People are taking the wrong lessons from the Facebook Papers. The solution is to flip the power dynamic: give the people themselves the power to choose what they pay attention to.
as a compete novice in the industry with a passion to write words, Substack provided a welcome harbor in the shark infested waters of the media ocean. I didn't know what I didn't know. Substack and its writers have provided the keys to the doors of the prison of the mind.
Sadly, we all know so many people who will complain but never grab the key and free themselves.
They do not realize that their individual freedom is up to them. Nobody else will fight for your freedom if you are unwilling to participate.
Substack opened the door after I unlocked it and I discovered others willing to support that liberation. For any skeptics out there, I am living proof that a person with a dream-goal can achieve an objective without being an expert.
The world has too many experts saying all kinds of expert things. I am just an expert on my life, and I have found that my expertise in that arena resonates with others.
I think it provided a welcome harbor for readers, too. Even just from a UX perspective it's so much nicer to read a page on Substack. It loads faster, has zero distracting ads, uses less power on mobile devices, and has nothing else to distract from the text. People are sick of the ad-based model. Substack delivers something better.
Well said. Why I dumped FB 6 yrs ago, rarely go to IG, Telegram is gaining steam and I love reading from my fav writers/researchers on this platform. Thank you!
Dependence on telegram or any other like-soliciting forum is a social pathology that always leads to the same pathological outcomes. The "heart" counts on substack articles and comments feeds that same pathology. Competent people express their messages, and competent people read those messages, even offering payment for messages they like. Longing for reassurance from strangers for its own sake indicates insecurity that is best treated by avoiding altogether venues where "hearts" are the only reward. It's a video game mentality, showing disconnection from reality.
Learning makes us better. Likes make us insecure and weak.
Depends on who you follow, no? I follow the same trusted sources on Telegram as I do on substack. Besides I lost all my SM platforms from censorship - Telegram was a great alternative. Have a great day.
No, it doesn't really depend on who you follow, only that you're a follower. "Follow" as a tag for reading an author's work isn't accidental. Learning is healthy. Following breeds dependence. Healthier to call it "Index" or "Reading List." Some are incapable of doing anything other than follow.
Participation in sites that censor demonstrates the pathology of following.
I dont want to be on your base, or any other that includes neurotic dependence on approval by strangers. Those who depend on telegram or any other outlet aren't very independent. Sad.
I'm still waiting for someone to implement spotify for journalism. Subscribing to 15 different papers and 30 different substacks/patreons is not practical. But if I could spend $10-20 a month and just never hit a paywall when I want to read an article? I would do that immediately.
Hugely agree. Wish my fee would mostly get divvied up by how long I spend on the various authors’ articles. Would let you dip toes into new material without “supporting” a wacko (much). Reward the quality authors.
I could not agree more wholeheartedly. This is part of what drew my to Substack in the first place and I have only become more impressed with the platform and more passionate about its model ever since. I will be sharing this article widely.
"But it is the free and open exchange of ideas that allows for effective communication, and it’s also the cornerstone of a free society, which becomes repressive if individuals are muffled, or the flow of information is restricted. The best weapon against misunderstandings, or misinformation, is more communication, more free speech, not silence, and not censorship (or threats of deplatforming)."
One person's "disinformation" in another person's censorship, silencing, and forcing of unnecessary authoritarian restrictions on the free an open exchange of ideas.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Disinformation isn't a difference of opinion. It's propaganda. It's deceptive information deliberately spread to cause harm. I'm not going to defend anyone's calls for genocide or incitement for murder. The FB criticisms aren't about whether a politician is bad at their job, they're about how they allowed a genocide in Myanmar to be organised on their platform.
For anyone reading this: obviously calls for physical violence and genocide(!!) are NOT protected forms of free speech. In fact, they are crimes and no entity, no corporation, nor government that supports human rights, like the USA, protects threats against others on any platform.
This is my point. Restrictions on speech already exist. In terms of social media, they are not being policed, they are not taken seriously, platforms are either ignoring them, or taking far too long to respond to them. Holocaust denial is a huge issue on YouTube. Groups like Qanon appear harmless at first but have a LOT of crossover with fascist ideologies generally and antisemitism in particular. Antivax rhetoric is getting people killed daily. But most platforms do nothing or even amplify disinformation. This shit isn't harmless. It's not just a difference of opinion. There needs to be room to remove disinfo because correcting it or arguing against it sadly does very little.
Someone could claim that everything you've stated above is "disinformation" and try to prevent you from expressing your opinions because of it. What you are advocating for is a slippery slope where all kinds of topics from history to health that you deem "inappropriate" need to be "removed" from public platforms. The same could be done to you. Hence, the reason for the standards of liberty that protect free speech. Let adults find out the information they need, with minimum interference, and respect their ability to find the truth for themselves. What is now deemed "common knowledge" may change over time as more information is revealed. It's happened many times throughout history. At no point does everyone know all the facts, and demonizing others, casting aspersions on whole groups of people, is a lot more harmful than letting people have conversations on social media platforms. I wish you the best, and I will end this by saying: let's agree to disagree.
... the latest Public Health Scotland data is out. Scotland is 71% vaccinated. It shows that the fully vaccinated accounted for 89% of Covid-19 deaths in the past four weeks from October 9th through to November 5th… so similar to UK numbers.
... what was that about antivax rhetoric? ..one could say you are spreading disinformation by saying antivax is just rhetoric with no basis in fact... and censor you ...
..there is a reason Freedom of Speech is the 1st Amendment in the US constitution..
What is proposed in this article does nothing to get rid of the horrendous amount of disinformation spread daily on Facebook and other sites. Disinformation is poison to human society and causes otherwise reasonably sane individuals to take horse de-wormer, rather than a highly effective vaccine. And, this is only one of millions of examples of why Facebook and the rest need to be regulated and fined out of existence if they don't themselves, get rid of the vast hatred and disinformation that is poisoning human society.
Basically, you're advocating for the destruction of the First Amendment, the cornerstone of our democracy. If you think there is disinformation, better that you would use your own free speech rights to counter that disinformation. Rather than snuffing out free speech and democracy, we should encourage a bottom-up system that allows for a wider access to free speech platforms that allow free people to exercise the system of checks and balances that the First Amendment was meant to encourage.
The first amendment says the government can't restrict your speech, not that Facebook can't. Your speech is already subject to plenty of restrictions that you agree to every time you sign up to a website. This disinformation is itself snuffing out democracy. What checks and balances are you referring to?
The government, much of it through the Democratic Party at this time, is trying to use the government to intimidate and possibly regulate speech on Facebook. That is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Checks and balances in a free (speech) society are provided by unfettered discourse by people using their critical thinking skills. It's the worst system except for all the rest, or do you believe that history shows that government knows best what is acceptable speech and what is true?
". . .hatred and disinformation that is poisoning human society". Same problem with pornography. One thinks they know it when they see it, but the neighbor may not agree. The law says people are to be held accountable for inciting violence, crime or fraud. It does not cover what some might find annoying, hateful or wrong. More speech police is not the answer.
The needed change is far more simple. Simply change § 230(c) to have a new subsection (3):
(3) Civil liability not excepted
The provisions of subsection (2) above shall not apply to any actions of any provider or user of an interactive computer service aggregating content of others by means of computational algorithms as defined below.
With a corresponding new definition of "computational algorithms" to reflect the types of practices that are reflected in the Facebook papers, companies would lose the implicit subsidy of § 230 and would have to make rational, economic judgments or face civil liability. Facing the economic realities of their actions through potential liability would rationalize the actions of the providers.
> flip the power dynamic: give the people themselves the power to choose what they pay attention to.
Don’t people already have that power? I only pay attention to social media when I choose to. How are people compelled to pay attention to social media?
> The real problem is at the foundation: a business model that sells people’s attention to advertisers, which motivates companies to reward the content that most effectively manipulates people’s emotions.
It seems like this same criticism could be made of broadcast TV in the 20th century. Does the argument that better regulations solves the attention crisis hold up to the TV analogy?
People don't have that power. They've been trained to follow the crowd, utterly dependent on the mob for their direction. Self reliance has been bred out of a large portion of global populations that Facebook reaches. Facebook is a tool for global socialism, successful because so many depend on someone telling them what to think.
People do have the power but will often passively accept what is offered if it doesn't have an immediate cost. That's the political benefit of "free" health care, community college, etc. and has some arguable validity when the personal benefits are clear. When someone has to take a concrete action of which laying out money is one very pointed example they are more likely to think about it before acting. That's also why credit buying became as popular as it is; people could have stuff without paying for it immediately, often with money they don't have. There are arguments on both sides but, in general, anything that makes people think before they had is a benefit.
Yes, the analogy holds up quite well and became the basis for cable cutting when the option became obvious to enough people.
They will, inevitably, like all their evolutionary forebears. Substack, Facebook, et al are neither heroes or villains, just reflections of the social pathologies that encumber societies and reassure the insecure. Substack's promise to remain open is reassuring, but the "heart" buttons ensure it won't last. We always succumb to the mob. Seems to be a part of our nature, like the other deadly sins.
“With this kind of model, free content can still exist, but it will be truly free — not masquerading as such while quietly extracting costs in the form of personal data or manipulated behavior.”
Sounds great, but how?
Who’s going to fund the operational costs, forget about shareholder profits, of Google or Facebook-like content if it’s posted and hosted for free and free to view? Are you proposing publicly-funded networks where “free content can still exist”?
The only current model I can think of that may work is the Internet Archive. However, given the difference in size between a relatively small nonprofit like the Internet Archive and behemoths like Google and Facebook, how could you scale an Internet Archive-type model to meet the demand for Google and Facebook-like services? My guess is, first, you would need to impose government-mandated and publicly-subsidized universal internet access, much the same as access to electric and postal services is pretty much universal. And then, a tax would have to be imposed to pay for the universal access.
A publicly-funded and controlled internet might result in something better than the current model, but I think it’s doubtful it’s going to happen any time soon. Commercial radio and television, as well as magazines and newspapers, have always been in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. I suspect they will continue to do so as long as they can.
As commercial broadcasting and print have migrated to the internet, nothing’s changed. The viewer is still the product, not the customer. Unfortunately, the internet is nothing new, it’s the same old same old. As in the past, a small segment of the audience will seek alternative media outlets like the Internet Archive, while everyone else watches the Super Bowl.
The real problem isn't Facebook's foundation, but society's foundation. Facebook is good at manipulating the population, but only because the population is so easily manipulated. American society is controlled by the knowledge of its members, which has been undermined by several generations of malfeasance by the failed education system. Some have managed to overcome that handicap, the rest use Facebook.
Yes, decades of the ed system... now it is being taught by those who have been educated in the same. It is a foundational issue. When I went through a Bach of Education program (although in Canada), I realized the problem even more.
I am incredibly grateful for Substack's platform. The awareness you share in this letter -- regarding what drives attention -- is priceless. Changing dominant model/structures has the potential to re-wire how the internet works. It really is such a valuable tool for connection and growth. Let's build it to make our world a better place. Thank you!!!
Great piece and valuable questions about the real problem and potential solutions. Thank you for identifying this as a FACEBOOK leak not a whistleblower because that label is abused to give an allure of brave truth telling when true whistleblowers are silenced, smeared and prosecuted not championed by Congress or lionized by corp media.
Back when the online world was the computer bulletin board, forum moderation revolved around the concept of "excessively annoying behavior", which was summarized as follows: don't be excessively annoying and don't be excessively annoyed.
Outside of that rule, the BBS universe was a fairly wide open place for people to express their opinion.
as a compete novice in the industry with a passion to write words, Substack provided a welcome harbor in the shark infested waters of the media ocean. I didn't know what I didn't know. Substack and its writers have provided the keys to the doors of the prison of the mind.
Sadly, we all know so many people who will complain but never grab the key and free themselves.
They do not realize that their individual freedom is up to them. Nobody else will fight for your freedom if you are unwilling to participate.
Substack opened the door after I unlocked it and I discovered others willing to support that liberation. For any skeptics out there, I am living proof that a person with a dream-goal can achieve an objective without being an expert.
The world has too many experts saying all kinds of expert things. I am just an expert on my life, and I have found that my expertise in that arena resonates with others.
Thank you Substack
Ric
I think it provided a welcome harbor for readers, too. Even just from a UX perspective it's so much nicer to read a page on Substack. It loads faster, has zero distracting ads, uses less power on mobile devices, and has nothing else to distract from the text. People are sick of the ad-based model. Substack delivers something better.
Well said. Why I dumped FB 6 yrs ago, rarely go to IG, Telegram is gaining steam and I love reading from my fav writers/researchers on this platform. Thank you!
Dependence on telegram or any other like-soliciting forum is a social pathology that always leads to the same pathological outcomes. The "heart" counts on substack articles and comments feeds that same pathology. Competent people express their messages, and competent people read those messages, even offering payment for messages they like. Longing for reassurance from strangers for its own sake indicates insecurity that is best treated by avoiding altogether venues where "hearts" are the only reward. It's a video game mentality, showing disconnection from reality.
Learning makes us better. Likes make us insecure and weak.
Good stuff but I gave you a heart anyway.
agree and disagree on that point. With the other platforms, all one gets is likes
Here, if I get a heart, cool
I'd much rather have all of the little $4.03 hits to my account. I heart money + freedom = Substack!
Depends on who you follow, no? I follow the same trusted sources on Telegram as I do on substack. Besides I lost all my SM platforms from censorship - Telegram was a great alternative. Have a great day.
No, it doesn't really depend on who you follow, only that you're a follower. "Follow" as a tag for reading an author's work isn't accidental. Learning is healthy. Following breeds dependence. Healthier to call it "Index" or "Reading List." Some are incapable of doing anything other than follow.
Participation in sites that censor demonstrates the pathology of following.
Was never censored on Telegram, on FB/IG I was. Why I began a Telegram account. You’re way off base. Ta ta
I dont want to be on your base, or any other that includes neurotic dependence on approval by strangers. Those who depend on telegram or any other outlet aren't very independent. Sad.
FB? IG?
I'm still waiting for someone to implement spotify for journalism. Subscribing to 15 different papers and 30 different substacks/patreons is not practical. But if I could spend $10-20 a month and just never hit a paywall when I want to read an article? I would do that immediately.
This is a great idea - of some aggregator/s in journalism. I don't how can work but it's a great idea indeed.
Hugely agree. Wish my fee would mostly get divvied up by how long I spend on the various authors’ articles. Would let you dip toes into new material without “supporting” a wacko (much). Reward the quality authors.
you should do it before Spotify reads this. great idea
I could not agree more wholeheartedly. This is part of what drew my to Substack in the first place and I have only become more impressed with the platform and more passionate about its model ever since. I will be sharing this article widely.
"But it is the free and open exchange of ideas that allows for effective communication, and it’s also the cornerstone of a free society, which becomes repressive if individuals are muffled, or the flow of information is restricted. The best weapon against misunderstandings, or misinformation, is more communication, more free speech, not silence, and not censorship (or threats of deplatforming)."
From: Communication Insights From Movies
https://moviewise.substack.com/p/communication-insights-from-movies
There is no freedom in lies and disinformation. What is true is not a matter of opinion, truth is based on facts in evidence.
One person's "disinformation" in another person's censorship, silencing, and forcing of unnecessary authoritarian restrictions on the free an open exchange of ideas.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
― Evelyn Beatrice Hall (paraphrasing Voltaire)
Disinformation isn't a difference of opinion. It's propaganda. It's deceptive information deliberately spread to cause harm. I'm not going to defend anyone's calls for genocide or incitement for murder. The FB criticisms aren't about whether a politician is bad at their job, they're about how they allowed a genocide in Myanmar to be organised on their platform.
For anyone reading this: obviously calls for physical violence and genocide(!!) are NOT protected forms of free speech. In fact, they are crimes and no entity, no corporation, nor government that supports human rights, like the USA, protects threats against others on any platform.
This is my point. Restrictions on speech already exist. In terms of social media, they are not being policed, they are not taken seriously, platforms are either ignoring them, or taking far too long to respond to them. Holocaust denial is a huge issue on YouTube. Groups like Qanon appear harmless at first but have a LOT of crossover with fascist ideologies generally and antisemitism in particular. Antivax rhetoric is getting people killed daily. But most platforms do nothing or even amplify disinformation. This shit isn't harmless. It's not just a difference of opinion. There needs to be room to remove disinfo because correcting it or arguing against it sadly does very little.
Someone could claim that everything you've stated above is "disinformation" and try to prevent you from expressing your opinions because of it. What you are advocating for is a slippery slope where all kinds of topics from history to health that you deem "inappropriate" need to be "removed" from public platforms. The same could be done to you. Hence, the reason for the standards of liberty that protect free speech. Let adults find out the information they need, with minimum interference, and respect their ability to find the truth for themselves. What is now deemed "common knowledge" may change over time as more information is revealed. It's happened many times throughout history. At no point does everyone know all the facts, and demonizing others, casting aspersions on whole groups of people, is a lot more harmful than letting people have conversations on social media platforms. I wish you the best, and I will end this by saying: let's agree to disagree.
... the latest Public Health Scotland data is out. Scotland is 71% vaccinated. It shows that the fully vaccinated accounted for 89% of Covid-19 deaths in the past four weeks from October 9th through to November 5th… so similar to UK numbers.
... what was that about antivax rhetoric? ..one could say you are spreading disinformation by saying antivax is just rhetoric with no basis in fact... and censor you ...
..there is a reason Freedom of Speech is the 1st Amendment in the US constitution..
What is proposed in this article does nothing to get rid of the horrendous amount of disinformation spread daily on Facebook and other sites. Disinformation is poison to human society and causes otherwise reasonably sane individuals to take horse de-wormer, rather than a highly effective vaccine. And, this is only one of millions of examples of why Facebook and the rest need to be regulated and fined out of existence if they don't themselves, get rid of the vast hatred and disinformation that is poisoning human society.
Basically, you're advocating for the destruction of the First Amendment, the cornerstone of our democracy. If you think there is disinformation, better that you would use your own free speech rights to counter that disinformation. Rather than snuffing out free speech and democracy, we should encourage a bottom-up system that allows for a wider access to free speech platforms that allow free people to exercise the system of checks and balances that the First Amendment was meant to encourage.
The first amendment says the government can't restrict your speech, not that Facebook can't. Your speech is already subject to plenty of restrictions that you agree to every time you sign up to a website. This disinformation is itself snuffing out democracy. What checks and balances are you referring to?
The government, much of it through the Democratic Party at this time, is trying to use the government to intimidate and possibly regulate speech on Facebook. That is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Checks and balances in a free (speech) society are provided by unfettered discourse by people using their critical thinking skills. It's the worst system except for all the rest, or do you believe that history shows that government knows best what is acceptable speech and what is true?
Disinformation in free speech = a misinformed society! The most pertinent information given to society needs to be very accountable!
... and who decides 'pertinent information'? ... you? ...
And that's a big part of what the 1st Amendment is all about. Government imposed censorship or editing is totally contrary to accountability.
". . .hatred and disinformation that is poisoning human society". Same problem with pornography. One thinks they know it when they see it, but the neighbor may not agree. The law says people are to be held accountable for inciting violence, crime or fraud. It does not cover what some might find annoying, hateful or wrong. More speech police is not the answer.
The needed change is far more simple. Simply change § 230(c) to have a new subsection (3):
(3) Civil liability not excepted
The provisions of subsection (2) above shall not apply to any actions of any provider or user of an interactive computer service aggregating content of others by means of computational algorithms as defined below.
With a corresponding new definition of "computational algorithms" to reflect the types of practices that are reflected in the Facebook papers, companies would lose the implicit subsidy of § 230 and would have to make rational, economic judgments or face civil liability. Facing the economic realities of their actions through potential liability would rationalize the actions of the providers.
I struggle to follow this reasoning.
> flip the power dynamic: give the people themselves the power to choose what they pay attention to.
Don’t people already have that power? I only pay attention to social media when I choose to. How are people compelled to pay attention to social media?
> The real problem is at the foundation: a business model that sells people’s attention to advertisers, which motivates companies to reward the content that most effectively manipulates people’s emotions.
It seems like this same criticism could be made of broadcast TV in the 20th century. Does the argument that better regulations solves the attention crisis hold up to the TV analogy?
People don't have that power. They've been trained to follow the crowd, utterly dependent on the mob for their direction. Self reliance has been bred out of a large portion of global populations that Facebook reaches. Facebook is a tool for global socialism, successful because so many depend on someone telling them what to think.
People do have the power but will often passively accept what is offered if it doesn't have an immediate cost. That's the political benefit of "free" health care, community college, etc. and has some arguable validity when the personal benefits are clear. When someone has to take a concrete action of which laying out money is one very pointed example they are more likely to think about it before acting. That's also why credit buying became as popular as it is; people could have stuff without paying for it immediately, often with money they don't have. There are arguments on both sides but, in general, anything that makes people think before they had is a benefit.
Yes, the analogy holds up quite well and became the basis for cable cutting when the option became obvious to enough people.
Yes! Exactly this. God bless you, Substack, and please never sell out to the bad guys.
They will, inevitably, like all their evolutionary forebears. Substack, Facebook, et al are neither heroes or villains, just reflections of the social pathologies that encumber societies and reassure the insecure. Substack's promise to remain open is reassuring, but the "heart" buttons ensure it won't last. We always succumb to the mob. Seems to be a part of our nature, like the other deadly sins.
We are the bad guys.
Just stop tracking and surveillance. Yes. Flip control to the user.
It used to be called Nielsen and Arbitron, now it's called "tracking and surveillance".
How about political polling data? If political polling isn't tracking and surveillance, I don't know what is.
Ban surveys and political polls. I'm all for it, but it ain't going to happen.
But surveys and polls are permission based not tracking!!
permission persmission.
If surveys and polls aren't tracking, I don't know what is.
Also, a lot of the surveying and polling is of publicly available data. So, unless you're a hermit, you're being followed whether you like it or not.
“With this kind of model, free content can still exist, but it will be truly free — not masquerading as such while quietly extracting costs in the form of personal data or manipulated behavior.”
Sounds great, but how?
Who’s going to fund the operational costs, forget about shareholder profits, of Google or Facebook-like content if it’s posted and hosted for free and free to view? Are you proposing publicly-funded networks where “free content can still exist”?
The only current model I can think of that may work is the Internet Archive. However, given the difference in size between a relatively small nonprofit like the Internet Archive and behemoths like Google and Facebook, how could you scale an Internet Archive-type model to meet the demand for Google and Facebook-like services? My guess is, first, you would need to impose government-mandated and publicly-subsidized universal internet access, much the same as access to electric and postal services is pretty much universal. And then, a tax would have to be imposed to pay for the universal access.
A publicly-funded and controlled internet might result in something better than the current model, but I think it’s doubtful it’s going to happen any time soon. Commercial radio and television, as well as magazines and newspapers, have always been in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. I suspect they will continue to do so as long as they can.
As commercial broadcasting and print have migrated to the internet, nothing’s changed. The viewer is still the product, not the customer. Unfortunately, the internet is nothing new, it’s the same old same old. As in the past, a small segment of the audience will seek alternative media outlets like the Internet Archive, while everyone else watches the Super Bowl.
The real problem isn't Facebook's foundation, but society's foundation. Facebook is good at manipulating the population, but only because the population is so easily manipulated. American society is controlled by the knowledge of its members, which has been undermined by several generations of malfeasance by the failed education system. Some have managed to overcome that handicap, the rest use Facebook.
Yes, decades of the ed system... now it is being taught by those who have been educated in the same. It is a foundational issue. When I went through a Bach of Education program (although in Canada), I realized the problem even more.
I am incredibly grateful for Substack's platform. The awareness you share in this letter -- regarding what drives attention -- is priceless. Changing dominant model/structures has the potential to re-wire how the internet works. It really is such a valuable tool for connection and growth. Let's build it to make our world a better place. Thank you!!!
Thoughtful piece, thank you.
Great piece and valuable questions about the real problem and potential solutions. Thank you for identifying this as a FACEBOOK leak not a whistleblower because that label is abused to give an allure of brave truth telling when true whistleblowers are silenced, smeared and prosecuted not championed by Congress or lionized by corp media.
Back when the online world was the computer bulletin board, forum moderation revolved around the concept of "excessively annoying behavior", which was summarized as follows: don't be excessively annoying and don't be excessively annoyed.
Outside of that rule, the BBS universe was a fairly wide open place for people to express their opinion.
That's the sort of rule we need to get back to.