Th3 Core

I've often wondered if Facebook, Youtube, & Twitter founders ever thought of just how much money, time, and effort they'd have to put into moderating their platforms.  I now wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to invoke WmW's first rule.

FB, I think, could withstand the impact on traffic. Youtube, too.  I don't know enough about Twitter to comment.  That said, politics & religion have been used as engagement talons and it's my understanding that the political ads have been golden revenue streams.

There was a similar crisis in the 1800s, but we didn't solve it by banning politics from the media of the time, but by developing a consensus around journalistic standards (two independent source for corroboration, etc).

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/16-when-attention-went-on-sale

To me, the root problem is a set of algorithms designed to hijack the mind and the personalized advertising engines they feed.

Back when I was on Facebook, I actually had really good political discussions there. I have some friends who have very different viewpoints from me and Facebook was actually a really good place discuss things. I would post a link and they would post a "yeah but" link. I think it led to better understanding of each other, to revising our thinking a bit, and on rare occasions to changing our minds. Is the solution really a blanket ban on politics?

To me, it's not the politics so much as the everything else.

Do you think Facebook would be radically different if it were a subscription service with no ads? Aside from ceasing to exist, how would it change?

How about if it had ads, but only very generally targeted ads, not the hyper-personalized advertising and remarketing possible now?

How about if it had all the same ads it has now, but you got a strict chronological feed of your friends' posts without any algorithmic curation?

YT and Twitter seem harder.

>>Twitter

I often hear journalists say that Twitter is the one social media you need to be on if you're a politics journalist. Apparently that's where a lot of the discussion happens.

All of this is terrifying for me. I hate the hypocrisy presented by the media and the left. They claim it's fine for them to ban whoever they want to, because they are private businesses. For whatever reason I can't do the same if let's say I owned a restaurant and wanted to ban LGBT people. It's also privately owned. The difference is that key people from Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Twitter are going to work for the goverment when Biden steps in. Doesn't this show something? Another example of 'You are with us or against us'.

So, what do you think, LM?  Hired pot-stirrer?

>Hired pot-stirrer?

Yeah, most likely.  It has worked well too.

>you get zero results

Also, I said "bot" but it was likely written by an actual human, one with a pretty good mastery of English too.  Back around the turn of the century the defunct SEO firm I worked for had a "whisper" banch where they'd post "opinions" to forums, it was relatively affordable even at California rates.  I am sure a group out of Poland could use actual humans at very low cost.

Spam registrations are way down since I've put in recaptcha and those basic questions that need to be answered.

Yeah, it will be interesting to follow up on the text in a week or so and see how many times it has worked its way into the index.

Reddit removed 6% of all posts made last year - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56099232

Facebook to show less political content in the News Feed, expanding test to more countries

https://www.filingsearch.com/mediaNews/202108718303/Facebook-to-show-less-political-content-in-the-News-Feed,-expanding-test-to-more-countries-2021-09-01