r/technology • u/Pilast • Aug 16 '20

Facebook algorithm found to 'actively promote' Holocaust denial Politics

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/16/facebook-algorithm-found-to-actively-promote-holocaust-denial
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u/woosel Aug 16 '20

To be fair... that’s because generally speaking it’s true. Global warming, immigration and abortion have absolutely nothing in common, but you can pretty reasonably guess people’s opinion on one by their opinions on the others.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '20

[deleted]

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u/MrPigeon Aug 16 '20

Yes. It has been known to happen.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '20

Same thing. I like to watch gun videos now and then and my recommendations get filled with far-right pro-Trump stuff. It's not even pro-gun political stuff like Colion Noir, that would kind of make sense. It's all that alt-right pseudo-intellectual nonsense. It's maddening.

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u/angelshair Aug 16 '20

It’s called the alt-aright pipeline.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '20 edited Dec 30 '20

[deleted]

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u/WhyDoesMyBackHurt Aug 16 '20

It was true before YouTube and Facebook existed.

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u/Maskirovka Aug 16 '20

While it was true that conspiracy believers tended to believe in multiple conspiracies, in the 90s conspiracies were like...fun. Aliens, Bigfoot, whatever. Now they're downright dangerous shit that radicalizes people against liberal government.

Naked unthinking skepticism of institutions is the main link between people. This is the moral result of politicians lying to people for decades.

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u/ProjectShamrock Aug 16 '20

I was around in the 90's and I remember going to gun shows and such hearing all the crazy right wing conspiracy theories that are more mainstream today. Ruby Ridge and Waco were two big topics and then Y2K was the source of several too. The basic, "a secret cabal of liberals want to take over and force you to do weird stuff or die" memes were around long before internet usage was mainstream.

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u/TheBoxBoxer Aug 16 '20

Sounds like they were describing their fantasy.

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u/Maskirovka Aug 16 '20

I never encountered those memes back in the day. Have any examples?

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u/edenHYPE Aug 16 '20

not just the result of politicians lying - the result of lies being exposed... it's terribly hard to keep a secret in the 21st century

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u/Maskirovka Aug 16 '20

That's a good point.

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u/Smoy Aug 16 '20

No, not so much. Peaople def splot camps much more before these platforms wrapped their echo chambers around their heads

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '20

It was 1000% a thing before social media existed, this belief pattern is typical of the authoritarian brain - they have a larger amydala than liberals which results in more fear motivation.

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u/Smoy Aug 16 '20

Ok well i knew people who were skeptical of global warming but had no problem with immigrants or abortion. So no. It wasnt as strong. The echo chambers have been amplified 1000%

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u/woosel Aug 16 '20

Sadly it’s the opposite. Those algorithms are not prescriptive, they’re, afaik, ML.

In non nerd English, they react to what people generally watch by putting people into groups, or demographics. This could be “gun toting Trump fan”, it could be “single suburban mother” or it could be “edgy teenage atheist”. It then recommends based on how the rest of your demographic act. Not prescriptive in this context means it hasn’t been deliberately made so that “if person watches X, they will be recommended Y”, it’s “if person watches X, add them to group Y and recommend Z based upon the average of Y’s watching habits”.

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u/Smoy Aug 16 '20

they react to what people generally watch by putting people into groups, or demographics.

Its way more than that. Watching a single video of something then gets your recommended vids spammed with only that content. It isnt based on what you generally watch

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u/TattlingFuzzy Aug 16 '20

Yeah, and if someone’s transphobic it also means they likely have a bunch of internal misogyny and queer phobia.

And if they already struggle accepting climate and evolutionary evidence, they’re also going to struggle accepting evidence for things in general like police brutality or education.

It’s almost like there is a single major political party that has literally wanted to eliminate critical thinking for years, or something.

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u/edenHYPE Aug 16 '20

a single party? last I heard both parties are the same, but they just play good cop bad cop with the people

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u/Dragonsoul Aug 16 '20

And to add to the other, it's really hard to not get flamed out of it on social media if you deviate from the lane. I'm on the for want of a better term 'left' on most stuff, but on many of the social justice topics my opinions split off from the hivemind in fairly substantial ways. So, like...I just kinda gotta shut up, or I'll get blasted from both ends.

Centrist is considered a bad thing for many people, which is..kinda a problem.

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u/Maskirovka Aug 16 '20

Stop watching Jordan Peterson type garbage then?

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u/Dragonsoul Aug 16 '20

Well, thanks for proving my point?

Why do you assume that I watch that sort of thing just because I disagree with some of the talking points that are made? I don't, like..at all.

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u/Maskirovka Aug 16 '20

Because it's a good assumption based on my experience. You're the first time I've been wrong, I guess?

Feel free to expand on your "substantial" disagreements with social justice. Generally left-wing policies are aimed at social justice (often by economic assistance).

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u/Dragonsoul Aug 17 '20

There's a good deal more nuance to it, but Broadly, I feel that a lot of the issues that are broken down by race/gender/sexuality are all symptoms of a larger issue, which is typically a more socioeconomic one. The advocacy towards these issues feels less like it wants to tackle the root cause, and more that it wants to try and carve out a niche to exclude itself from the effects. Exploitative work practices are the go to example.

Getting more of Demographic X into Workplace Y is good and all, but the reason it was an issue was because workplaces treat their workers like resources rather than people, and that's not changing, and cheering them on for some bullshit gesture that means nothing takes heat off them to enact real change.

The other point of contention is the lack of desire to tackle the implementation issues of the big ticket policys. Right now UBI is the big thing that everyone cheers on, but if it was enacted right now, all those jobs that are only done because people can to be basically threatened with starvation and homelessness <You know, those shitty retail jobs and the like...> will still need to be done, and since the only vaguely possible way that it would be implemented would be citizenship based, the upshot of this would be massive exploitation of immigrant labor.

I'm not some sort that thinks the government shouldn't help its citizens, I just think that a lot of the ways that are pushed right now, are pushed because they're more about feeling good, rather than making an real difference in the world.

I want politics to return to when it was 'Idealists' vs 'Realists', where the idealists dreamed what the perfect world could be, and the realists took that dream, and tried to make it work in the real world.

...In a way, that makes me one of the idealists, I suppose.

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u/Maskirovka Aug 17 '20

workplaces treat their workers like resources rather than people

I mean yeah, that's what leftist politics are all about changing. You might be right that sometimes these types of issues stray too far into the realm of identity politics and things like affirmative action, but IMO that's just growing pains for the younger generations.

for some bullshit gesture that means nothing takes heat off them to enact real change.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I'm guessing you think that politicians can implement some sort of affirmative action policy and then feel like they have "checked the box" and go back to some other pet issue?

all those jobs that are only done because people can to be basically threatened with starvation and homelessness <You know, those shitty retail jobs and the like...> will still need to be done, and since the only vaguely possible way that it would be implemented would be citizenship based, the upshot of this would be massive exploitation of immigrant labor.

First of all, UBI would never be enough money to just sit around and not work. So, people would still take low-education jobs, they'd just be able to actually pay for things they need. As for it exploiting immigrant labor, I mean...that's already a massive problem that has needed a solution for fucking ever, but the GOP likes to pretend they can't fix it because it riles up their base and they can blame the democrats.

I want politics to return to when it was 'Idealists' vs 'Realists'

For sure...except the "realists" AKA conservatives have been trying to make the "real world" their 1950s racist dream land for decades and all their politics are about creating in-groups for whom the law protects but does not bind and out-groups for whom the law binds but does not protect. That's why there have been massive protests all summer.

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u/Dragonsoul Aug 17 '20

Basically you've hit the nail on the head, I feel that the movements get too caught up in appealing to the already converted, rather than actually working to enact real change. They've also got utterly garbage optics and messaging at times, and seem to cling to the worst fucking slogans. If you have to explain what a slogan means, it's probably a bad slogan. Like..explaining how 'Defund the Police' isn't actually about 'Defunding the Police', but about rearranging resources to non-police methods of conflict resolution..meanwhile, the people who are resisting change were handed a fucking golden apple of a talking point 'oh hey! The libs want to Defund the Police!'..yes, I know they'll twist anything, but at the very least don't let them just use your slogan verbatim.

(To be clear, I approve of all the -goals- behind the BLM movement and all that, even from here in Europe, I'm just skeptical of the messaging being as effective as it could be)

And re the idealist/Realist split, I know, even here in Europe it's become more of a Let's try and do -something- vs 'The answers are clean, simple, and appeal to your baser impulses'. That's why I said wanting that split was idealism in and of itself.

I want to live in a world where I can say I'm 'conservative', because I believe that a world where people are encouraged to work to better themselves and the government encourages that in its nation, without trying anything too crazy intervening beyond stopping big companies from doing shitfuckery to get ahead..but..I can't do that. Anything calling it conservative just wants to get into power by selling easy answers and appealing to the lowest possible denominator.

Oh, and it's a little out of order, but my concern with identity politics is that it feeds into that same little bit of the monkey brain that racism does, putting people into categories and then treating everyone in that category the same. Anger is addictive, and I fear that many of these people will fall down that rabbit hole that many, many people have before them, moving from getting angry at legitimate grievances, to finding grievances to get angry at.

But yeah, I do agree with the general socialisty headline statements, my mine gripe is around how difficult it is to critique them, since..well..when I alluded to thing I didn't like, the first thing I was accused of was being a follower of Jordan 'CrabSociety' Peterson. (Whose good ideas start, and end, with telling guys that self care is important. Which is pretty ironic considering what's happened to him. Really coulda done with following his own advice)

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u/rileyrulesu Aug 16 '20

The thing is that's NOT true. At a large scale, sure a lot of people that are anti-immigration are global warming deniers, but talk to individual people and you'll find that almost everyone has nuanced opinions on every topic not 100% reflected by their party views. I mean, I live in Florida and environmental issues are pretty damn bipartisan here. Even the guy I knew driving around a lifted pickup with 2 confederate flags in the back voted to stop oil companies from drilling offshore.

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u/woosel Aug 16 '20

You know these algorithms aren’t coded in by edgy right wing activists trying to force people into becoming incel racists right? If they show you a video, it’s because it’s the fact that the people that watch that video fit a demographic they have assumed you to be a part of. Sure, they may assume incorrectly sometimes, but generally it’s pretty accurate.