest there. (I'm not american, just an easy example that came to me)

[dpratt]

This is a shockingly concise, accurate and readily digestible by the common person description of what Facebook actually is. If you don’t mind, I’m going to save this for the future.

[jqpabc123]

Be my guest.

[mgraczyk]

It's a serious issue and not one that should be taken lightly, but I think it warrants taking a small step back and thinking a bit more about it.

The claim in this comment is that Facebook's business is to sell ads, but facebook users actually the thing being sold, rather than the customers. This has caused Facebook to become evil and do evil things.

However, if you think about it, almost any social "product" follows the same pattern.

Consider Bars and Clubs. On the surface it seems like their only purpose is to sell alcohol to the patrons, and in a way the patrons are just a way to make the club look more popular to attract more alcohol consumers. But most bars don't become propaganda organizations delivering ethanol via an IV drip. Bars want to create a fun environment that is sustainable in the long term, so they avoid strategies that are likely to harm their customers and prevent them from coming back. Some bars are undoubtedly evil, but it's usually pretty obvious and there are regulations to detect and limit misleading or dangerous behavior (spiking drinks, racial discrimination on entry).

For a lot of people, Instagram is more like a Bar than a physical product. It's a place you go to interact with people and have fun or catch up. Facebook wants people to enjoy themselves and keep coming back. Sometimes people have a bad time or are harmed, but it's in Facebook's best interest to understand that and change things to make Instagram safer and more enjoyable, so people will keep coming back and "buying drinks".

[jqpabc123]

Consider Bars and Clubs.

Bars earn all their income from serving individual patrons. Facebook earns nothing from their individual patrons. All their income is earned serving those seeking to manipulate and take advantage of their patrons.

It's easy to see where the allegiance lies in either case --- just follow the money.

[tomjen3]

Its main goal is to create more engagement so Zuck can sell more ads. Turning an AI out with the goal of maximizing engagement creates a machine as you described.

[echelon]

Easy legislative fix

1) Stop hiring ex-Facebook employees. Unless they come clean about the company, they're willingly working at a corporation designed to destroy people. Why would you want people that sacrifice morals for money at your company?

2) Pass legislation requiring that algorithmic / amplified social media displays a "Surgeon General's" warning at the top that can't be dismissed. 12px white on black font: "This product is designed to be emotionally disruptive"

3) Disallow companies from targeting or onboarding children. If kids can have an account, there must be no adds or PII used in analytics or big data. No studying them. No manipulating them.

[chiefalchemist]

FB is primarily a data collection and behavior directing organization. Surveillance Capitalism is real.

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

[spectramax]

I’d say Twitter has done more damage to the society than FB. Twitter is a pure outrage machine.

I might be in the minority but Instagram is still awesome. It’s gotten more ads but most of them are quite interesting.

I’ve found made in USA goods from IG ads like this: https://psudo.com/

[pfisherman]

My understanding is that the scope of Facebook ads and surveillance is not limited to Facebook properties. The Facebook pixel and SDK are pretty ubiquitous.

Twitter is actually useful if you limit who you follow to the right people. My experience of Twitter is a bunch of academics promoting their articles. Lior Pachter trashing tSNE and UMAP is about the spiciest it gets.

[rendall]

I know very few people on Twitter. Facebook, on the other hand, is nearly a requirement even to have a social life. I don't use FB, but I definitely miss out on general invitations.

It is strictly not possible to participate in local Burning Man events here in Finland without a Facebook account, for instance. They flat out refuse to promote through any other platform or channel.

[spectramax]

I fundamentally disagree with Twitter's ideological position. Banning the president, allowing Taliban leaders, it is a censorship extravaganza and the selling point is ecochambered short blips of outrage. What you're pointing out is also true - there is some good stuff on Twitter just like any platform. Most political content on Twitter is horrible, left / right - both.

FB goes against silicon valley's zeitgeist and it gets disproportional hate. IMO, all social media is toxic and it has done more damage to the society than benefited ... but the biases are very much evident in how each service is perceived by the larger tech community. FB also did many eggregious things, no doubt. Election interference, etc.

Meanwhile, Tiktok is HN's darling.

Another thing is Twitter has become de facto channels for official communications of government bodies. How do you access these official channels? With a phone number of course when you try to register an account - which is required. Twitter has destroyed the world by coaslescing social media, outrage tactics, government bodies into one hot boiling soup of toxins.

[pfisherman]

Well a big part of the distinction between FB and Twitter for me is the scale, scope, and competence of their surveillance and targeted influence (i.e. ads) capabilities and operations.

Would Twitter be as evil as FB if they weren’t incompetent? Maybe. But that is not the world we live in.

One area where I think we are talking past each other is referencing the consumer facing aspect vs the money making (B2B) aspect of social media. I think of these companies as ad platforms. They exist to collect data on people and their behavior, and sell tot to advertisers so they can use it to influence decisions. The whole public square thing is incidental to that. It exists only because it helps them collect data and sell ads.

To your other points Twitter is an official channel of communication for government agencies, not THE official channel. They still maintain websites and put out press kits.

Twitter should have banned the president long before they did for his repeated violations of their TOS, as they would have any normal member of the public. Same for other world leaders. Imo, leaders should be held to a higher standard of behavior wrt to the EULA and T&Cs than the average Joe.

[spectramax]

I can digest your take. I’d say that governments shouldn’t be on Twitter. I have conflicting internal voice - on one hand, I don't want any of these social media companies to allow populist movements to rise (that includes people like AOC that are running populist movements on Instagram and social media). On the other hand, I don't want any politician banned unless they ban all of them - on principle. President Trump was violating TOC left and right but Twitter allowed him for 4 years reaping engagement revenue, but all of sudden they were emboldened as soon as President Biden took office. These are weak companies with weak ideologies.

Make Politics Boring Again, I am down with this.

[wpietri]

You may be using Twitter wrong. Switch it from "top tweets" to "latest tweets" mode, and then follow people who tweet and retweet things that are not outrage-driven. I follow a lot of interesting people and I learn a ton.

But even if Twitter were pure outrage, that is far from the most serious social media damage to society. Twitter, for all its faults, is relatively low on mis- and dis-information because people call it out. It's all one conversational space. Facebook, which is much more fragmented, enables flourishing niches of bonkers thought. Some of those niches are just wild-type insanity, but many more are gardens of crazy cultivated by people with a financial or political need for that.

I firmly believe that without Facebook, we wouldn't have a situation where thousands of people are dying per day of a preventable disease, with 95+% of those because of mis- and dis-information about the disease and the necessary countermeasures.

[fouc]

I suspect that Facebook has more users than Twitter, and heavier engagement. Facebook has multiple aspects that people heavily use, things like photo albums, marketplace, messenger, birthdays, etc. In comparison Twitter seems more limited.

[katbyte]

As far as I know Twitter had not been responsible for ethnic cleansing mole times in multiple countries not helping dictators stay in power: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

[spectramax]

Here is Twitter CEO promoting a dictatorship as a place to go for meditation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/09/latest-...

[katbyte]

I guess I stand corrected (thou can’t read the article) - next up is genocide on the evil company bingo card