All in all, this is why there is no dislike button. The entire Facebook system incentivizes division because division creates revenue. It's a perpetual loop.

Let's walk through how it works:

Step 1) A person posts, or shares, something incredibly divisive. Note: There is no feedback button to let the poster know the content is hateful and that broader society disapproves of it. There is also no consequence to posting it most of the time.

Step 2) The content attracts likes. Since there is no dislike button, or negative feedback, any likes received makes the poster feel good.

Step 3) The poster is emboldened and increases his/her frequency of posting divisive or hateful content. This attracts a following and more engagement for the original poster. The poster has no need to create inclusive content. They are incentivized to find and highlight divisive thoughts from their life because it rewards them with engagement and the Facebook system re-enforces those thoughts.

Step 4) Repeat

Each subsequent post creates more comments, more engagement, more passion. This is great for Facebook because it means more time on site and increased usage frequency. The handout Facebook is giving advertisers is proof of that. They are monetizing the system. Make no mistake, it is designed to work this way and they are profiting from it.

I disagree - reddit has a downvote button and it has zero Impact on the outcome.

This isn’t Facebook making this happen.

This is human beings being human beings in an alien environment exposing the difference between their stated preferences and unstated preferences.

It happened with forums, it likely happened with geocities.

You don’t need a like or dislike button, you just need the internet and text.

Anti Semitic forums were attacking Jewish forums before Facebook even showed up.

Facebook is just absorbing the entire internet in that all the “forums” are now just groups on Facebook. So it owns all the ad revenue everywhere - as long as people stay on Facebook.

But there’s no special incentive for divisiveness - that’s just what happens when people interact in a feature deficient, always on, text first, persistent environment.

Reddit is a different beast. It is confined to a sub-reddit and the people who judge it are the people who are part of that sub-reddit. Mods included.

Also, reddit doesn't spread the content if there is any uptick. It is all pretty confined. Facebook does the exact reverse. It goes out of its way to spread the content that is driving engagement.

The thesis holds that a dislike button’s absence emboldens negative behavior.

This is not true, because if so Reddit’s and their subreddits would have a very different history.

And as another user pointed out, the research shows that a dislike button actually creates MORE engagement and content, not less.

My point is that this is the human mind on the internet; most human beings have no clue about how they work, what their hidden biases are, and what assumptions and fantasies they carry to deal with the world.

When those heuristics are treated to a system that assumes their best behavior, it will fail to our more regular, normal behavior.

Referencing one research article isn't proof. There are several others that argue otherwise.[1] On Reddit, a dislike button isn't meaningless. If your post and comment karma go down endlessly, you start to lose privileges. So it really does encourage behavior that is acceptable in the context of the subreddit. The research paper, for example, talks more about rating scales in context.

As I have mentioned, Facebook's problem is that a) There is endless spread for bad content, like fake news. b) There is no way to have the crowd give definitive negative feedback to the user where not only is a dislike recorded, but the impact of the dislike is weighted based on the standing of the user giving it. c) and even if there was, there is no way to degrade privileges.

[1] http://www.rangevoting.org/sen-recsys2011.pdf

You are making many assumptions that need support. They are directly contradicted by relevant research.

This study on the community effect of downvotes [1] came to rather different conclusions. They conclude that downvoting has a paradoxical effect. It actually incentivizes the poster to post even more content, of even lower quality. And just as importantly, upvotes similarly have no positive effects. They do not result in users posting more regularly, nor generating more well received content. Upvoted users actually tend to leave the community more quickly than downvoted users. The one and only response that negatively incentivizes users is no response at all - which causes them to leave much earlier than up or down votes. And it gets even better. Downvotes tend to spread. Downvoted users tend to downvoter others who in turn begin downvoting others as well. All of this along with the consequential effects downvoting have on quality.

I'm not sure the content voting system has been a success. The nominal idea is to enable the masses to sort content by quality. But on most sites when the systems are not being gamed, it just results in people upvoting things that stir their emotions (sensationalism, controversy, politics, cat videos). And when it is being gamed, what little meaningfulness that remained is completely removed.

Even on a site like this which is going to have a more well educated and technical userbase than average who clearly make some effort to upvote more on quality than the above metrics, compare the front page to the first page of new. The frontpage should be on the orders of magnitude more interesting and higher quality, since you're comparing a heavily filtered selection to a random selection. Is it?

[1] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1429

Its a good hypothesis. I think there's more psychology at play then just this though. In a way, Facebook helps minorities find each other, and then isolate themselves virtually to be "just amongst them". Possibly its the no consequence framework that has given them the courage to continue to pursue finding others of similar values. As they grow though, and realize they are not alone, the isolated group can now open itself to others and recruit into the group, promoting its values.

Now, for a lot of minority groups, this can be great, maybe positive overall for society. Unless a group with vicious values comes along, then it turns into a problem. Especially if it is found that this minority was in fact never small, just very well amortized across all of our society.

Another aspect though, is that those values could have even been amortized among each individual, in the full set of a person's value. So maybe a person believe many things, and has many values, but they balance out, and generally an overall behavior comes out of them. This behavior maybe is a desired one for society at large. Now comes the internet, or Facebook, and one can explore a subset of its values, maybe the ones that often get most repressed. You explore this in isolation of your other values, almost as a fantasy. Now through this exploration, you find others exploring the same subset. This social finding could somehow re-enforce that value, suddenly weighing it higher into your overall balance. This would mean that it might be a bad thing, as it can alter ones balancing values which have worked for society till now, into a new balance that might exhibit a more detrimental behavior. Alternatively, it could also not affect the behavior when away from the internet. In which case, the internet behavior could mislead us into thinking we have all these people which would have detrimental behavior in real life also, when in reality, we do not, they only exbibit such behaviors when online. And off-course, as we move most of real life on the internet, that might still mean trouble overall.

Just some thoughts.

I think there is a bigger danger in this sort of isolationism (quite the euphemism!) than just vicious values being allowed to coalesce. The isolationism results in individuals' values not being challenged, which can push them further and further away from reality. Let's create an imaginary example. We're trying to solve a math problem. The correct answer to this problem is 0. However, one side believes the answer is absolutely at least 50. And the other side believes the answer must be no more than -50. When these two groups remain within contact, they counter balance each other. But now let's isolate these groups. In the past when the -50 side chose to go -60 there would be some push back against that and it would help create a more of a central equilibrium. But in isolation without opposition, -60 sounds awesome. Why not -70, or even lower? And on the other side an equal but opposite push for 60, 70 and more is simultaneously happening.

Taking this into real life, I think this is arguably what is happening with politics today. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being right leaning or left leaning. But as we have begun to segregate ourselves into 'only right leaning' or 'only left leaning' the individuals within these groups have started becoming increasingly radicalized. News that is supportive of the chosen belief is accepted unquestioningly. Negative news of 'the other side' is similarly accepted without question. And, perhaps more than ever before, we are creating a country where people are not only becoming radicalized in their beliefs, but mutually intolerant of anything except those beliefs.

And now a thought experiment. Imagine we broke the country into two by political view. And, for the sake of fairness, we'll pretend that both magically have all the resources/wealth/etc of the original nation. Would this resolve the issues with everybody living happily ever after? I imagine we'd see the exact same cycle begin to be carried out without these new nations as people divided and radicalized once again to no real end. The founding fathers were, in terms of identity and broad political view, relatively homogenous. Yet it took no time for them to break into Federalist vs Antifederalist (in spite of their astute prognostications on the dangers of parties). And as one side or the other gained dominant support it never resulted in stability. Instead there would be a fracturing and new split to no end. But as they remained with arm's reach of each side, radicalism never took that much of a hold. Granted, we did have a sitting vice president kill the first secretary of the treasury in a duel. But in a paradoxical way that illustrates how generally respectful the parties remained. Sufficiently impugning somebody's honor, part and parcel of modern politics, was sufficient cause for a duel which did on occasion result in death.

> But as they remained with arm's reach of each side, radicalism never took that much of a hold. Granted, we did have a sitting vice president kill the first secretary of the treasury in a duel.

I think this is a rather rose-tinted view on the amount of corruption and discord that has prevailed in the US, such as the Harding administration.

It also rather depends on your definition of "radicalism". Is white supremacy radical or mainstream? Does that change over time? Does that make it right?

You're definitely correct about there being some ambiguity in the definition of radicalism.

I think there are two main indicators of radicalism. The first is the assumption that one is correct to the point that there is a complete unwillingness to even consider contrary possibilities. The second, which is often linked to the first, is a tendency to resort to violence against those do not feel the same as they do.

So for instance Jehova's Witnesses are certainly not mainstream and their views are quite extreme. But even the most devout and determined door knocker is not somebody I would call a radical. They're happy to, and indeed seem to take immense pleasure, in discussing and defending their religion even to those who would challenge and reject its very core - even if the questioner does so in less than tactful ways. While Jehova's may not necessarily change their view, they would certainly indulge alternative views. And violence is never even considered.

By contrast take those who adhere to radical Islam. In that case anything short of complete deference is seen as a grievous offense. Acts such as drawing their religious figure is seen as sufficient cause to literally murder individuals, in mass. That behavior is absurdly radicalized. In the US we're still far away from that level. But increasingly we're seeing individuals incapable of discussing things with one another, and violence is an increasingly common outcome. And as individuals become further and further ideologically isolated, this radicalism and mutual intolerance is only like to increase.

While I agree with your argument I think negative comments are a form of feedback and they're omitted from your post.

I wonder how people who work for Facebook feel about stuff like this signing their checks. I've long postured it only takes a steady six-figure paycheck to convince an intelligent college-educated individual to put their head in the sand.

Facebook is private (at least most posts are). So "broader society" will not be giving feedback.

YouTube is public, and has a dislike button... many "fringe" videos still have tons of likes because they are mostly viewed by people sharing the same opinions.

Most posts spread to at least a 3rd degree. I can share an article, my friends see it and comment on it. Then their friends see that they commented on an article by showing it to their friends.

Also, don't forget the share button. That causes the degrees to reset and it goes from there.

You think a dislike button would disincentivize division?

Seems like it would make group boundaries stronger since people would dislike anything they disagree with.

But in that case they’d at least be interacting with the other side, potentially curbing some of the most radical views.

> Since there is no dislike button, or negative feedback, any likes received makes the poster feel good.

Sure there is. Next to Like you have: Love, Laugh, Wow, Sad, Angry.

That is not a dislike button. For example, you can select angry and it leaves it up to interpretation what you are angry about. Either way, most people think it is about the article you are sharing.

Here is an example: Share a post about Black Lives causing a riot.

Clear this is fake. Now if a reader of that post puts angry. Are they indicating the post is fake and they are angry with the original poster? Or are they now angry with Black Lives Matter because they think they caused a riot?

Facebook designed it this way so that the original author of the post still gets positive feedback. There is no need to change his/her behavior. They keep posting and the engagement for Facebook keeps rolling.

> Are they indicating the post is fake and they are angry with the original poster? Or are they now angry with Black Lives Matter because they think they caused a riot?

How is dislike any clearer?

There is a button in the app to give feedback about a post including flagging it as hate speech. There is also a sad and angry reaction?

See below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15590910

I remember reading about Obama's election and the use of "big data" and "data science" to target voters: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-us...

The social media companies picked on that and ran with it. So, while Facebook is not exactly the paragon of ethical behavior, this is just fodder for click bait. If the same targeting had worked in someone's favor the article would have been "gave advertisers an edge over traditional advertising" or something.

Check Cambridge Analytica:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/16/15657512/...

They helped Tory in this summer GE in UK, and they failed miserably.

uh? they were behind Brexit

I went to a talk by blue state and the main use of big data was identifying local affinity groups who could then go out and do traditional electoral work.

Guess that backfires.

This idea goes back a long way. See "The 480", from 1964.[1] Karl Rove got his start doing such analysis. There's a famous picture of young Rove with a reel of computer tape. Such data used to be used to target direct mail and phone calls. It didn't help with TV and newspapers, though, and they were more important.

The difference this time is that Facebook now has a big fraction of the news business. Now this stuff has real traction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_480

Here's a WaPo summary on the legality of "the Russians" buying Facebook ads: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/09....

Basically, it all hinges on if the ads mention a candidate (illegal) or were worded in a vague manner (gray zone).

Maybe all political advertising needs to have a named publisher like in the UK get caught promoting a candidate without stating the publisher and their election agent will get you in the election court.

"Published by Americans for a Safer Tomorrow, inc."

Techmeme summary: Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed: Facebook provided political advertisers 14 targeted categories from very liberal “youthful urbanites” to very conservative “great outdoors” during 2016 election

The implication of this is that the real "filter bubble" is not the one people choose by their free association with other people, but the filters applied by the platform for advertising purposes. Your neighbours are reacting to ads, news and clickbait that you've never even seen and may not have the opportunity to see.

Neal Stephenson's Interface (1994) has never been more relevant.

"The corresponding item on the list was highlighted, a bright purple box drawn over it so that the user could see which category he was dealing with at the moment. The hundred categories and names on the list were as follows:

  IRRELEVANT MOUTH BREATHER
  400-POUND TAB DRINKER
  STONE-FACED URBAN HOMEBOY
  BURGER-FLIPPING HISTORY MAJOR
  SQUIRRELLY WINNEBAGO JOCKEY
  BIBLE-SLINGING PORCH MONKEY
  ECONOMIC ROADKILL
  PENT-UP CORPORATE LICKSPITTLE
  HIGH-METABOLISM WORLD DOMINATOR
  MIDAMERICAN KNICKKNACK QUEEN

..."

Reddit is different, you don't have public profile with you identity. The upvote and down vote are true opinion of people.

BAM! You've been Buzzfed!