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The internet wants to be fragmented

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#61

Post by vorpalhex »

postalrat wrote: post #40
zajio1am wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric But there is a real need for some kind of post rating/ranking (like like/dislike button, or explicit point rating). Once you got to thousand-post threads the without ranking mechanisms interesting posts are lost in noise. I guess that effectiveness of these mechanisms is an important part of why people…

Maybe AI is the answer. It can be be the better judge of comments in a conversation.

"Ah sorry the magic AI has decided only comments aligned with political party are good. It must be correct!"

AI is just an algorithm. It's not a magic truth knower.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#62

Post by Taek »

crazygringo wrote: post #57
nonrandomstring wrote: post #46

One of the most frightening bits of social science/philosophy I heard came from Slavoj Zizek, because it's about harbingers of big change. I have tried in vain to find a written reference. It's buried within some of his often tediously tangential talks - but I would love to know if any former Yugoslavians can attest to the truth or falsity of it. Zizek said that the former Yugoslavia was a tense but stable amalgam fo…

I don't know about the specific case of Yugoslavia, but I'd be incredibly wary of drawing any broader conclusions, even if it were a factor in that specific case. The US Civil War certainly had plenty of "jaw jaw jaw" before it, there was no "political correctness" at the time, and that didn't prevent it. Similarly we've had something like three and a half decades of "political correctness" in the US without any civi…

January 6th is a significant data point and shouldn't just be handwaved away. I've watched political correctness erode the dynamic of my own family, it's continuously sewing resent between people who have different angles of non-PC opinions.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#63

Post by zackees »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #4

The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…

[dead]

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#65

Post by seydor »

Taek wrote: post #59
seydor wrote: post #50

The internet is vast. But if your attention is fully absorbed between twitter and substack (like the author is), you feel trapped, because, well, you are. Maybe try to venture out of your internet comfort zone. It's not all spam out there, nor is it worthless because it was not recommended by someone cool. Just don't be lazy

This comment doesn't offer any practical advice on where to find content of higher quality, it just condescends people who don't feel like they have high quality options.

my comment is condescending to people who don't put the effort for searching needles in the haystack, but instead spend their whole online time in the well beaten path.

The content wont always be of "higher quality" , because quality is subjective. Here are two nearby sources of such content:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#67

Post by ilyt »

zajio1am wrote: post #32
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #4

The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…

> The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric But there is a real need for some kind of post rating/ranking (like like/dislike button, or explicit point rating). Once you got to thousand-post threads the without ranking mechanisms interesting posts are lost in noise. I guess that effectiveness of these mechanisms is an important part of why people…

The problem is no system is immune to incompetent/uncooperative users.

If in reddit/hn-like sites users use up/downvote as "okay, this is interesting discussion"/"this adds nothing to the topic" it works reasonably well.

If they decide that it is just same as like/dislike button (as is common on many bigger subreddits), then we get back to promoting echo chambers

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#68

Post by ilyt »

mikrl wrote: post #42
amadeuspagel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most social networks don't have an equivalent to downvotes at all.

I think this might be structurally related to our political ideology of liberal democracy. We assume that bad takes die out or are overcome by good takes in the marketplace of ideas. Therefore, the ‘magnitude’ of a bad take should intuitively be close to 0, and the magnitude of a good take should be positive and nonzero. Allowing negative scores permits bad takes to become large in magnitude. Allowing or disallowing…

But lack of downvotes mixes "just average takes not worth a upvote" with "this guy is obviously a moron, why I'm even seeing his comments together with other competent people?"

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#69

Post by airstrike »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #4

The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…

> The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric.

Upvoted for this

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#70

Post by dayvid »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #4

The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…

The biggest problem is that you can make money from the internet.

The internet was more about self-expression and fun. Then people realized they can sell things or themselves (being a "content-creator", "thought-leader", etc.).

As a result the most active people are tailoring their actions towards increasing engagement, getting you to buy something, getting you to think a certain way, etc. and we have a divide between "content-creator" influencers/producers and passive consumers who like or retweet things they haven't thought through but sound catchy and provide the same opinions.

It's not 100% bad; content is more polished and organized, but you have to be discerning in order to get good value and a lot of people don't have those abilities.

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