I have seen people who otherwise seem mentally fit flake out at the shocking shocking shocking idea that Facebook has political bias. This newfound concern went supernova when it dawned on them that the Orange Menace (President Trump) used the same technology formerly used by the Anointed One (Former President Obama) and the Unstoppable Force (Is Never Going To Be President Hillary).
Surprise! What one side can do… the other side can do. Watch your back hippies… we have also mastered the secret of fire, literacy, math, hard work, compound interest, and how to run a trot line. Nothing is sacred! The knowledge is out there and people without iPads can use it too! (Also a frighteningly large percentage of us studied STEM and are not nearly as stupid as you’d be comfortable imagining. That’s right, there are people who disagree with you, they know how to use technology, and they’re not idiots. You may need another bong hit before you let the import of it all sink in.)
So Zuckerberg talked to old people in suits while not under oath and drank water like a boss. Most of Portland fled to their favorite vegan/lesbian bookstore; where they spent the afternoon weeping over their iPads at the very thought that the whole fucking world isn’t like their imaginary bubble. Sometimes I feel sad for these folks, other times I want to hit ’em with a hammer. (Possibly a yellow fiberglass handled high capacity assault hammer which is entirely unlike the wood handled mallet envisioned by our colonial Founders; but that’s a discussion for another day.)
I’m talking here to the folks on the fainting couch over the subject of newly discovered bias. Lets dispense with this shit right now. There’s a portion of the American electorate that is well aware that Facebook actively loathes their very existence. The name of that portion is half. Now the other side knows what it’s like. Welcome the party. Now you’re one of us. You’ve got the Deplorable Cooties and there is no cure! Bwa ha ha ha ha!
Facebook and Politics: Nobody sane thinks Facebook isn’t playing politics. If you think Facebook is not politically biased you’re a fish that can’t see the water in which you swim. Of course, the Facebook feed to the Portlandia vegan barista’s poetry slam is not peppered with articles about how Mitt Romney was a swell fella. But the point is that nobody’s feed was peppered with articles about how Mitt Romney was a swell fella. Not even Mitt Romney got to see that. He never got on Facebook and saw a lot of content that was meaningful to his interests. “Wow, there’s a bunch of information about how I did that stuff for the Olympics! What a happy day!” You won’t find much on Facebook about how cool it is to be fiscally conservative, buy guns, fix your transmission with a wrench, or pay off your student loans. (AND I MEAN PAY OFF EVERY GODDAMN PENNY YOU CHICKENHEARTED WHINERS!) If it were merely an aggregation algorithm there would be gatherings of things familiar to a responsible adult who is not left of Trotsky and wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.
Facebook is biased. Cut the shit and accept it. Quit pretending. If you’re a Facebook fan who thinks otherwise get your tongue out of Zuckerberg’s ass and come up for air. Live in meatspace a while. It’ll be good for ya’.
Facebook is a business. Viewer’s data is only the interim the product. The purpose of the data is to influence people to buy stuff and vote as instructed. The end product of Facebook is your compliance. That’s what you offer up for sale every time you login, click “like”, post, or view. Increasingly, selling votes is more valuable than selling shit. So that’s where Facebook went. And no, Facebook (or Zuckerberg) didn’t think it over when they started picking sides.
Look at Zuckerbeg… the dude’s a droid. He doesn’t ponder philosophy any more than my dog plays the piano. He’ll follow data and money like the fucking Terminator with nary a thought for what he’s created or become. It’s not his fault. You can either blame the flood for fucking up your basement or you can quit building in a flood plain. The river could do no other that what it does.
Notice he stormed right into the endless minefield of censorship? He thinks it’s totally logical to sort through a bazillion posts and use AI to separate good words from Wrongthink? And who’s going to manage that? Al Gore, the Pope, the Chinese Communist party, somebody’s cat. Are you going to let Zuckerberg build a machine on the assumption that it’ll always be in the hands of angels. What will lefties do if it’s someday be run by the love child of Dick Cheney and Darth Vader. Then what?
Some things are undefinable and most people learn that through experience. What will be his encore? Will he and is magic AI solve logic behind the existence of God, why dogs die young, and how many angels dance on the head of a pin. He stepped on his dick because he doesn’t even consider what he’s doing. Not his fault; it’s ours. We should never trust any information to a guy who thinks he can separate good words from bad words at any level beyond a six year old calling someone a poopyhead.
During presidential election cycles it’s almost laughably impossible to miss Facebook bias. Look at a “Rollin’ Coal” Fanpage and there’s an ad for Hillary Clinton? Really? The algorithms somehow associated “high flow air ducting for maximum earth shattering horsepower” with “I’m with her”? How can something that obtuse possibly derive from anything other than paid insertion? There’s no way simple sorting of likes and dislikes matched a 25,000 pound Warn winch with “she persisted”! Obviously it’s paid content and by definition biased. They paid to bias it. Could it be because those Gaia nuking trucks are at an event in Wisconsin? What if the event was in Texas? Would the article about camshaft upgrades link to Hillary in a state where she already gave up? Of course not! (Unless maybe you’re in Austin?) Does it make me a misogynist to notice this when Hillary is running? Or a racist when Obama was running?
Sadly, it hasn’t let up. I was looking at an article about sailboat rudders in the Philippines (I have eclectic tastes… don’t judge!) and Facebook decided that was a great time to bitch me about over gun control. Really? Sailboats in another country leads to gun control and I’m not supposed to notice the non sequitur? If they’re trying to hide their bias they aren’t trying that hard.
That’s the funny part. It’s so obvious and it didn’t work. If calling me deplorable didn’t get my vote why would interrupting a fun video of a truck with huge smokestacks churning up a dirt track do better? The only good part was that they were so busy trying to sell me a political view they briefly let up the pressure on that fishing depth finder I looked at in 2008. I looked at it and decided not to buy. Someone somewhere is desperate because they’ve been shoving ads for that stupid depth finder at me for years. If I were an investor I’d short sell any company that dumb. Come to think of it, going short on any company that needs a Facebook push to continue might be a good call? I wonder if Starbucks is trending heavy on Facebook today?
Many many years ago when I was commuting a long distance in a tie, I’d listen half-awake or half-exhausted to PBS for news. Over a fairly short while I discovered that the news was strongly biased in favor of Gore and manifestly against Bush W. PBS argued they devoted the same time to each. But almost all the “W” stories were negative and all the Gore stories were positive or just informative. And that coverage continued for the next 8 years until the first real black president after Clinton was anointed. This goes back 18 years and Nixon can attest it started even before that. It’s just what they do and it’s getting far worse now. The alphabet networks and the FANG’s are deranged now. Journalism like academia id dead.
Yep, they’re deader than a door nail. Ironically I miss journalism (or at least the idea of it). I read the newspaper most days from when I was a paperboy until I tapered off around the Obama election. They were always biased and in the 1990’s and early 2000’s they already terrible and getting worse. Even so they had the decency to pretend and I liked the tactile feel of a paper like a smoker wants his cigarette. By the time W. Bush was in the white house they’d gone so deep up their own ass I started to give up. When Obama ran it was game over.
Not surprisingly large dead tree papers widely tanked. They had it coming. Nobody reads dead tree newspapers but octogenarians looking for Marmaduke and locals looking for the the high school sports team where their grandkids play. I really miss newspapers but they stopped printing news.
“Someone somewhere is desperate because they’ve been shoving ads for that stupid depth finder at me for years.”
Aside; if anyone thinks these guys aren’t morons, this should put paid to that. Or like how I buy something on Amazon and then see ads for it for days. Sometimes I’ll open a webpage and see 5 ads for the thing I just bought, one under the other. Brilliant, guys! That’s absolutely the *worst* possible time for that ad!
Suckerberg, his product derives from suckers and is aimed at suckers, so shall he be named. Sadly there is probably one born every second now (W.C. Fields reference).