Facebook has changed its mission statement as Mark Zuckerberg has indicated a new focus on "groups":
"We used to have a sense that if we could just do those things, then that would make a lot of the things in the world better by themselves," Zuckerberg told CNN Tech. "But now we realize that we need to do more too. It's important to give people a voice, to get a diversity of opinions out there, but on top of that, you also need to do this work of building common ground so that way we can all move forward together."
The company even has a new mission statement: "To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." This marks the first time the company has overhauled its mission, which had previously been "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected."
CNNMoney also dishes the doubt:
Zuckerberg has denied that filter bubbles are widespread. He also believes memberships in groups will expose people to more opinions, not fewer, by helping "people meet new people and get new perspectives and broaden their horizons."
[...] The move to a more groups-based experience for Facebook users could mean people get fewer articles from their news feed, where many publishers post directly. They might see less news overall, including fake news, or a more curated selection of stories from their groups. Facebook has not said how or if its tools for fighting fake news carry over to stories posted in groups.
The focus on groups as a positive tool with the power to change the world overlooks how people use them for negative causes. Hate groups like white power organizations use Facebook groups openly, and will continue to exist in the future. Zuckerberg has said he values free speech on the platform and Facebook only interferes if something goes "way over the line," like bullying or the threat of real world violence. Facebook often relies on regular people flagging objectionable content, but that's less likely to happen in closed Facebook groups.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Lagg on Sunday June 25 2017, @06:00AM (3 children)
Just let the people who are going to be corporatized be corporatized. Election, Russia and the piece of shit that proves politics doesn't belong in software - formerly known as Gab - have proven without a doubt the strategic value of splitting people apart so they can't hear contrary ideas and manipulating them by the slice is a 100% surefire return on investment. This is also more directly profitable because you know what kind of engagement those groups are going to respond to. Their view tends to be narrow and predictable.
They ate it up in the last 2-4 years. They're eating it up as I type this. It's why twitter and facebook are so suffocatingly toxic in the first place. Reddit too. Let the people that are going to fatten up on it do so until they're so fat you can see them from space. Maybe then there will be a critical mass and people break up into the site-based tribes they belong in once again. Say what you want. 15K nerds deeply entrenched into their own nerdbubble space bitching about the weirdo Buffy club with 100 users making 20K posts on a PHP forum is preferable to the Orwellian business going down now. And I'll welcome it back.
Also: Zuckerberg is still a loser that proves money doesn't correlate with being a decent man. Him saying that the idea of false information and propaganda influencing the election is "crazy" should make him and facebook an immediate target of suspicion because they were right there along with twitter censoring shit during the DNC leak. Also he's either stupid or lying when he underplays this stuff. I simply cannot believe that the "ideas people" aren't aware of the nature of information when every other tech company is looking deep into fuzzy/noisy data sets and ML right now. Why do people still let him talk on interviews? I seriously doubt I'm the only one that immediately detects him as an untrustworthy weasel.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 25 2017, @07:03AM (2 children)
These people will ruin your life on the long term however if they are permitted to follow their natural inclinations.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Sunday June 25 2017, @09:16PM (1 child)
Yeah therein lies the issue. Is it them or the people who pretend to speak for them that ruin my life. I always get stuck on this because do we blame people who get brainwashed by cults? What amount of responsibility can be laid on them for willful ignorance when we're seeing algo-optimized isolation for more manageable manipulation of opinion.
Also I no longer trust people to be self-aware enough to realize what's going on. I don't think they're dumb or that tech people are better. But I've come to understand there's no initial seed of doubt with people's minds when they look at their facebook wall. There's no intial "wait a minute" instance of critical thought. Because they don't know what user generated content looks like, the trouble with it, how it can be picked apart and the huge level of trust between point A and point B between user and site. When this stuff was fragmented there was no concentration of users to make the data profitable or sensical. General interest centralized social media has to be the precursor to the goddamned grey goo.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 26 2017, @01:00AM
It seems being surrounded by drones is part of life and the remedy is to get elsewhere when the drones are about to learn about brick walls and reality.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday June 25 2017, @06:39AM
Mark Suckerberg has indicated a new focus on "mental inbreeding":
CNNMeMore also dishes the doubt:
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @10:22AM
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday June 25 2017, @03:49PM
"We'll gladly put you at the helm of our little fleet. But our ships must all sail in the same direction."
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Sunday June 25 2017, @08:21PM
"to get a diversity of opinions out there".
Priceless. They're blocking more every day.