OT: The Facebook Papers

[Likes2ridefar]

Originally Posted by mcteague

I'd like schools to spend time teaching critical thinking, along with basic personal finance, but have little hope that will come to pass.

Tim

At my wife’s middle school where she teaches they are more concerned about vandalism and assaults from kids daring each other on tik tok, learning is secondary for many.

[vespasianus]

Originally Posted by Dude

I completely agree, people are pissed when FB share price doesn't go up. Capitalism is the game and FB and amazon and fox news are all winning so why should they be punished? When the headlines are "Facebook choose profits over people." Well yeah, duh, every public company is incentivized to choose profits over people.

The "people are the problem" you allude to is oversimplifying it. I know that might not be "your" argument, but that's always the main counter argument. They could all choose people AND profits but have made a conscious decision not too.

I am not sure you can have people and profits. I think that is the people problem or more specifically, the American people problem.

[adub]

We are all sheep slowly being lead off a cliff.

[redir]

The irony of it as it just came to me is this. Way back when nations would design propaganda campaigns for what ever reasons and goals they wanted to attain. Even as horrible as some of the past regimes in recorded history were the propaganda was always for some nationalistic cause whether on the right or left. For the glory of the father land in Germany in the 1930's to the glory of Angka in Cambodia in the 1970's. These propagandists were doing it for the love of country and their ideology. They ripped nations apart and rebuilt them under a twisted ideology into authoritarian dictatorships all cheered on by the people because they fell for it.

And now we have a propaganda campaign (or at least a platform for such a thing) not for a cause or sociopolitical ideology or nationalistic cause but for profit. Tearing nations apart, leading them in some cases to genocide for profits. That's sick.

[norcalbiker]

Originally Posted by mcteague

I'd like schools to spend time teaching critical thinking, along with basic personal finance, but have little hope that will come to pass.

Tim

Well, they're more concern other things. In state of Oregon, You no longer need to know Math and know how to read and write to graduate high school. I think the governor of that State sign that bill. It's sad.

[Likes2ridefar]

Originally Posted by norcalbiker

Well, they're more concern other things. In state of Oregon, You no longer need to know Math and know how to read and write to graduate high school. I think the governor of that State sign that bill. It's sad.

Same in arizona. I’m amazed how low the bar is here for education.

[verbs4us]

Originally Posted by Louis

Doesn't this forum count as "Social Media?"

They can't all be bad.

Touche! A big difference between FB and Paceline is that we ARE bound by a social contract--we all love bikes, biking, other bikers and anything that promotes cycling. We are a pretty respectful and civilized group; we aren't here to pick fights or one-up the next guy. What are FB users bound by, other than starting each post with "I" or "My cat..."?

Years ago -- and I am revealing my age -- MAD magazine ran a spoof on US magazine, called "ME magazine," where every single feature was about me: here is my car, my house, my dessert, my cat. As with almost everything in MAD, it was remarkably prescient.

[bikinchris]

Originally Posted by redir

I do need to catch up on all of this and try to keep an open mind. I know we are all susceptible to propaganda, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance and so on. We tend to want to seek out our own echo chambers... But still. It only takes a second to fact check something. So when i see something that looks like BS to me on FB instead of running with it I just look for better sources. It's not that hard. SO the question is, is that really Facebooks fault? Maybe it is I don't know, that's why I am trying to be open about it.

Most people are not only blissfully unaware of what confirmation bias is, they are completely unaware of their own bias.

That being said, the internet as a whole is mostly being used to sell or spread disinformation about nearly every subject you can imagine. Not just politics, but products for sale as well as opinions of all sorts of things. People actually get paid to post positive reviews about a product and negative reviews about competing products. So, imagine what is being done about politics.
EVERYTHING you see online should be viewed with skepticism, including this very post.

[eddief]

billionaire robots in hoodies.

[redir]

Originally Posted by bikinchris

Most people are not only blissfully unaware of what confirmation bias is, they are completely unaware of their own bias.

That being said, the internet as a whole is mostly being used to sell or spread disinformation about nearly every subject you can imagine. Not just politics, but products for sale as well as opinions of all sorts of things. People actually get paid to post positive reviews about a product and negative reviews about competing products. So, imagine what is being done about politics.
EVERYTHING you see online should be viewed with skepticism, including this very post.

Yeah I know. What bothers me though is that the Internet is a miracle of technology that has brought incredible amounts of knowledge to anyone who has access to it which is most of us now.

Have you ever heard of Brandolini's law? If not look it up

[charliedid]

It takes some work and commitment but I find Facebook easy to manage in a way that suits me. I never comment on and usually delete posts that link to news articles and I never comment on friends political post and usually hide those. Now my feed is boring and free of much of the nonsense. I'm cool with that.

I really just use it to connect with friends and family and a couple hobbies.

Plenty of people and other companies want Facebook broken up so they can share in the advertising spoils which is understandable. Same with Google.

We can't save everyone from themselves.