Out of context: Reply #46
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- MrAbominable0
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Laurie Penny wrote at the New Statesman, "Nobody has ever had this sort of power before. No dictator in their wildest dreams has been able to subtly manipulate the daily emotions of more than a billion humans so effectively. There are no precedents for what Facebook is doing here. Facebook itself is the precedent. What the company does now will influence how the corporate powers of the future understand and monetise human emotion."
But additionally, one must question why the study was allowed in the first place. Adam D.I. Cramer, a Facebook data scientist, said they conducted the study because “We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out,” according to a post on his Facebook page. “At the same time,”he continued, “we were concerned that exposure to friends’ negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook.”
What did Facebook intend to do (or what have they, perhaps, already done) as a result of this fear? Skew our news feeds in a more positive direction, to shield our fragile egos and comparison-prone selves? Do they intend to shield us from our worst selves by only giving us the information they deem important, worthwhile, positive, happy?
This is not Facebook’s job, and this is not part of providing a “better service,” as Cramer said was their intent (“The goal of all of our research at Facebook is to learn how to provide a better service.”). Doing research to provide “better service” involves shielding users from hackers, bugs, and glitches in the system. It involves creating a platform (not an information-sorting station) for users to interact with friends and family, without having to fear subtle manipulation. Yet that is exactly what Facebook was doing, and has in fact progressively done over the past several years. Far from providing a simple social media platform, Facebook now shapes news feeds using a series of algorithms that sort and post information according to users’ supposed preference. We have some control over this, but not all. Information gets parceled according to the pages we visit most, the links most likely to fit our profiles—yet this has something of a cyclic effect. The users or links that don’t show up on our profile are likely to be forgotten.
- i can't see what the problem is. ignore facebook. problem solvedhans_glib
- I agree, hans. People put up all their photos and share their mundane life statuses with the world dailymonospaced
- and then complain that the data is saved for them? oh my!monospaced
- sort of misses the point entirely, mono. Facebook is the precedent. What next when unchecked?
MrAbominable - agree to disagreemonospaced
- fair enough.MrAbominable