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The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

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Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#81

Post by maxerickson »

lmm wrote: post #80
mcrad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you agree the business model is manipulative, but that the ones being manipulated should be the "target to blame" for their stupidity?

One man's manipulation is another's customer service. The business model is to give you more of what you read, share and reply to, and less of what you don't. I don't see how that's "manipulation" any more than my local coffeeshop selling me good coffee so that I'll keep coming back and buying more coffee from them is "manipulation". If your social media experience is "awful" I think that's a reflection of you rather…

What if the coffee shop were putting a lot more sugar in the drinks than they claimed?

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#82

Post by teddyh »

oblio wrote: post #73
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hell is a place where you actually have favorite companies and engage in conversations with those companies. it is said that you should never meet your heroes (or I suppose your favorite celebs). Hell is a place where you are exposed to your heroes' casual thoughts. maybe it would just be hell for me; but a personality change so extreme that I ended up with favorite companies afterwards does sound like the plot to a…

People do want to meet their heroes, there's a reason we have terms such as "fans", "groupies", etc.

Dogs chase cars, but it usually does not go well if they catch one.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#83

Post by tpush »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

Considering the political shit storms on Twitter that occur what feels like every 5 minutes, I’m actually really happy for Twitter’s(and social media’s in general) relatively low popularity in Germany.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#84

Post by watwut »

oblio wrote: post #67
watwut wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you know they are not representative? If that tweet has considerable response, then those who liked it are represented by it. Most of those who retweeted it are too.

Representative of what? First of all, there's many, many bots on Twitter. So the replies or the likes can be fake. Secondly, even if they're real, how do you know that they're representative of anything? Twitter is global. US politics, for example, could be followed by Afghan kids. Why would US news care about likes from people half a world away? Thirdly, there's a lot of dumb people around. There's several reasons o…

Is your idea is that only polls should be published or what exactly? They are as representative of their own opinions as any other person or activist or whoever quoted. Whether they are dumb is irrelevant. Plenty of senators are dumb too. Just because you don't like somebody does not mean he or she does not exist and that his or her opinions don't influence their votes, buying habits or otherwise have impact on world around them.

Huge chunk of "old media" is garbage too, just with little bit better grammar. One thing that curation of old media was bubble too. It made people convinced that "nobody think that" while quite a lot of people actually think that. I don't mean outright censorship here, but the range of arguments and opinions being expressed was much smaller.

To some extend, I understand how ideologies can be dangerous and how their promotion in media threatens us. But you don't seem to object on the "this person is promoting ideology that leads to less freedom" grounds. You seem to object on the "these people should not matter" grounds.

Lastly, it US cared more about what Afghan kids like, US would be less cool about killing them and about destabilizing whole regions of world.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#85

Post by pjc50 »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

"What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? " It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness. When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term. For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over thing…

The old version of this is "vox pops", where a TV company goes out and interviews random people in the street. Both are vulnerable to cherrypicking the people that say what you'd prefer them to say.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#86

Post by lmm »

maxerickson wrote: post #81
lmm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man's manipulation is another's customer service. The business model is to give you more of what you read, share and reply to, and less of what you don't. I don't see how that's "manipulation" any more than my local coffeeshop selling me good coffee so that I'll keep coming back and buying more coffee from them is "manipulation". If your social media experience is "awful" I think that's a reflection of you rather…

What if the coffee shop were putting a lot more sugar in the drinks than they claimed?

If they were lying to me I'd have a problem with that. I don't think I see the analogy though? I'm told I'm getting an algorithmically prioritized feed of my friends' posts and that seems to be what I am getting?

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#87

Post by maxerickson »

lmm wrote: post #86
maxerickson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the coffee shop were putting a lot more sugar in the drinks than they claimed?

If they were lying to me I'd have a problem with that. I don't think I see the analogy though? I'm told I'm getting an algorithmically prioritized feed of my friends' posts and that seems to be what I am getting?

It's a weak analogy. But the idea is that perhaps the algorithm is giving you what is good for them instead of what is good for you.

So then you are in the much more difficult place of deciding how they are characterizing the feed and how that lines up with what they are putting into it and so on.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#88

Post by pjc50 »

eksemplar wrote: post #24
sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter. I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner. You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow…

Don't use twitter for general news. Mute the news sources if you have to. If it's big enough it will bleed over into your feed anyway. Often I can work out what the news is by reverse-engineering the jokes about it.

It's much more interesting for highly specific news. I've got some accounts I follow for local news, some for gamedev news, people doing interesting tech, art, jokes, and a few "commentators" who are excellent enough to be worth reading on their own. It can be great for kibitzing on live TV events too.

Mind you, these days I post very little original stuff too. The internet is just too much of a live-fire zone.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#89

Post by krapp »

matklnz wrote: post #44
sonnyblarney wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? " It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness. When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term. For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over thing…

But that's the job of a journalist... to create controversies where there are none. To divide society to get you hooked on news.

> But that's the job of a journalist... to create controversies where there are none. To divide society to get you hooked on news.

Is it, though?

Does every journalist really "create controversies where there are none?"

Is every news story really an attempt to "divide society to get you hooked on news?"

Do you also believe meteorologists gin up their weather forecasts with storms for better ratings?

Don't confuse cynicism with intellectual rigor, please. The world - even media and social media - are more nuanced than that.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#90

Post by watwut »

eksemplar wrote: post #25
skybrian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever been to a large meeting when there's a hot political issue? People can be nasty in person too, unless there is very good moderation, and sometimes even then.

Mostly stupid/unsuccessful people. The elite is very good at disagreeing with each other on a polite manner. I work in the public sector, as a manager who is on a board that designs suggestions for our national digitization strategies. I know how to play the game now, but the most eye opening thing to me when I was starting out was how people disagree at those levels of society. If you want to say that you think some…

Unfortunately, this is also how elite enables those who abuse power as long as those mistreated are not part of elite. This how and why bullies and abusers keep and gain powerful positions. This is how sexual assault becomes sex scandal and this is why Jerry Sandusky could abuse so many boys.

This is how outright self-serving lies become part of consensus.

This works the way you described because those people have little personal stake at policies they pursue while people loosing/gaining housing, getting probation or prison time, being able/unable to pay for layer/healthcare or otherwise touched by those policies don't participate.

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