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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.
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.
It doesnt have to be russia to scream fire in a theater.
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.
Cause, or effect?
I know the conventional wisdom is that we're all supposed to be hating on Facebook now (I mean, they practically GAVE Trump's election to Cambridge Analytica, amirite? It couldn't be that people seriously voted for Trump...they must have been TRICKED by FACEBOOK!), but this explanation is not only terrifically timely for the meme, it's altogether too pat.
I rather suspect that if one could measure the intensity and frequency of gossip pre-Facebook, one would find a "disturbing" correlative uptick in gossip to all sorts of things...that people like to gossip about. If one correlates an uptick in FB postings to hate crimes, one has to evaluate further if the postings are legitimate or false - I sincerely doubt anyone in the media is going to admit that "well maybe those people complaining about those illegals might have been justified"...ever.
Humans have always, generally, hated strangers in their midst. It's a tribal thing. Strangers with different habits, hair, clothes, language, food, and especially SKIN COLOR have always been easier to target for frustrations.
It doesn't help that there seem to be a sadly-not-"fake news" plethora of stories about crime and illegals* like Mollie Tibbetts and Kathryn Steinle - nearly 25% of Federal prisoners are illegal immigrants. Racism is not acceptable, but not wanting criminals in ones' community is a pretty reasonable desire.
*they're not "undocumented" - that's a flat-out lie; "undocumented" implies that they just don't happen to have their papers, or that such papers actually exist - they're illegal immigrants and farcical games with language only makes it clearer to some that there's a collusive effort to hide that.
-Styopa
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.
Always presented as important news? None of this internet stuff is fundamentally new, it's just more efficient. If a pamphlet or a town crier can influence people's minds, facebook can too - because that's all it is.
Same situation as sharing songs on the internet. Nothing different than recording something onto reel to reel from a radio 60 years ago, just more efficient.
I personally find Yahoo!'s front page to be far far far more egregious player than FB. FB at one time had their "Trending Stories" component which was a blatantly biased attempt to subvert what was actually trending. As time wore on FB realized people simply were not buying their slanted opinion of what was important. Ultimately FB shuttered the "Trending Stories."
But Yahoo! That's a totally different animal. Maybe, and I mean maybe, one out of twenty headlines presented is not biased. I read their headlines every single day and despite all their trying I still ain't buying.
FB is bad, but Yahoo! is egregiously bad.
Caution: Contents under pressure
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.
Trump's lawyer just implicated him in felony campaign finance fraud among other crimes for which evidence already exists in Mueller's hand. Checkmate. Rudy Giuliani should be remembered as the world's dumbest attorney.
That comparison is way off the mark. Guns don't do anything on their own. Facebook does a fuck of a lot on it's own. It's designed to feed you whatever propaganda you're most predisposed to believing.
Facebook is pretty much the best brainwashing machine ever built, so yeah, it shares a large chunk of the blame. Obviously the people who engage in violence aren't innocent cherubs, but their individual actions are a much smaller problem.
Maybe people need to look at what's being conveyed on these messenger (social media) services instead of of trying to block it?
You know, if migrants really are stealing and committing sex crimes at a statistically higher rate above the norm then it should be reported.
Same goes for politicians who commit crimes.
If anything, it sounds like certain people don't like it when social media serves up a dish of politically inconvenient news and the plebs rightly get angry. Maybe if journalists were doing their job there would be a more balanced way of reporting such news so that it doesn't inflame the public's violence.
Nah that would all make sense now wouldn't it?
If you claim critique based on research methods, at least skim the paper first. It is free and the main body of the paper is only 42 pages long with the remaining 38 pages providing background information, references, and data summaries. Start reading on page 18, the "Empirical Strategy" section.
The authors make much more than correlation after discussing it in the previous section and then demanding more evidence. They proceed with an explicitly causal model that is verified by statistical evidence. It isn't obvious if you don't have modeling background but "structural evidence" refers to structural equation modeling, which is rigorously designed to determine causality. Controlling for interactions is done to isolate variables and included known differences in demographics between municipalities.
In particular, understanding these results requires some understanding of the actual role of the AfD in German politics, but your point was about research method, which wasn't legitimate given the content of the actual paper.
Remember kids if you are not continuously outraged and afraid money is being left on the table.
No. Your way of thinking is a cancer that humanity needs to remove. You make endless claims without actual knowledge of the situations, and without any peer-reviewed evidence where you imply "scientific" support. Social Darwinism and right-wing identity politics are exactly what fed the second world war. Every country involved had eugenics programs, etc. but it was only Germany with a rabid doctrine developed by disgruntled illiterate veterans with untreated psychological disorders. That doctrine is what you are preaching now, whether you realize it or not. This is not the material to "troll" with, and if you believe it then you need genuine mental health evaluation and treatment so you can live a productive life in our society.
Facebook VP: "The Majority Of Russian Ad Spend Happened AFTER The Election" https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2...
"many of these ads did not violate our content policies. That means that for most of them, if they had been run by authentic individuals, anywhere, they could have remained on the platform."
Shouldn't you stop foreigners from meddling in US social issues?
The right to speak out on global issues that cross borders is an important principle. Organizations such as UNICEF, Oxfam or religious organizations depend on the ability to communicate - and advertise - their views in a wide range of countries. While we may not always agree with the positions of those who would speak on issues here, we believe in their right to do so - just as we believe in the right of Americans to express opinions on issues in other countries.
So, after all the investigations and debunked conspiracy theories, the strongest argument for alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US federal election is $100K of non-political or partisan Facebook ads - more than half of which ran after the election, and a quarter of which never ran at all.
Putting it into perspective: Total election spending: $2.4 billion. Total Clinton/Trump Facebook ad buys: $81 million.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Facebook cannot magically convert idiots into reasonable and rational people. Facebook isn't responsible for this particular problem it is the users causing the problems.
Facebook has its share of responsibilities. Its AI algorithm is optimized to autonomously search for what will keep the users on the site the longest (so that the company has more eyeball time to sell to advertisers / more behaviour data to sell, and thus the company gets richer).
Old studies done since TV is "a thing" have already shown that the human mind will pay more attention to emotion-generating content, even more if these emotions are negative. Eventually, human mind tends to pay most attention to violence and extremes.
(Probably an evolutionary advantage in the distant past, as paying attention to which member of the ape-pack got mauled by a tiger is more likely to provide you useful information to save your ass, than paying attention to how the flowers are beautiful).
Thus, by trying to give to viewer whatever is the most likely to keep their attention focused, the algorithms used by Facebook will independently rediscover the above, and will spontaneously (machine-) learn to provide even more extreme content, until each "echo chamber" one lock oneself in slowly devolves into a giant mess of extremism, violence and crazy conspiracy theories.
All this without the AI even having a clear idea of *what* the content is, only have the statistical notion that it tend to retain attention.
Facebook devs where the one writing these algorithm without taking into account where it can lead, they do share a part of responsibilities.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Complete and utter bullshit.
Facebook is not inciting violence.
Facebook is not inciting violence intentionnally, per-se.
Facebook is just optimizing for profits, and due to their specific market (advertising, data mining, etc.) they need, as the above poster stated, they need to increase engagement (i.e.: keep more eyeballs focused on facebook, for further reselling)
And old studies done in the era of TV have already shown, the thing that increases the most engagement is emotions, more likely negative emotion, thus fear and violence.
Thus even if Facebook hasn't in a "james bond vilain-style" decided to promote violence for pure evil intents, just by having machine learning algorithms that try to feed whatever attract the most user attention, they'll eventually start to automatically promote 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,
It's not the "instant communication" part that is main culprit (though it contributes a bit).
It's the filtering going on.
We're not in the beginning of the age of internet anymore.
You're not suddenly exposed directly to the speech of the other millions of people, anymore. That's long past ago (you can't download the whole web on a DVD anymore :-P )
You're not even exposed to a random / representative of the speech of some of that other million of people, neither. Specially not since commercial companies jumped in and they need to profit from their business
You're specifically exposed to that tiny fraction (tiny enough so that it can fit within the limited attention span of our monkey-brains) of the speech of that other million of people, that the companies' machine learning algorithms have determined to be the most likely to attract your attention and provoke you into staying around (further speaking your own idea).
Yes, the increase of content has (somewhat) had some influence on the way we communicate. (We've reached the point where we can't follow everything).
The current data tech giant (Facebook, Google, etc.) are extremely strongly shaping the kind of communication that is going between people. But they need profit, so they focus on whats the most profitable to them even if that fucks everything up.
Basically, the "information highways" have slowly transmorphed into the "kingdom of the few most attention-grabbing filthy tabloids".
such as civilized countries being overrun with third world filth.
Yeah, thank your for this nice demonstration of your opinions.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The people who have been used to running news monopolies are, like medallion cabdrivers, unaccustomed to competition. Now that raw news about what the unvetted flood of refugees is doing in Europe is getting through around the mellowspeak filtration system of the traditional media, they are blaming...the new sources of information for allowing a diversity of news and opinion through.
Watch for the EU to respond by fining everyone who reports unofficial news or channels unofficial opinions.
Using disease metaphors to describe "undesirable" societal elements...who else did that? Oh right the Nazis. Insisting that people who disagree have mental problems and must be involuntarily committed for their own good...who else did that? Oh right the Communists. What kind of thinking needs to be removed again? Look in the mirror.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You are the fascist here. It's obvious to everyone but you.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!