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Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

theatlantic.com

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Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#41

Post by matte_black »

5thbootloader wrote: post #28
candiodari wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very worrying that people want to force young people who are learning to form their own opinion to choose "correctly". For whatever value of correctly. By contrast, what these kids are doing, trying to pressure and misinform each other, is exactly what I'd want them to do : they're learning. Maybe, God forbid, they'll learn how that works and when it's being done to them. And that, I'm sure, a decent fracti…

I find it more worrying that anyone would want to support this kind of learning. These young people are not being educated on how to identify misinformation; rather, they're being indoctrinated with values that encourage virtue signaling or worse, trolling. Living inside a bubble of criticism and misinformation doesn't lead one to immediately question and then reform the system. More often, people choose to adapt to…

Unfortunately, I think that before society really figures this out there’s going to be at least one “lost” generation, that will be seriously hurt or screwed up and by such groupthink.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#42

Post by sbjs »

GavinMcG wrote: post #33
sbjs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally all traditional news is. One questionable and undoubtedly biased source writes an article. If it’s likely to get attention, then other news stations copy it verbatim. Social media is just an “unpolished” version of this preexisting turd of a setup.

No, it's not. At least not if you're counting the old papers as traditional. If you're counting cable news companies as traditional, you're probably 30 or younger and don't remember when news companies actually did research and had editors that fact-checked.

For as long as I can remember, news television has been a total joke. There's Democratic News and Republican News and both are obvious liars. I never read newspapers so I don't know if those are any better but I imagine not.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#43

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

5thbootloader wrote: post #28
candiodari wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very worrying that people want to force young people who are learning to form their own opinion to choose "correctly". For whatever value of correctly. By contrast, what these kids are doing, trying to pressure and misinform each other, is exactly what I'd want them to do : they're learning. Maybe, God forbid, they'll learn how that works and when it's being done to them. And that, I'm sure, a decent fracti…

I find it more worrying that anyone would want to support this kind of learning. These young people are not being educated on how to identify misinformation; rather, they're being indoctrinated with values that encourage virtue signaling or worse, trolling. Living inside a bubble of criticism and misinformation doesn't lead one to immediately question and then reform the system. More often, people choose to adapt to…

> Instead of pointlessly debating each other on this app, a platform designed to capture attention and manipulate emotions

Someone probably write this same thing about news papers when they were a recent invention. Television also.

> these people should take time to research and then carefully write an essay. Once they are satisfied with their opinions, they could share their thesis with the public and request contestation.

More people than ever before are now university educated, or presently attending university. That’s got to help counteract the misinformation trend.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#44

Post by Mirioron »

losteric wrote: post #39
Mirioron wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does fight against a situation where the news would be lying though. Recently we've heard about many news outlets getting something wrong accidentally or maybe even deliberately. What they do on Instagram would probably help against that.

It boils down to one thing: how does the spread of misinformation compare to the spread of a correction? Every subscriber of a traditional newspaper will see their corrections, often published the next day. How does Instagram/social media compare? In my experience, it doesn't. I've never seen a correction come through anonymous social media channels.

Are you crazy? Almost nobody sees or reads corrections. They're usually in small print to some side, where they reluctantly might retract something.

At least on social media if the correction is big enough it'll be brought to people's attention.

Have you really never seen a correction posted on reddit? Every other day there's some news article that has as the first comment a correction of the article, because the article is wrong or leaving something out.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#45

Post by intended »

Alex3917 wrote: post #18
Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

> It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news" I mean they probably are. It’s unlikely these kids are running their Instagram channels as loss leaders with the real goal of selling billion dollar military technology.

While it’s more likely they will get more basic facts wrong, and mix up opinion with reporting.

There’s a different type of error distribution.

The baseline issue is that media firms doing boring news are not marginally competitive, against a new cycle driven sensational news channel.

The noisy channel will get more viewers, more ad space and eventually buy out the other channel.

Part of the problem is unbridled efforts to apply psych and marketing research to win market share (a corporate necessity).

And the other part is also an Intellectual malaise in many viewers.

I think we just give it all up and start working for the men with the power. The situation seems unsolvable, and people are pretty much only investing in systems That propagate this phenomenon.

All news needs to become more boring and fact based - yesterday.

This arms race for attention will not stop. Market competition is a crap system when a common resource is allowed to be exploited - in this case, collective attention.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#47

Post by lumberjack »

Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

Isn't this already what supposedly happens on reddit? And it proves very easy to game: a handful of cooperating accounts can change the narrative very easily, irrespective of the facts.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#48

Post by [deleted] »

Mirioron wrote: post #36
Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

It does fight against a situation where the news would be lying though. Recently we've heard about many news outlets getting something wrong accidentally or maybe even deliberately. What they do on Instagram would probably help against that.

[deleted]

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#50

Post by pokemongoaway »

Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

We should lay judgement more on this being a sign of the times than the fact that it is "young people" doing this. So what's the implication, that the young are stupid? It's our culture, we should own up to it. If any significant amount of the mainstream news were considered to be outright propaganda, then you wouldn't find their behavior odd - right?
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