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Tim Cook Implies That Facebook's Business Model of Maximizing Engagement Leads to Polarization and Violence

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

On the very small margin maybe true but the baseline is that we had a year of violence which is the extreme exception to American politics. The violence was relatively limited to some big urban centers. Many people are passionate and interested but only a tiny portion are violent and there are a million better explanations than Facebook efforts at engagement.
 
yaxomoxay said:
You're right. I found out recently that FB can even be worse than Twitter.
Since it's on topic, this is what I wrote last Friday on the "What's on your mind" thread:

My news diet experiment is ongoing. Some findings so far... some surprising.

What I did:
  • I basically stopped watching and reading all news a few weeks ago, gradually.
  • I removed ALL political accounts from my IG, Twitter feed, and Facebook.
  • I removed reddit.
  • I removed the few youtube subscriptions to news.
  • I removed all the subscriptions to political podcasts.
  • I cleaned up the gmail account I use for newsletter. All of them (except one) go in the trash now before I even see them.
What I found so far:
  • I do NOT miss watching/reading the news. I mean, not at all. My mind seems way clearer.
  • It seems that so far I am still able to "receive" important news. I heard, through word of mouth or a random comment on social media, about some major events, or some executive orders.
  • It seems that I am mostly out of irrelevant stuff; I just do not have any clue about this or that gossip, although something still arrives to me.
  • To my huge surprise, not only twitter is bearable, but I actually like it. I have motivational follows, I have fitness follows, I have bookish follows, and a few friends in there. I am using it to motivate myself, and it's working. To my double surprise, so far I haven't seen a single political post, or a single controversial post on it since I started the test. (by controversy I mean something serious, I don't mean "Do you like director X?") I also noticed that the little non-political controversies on Twitter are not really as "violent" as the political ones.
  • Instagram can be a double edged sword. I have mostly fitness related follows... and a few IG-models :) I noticed that some controversy might happen on there, and I noticed that somehow political posts will appear. I also noticed that it's inevitable, but it's also very very contained to big events and just a few accounts for one or two days (e.g. after the presidential inauguration people, groups, heck even IG-models posted something political).
  • Instagram also makes me aware of some minor event via meme. I started observing many memes on Senator Sanders, and it took me two or three posts to understand what it was (many are incredibly hilarious) even if I haven't seen a single video, and even if I haven't seen the actual picture. Comments on IG can be really nasty, but mostly are good.
  • Some friends are way too political even on IG and I muted them.
  • Facebook is the worst. I did not expect this, but it's all about politics. After removing all the political follows, and all the news channels, and even many groups I used to follow, politics is there. Always. Every two posts there is politics + controversy. Many of the so called Friends talk about politics, even the unsuspecting ones, and they usually do it a-la PRSI style (@Scepticalscribe my comment on the Feedback forum comes from this observation).
  • It seems to me that most of the controversies on IG and FB come from a small % of accounts (more on FB than IG), while Twitter is the opposite: most of the good stuff comes from a small % of accounts.
So far, very interesting experiment. I'll let you know!

(this post is 100% apolitical)
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After being a political junkie for years I did the same 6 months ago. Don’t miss it and life is better. I am not easily excitable so I don’t need to know where to go protest and all I do is vote (when I do that) so I didn’t lose anything. Except anxiety about the lack of education of my fellow citizens and now I can put that out of my mind more easily without constant reminders.
 
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ikramerica said:
Except there is no unfiltered news. There never has been. it’s either biased or uninformed.

MacRumors articles are biased, even if only slightly so, based on what they choose to quote, and what they choose to report.
Your local news station reporting on the Mac is usually uniformed.

Most reporters are assigned to a topic because that’s what the editor told them to write about. Then they consult experts who became experts due to their bias. And reporters who are the “tech editor,” for example, will have inherent biases that impact their choices.

So how about reading memes instead of news? Well, just like the news, your first exposure will irreparable shape your POV about the underlying topic, and the next memes will possibly expand your understanding. But it obviously won’t give you the details.

But for at least a generation, the details of politics have been hidden from the public as much as possible. I remember in 2008 during the Presidential primaries, news reports wouldn’t report on WHAT the candidates said or did on the campaign trail, just WHERE they were that day and how many people showed up. It was before FB really took off, but it was a contest of follows and likes without context. And that is easily manipulated by news coverage.
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So confused—I was quoted here from something I didn't say . . . I'm not sure who said it.
 
diamornte said:
Maybe it's time for Tim to tell us about Apple's version of Facebook?
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iMessage, FaceTime, news app. This allows you to keep in touch with the people who matter most in your life, while surfacing relevant news with the help of human curation as compared to machine learning.
 
tgwaste said:
Yet Facebook remains in the App Store and Parler is still gone. Even though we now know that most of the planning was done on Facebook and Twitter.

Apple is right on privacy but we all know their reasons for doing this is Bottom line and nothing to do with its Users. Removing Facebook would hurt its bottom line as people would move to Android to get Facebook back. Apple is as greedy and manipulative as ever.
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Always strikes me odd when I see these sort of black and white, dichotomous type arguments.

It seems perfectly plausible that Apple could think about their bottom line, and genuinely care about privacy, and do those two things simultaneously.
 
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yaxomoxay said:
I don't necessarily disagree with the above, but I'd like to take Afghanistan off the (good) list above. Afghanistan was the result of a direct hit on US soil (9/11). We can discuss and analyze forever how it was handled, but it does not belong with the other countries mentioned above.
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OBL was a Saudi by birth, upbringing and background, (not Afghan) as were most of those who flew the planes that committed those atrocities.

The Afghans in Government at the time, the Pashtun dominated Taliban, erred, in allowing themselves to become captive to their own traditions of boundless hospitality when they (stupidly) offered Bin-Laden sanctuary, informed, I suspect, by some take on the old idea of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'.
 
tgwaste said:
Yet Facebook remains in the App Store and Parler is still gone. Even though we now know that most of the planning was done on Facebook and Twitter.

Apple is right on privacy but we all know their reasons for doing this is Bottom line and nothing to do with its Users. Removing Facebook would hurt its bottom line as people would move to Android to get Facebook back. Apple is as greedy and manipulative as ever.
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I didnt dedicate a lot of brain cells to what happened with Parler but I got the impression that FB and Twitter banned those users because they were nuts and encouraging sedition. So, they went to a platform that condoned / encouraged more outrage and crazy plots. Other concerned (and arguably sane) people felt it was too dangerous and damaging to society to let it continue to exist (kinda like FB is still, yes) and decided to turn it off. That's what I would like to think vs some conspiracy, but I could be wrong.

Could you imagine a world where Apple booted FB? At first everyone would be upset. Then after the 2 week detox, imagine how many people would feel happier, more alive, more optimistic, and more connected with those souls in the same room as them?
 
obamtl said:
Facebook is an immensely useful tool, it's just being driven in a direction that I think may now be doing more harm than good.
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Have you watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix yet? It all started with good intentions until greed took over.
 
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applicious84 said:
America and Americans have been like this long before FB. Giant corporations, including
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You could take it a step further and say it's a problem with capitalism, not Americanism but yes, we all have the capacity to be hypocrites, America and Apple included.

I just think Apple is the lesser evil of all the other tech companies right now. Though, Microsoft seems to be looking pretty neutral these days.
 
I still don't get how Facebook is polarizing. You use it with your friends. Complain about Twitter or Reddit instead.

The problem with FB is mainly that it's addictive and time-wasting, but for many people, so is the iPhone. And Facebook ultimately makes nearly all its money from advertising, making it probably a net negative. Overall I like Apple as a company more.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
OBL was a Saudi by birth, upbringing and background, (not Afghan) as were most of those who flew the planes that committed those atrocities.

The Afghans in Government at the time, the Pashtun dominated Taliban, erred, in allowing themselves to become captive to their own traditions of boundless hospitality when they (stupidly) offered Bin-Laden sanctuary, informed, I suspect, by some take on the old idea of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'.
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Yes, I know that OBL was Saudi, but it’s virtually irrelevant as far as the retaliation to his attack goes.

I mean, if I join a militia in Texas - where I live - and attack the Pentagon I don’t expect retaliation on Milan (where I grew up). The point is that the Afghan war was a direct response to a direct attack, which can’t be said about the other proxy wars listed in the original post.
 
I hear Facebook saying that disclosing their tracking is a problem [for them] and countering with “iMessages exists”.

I see them getting desperate. I like it.
 
It's really amazing that a CEO of a private company now talks about things that should be the purview of a politician and that a private company wields so much influence in our lives.
 
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nylon said:
He's 100% correct on this issue. Social media has become a doomsday machine. The Algorithms are designed to inflame not to inform.
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Watch "The Social Dilemma" for a lot of info about exactly how this all works. But yes, in essence, nothing about truth or fact really matters. I expect, for society to survive, we really are going to have to figure out a way to limit the self-reinforcing disinformation machine that we've built. Yes, it was around before, with Fox New, and plenty of regional newspapers being so ultra-conservative that what they printed (still print in many areas) were (are) tantamount to outright lies; but now we have a myriad of systems in place that allow all types of utterly false beliefs to propagate as if they had validity. It's not good, it's not even safe. It's probably not sane.
 
canhaz said:
Always strikes me odd when I see these sort of black and white, dichotomous type arguments.

It seems perfectly plausible that Apple could think about their bottom line, and genuinely care about privacy, and do those two things simultaneously.
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Well said.
 
Lack of independent thinking if the cause of the flight to tribalism, polarization, and violence. Platforms to not cause these things, the people using them do. Any submission to the contrary is determinism.
 
And FB doesn't violate antitrust laws filleting their user base? Selling their secrets? They are far too big, and far too powerful. They should have died the same way MySpace has. Disgraced and toxic...
 
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