<story><title>Can Facebook Be Cut Down to Size?</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/opinion/facebook-china-privacy-data-security.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zestyping</author><text>This op-ed argues the question &amp;quot;Should Facebook Be Cut Down to Size?&amp;quot; but doesn&amp;#x27;t really address whether it can, or how.&lt;p&gt;Can it?  What would work?  How would you do it, if you could?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>obelix_</author><text>It can.&lt;p&gt;The root cause of a lot of problems Facebook creates is the like count next to every utterances, article or behaviour on the net. This has to be regulated much more than private data&amp;#x2F;friend graphs&amp;#x2F;location data&amp;#x2F;what you view&amp;#x2F;search for etc etc.&lt;p&gt;Psychologists will tell you the most effective way to influence behaviour of an individual is to show people what the herd around them is thinking, saying or doing. This is how society has always created &amp;quot;social norms&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If people around you don&amp;#x27;t smoke, you are less likely to be a smoker. Teen girls who see other girls get pregnant are more likely to get pregnant. There are literally thousands of examples that can be cited about how seriously we take this signal.&lt;p&gt;In a world with too much info that no one is trained to handle or are too busy or distracted to handle, we look at what what the majority of people around us are doing and do that blindly. This is signal influences behaviour. Both good and bad.&lt;p&gt;Facebook has fucked that signal up for society. In every sphere of life. And we are currently dealing with the fallout. The signal is being delievered too fast and too much imho. And this speed is highly overrated in its value to society.&lt;p&gt;Whether these counts should be displayed, to who, how quickly, next to what type of content, for different communities, education levels etc needs to be debated and regulated.</text></comment>
<story><title>Can Facebook Be Cut Down to Size?</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/opinion/facebook-china-privacy-data-security.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zestyping</author><text>This op-ed argues the question &amp;quot;Should Facebook Be Cut Down to Size?&amp;quot; but doesn&amp;#x27;t really address whether it can, or how.&lt;p&gt;Can it?  What would work?  How would you do it, if you could?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tmalsburg2</author><text>Making WhatsApp and Instagram separate companies would be an easy start. Then you could also separate advertising from social networking, e.g. let advertisers compete on FB. Would it work as in &amp;#x27;would all components survive?&amp;#x27;. That we would find out soon enough.</text></comment>