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The internet wants to be fragmented

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#91

Post by mypetocean »

airstrike wrote: post #69
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

For me it was this:

> Normal purposeful speech makes different opinions closer, while speech under the feedback of the like button makes similar opinions even closer and different opinions further apart.

But there is another aspect to the complexities here.

Years ago, I started thinking of the LIKE/UPVOTE button as an "increase visibility" button.

I don't upvote just because I like it (humor perhaps being an exception).

Often, I'm not upvoting just the comments I like: I'm upvoting the whole containing _thread_, including the conflicting views if they seem to have been made in good faith.

Because when good quality discourse takes place, I want the whole instance to be seen.

In these cases, the intended audience of my upvotes is most immediately the algorithm (in a way), rather than human viewers.

Sometimes I've found myself wishing my upvotes could be made invisible to humans since I know many of them will interpret my upvote differently than intended. There is no nuance.

It gets me wondering how feedback mechanisms might be diversified to add nuance back into these systems (while still moderating complexity).

Emoticons (as on Slack) do add nuance, but every emoticon pack I've seen lacks nuance most in neutral and critical responses.

Of course, no technology we have now can compare with verbal discourse for nuance. But you and I are more likely to be able to influence feedback features on social media than to succeed in eliminating them.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#92

Post by pessimizer »

falcolas wrote: post #49
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…

Why does someone’s position need to change? That implies that somebody is wrong, and that’s not necessarily the case. More often, the “wrongness” comes from having a different point of view. For example, it’s easy to say “fuck cars” when you live in the city and they are only polluting, noisy nuisances that are, at best, optional for living your life. But when you live where I do, not having a car means a significant…

> Why does someone’s position need to change? That implies that somebody is wrong, and that’s not necessarily the case.

Depends on your purpose in talking. My purposes are to inform people of things, to request information about things, to ask people to do things, to play, or to indirectly express approval(hug) or disapproval(hiss.)

If I'm arguing with somebody, I should either be improving the quality of their information or improving the quality of my own, or determined to convince somebody that they should do something. If I'm playing, by definition I can't be seriously arguing. The only people who care about my approval or disapproval as such are my parents and other loved ones; to other people the news about my current feelings as an individual aren't important, and if other people who didn't care about me found them important, they wouldn't want innuendo, they'd just want the facts.

If we have two incompatible opinions about something, yet we have no desire to bring them into agreement, why are we even arguing about it? Surely there's something better we could be doing.

I think a lot of people have started to think that the internet loves or hates them personally, and are desperate for its approval in an unhealthy way. The fact that there's money to be made in being noticed on the internet makes the situation even worse.

> For example, it’s easy to say “fuck cars” when you live in the city and they are only polluting, noisy nuisances that are, at best, optional for living your life. But when you live where I do, not having a car means a significant number of unreasonable changes to your life.

"It's easy to say that if you're you" isn't part of any legitimate argument. It's just extraneous ad hominem that people add while making (or eliding past) an argument. It also doesn't get you out of explaining "significant number" or especially "unreasonable," which begs the question.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#93

Post by hinkley »

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…

Once in a while I’ll say something snarky and get downvoted. I usually delete those because I’m not really adding to the dialog. But the world is full of uncomfortable truths, software doubly so (or at least, I can see more of them). It’s humbling when people agree, irritating or amusing when they don’t. Confusing when I say the same thing in two replies in one thread and one gets 25 downvotes while the other gets 35 upvotes.

My fake internet points go up every week whether I say something controversial or not so since they’re fake anyway what do I care? I know some people do but get a grip.

At the end of the day if you understand something that other people don’t, I figure that’s a way to stay gainfully employed. I don’t like cleaning up other people’s messes for long though. It’s fun at first and on some teams I get copycats and everything goes well, more or less. I’ve maybe made the world a better place by teaching some people something new. On others I become the janitor and end up leaving. Getting “downvoted” at work does matter.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#94

Post by hinkley »

dayvid wrote: post #70
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 betwee…

The Internet is television with lower production value and longer commercials.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#95

Post by lotsofpulp »

hinkley wrote: post #94
dayvid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 betwee…

The Internet is television with lower production value and longer commercials.

I spend far less time subjected to advertisements on the internet than when I used to watch TV. Near zero time, actually.

Now it is a game of figuring out the shills that are advertising, but trying to disguise their content as not advertising.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#96

Post by swayvil »

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…

I've caught myself being sensitive to the popular narrative when uttering my opinions, fearful of my "citizenship score". Shameful, yes. To a degree, here (yes!) but much moreso elsewhere (might be unavoidable).

Feedback is divine. Convenience is king. So let's go with the vote button. This distributed god-king is our best way to control this stuff (moderation, filteration etc).

We should not only be voting but looking at our peer's votes too. Weight votes by the voter. Stuff like that

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#98

Post by ROTMetro »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #36
tshadley wrote: post #31

If twitter dies, where do I find a site where I can follow at least one expert/leader in every major discipline/social/political-movement to get a sort of snapshot of what's happening in the world? I don't need to agree with every expert/leader, I just want to know what they think.

the way we did before massive corporate social walled gardens people keep a blog and you subscribe to the blog feed. bonus point: it's completely free, you don't even need to give away your personal data and be forced to watch ads. but it's 2023, realistically if Twitter dies these people will open a fediverse account that you can follow.

Blogs were awful. Lack of actual discussion, just pontification and ultimately you curate your own list of (mainly) like minded blogs. Give me a reddit thread anyday where some rando (whose blog I never would have followed) calls out the original post with differing thoughts/viewpoints. Sites like reddit/twitter broke me away from the trap of blogs by people with great credentials giving/polished public face giving them un-deserved authority over my thinking. Reddit causes me to re-evaluate and change my positions regularly, something that neither blogs nor mainstream media ever managed to do. Twitter makes me actively angry if I read replies, but it has also surfaced many interesting people who are deep thinkers with positions other than mine. But twitter's most powerful revelation is when it shows me I HATE so many of the people whose positions I used to align with, and whose slower more thoughtful blog posts swayed me. When I see their immediate response to something, and it is just awful and ugly and full of hate, not rational thought but just knee jerk reaction, then yeah, no thanks. I don't need a deeper insight into your thoughts. Twitter has weeded out so many ugly people from having influence on me.

Reddit - injects thoughts/opinions I would never have sought out on my own. Twitter - Shows the true face of 'thought leaders',takes away their polished persona and shows me when I have been giving too much credit to horrible people.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#99

Post by sboomer »

waspight wrote: post #90

In the spirit of the article, how do you start your own community these days? I think it was phpbb that was popular last time I checked (perhaps 15 y ago).

I believe Discord and Telegram may fill in the gap. WhatsApp is kind of personal, where you communicate with your real world friends.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#100

Post by nickthegreek »

lapcat wrote: post #86
nickthegreek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had my mind changed due to HN. But the posters of comments would never know. I’ll give them an upvote and move on.

> I’ve had my mind changed due to HN. Do you have an example?

No specific one comes to mind, but normally the comments move my position, not flip it on its head. This is most effectively done by the poster giving an example of something I didn’t know about along with a link to a primary resource.
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