The Buffet Problem

 

One of the things we miss most in this age of Covid-19 restaurant closures is the all-you-can-eat buffet. Back when you could do that sort of thing, you could grab a plate, go up to any of the counters, and grab whatever you wanted.

Of course, the bad thing about a buffet is also the best thing about a buffet - you can have whatever you want. So, if it suits your fancy to fill your plate with desserts instead of having a salad, nobody can stop you, except possibly yourself.

Facebook works like that, but with a twist.

Imagine this: instead of a buffet counter you walked up to, you were seated at a buffet where the food comes to you on a conveyor belt. As the food items go by, you can help yourself to whatever items suit you. Then sit back and wait for the next thing you like.

Except, this buffet table is watching you, and responds to the items you take.

If it sees you help yourself to a piece of pie, suddenly the conveyor starts bringing you all kinds of other pies. If you then choose a chocolate pie, suddenly the non-stop desserts heavily favor chocolate treats. And while this might strike some people (including me) as being in heaven, if you spend too much time at this particular buffet table, you will be too heavy to ever leave!

This is precisely what Facebook does.

If it sees you like right-wing news, it starts bringing you lots of other right-wing news items. If it sees that you hate Joe Biden, it starts feeding you all sorts of negative news items, true or otherwise, regarding Uncle Joe. And if it sees that right-wing conspiracy theories undermining Biden suit your fancy, well, then you get lots of those items, too.

Pretty soon, you are utterly convinced that Joe Biden is a Venezuelan Communist, in the pay of China, who didn't win the election. And you KNOW this, because you've seen an "overwhelming preponderance of evidence" regarding this.

No. What you've seen is the teeniest, tiniest supply, the one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent, of information out there. Likely, it is easily debunked, or would be, if you were ever allowed a balanced perspective.

But Facebook does not currently care much about a balanced perspective. Just as the buffet table doesn't particularly care if you eat healthy. All it cares about is serving you what you want. As does Facebook. It wants you to keep looking, to keep clicking, because that's what keeps your eyeballs glued to the Facebook scroll, where the advertisers are. And its those advertisers that transform Mr. Zuckerberg's platform into money.

The fact that it has made you into a flat-earther who questions the moon landing in the process is nothing more than an externality.

The human brain is easily hacked! We've known this ever since we mass-produced refined sugar and saturated trans-fatty acids, and seen corporations use them to boost food sales. We've known it ever since sex and violence have been used to boost the sales of movies and video games. We've known it ever since heroin and cocaine took over our cities' streets. And just like heroin and cocaine were supplanted by more virulent drugs like crack and crystal meth, the news has been supplanted by the truth-optional news; news which gives you your desired truth rather than the actual truth; truth that gives you a non-stop parade of desserts down the conveyor belt.

Yes, I just equated Facebook with crack cocaine.

We need everyone in the news industry to take an oath to disseminate only truth, just as physicians take the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. We need the FCC to punish untrue news stories with substantial fines. We need a solid North Star to navigate by!

We need the conveyor belt to make us eat a salad now and then.

And the free market isn't going to do this by itself. Because, if left to its own devices, it will keep sending us nothing but chocolate and bacon down the conveyor until we all die too young.

Eric

*