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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
OK, you modded me down, but don't pretend you didn't laugh a little bit when you read, "the Manchurian Cantaloupe".
See? I saw you smile a little just now when you read it again. You can't help yourself because it's funny. My work here is done for the night.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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 ]
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 do realise that it was CNN and the left in general who started the whole 'Fake News' thing to explain why Shillary lost the election?
This is incorrect, Anonymous Coward.
The term was in use long before Hillary lost the election.
From - https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs...
It was mid-2016, and Buzzfeed's media editor, Craig Silverman, noticed a funny stream of completely made-up stories that seemed to originate from one small Eastern European town. "We ended up finding a small cluster of news websites all registered in the same town in Macedonia called Veles," Silverman recalls.
He and a colleague started to investigate, and shortly before the US election they identified at least 140 fake news websites which were pulling in huge numbers on Facebook.
The young people in Veles may or may not have had much interest in American politics, but because of the money to be made via Facebook advertising, they wanted their fiction to travel widely on social media. The US presidential election - and specifically Donald Trump - was (and of course still is) a very hot topic on social media.
And so the Macedonians and other purveyors of fakery wrote stories with headlines such as "Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President" and "FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide". They were completely false. And thus began the modern - and internet-friendly - life of the phrase "fake news".