The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
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The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
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Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#2Sounds like a great explanation for the spread of very polarized political opinions in social media.
Everyone thinks their niche opinion has obtained majority support.
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#3I call this anecdotal growth mutation.
You see something, you share it, a lot of other people share it.
Suddenly the anecdote becomes statistically significant in the heads of everyone.
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#4Sounds like a great explanation for the spread of very polarized political opinions in social media. Everyone thinks their niche opinion has obtained majority support.
Do you think this is the first time in history that there are very polarized political opinions?
How do you explain it in the past? Maybe polarization comes from... polarizing circumstances?
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#5Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12149338
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#6This is a timely article. If I only viewed the world through my Facebook feed right now, I'd believe that everyone in the US wants to defund every police department.
In reality it's an incredibly unpopular view among everyone, left, right, and center.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
I think making this worse is that even a mild concern about this policy would be received very poorly on social media -- so nobody objects and you see a silent majority phenomenon.
It's frightening that social media is a primary news source for so many people.
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#7This is a timely article. If I only viewed the world through my Facebook feed right now, I'd believe that everyone in the US wants to defund every police department. In reality it's an incredibly unpopular view among everyone, left, right, and center. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... I think making this worse is that even a mild concern about this policy would be received very poorly on…
Case in point: The reality that it's unpopular doesn't save you from the downvotes you're currently getting from those who wish it were otherwise.
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#8I view this as the primary reason that protests and rioting have been significantly more widespread recently.
In order for someone to feel good about protesting and rioting, it helps if people around them are doing it, so that it seems socially acceptable, and so that negative consequences are less likely to occur. Normally you would need to see this physically near you, but now with viral algorithms, all it takes is one protest in one location, broadcast to a billion people, and many of them will start to believe "there's all theses protests going on everywhere, so I might do it too".
In some forms this is useful, but in others it is extremely dangerous and can allow for mass unrest based only upon what uncontrollable algorithms end up promoting due to what is the most viral content.
Humans evolved in significantly smaller societies than they live in today, and it's very difficult to have proper intuition about how many people are doing various things after seeing hundreds of examples of them on the Internet. As a result I notice many people making estimates about the frequency of activities that are not only off by one order of magnitude, but sometimes more like three to six.
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#9I view this as the primary reason that protests and rioting have been significantly more widespread recently. In order for someone to feel good about protesting and rioting, it helps if people around them are doing it, so that it seems socially acceptable, and so that negative consequences are less likely to occur. Normally you would need to see this physically near you, but now with viral algorithms, all it takes is…
I live in a small community outside America. On Saturday I left the mall where I'd been subject to the 'new normal' covid distancing laws shit. Stepped out into the sunshine to see over 1000 people marching down the street in one huddled mass protesting because...riots in America. I watched a car's window get smashed because they wanted to drive through an intersection and had the audacity to ask if they could drive through.
While we have issues with police and abuses of power here, it's not even a speck on the radar compared to America. There's real issues here worth protesting. There's a worrying lack of housing for people here in the last year since the psyche ward and homeless shelters shut down. Businesses have been closing down permanently for months, people are desperate for work, one of the largest clearcuts ever for the area has been proposed in the watershed where the town's drinking water comes from. It contains not only the oldest tree in Canada, so old that our tools can't penetrate deep enough to age it, but some of the largest intact old growth in the province, habitat for numerous endangered species and again, directly feeds nearly every river that supplies our water.
Nobody cares, nobody even acknowledges the issues outside their door. But some riots in America are worth flaunting all the measures forced on people for months because they've been riled up to believe it matters more than everything we've been told to believe for months now because social media tells then they need to care.
Re: The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016)
#10This is a timely article. If I only viewed the world through my Facebook feed right now, I'd believe that everyone in the US wants to defund every police department. In reality it's an incredibly unpopular view among everyone, left, right, and center. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... I think making this worse is that even a mild concern about this policy would be received very poorly on…
This is a silly straw man argument you’re making. Asking every American whether they want to defund the police is like asking everybody in the US if they enjoy taking the subway to work. Only a fraction of Americans live in cities that are calling for this action. A more reasonable poll would only ask Minneapolis residents.