Journalists who cover Facebook and bristle at their haughty disdain and/or patronizing condescension, consider this illustrative example from Daniel Ellsberg, discussing a conversation he had with Kissinger. The problem is with asymmetric information.https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge/ …
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As with most major conflicts, this one is made bigger because both sides are partially right. It *is* true that if most journalists knew what insiders know, they'd think very differently about Facebook and its attendant problems, and the media narrative would totally change.
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But it's also true that FBers live inside a blinding miasma of values and assumptions: the world looks very different from Menlo Park (inside a Disneyland campus) than it does from a Rohingya refugee camp or a Brazilian favela. The journalists also see things FBers don't.
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This is real FB pickle: Journalists with little information, reporting on insiders with better information (themselves blinded by a corporate culture that feels besieged and can't shake itself out of the FB perspective), read by a public that largely doesn't understand any of it.
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Unlike Kissinger though, the journalists are never getting clearances. FB does a uniquely bad job at conveying their view, and journalists aren't really incentivized to understand it anyhow. They're as captive to the media cycle as anyone, despite collectively creating it.pic.twitter.com/z5Prp5Odjy
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The full impact of Facebook, or really the mass adoption of socially-connected smartphones, will only be understood decades from now. I suspect much contemporary coverage will seem silly in retrospect, but so will many of FB's actions.
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Personally, I try to ignore the fleeting hangups of the FB commentariat (e.g. Cambridge Analytica), and focus on the bigger technology shifts. Take the recent example of WhatsApp, which differs markedly from core FB, and yet has caused much turmoil.https://www.wired.com/story/why-whatsapp-became-a-hotbed-for-rumors-and-lies-in-brazil/ …
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End of conversation
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Still waiting for this realization to dawn on a lot of people at FB....
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Going to make one over-simplified statement: the only way something is binding, limiting, isolating, etc is if it’s moving in the wrong direction. We have a fundamental, global misalignment with what “good”, “right”, “just”, “truth” - whatever the term - is.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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