Honest discussion about Facebook hate
I know it's a seasonal trend to hate on Facebook and bandwagon around it, but I just want to really understand the entire reasoning behind it. Is it because of the "whistleblower"s take that they genuinely they push forward hate speech and knowingly harm their users? Facebook is very transparent for how big of a company it is, and never have I heard any complaints from people working here regarding a systematic lack of empathy to increase revenue. The hate more often than not comes from people not part of the company who have little to no idea of how company actually operates. I hear people complain about how FB promoted polarizing, hate filled content but it is only a side effect of a being a social media company in general. When you make the world a more connected place you also connect people with more polarizing ideas together leading to issues as such. Their algo which shows people what they want to see more of isn't very proprietary either, its very rudimentary in the industry-- Youtube does it, Twitter does it, Tiktok does it and basically every news outlet. At the scale which they operate any social media company whether it is Facebook or not cannot solve these issues easily without censoring or creating a biased platform, which is again something most people don't want in the free world. It is more easy to form groups for riots yes but it is also easy to form groups that support and help each other. Do people want a more connected world but only the good side of what that brings? The leaked docs and research show they put in time, effort to understand the issue and tackle it but that doesn't necessarily make them bad compared to other social media companies who didn't put it the time to understand their user base. I am probably completely biased and wrong about my take but I am open to hearing some genuine reasons for the hate, reasons that are only applicable to Facebook and not to other companies in social media space. #facebook #twitter #tiktok #snap #google #youtube
You are right
Exactly - if Facebook gets blamed for what users post on it, should Apple get blamed for the users having an iPhone? Furthermore, deciphering the validity of information should be YOUR responsibility, not Facebooks. This is what happens when victim mentality becomes mainstream - thereâs no sense of personal accountability anymore
Problem is not users posting, it is what fb chooses to amplify and what it chooses to suppress. Equivalent would be if apple chooses to make iPhones of people with > 10k in monthly income, behave in weird way to make you buy a new one. That said yes, people should take responsibility and stop using instead of complaining.
If thatâs the case, why donât websites like Twitter and Reddit, which are literal liberal echo chambers with one sided moderation, and blatant vote manipulation the most egregious offenders? Facebook pales in comparison
Conservatives donât like FB because their posts get removed Liberals hate FB for not removing all conservative posts The extremists from both isles should be totally responsible for this polarized country because their extreme ideology and unwillingness to compromise. FB just let people see how messed up the country is.
Whatâs extreme about not liking when your posts getting removed? Itâs like I think you should shut up and Iâm disappointed that policemenâs doesnât enforce it enough. You donât like to be shut up and disappointed that policeman does enforce it somehow. We are both part of the problem and should find a compromise â you may not shut up completely, but you should stop discussing topics I donât like. Nobody ever questioned what I say, and nobody tries to ban my speech. Do you see nothing wrong with that? Itâs a bit asymmetrical, isnât it?
Exactly my view as well. Itâs just people are not able to accept how messed up we are so easy way is to blame the platform.
These are the people who can't comprehend the complexity of the issue. For them, Facebook is an easy target (Although Fb didn't do themselves great favors through their attitude all these years) and blame it for all evils in the society. Netflix documentary (which is woefully one-sided and doesn't provide the full picture) also didn't help.
Yuval Noah Harari had shared an interesting anecdote from history. Once the printing press became more available, the most popular content was mini booklets on ways to identify and save yourself from the witches. We (humans) are not the rational truth seekers that we assume ourselves to be. We are emotional fools who enjoy interesting stories and biased narratives over rational reality. Any scaled out media is bound to suffer from this very human trait.
I wonder why traditional media donât get this hate, they are known to be biased no?
They are limited in their scale, produce and distribute the content, so there is direct liability. Hence they donât publish extremely random junk that users of social media are capable of. They get the hate for the bias but the side they are biased on, they like them. So it somewhat evens out as well.
The time it takes and access on who gets to publish an article is considerably different on traditional print. It also puts ownership upfront whereas social media not only does it make easy for anyone to write anything, but also offer ways to guard their identity.
The Facebook algorithm doesnât prioritize content you *like* but content that creates engagement. Engagement includes an angry react or angry comment. The leaks revealed that an angry react is weighted 5x more than a like. The algorithm shows you the most controversial, clickbait junk to get you to engage. But Facebookâs real problem is reputation. Typically the first move of a firm facing reputation problems is to fire the unpopular CEO, but Zuck has appointed himself unfireable dictator for life.
Do the leak docs actually reveal that tho? Can you please provide me the source? I know advertisers don't want to show.ads next to content people hate or are angry about engagement with hateful content doesn't necessarily translate to better ad revenue, but ya I wanna see where in leaks tells you this.
It's not as simple as people simply bullying poor Zuck or not understanding how algorithms work. It's also that FB sometimes blatantly takes sides in ways that amplify real world violence. In my country, FB's models and manual reviewers identified actively hate promoting content but the policy makers decided not to delete the posts/pages because they were tied to the ruling powers. People flagged posts calling for rape, genocide, arson but were told this doesn't go against their content policy. The country policy chief had to resign because some of her blatantly partial comments supporting one party were leaked, but there is no evidence that anything has changed. And it's not just in my country. There was a thread a few days ago on Blind about someone reported a ton of hate speech targeting a minority community in another while an actual riot was going on, only to be told that again, it didn't violate their policy. Basically FB's policy makers will almost always suck the dick of the guy in charge, without caring about the fallout.
Dude this feels so anecdotal and personal. I know people who reported stuff and the stuff got taken down. These personal comments and stories aren't really evidence or proof of a systematic policy inside Facebook. They literally get no profit from deciding to not remove posts about rape, genocide, arson. It is literally the worst thing any platform can do to itself as it de incentives lot of people and companies from promoting their ads on such a site. Lack of moderation is an entirely different issue, but saying that they promote this stuff sounds like media bullshit.
"They literally get no profit from deciding not to remove posts about rape, genocide.." Wrong. If the majority block of a country supports or is happy to ignore hatred against minorities, it is absolutely in FB's monetary interest to let these things slide. All these content was linked to the ruling government. Cross them too much, and they can literally drown FB in bureaucratic red tape. Or even ban them from the market (a HUUGE market). And yes, it is absolutely systematic because the fucking policy head for the whole nation was directly responsible. Anyways, you don't have to believe me. The data about my country and FB isn't new and has been discussed quite a lot. You can look it up if you want. Hint: it's a major Asian country.
This is my experience working at Facebook and also digging deep on where the hate comes from. Most of the time people rather all the time people target Facebook to gain fame/name/politics and misconstrue the info because of their own personal gains, I fail to understand what the recent whistleblower is trying to do here basically if Facebook has spent some time /money on the research means they really care about their product and see where they can do their best or solve security/privacy or the affects on the society but the so called whistleblower changed the narrative to take advantage. I am sure there are lot of people behind her to back up all the mis information she is projecting the world. If she is so concerned why did she not raise her voice internally because we all speak up when we feel something is wrong and we never get penalized for it. Facebook as a company always allows their employees to have their own beliefs.
FB is getting the same hate as Uber got sometimes back, and Microsoft got before that. This will pass soon when the media finds their next scapegoat.
Tl;dr