You said his tweets were a damning indictment. That’s not an objection?
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Replying to @benedictevans
I’d seen Facebook objection to breach language elsewhere, including allegedly legal threats to stop publication of story—so wasn’t referring to his tweets. That said, I think Alex’s explanation does implicate the business model. How is an ordinary person supposed to consent?
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Replying to @zeynep
This is a strong argument against the openness that almost all academics, journalists and advocates urged on Facebook until very recently.
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Replying to @benedictevans
Nope! You can easily have access to research that provides public info without letting sleazy apps collect friend info. Put people on site! Independence of research, publish without PR approval, no taking data off site. Done. I know many who’d jump at this and contribute a lot.
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Replying to @zeynep
It’s not a matter of research, but of innovation around new services. Closing off API access makes that harder and was evil, according to all tech advocates. Same for Apple curating the store - closed! Evil! All the advocacy positions have swung around 180°, which is notable.
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Replying to @benedictevans @zeynep
Also seems like you are making a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” argument that is somehow rationalizing fb role that even fb is trying to reconcile (very sloppily).
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Replying to @grubercraft @zeynep
It’s pretty clear one reason FB failed to clamp down on fake news was that the entire community consensus was FB should not make decisions like that. That consensus was wrong. But it wasn’t only FB that was thinking like that.
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Replying to @benedictevans @grubercraft
Nope, they were afraid of the political backlash. And there was no such consensus; some people were begging Facebook to crack down on fake news before the election. I believe they thought that Clinton would win (as did everyone) and they would deal with this after the election.
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Replying to @zeynep @grubercraft
‘Facebook should not decide what I can share’ was an extreme widespread view.
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Replying to @benedictevans @grubercraft
Among some, yes, but it was based on multiple misunderstandings which Facebook perpetuates. One, it already decides what people effectively share (has since newsfeed went algorithmic) but buries that fact, and research shows most people have no idea. But that's not all.
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Second, it buried the issue of misinformation and fake news on the platform pre-election. It was visible to many of us from just eyeballing it, and they certainly knew, but they avoided the topic and did very little. So people didn't know what the issue was so could not weigh in.
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@zeynep has been clear and consistent on these issues from the start. It’s a mistake to conflate her with some bad-faith critics1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
I don’t. But I don’t necessarily agree with her either.
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End of conversation
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