Mark Zuckerberg's Mentor 'Shocked and Disappointed' -- But He Has a Plan (time.com)

Early Facebook investor Roger McNamee published a scathing 3,000-word article adapted from his new book Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Here's just one example of what's left him "shocked and disappointed": Facebook (along with Google and Twitter) has undercut the free press from two directions: it has eroded the economics of journalism and then overwhelmed it with disinformation. On Facebook, information and disinformation look the same; the only difference is that disinformation generates more revenue, so it gets better treatment.... At Facebook's scale -- or Google's -- there is no way to avoid influencing the lives of users and the future of nations. Recent history suggests that the threat to democracy is real. The efforts to date by Facebook, Google and Twitter to protect future elections may be sincere, but there is no reason to think they will do anything more than start a game of whack-a-mole with those who choose to interfere. Only fundamental changes to business models can reduce the risk to democracy.
Google and Facebook "are artificially profitable because they do not pay for the damage they cause," McNamee argues, adding that some medical researchers "have raised alarms noting that we have allowed unsupervised psychological experiments on millions of people."

But what's unique is he's offering specific suggestions to fix it.

• "I want to set limits on the markets in which monopoly-class players like Facebook, Google and Amazon can operate. The economy would benefit from breaking them up. A first step would be to prevent acquisitions, as well as cross subsidies and data sharing among products within each platform."

• "Another important regulatory opportunity is data portability, such that users can move everything of value from one platform to another. This would help enable startups to overcome an otherwise insurmountable barrier to adoption."

• "Given that social media is practically a public utility, I think it is worth considering more aggressive strategies, including government subsidies."

• "There need to be versions of Facebook News Feed and all search results that are free of manipulation."

• "I would like to address privacy with a new model of authentication for website access that permits websites to gather only the minimum amount of data required for each transaction.... it would store private data on the device, not in the cloud. Apple has embraced this model, offering its customers valuable privacy and security advantages over Android."

• "No one should be able to use a user's data in any way without explicit, prior consent. Third-party audits of algorithms, comparable to what exists now for financial statements, would create the transparency necessary to limit undesirable consequences."

• "There should be limits on what kind of data can be collected, such that users can limit data collection or choose privacy. This needs to be done immediately, before new products like Alexa and Google Home reach mass adoption."

Comments

Subsidies?

[alvinrod]

Given that social media is practically a public utility, I think it is worth considering more aggressive strategies, including government subsidies.

Oh fuck no.

Regardless of whether you think government spending is too high or too low, I think we can all agree that none if should be going to goddamn social media.

Re:Subsidies?

[ShanghaiBill]

Regardless of whether you think government spending is too high or too low, I think we can all agree that none if should be going to goddamn social media.

Not only would it be an absurd waste of tax dollars, but it would give the government (Donald Trump for now) leverage over what is published, promoted, or suppressed. This is the way to destroy democracy, not save it.

Taxpayer funded subsidies for social media is such a profoundly stupid idea, that anything else this guy has to say can be dismissed. He has no credibility.

Re:Subsidies?

[Maelwryth]

Without reading the book, he might be referring to the removal of government subsidies such as tax breaks, etc...

Re:Subsidies?

[Maelwryth]

Just read it.....apparently he doesn't mean that at all.

"The government already subsidizes energy exploration, agriculture and other economic activities that the country considers to be a priority, and it is not crazy to imagine that civically responsible social media may be essential to the future of the country. The subsidies might come in the form of research funding, capital for startups, tax breaks and the like."

Re:Subsidies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would prefer government regulation to FAANG. The post office makes sure my messages get delivered. They can do the same online.

Re:Subsidies?

[StikyPad]

I don't know, I can think of counterexamples of government subsidies working to promote diversity of view rather than a platform for its own propaganda, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, and arguably even things like Federal Student Aid and the Postal Service. In fact, the Postal Service could be viewed as the first government subsidized social network in many ways.

Now I'm not sure that subsidizing social media is a worthwhile effort, but I think it is an interesting idea, particularly if society wants to establish an independent, third-party social network that's not profit-driven. At the same time, I would have serious concerns about how well data could be protected. To use the Postal Service example above, not only is data (mail) routinely lost and intercepted by malicious third parties, but the USPS also has broad discretion in inspecting and opening many communications.

Personally I don't use social media because I don't trust any of the major players with my data. (I also take steps to actively thwart efforts to track my online habits.) I recognize, however, that I am missing out on the ability to easily share information with friends and family. Even if being on social media isn't worthwhile to me as it exists today, it clearly *is* worthwhile to hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, so I think the issue is something that needs attention and carefully considered efforts to improve the status quo, including (and maybe especially) ideas that seem far-fetched.

Re:Subsidies?

[Can'tNot]

I can think of a ton of reasons why publicly-funded social media would be better than advertiser-funded social media. So many reasons.

This is an old argument though, and TV is usually the example given: why is British television objectively better than American television? Because it's made to appeal to viewers instead of advertisers. British television is publicly funded.

Re:Subsidies?

[AmiMoJo]

The BBC is essentially government funded. As I understand it NPR is at least partially publicly funded too. Yet both have a reputation for being impartial and reliable sources of news and information.

Many public spaces where politics are discussed are publicly funded too.

If done right publicly funded social media wouldn't automatically be bad.

Re:Subsidies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except. NPR is not unbiased at all. Listen the choice of words used.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/npr/

https://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-other-half-of-america-that-the-liberal-media-doesnt-cover/

When you are liberal, and everyone else around you is as well, it is easy to fall into groupthink on what stories are important, what sources are legitimate and what the narrative of the day will be. This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience.

https://www.mrc.org/bozells-column/npr-admits-liberal-bias
National Public Radio is properly understood, even by the media, as radio by and for liberals, not the general public. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz puts it, the media landscape stretches "from those who cheer Fox to those who swear by NPR."

The only ones who seem not to know that the left has a massive, taxpayer-funded radio network of 700 affiliates are the liberals trying to sell investors on their own private-sector talk-radio network. A recent PBS "NewsHour" story on talk radio turned ridiculous when reporter Terence Smith allowed liberal-network booster Jon Sinton to proclaim: "Every day in America on the 45 top-rated talk radio stations, there are 310 hours of conservative talk. There is a total of five hours of talk that comes from the other side of the aisle."

Re:Subsidies?

[doom]

The trouble with government funded news agencies like NPR is that it can only work as long as the government is reasonably enlightened as is willing to respect its independence. So it fails just when you need it most...

The post-Reagan Republicans started making jokes about "National Pinko Radio" and threatening it's funding. That pulled it back to the "center" really fast.

Re: Subsidies?

[illiac_1962]

He brings up enforcing the law, that might help. Stop letting companies merge!!

Catastrophe??

[dasgoober]

How much money has he made from FB? I'll take that catastrophe any day!

Re:"information and disinformation look the same"

[walterbyrd]

Did Fox News published the fake news story about Cohen's trip to Prague?

Has Fox News actually staged news events like ABC, CNN and MSNBC have done?

Has Fox News used photos from a previous administration, as evidence of what the current administration is doing?

Has Fox News published the fake news story about the child being ripped from her mother's arms, like TIME did?

Buzzfeed not only published a fake news story about a Trump/Cohen conspiracy, but when the story was proved to be bullshit, buzzfeed refused to retract it. This is not the first fake news from buzzfeed. Why no conspiracy to censor buzzfeed, like what was done to Infowars? Why isn't buzzfeed being deplatformed? Why the double standard?

Before you bash conservative news sources, maybe you should take a more objective look at the leftist sources?

Privacy is bullshit under..

[blahplusplus]

... a capitalist society. The nature of communication technology is honesty, the individual simply cannot be private because companies own the infrastructure of society. Every company from our gorocery store, to our internet service provider, to our bank is selling our data or doing so on the sly. Private power cannot be incentivized to not erase privacy, it simply cannot work in a technocratic capitalist society because most people are not technology illiterate and will end up leaking data about you indirectly just through interactions.

With the amount of data facebook/google/amazon have they can build good enough inference models now, it's much too late to go back since the general groundwork for revealing hidden characteristics of nodes in the social graph (aka other people) due to discovering the rules of how people select their friends and mates.

We've opened the pandora's box of technology + private power. We're heading to a new feudal/slave technocratic society of pure oligarchy lawlessness. This is aptly seen on our PC's with windows 10 as a service, steam, mmo's and mobile games - aka software you don't own or control means you must give up privacy by default to use these things.

The only way you get your privacy back is ideological revolution and having a say in how these companies are run. They have no incentive not to harvest your data by using theiverous software as a service models.

Re:Privacy is bullshit under..

[blahplusplus]

That's why we, wait for it, are supposed to REGULATE our CAPITALISM derp! Because that's the only way we aren't screwing ourselves, IF we do that comprehensively and competently.

You don't seem to understand you can't regulate the very thing that has the power to undermine the regulations, see: bailouts in 2008. You're historically illiterate to an insane degree.

Re:Privacy is bullshit under..

[Z80a]

Probably a war on data brokers could work to some extent.
People will stop collecting your data if they have no one to sell it to.

Re:Privacy is bullshit under..

[doom]

Arguably the financial industry bailouts were needed and worked as intended-- and the money has been paid back.

What didn't work: (1) there was no equivalent "bailout" for the ordinary citizens, e.g. mortgage relief; (2) the rules on the financial industry were not tightened up very well afterwards, so we can look forward to replays of 2008 in the future.

But "regulatory capture" is indeed a real problem: so don't let it happen. Doing without regulation because capture can happen is not actually a sensible strategy.

For the near future, the prescription is (1) don't elect Republicans, (2) stay away from "moderate" Democrats. "Have you recieved funding from the agencies you're regulating" is not actually a bad litmus test, if you think about it for two seconds.

Not going to happen

[chromaexcursion]

He makes good points. But it's too late.
There are few laws governing social media. And, there won't be any anytime soon. Just look at the shutdown disaster.
Need to find solutions that are in the current system.
(this is a resubmit after logging in)

Re:"information and disinformation look the same"

[Frank Burly]

Your rhetorical questions are suspiciously specific. Fox News tells convenient falsehoods to comfort and enrage our senior citizens, poorly educated, and President. Here are some examples I found in 5 seconds of using the cyber.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/feb/26/fact-checks-behind-daily-shows-50-fox-news-lies.

This was a couple years ago, so post WMD BS, but pre "Caravan of Death" BS.

Re: "information and disinformation look the same"

[Z00L00K]

Even if it is desinformation on national TV by our politicians?

The amount of desinformation combined with stupid decisions impacting the lives of everyone is what kills democracy. Just label someone racist and it's on the desinformation track because it will move the discussion from the subject to the messenger. If that doesn't help, then make a comparisition with a suitable Nazi leader in order to kill the debate. Godwin's law still works for many.

Using strong labels is however not necessarily right since it skews the debate and over time those labels wears down and became weaker.

Climate change denier is another label that is thrown around, and the only focus is 'Burn less coal/oil'. But everyone evades the real issue - overpopulation, because then the solution would be racist.

Re:"information and disinformation look the same"

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox News is a fake news site. It's an opinion site that willfully uses news topics to call itself a news site, but it does not ever report the news objectively. This has been demonstrated tens of thousands of times, it's no mistake.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/feb/26/fact-checks-behind-daily-shows-50-fox-news-lies/ -- There was no amazing coincidence of errors in their reporting that caused them to lie this much for politics, sorry Bill.

It's moronic to conflate Fox News with investigative journalism or objective news reporting. It is punditry.

Re: "information and disinformation look the same"

[_Sharp'r_]

So his issue is that he doesn't like events like Trump being elected, i.e. " Recent history suggests that the threat to democracy is real." and his solution is to give Trump the power to break up online media companies and control the remains.

I'm not sure the logic is strong with this one....

In all seriousness, it's not enough to decide you disagree with the results of the market for something (in this case, news-style entertainment) to conclude that the government must therefore intervene. In addition, you also must demonstrate the government intervening would be an improvement of results and not make things worse. McNamee barely asserts the first part of that test and seems to assume away the second part, as there is no evidence he even considered it.

with no one grandfathered in

[meglon]

No one should be able to use a user's data in any way without explicit, prior consent.

I agree wholeheartedly, and i think it should be all consumer databases, including Acxiom, Equifax, Experian, Epsilon, CoreLogic, Datalogix, inome, PeekYou, Nielsen, Exactis, Recorded Future, and every single one out there, as well as every single mailing list used by magazines, catalogs, credit card companies, banks.... everything.

The current hype is about how horrible Facebook, Google or Amazon is... and yes, they're bad... but this shit has been going on for decades. All of it needs to be a require an explicit opt-in (revocable at any time), with fines so significant it will bankrupt a business if they disregard getting an opt-in from people.... and none of this automatic opt-in bullshit because you buy a product from them or use their website.

Good Idea

[gijoel]

"There need to be versions of Facebook News Feed and all search results that are free of manipulation."

Good idea, but you should start with traditional media first.

Re: "information and disinformation look the same"

[meglon]

Well, overpopulation isn't actually the problem... it's overconsumption of the worst/most damaging possible choice (available). Part of that is technology... the technology to use better (less damaging) sources of energy is barely out of infancy, and it threatens those already in power with a paradigm shift away from them. The greater the amount of green energy we use, the better off we are... and yes, at a certain point we'll cross the hump where what fossil fuels we use (while continuing to drop) will not cause the amount of damage it's causing now (because it will become a smaller and smaller percentage of overall use), eventually going the way of the horse and buggy. Whether that happens fast or slow depends on technological advancement, and the choice will determine how serious the damage we've already done is to be.

A solution that will not solve the wrong problem

[taustin]

The problem isn't unregulated social media, the problem is lazy, disengaged, gullible, and frankly, stupid voters. Regulating social medial won't solve that. Banning social media won't solve that. Banning the internet won't solve that.

Nothing he proposes will in any way affect the ability of social media to manipulate lazy, disengaged, gullible, stupid voters, it will only change (if it even does that, which is unlikely) who gets to decide how.

I cannot help but wonder if that's the real goal.

A couple of good ideas

[WolfgangVL]

But he does off the deep end with the government subsidies silliness.

I think many of the problems we've created with social media can be solved by simply educating users about the internet a little better. Half the reason misinfo spreads so easily is because a large subset of users don't know how this thing actually works. We made it too easy, and now every lowthinking knuckledragger can connect to the net and consume..... consume whatever gets served up to em. For good or ill.

Safe internetting should be taught in grade school through high school. We already provide K-12 students with computing platforms in many districts, but it seems like actual computer use education is just assumed.

My Son was issued a Chrome-book in 1st grade, and it's followed him into middle school. I certainly don't like the way Alphabet gets a direct line to the entire districts worth of student academic marks by default, and I would feel a lot better if some effort was given to educate the students in how to safely navigate the net, how to recognize different phishing attempts, and the value of personal information. Those are just the start. I think Alphabet aught to take the lead on this one in trade.

Our own advertising complex has grown really really good at targeted manipulation, and we already have a real good idea how easily foreign actors can manipulate people online. With that in mind, I feel social media has a social responsibility to educate users in how to use their platforms safely. If it takes government regulation, then so be it. This is one of the few places where I feel it's actually necessary.

Here's a portal to the internet kids. Go nuts.

Re: A couple of good ideas

[Maelwryth]

I don't really get why he goes for subsidies either. The removal of them would be more to my liking. No more H-1Bs, no more tax breaks, reasearch incentives, etc....These are all subsidies.

Re:A couple of good ideas

[Ichijo]

Safe internetting should be taught in grade school through high school.

Isn't that a subsidy?

Republican coward can't admit the lies, lol. Sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is exactly why you fail - you are debunked by the facts within that link, which isn't to a politifact source but to a Comedy show that happens to be spot on 100% verifiable fact checked info, and you HIDE LIKE A BITCH!
Allow me to pull your head out of your ass and teach you how to read, traitor! From TFA you're so afraid of, you pansy ass :

- The fact-checks behind 'The Daily Show's' 50 Fox news 'lies'
By Lauren Carroll, Aaron Sharockman on Thursday, February 26th, 2015 at 3:00 p.m.
The Daily Show posted a Vine Wednesday titled, "50 Fox News lies in 6 seconds."
We’ve fact-checked almost all of the statements they cited. For the record, we originally counted 49 claims, not 50. The Daily Show said No. 50 was left off due to a technical error. They've updated their Vine, which we've included here.
* * *
1. "In July 2010 the government said small businesses -- 60 percent -- will lose their health care, 45 percent of big business and a large percentage of individual health." Sean Hannity, Nov. 11, 2013 False
* * *
2. "And President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture out of his own pocket, yet it's the Republican National Committee who's paying for this." Anna Kooiman, Oct. 5, 2013 https://bit.ly/2W1wHzv
* * *
3. Labor union president Andy Stern is "the most frequent visitor" at the White House. Glenn Beck, Dec. 3, 2009 False
* * *
4. "Far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns." Tucker Carlson, Aug. 9, 2014 Pants on Fire
* * *
5. White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard once served as the "right-hand man" for Bertha Lewis, who heads up ACORN. Steve Doocy, Sept. 29, 2009 False
* * *
6. "Look at the debt that has been accumulated in the last two years. It's more debt under this president than all those other presidents combined."
Sarah Palin, May 31, 2011 False
* * *
7. "There is no good data showing secondhand smoke kills people." John Stossel, Dec. 4, 2014 False
* * *
8. "Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history." Sarah Palin, Aug. 1, 2010 Pants on Fire
* * *
9. "The insurance industry is actually run by mostly Democrats." Dana Perino, Oct. 31, 2013 False
* * *
10. The Obama administration "manipulated deportation data to make it appear that the Border Patrol was deporting more illegal immigrants than the Bush administration." Lou Dobbs, July 1, 2014 False
* * *
11. Some doctors say Ebola can be transmitted through the air by "a sneeze or some cough." George Will, Oct. 19, 2014 False
* * *
12. Says the Texas State Board of Education is considering eliminating references to Christmas and the Constitution in textbooks. Gretchen Carlson, March 10, 2010 Pants on Fire
* * *
13. Because of President Barack Obama’s failure to "push job creation," the black unemployment rate in Ferguson, Mo., is three times higher than the white unemployment rate. Lou Dobbs, Aug. 19, 2014 False
* * *
14. When White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Mao Tse-tung was "one of her favorite philosophers, only Fox News picked that up."
Bill O’Reilly, Oct. 23, 2009 False
* * *
15. "The president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day." Michele Bachmann, Nov. 3, 2010 False (Note: Bachmann’s claim was made on CNN, not Fox News but Glenn Beck made a similar claim on Fox)
* * *
16. "We researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it." Bill O’Reilly, Oct. 27, 2010 Pants on Fire
* * *
17. "If you make more than $250,000 a year you only really take home about $125,000." Steve Doocy, July 11, 2012 False
* * *
18. A Census Bureau worker says he was told to skew information to bring the unemployment rate down "as we headed into an election season." Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Nov. 19, 20

Re:"information and disinformation look the same"

[ShanghaiBill]

It's an opinion site that willfully uses news topics to call itself a news site, but it does not ever report the news objectively.

Subjective/biased reporting is not the same as "fake".

It isn't false just because you disagree with it.

Just kill Facebook, Twitter, and all social media

[Rick Schumann]

It's all cancerous garbage and humanity would be better off without it.

I'm typically opposed to heavy govt intervention

[Beeftopia]

I'm typically opposed to heavy government regulation and intervention. I believe that simple regulatory frameworks which create a system of rewards and punishments which loosely cover self-organizing (free-market) systems is optimal.

BUT... the scale of large companies can rival governments. The Founders banned an official church because they knew a church was a competing power center. Very large companies, on the scale of the East India Tea Company, or groups of companies, like the Military-Industrial complex which Eisenhower called out, can grow to rival government - elected government - power. The Founders did not foresee this development, as far as I can tell.

So, for that reason - the power reason and less so the monopoly reason - that government has an interest in looking into how much power these companies have, and to bring that power under control.

Another issue we have nowadays is that politicians dance for donors, and politicians also shake down donors. It's a symbiotic relationship which undermines elections. That issue is a deep-seated root cause, a symbiotic relationship which also must be addressed. It gives too much power to large donors. Power to control the government, rather than people in elections' power to control government.

As far as the monopoly angle goes, I suspect these big web companies may be - MAY be - something of natural monopolies, like railroads or utilities or other infrastructure providers. Limiting acquisitions by these companies sounds like a good idea to encourage competition though. But then, this points to money in politics - limiting acquisitions doesn't create as much "virtual gold" - high stock prices. And it seems to me that "making money now" supersedes pretty much any other concern in American politics today.

Re:A solution that will not solve the wrong proble

[Visarga]

I see it as a problem of short vs long term horizon. When you're too old, young, sick or uneducated you got to think about tomorrow, not the year or decade after that. But when you're a young, educated professional you think much more about your long term future. That reflects in the voting patterns. The short term people are easily bought with promises of immediate relief, even if it is just a slight relief or completely illusory. The population will always be split, and, as in game theory, when you have no care about the long term future, why would you cooperate instead of betraying? Thinking of long term well being (cooperating towards such a future) is based on having something to lose or gain long term. As long as much of society has no future, they have no reason not to betray and vote with the destructive short-term policy.

Re:A solution that will not solve the wrong proble

[Undead Waffle]

Or young educated professionals overestimate their understanding of the world and build a utopian vision based on a naive and overly simplistic worldview and are too stubborn to see its flaws until they get older and, hopefully, wiser?

Anyway, grandparent is completely correct. Ultimately the voters decide everything. Blaming people spending money to manipulate voters with propaganda is missing the point. There will always be propaganda. There will always be attempts at manipulation and misinformation. And they do this because people fall for it. Your best bet would be to make the voters better informed and better critical thinkers, but good luck with that. We've had decades of campaigns telling people it's their civic duty to vote even when they don't understand the issues. Originally the US only allowed landowners to vote. That's not practical today, but it did provide a filter on the voting pool to favor people more invested in the country and generally more educated.

Re:WHATTABOUT HILLARY, COMRADE? As Trump hangs?

[Knuckles]

Trump is President of the USA, aka the sovereign.

A king or emperor would be the sovereign of a state. In the United States of America, the sovereign is the people.

how nice

[umghhh]

the fight of verbal abuse and accusations of treason by different fractions of /. readership commences as desired/expected.
For anybody who studied the subject of misinformation and propaganda it is clear that the media outlets however honest will do what they are told to do by their masters. The rest of us just fumes over what others propose. I recall the excitement when FB 'supported' uprising after elections was all over in the news. I had my doubts back then and I have them now - neither the uprising was 100% honest and coming from the 'masses' nor the pushback by the state stayed far behind. I hear some stories by formerly respected media outlets are revealed as fakes sometimes months later. There is bias - all of us have it. It is difficult to raise above that. Most do not even try. Journalists are like the rest of us. These days the 'principles' are often more important than facts so facts lose. This shows very nicely when we all can rally around the cause - which is why Iran Air Flight 655 received different treatment (human tragedy) than Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (crime against humanity etc although I admit the wikipedia article now is much nuanced now then it used to be). At some point an intelligent and educated individual has to stop and ask themselves - what is true and how can they be sure? Wait and see is my take on it. If there was a wide spread conspiracy we find out eventually. There is a problem here - or actually two. We usually have to make decisions much faster than the truth takes to reveal itself and some conspiracies are small enough to be successful. Not sure what solution there is. I just realize that the times when a person and their close friends could say - "it's enough, time to go" and indeed migrate 'further west' are gone. You can see how this changed - in middle ages in Europe this was actually 'further east' - but where do we go now? There is no place to go and settle where one can built a society based on own rules and (at least for some time) be left alone with it. So we have to accept that we are ruled by corrupt people, surrounded by idiots and lying or misinformed messengers. and governed by coalitions or conspiracies to protect us from 'terrorists'' and there are indeed real terrorists too that try to kill us. Come to think of it: nothing has changed over millennia other than the speed the spin is given to the news only now we have machine guns and the nukes. 40ya most of the spin in the West was antisoviet and on average (probably?) right leaning. Now sometimes outright marxist views on civil liberties and reality seem to prevail and Putin and Trump are always guilty. From what I see it is not betterthan on court of Nero. At least we have aspirin to get headaches away now. Unless of course you should not take it because some other company influenced the general advice and aspirin is now deemed dangerous to life (almost as bad as the stuff NK serves to unloved members of the ruling family).
When I was younger I was wondering if future it is going to be like star wars of star trek. The reality is we are being served Idiocracy. No hope providing sequel to that...

eroded the economics of journalism??

[thoughtlover]

C'mon here... really? Facebook wasn't even around when Craigslist hit the scene. Craigslist, in their (probably looked back with horror) extreme benevolence gave people the power of free classified adds. Dating services like Match, Eharmony, and PoF probably did more to take away from newspapers' profit-margins than Google, Twitter (c'mon really??), and Facebook ever did.

Yup, Craigslist and dating services killed journalism.

Re:eroded the economics of journalism??

[doom]

Craig Newmark argues that television was killing print journalisms ad revenue long before the internet showed up.

There are a bunch of businesses out there that are based on bundling various functions together into one package where some of them can be used as loss-leaders and others as profit centers-- it's pretty obvious that's ripe for failure when someone figures out how to do the money-making part without the loss-leaders.

(One of my favorite examples these days: we've traditionally had a bunch of social centers disguised as market places-- e.g. bookstores-- and now that the brick-and-mortar business is going out of style we really need to re-think this and figure out how we're going to fund our social centers. I see former-bookstores playing with becoming non-profits, selling memberships, etc...)

Re: "information and disinformation look the same

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt the next Bond villain will be a social media CEO.

Step zero

[doom]

I want to set limits on the markets in which monopoly-class players

So, step zero is elect a bunch of democrats. And not "moderate" democrats, either.

At some point we've got to be willing to talk about the real problem without fear of seeming "too partisan".

Lincoln.

[bussdriver]

President Lincoln ended the government subsidies to the free press because they were not supporting him like he wanted them to. A huge % of the GDP was put into paying the free press (I forget but it was more than a few %) keep in mind that a lot of this was having the postal service deliver all newspapers for free. It did create problems which have gone on so long that nobody knows just how much damage it caused... nor do we care because it's degraded so much from that fall.

Craigslist hurt them greatly; however, the truth is MANY papers remained profitable despite that-- most the BS you hear is from owners complaining the profit margins were at historical lows but were NOT in the red. Yes, layoffs also helped and the quality of reporting has gone down; more pooling of resources in to press services has been done. It wouldn't have been as bad if they were allowed to have tiny profit margins; if their owners were thinking public service... or they were allowed to be TAX EXEMPT. A special kind of non-profit status like churches have had; or simply a non-profit with an easy transition path incentive since owners want profits and influence... they will run it into the ground before they spin it off for the public good. That wouldn't solve the whole problem; it would have slowed it.

Short attention spans and CRAP news online killed journalism. People live in filtered bubbles and they like that. Now we have a generation of snow flakes who are touchy about everything and kill themselves over an insulting tweet. So sheltered it would be a joke if it weren't widespread. People say stuff about the "living in mom's basement" complainers but we have a generation of virtually sheltered people who are similar.

Re:Lincoln.

[bussdriver]

Religion has done just fine with it's tax exempt status. Religion doesn't even deserve to be treated any better than a non-profit but it gets exploited in the wrong direction with business cults.

Giving a blanket tax exemption for news biz is kind of like what the country did before Lincoln. They did upset the gov to the point that huge subsidy was removed but it didn't get the press to give in to the government during the civil war to keep the money.

Re:Disinformation

[bussdriver]

In the "real world" the disinformation is not controlled by a massive entity. Crazy uncles, friends, TV, radio, print, signs, speeches, etc. All different but harmfully consolidated over the last few generations. The tech boom only made it worse, not better. For the 10% progress you got 90% regression.

Re:Part of the problem

[doom]

No, it's a random shot to try to discredit the source. If he made money off of what he's criticizing he must be some sort of hypocrite! Or something.

Of course, it's more likely he's one of the former-partners that the Zuck has reportedly shafted on his climb to the top, and this book is payback.

Re:A solution that will not solve the wrong proble

[doom]

The problem isn't unregulated social media, the problem is lazy, disengaged, gullible, and frankly, stupid voters

Human beings are indeed very weak reeds, and yet some institutions have succeeded in developing a fair degree of reliability in spite of being contructed out of such weak reeds, so it would seem that the way you connect us fallible nodes together actually matters, social structures matter, and our internet sites matter--

By the way, the model of the stupids vs the smarts doesn't hold up very well if you look at the actual data-- nominally smart people can actually be very stupid, which is something you might've noticed by now if you were actually one of the smarts.

Re: Republican coward can't admit the lies, lol.

[illiac_1962]

All these statements remind me of those weird rags sold in check-out lanes with outrageous headlines meant to startle old people. Do you really lose your shit that bad when you hit 70 to where you start believing everything you see in print or spoken on TV?

Re: "information and disinformation look the sam

[illiac_1962]

This is pure gold.

Re:I'm typically opposed to heavy govt interventio

[Beeftopia]

* The Vatican (Rome) was a powerful political entity, dictating policy throughout Christendom (and still is, but not like prior to the first schism).

* Henry VIII broke with Rome and formed the Church of England which HE controlled, because Rome was thwarting him.

* Islam flat out combines church and state into one entity.

Churches are power centers. There may be other reasons why the Founders banned an official church. But the net result of banning an official church was preventing the growth of a competing power center which could and would undermine the power of the elected government.

A CC from Facebook itself...

[shanen]

Mostly missed this story since they cycle so fast. Usual waste of time to suggest an obvious solution like slowing down the aging of good stories (even though I see little evidence this one was good enough to have gotten slowed down). However I did reply over on Facebook and might as well share it here:

I hope I have an opportunity to read your new book about Facebook, but I will not buy it on Amazon, which is just another flavor of the corporate cancers that are destroying us. I hope the book delves into ekronomics or such solutions as progressive profits taxes based on market share... However from this page it looks like your personal interests have gone from essential time, past investment time, and now all the way into recreational time.

Re:Journalism Was Disinformation

[NicknameUnavailable]

no central authority dictating how to spin things? Russia seems like a pretty large central authority that was spinning things. Have you tried therapy?

You guys just can't accept that over half the country you live in doesn't like your beliefs, huh?

It's popular to sh*t on Facebook.

[laxr5rs]

They've become the whipping boy. Will it last? No. Because it's a complex situation and the preference for whipping boys doesn't last. As far as I can tell, now, Facebook is a spawn of hell. Child of Satan, or maybe SANTA! I still use Facebook, and Fluff Buster Purity to block what I don't want to see. I keep up with family and friends, and pay no attention - at all to ads or political BS. Why? I don't see it. I like Facebook the way I have it set up. Controlled.

Re:"information and disinformation look the same"

[Frank Burly]

I appreciate the effort, and the citations, but the Fox News claim you are attempting to substantiate is:

4. "Far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns." Tucker Carlson, Aug. 9, 2014

The CDC page you linked to expressly states: "Among children ages 1 to 4, most drownings occur in home swimming pools." No number for bathtubs is even hinted at

Though to be fair to both AC and Mr. Carlson, it should be pointed out that many of the children killed are deliberately targeted by a family member or classmate, so it remains possible that the number of children "killed accidentally" is quite small indeed.