Facebook prepares to max out on stupidity

Well, maybe.

Over the past few months, Mark Zuckerberg has spoken at length about his grand plan for fixing Facebook. In short, it involves “pivoting” - as they say - to a more private social network. One which focuses on closed spaces, like groups or messaging, rather than the public News Feed.

Okay. Now, if such closed spaces were such that you could basically never find them unless you already actually knew existing members in the real world, then that might not be such a bad move. It would be (in principle) much harder to harvest data and thus manipulate feeds. It would also make the platform more akin to something like a telephone service, where the content is not a product of the technology.

Does anyone have much faith that it will work out like that ? I doubt it.

On Monday, ProPublica revealed the existence of a private Facebook group which contained disturbing jokes allegedly posted by US Border Patrol agents. The investigative site said comments included mockery of migrants that had died in custody, as well as aggressive, sexist remarks about prominent female politicians. The group has existed for more three years and has almost 10,000 members.

And the Washington Post detailed a flurry of groups offering bogus cancer treatment “advice”, such as to "use baking soda or frankincense” instead of chemotherapy. These groups are able and allowed to flourish - the Post reported at least two with more than 100,000 members. Facebook said it provides related news stories to posts that might contain misinformation, but we don’t have any statistics on how effective this measure is.

Which strongly suggests that Facebook will just become what it is now except with everything brushed under the carpet. I'm on MeWe, which is also totally hidden from view, and that's a problem. Granted, there are plenty of situations which privacy is required - but there are also plenty where it isn't. No-one is suggesting that telephone calls should all be public any more than anyone would propose that all Parliamentary sessions be held in secrecy.

The thing about social media is that it has fundamental differences from traditional communications systems. It can't really be compared with telephones or letters, which are only suitable for contacting small numbers of people you already know. It's not like going round to a friend's house for a chat if you're talking to ten thousand people - a meeting of that size would, if held in the real world, inevitably be public. Social media enables privacy (or perhaps secrecy would be a more appropriate word) of unprecedented size and scope, and that's a problem. We can't even begin to understand society, much less remedy its problems, if we don't even know what social norms are in the first place.

“This vision could backfire terribly,” warned French journalism professor, Frederick Pilloux, in 2018. “An increase in the weight of 'groups' means reinforcement of Facebook’s worst features -  cognitive bubbles -  where users are kept in silos fuelled by a torrent of fake news and extremism.” 

Make no mistake: few, if any, of the problems Facebook is “working hard” on at the moment would have come to light were it not for external pressure from journalists, lawmakers, academics and civil rights groups. The examples I’ve raised here pose a question: is Facebook fixing itself, or merely making it harder for us to see it's broken?

And I would also doubt just how effective this would be at avoiding the problems of data harvesting and manipulation anyway. It will only switch the arena in which the interested parties operate and make them harder to spot.

I would suggest that all groups over a very small threshold size (say a dozen) be completely public, fake news be removed, feed manipulation of any kind (except that of direct user control) be ended , and revenue be driven by something other than advertising.

Facebook may be 'pivoting' to something worse

In short, it involves "pivoting" - as they say - to a more private social network. One which focuses on closed spaces, like groups or messaging, rather than the public News Feed. He unveiled this plan in March, a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit.