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Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

arstechnica.com

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Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#21

Post by RiverCrochet »

farceSpherule wrote: post #12

Social media is the new smoking... Widespread adoption before understanding risks - embraced globally before fully grasping the mental health, social, and political consequences, especially for young people. Delayed but significant harm - can lead to gradual impacts like reduced attention span, increased anxiety, depression, loneliness, and polarization Corporate incentives misaligned with public health - media compa…

Not an accurate analogy in my opinion, but close.

- Smoking feels good but doesn't provide any useful function.

- Some social media use feels good and doesn't provide any useful function, but social media is extremely useful to cheaply keep in touch with friends and family and extremely useful for discovering and coordinating events.

Fortunately the "keep in touch" part can be done with apps that don't have so much of the "social media" part, like Telegram, Discord, and even Facebook Messenger versus the main app.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#22

Post by SoftTalker »

> Only some interventions showed modest improvements. None were able to fully disrupt the fundamental mechanisms producing the dysfunctional effects.

I think this is expected. Think back to newsgroups, email lists, web forums. They were pretty much all chronological or maybe had a simple scoring or upvoting mechanism. You still had outrage, flamewars, and the guy who always had to have the last word. Social media engagement algorithms probably do amplify that but the dysfunction was always part of it.

The only thing I've seen that works to reduce this is active moderation.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#23

Post by KaiserPro »

Social media can be fixed, its just the incentives are not aligned.

To make money, social media companies need people to stay on as long as possible. That means showing people sex, violence, rage and huge amounts of copyright infringements.

There is little advantage in creating real-world consequences for bad actors. Why? because it hurts growth.

There was a reason why the old TV networks didn't let any old twat with a camera broadcast stuff on their network, why? because they would get huge fines if they broke decency "laws" (yes america had/has censorship, hence why the simpsons say "whoopee" and "snuggle")

There are few things that can cause company ending fines for social media companies. Which means we get almost no moderation.

Until that changes, social media will be "broken"

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#24

Post by wk_end »

KaiserPro wrote: post #23

Social media can be fixed, its just the incentives are not aligned. To make money, social media companies need people to stay on as long as possible. That means showing people sex, violence, rage and huge amounts of copyright infringements. There is little advantage in creating real-world consequences for bad actors. Why? because it hurts growth. There was a reason why the old TV networks didn't let any old twat with…

> Social media can be fixed, its just the incentives are not aligned.

So social media can't be fixed. Incentives are what matter.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#25

Post by RiverCrochet »

KaiserPro wrote: post #18
duxup wrote: post #2

A 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…

> But here's the thing ... people CHOOSE to engage Kinda, but they also don't really realise that they have much more control over the feed than they expect (in certain areas) For the reel/tiktok/foryou-instagram feeds, it shows you subjects that you engage with. It will a/b other subjects that similar people engage with. Thats all its doing. continual a/b to see if you like what ever flavour of bullshit is popular.…

There's definitely a mass of people who can't/won't/don't get past passive/least-effort relationships with things on screens. These would be the type that in the TV days would simply leave the TV on a specific channel all day and just watch whatever was on, and probably haven't changed their car radio dial from the station they set it to when they bought the car. In modern times they probably have their cable TV they still pay for on a 24 hour news channel and simply have that going all day.

To be fair, in times far past, you really didn't have much choice in TV or radio channels, and I suspect it's this demographic that tend to just scroll down Facebook and take what it gives without much thought other than pressing Like on stuff.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#26

Post by IAmGraydon »

Social media in a profit-seeking system can't be fixed. Profit-seeking provides the evolutionary pressure to turn it into something truly destructive to users. The only way it can work is via ownership by a benevolent non-profit. However, that would likely eventually give in to corruption if given enough time. Outlawing it completely, as well as regulating the algorithmic shaping of the online experience, is probably the inevitable future. Unfortunately, it won't come until the current system causes a complete societal facture and collapse.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#27

Post by amanaplanacanal »

wk_end wrote: post #24
KaiserPro wrote: post #23

Social media can be fixed, its just the incentives are not aligned. To make money, social media companies need people to stay on as long as possible. That means showing people sex, violence, rage and huge amounts of copyright infringements. There is little advantage in creating real-world consequences for bad actors. Why? because it hurts growth. There was a reason why the old TV networks didn't let any old twat with…

> Social media can be fixed, its just the incentives are not aligned. So social media can't be fixed. Incentives are what matter.

Incentives can be changed though, through law.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#28

Post by Mouvelie »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

I 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…

Genuine question : are you scared for your job ? I see this tendency to use "synthetic personas" growing and frankly, having to explain why this sucks is insulting in itself. Decision makers are just not interested in having this kind of thought argument.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#29

Post by weregiraffe »

cwmoore wrote: post #15
westurner wrote: post #10

Do 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…

Sure can! “No smoking, gambling, or loose women.” TaDAaaah!

No loose men either.

Re: Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

#30

Post by CrimsonCape »

KaiserPro wrote: post #18
duxup wrote: post #2

A 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…

> But here's the thing ... people CHOOSE to engage Kinda, but they also don't really realise that they have much more control over the feed than they expect (in certain areas) For the reel/tiktok/foryou-instagram feeds, it shows you subjects that you engage with. It will a/b other subjects that similar people engage with. Thats all its doing. continual a/b to see if you like what ever flavour of bullshit is popular.…

Transparency would prove or disprove this. Release the algorithm and let us decide for ourselves. In my experience, Instagram made an algorithm change 3-4 years ago. It used to be that my feed was exactly my interests. Then overnight my feed changed. It became a mix of 1. interracial relationship success stories 2. scantily clad women clickbait, 3. east asian "craft project" clickbait, and just general clickbait. It felt as if "here's what other people like you are clicking on" became part of the algorithm.
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