These kinds of headlines—"Here’s How Facebook’s Local News Algorithm Change Led To The Worst Riots Paris Has Seen In 50 Years"—and reporting largely unfounded and irresponsible. What about the evidence here is convincing?pic.twitter.com/3nQHqLVkAG
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There is fairly strong historical work on how railroads and telegraph (which also transform the communication landscape) helped contribute to Paris burn a few times before. Historians deal with this kind of complexity all-the time (and they disagree, too).
If they are organizing on Facebook, FB is part of the causal chain—and just like any big affair, it's one contributing factor among multiple dynamics, interacting with them all. Movements live or die by visibility, so if FB group visibility is increased, that's part of the story.
That said, I don't like the title of the piece. Too strong in my view. (I now negotiate title veto on writing contracts, well, partly because the need to go viral on Facebook/Twitter favors edgier and bolder claims in titles
).
Too complex to falsify in any such way, imo. It is plausible to me that an algorithm change—if it drastically altered visibility of some messages—could be an accelerant, with feedback loops. But sure, one dynamic among many.
This movement literally started around a Facebook event. It's main symbol, the vest, comes from a random guy's viral Facebook video, the only coordination happening is being done in Facebook groups. There is no movement without Facebook.
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