Um. The fact that FB sees great advantages in learning about its users and prefers that to a simple subscription service is a problem. As a user I would prefer to pay FB and not get ads rather than have FB learn all about me to serve me ads.
That's actually one reason I use mewe more than FB . I pay for mewe and there are no ads
Yes. My [military-oriented] fb group uses MeWe as a "divert base," aka, an alternate location to assemble, should fb access be interrupted (as it was a few years ago.)
During that fb access interruption, we realized that since we were a diverse (eg., multiple branches of service) group, very few members of which had ever met in person, or otherwise exchanged personal info, it would be virtually impossible to re-create our group's membership rolls & contact info.
So, it seemed prudent to "hope for the best, but plan for the worst" by setting up in MeWe (any alternate social media would have been fine. MeWe simply presented itself as a reasonable site to achieve our goal.)
I greatly dislike Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Why? Because the algorithm optimizes for engagement. This often means amplifying poor behavior. This can degrade our culture. This is like incorporating a religion into our society that promotes disrespect and other poor behaviors.
We want discourse platforms that raise expectations and amplify respectful behavior. The best way of doing this is by manually curating the content. Each one of us ourselves. For example, see the Substack In My Tribe. Links to Consider can be thought of as a Best Work Board, showcasing the best ideas and writing according to one man. Each of us can do this. We don’t need an algorithm. We don’t need Mark Zuckerberg. We don’t want an algorithm to take away from our duty to judge the behavior of others. This is for each of us to do, whether online or in person. Say no to algorithms that attempt to mimic human judgment about others’ behavior. Conscience is our God. See my post “Toward Better Religious Schools” that argues against AI graders.
We can improve discourse by policing disrespectful commenting. Each Substack administrator should do this according to their discretion.
This still leave us with an imperfect system. Anonymous commenters can get away with disrespectful comments by creating new profiles and continuing poor conduct.
We can ban anonymous profiles but this comes with a steep trade-off. Many commenters prefer anonymity. I wonder what discourse would be like at In My Tribe if all commenters were required to use their real names and identifying headshots. This would be an interesting experiment. We don’t allow anonymous drivers on the road? Everyone has to carry a driver’s license. Obviously there are downsides to requiring photo identification on discourse platforms like Substack, but what are the alternatives?
What are alternative techniques to COMPLETE anonymity? Don’t we want to maintain some kind of tracking to reputation and status linked to a known user so that we can discipline users that simply want to disrupt our conversations. What is a good happy medium between complete anonymity and complete photo identification? Maybe the administration can have access to photo identification but prevent the public from knowing who is who. This could be done manually by each Substack administrator.
And I use Facebook less than anyone, averaged over the past 8 years. Didn’t use it at all from 2016 until this past spring. Then had to sell a snowblower on marketplace so I created a profile. Now certain sports clubs require that I use it to sign up for their programs.
The big problem with Facebook's moderation is the vast potential for abuse. This includes the spreading and promotion of disinformation, and the suppression of political speech that the government does not want propagated, both of which Facebook has engaged in. To me, these abuses outweigh whatever good the moderation does.
I've never been a Facebook member and don't care what happens to it except that it's inflated my elderly parents' portfolio lol, which I also don't really care about except that it makes my father happy the way Silas Marner was happy counting his coins of an evening. And there's not much joy in being very elderly and kept alive by strange medical interventions that don't grant health, but survival. So I guess I am bullish on Facebook (and all that other crap), for his sake.
But I didn't think the answer re Myanmar exactly put that issue to bed. Presumably in the past phone lines were used to coordinate whatever repressive activities were referenced. The difference now is that they're legible to the provider. It seems akin to suggesting that the phone company, whatever phone company, was remiss in not surveiling and controlling phone conversations in the past. Since all communication among individuals or even groups of individuals is going to fall into one of three buckets: harmless, harmful, or beneficial.
It may be obvious that I have given this little thought, so I am quite prepared to have this impression corrected.
When the telephone came into use, there was no technology that could monitor every call and analyze what was said (speech recognition, etc,). If such technology had existed, I wonder if governments would have reserved the right to use it and no one would ever have assumed that their phone calls were private or believed that they had a right to such privacy.
When we moved to Evergreen CO in the late 1970s, we had a 4-party telephone line. I'd never experienced a party-line before. 'Twas quite a novelty for me....
I remember reading somebody’s local memoir in which figured “Daddy“ who was larger than life to them, fun when not on a bender, alarming or at least unpredictable when on a bender. And just overall prone to disappear with some regularity. They didn’t really have anyone to call, IIRC, so the lady who operated the party line, always knew when they rang her up that what they really wanted to know was where daddy was. She lived where she necessarily saw Daddy’s comings and goings, and she would answer, yeah, he left out this morning for town or whatever.
You are right - subscriptions is a weaker business model. However, it is a viable business model.
I regret that regulators did not stop the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook. I moved to Signal, and was able to get (most of) my European familiy members to move as well. No such luck in the US.
I have reduced by use of Facebook by 80 or 90%. Glad to hear about Mewe, but I doubt very much that family members in Asia will be willing to switch.
I don’t know why so many people complain about social media. If you don’t like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, don’t use them. I like that algorithms help me find topics in which I am interested. It saves me a lot of time. Targeted ads? I prefer these to ads for things I would never buy and have no interest in. Oh, and it’s free!
I primarily joined fb (in the 'way back) because it's where my kids posted photos of the g'kids and activities, etc.
I limit my fb "friends" to family and a "select" few real-life friends & have joined targeted groups (common interests, eg., genealogy, etc.)
I automatically ignore & delete "you might be interested in...." fb "suggestions," ads, and the like. It's but a minor inconvenience in the grander scheme of things that annoy me....
Each fb user needs to engage his own persnal responsibility & agency to weed out what he finds objectionable, rather than complain that the god-like oversight management doesn't do an adequate job of policing for his own preferences.
Jeepers, people need to just manage their own lives instead of looking to others to do it for them. IMHO. :-)
"You can think of Type I and Type II errors, where it either mistakenly takes something down that was really ok or mistakenly leaves something up that was really offensive."
This is not an either/or. The controversial material will always be both, depending on the person.
Re: "If Facebook switched away from an advertising model to a subscription model, it would be throwing away the valuable information that it obtains about its users."
A subscription model may allow a platform to track information about usage by subscribers. For example, Substack tracks email activity and "subscriber engagement." Presumably, this tracking information is valuable for Substack's business model. And presumably, lack of advertising has value for the business model insofar as many subscribers seek an ad-free platform. (A selection effect.)
And an advertising model may allow users to opt out of various kinds of tracking by a platform.
Perhaps the advertising model tends to involve more tracking because (a) opt-out provisions are incomplete and (b) many users don't bother to navigate settings to opt out?
Facebook uses various models along with deals with banks and credit card companies to get a good idea of your spending and your asset profile. So does Google. Subscriber models have accurate verified information about your physical house, which can then be used to get access to other information about you. Ultimately they care most about your purchasing decisions and selling opportunities to influence those decisions to companies. Facebook would say that they do not really need the subscriber information or the money because they're good at correlating users to real information anyway.
Companies have an interesting relationship with bots and fraudulent traffic because they benefit from the illusion of higher use of the service, but advertisers suffer higher prices due to fraudulent metrics. Requiring subscriptions is an anti-fraud measure, but the companies usually want an optimal level of fraud for their purposes.
Um. The fact that FB sees great advantages in learning about its users and prefers that to a simple subscription service is a problem. As a user I would prefer to pay FB and not get ads rather than have FB learn all about me to serve me ads.
That's actually one reason I use mewe more than FB . I pay for mewe and there are no ads
Mewe? Never heard of it. Is anyone else on it?
Yes. My [military-oriented] fb group uses MeWe as a "divert base," aka, an alternate location to assemble, should fb access be interrupted (as it was a few years ago.)
https://mewe.com/register
Interesting. Let me read about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeWe
During that fb access interruption, we realized that since we were a diverse (eg., multiple branches of service) group, very few members of which had ever met in person, or otherwise exchanged personal info, it would be virtually impossible to re-create our group's membership rolls & contact info.
So, it seemed prudent to "hope for the best, but plan for the worst" by setting up in MeWe (any alternate social media would have been fine. MeWe simply presented itself as a reasonable site to achieve our goal.)
What can you tell us about your group? Seems prudent.
It's a closed group (i.e., by invitation only), both in fb and MeWe. Like what would you like to know, ...specifically?
I greatly dislike Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Why? Because the algorithm optimizes for engagement. This often means amplifying poor behavior. This can degrade our culture. This is like incorporating a religion into our society that promotes disrespect and other poor behaviors.
We want discourse platforms that raise expectations and amplify respectful behavior. The best way of doing this is by manually curating the content. Each one of us ourselves. For example, see the Substack In My Tribe. Links to Consider can be thought of as a Best Work Board, showcasing the best ideas and writing according to one man. Each of us can do this. We don’t need an algorithm. We don’t need Mark Zuckerberg. We don’t want an algorithm to take away from our duty to judge the behavior of others. This is for each of us to do, whether online or in person. Say no to algorithms that attempt to mimic human judgment about others’ behavior. Conscience is our God. See my post “Toward Better Religious Schools” that argues against AI graders.
We can improve discourse by policing disrespectful commenting. Each Substack administrator should do this according to their discretion.
This still leave us with an imperfect system. Anonymous commenters can get away with disrespectful comments by creating new profiles and continuing poor conduct.
We can ban anonymous profiles but this comes with a steep trade-off. Many commenters prefer anonymity. I wonder what discourse would be like at In My Tribe if all commenters were required to use their real names and identifying headshots. This would be an interesting experiment. We don’t allow anonymous drivers on the road? Everyone has to carry a driver’s license. Obviously there are downsides to requiring photo identification on discourse platforms like Substack, but what are the alternatives?
What are alternative techniques to COMPLETE anonymity? Don’t we want to maintain some kind of tracking to reputation and status linked to a known user so that we can discipline users that simply want to disrupt our conversations. What is a good happy medium between complete anonymity and complete photo identification? Maybe the administration can have access to photo identification but prevent the public from knowing who is who. This could be done manually by each Substack administrator.
And I use Facebook less than anyone, averaged over the past 8 years. Didn’t use it at all from 2016 until this past spring. Then had to sell a snowblower on marketplace so I created a profile. Now certain sports clubs require that I use it to sign up for their programs.
The big problem with Facebook's moderation is the vast potential for abuse. This includes the spreading and promotion of disinformation, and the suppression of political speech that the government does not want propagated, both of which Facebook has engaged in. To me, these abuses outweigh whatever good the moderation does.
I've never been a Facebook member and don't care what happens to it except that it's inflated my elderly parents' portfolio lol, which I also don't really care about except that it makes my father happy the way Silas Marner was happy counting his coins of an evening. And there's not much joy in being very elderly and kept alive by strange medical interventions that don't grant health, but survival. So I guess I am bullish on Facebook (and all that other crap), for his sake.
But I didn't think the answer re Myanmar exactly put that issue to bed. Presumably in the past phone lines were used to coordinate whatever repressive activities were referenced. The difference now is that they're legible to the provider. It seems akin to suggesting that the phone company, whatever phone company, was remiss in not surveiling and controlling phone conversations in the past. Since all communication among individuals or even groups of individuals is going to fall into one of three buckets: harmless, harmful, or beneficial.
It may be obvious that I have given this little thought, so I am quite prepared to have this impression corrected.
When the telephone came into use, there was no technology that could monitor every call and analyze what was said (speech recognition, etc,). If such technology had existed, I wonder if governments would have reserved the right to use it and no one would ever have assumed that their phone calls were private or believed that they had a right to such privacy.
Well, I know people on party lines had no expectation of privacy!
When we moved to Evergreen CO in the late 1970s, we had a 4-party telephone line. I'd never experienced a party-line before. 'Twas quite a novelty for me....
I remember reading somebody’s local memoir in which figured “Daddy“ who was larger than life to them, fun when not on a bender, alarming or at least unpredictable when on a bender. And just overall prone to disappear with some regularity. They didn’t really have anyone to call, IIRC, so the lady who operated the party line, always knew when they rang her up that what they really wanted to know was where daddy was. She lived where she necessarily saw Daddy’s comings and goings, and she would answer, yeah, he left out this morning for town or whatever.
How many Trump supporters do you think are on the oversight board?
I don’t ever click on ads, anywhere. Simple.
You are right - subscriptions is a weaker business model. However, it is a viable business model.
I regret that regulators did not stop the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook. I moved to Signal, and was able to get (most of) my European familiy members to move as well. No such luck in the US.
I have reduced by use of Facebook by 80 or 90%. Glad to hear about Mewe, but I doubt very much that family members in Asia will be willing to switch.
I don’t know why so many people complain about social media. If you don’t like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, don’t use them. I like that algorithms help me find topics in which I am interested. It saves me a lot of time. Targeted ads? I prefer these to ads for things I would never buy and have no interest in. Oh, and it’s free!
I'm with you.
I primarily joined fb (in the 'way back) because it's where my kids posted photos of the g'kids and activities, etc.
I limit my fb "friends" to family and a "select" few real-life friends & have joined targeted groups (common interests, eg., genealogy, etc.)
I automatically ignore & delete "you might be interested in...." fb "suggestions," ads, and the like. It's but a minor inconvenience in the grander scheme of things that annoy me....
Each fb user needs to engage his own persnal responsibility & agency to weed out what he finds objectionable, rather than complain that the god-like oversight management doesn't do an adequate job of policing for his own preferences.
Jeepers, people need to just manage their own lives instead of looking to others to do it for them. IMHO. :-)
"You can think of Type I and Type II errors, where it either mistakenly takes something down that was really ok or mistakenly leaves something up that was really offensive."
This is not an either/or. The controversial material will always be both, depending on the person.
Excellent summary of a fascinating conversation.
Re: "If Facebook switched away from an advertising model to a subscription model, it would be throwing away the valuable information that it obtains about its users."
A subscription model may allow a platform to track information about usage by subscribers. For example, Substack tracks email activity and "subscriber engagement." Presumably, this tracking information is valuable for Substack's business model. And presumably, lack of advertising has value for the business model insofar as many subscribers seek an ad-free platform. (A selection effect.)
And an advertising model may allow users to opt out of various kinds of tracking by a platform.
Perhaps the advertising model tends to involve more tracking because (a) opt-out provisions are incomplete and (b) many users don't bother to navigate settings to opt out?
Facebook uses various models along with deals with banks and credit card companies to get a good idea of your spending and your asset profile. So does Google. Subscriber models have accurate verified information about your physical house, which can then be used to get access to other information about you. Ultimately they care most about your purchasing decisions and selling opportunities to influence those decisions to companies. Facebook would say that they do not really need the subscriber information or the money because they're good at correlating users to real information anyway.
Companies have an interesting relationship with bots and fraudulent traffic because they benefit from the illusion of higher use of the service, but advertisers suffer higher prices due to fraudulent metrics. Requiring subscriptions is an anti-fraud measure, but the companies usually want an optimal level of fraud for their purposes.