Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
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Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#2I still feel like large tech companies don't understand the amount of power they wield beyond it's capacity to influence buying decisions. I personally believe that YouTube (pre-2009) was the early breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, and Facebook groups/pages was the enriched gasoline added to the fire.
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#3I still feel like large tech companies don't understand the amount of power they wield beyond it's capacity to influence buying decisions. I personally believe that YouTube (pre-2009) was the early breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, and Facebook groups/pages was the enriched gasoline added to the fire.
The question is a bit philosophical at this point given the boundaries but is it truly their power?
The spread was by "Conspiracy Theorists" types look for self confirmation first to others of the type. It isn't like they could do anything to say get them to support say sensible infastructure upgrades because it wouldn't flatter their egos.
YouTube rewind got critically panned and any overt efforts for youtube tend to be poorly received.
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#4[dead]
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#5I still feel like large tech companies don't understand the amount of power they wield beyond it's capacity to influence buying decisions. I personally believe that YouTube (pre-2009) was the early breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, and Facebook groups/pages was the enriched gasoline added to the fire.
Pre 2009? Is this not true today?
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#6I still feel like large tech companies don't understand the amount of power they wield beyond it's capacity to influence buying decisions. I personally believe that YouTube (pre-2009) was the early breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, and Facebook groups/pages was the enriched gasoline added to the fire.
The question is a bit philosophical at this point given the boundaries but is it truly their power? The spread was by "Conspiracy Theorists" types look for self confirmation first to others of the type. It isn't like they could do anything to say get them to support say sensible infastructure upgrades because it wouldn't flatter their egos. YouTube rewind got critically panned and any overt efforts for youtube tend t…
The recommendation engine plays a very big role.
Fundamentally the ad companies (FGA) have a problem - their entire value proposition is that the little space at the side of the page and before the content is very valuable and has an influence on people's thoughts and decisions.
So if they then try to claim that the content itself, or the list of recommended "watch next" videos on Youtube, isn't influential, it fails the sniff test.
(Apple are mostly clear on this front. Netflix know the "watch next" is critical to their success, but they don't let people fill it with unvetted garbage.)
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#7I still feel like large tech companies don't understand the amount of power they wield beyond it's capacity to influence buying decisions. I personally believe that YouTube (pre-2009) was the early breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, and Facebook groups/pages was the enriched gasoline added to the fire.
Our society is so obsessed with the fear of censorship, or the "elite" hoarding all information, that we've now dived right into the opposite deep end. There's always too much of a good thing.
We created tech to usher in an era of new mediums. But we never stopped to ask ourselves what should we keep from the "old" systems. In any system that gets recreated/refactored, there is always a duplication of efforts. And that's what we're seeing right now. We're slowly realizing that editorialization is desperately needed.
In all these social graphs that's been created, we assume all "nodes" are rational actors, or are likely to be rational actors and that the information if just let free would steadily sort itself out. But that's not what we're seeing. Old diseases are new again and entire republics have fallen victim to misinformation.
It's well past time to address these issues. I thought 2008 was bad. I could have never imagine 2016. And now I'm severely worried about what non-sense we'll see in 2020.
Tech companies, and the employees in these companies, need to continually ask themselves what they're empowering.
EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk&feature=youtu.be...
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#8I still feel like large tech companies don't understand the amount of power they wield beyond it's capacity to influence buying decisions. I personally believe that YouTube (pre-2009) was the early breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, and Facebook groups/pages was the enriched gasoline added to the fire.
My father in law is a conspiracy theorist and it came a lot more from Fox News and talk radio than YouTube. They were pretty mainstream well before YouTube
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#9Some firms are more on top of it than others.
Netflix's deal with Goop is not encouraging, Goop just a "lifestyle brand" that is selling snake oil.
Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation
#10This is incredibly worrying. I understand that anti-vax conspiracy theories are dangerous, but I can think of a ton of ways banning "bad medical advice", as determined by a $10/hr contractor at Pinterest, Facebook, etc. could end up hurting people with health problems by preventing them from sharing useful information. I have gender dysphoria and at one point considered getting on testosterone, but thanks to conversations with transmen and detransitioned women on social media, I learned about less-commonly discussed side effects and decided against taking testosterone. This is an area where research is still developing and there aren't a ton of long-term studies, so it's incredibly helpful to be able to learn from other people's experiences, even if they aren't yet confirmed by research.
Likewise, I know people who've had a post or comment removed by Facebook because it was erroneously interpreted as racist or sexist. Off the top of my head, I know a friend who was sharing information on ICE raids with friends who were immigrants and they got banned from Facebook for a couple of hours (he was unbanned after appealing). I know someone else who was sharing statistics on domestic violence that was interpreted as discriminatory. The corporations making these policies don't have a good enough understanding of political issues to determine whether a statement is hate speech - and hell, even people who are knowledgeable about politics and history disagree in a lot of areas.