But while Russian meddling is a serious problem, the current sentiment toward Silicon Valley borders on scapegoating. Facebook and Twitter are just a mirror, reflecting us. They reveal a society that is painfully divided, gullible to misinformation, dazzled by sensationalism, and willing to spread lies and promote hate. We don’t like this reflection, so we blame the mirror, painting ourselves as victims of Silicon Valley manipulation.
At the hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, squarely blamed the tech companies for Russian interference. “You bear this responsibility,” she said. “You’ve created these platforms.”
But we, the users, are not innocent. Some of the Russian propaganda on social media was cribbed from content that was posted by Americans. Yes, social media helps propaganda spread farther and faster. But Facebook and Twitter didn’t force users to share misinformation. Are Americans so easily duped? Or more alarming, did they simply believe what they wanted to believe?
.. The real crisis is Americans’ inability or unwillingness to sift fact from fiction, a problem that is worsened by the mainstream media’s loss of credibility when it comes to setting the record straight... Facebook’s algorithms may encourage echo chambers, but that’s because the company figured out what users want... The real problem is that Americans don’t have a shared sense of reality... A couple of years ago, I was part of a team that tried that very experiment. We ran a Silicon Valley start-up called Parlio, which was later acquired by Quora. Parlio aimed to be a social media platform for civil debate. But what we discovered was that people loved the idea of reasoned debate, then decided that those debates took too much time. Thoughtful content was also less likely to go viral, and many users are addicted to the sugar rush of virality. So while people liked the idea of eating their vegetables, they still gravitated to Twitter’s candy aisle.Social media platforms magnify our bad habits, even encourage them, but they don’t create them. Silicon Valley isn’t destroying democracy — only we can do that.
Facebook’s 2016 Election Team Gave Advertisers a Blueprint to a Divided US
All in all, this is why there is no dislike button. The entire Facebook system incentivizes division because division creates revenue. It’s a perpetual loop.
Let’s walk through how it works:
Step 1) A person posts, or shares, something incredibly divisive. Note: There is no feedback button to let the poster know the content is hateful and that broader society disapproves of it. There is also no consequence to posting it most of the time.
Step 2) The content attracts likes. Since there is no dislike button, or negative feedback, any likes received makes the poster feel good.
Step 3) The poster is emboldened and increases his/her frequency of posting divisive or hateful content. This attracts a following and more engagement for the original poster. The poster has no need to create inclusive content. They are incentivized to find and highlight divisive thoughts from their life because it rewards them with engagement and the Facebook system re-enforces those thoughts.
Step 4) Repeat
Each subsequent post creates more comments, more engagement, more passion. This is great for Facebook because it means more time on site and increased usage frequency. The handout Facebook is giving advertisers is proof of that. They are monetizing the system. Make no mistake, it is designed to work this way and they are profiting from it.
.. I think there’s more psychology at play then just this though. In a way, Facebook helps minorities find each other, and then isolate themselves virtually to be “just amongst them”. Possibly its the no consequence framework that has given them the courage to continue to pursue finding others of similar values. As they grow though, and realize they are not alone, the isolated group can now open itself to others and recruit into the group, promoting its values.
Now, for a lot of minority groups, this can be great, maybe positive overall for society. Unless a group with vicious values comes along, then it turns into a problem. Especially if it is found that this minority was in fact never small, just very well amortized across all of our society.
.. I think there is a bigger danger in this sort of isolationism (quite the euphemism!) than just vicious values being allowed to coalesce. The isolationism results in individuals’ values not being challenged, which can push them further and further away from reality. Let’s create an imaginary example. We’re trying to solve a math problem. The correct answer to this problem is 0. However, one side believes the answer is absolutely at least 50. And the other side believes the answer must be no more than -50. When these two groups remain within contact, they counter balance each other. But now let’s isolate these groups. In the past when the -50 side chose to go -60 there would be some push back against that and it would help create a more of a central equilibrium. But in isolation without opposition, -60 sounds awesome. Why not -70, or even lower? And on the other side an equal but opposite push for 60, 70 and more is simultaneously happening.
Taking this into real life, I think this is arguably what is happening with politics today. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being right leaning or left leaning. But as we have begun to segregate ourselves into ‘only right leaning’ or ‘only left leaning’ the individuals within these groups have started becoming increasingly radicalized
.. This study on the community effect of downvotes [1] came to rather different conclusions. They conclude that downvoting has a paradoxical effect. It actually incentivizes the poster to post even more content, of even lower quality. And just as importantly, upvotes similarly have no positive effects. They do not result in users posting more regularly, nor generating more well received content. Upvoted users actually tend to leave the community more quickly than downvoted users. The one and only response that negatively incentivizes users is no response at all – which causes them to leave much earlier than up or down votes. And it gets even better. Downvotes tend to spread. Downvoted users tend to downvoter others who in turn begin downvoting others as well. This study on the community effect of downvotes [1] came to rather different conclusions. They conclude that downvoting has a paradoxical effect. It actually incentivizes the poster to post even more content, of even lower quality. And just as importantly, upvotes similarly have no positive effects. They do not result in users posting more regularly, nor generating more well received content. Upvoted users actually tend to leave the community more quickly than downvoted users. The one and only response that negatively incentivizes users is no response at all – which causes them to leave much earlier than up or down votes. And it gets even better. Downvotes tend to spread. Downvoted users tend to downvoter others who in turn begin downvoting others as well.
Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood’s Oldest Horror Story
Nearly 80 years later, that aroma of perversion and maladroit du seigneur clings to Hollywood. Now we are inundated with grotesque tales of Harvey Weinstein pulling out his penis to show to appalled and frightened young women, enlisting the pimping help of agents and assistants to have actresses delivered to his hotel rooms, where he pestered the women to watch him shower or give him a massage or engage in intimate acts.
“The ill will towards him for getting away with it all for so long has unleashed something so primitive,” a prominent male Hollywood producer told me. “If people could rip him apart, they would
.. a man trusted by the Obamas to have their daughter intern at his company.
.. Often the actresses scrambled, trying to figure out how to get out of the room without having their futures shredded by the vindictive satyr, who also threatened to destroy actresses who balked at wearing dresses designed by his wife Georgina Chapman’s fashion label on the red carpet.
.. Min recalled attending the $400,000 speech Barack Obama made as an ex-president to an A&E Networks advertising upfront at the Pierre hotel in New York in April... “There probably needs to be some introspection about how certain people who engage in horrendous mistreatment of women can co-opt the media,” she mused. “The fundamental predatory nature of Hollywood is young, attractive people — largely females — putting themselves in front of men to be judged and appraised and chosen.
.. In Hollywood, unlike at other Fortune 500 companies, the one-on-one meetings take place in hotel suites and bars. It’s an exploitative and oddly personal process.”
.. Harvey had proven time and again he could get you the Oscar that could make your career. It’s the difference between being in the reboot of ‘Saved by the Bell’ or getting 15 million for your next role.”
Hollywood is a culture that runs on fear. And it is not like other professions, one top entertainment executive said, because “no one comes with a résumé. It’s about what you look like and who sent you.”
.. There was resentment against Weinstein in Hollywood, not only for the stories bubbling around about women, but the way he humiliated men who worked with him. He even berated a 15-year-old girl at a screening because her parents supported a political candidate he opposed.
.. Like Trump, that other self-professed predator, there were complaints that in business deals he stiffed people on bills (advertising and public relations payments), and he had a reputation for lying, cheating, taking advantage, acting like a thug. Many in the film community felt he besmirched the Oscars by turning it into a marketing race rather than a contest of quality.
What To Do With “Shitty Media Men”?
The body of the email contained an anonymous Google spreadsheet labeled “SHITTY MEDIA MEN.” On the top, it said, “DISCLAIMER: This document is only a collection of misconduct allegations and rumors. Take everything with a grain of salt. If you see something about a man you’re friends with, don’t freak out. Men accused of physical sexual violence by multiple women are highlighted in red.” I saw some of the names and thought: fucking finally. Finally, the grossest men in media will be exposed.
.. But things do get complicated when you start lumping all of this behavior together in a big anonymous spreadsheet of unsubstantiated allegations against dozens of named men — who were not given the chance to respond — that, by Wednesday night, seemed to have spread far and wide. At various points on Wednesday, dozens of anonymous accounts were looking at the spreadsheet. This was by design; because of the way the document was structured it meant that anyone could look at it, download and share it
.. In the coming days, as aggregated lists of men are created, it’s important to distinguish who are dogs and who are sexual assaulters.”
.. the fact of the spreadsheet’s existence is itself a feature of this new social media age, of email hacks and document leaks, and a time when things that had just been whispered about are put into digital form, and shared, and take on a life of their own.
.. the consequences almost never outweigh the price that women pay for coming forward. Our motives are suspect, our reputations are maligned, our victimhood called into question.
.. the thing that stuck out to me, and sickened me, the most on the list was the men about whom it had been written “rumored sealed settlement.” Because most of those men are still working in media
.. The hypocrisy of performative allyship has been well documented. But what of the hypocrisy of media organizations themselves?
The accused work at some of the most well-known places in the industry, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, Mother Jones, and BuzzFeed.