Zuckerberg's announcement today is why I've spent the last four years complaining about the funding relationship between meta and (earnest) scientists working on various nudges. Now, they're pointing to that body of work to abdicate responsibility for content, replacing T&S with community notes. - ThreadSky

jbakcoleman.bsky.social • 81 days ago

Zuckerberg's announcement today is why I've spent the last four years complaining about the funding relationship between meta and (earnest) scientists working on various nudges. Now, they're pointing to that body of work to abdicate responsibility for content, replacing T&S with community notes.

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jbakcoleman.bsky.social•81 days ago

Community noteas take time to identify and attach, and only have any effect after this processes has completed---long after much of the exposure occurs. They also have lesser effect implicity on any content posted by large accounts as they get a *ton* of spread before a community note can be found.

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•81 days ago

This is Contagions 101 stuff, but the science here has focusd on the marginal impact after labeling occurs, leading to an appraisal of only these marginal impacts of reduction in spread not the total reduction (which is what we presumably care about).

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•81 days ago

This frees up platforms to optimize free from concerns about the costs of managing and mitigating awful shit spreading around. They can just point to users and say "it's what our community chooses to share".

it's not, of course... as its algorthmically amplified.

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•81 days ago

All this is to say, the goal of funding these scientists was not to develop ideas but to launder their credibility so they could point to independent research down the line. Facebook has an army of social scientists and scarcely needs the academy for anything other than its reputation.

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•81 days ago

IIn what world does it make sense to fund academics to generate ideas based on MTurk surveys when you've got half of their former postdocs on staff and the ability to run on-platform A/B tests?

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•81 days ago

As stated at the outset, I think the scienctists were earnest and we all have to fund our work somehow.. but its important not to lose sight of what was/wasn't funded and how that shapes the kind of interventions and their justifications.

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