Evidence is Piling Up That Facebook Can Incite Racial Violence (technologyreview.com)

Higher use of the world's dominant social network has now been strongly linked with more attacks on refugees in Germany. From a report: Greater use, greater violence: Specifically, in towns where "per-person Facebook use rose to one standard deviation above the national average," attacks on refugees "increased by about 50 percent," the New York Times reported today, citing a University of Warwick study. Researchers there carried out a detailed analysis of more than 3,000 incidents in Germany over a two-year period. Crucially, the link held true regardless of the city's size, political leanings, or economic status -- and didn't correlate with general patterns of internet use. Those findings strengthen the case that using Facebook in particular can be a driving mechanism of greater violence.

Greater scrutiny: That's more bad news for the embattled social network, which has long portrayed itself as a benevolent company driven by a mission to draw the world closer together. But researchers recently found that coordinated hate speech and propaganda on the site helped fuel violence in Myanmar. And last year, Facebook itself eventually acknowledged that Russian agents had posted tens of thousands of inflammatory posts -- which reached tens of millions of people -- before and after the 2016 presidential election, in a massive campaign to deepen divisions in the United States.

Comments

No kidding

[timholman]

Evidence is Piling Up That Facebook Can Incite Racial Violence

The entire purpose of Facebook is to monetize having people at each others' throats ... because it increases engagement, and makes Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's shareholders that much richer. Of course Facebook is inciting racial violence, along with political violence, criminal violence, school violence, and any other violence you can think of. If money can be made from it, Facebook will provide more of it.

I have friends who have stopped speaking to each other because of Facebook. It will only get worse, because Wall Street demands higher returns from the company, which means .... more violence.

Re:No kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence is Piling Up That Facebook Can Incite Racial Violence

The entire purpose of Facebook is to monetize having people at each others' throats ... because it increases engagement, and makes Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's shareholders that much richer. Of course Facebook is inciting racial violence, along with political violence, criminal violence, school violence, and any other violence you can think of. If money can be made from it, Facebook will provide more of it.

I have friends who have stopped speaking to each other because of Facebook. It will only get worse, because Wall Street demands higher returns from the company, which means .... more violence.

Complete and utter bullshit.

Facebook is not inciting violence. What you are seeing is an unintended side effect of people having, for the first time in human history, the ability to instantly communicate with millions of other people, allowing then to speak out against things going on in the world that they are unhappy about, such as civilized countries being overrun with third world filth.

This is not a defense of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg and everyone associated with Facebook can fuck off and die for all I care. But blaming Facebook for "hate speech" and "attacks on refugees in Germany" is simply using them as a convenient scapegoat and ignoring the real problems faced by society.

Re:No kidding

[swb]

I think you and the parent are both kind of right and your opinions less contradictory than you think.

I can remember when Facebook was pretty new and the Facebook newsfeed was a chronological list of your freinds' posts. Then they started manipulating it in various ways, people would comment on not seeing some posts by people they used to, then the flood of companies, advertising and so forth until the 'newsfeed' was a totally manipulated entity where "engagement" was somehow a barometer of clickbaitiness and controversy.

I think Facebook mostly aligned the newsfeed with how wound up people got, their version of engagement. As it turns out, others found out that with enough effort you could use that to push controversial issues on Facebook since their controversy was likely to result in high levels of "engagement".

Dislike of refugees in Germany is just another controversy that Facebook's system manages to amplify. And it's not that people aren't *actually* upset in Germany over immigration. Merkel is barely hanging onto her job after bulk-importing Syrians and larger Germany society is taking a beating for suppressing news/discussion of ethnic conflicts within Germany.

After a while, it's hard to separate the organic anger about issues and the amplified version of it. And there's a point at which being bombarded with people's marginally informed outrage constantly just makes you hostile. I had to quit using Facebook, despite its ease of keeping me informed on some people/family I liked, because it was making me really dislike people I actually liked in real life, people I invite to my house for dinner and have long conversations with without being angry.

King Maker

[seoras]

Evidence is Piling Up That Mark Zuckerberg doesn't realise that he's now wielding, badly, the same power that Rupert Murdoch once enjoyed playing King Maker with.
If election meddling (you decide if it has happened or not) is now done on the FB platform then Zuckerberg is effectively renting out that power.
Easier to strip him of it, or try to get leverage on him, to get a slice of that power yourself.

When ever I read these sensational headlines the single piece of information that I think would be the most useful isn't what I'm being told it's "who's behind it?"
Who started the gossip and the whispers?
There in lies another problem with our media. This Murdoch understood well. It's easy to hide behind your employee journalists, editors and tamper with the world on a grand scale than to do so out in the open.

Zuckerberg is very much out in the open and very exposed.

Re: No shit, they can influence an election

[rudy_wayne]

News, Opinions, Paid News and Fake News... those are the options

There is no such thing as 'Fake News'.

There are Facts, Opinions and Lies.

Those are the only options.

Echo chambers are bad, m'kay

[raymorris]

Facebook feeds people stuff similar to what they have "liked" before, setting up another echo chamber.

Earlier today I was noticing that if CNN were my primary source of news, I'd really dislike conservatives and Republicans; if Fox were my primary source, I'd have a disdain for liberals and Democrats. It's my understanding that Facebook is even worse, and it is the number one most popular source of "news", as I recall. Certain comedians are also among the top sources people cite as where they get their "news" (apparently confusing jokes mixed with propaganda for news).

On Slashdot, at least I talk to people who have a point of view different from my own. Occasionally they are calm and rational, presenting a cogent argument. What's really great is when they also are adult enough to listen to my opposing viewpoint and discuss where we each may have a good point, and can each learn something from the other point of view. It's great when that happens.

Well... not really. But it does something else.

[Opportunist]

Facebook, like every social media platform, has one crucial function: It can connect like minded people. Actually, that's its primary function. Now, while this seems quite positive on the surface, it can be quite detrimental to us as a society too. Because it also allows very unsavory and outright crazy people to connect. Which you might notice in the more recent skyrocketing number of conspiracy theories being peddled loudly.

What does this have to do with each other?

Let's say you have an uncommon, unpopular or outright illegal position or opinion. In a "normal" society, you'd feel quite alone with your opinion because nobody shares it. This changes when you're able to connect with like minded individuals who share your twisted world view. Suddenly you're no longer alone, moreover, you feel that your position is verified as true and right, you feel vindicated. And of course you start living in this echo chamber of like minded people who keep telling you that you're right and that your "crazy" opinion is not crazy at all but that everyone else is crazy.

This works for every kind of fringe ideology. It has worked for religion for centuries without the internet, but the internet gives other insane ideas the same level of self perpetuating reinforcement. From religion to third wave feminism, from white supremacy to black lives matters. And yes, from contrails to flat earth.