<story><title>Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blakesterz</author><text>Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I&amp;#x27;ve read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I&amp;#x27;ve never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don&amp;#x27;t think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots&amp;#x2F;fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doing the same. It also seems like the loudest people (and bots) are the most toxic and get the most engagement. It&amp;#x27;s people, all the way down, and there will always be a bunch of people doing the wrong thing. Those people will be highly incentivized and motivated, while the rest of us will just be looking for something to read.&lt;p&gt;(Also, maybe interesting, the author of this is the executive editor of The Atlantic, not just some reporter.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>soupfordummies</author><text>The fix is easy and it&amp;#x27;s simple -- stop using them! Normalize it. Encourage others to do the same. Make it &amp;quot;cool&amp;quot; to not be on them&amp;#x2F;&amp;quot;lame&amp;quot; to use them.&lt;p&gt;I struggle to see how personal FB&amp;#x2F;IG&amp;#x2F;Twitter use is anything other than a net negative at this point. And it&amp;#x27;s gotten a lot more so over the last several years, IMO.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blakesterz</author><text>Wow. As much as I do agree with this, this is some hyperbolic writing. I&amp;#x27;ve read so many articles just like this one, they show up on HN quite often it seems, and I&amp;#x27;ve never seen one that had what seemed like a realistic fix to the problem. I don&amp;#x27;t think there is a fix really. All social media platforms will be full of bots&amp;#x2F;fakes that exist to spread garbage. All social media platforms will be full of real people doing the same. It also seems like the loudest people (and bots) are the most toxic and get the most engagement. It&amp;#x27;s people, all the way down, and there will always be a bunch of people doing the wrong thing. Those people will be highly incentivized and motivated, while the rest of us will just be looking for something to read.&lt;p&gt;(Also, maybe interesting, the author of this is the executive editor of The Atlantic, not just some reporter.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>OminousWeapons</author><text>The solution to some of these problems is obvious: ban collection of data for advertising purposes and ban targeted, cross platform advertising. You would still be allowed to advertise, but ads would have to function like magazine ads effectively where the only targeting is by site interest. This would force these social media companies (and many others) to change their business model and actually charge users directly for services which would not only shrink the user base but would make running a bot farm increasingly unaffordable at scale.</text></comment>