311–320 of 889 posts
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If you don't like the stuff they post, don't follow them. This includes things that you don't think they should post - you know, the "off-topic" stuff. Them posting that stuff isn't a "problem" just because you do not appreciate some of the content.
You also get posts that they may have favourited or friend a they follow. That's when things get toxic.
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How are they “verifiable” falsehoods? E.g., conspiracy theories are famous for being almost always unfalsifiable. These views usually are a mix of low prior hypotheses, politically incorrect semi-truths, marketing propaganda (with few empirical assertions), and lies.
"The NSA is secretly monitoring all communications on the internet" That would have easily been labeled misinformation and disinformation 10 years ago.
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Block early, block often. Think twice before following someone.
Doesn't that just reinforce the echo chamber? I don't actually use Twitter or Facebook, and I deleted my Reddit, so I'm not the one to talk. But my wife uses Twitter a lot and has managed to get into conversations that are very hard to keep civil. She has found several approaches that work without blocking. 1. Only enable notifications and DMs from mutual follows. People who get into pile ons don't tend to follow the…
No, I think there's a big difference between an echo chamber constructed by algorithms that push content upon you without your consent or knowledge, and an "echo chamber" constructed by yourself when you actively curate and trim the media you consume.
You and your wife's suggestions are really good ideas, but for them to be effective, it's essential that you exercise control over what hits your eyeballs. Twitter, in particular, is a hot mess. I use the "muted words" feature to filter out tweets that contain words that raise my blood pressure, it's now well over 200 words since late 2016. Is that a making a bubble? Perhaps, but I've found it's better to engage with that subject matter in a time and context of my own choosing rather than having it dropped into "my feed".
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Plenty of people on Reddit and TikTok are getting banned on Parler for posting liberal ideas [1]. It's not free speech . It's one-sided. [1] https://www.newsweek.com/parler-ted-cruz-approved-free-speec... Edit: this post is getting downvoted like crazy. People have strong opinions about this.
"free speech" is just being used as a dog whistle for far right ideas in this case. These people are not behaving in good faith, don't bother engaging with them as if they were.
>dog whistle
to be reductive, yes far right and even fascist ideas would fall under the umbrella of free speech as would... literally everything else.
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I have to agree that big tech really messed this one up. Their attempt at regulating speech on their platforms (entirely their own right to do however they want) has resulted in both sides being pissed . I had commented on this a while ago that it was like War Games - the only way to win this game was not to play at all. The second they started being the arbitrator of speech they were guaranteed to piss people off. T…
I dont think Big Tech got every call right, but I really don't see how they please both sides here. Especially when one side, from the top down, considers everything other than sycophantic praise for its leader to be 'fake news', and the other side has some people opining that even reporting things the other side says without qualification is irresponsible journalism. If anything, I'd say hindsight makes some of thei…
There was this ideal of the internet with information being freely distributed and available, that people would seek out truth. What we have seen though is that large groups of people just believe whoever has the bigger microphone.
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2020, or more likely 2016 will perhaps be seen as a turning point in the fortunes of the US Republic, when the democracy began to unravel, the law was used as a weapon against enemies, and the rule of law was replaced by mob rule with different factions warring in the streets. The parallels between the US at this moment and pre-war Europe or Rome at the time of the Catiline conspiracy are striking - the centre cannot…
Why can’t the dissenting States just secede from the Union? It is a democracy after all.
It’s worth noting that the first thing Parler did was start censoring anyone unsupportive of their form of conservatism. They’re not offering freer speech, they’re offering a safe space. Maybe that’s a seller, maybe it’s not, but it’s an important distinction. This is really just /r/conservative taken to its logical conclusion.
I suspect we will continue to see services that unbundle social media's hottest topics. Social media may have created an outrage economy -- a subset of the attention economy. But like ebay, craigslist, etc, the social media platforms' broad focus means their product can't specialize when strong trends emerge. The outrage will be unbundled by niche companies. I actually think this is a good thing. Seeing conspiracy th…
On one hand, I agree there is a positive to isolating the worst of social media off on a separate site.
On the other hand, we're (maybe) just starting to see Facebook etc take some action on the worst elements of social media. This subverts that and makes it harder for Facebook to take further action in the future: shareholders will rightfully ask "what if you lose even more users by banning ".
Also, the bad thing about fb etc is that they just want to sell you advertising. But that's also the good thing, Facebook don't care about your politics, they don't particularly want to influence you as a person, they just want you to click on ads for shit you don't need.
I wonder about other social networks, eventually someone will weaponise one, and sell votes rather than clicks. Is this the start of that? An expressly Conservative social network is much better placed to sell souls than clicks...
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It's a shame, but it really does feel like "free speech" has become a near dog-whistle. Almost any time I hear of a service billing itself with free speech as a primary selling point, a quick visit is more than enough to turn me off of ever returning. Besides this, there's a clear feedback loop that happens regardless of the intent of the service's creators. The people most likely to get kicked off of social media pl…
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Agree, we will likely end up with right leaning town square and left leaning town square. And because every company seems to think they need to pick a side on political topics, it may extend beyond speech platforms. For instance I wouldn't be surprised if at one point conservative leaning viewers would migrate away from the likes of netflix for been fed up of being preached woke catechism in every TV show. And perhap…
I really hope Netflix learns from the awfulness of Star Trek Discovery.
Netflix doesn't carry it in my country.
Star Trek Discovery is awful for many reasons.
How do they intersect?
In mid October I deleted almost all my tweets and likes (but Twitter being so shit they are still showing my likes except it’s not liked anymore lol) and have not been tweeting anything anymore. I found Twitter too toxic, it made me angry with people for no reason, so I deleted all my tweets and the app. No more notifications, no more “just checking Twitter quickly”. I now go to Twitter like once a day just to have a…
if twitter is so bad, why do you keep using it?
That's the thing: it's become extremely deeply embedded in our society, since it's damn catnip to 24-hour news (which, IMO, was the originator of this problem - they need content, now, and anything which provides is thrown up there).