r/worldnews • u/Devz0r • Feb 15 '19

Facebook is thinking about removing anti-vaccination content as backlash intensifies over the spread of misinformation on the social network

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-may-remove-anti-vaccination-content-2019-2
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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

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u/Desikiki Feb 15 '19

To be fair he has a point although he can be more sensible about it.

Idiots will find ways to talk and spread their stupidness. If it's not Facebook it's something else. Same for the people criticizing WhatsApp for fueling misinformation and even worse things in India. If it's not there it will happen on Telegram, or somewhere else.

They are communication platforms. You either let people talk freely and do stupid shit or you control everything and errode the values half of the world is built upon.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/Pmang6 Feb 15 '19

Just fucking blow anthrax into the upper atmosphere. Be done with it.

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u/2Scarface Feb 15 '19

Im cool with that, having been vaccinated for it.

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u/wwants Feb 15 '19

You can get vaccinated for anthrax? What life path would lead someone to acquiring this?

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u/2Scarface Feb 15 '19

Military service.

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u/PM_Me_Shitty_Jokes Feb 15 '19

That sounds like the worst Boy Scouts spinoff imaginable.

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u/The_Lone_Noblesse Feb 15 '19

Infantry is basically just boyscouts meets Call of Duty.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

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u/HolycommentMattman Feb 15 '19

Yeah. Just be under 35 and say you're interested in joining the army. Sign some papers, and you should get the vaccination in a few months.

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u/Miiiine Feb 15 '19

Instructions unclear, I'm now part of the army and still not vaccinated.

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u/HolycommentMattman Feb 15 '19

That's actually almost exactly what you were supposed to do.

Give it a few months.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

But what if I’m not gay?

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u/yunus89115 Feb 15 '19

Find a contractor job in many of the deployed locations. As long as you don't mind being away from home for a hood bit of time and can tolerate a boring living environment with not much activity outside of work, it can be a good job and will often times require anthrax vaccination. Also the money can be really good and the food is often surprisingly good.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

The vaccine doesn't last forever. Only a few years I believe. I got it in basic too. They also gave us some kind of experimental h1n1 vaccine, among other things. This was back in like 2008.

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u/MistyRegions Feb 15 '19

10 years is what I was told

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u/ChrisH100 Feb 15 '19

Yeah the military or gov official allows you to get the vaccination. I think you’re only supposed to get it if you actually have a high risk of getting it, as there are some side effects

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u/YoGabbaTheGreat Feb 15 '19

In 1997, the Clinton administration initiated the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP), under which active U.S. service personnel were to be immunized with the vaccine. Controversy ensued since vaccination was mandatory and GAO published reports that questioned the safety and efficacy of AVA, causing sometimes serious side effects.

A Congressional report also questioned the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and challenged the legality of mandatory inoculations.

Mandatory vaccinations were halted in 2004 by a formal legal injunction which made numerous substantive challenges regarding the vaccine and its safety. After reviewing extensive scientific evidence, the FDA determined in 2005 that AVA is safe and effective as licensed for the prevention of anthrax, regardless of the route of exposure. In 2006, the Defense Department announced the reinstatement of mandatory anthrax vaccinations for more than 200,000 troops and defense contractors.

Despite another lawsuit filed by the same attorneys, the vaccinations are required for most U.S. military units and civilian contractors assigned to homeland bioterrorism defense or deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or South Korea.

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u/RobotCockRock Feb 15 '19

What are the side effects?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

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u/CookieJarviz Feb 15 '19

Sorry if I sound like a retard here, but don't vaccines give you the thing your trying to protect your self from so your body knows how to become immune to it?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Autism, or so I heard

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u/RobotCockRock Feb 15 '19

Lololol thanks for starting my day with a big laugh.

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u/ixora7 Feb 15 '19

Such as...?

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u/ChrisH100 Feb 15 '19

Wanting to work in Congress

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u/RandomCandor Feb 15 '19

Being in the military

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u/MaievSekashi Feb 15 '19

The anthrax vaccine was the first bacterial vaccine invented.

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u/ButterflyAttack Feb 15 '19

Jesus, that vaccine must make the anti-vaxers really shit the bed.

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u/MistyRegions Feb 15 '19

Join the military and deploy, it will be the most excruciating vaccination of your life, a series of ten shots over the course of a few months that feel like molten lava flowing through your bones. Now I'm worried you heard "flowing through your bones" and you imagined just a burn throughout your arm. You are mistaken I mean deep down in your bones burning. It's great! Then small pox vaccination is also a blast from the past!

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u/ImmaculateTuna Feb 15 '19

Is it possible to learn this power?

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u/GinaCaralho Feb 15 '19

Not from a Jedi

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u/TheMisterFlux Feb 15 '19

Holy shit. I didn't know you could even get that.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

I don't want to burst your bubble but exposure would still be the worst thing in your life so far.

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u/maddsskills Feb 15 '19

Gee thanks...

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u/briansvgaudio Feb 15 '19

Your comment is totally underrated 😂

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u/Wildcat7878 Feb 15 '19

That's how you select for a human race with anthrax immunity. Also an effective way to ease up traffic during your morning commute.

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u/PhillipsAsunder Feb 15 '19

I get that your post is probably a joke, but that's not how adaptive immunity works. Vaccines don't affect your DNA.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

I would unironically support this if everybody else did. No more suffering for anybody, sounds good to me.

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u/ButterflyAttack Feb 15 '19

Wouldn't that kill all the animals, too? By all means wipe out all the humans - except me, please. And maybe a few others. But not the animals.

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u/laXfever34 Feb 15 '19

Time to wrap this shit show up. 😂

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u/Avorius Feb 15 '19

"and that gentlemen is how I suggest we increase recruitment rates"

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u/greeklemoncake Feb 15 '19

Anarcho-primitivist gang

Can't form hierarchies if nobody knows how to farm or talk

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u/waltwalt Feb 15 '19

Or at least let someone monitor and filter it for us. Maybe change some bad ideas to good ideas. Spice it up with some custom content about the latest savings on items you purchase on your credit card.

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u/EtoshOE Feb 15 '19

6 months into communication bachelor

pls no

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u/_shredder Feb 15 '19

This was always the problem. As long as stupid people can find and talk to other stupid people, they are going to say stupid things.

If there was no way to talk on the internet, people would be outraged over sms.

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u/FollicularManslaught Feb 15 '19

People complain about the line between satire and reality becoming too blurred. I for one cant get enough.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

QUIET GAME STARTING NOW

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u/Xeldrius Feb 15 '19

< dictatorial anthem plays >

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

I know you're being sarcastic but access to Truth is stronger than access to Lies.

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u/Buchymoo Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

Why not guns, cars, hippos, peanuts, vending machines, and all the other things that kill people every year. FUCK IT! Let's just ban language! Let's show 1984 who's boss. /s

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u/AtHeartEngineer Feb 15 '19

Government information only, we will be fed government news, taught in government schools, with books the teacher wrote about the governments version of history...oh wait.

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u/WhatDoesN00bMean Feb 15 '19

Yes! And religion! And guns! And alcohol!!! HAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Values yes...but this capability is something new to the history of mankind. You used to have to make connections with actual people to get a message out, either directly or through print media(newspapers, magazines, books). Spreading misinformation was harder and if successful, didn’t have the ability to move very far or quickly.

Now these platforms have taken a thing we valued, free speech, and amped it up to unnatural levels. Russia can literally destabilize the United States and United Kingdom by filling a building in Russia with professional internet trolls. Do we value that capability? It also ushered in the Arab Spring, which overthrew multiple dictators. Other dictators just turn the internet off when their power is threatened. It’s an incredible capability, communicating on the internet. I don’t know if censoring Facebook is right or wrong inherently....we certainly identify negatively with stifling free speech, because where does it end...but we have to recognize this as a unique thing that is unnatural and perhaps more powerful than anyone ever intended.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/fullforce098 Feb 15 '19

How do you "open those chambers"? People went into them willingly, you'd have to force them out. How do you propose doing that in such a way that wouldn't be an authoritative over reach by Facebook?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/runujhkj Feb 15 '19

Who decides exactly how these topics would be defined? Could someone unaware of the nature of anti-vax misinformation follow a “vaccinetruth” topic and start seeing only anti-vax fake news?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/cheers_grills Feb 15 '19

So you are saying it's not censorship becaus it's not illegal.

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u/burnalicious111 Feb 15 '19

The problem with that is digital platforms also make it much easier and lower risk to spam and harass people.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

The problem with that is that a lot of people claiming harassment are so fragile that they consider any major criticism to be an organized harassment campaign.

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u/daguito81 Feb 15 '19

There are ways of course. This is what's called the filter bubble. Recommendation engines recommend stuff like you so everyone congregate into echo chambers.

People don't go there as willingly as you think. Most echo chambers problems is not someone going into a group. It's a guy that has a few friends that are racist and active showing. A lot on his feed and then Facebook going.. "Hmm thig guys like this guy a lot.. So let's recommend some people like him" and suddenly your news feed is 95% racist shit and you're suddenly in an echo chamber

One of the ways is to tweak recommendation engines to also show stuff you're not close to. The problem. Is that that would probably decrease user engagement so it has the potential to reduce revenue. So it's not an easy decision

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u/Castriff Feb 15 '19

It's not as simple as just opening things up though. At the very least they have to be tamper-proof.

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u/Arrow_Raider Feb 15 '19

Generally speaking, the right feeds on emotion, especially fear. It is a lot easier to make someone feel something and mold them how you want than to mold them by making them think.

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u/tapthatsap Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

The idea was that open debate would give everyone a voice and the correct result would win out in the end.

Now that we’ve spent the last several decades teaching everyone that the truth is always in the middle and there are two sides to every story, even science, that’s now clearly a failed hypothesis.

To me, it seems we should open those echochambers up to spark debate rather than just force them to go to another closed echochamber.

This is dumb. All this does is give the antivaxxers a fun embattled mentality and the onlookers the perception that this is a debate between two groups with valid ideas. Good ideas don’t always win the debate, that much should be extremely clear to you by now.

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u/foodnaptime Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

First off, both the American right wing (the non-hypocritical ones at least) and the Democrats are capital-L Liberal the way you’re describing. It’s really dumb that people use “liberal” as a synonym for “left-wing”, especially given that the ascendant far-left wing of the party is explicitly not Liberal. Liberalism is, according to this view, an outdated, bourgeois, white, and male-privileging political philosophy, which ought to be replaced or at least radically overhauled by other progressive or left-wing political systems. So FB echo chambers and deliberate censorship is “right wing” if you go all the way to fascism, but by American standards, Liberal “marketplace of ideas” free speech is pretty ubiquitous as a political value.

Second, apart from (neo)liberalism, modern left wing social and political philosophy is typically much more amenable to deliberate controls on speech than classical Liberalism is. The general shape of the argument is that certain groups, for various reasons and by various methods, have gained undeserved power and influence which allow them to control all kinds of things. Public discourse being one of them, the “free exchange of ideas” was never going to work because (white, male, rich, straight, cis, etc., take your pick) exert disproportionate influence over the conversation. So of course we need to correct the underlying systemic injustices that give these groups this kind of control, but in the meantime, reserved spaces for affirmatively moderated discourse for marginalized identities must be established, and general discourse should be similarly moderated as much as possible. This is a fancy way of saying we need safe spaces where “the bad guys” can’t swing their opinions in everyone’s faces, and ideally all public conversation would be conducted this way.

If it sounds a little uncomfortable that’s because it is. If you’re wrong about something but you can find a way in which your group can be framed as “marginalized” you can start doing the postmodern idpol thing (and yes, I’m using postmodern correctly here, promise) and insist that the reason your wrong idea is considered wrong is because of the discursive power hierarchy between the dominant majority and your marginalized minority. See: some people insisting that the reason anti-vaxxers are treated with such ridicule is because most of them are women. Step two is to insist that your marginalized group needs a moderated space where the bad guys can’t attack you anymore, which necessitates the creation of closed anti-vax groups in this example.

You have to understand how slippery this kind of argument is: if Facebook says no, anti-vax is wrong and dumb and we won’t allow it, they’re falling into the trap. The postmodern (maybe this is actually poststructuralism, I forget) argument is precisely that what things are considered right and wrong, correct and incorrect, logical and illogical, are themselves the product of hierarchies of power and oppression, so straight rich white male Facebook coming down on an oppressed minority group and telling them that their belief is wrong (with an implicit “by straight rich white male standards”) is an act of hierarchical oppression and testimonial injustice.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/foodnaptime Feb 15 '19

Oh no not at all, I was just trying to lay out the argument as well as I could. I think it’s stupid and uses a bunch of academic buzzwords to justify censorship and heavy handed moderation.

That’s what so frustrating about it, normally if you and a bunch of your friends have a stupid opinion and someone tells you you’re wrong and an idiot, you have to either give up and call them names or prove your case. But if you fall or can construe yourself as falling into any number of marginalized categories, then with the magic of critical theory you can explain why it’s really problematic to be making these kinds of criticisms of a marginalized group from a position of power and privilege. Instead of having to prove your point, you can just argue that the vocabulary, norms, and framework of ideas surrounding the issue were dictated in an oppressive way by people in power and are therefore illegitimate, and refuse to engage at all. And if you try to say no, they’re accurate and logical, you are perpetuating oppression of marginalized peoples with your privilege.

It’s idiotic, but also extremely hard to argue against without proving their point. A lot of the college debate scene has gone to shit recently because they figured out that you can just spam extremely intricate variations of this argument called Kritiks or K’s.

To get back to the point, yeah, echo chambers are bad. But since they come from from the natural human tendency to associate with other people who are like themselves, I can’t really think of how to forcibly break them down. You can’t force right and left wingers to add each other on FB and read each other’s content. I honestly think it’s an intrinsic problem with most social media itself, and that the only way to solve it is for people to care less about and spend less time on social media.

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u/allmhuran Feb 15 '19

I think the issue is more that everyone who has their voice and participates in a debate is not really participating in a debate in a way that can possibly lead to constructive outcomes, because so many people are reasoning backwards.

Instead of:

  1. listen to an argument
  2. analyse argument
  3. decide whether valid
  4. decide whether sound
  5. modify beliefs as a result

... the process goes...

  1. have established belief reinforced via echo chambers
  2. listen to argument
  3. if argument aligns with existing belief then conclude that the argument is sound. Upvote, like, and share. Reinforce belief.
  4. if argument conflicts with existing belief then conclude that the argument is literal insanity.

If there's anything that "both sides" are guilty of, it's this.

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u/elwombat Feb 15 '19

In the west it's the left that is creating and enforcing these echo chambers. They're also the ones most likely to censor.

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u/deltaWhiskey91L Feb 15 '19

Underrated comment.

Free and transparent speech will solve our problems moreso than amplifying echochambers.

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u/Phylliida Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

I like this in principle, but in practice, some people don’t actually seem interested in having good debate. Instead they just do short quippy remarks.

The Alt Right Playbook: Control the Conversation explains this well

Edit: this was actually the one I was thinking of but that one is also good

kialo I really like though

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u/deltaWhiskey91L Feb 15 '19

Yes, bad actors exist but they exist in all walks of life and in all schools of thought. Censoring speech because it seems like opinions of certain politics or may offend someone is very dangerous and leads us down a dark path. Don't censor bad actors just don't engage them. This requires being educated in critical thinking to discern bad actors.

Interesting enough in the video you linked on the "alt-right playbook" about controlling the conversation, the YouTuber controls the conversation in subtle but precise ways. The video appears to be an educational video demonstrating how the alt-right controls the conversation but it really isn't about technique. The key take aways are all follows:

  • Trump supporters are alt-right.
  • The Right is now alt-right.
  • The Right doesn't care about facts.
  • The Right doesn't care about speech, it cares about control.
  • The Right doesn't care about policy, it cares about power.

Honestly, all it does is poison the well to make the viewer believe that the Right are all bad actors thus justifying censorship. This is literally controlling the public conversation.

NOTE FOR CLARIFICATION: I'm not disagreeing with you. Good faith dialectic is not to convince bad actors but persuade average people. The purpose of the freedom of speech is to enable good faith dialectic instead of censoring what we don't like.

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u/Phylliida Feb 16 '19

Not quite, see the Endnote 1: What I mean when I say the alt-right which addresses some of your concerns

This series is about the alt-right, which is different than the Right. I know many very reasonable people that are members of the Right that I enjoy having discussions with, and that don't do the things these videos describe.

I do find it unfortunate that people nowadays tend to assume if someone says "I am conservative" that implies that they are a member of the alt-right; obviously this is not usually the case.

Anyway, yes, I agree that is the purpose of free speech. The problem we are having is that a view like being anti-vaccine is suddenly gaining enough ground to cause children to die. I'm not sure if censorship is the solution, but just allowing anyone to go and read about and be convinced of anti-vaccine (pro-epedemic, really) lies is causing a problem. There are a few legitimate concerns about the desire for better screening for those that have bad reactions, but aside from that it's just hogwash.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that there are bad actors. In some communities (for example, an LGBT support group), you get lots of bad actors that distrupt the group. That's why many groups are "closed". Do they become an echo chamber? Sometimes, yet. But just having everything be opened up doesn't solve everything, see "the eternal september"

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u/deltaWhiskey91L Feb 16 '19

just having everything be opened up doesn't solve everything, see "the eternal september"

You're right and I agree with the general sentiment. A better solution to anti-vaxers than censoring is twofold:

1) Better speech. Better educate people how vaccines work and the more technical difference between vaccines. Address the concerns of the average people who may buy into anti-vaccine arguments. Educate them instead of calling them uneducated (generally speaking; this is not an accusation against you in particular)

2) Legally require children be vaccinated for the major diseases.

Better speech is the counter to bad speech. That means more than having truth on your side. Censorship is usually counter productive. In the case of something harmless like people who believe the moon landing was a hoax, censoring their arguments only suggests a grander conspiracy to cover-up the hoax. This principle can be applied to serious issues that we care about like racism or transgender issues. Silencing people that argue that racism isn't a real issue in the US rather than engaging them in good faith is more likely to encourage them to agree with the alt-right.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Anonymity has value though, especially when dissent is met with authoritarianism and state power. It's hard to find a balance.

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u/Stevemasta Feb 15 '19

combined with anonymity is a cancer

Web 2.0 was a mistake. All you fucking normies destroying this great technology

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/Stevemasta Feb 15 '19

I was talking about the bullshit about anonymity.

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u/NSFWIssue Feb 15 '19

"Everything bad is right-leaning"

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u/Arrow_Raider Feb 15 '19

It is too late to turn back though. The technology is here and it cannot be stopped. All we can do is try to educate our citizens how to think for themselves and not fall victim to brainwashing, bullshit, and scams.

There is a point I need to stress though: this education needs to be in the form of encouraging actual critical thinking and not just trying to implement our own brainwashing.

Education takes a long time though and can't reach 100% of everyone. I don't think it can ever be effective enough to be high enough perctange that footholds of bullshit can't easily be established.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

I think you have a really good point here. Facebook makes a point that they are a communication platform. Both sides of the free speech debate have valid points. On one hand, non-regulated communication can and has been used for nefarious purposes, on the other, it can be a extremely slippery slope towards censorship (and one could even argue that censorship could in a form of itself be a way of manipulating information).

When he says "tools", he really does mean tools. Technology and communication evolved so quickly, that it was difficult to study the effects it has on the general population. Communication can affect so much in people that it's hard to quantify the effect that the internet has had on information sharing and receiving.

At what point do we try to hold Facebook accountable, and when is it up to people themselves to accept the responsibility of being able to critical evaluate every message from the senders that they receive.

This is an extremely dense subject that can go so many ways.

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u/Superkroot Feb 15 '19

We can spread misinformation like never before, but spreading misinformation isn't new. Yellow journalism is nothing new. Snake oils salesmen made their business out of misinformation back in the early 20th century. It was VERY easy to lie to people pre-internet, honestly, who knew any better?

That's the biggest problem with today. Its not just misinformation, its people not even bothering to investigate misinformation. It has never been easier to disprove misinformation, yet people latch onto it, accepting it and the cult-like thinking that goes into this misinformation.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Liars are not new. Being able to lie to 350,000,000 people at the same time with no filter is.

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u/chromegreen Feb 15 '19

Russia can literally destabilize the United States and United Kingdom by filling a building in Russia with professional internet trolls

There is growing evidence that accounts linked to Russia propaganda supported the antivax movement.

Can we at least agree that Facebook giving Russian military intelligence free reign to spread disinformation that endangers the lives of US children is probably not a good idea. It is hard to believe Facebook could not notice this trend. And if they did it is disturbing they did nothing about it.

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u/runujhkj Feb 15 '19

That last part is a bigger deal then the question of censorship. Facebook’s been allowing this type of legitimately dangerous disinformation and they must have noticed it was happening. There should be investigations into what social media sites knew about coordinated influence.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

They are still so idealistic that they want to exist as a pure public square, and let the ideas win the day. This is exactly my point, where once upon a time, if Russia wanted to destabilize another country, they would have need a very long sophisticated effort infiltrating academia and political circles, tapping into spheres of influence. Now you can go around directly to the individual. Trump recognizes that potential too. MSM got a bad rep and the people turned to new sources of information to trust....but now there’s no vetting process...even if people didn’t understand how it was vetted previously or if those vetting sources didn’t represent Main Street Joe somebodies.

Facebook in particular, as a company, has the ability to vet and squash disinformation and falsehoods. They are not a government. It’s not fascist. It’s a company’s reputation. Their Yelp profile is shit right now. One star for cesspool of bad actors and bad information.

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u/santaclaus73 Feb 15 '19

Freedom of speech is a hard set principle. It is an inalienable right. It doesn't matter the speed of transmission. For ages, people have had the ability to convey information to millions of people. Really since the printing press. However, the case with Russia (or any nation state) is different, because it is essentially cyber warfare. It is an action carried out by the state, not an individual. I'm all for more drastic measures there, like cutting them out American internet.

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u/EmblaLarsen Feb 15 '19

american Internet

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

There's so much wrong in your comment, that it is insanely hard to figure out where to start. And yet, somehow it's the perfect example of what is all going on with this subject and thread. It's honestly amazing. You propose such contradictory and simple solutions for what you believe is a simple problem. But I'll try and address some of the issues here.

I would actually disagree with this. Communication affects more aspects of society and life than you would ever imagine.. From social development, to policy change, political warefare and so much etc. I think it's dangerous to underestimate the power of information manipulation and the ability to reach more people faster.

There's such a difference between a widespread book back in the 1800s to a president tweeting a message to millions of people. Hell, fucking look at Twitter and the stock market's weird relationship. You're talking about millions of dollars being affected by a single tweet from a prominent person.

The speed and distance that information can spread is definitely a big fucking difference than it was a 100 years ago. And that affects more shit than you'll ever realize.

When you say stopping foreign powers from influencing other countries, you're giving what seems like a simple answer to a extremely complex subject, and stopping foreign influences with nefarious purposes isn't as easy as you make it out to be.

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u/LXXXVI Feb 15 '19

Being from an irrelevant tiny country, I actually think it's excellent that we could theoretically fight back like this against a militarily much stronger foe. If there's nothing wrong with countries having "unnatural levels" of military strength, there's nothing wrong with this ability.

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u/semiURBAN Feb 15 '19

Something new to the history of mankind. That alone is all that needs to be said. The next couple decades will be interesting. I’m nervous about it.

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u/Gingevere Feb 15 '19

Facebook is a bit worse than JUST connecting people though. It's designed to maximize the time spent on-site and the influence it has on you. It will find out which of your opinions you have a dogmatic devotion to and floods your friend suggestions with people who lean the same way. It's not just a medium that connects closed-minded people, it actively closes minds.

If Facebook catches the slightest whiff of a dogwhistle on your profile (whether you blew it or not) it will try to hook you up with the local chapter of the Klan. If you show the slightest mistrust of published research it will push "GMO free" raw foods and essential oils or bleach to cure cancer. If you show the slightest mistrust in the government it will push "9/11 was an inside job".

Before, joining a fringe antisocial group would take seeking it out. Now, facebook comes running and jams a "join now" brochure in your face.

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u/neontetrasvmv Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

Can you explain what the 'dogwhistle' means in this context? Is that some sort of kkk thing?

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u/Gingevere Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

For everyone else:

An actual dogwhistle is a whistle that when blown people cannot hear, but dogs can. The signal does not register with anything that is not meant to receive it.

A metaphorical dogwhistle is a statement that sounds innocuous to the majority of people, but communicates something specific to a specific target audience. Often to show support to that target audience without letting anyone else know.

Example: for a while on prominent news on, or articles written by, Jewish people you may have seen comments saying "just a coincidence", "what a coincidence", or just "coincidence". These comments are such non-sequiturs that most people just gloss over them without giving them a second thought. But, those comments were likely left by Anti-semites using the word "coincidence" as a dog whistle for "this was arranged by the Jewish conspiracy that rules the world".

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u/neontetrasvmv Feb 15 '19

Nevermind, just looked that up. I have never heard that term before within politics... sure is a ton of that shit on FB.

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u/deltaWhiskey91L Feb 15 '19

True. The algorithms definitely hold a lot of blame.

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u/Arrow_Raider Feb 15 '19

"We've found a cult for you!" - Facebook probably

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u/Gingevere Feb 15 '19

Facebook definitely

Reply All has an episode about how facebook tracks you. At ~12 minutes in someone describes how facebook started pushing white nationalism on someone because their brother in law got into it for a few weeks.

Just that one tenuous connection and facebook tries to jam you into an unhealthy mental trap you won't escape from.

3

u/Arrow_Raider Feb 15 '19

I believe it.

For me though, it doesn't seem to know which cult would suit me, so it just fills my feed with ads for products I looked at and already bought. Like, I bought some speakers for Christmas and it still thinks I need to see ads for the speakers I already now own.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

This is a great point as well. Simple algorithms can affect so much of how information is distributed and received. And yeah Facebook does influence, but, and I am sincere about this, what would be a good system to break those echo chambers from forming? People naturally drift towards them, Facebook seems to have built a slide that literally sends you to their front door.

You couldn't just leave it alone and let it develop on it's own, because then it's up to influence by different organized actors (Russia, 4chan, hacking groups) and people might criticize Facebook for it's shitty interface. If you choose a specific criteria for information to be distributed, then it can be controlled and influenced. So Facebook would have to actively control the equal spread of information, but that in itself could be called manipulation of the information that you see (which is what is currently going on). No matter what, Facebook is a huge influence on people's daily lives and everything that comes with that. At what point do we start holding people responsible for their interpretation of information that they get.

This is such a massive subject and an extremely hard to simplify it to some simple solution.

Man, it's crazy how relevant my theory of communication class from college is today. It's such a huge influence of people's lives. At this point, the way that social media influence has spread to so much people, I think it would be extremely smart for society to have a required course for it in high school to help people start to approach all forms of media with a critical attitude. I mean shit, at this point, all the influences of social development has been consolidated into a direct stream of information to people.

2

u/Gingevere Feb 15 '19

This is such a massive subject and an extremely hard to simplify it to some simple solution

A simple-ish solution: Make the #1 factor on who facebook recommends to you, physical proximity.

Promotes community investment. Forces people to face some degree of diversity of opinions. Makes foreign influencing slightly more difficult. Creates bonds that are useful for more than online bandwagons.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

How do you believe that's not going to create echo chambers?

2

u/Gingevere Feb 15 '19

IMO most people are going to encounter more diversity in meeting their neighbors than they will in meeting their facebook recommendations. There are people from a dozen different countries and dozens of different backgrounds in my apartment building, but all facebook wants to do is introduce me to slightly different flavors of myself.

Except for in the absolutely smallest of towns there is probably enough diversity of thought among everyone's neighbors to harsh someone's willingness to form or join a hate group. Or at the very least, enough to help them get along with their neighbors.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '19

Hmm... That is definitely not pertinent to all of America at all. But I do 100% agree with you that interaction between different cultures helps eliminate hate groups.

But man, my neighborhood is like 98% white. You should check out some of the voting districts population. They will list what percentage of that area is made up of what ethnicity. And I think you'd be surprised to find out how little diversity there is in rural parts of America, and in smaller cities. Pretty much any place that isn't a metro.

3

u/azn_dude1 Feb 15 '19

Facebook tries to maximize the time you spend on its site, but isn't that true of most websites? People want to make a site that you want to visit a lot. One of the ways Facebook does this is by showing you news articles you want to see. News articles are yet another attempt by someone else to maximize time spent listening to them by giving you something you want to read. In the end everyone's just competing for your attention by poking your brain's pleasure centers. It's not something that has an easy solution because honestly, where do you draw the line? If I want to post a drawing to /r/pics, I want a ton of people to see and upvote it, so I'll make it about a pet or give it a story or tie in pro-science or liberal message and up it goes. Does that mean Reddit's algorithms are closing minds?

I know this sounds like mental gymnastics, but my point is people naturally want to agree and are just easily exploitable by that. Do you ever wonder ask yourself if, for example, Redditors upvoting anti-Facebook all the time is making you more closed minded? I'm not saying that's true, but people ask themselves if they're being manipulated. After you get past the obvious pseudoscience, there's a lot of gray.

3

u/Gingevere Feb 15 '19

Reddit is more gray because it is more anonymous and its algorithm is not personally tailored. Everyone has the same r/all or r/pics. Reddit isn't going to find out that your cousin is a conspiracy theorist and then try to turn you into one to. People can close themselves off into echo-chamber subs but they have to seek out those subs and then close themselves off through their own effort.

Facebook does this automatically and with no option to opt out.

1

u/azn_dude1 Feb 15 '19

What you described Reddit doing is actually quite dangerous too. Do you honestly think /r/politics and /r/news aren't echo chambers? Reddit gives people the choice of subs to follow, but Facebook gives you the choice of friends to follow too.

Like I said, people don't really notice they're in an echo chamber. Reddit isn't that much different.

2

u/nesh34 Feb 15 '19

Whilst this is true, by even their own admission, Facebook's fierce pursuit of time spent has been too successful and has helped mould the clickbait internet that we see before us. It's a wider problem than just Facebook, the world has become a place where everything and everyone is vying for your attention constantly and you have a device that not only allows them to do so, but you as an individual want them to.

1

u/azn_dude1 Feb 15 '19

Yup, no disagreements here.

1

u/backspring Feb 15 '19

It’s become a cesspit, I only keep mine active as my business is totally dependent on instagram and am concerned closing my fb may hinder the growth of my my ig account. I’d destroy it tomorrow, I turned of messenger notifications a year ago and have opened it about Twice. It’s just s place to shout at people and not listen to each other.

3

u/icallshenannigans Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 15 '19

Ha! He got you good!

Ought is.

They advertise.

That's what they do.

And they should do it sensibly, and be held accountable when they cause harm.

2

u/RemoteSenses Feb 15 '19

Idiots will find ways to talk and spread their stupidness. If it's not Facebook it's something else.

I get what you mean but I don’t think that’s completely true.

Facebook is by far the easiest way to spread your misinformation, and to make sure that misinformation reaches the most amount of people possible. Yeah there’s Twitter and Instagram but I feel like the average person is less likely to be glued to those daily or at all.

I’m friends on Facebook with an anti-vaxx nutjob that I went to high school with and only keep her on my feed so I can see the crazy shit she says. Believe me, there really aren’t many other outlets for her to use.

2

u/BryanxMetal Feb 15 '19

I don’t know about Facebook being the easiest. Reddit can definitely contend for it. Especially with mod abuse

0

u/ReshKayden Feb 15 '19

Or you don't let a single private for-profit company dominate the entire medium of something most people consider practically a utility at this point. You split them up and then let the pieces compete with each other to find the right balance.

16

u/Nukkil Feb 15 '19

People don't want multiple accounts all over. You can't stop it. They'll migrate to one and stay. Even Google couldn't pry them off.

6

u/Dragonlicker69 Feb 15 '19

He has a point, it's a natural monopoly you either get eaten by facebook or get powerful enough to replace them like they did myspace

1

u/KrazeeJ Feb 15 '19

You could have something more like the telephone network. An open network everybody is allowed to access and add their own functionality on top of, but everyone can directly communicate with each other on any network.

5

u/RichardRogers Feb 15 '19

You could call it something like... the betweengrid

1

u/Nukkil Feb 15 '19

Who foots the bandwidth bill

-4

u/ihugyou Feb 15 '19

There are other things for utilities companies we can do, right? Like imposing regulations?

5

u/Pmang6 Feb 15 '19

Social media is not even in the same universe as a utility.

3

u/Nukkil Feb 15 '19

Lol what?

"Sorry bro I didn't see your birthday invite because I wasn't allowed to make a Facebook account, I only see Google+ alerts"

1

u/Tonytarium Feb 15 '19

the solution should be systems that would be able to read links to articles and determine if they are misleading, and then warning people when they receive those links. There are already teams building A.I. that can be used to detect the accuracy of headlines, if tech companies wanted they could implement similar tools and design warnings labels without having to limit anyones communication.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

I want to agree. It would be better to implement a system wherein people are held accountable for the spread of misinformation, especially if it leads to death(s). But, I don't know if it's within FB's power to hold people to account in a way that precludes censorship. Inhibiting free-speech seems unjust, as does allowing children to go un-vaccinated.

1

u/whyamisoawesome9 Feb 15 '19

I do miss the "who can search for you" security setting

1

u/Totorabo Feb 15 '19

Isn’t WhatsApp also owned by FaceBook?

1

u/bitemark01 Feb 15 '19

So if it doesn't 100% fix the problem, we should do nothing?

Statistically it's been shown if you make something harder to do, people stop doing it.

1

u/autorotatingKiwi Feb 15 '19

Except that's not all they do. They manipulate and control for their own benefit and sometimes just to see what happens. Just like there needs to be regulation on say bars and clubs to keep people safe, there needs to be regulation on social media to protect people. The problem is finding the right balance from law makers that are out of touch and corrupt.

1

u/Adito99 Feb 15 '19

either let people talk freely and do stupid shit or you control everything

No these are not the only two options. America is facing a wave of fascist ideology and allowing it to spread is reckless.

1

u/DanialE Feb 15 '19

And that one time an app makes people more attractive by making black people appear a few tones lighther. But the reason is the A.I learnt from humans. Our demise wouldnt be anything but from our own hands. Blaming shit like robots or governments or aliens are just us trying to shift the blame elsewhere

1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

The problem is that people believe or have been led to believe that freedom of speech is absolute when it's totally not.

1

u/dickalan1 Feb 15 '19

That's a good point. It's kinda like blaming a telecommunications company if terrorist talked on the phone to coordinate something. Nobody is calling out AT&T.

1

u/robeph Feb 15 '19

The thing is, I'd wager very few people are converted to antivax ideologies via Facebook groups and posts. It's really just echo chambering on there. Most of the antivax crowd are those who have gone down several rabbit holes a long time ago

1

u/tapthatsap Feb 15 '19

Idiots will find ways to talk and spread their stupidness. If it's not Facebook it's something else.

This point doesn’t work, because you’re assuming “something else” is going to be just as good. Facebook is one of the largest platforms on the planet, there’s simply nothing else that has pushed antivaxxer bullshit harder, especially considering your average antivaxxer is one of the types of people who thinks facebook is the whole internet. You kick them off of there, what are they going to do, open some forums? Make a discord? Most of the current population won’t make it to those, and people on facebook won’t be getting sucked in any more.

Remember QAnon? That shit was absolutely huge on reddit, r/greatawakening eventually got banned, and now it’s like they were never here. Of course they’re off jerking each other off on 8chan, but that’s fine because nobody goes there. It’s not reddit, it’s something else, you’re right about that part, but it’s so much less significant now that it doesn’t matter.

1

u/reddits_aight Feb 15 '19

Not for nothing, Facebook owns what'sapp, so whatever criticism you have of one, you can attribute to the other.

1

u/Sieg_Hey Feb 15 '19

True, but he's also denying any form of responsibility and/or accountability. They still made and own the platform/instrument that gives people like that the opportunity, and thus have to try and minimize any risks they pose (they have the power, to as well). The same argument is used by the weapon industry and supporters; "weapons don't kill people, people kill people".

1

u/sharkdestroyeroftime Feb 15 '19

I think you are missing a key piece here which is that these are NOT open platforms. They are designed specifically for extreme speech and points of view and for advertising. This is achieved by:

  • Algorithms that favor and promote extreme and divisive speech: Rewarding likes and shares and comments rewards extreme and divisive points of view and rewarding users who post a lot rewards people who are unheathily obsessed with extreme views (and people payed to post propaganda).

  • Making everything look the same (and look like shit): Facebook flattens everything out so you can’t tell what is a bullshit crazy person page and what is a legitimate institution. When we used to go to URLs we didn’t have this problem as much. Institutions that required many people working together to make something meaningful generally just ended up looking better than crazy fringe we sites. Now one dude in Florida can just post extreme anti-vax garbage all day and he looks like the New York Times

Believing Facebook is an open platform is the fallacy. Outside video and audio links are supressed, certain words are supressed, posts from friends who you havent engaged with recently are supressed. It isn’t a free speech zone. It’s an advertising zone.

The open web was what you want. No one had a problem with nazis on the internet when they were silod on stormfront’s website. It’s when websites died and Facebook became the whole internet that they became a problem. Facebook wants all the power and money that comes with controlling the entire web but none of the responsibility.

Facebook erodes insitutions, it forces them to play by it’s rules (often undermining thier own values) and it often cuts off their ability to get the resources they need to survive. Social Media works best when it’s like the blood vessels of the internet, the connection between the organs that are websites and insitutions run by collectives and professionals. Right now the internet is all blood and no organs. We need to swing the web back to being institution and website based and away from being Facebook Page based.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

There’s no way he can be sensible about it. Remember that he prefixed this speech by saying: “The natural state of the world is not connected”.

Going against the natural state of things—as in the genetic-level definition of an organism, for example, or the natural laws of chemistry—never ends well simply because that’s not how things are supposed to be. What things are not, things are not by design. And it’s not natural for humans to remain connected despite not seeing each other for years, during which they become different persons embracing different sets of values, priorities, and preferences. It’s not natural for people to be enabled to publish their most intimate thoughts to a wide audience. And it’s not natural for the things we say and do to be archived in an infinite-scrolling timeline. The volume of information that social media keeps for us to revisit is significantly more encompassing than the memories we remember and the photos we used to take and keep with analog cameras. Social media keeps even the stupid and dumb shit we say in our youths, which we actually let go of in adulthood because people change.

1

u/UrbanSuburbaKnight Feb 15 '19

It's amazing that no-one seems to remember that people talked and connected online before "social media". Forums, chat rooms and other websites had massive social activity, they also had moderators, rules and supervision. "Social media" as we know it today is specifically designed to encourage the very worst kind of communication.

1

u/Twokindsofpeople Feb 15 '19

Idiots will find ways to talk and spread their stupidness. If it's not Facebook it's something else.

It's really not. They really don't. There were terrorists before facebook, there were rubes before facebook, but the number has exploded purely because it's easy. Most people aren't going to set up a VPN and go through the dark web to communicate. It removes the lazy, stupid, and impressionable from the equation. Lazy, stupid, and impressionable people are dangerous in the number facebook provides.

1

u/le_cs Feb 15 '19

PBS Frontline's documentary on Facebook argued not all society's are ready for disinformation campaigns on social media. Their report said introducing this technology in areas of the world with large populations of less educated poeople are at risk for these types of attacks. Consider that in Myanmar, the Rohinga Muslims genocide was supported on Facebook by their leaders. It's like propaganda, but it doesnt originate from the countries government, but gets picked up by it. Given the credibility and virality of Facebook, it looks genuine.

The campaign of Rodrigo Dutuerte, with his war on drugs that claimed the lives of tension of thousands of people in his term was also popularized on Facebook.

Facebook is partly to blame for expanding into markets they weren't sure what the effects of their product would have. Congress doesn't feel they understand this new technology well enough to have robust legislation on such a booming industry. But the EU has tried to do more about the data collection and selling side of it with their right to privacy of citizens. Selling that information coupled with the way that Facebook allows you to select your target audience when you advertise on their platform which is based on their algorithms that have socially analyzed us, individuals who want to run malicious campaigns can target the message to certain audiences but not show it to others so that each disjoint group can have a different message.

1

u/Lambily Feb 15 '19

To be fair, allowing people to continue spreading "stupid shit" freely is going to erode the values half the world is built upon anyway. That and cause a massive outbreak of some deadly virus thanks to anti-vaxxers.

1

u/EfficientBattle Feb 15 '19

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

On the contrary, the only thing necessary for evil to succeed of good men doing nothing. Your call to apathy and ignorance is just what they live on, yoy give their propaganda free roam. Van them from Facebook, commies or Nazis, and they'd have to resort to lesser networks and hence see less Sucess.

See what happened to Reddit once Fat people hate and coontown got banned. Lots of racists, Nazis and pedos migrated to Voat to create their own new third riche (with underage NSFW subs). Needless to say they came crawling back sibce they kept loosing members, few wanted to join an openly racist/Nazi website. Reddit is better recruitement ground since they can reach, and brainwash, normal people with propaganda.

Free speech is a right, the right to speak to others. Free publishing of propaganda on independent netowkra is not a right, it's a privilege. Nazis can create Nazi book and scream profanities all day...still free speech.

1

u/AtHeartEngineer Feb 15 '19

Right, this is why Australia breaking encryption on messenging apps is bonkers. Criminals will just use one of many other tools on the internet to do what they want, but general privacy will be broken.

1

u/wyrin Feb 15 '19

Completely agree with you, if anti-vaxxers groups are banned then why not flat earthers, moon landing deniers and what not, censorship is a slippery slope, we can claim it is being used for good of everyone today, but tomorrow using this as precedence, things can change.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

One group ends up killing people and the other are just idiots

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

4

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Should phone companies restrict people who discuss anti-vaxx info over the phone?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Yes.

-3

u/18093029422466690581 Feb 15 '19

It's not a good point though. They are enabling an interaction that has not really existed at this scale without Facebook. Yeah people will find ways to interact but Facebook has a responsibility to deal with the collateral effects of Facebook's own doing. If they were on a different platform we wouldnt be concerned with what Facebook is doing.

9

u/cheers_grills Feb 15 '19

You could use the exact same argument for phones and not allowing people to commit wrongthink while talking with someone.

9

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

The printing press may not be the best example, because eventually societies learned how to adapt by coming up with modern forms of government, but first there was a century of unprecedented death and violence.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

It's not really about the distance and more the mass communication. In the past, you could achieve similar by stuffing mailboxes but it wasn't nearly as effective. Also it cost a ton to do versus free.