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Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

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Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#11

Post by d110af5ccf »

3np wrote: post #3

Somehow this post takes the least interesting part of the source article[0] and draws false conclusions from it. > In the simulation, the decision whether to rebroadcast is random, rather than being driven by “virality” or cognitive bias, so the simulation is an optimistic one. > It turns out that message propagation follows a power law: the probability of a meme being shared a given number of times is roughly propor…

The Scientific American article does bring up a number of interesting social dynamics. However the modeling described seems bogus to me. The algorithms sound like they are incredibly oversimplified. It seems unreasonable to assume that all people interact with social media in the same way or to assume that their behavior is random.

For perspective, genetic algorithms are a biased random walk and they clearly work quite well.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#12

Post by stavros »

crdrost wrote: post #7

Related to this, there is an intimacy of small community which makes you feel valued and a proper contributor, that social networks really seem to oppose: they want to make the network bigger, you are part of the biggest world context, everybody on TikTok is eating a habanero while watching Bob Ross, so only if I do the same nonsense do I have a chance of 100 people noticing and liking the video and maybe opting to s…

Nitpick: There's no ñ in habanero.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#13

Post by tacostakohashi »

stavros wrote: post #12
crdrost wrote: post #7

Related to this, there is an intimacy of small community which makes you feel valued and a proper contributor, that social networks really seem to oppose: they want to make the network bigger, you are part of the biggest world context, everybody on TikTok is eating a habanero while watching Bob Ross, so only if I do the same nonsense do I have a chance of 100 people noticing and liking the video and maybe opting to s…

Nitpick: There's no ñ in habanero.

Don't be such a ñitpicker.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#14

Post by dylan604 »

crdrost wrote: post #7

Related to this, there is an intimacy of small community which makes you feel valued and a proper contributor, that social networks really seem to oppose: they want to make the network bigger, you are part of the biggest world context, everybody on TikTok is eating a habanero while watching Bob Ross, so only if I do the same nonsense do I have a chance of 100 people noticing and liking the video and maybe opting to s…

>When I put it that way it feels banal,

It is banal, at least the largest portion of social media is. Originally, I could see the usefulness of FB with connecting with friends near & far, sharing, planning, etc. All sounds useful, but then FB turned it creepy with their method of monetizing their products and algos to pull the strings to make it as addicting as possible. Insta, TikTok, etc has pretty much fully embraced the dark side of social. LOOK AT ME!!! LIKE ME!!! FOLLOW ME!!! Again, with the tweaking of the algos to up the addiction factor. All in the name of "engagement".

YouTube already made me nervous, but there's definitely some people creating content there that is not about that at all so I don't lump them in with the others.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#15

Post by civilized »

I have no idea what the logic of this post is supposed to be. Message sharing follows a power law and so therefore... something about quality going down when messages go up? And something about filtering? What on earth is he talking about?

...Well, it turns out he's sharing the conclusions of the linked SciAm article, but the SciAm article just says "the super smart researchers plugged numbers into their simulation and this result magically came out". There's no insight or explanation.

Are we expected to just believe that computer simulations built by credentialed scientists prove things about the real world?

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#16

Post by mananaysiempre »

crdrost wrote: post #7

Related to this, there is an intimacy of small community which makes you feel valued and a proper contributor, that social networks really seem to oppose: they want to make the network bigger, you are part of the biggest world context, everybody on TikTok is eating a habanero while watching Bob Ross, so only if I do the same nonsense do I have a chance of 100 people noticing and liking the video and maybe opting to s…

This strongly reminds me of Kornhauser’s three levels of social relations (Politics of Mass Society, 1959):

> We can conceive of all but the simplest societies as comprising three levels of social relations. The first level consists of highly personal or primary relations, notably the family. The third level contains relations inclusive of the whole population, notably the state. The second level comprises all intermediate relations, notably the local community, voluntary association, and occupational group.

Etc., the argument being that much of the socially important parts and ills of industrialization, urbanization, and the ensuing mass society are reducible to the dissolution of the second level and the transferral of its customary characteristics and behaviours (strong attachment, group identity, and so on) to the third.

But that’s mostly me channelling my history teachers, not original thought, so maybe someone who actually knows this stuff can say more.

Lest this be perceived as doomsaying, let me mention that Russian-language LiveJournal seemed to retain that small-town feel up until the very end (early 2010s) despite the considerable number of readers and commenters (thousands of readers for the most popular post on a slow day—much less than on Facebook, much more than you could ever possibly know). Possibly that’s because the number of writers (worth following) was much smaller, due to the higher effort required for long-form posts.

Again, people with more experience in older online communities should know more about this, as that was the only thriving one I experienced personally.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#17

Post by awinter-py »

> as the number of messages in the network rises, the quality of those which propagate falls

The job of technology here should be to reduce noise, both on open platforms like twtr and closed platforms like slack channels and forums.

Computers are good at categorization -- now just use it to restrict what I see rather than recommend extra stuff.

Spam detection for things not traditionally considered spam.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#18

Post by mananaysiempre »

awinter-py wrote: post #17

> as the number of messages in the network rises, the quality of those which propagate falls The job of technology here should be to reduce noise, both on open platforms like twtr and closed platforms like slack channels and forums. Computers are good at categorization -- now just use it to restrict what I see rather than recommend extra stuff. Spam detection for things not traditionally considered spam.

That’s what they call a “filter bubble”, though. (Still not convinced that’s an inherently evil thing, yeah, but somewhat convinced an implicit and unavoidable one may not be good.)

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#19

Post by awinter-py »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #18
awinter-py wrote: post #17

> as the number of messages in the network rises, the quality of those which propagate falls The job of technology here should be to reduce noise, both on open platforms like twtr and closed platforms like slack channels and forums. Computers are good at categorization -- now just use it to restrict what I see rather than recommend extra stuff. Spam detection for things not traditionally considered spam.

That’s what they call a “filter bubble”, though. (Still not convinced that’s an inherently evil thing, yeah, but somewhat convinced an implicit and unavoidable one may not be good.)

yes fully agreed, it can be bad

but there's a political version of a filter bubble which is getting the same news, but opposite interpretations

vs things like industry-specific updates -- I get a much smaller volume of, say, biology news than someone who works in it

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#20

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

crdrost wrote: post #7

Related to this, there is an intimacy of small community which makes you feel valued and a proper contributor, that social networks really seem to oppose: they want to make the network bigger, you are part of the biggest world context, everybody on TikTok is eating a habanero while watching Bob Ross, so only if I do the same nonsense do I have a chance of 100 people noticing and liking the video and maybe opting to s…

Could you imagine if hypothetically, HN suddenly became the world's most popular social network? It would be unusable for it's current purpose and no amount of moderating could ever fix that.

This sounds harsh but not everyone deserves to be heard all of the time- myself included.

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