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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)

#111

Post by varjag »

Ambolia wrote: post #108

The lies and conspiracy theories were always there. The difference now is that there are lies and conspiracies in different directions rather than a consensus of lies and conspiracy theories. Of course it remains to be seen if it's possible to create a consensus of a nation without centralized media like we had until now. If it's not, we will have to get used to the population fragmenting into different groups with d…

> The difference now is that there are lies and conspiracies in different directions rather than a consensus of lies and conspiracy theories.

Quite the opposite, the once-thriving ecosystem of conspiracy theories is gutted now. Social networks did to it what industrial farming did to agriculture. It's one huge monoculture spanning nations, generations, languages and cultures. Even across the professed political alignments.

When once you were able to meet a person with crackpot beliefs in one area but seemingly sane in the other, now it's a wholesale deal. Listen to them rant about a single cliche conspiracy and you very much know their whole worldview on every issue down to the minute detail.

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

#112

Post by notanzaiiswear »

I don't quite understand: it seems to me there is an infinite stream of news, and everybody has to find a way to extract bits and pieces relevant to them.

Social networks just make it easier to access the news stream, in that sense. But they are not responsible for creating the news, or at least, not in a significant way - as infinite+whatever amount of "news" SN create is still infinite.

This just in relation to the article - of course SNs create all kinds of problems, but the amount of information is not really the problem caused by SNs.

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

#114

Post by notanzaiiswear »

peakaboo wrote: post #102
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the same with Linux. If it would be super popular and mainstream, the corporations would destroy everything that's fun with it in order to sell you things and track your data.

Like Android?

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

#115

Post by mrweasel »

mdp2021 wrote: post #85
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> no amount of moderating There can be automated systems to fix that - to rank contributions , with the aim to boost the signal and reduce the noise, with the final aim to facilitate a lean and productive debate and information sharing; and also to connect contributions , to reduce dispersion, etc. Such systems to rank contributions are related to the theory of voting systems (quantitative ranking of voters and optio…

Moderation is something I've been think about lately. So fare the best idea I've come up with is "hide all posts by default", then randomly show a post or comment to something like 5 - 20% for the other users. Only when a post then reaches some level of likes/upvotes/whatever will that post open up to comments and be visible to all other users of the platform. If it fails to reach the required number of votes in 24 hours is will just be deleted.

Most social media platforms are simply to big to moderate in any meaningful way, in my opinion. AI has so far show to be ineffective, as show by comments and open letters from Facebooks human moderation staff.

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

#116

Post by capableweb »

peakaboo wrote: post #101
capableweb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're effectively describing Scuttlebutt in a nutshell. Small communities that are formed ad-hoc by peering with each other. "Follow" mean you'll help replicate their content for others who follow them + you. Scuttlebutt is already successful even though it's very small so far. Tags and other things can be used to explore content on the network, as long as you've found an entry-point. I'm a bit split about spreading…

The name is awful. I certainly don't want to spread the word about "scuttlebutt". So I guess that's a good thing, keeps it small and cosy.

You sound like the same person who could never work on a ship as there is a "poop deck", and you could of course never refer to it as such, poop is a bad word!

Also, never try archery as some people might try to use the word "prickshaft" towards you. The horror.

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

#117

Post by herbst »

BarryMilo wrote: post #2

As always, it's a bad time to be an imaginary person. It's a big leap to pretend the model reflects the real world, let alone today's real world. As far as I can tell, sharing has become largely fenced into communities (reddit subs, Facebook groups). People who still share with people they know personally appear to me to be a minority. Don't get me wrong, the principle is sound, but the world changes fast and the des…

As contrast in my social circle nearly everything is spoken / shared in private messenger groups today. From my POV this is the current trend. Then again my environment is mostly online privacy aware.

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

#118

Post by ColinWright »

Buttons840 wrote: post #88
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…

I've thought of creating a social network that groups people into small groups of 100 or so, by interests and location. I would advertise it as a chance to escape the monoculture and explain that the cost if you must participate a minimum amount, like 1 post or comment per week on average or something. And then you could mix up the groups every year or two. It would have its pros and cons, but it would achieve the go…

The first part of what you say is similar to what's happening with some parts of Mastodon. There are many, many small instances that are (apparently) starting to develop their own cultures, but you can still see what other people are saying because of federation.

The ideas of requiring engagement, and mixing the groups, are interesting, but I'm not sure how they'd work. I've seen the "You must engage" idea applied elsewhere without success, so it needs a little more work.

Even so, I think your ideas have promise.

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

#119

Post by onion2k »

jader201 wrote: post #74
onion2k wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is unfair, but this just makes you sound a bit antisocial. You're actively trying to remove all of the personality from social media, and filter it down to just professional or single-interest posts. People aren't like that; everyone has many facets to what they're interested in, who they are, and what makes them tick. Removing them from your network as soon as they post anything from your red flag list…

> Perhaps this is unfair, but this just makes you sound a bit antisocial. You're actively trying to remove all of the personality from social media, and filter it down to just professional or single-interest posts. Does everyone have to be social via social networks nowadays in order to be considered “social”? Can’t we just be social, you know, face to face? And then just leave online media to news/facts? It’s so wei…

Does everyone have to be social via social networks nowadays in order to be considered “social”?

Can’t we just be social, you know, face to face? And then just leave online media to news/facts?

Of course you can. You just can't claim to have "a good social media experience" if that's what you're doing (as rg111 did). If you're removing all the social parts from social media then you're not have a "social media experience" at all. You're doing something else. That might be good, and you might enjoy it and find it useful, but it's not sociable if all you're doing is consuming filtered content about a topic you're interested in.

Rejecting the social aspects of social media is, by definition, antisocial. That doesn't reflect on how sociable you are in other contexts though.

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

#120

Post by pezezin »

Stratoscope wrote: post #32
stavros wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: There's no ñ in habanero.

And in fact that informs how to pronounce the word. It's not hah-buh-NYAIR-oh, it's hah-buh-NAIR-oh. A similar one that I used to get wrong all the time is empanada. No ñ in that either, but I always said em-puh-NYAH-duh. Then one day I noticed it was just a regular n and it is pronouced em-puh-NAH-duh. Now for a really embarrassing one. This was back in the day when I was working with my friend and colleague Alan Co…

I will never be able to understand English phonetic approximations. Spanish is my mother language and I don't know how they are supposed to sound like xD

In any case, "empañada" is a real word, it mean's "foggy", but used for glasses, not for the weather itself. For example, "tengo las gafas empañadas" -> "my glasses are foggy"

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