Everyone wants to blame Mark Zuckerberg for polarization and fake news. But if social media were fragmented into a thousand smaller companies instead of a few big ones, wouldn't polarization and fake news be worse?
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If everyone watched news from a local cable channel, they wouldn't have the same effect on a country as when they either watch Fox or CNN. FB being so large is part of what makes fake news a problem it adds credibility when you see an article liked by N,000s of people.
If there were 1000 smaller social networks, people would choose theirs by affinity, not location. So it would be worse than switching from local to Fox News, not better. There would be 500 different Fox Newses, many of which made Fox seem unbiased by comparison.
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Not really. Choosing sources by affinity is still a less damaging situation than having (dis)information targeted at you made possible by the big data that a unified system (and unscrupulous management) make possible.
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Right — Cambridge Analytica’s data mining and profiling was only possible because of FB’s scale and cooperation / lax rules.
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Correct, but you have to have that affinity in the first place. There is less motivation to spread misinformation to people who already have your affinity. In addition not be exposed to different ideas isn’t innately polarising in the way spreading misinformation to each other is
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That is a good point, though I suspect fragmentation will substantially increase the number of commentators on hyper-polarised sites who are non-confrontational extremists - (people who enjoy being in echo chambers while avoiding twitter-wars)
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The 500 different FOX news(es) would not all be unique; They would have a lot of things common with each other. And therefore the opinions overall are a lot more washed out, than being pushed into one particular direction (which definitely is far more dangerous)
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This already sort-of exists in smaller forums like Stormfront or segments of 4chan - and they're often the originators of the fake news that makes it out into the wider pool
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Yep, but that's the point right, the harm is done in the wider pool?
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But it might keep the really awful biased populist fodder out of the general population, and keep from radicalizing the rational. Gab is a good example where FB is not hospitable to their views, and so it keeps the really extreme views over there. That may be better for us.
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An ultimate fringe social network was a chat on ICQ. Smaller networks can't amplify and promote a fake news based on an agression for clicks. The key is amplification and reach. Only big aggregator can do that. The smaller network, smaller amplification among everybody combined.
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Why should I acquit FB because smaller networks has worse effect?
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