> My path in technology started at Facebook where I was the first Director of Monetization. [...] we sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible and turn into historically unprecedented profits. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.
> Tobacco companies [...] added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis.
> Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs.
> Tobacco companies added ammonia to cigarettes to increase the speed with which nicotine traveled to the brain. Extreme, incendiary content—think shocking images, graphic videos, and headlines that incite outrage—sowed tribalism and division. And this result has been unprecedented engagement -- and profits. Facebook’s ability to deliver this incendiary content to the right person, at the right time, in the exact right way... that is their ammonia.
> The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions — it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage. All the while, the technology is getting smarter and better at provoking a response from you. [...] This is not by accident. It’s an algorithmically optimized playbook to maximize user attention -- and profits.
> When it comes to misinformation, these companies hide behind the First Amendment and say they stand for free speech. At the same time, their algorithms continually choose whose voice is actually heard. In truth, it is not free speech they revere. Instead, Facebook and their cohorts worship at the altar of engagement and cast all other concerns aside, raising the voices of division, anger, hate and misinformation to drown out the voices of truth, justice, morality, and peace.
This is what every news outlet tries to do. The only difference is that FB is better at it. It reminds me of the controversy about targeting ads towards protected categories (age, gender). This is something all media buys do as well, based on location, event type, but FB just has a better way.
I'm not saying its right, or necessarily wrong, just that this seems to be more about them being good at something than it is about them operating in moral territory that is different than any other business.
And I agree Facebook is not the first company in the world to maximise attention with this kind of content. Go back to when political pamphlets started appearing in the 16th century, it was mostly salacious bullshit about well-known public figures being possessed by the devil or drinking the blood of orphans.
I am not even sure what the problem is anymore, let alone what the solution is...but this is not going to stop with Facebook, this is just a reflection of human nature (and yes, everyone has complained about this kind of "content", it ignores the fact that most humans enjoy consuming it).
(I think the most problematic part of Facebook is just that so many people get their news from there and, like every human that has ever existed, they have been unable to deal with that responsibility in an even-handed way...I don't know though. They are basically a dead platform anyway, it is mainly used by old people to keep up to-date with their grandchildren afaik...I don't really know anyone who uses it, and I have never used it myself).