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The internet wants to be fragmented

noahpinion.substack.com

201–210 of 246 posts

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#201
Blah blah blah.

This is all blah.

Noah is perpetually, painfully online. He has to be, because he makes his living (a) pointing out when people are wrong on the internet and (b) trying to convince people that he's really smart. All of his interactions with reality are through that lens. Seriously, It's January 1. Go look at how many tweets and retweets the guy has on twitter in the last 24 hours.

The internet does not want to be fragmented, because the internet seeks status.

People on the internet will seek status (see: Smith, Noah), and barring that, will seek the knowledge of those who have claimed status. And as long as those with the MOST clout congregate on a single platform, the rest of the people on the internet will follow. It makes logical sense for all of the actually important journalists to centralize around a hub like twitter because it's a way for them to keep their ear to the pavement. They are expected to report quickly on issues and it gives them the ability to stay up to date on quickly changing issues. Even for things as mundane as sports, almost all sports journalism is broken first or simultaneously on twitter. Twitter is the tool. The true value is in who is using it. It's what Musk has gotten hilariously backwards and why it will eventually bite him in the ass.

The right-wing sphere has Gab, Parler, AND Truth Social. Nobody reads them. Donald Trump's own posts on his own platform get far more reach by second-hand screenshots on twitter than on the platform he owns. Candace Owens doesn't gain any visibility by fighting with a nazi on Gab. She can get a lot of views by nitpicking a post from Maggie Haberman though.

The internet has ALWAYS wanted to gravitate to central locations. The post-Usenet years were an abberation because it was a time when a centralized source for information and conversation was disrupted. Those people sought out Digg, and then reddit. They're still on reddit. If it wanted to fragment, it'd have done it already.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speech is also about comfort and venting where echo chambers shine. And those chambers predate the social media. IME even IRL people tend to congregate mostly with like minded individuals. And if the congregation turns out to have too many views in contrast to ones own then folks tend to leave.

I was so baffled years ago by a man on the street series of interviews where people in a Liberal US City were asked if they had any republican friends or if they would be friends with such. Most said no. I also know a US lady who echo's this. Today my YouTube feed is filled with both conservatives and liberals (most of which voted republican)

Pardon if I'm just a little slow, yet not sure I follow what you're getting at.

If both the urban citizens and YouTubers are liberal, and the latter even (mostly) voted republican, then how are you defining 'liberal'?

Or is the distinction that things have changed over the years because YouTube broke geographic bubbles? So now even YT liberals often vote republican?

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#203
post #70

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…

[dead]

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just advertising, its the ad networks that have been silently putting their finger on the scale to coax/trick the major corporate customers to support certain issues.

Wait, so the ad networks are the puppet masters pulling the strings of the major corporations to support...what certain issues?

Capitalism. It’s paperclip maximisers all the way down.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#205
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why someone hasn't created what I call the 'orange slice' expression button. Much like cutting an orange in half it gives a preset amount of positive and negative values. Sort of a play off the meta moderation that Slashdot did. For positive values it you could have something like [I believe this is truthful], [I like this content],[Funny],[Positive message] and for negative values [I believe thi…

That's what trive.news was about. Turns out crowd sourcing truth gives a weighted average towards accuracy. Something tells me businesses relying on getting "experts" to sell you on things, would want to keep general public opinion out of the equation. http://www.trive.news/Whitepaper.0.2.6x.pdf

Interview of trive founder, where he explains the process

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDL-kaJ_sY

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#206
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why someone hasn't created what I call the 'orange slice' expression button. Much like cutting an orange in half it gives a preset amount of positive and negative values. Sort of a play off the meta moderation that Slashdot did. For positive values it you could have something like [I believe this is truthful], [I like this content],[Funny],[Positive message] and for negative values [I believe thi…

That's what trive.news was about. Turns out crowd sourcing truth gives a weighted average towards accuracy. Something tells me businesses relying on getting "experts" to sell you on things, would want to keep general public opinion out of the equation. http://www.trive.news/Whitepaper.0.2.6x.pdf

The Wisdom of Crowds v.s. The Stupidity of Herds

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FuObIEngySA

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#207
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why someone hasn't created what I call the 'orange slice' expression button. Much like cutting an orange in half it gives a preset amount of positive and negative values. Sort of a play off the meta moderation that Slashdot did. For positive values it you could have something like [I believe this is truthful], [I like this content],[Funny],[Positive message] and for negative values [I believe thi…

That's what trive.news was about. Turns out crowd sourcing truth gives a weighted average towards accuracy. Something tells me businesses relying on getting "experts" to sell you on things, would want to keep general public opinion out of the equation. http://www.trive.news/Whitepaper.0.2.6x.pdf

BBC - The Wisdom of the Crowd (original experiment)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iOucwX7Z1HU

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#208
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what trive.news was about. Turns out crowd sourcing truth gives a weighted average towards accuracy. Something tells me businesses relying on getting "experts" to sell you on things, would want to keep general public opinion out of the equation. http://www.trive.news/Whitepaper.0.2.6x.pdf

the whitepaper offers no evidence for such claims except some vague about the "wisdom of the crowd" Experience from political betting spaces tells me that the wisdom of the crowd rarely actually holds up to scrutiny. Political bettors[0] hardly ever do as good as simple poll aggregators like 538 or RCP. [0]: https://electionbettingodds.com/

The wisdom of crowds is a well known principle, used in engineering to overcome something that is extremely difficult to measure (noisy data for instance), considering only one single measurement would be very dangerous, since it might be extremely imprecise. However, if you measure 1000 times and take the average, the errors cancel out and you have a pretty accurate measurement :)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNQ3GccCAI0

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#209
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the whitepaper offers no evidence for such claims except some vague about the "wisdom of the crowd" Experience from political betting spaces tells me that the wisdom of the crowd rarely actually holds up to scrutiny. Political bettors[0] hardly ever do as good as simple poll aggregators like 538 or RCP. [0]: https://electionbettingodds.com/

The wisdom of crowds is a well known principle, used in engineering to overcome something that is extremely difficult to measure (noisy data for instance), considering only one single measurement would be very dangerous, since it might be extremely imprecise. However, if you measure 1000 times and take the average, the errors cancel out and you have a pretty accurate measurement :) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNQ3G…

That's not wisdom of the crowds. That's just a big sample size

Also, the video you posted points out a critical part of it working: diversity

I think that's why an aggregation of independent pollsters, as few of them as there might be, often ends up giving us a more accurate prediction than the millions of users that engage in PredictIt or similar betting websites

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#210

Being the same person online as offline destroyed everything great about the internet. When you were an asshole you got banned from the website, and then you had to trim some of your sharp edges off so you didn't get banned from the next one. These days being an asshole results in either you aurrou ding yourself entirely with other assholes or getting your real life ruined by losing your job or even being arrested in…

I think you're exactly right. In my youth, the internet was about having fun, about being INTERESTING, even if your mom or your boss wouldn't understand. And you could always just walk away from your Buffy Xanga and get into something else. Now, the language of ridiculous places like LinkedIn has become the norm, on pain of having your life derailed. "HI MY NAME IS JOHN (HE/HIM), I LIVE AND BREATHE ENTERPRISE SALES S…

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