<story><title>Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus group</title><url>http://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/02/21/dear-mark-zuckerberg-democracy-not-facebook-focus-group</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caconym_</author><text>I admit that I haven&amp;#x27;t read the &amp;quot;manifesto&amp;quot; but it seems strange to me that the guy in charge of a platform that is arguably doing significant damage to our culture and democracy, all in the name of advertising profits, could be considered as an authority on how to fix the problems in question.&lt;p&gt;One preliminary solution seems fairly simple, and Zuckerberg is in a somewhat unique position in that he has the power to implement it on a large scale: stop feeding people an endless stream of ad-stuffed trash media selected by an algorithm maximizing for clickbait factor and nothing else. I genuinely believe that it&amp;#x27;s poisoning people&amp;#x27;s minds and doing significant damage to our society. Of course, it is making them money, so it will not change (in fact it will probably get worse).&lt;p&gt;It is not written in stone that a profitable enterprise must be compatible with the &amp;quot;greater good&amp;quot; (for lack of a better term). Some things are inherently destructive. Facebook takes a lot and gives nothing back. The idea of handing over the reins of our society to some outgrowth of its current model is as terrifying as it is hilarious in its blind arrogance and ignorance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rosalinekarr</author><text>&amp;gt; stop feeding people an endless stream of ad-stuffed trash media selected by an algorithm maximizing for clickbait factor and nothing else. I genuinely believe that it&amp;#x27;s poisoning people&amp;#x27;s minds and doing significant damage to our society.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been hearing this from a lot of people lately, but every time I do, I can&amp;#x27;t help but think we&amp;#x27;ve got it backwards. People aren&amp;#x27;t becoming worse because of clickbait and fake news. Clickbait and fake news are becoming worse because of people.&lt;p&gt;Long before there was Facebook, plenty of people bought and read magazines and newspapers like the National Enquirer and the Daily Mail. The only difference now is that those people, just like everyone else, have access to much more of that content thanks to the internet. Taking that content away from those people isn&amp;#x27;t going to make them smarter. It&amp;#x27;s just going to make them angrier and more determined to seek that stuff out.&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the only real solution is improving education, but no one wants to talk about that because that&amp;#x27;s the hard way. It&amp;#x27;s much easier to demand that certain news sources be censored or that certain news aggregators impose a bias against them, but that&amp;#x27;s a very dangerous road to travel down. Today, people are talking about sources like banning Breitbart and The Daily Caller, which is well-meaning, but how long will it be before people start talking about banning sources like The Intercept or The Guardian? There are certainly plenty of people in both political parties that would gladly slap the labels of &amp;quot;clickbait&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;fake news&amp;quot; on them as well.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus group</title><url>http://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/02/21/dear-mark-zuckerberg-democracy-not-facebook-focus-group</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caconym_</author><text>I admit that I haven&amp;#x27;t read the &amp;quot;manifesto&amp;quot; but it seems strange to me that the guy in charge of a platform that is arguably doing significant damage to our culture and democracy, all in the name of advertising profits, could be considered as an authority on how to fix the problems in question.&lt;p&gt;One preliminary solution seems fairly simple, and Zuckerberg is in a somewhat unique position in that he has the power to implement it on a large scale: stop feeding people an endless stream of ad-stuffed trash media selected by an algorithm maximizing for clickbait factor and nothing else. I genuinely believe that it&amp;#x27;s poisoning people&amp;#x27;s minds and doing significant damage to our society. Of course, it is making them money, so it will not change (in fact it will probably get worse).&lt;p&gt;It is not written in stone that a profitable enterprise must be compatible with the &amp;quot;greater good&amp;quot; (for lack of a better term). Some things are inherently destructive. Facebook takes a lot and gives nothing back. The idea of handing over the reins of our society to some outgrowth of its current model is as terrifying as it is hilarious in its blind arrogance and ignorance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WWKong</author><text>&amp;quot;stop feeding people an endless stream of ad-stuffed trash media selected by an algorithm maximizing for clickbait factor and nothing else&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure if this is the core of the problem, if at all. Most of what you see on facebook are links shared by your network. If your &amp;quot;friends&amp;quot; are sharing and re-sharing clickbait fake news, you see clickbait fake news. This is evident in groups on whatsapp where there is no algorithmic intervention and it is still an endless stream of misinformation (in most diverse groups). This also mirrors real world echo chambers.&lt;p&gt;If you do have have some suggestions for solving this problem, it would be great to discuss here.</text></comment>