That's a trivial notion of causation in which a particular Lyft driver drove me home. It says nothing about whether I would have gotten home at basically the same time even if she hadn't been working.
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Replying to @deaneckles @buzzfeedben and
Ah! Facebook isn't identical to any other communication platform; obviously telegraph to television is a big change. A Lyft driver to another is kinda like... one TV correspondent to to another. Facebook isn't just one more way. It clearly changes the road, if you will.
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Replying to @zeynep @buzzfeedben and
Then you need to employ a notion of causation that involves counterfactuals, not just being part of the chain of events.
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Replying to @deaneckles @buzzfeedben and
And one can, but not "if one can't prove it wouldn't have happened without X, then X didn't matter." No experimental set-up possible to prove it. Well. Unless you are Facebook, and you can selectively tweak algorithms in countries to experiment.
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Replying to @zeynep @deaneckles and
I also wish we had more robust experimental approaches, but when you consider what we *do* understand about human societies, historical examination of complex causal chains is a superb method. Only problem is cannot indisputably resolve; more like field convergence/consensus.
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Replying to @zeynep @buzzfeedben and
I'm not suggesting radical skepticism about the methods of history. Rather, I think it is unfair to historians to liken their work to the quality of evidence and plausibility of claims in this article.
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Replying to @deaneckles @buzzfeedben and
zeynep tufekci Retweeted
I’s agree that the piece is overwritten (part of the need to appeal to things that go viral—human/tech vulnerability). But Facebook algorithm change may well have pushed over the feedback loop and social media is the mileue. From ages ago: https://twitter.com/evanchill/status/1070516951099805696 …
zeynep tufekci added,
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Replying to @zeynep @deaneckles and
I’m arguing against “it’s just a tool.”
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Replying to @zeynep @deaneckles and
More like an accelerant being poured on a fire
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Literally every facet of this movement is being crowdsourced via Facebook. The unions just threw in their support. Without Facebook, of course people would have protested Macron, he's hated. But a national protest materialized in 10 days off the back of one Facebook event.
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And that has speed-to-scale has a lot of consequences to movements. It may be one of many possible paths in different universes, but in this particular one, it is *the* path and its features matter a great deal. (I wrote a whole book about just that so...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
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