Lawmakers fed up with Zuckerberg
Keep in mind that Facebook entered the spotlight only after it was alleged&#x2F;found that it didn&#x27;t do enough (in hindsight) to prevent Russian meddling in the 2016 election.<p>What is often overlooked from the analysis is that the current president successfully exploited the <i>intended</i> behavior of the news feed algorithm to obtain billions worth of free marketing&#x2F;PR during the campaign.<p>The algorithm is essentially a virality detection sensor that finds &quot;high quality&quot; content (measured by how much users will engage with it) and distributes it to users in a way that maximizes the amount of ad revenue generated by their consumption of the content.<p>There is also a mechanism that creates an exceptionally rich psychographic and demographic profile of each user, so that ads can be targeted with great precision (resulting in higher yield and thus higher ad spend by marketers).<p>However just as Twitter ran into scalability issues once celebrities started using the platform, Facebook has run into a different kind of scalability issue.  The news feed algorithm had very unexpected behavior when large numbers of users started sharing stories about Trump, commenting, liking&#x2F;frowning, aggressively, etc.<p>The unexpected behavior was that Trump content (specifically the content he controlled because it was triggered by his deliberate crass remarks) suddenly took over the news feeds of millions and millions of users, and the person controlling the flow of such content was none other than the candidate himself.<p>The Trump campaign used this mechanism successfully to reach undecided voters -- just because someone posts a story criticizing something crass Trump did doesn&#x27;t mean the content doesn&#x27;t reach a small percentage of their FB friends who view the content in a positive light.<p>Another side effect was that all the newspapers and media outlets had been increasingly measuring social media engagement as a signal of the effectiveness of their content&#x2F;editorial strategy.  So by successfully creating massively controversial stories which got shared on social media, Trump effectively rewarded journalists for helping him control the focus of press coverage of his campaign.  One can imagine the praise reporters received for stories that were shared millions of times which outlined some crass comment or another.<p>The FB news feed algorithm is the way it is because it maximizes revenue for Facebook. At present it is completely possible that Trump or another candidate could use the same exact approach again in 2020 and beyond.  As much as Trump is beneficial to many establishment interests, he also endangers many, and this is not a risk that those in power want to allow to happen.<p>So what US officials want is the ability to suppress content that would otherwise have been promoted by Facebook&#x27;s algorithm.  The excuse we are getting officially is that they want to suppress things like the Russian-funded content (which was a very small factor in Trump&#x27;s overall viral success).  But in actuality what they want is the ability to turn down the volume on some political topics&#x2F;discussion and turn up the volume on other topics&#x2F;discussion.<p>This is, in essence, the same goal as the Great Firewall of China, only it&#x27;s far more sophisticated because nobody will get any &quot;451 content censored&quot; errors.  Over time the public will just end up with slightly different opinions, focal points, etc., than it would otherwise have had.<p>Keep in mind that Facebook has been gradually doing everything the officials have requested, but Zuck cannot simply wave his wand and make all this available to officials. If he did he might face employees protesting the decision, etc.  But officials view the timeline as extremely urgent and are escalating by attempting to harm Facebook&#x27;s market value so that Zuck gets pressured by other sources to do as requested.<p>It&#x27;s funny that we are seeing this peculiar turn of events as the build up to the US having its own Great Firewall.  But when you think about why certain social media is banned in Egypt and Turkey, it&#x27;s pretty clear that by amplifying viral themes in ways that government can&#x27;t control, the status quo is endangered, and those in power stand to lose when that happens.<p>So in an ironic sense, Trump&#x27;s social media strategy resulted in a &quot;spring&quot; of sorts in the US, which ruffled a lot of feathers among power holders.  Trump has largely been contained and is not a threat, but there is great concern about the risks that Facebook&#x27;s algorithm poses to the political status quo.  That is what this harassment is about.  The worst nightmare of US officials would be someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez utilizing a similar strategy.<p>In much the way that the printing press was used to fuel social upheaval, the same mechanism is at work with social media, but it is thousands of times more powerful.<p>I think we need to ask ourselves what does a democracy look like in an era where social media virality and herd mentality is &quot;enhanced&quot; by news feed algorithms.   Twitter started off without an algorithmic feed but adopted one once profits became the sole focus.  We think of the design of news feeds as deep science, but it&#x27;s equivalent to holding various cuts of meat in front of hungry dogs.  Human brains and emotions gravitate toward a small number of emotionally potent themes, so algorithms have effectively reduced the dimensionality of social media so that it mainly targets the centers of addiction, the lizard brain, etc. These are the same parts of the brain triggered by the platitudes and fear-mongering of politicians and government officials, so of course they are taking notice and want to control it.