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Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

m.nautil.us

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Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#51

Post by crankylinuxuser »

ryandrake wrote: post #42

Ironically, the first thing you're greeted with on this site is an attention-grabbing ad, if you choose to browse without protection. If modern media a DoS attack, it's not very sophisticated since it can be easily avoided by non-participation. Install an Ad blocker. Browse the web in private mode. Turn off notifications. Treat everything you read with skepticism (assume it is trying to manipulate you). And never, ev…

Oh, just wait until the hordes come out of the woodwork to poo-poo you for blocking ads and such.

They have their reasons, like "No Ads means no free content", or "You're taking the money out of content creators mouths", or variations on a theme.

What's doubly silly, is I control how my computer renders what content, downloads what content, and does whatever actions I want. Once it leaves your computer/network, its no longer up to you, ad company.

(Is now waiting for Wildvine to be used on content, forcing such ad viewage, now that DRM is part of the bloody HTML5 spec.)

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#52

Post by mobilefriendly »

ako wrote: post #46
genzoman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why so many people choose to give any government more and more power. This is similar to a cultural nuclear weapon. Maybe it will work in the right persons's hands for an agent of good, but really, over the course of time, is limiting what people can hear going to be a good thing for them? How can you tune your personal BS meter, if you never hear any BS? Who watches the watcher? There is no singular p…

Given free hand, corporations can be just as dangerous as governments. I don't know why you would trust corporations more, since their only goal is to make money.

>just as dangerous as governments

Corporations don't have nukes or concentration camps.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#53

Post by theonemind »

shmageggy wrote: post #33

I would gladly pay for something like what is advocated for in this article, but I'm not aware of anything like it. A news publication that: * Has the goal of filtering rather than flooding * No ads * No pop-ins 3/4 of the way through the article telling me about four other articles I should read * No endless scrolling * Upfront about bias * Cites sources

This actually reminds me of Delayed Gratification https://www.slow-journalism.com/ . I don't think they make an online version of anything, though. You get it in print. A quarter (3 month) time delay helps with the filtering. No bother about what Trump tweeted on any given day. Kind of like a history book being written in "real time".

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#54

Post by cabaalis »

ako wrote: post #46
genzoman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why so many people choose to give any government more and more power. This is similar to a cultural nuclear weapon. Maybe it will work in the right persons's hands for an agent of good, but really, over the course of time, is limiting what people can hear going to be a good thing for them? How can you tune your personal BS meter, if you never hear any BS? Who watches the watcher? There is no singular p…

Given free hand, corporations can be just as dangerous as governments. I don't know why you would trust corporations more, since their only goal is to make money.

At least with a corporation you understand their goal completely.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#55

Post by kadenshep »

genzoman wrote: post #35
wffurr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The root of the issue is ... capitalism" FTFY. The structural issues mentioned in the original article are inherent in a free market economy. Democratic deployment of capital and technology would change the dynamic substantially. An alternate approach would be to have substantial regulation on speech by companies (aka advertising and propaganda), but even this would require major changes driven by the democratic pro…

I have no idea why so many people choose to give any government more and more power. This is similar to a cultural nuclear weapon. Maybe it will work in the right persons's hands for an agent of good, but really, over the course of time, is limiting what people can hear going to be a good thing for them? How can you tune your personal BS meter, if you never hear any BS? Who watches the watcher? There is no singular p…

> is limiting what people can hear going to be a good thing for them?

I mean we currently have the exact opposite problem. We can definitively answer that people hearing everything and anything is quantifiably a bad thing for a good-sized portion of the population.

See here[1] and here[2] for some quick examples.

>Who watches the watcher?

Transparency is not antithetical or exclusive to any system that allows information to be properly editorialized. Dystopian hypotheticals kind of fall flat on their face when we have practical problems that run completely counter to some far off totalitarian future.

The worst part about the media landscape for me is not the massive maze of crap you have to wade through, it's that there's enough people willing to lend credence to some part(s) of that maze of crap. It can often remove any hope of a reasonable foundation for a conversation on whatever topic.

I think the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[3] applies well to this topic.

>The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

The current U.S. political landscape is a perfect example of this. We have people buying into certain political mythologies (either outright lies or just plain conspiracy theories, in regards to certain political factions and general policies) with no factual basis and it's wasting what is essentially valuable political capital at an alarming rate. And disappointingly, the actual conspiracies we do have evidence for are disregarded by the very same population that seems to be completely incapable of discerning and analyzing information (or misinformation) in general, across any field. Say, I don't know, climate change.

[1]: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1065912917721061

[2]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2331/epdf

[3]: https://www.slideshare.net/ziobrando/bulshit-asymmetry-princ...

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#56

Post by mavrc »

dcow wrote: post #20
api wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put it that way. The problem is that a ton of the stuff impinging on us is not knowledge. It's propaganda, fluff, stupid memes, click bait, and systems with interfaces designed to be addictive and to act like Skinner boxes. What I really see happening is a "part 2" repeat of the spam apocalypse that hit e-mail, Usenet, and other federated systems on the early Internet. In the late 1990s spam destroyed most…

I'm curious why this is getting downvoted without any response. You may not agree 100% but it's an interesting perspective nonetheless and certainly warrants a rebuttal instead of simply being hidden.

I am too.

In particular, the idea of AI-driven ads to improve targeting to near-as-makes-no-difference perfect levels is rather unnerving. We're at a moment when the influence of companies or governments in social media is still somewhat obvious/trackable, often because it's driven by actual people. Making it better and then making it automated would result in a system where it would be basically impossible to tell the difference between ads and actual people.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#57

Post by jesperlang »

ryandrake wrote: post #42

Ironically, the first thing you're greeted with on this site is an attention-grabbing ad, if you choose to browse without protection. If modern media a DoS attack, it's not very sophisticated since it can be easily avoided by non-participation. Install an Ad blocker. Browse the web in private mode. Turn off notifications. Treat everything you read with skepticism (assume it is trying to manipulate you). And never, ev…

I've taken it a bit further with my ad blocker. Started blocking not just ads but irrelevant things like:

* Top/Related posts (they distract)

* Newsletter signup blocks in the middle of articles (I never ever want to signup for newsletters)

* Sharing tools (I know how to cut-past a URL, thank you)

* Recent comments blocks (I don't care)

* Page footers (bloated with completely irrelevant information)

* ... and so on

You will be surprised how much stuff you can actually just block!

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#59

Post by drcode »

This reminds me of how easy it was in the early days of Hacker News to get on the front page with a project: In our new media world, the only way to get onto the Hacker News front page, or any other site, is to either have a post highly targeted for this site (with these sort of DoS elements) or blind chance.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#60

Post by ako »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #52
ako wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given free hand, corporations can be just as dangerous as governments. I don't know why you would trust corporations more, since their only goal is to make money.

>just as dangerous as governments Corporations don't have nukes or concentration camps.

Corporations have nuclear power plants that can be just as dangerous. Corporations can feed the masses miss-information, that may lead to destabilisation of a society by making them vote for the wrong person.
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