Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
arstechnica.com
Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
1–10 of 210 posts
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#2A lot of talk goes into how Facebook or other social media use algorithms to encourage engagement, that often includes outrage type content, fake news, rabbit holes and so on.
But here's the thing ... people CHOOSE to engage with that, and users even produce that content for social media platforms for free.
It's hard to escape that part.
I remember trying Bluesky and while I liked it better than Twitter, for me it was disappointing that it was just Twitter, but different. Outlandish short posts, same lame jokes / pithy appeals to our emotions, and so on. People on there want to behave the same way they wanted to on Twitter.
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#3I work in survey research and I'm rather appalled at how many people would rather survey a sample of AIs than a sample of people and claim they can come to some valid conclusion as a result.
There are many ways AIs differ from real people and any conclusions you can draw from them are limited at best -- we've had enough bad experiments done with real people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Int...
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#4A lot of talk goes into how Facebook or other social media use algorithms to encourage engagement, that often includes outrage type content, fake news, rabbit holes and so on. But here's the thing ... people CHOOSE to engage with that, and users even produce that content for social media platforms for free. It's hard to escape that part. I remember trying Bluesky and while I liked it better than Twitter, for me it wa…
What gets me about some platform is all the text-in-images and video with senseless motion. I've been dipping my toes into just about any social where I could possibly promote my photography and the worst of them all is Instagram where all the senseless motion drives me crazy.
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#5I work in survey research and I'm rather appalled at how many people would rather survey a sample of AIs than a sample of people and claim they can come to some valid conclusion as a result. There are many ways AIs differ from real people and any conclusions you can draw from them are limited at best -- we've had enough bad experiments done with real people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Int…
Appalling. The entire question of "fixing social media", for any definition of "fixing", involves not just the initial reaction to some change but the second-and-greater-order effects. LLMs are point-in-time models and intrinsically can not be used for even guessing at second-order effects of a policy over time. This shouldn't have gotten past the proposal phase.
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#6A lot of talk goes into how Facebook or other social media use algorithms to encourage engagement, that often includes outrage type content, fake news, rabbit holes and so on. But here's the thing ... people CHOOSE to engage with that, and users even produce that content for social media platforms for free. It's hard to escape that part. I remember trying Bluesky and while I liked it better than Twitter, for me it wa…
What gets me about some platform is all the text-in-images and video with senseless motion. I've been dipping my toes into just about any social where I could possibly promote my photography and the worst of them all is Instagram where all the senseless motion drives me crazy.
Yeah I miss geocities. The pages were ugly, but they were that users ugly ... gloriously personal ugly.
Facebook is not my page, it looks nothing like I want... my content is in many ways the least important thing featured.
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#7A lot of talk goes into how Facebook or other social media use algorithms to encourage engagement, that often includes outrage type content, fake news, rabbit holes and so on. But here's the thing ... people CHOOSE to engage with that, and users even produce that content for social media platforms for free. It's hard to escape that part. I remember trying Bluesky and while I liked it better than Twitter, for me it wa…
> while I liked it better than Twitter, for me it was disappointing that it was just Twitter, but different
I feel exactly the same way.
I think there needs to be a kind of paradigm shift into something different, probably something that people in general don't have a good schema for right now.
Probably something decentralized or federated is necessary in my opinion, something in between email and twitter or reddit? But there's always these chicken and egg issues with adoption, who are early adopters, how that affects adoption, genuine UX-type issues etc.
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#8I'd like to see more software that amplifies local social interactions.
There are apps like Meetup, but a lot of people just find it too awkward. Introverts especially do not want to meet just for the sake of meeting people, so they fallback on social media.
Maybe this situation is fundamentally not helped by software. All of my best friendships organically formed in real-world settings like school, work, neighborhood, etc.
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#9I'd like to see more software that amplifies local social interactions. There are apps like Meetup, but a lot of people just find it too awkward. Introverts especially do not want to meet just for the sake of meeting people, so they fallback on social media. Maybe this situation is fundamentally not helped by software. All of my best friendships organically formed in real-world settings like school, work, neighborhoo…
I ran a co-working space social club that resolved this issue for many introverts in 2015-2017.
This is at core a 3rd places issue, haven't had the capital to restart it post covid.
Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
#10Do all of these points apply to the traditional media funhouse mirror that we love to hate, too?
> "The [structural] mechanism producing these problematic outcomes is really robust and hard to resolve."
I see illegal war, killing without due process, and kleptocracy. It's partly the media's fault. It's partly the peoples' fault for depending on advertising to subsidize free services, for gawking, for sharing without consideration, for voting in ignorance.
Social media reflects the people; who can't be "fixed" either.
If you're annoyed with all of these people on here who are lesser than and more annoying than you, then stop spending so much time at the bar.
Can the bar be fixed?