<story><title>Facebook announces policy changes ahead of 2020 elections</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10112048980882521</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snapetom</author><text>Haha.  Remember when we all thought that the internet was going to spread democracy, open ideas, and freedom?  Good times, good times.</text></item><item><author>libraryatnight</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;d asked teenage me in the 90s if the internet I loved then was going to turn into this, I&amp;#x27;d have thrown my computer in the trash. As a convenience tool its grown leaps and bounds, but as a &amp;quot;place&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s turned into a terrible neighborhood.</text></item><item><author>systemvoltage</author><text>Not sure if I have data to back this up but my theory around political turmoil and echo chambers is as follows:&lt;p&gt;- Before widespread internet use, say year 2000, all communities were local. News were local + nation wide, people still focused on their physical proximity of 20 miles that affected them the most. Today, none of my friends read local news. Local news outlets are being bankrupted left and right.&lt;p&gt;- Anonymity on the internet. People can say whatever they want without attaching their name, face and self-pride. This creates extremely unproductive conversations without consequences. Platforms such as Twitter propel this behavior to new heights. When it was local, you&amp;#x27;d lose friends for being unpleasant, you&amp;#x27;d lose credibility in your community for being inflammatory.&lt;p&gt;- Foreign interference - when internet use was not widespread, it was difficult to infiltrate a foreign election campaign and interfere with it.&lt;p&gt;- Data collection and manipulation - Targeted newsfeeds that feed these echo chambers could not possibly reach critical mass before the internet. Echo chambers were physical places to go to - Hells Angels or joining the Evangelical Christian church. No such limits exist now.&lt;p&gt;- Scale - The internet allows unprecedented scale to operate on. Echo chambers reverb into unimaginable self-resonance. Joe Rogan can say something and &lt;i&gt;millions&lt;/i&gt; could hear it. +1M subscriber channels on YouTube span thousands. That was practically impossible unless you were on national TV.&lt;p&gt;The internet has lot of positives (free voice, commerce, sharing of ideas, services, etc.) and its drawbacks are now surfacing. I want to go back to 90&amp;#x27;s when we had healthy debates between republicans and democrats. We were one country. One voice. And people debated about issues and not about other people&amp;#x27;s clans.&lt;p&gt;We wanted internet to be the left&amp;#x2F;middle of the Bosch&amp;#x27;s The Garden of Earthly Delights [1] but ended up creating something thats not too far from the right side of the canvas. Total chaos and loss of decency and respect for each other.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hieronymus_Bosch#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hieronymus_Bosch#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:T...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>K0SM0S</author><text>World Wide Web (www or W³): (between 1992 and 2042) Technological economic subsystem designed to monetize the intelligence of a few to produce ignorance in many more others. Internet is a fertile space for baseless or futile controversies (see &amp;quot;nihilistic relativism&amp;quot;), bad faith arguments (see &amp;quot;trolls&amp;quot;) and personal attacks (see &amp;quot;DOTA 2&amp;quot;); it&amp;#x27;s been shown to warm up populations to authoritarianism and speech control (see &amp;quot;Xiism&amp;quot;), and to generate the cannibalistic stock-splosions of the early 21st century. It was eventually replaced in 2042 by &lt;i&gt;radioweb&lt;/i&gt;, a quantum mesh network which ultimately spanned forty-eight thousand stars centered on the Sun by the year 4000. The only remnant of the World Wide Web in use today is Javascript. Replicas of the W³ circa 2020 are commonly used in airgap VR settings, to train soldiers to resist torture, or as horror depiction in movies. Psycho-history estimates that the human race would have gone extinct by 2145 at the latest if the W³ &amp;quot;experiment&amp;quot; hadn&amp;#x27;t been shut down prematurely by the Pixies.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook announces policy changes ahead of 2020 elections</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10112048980882521</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snapetom</author><text>Haha.  Remember when we all thought that the internet was going to spread democracy, open ideas, and freedom?  Good times, good times.</text></item><item><author>libraryatnight</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;d asked teenage me in the 90s if the internet I loved then was going to turn into this, I&amp;#x27;d have thrown my computer in the trash. As a convenience tool its grown leaps and bounds, but as a &amp;quot;place&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s turned into a terrible neighborhood.</text></item><item><author>systemvoltage</author><text>Not sure if I have data to back this up but my theory around political turmoil and echo chambers is as follows:&lt;p&gt;- Before widespread internet use, say year 2000, all communities were local. News were local + nation wide, people still focused on their physical proximity of 20 miles that affected them the most. Today, none of my friends read local news. Local news outlets are being bankrupted left and right.&lt;p&gt;- Anonymity on the internet. People can say whatever they want without attaching their name, face and self-pride. This creates extremely unproductive conversations without consequences. Platforms such as Twitter propel this behavior to new heights. When it was local, you&amp;#x27;d lose friends for being unpleasant, you&amp;#x27;d lose credibility in your community for being inflammatory.&lt;p&gt;- Foreign interference - when internet use was not widespread, it was difficult to infiltrate a foreign election campaign and interfere with it.&lt;p&gt;- Data collection and manipulation - Targeted newsfeeds that feed these echo chambers could not possibly reach critical mass before the internet. Echo chambers were physical places to go to - Hells Angels or joining the Evangelical Christian church. No such limits exist now.&lt;p&gt;- Scale - The internet allows unprecedented scale to operate on. Echo chambers reverb into unimaginable self-resonance. Joe Rogan can say something and &lt;i&gt;millions&lt;/i&gt; could hear it. +1M subscriber channels on YouTube span thousands. That was practically impossible unless you were on national TV.&lt;p&gt;The internet has lot of positives (free voice, commerce, sharing of ideas, services, etc.) and its drawbacks are now surfacing. I want to go back to 90&amp;#x27;s when we had healthy debates between republicans and democrats. We were one country. One voice. And people debated about issues and not about other people&amp;#x27;s clans.&lt;p&gt;We wanted internet to be the left&amp;#x2F;middle of the Bosch&amp;#x27;s The Garden of Earthly Delights [1] but ended up creating something thats not too far from the right side of the canvas. Total chaos and loss of decency and respect for each other.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hieronymus_Bosch#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hieronymus_Bosch#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:T...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jungturk</author><text>I still think it will, but its also created opportunity for other innovators less devoted to liberalism.&lt;p&gt;In my area, every spring as the days get longer and the frost subsides my yard springs up weeds.  Within a month the turf crowds it out despite its slow start.  Every year the same thing - the weeds are just quicker on the draw than the grass.&lt;p&gt;I think we&amp;#x27;re in the spring dawning of massive global connectivity - the nodes are online but they aren&amp;#x27;t good at resisting infection, the networks are vast but not resilient to abuse, truth struggles against the speed and virality and appeal of propaganda - but humanity&amp;#x27;s good at inventing approaches and institutions to improve on those things.&lt;p&gt;Asteroids, pandemics, and climate change on the other hand....</text></comment>