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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)

#151

Post by dragonwriter »

bckr wrote: post #150
joelbluminator wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we will have to get used to the population fragmenting into different groups with different chains of trust This is becoming harder to do with the current culture wars. If each group would have respected the other that would have been possible, but it seems each group (especially the radical left if we are being honest) wants the other to comply to a new set of rules and philosophies. In schools, in the workplace a…

I think "the radical left" is mostly reacting to upbringings that quashed personal expression, which phenomenon has been documented in the USA for centuries. So, they (and I, past tense) are reactive, unselfawarely using the tools they learned from their oppressors to try to do the opposite. And boy ever is the USA's right wing oppressive, but the oppression is in private, at home, in church, and in religious schools…

> And boy ever is the USA's right wing oppressive, but the oppression is in private

No, its not; its just that when its been public, its been broadly supported, because the center of US political power is ideologically on the Right, or at least has been for most of modern history.

So right-wing, whether economic (anti-socialist/anti-communist) or cultural (like PMRC’s push against naughty music, or the spate of internet censorship laws of the 1990s) tends to be supported not look partisan, because ot has support across both parties (the exact divide changes with partisan realignments, but for the more recent instances the Republican Party and the dominant centrist faction of Democrats tend to be in support.)

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

#152

Post by lonk11 »

pathseeker wrote: post #90
mdp2021 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Those are based on the assumption that votes are equal. There are a lot of people I just don't have any interest in hearing from. No automated system is going to fix eternal September style problems. And before you suggest that I could simply follow the groups I'm interested in, that's still not the same thing because the people in those groups will still be engaging with/distracted by the people I'm not following.

How about this way to automatically address the Eternal September problem:

When you upvote an item - you connect stronger to people who upvoted that same item.

When you downvote an item - you connection to those who upvoted it becomes weaker.

The content is ranked based on how strongly you are connected to people you upvoted each item.

That way when a lot of clueless/uninformed people come in and start upvoting useless to you content - they don't create noise in your personalized content list.

The content you see comes from people who have proven to find useful content for you.

This is how my hobby project https://linklonk.com works.

I did a Show HN a week ago and that post has more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28405659

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

#153

Post by maximus-decimus »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #147
maximus-decimus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you only leave online media to news/facts, it's not a social network at all. It's an online news paper or a user manual. You don't have to be social online, but getting angry at people for socializing on a social network is definitely anti-social. People have spoken over the phone and have had pen pals for a very long time, so "we have come to that" a long time ago.

Not necessarily. IRL, If I don't enjoy hanging around someone, I just won't hang around them. same goes gor social media. If I have a few friends who share my interests, I'll keep following them, but some friend who keeps spouting stupid stuff? I'll avoid them IRL and on Social Media. If uncle Joe keeps talking about conspiracy theories in family gatherings, I'll keep away as much as possible. I hang withy friends on…

The conversation wasn't about filtering out people you don't like, it was about filtering out anybody who shares anything personal. The real life equivalent would be stopping to talk to your uncle because he tells you he likes Italian food or went on a trip to Europe and you only keep speaking to people who talk to you about global warming or stuff that actually "matters". That how the person treats his friends online and the argument is if it is anti-social to do that on social networks.

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

#154

Post by b3morales »

Stratoscope wrote: post #107
Stratoscope wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 just remembered a couple more of my late friend's interesting pronunciations: "Old-timer's disease" (Alzheimer's) "Valentime's Day" Too late to correct him now! May he rest in peace.

Old-timer's/Alzheimer's probably qualifies as an Eggcorn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

(In fact I see that it is mentioned at the beginning of that article!)

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

#155

Post by mattowen_uk »

lonk11 wrote: post #152
pathseeker wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are based on the assumption that votes are equal. There are a lot of people I just don't have any interest in hearing from. No automated system is going to fix eternal September style problems. And before you suggest that I could simply follow the groups I'm interested in, that's still not the same thing because the people in those groups will still be engaging with/distracted by the people I'm not following.

How about this way to automatically address the Eternal September problem: When you upvote an item - you connect stronger to people who upvoted that same item. When you downvote an item - you connection to those who upvoted it becomes weaker. The content is ranked based on how strongly you are connected to people you upvoted each item. That way when a lot of clueless/uninformed people come in and start upvoting usele…

On the surface this seems reasonable, but in reality I think the users would end up inside echo chambers very quickly.

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

#156

Post by aendruk »

mikro2nd wrote: post #141
peakaboo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is so awful about "scuttlebutt"? In the old days, when ships were wooden, real sailors were pressed, etc., etc., every ship had a water container available to the sailors -- a water butt -- bigger than a puncheon but smaller than a tun. So sailors would share gossip (probably about how misguided their management was) -- scuttle -- around the water butt, hence "scuttlebutt". Where's the "awful"? eta: Exactly what…

Having never been in the old days, the word scuttlebutt isn’t in my vocabulary, but I do know scuttle (scamper) and butt (buttocks). Scampering buttocks, the meaning I would surmise in the absence of your history lesson, is indeed an awful choice of name if the network is aspiring for general appeal.

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

#157

Post by mattowen_uk »

vic-traill wrote: post #145
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.

I gave up on Usenet newsgroups when the noise in groups of interest (mainly rec.music. , comp.lang. and comp.sys.*) led to me spending too much time managing my killfile in relation to actually reading and replying to news. It really was too much to self-moderate your way through. The volume was just too much. As well, you couldn't sort through the trash to find the pearls. The volume was a trickle compared to volume…

On the basis that all the spammers have moved onto riper fruit such as Facebook and Twitter, I do wonder if Usenet will see a resurgent, after all in the good groups it's just a federated version of HN in style.

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

#158

Post by b3morales »

ramijames wrote: post #67
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…

Growth is always the default expectation. It's part of humanity at this point. I personally feel that it is destructive. I hate the idea that static and stagnant are NEGATIVES. They are not. They have value.

"Stagnant" definitely has negative connotations; better words might be "stable", "steady", "established"...

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

#159

Post by swivelmaster »

rg111 wrote: post #56

As soon as your news feed becomes too big for you to read all of it and then decide whether to repost anything, the quality of information you propagate is going to fall because of that filtering process. I avoid this by unfollowing people very frequently. I see one stupid candid or a pout or a food shot, I just unfollow that person. Same goes for SJW/White Supremacy types. Whether you are OP or a sharer, you get mut…

This is very nice for you, but the problem is that most people who consume social media are consuming it about as passively as possible and aren't aware that their experience can be curated the way that you are doing. Providing the tools to curate one's own social media feed is not a solution to the problem the article is explaining.

Here's an analogy: Imagine if we discovered that thousands of cars had some fatal flaw that could result in death and instead of recalling them the manufacturer just made a DIY repair kit available for twenty bucks online. How many people would just put it off or ignore the problem until their car exploded?

That's the problem we have with social media: It's got huge problems that most people are only vaguely aware of, and the solutions they offer are mostly esoteric DIY controls that very few people will care about or use.

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

#160

Post by mdp2021 »

pathseeker wrote: post #90
mdp2021 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Those are based on the assumption that votes are equal. There are a lot of people I just don't have any interest in hearing from. No automated system is going to fix eternal September style problems. And before you suggest that I could simply follow the groups I'm interested in, that's still not the same thing because the people in those groups will still be engaging with/distracted by the people I'm not following.

> Those are based on the assumption that votes are equal

No, absolutely not. Voters can be categorized, clusterized and ranked, already as part of voting systems theory (one single example in the latter: election of electors), and more beyond it.

> No automated system is going to fix eternal September style problems

And why not. One example: views filtering contribution by score.

> people in those groups will still be engaging with/distracted by

Not necessarily, if they are given the option to avoid that.

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