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The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

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Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#41

Post by alwaysanagenda »

All of this mistrust is built around eyeballs and advertising revenue.

Once you realize you can't monetize the network, you will understand why "lol, nothing matters."

If you're doing anything of worth on the Internet, put out your tip jar and point people to your PayPal or Venmo.

You build an empire on ads, it will always crumble. The author seems to recognize this fact, with the note that the current 'economic' model on internet revenue is indeed based on ads promising the right eyeballs.

However, I take a huge issue with this statement that the Internet was supposed to "rationalize [information]—to create markets where impartial metrics would automatically surface the truest ideas and best products, at a vast and incorruptible scale. "

That's a massive pile of assumptions that affect only a small chunk of individuals who hold unrealistic notions about an Internet that somehow works FOR them. This is not the Internet. What you are dreaming about is some big-data pie-in-the-sky AI algo, which last I check, doesn't exist.

YOU CAN'T MONETIZE THE NETWORK. VALUE FOR VALUE.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#42

Post by ggggtez »

>Better rules and technologies that authenticate online transactions; a different ad-tech infrastructure that resists fraud and preserves privacy;

I don't disagree with the premise, but this solution seems vague at best. Authentication and privacy? Great things to be sure, but where is the connection? As it said, even "verified" purchases could be (and sometimes are) done by paid shills.

I guess the proposal is to create laws that prohibit lying on the internet? This person has clearly fallen on the wrong side of the authoritarian argument if that's the solution they came up with to prevent power consolidation in big business.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#43

Post by moate »

yborg wrote: post #40
jaspax wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget that institutions take time to develop. They also forget that high-trust institutions frequently begin with a dictator. The end-point is high-trust/low-coercion, but you can't get there from low-trust/low-coercion. First you have to go through a high-trust/high-coercion state, after which you can gradually taper off the coercive elements as institutions mature and the individual actors get used to the n…

This isn't how the Unites States evolved. Arguably, the success of the experiment still hasn't been fully established, but the major institutions that govern the US system were more or less present right from the beginning.

That's a take. I'm assuming you mean "The US as created by white European invaders who had to decimate a local indigenous population using slavery and warfare after purging itself of imperial overlords" right?

Like the US in its current coast to coast form didn't spring out fully formed from Liberty's bosom. It also had centuries of European innovation that lead to it.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#44

Post by ikeyany »

yborg wrote: post #40
jaspax wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget that institutions take time to develop. They also forget that high-trust institutions frequently begin with a dictator. The end-point is high-trust/low-coercion, but you can't get there from low-trust/low-coercion. First you have to go through a high-trust/high-coercion state, after which you can gradually taper off the coercive elements as institutions mature and the individual actors get used to the n…

This isn't how the Unites States evolved. Arguably, the success of the experiment still hasn't been fully established, but the major institutions that govern the US system were more or less present right from the beginning.

There was never any coercion in the US. All those black people simply begged to be chained and beaten for centuries. The tribes? They just really wanted to travel to Oklahoma. Women were naturally granted the right to vote in 1776 without any strife or suffering.

Whitewashing history to make it more palatable is dangerous.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#45

Post by PhasmaFelis »

gipp wrote: post #34
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google made $4.7B off of the news industry, by aggregating other people's stories and advertising on them. None of that money actually went to writers or publishers. Which is the entire point of the article you linked. If you're gonna be snarky, you should really check to make sure your information is accurate.

That article -- and the lobbying group "study" it is based on have been pretty roundly condemned even by other journalism organizations e.g. https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/nyt-google-media.php tl;dr the number is total fabrication

Which only cements the claim that no one is making serious money off of proper news media.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#46

Post by ggggtez »

0xfeba wrote: post #13

At probably a naive glance it seems related to anonymity. Would tying identity to online posts increase this trust? What if you had to insert your National ID Card to comment in some feedback forums? I remember YouTube tried this and failed due to pushback. What's the driver of this clickbait/instant gratification/hot take culture that's developing? Is it just ads?

>Would tying identity to online posts increase this trust? No. People happily reshare fake news all day under their real names.

If you don't recall, Facebook also requires "Real Names" and we saw how much that helps.

The driver is human nature. The internet didn't invent the conspiracy theory, or the clickbait news article. That stuff existed almost since the first newspaper. False accusation is specifically called out in the 10 commandments. Lying and cheating is human nature and likely requires some checks in place when it gets to the point of harming others for your own profit.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#47

Post by brokenkebab »

rchaud wrote: post #22
rosterface wrote: post #7

There's no mention of what I think is by far the biggest negative influence on trust: the media. Trust in media is at an all time low: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trust... It's a totally self inflicted wound too. Clickbait, outrage bait, blatant political spin, stealthy retractions, journalists on social media starting mobs... Bots do not even register in most people's minds compared to tha…

What you see is the clickbait. What you don't see are the structural changes to the media landscape over the past 20 years that led to this. Newspapers per 100 million people fell from 1200 (in 1945) to 400 (in 2014). This is from a Brookings study cited in a Wikipedia article on the topic [0]. In 2013, the Chicago Sun Times laid off all its photographers and tasked journalists to take photos as well as provide the r…

The idea that the internet transmorphed media from oracles of truth to professional manipulators is taking the whole situation inside out. The fact that people used to trust media more is not an indicator that media used to say more truth in the past. Journalists lived in a high tower pretty much unreachable by an average reader, so producing rubbish, or being manipulative was billion times easier. In the past only an important journalist was able to stand against another important journalist, and even that was a slow inconclusive pushing. Nowadays, bullshit, and incompetence can be revealed in hours, and even small mistakes are publicly noted. Everybody can be media now. Naturally journalists has lost their semigod status. But it's important to understand that they weren't semigods before, it's just that you looked at them down up. And now you don't.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#48

Post by Kenji »

Complete nonsense. Yes, trust has been eroded, but only trust concerning the media and garbage websites like facebook, Twitter, etc. Go into niche communities (hackernews is already too large imho) and you will find beautiful flourishing microscopic ecosystems that do perfectly well (think of speedrunning and other niche gamer communities, programmer communities, lgbt communities, etc.). People trust each other, are kind to each other, etc. It's just that they are out of the public's view precisely because they are precious and if the public ever discovers them, they're destroyed. Oh, also, it's always been this way on the internet, for decades. The good stuff is always hidden away from the public because the public is not fit for the good stuff. Just like you wouldn't let just anyone join your research team or your backyard grill party, you wouldn't let just anyone join a great community. You may call that exclusionary or even elitist, I call it having standards. Also, this post may be ironic because I'm shadowbanned. But I don't really care if anyone reads my messages, this is more of a thought dump.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#49

Post by AnimalMuppet »

0815test wrote: post #35
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What that article tells me is that people say they belong to teams they don't actually belong to, and that very few people actually do. Seems to me to be a problem with the teams.

> What that article tells me is that people say they belong to teams they don't actually belong to I'm not sure that's consistent with the evidence. People are actively getting worse and worse at modeling the other "team", which strongly suggests that polarization is quite real indeed and not just a matter of different labels.

Democrats with higher education are getting worse and worse at modeling Republicans. I think that means that, in higher education, Republicans get exposed to real Democrats, and Democrats get exposed to a caricature of Republicans.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#50

Post by [deleted] »

CM30 wrote: post #39
sb057 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's part of the issue; there is no need for commercial first-hand accounts anymore. If someone on social media is talking about a news event and provides a video documenting their presence, that is about as verified and accurate as you can hope for.

You're being downvoted, but to a large extent, you're probably right here. For many topics journalists used to cover, you genuinely don't need them any more, since enthusiasts posting Patreon/donation funded content is at least as good in terms of quality. Tech, games, TV, music, sports, celebrity gossip, all of them can be covered just as well or better by some random guy on YouTube or some online blog site. And tha…

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