Kevin Kruse tweeted:
and got a lot of pushback in comments that people use it for business, finding homes for animals in urgent need of shelter, and otherwise socially isolated people use for keeping in contact. And lots say "of course I only use it responsibly."
I find this a bit irritating - it sort of suggests that people were highly unconnected socially before the internet. Maybe some were - but of course, it is very likely that there was more personal contact back in the day, too.
I think people really need to have less of a "too big to fail" [or, more accurately, "too big to be forced to change the way it operates] attitude towards Facebook - there are ways of alternative online networking that maybe have a modest degree of greater inconvenience, but we're not talking re-inventing the wheel totally here.
All of this is on back of the 60 Minutes whistleblower story about Facebook. This Gizmodo summary is good:
9 Horrifying Facts From the Facebook Whistleblower's New 60 Minutes Interview
The first one seems pretty big to me:
Haugen explained to 60 Minutes how Facebook’s algorithm chooses content that’s likely to make users angry because that causes the most engagement. And user engagement is what Facebook turns into ad dollars.
“Its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions,” Haugen told 60 Minutes.
“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” Haugen continued.
Now, of course, years and years of reading Catallaxy and its later spawn has shown me that any online community can spend most of its time on re-posting to each other stuff that is designed to re-enforce anger, so its not as if Facebook stopping that aspect is going to kill all problems with the net.
But gee, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
As for the site being down suddenly earlier today, I laughed at this suggestion:
4 comments:
just how is Facebook going to fail?
Its balance sheet is very healthy
I didn't mean that it literally is at risk of "failing". I just meant that in the same way that people feel that you can't just let banks fail as it would hurt too many people, a lot seem to feel government can't really do too much to Facebook to force it to change its modus operandi, because too many people already rely on it working in the way it presently does.
I've amended the post to make that clearer.
"Too big to fail" is just bullshit bad people use when they are stealing from you. Facebook has to fail, its functions taken from the oligarchy, its alleged owner executed as a terrorist, traitor, and subversive. That bastard is guilty of so many crimes against humanity its not funny any more.
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