71–80 of 210 posts
Social media isn't the problem, people are the problem, and we still working on how to fix them.
I think that's an oversimplification. People have problems sure, but just like alcohol, social media can and does exacerbate them. The answer to dealing with the former is regulation. I'm not sure that is feasible for the latter.
Social media isn't the problem, people are the problem, and we still working on how to fix them.
Social media leveraging the billions spent on marketing over the years, the skills of knowledgeable experts in multiple disciplines, basically thousands of human years of experts at manipulating people against a random person with zero guard up that wants to chat with their friends/make new friends isn't a people problem.
Social media as a vessel for diverse discussion is a tall order. It’s too public, too tied to context, and ultimately a no-win game. No matter how carefully you present yourself, you’ll end up being the “bad guy” to someone. The moment a discussion touches even lightly on controversy, healthy dialogue becomes nearly impossible. Think of it this way: you’re hosting a party, and an uninvited stranger kicks the door ope…
Whitelisting solves the problem for me. I curate every tweet I see with a browser extension. Strangers can't kick down the door. I only see content from my direct follows. It dramatically reduces the stress. Maybe a little like horse blinkers.
The study is based on having LLMs decide to amplify one of the top ten posts on their timeline or share a news headline. LLMs aren’t people, and the authors have not convinced me that they will behave like people in this context. The behavioral options are restricted to posting news headlines, reposting news headlines, or being passive. There’s no option to create original content, and no interventions centered on di…
This was my initial reaction as well, before reading the interview in full. They admit that there are problems with the approach, but they seem to have designed the simulation in a very thoughtful way. There really doesn't seem to be a better approach, apart from enlisting vast numbers of people instead of using LLMs/agent systems. That has its own problems as well of course, even leaving cost and difficulty aside.
There’s no option to create original content...
While this is true, I'd say the vast majority of users don't create original content either, but still end up shaping the social media environment through the actions that they did model. Again, it's not perfect but I'm more convinced that it might be useful after reading the interview.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds interesting. How did that work, did you rent a place for coworking and then opened it up for the social aspect?
My tech (I was founding engineer and CTO) company took over a co-working space and expanded it, we ran that portion of it at break even. We intentionally set out to create a social club/co-working space. A lot goes into it. I'm a non-theist who comes from a multi generational group of theist church planters (like 100s of churches, just over and over), it's a multi factorial process with distinct transitions in space-…
Because these 3rd spaces are open to anyone and probably bringing people in from internet commmunties. What do you do when someone comes along and they're not breaking any rules but its clear that no one likes them? I've seen it drive entire groups away but because the person has done nothing wrong I cant/dont want to just say "fuck off kid no likes your weird ass"
Social media as a vessel for diverse discussion is a tall order. It’s too public, too tied to context, and ultimately a no-win game. No matter how carefully you present yourself, you’ll end up being the “bad guy” to someone. The moment a discussion touches even lightly on controversy, healthy dialogue becomes nearly impossible. Think of it this way: you’re hosting a party, and an uninvited stranger kicks the door ope…
Worth reading Jaron Lanier's Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now book:
https://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Deleting-Social-Media-Accou...
Site culture is what prevents mods from having to step in and sort out every little disagreement. Modern social media actively discourages site culture and post quality becomes a race to the bottom. Sure its harder to onboard new users when there are social rules that need to be learnt and followed but you retain users and have a more enjoyable experience when everyone follows a basic etiquette.
Social media as a vessel for diverse discussion is a tall order. It’s too public, too tied to context, and ultimately a no-win game. No matter how carefully you present yourself, you’ll end up being the “bad guy” to someone. The moment a discussion touches even lightly on controversy, healthy dialogue becomes nearly impossible. Think of it this way: you’re hosting a party, and an uninvited stranger kicks the door ope…
Whitelisting solves the problem for me. I curate every tweet I see with a browser extension. Strangers can't kick down the door. I only see content from my direct follows. It dramatically reduces the stress. Maybe a little like horse blinkers.
This extension? https://github.com/rxliuli/mass-block-twitter
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…
Personally I really enjoy Mastodon and Bluesky but I am very deliberate at avoiding negative people, I do not follow and often mute or block “diss abled” people who complain about everything or people who think I make their life awful because I am cisgender or who post 10 articles an hour about political outrage. The discover page on Bluesky is algorithmic and respects the “less like this” button and last time I look…
FWIW, I've been consistently posting quality stuff on Bluesky for the last year, and despite having a few hundred followers, I get ZERO engagement.
People in the Bluesky subreddit tell me it's not a "post and ghost" platform in that you have to constantly interact with people if you want to earn engagement, but that's too time consuming.
In other words, the discovery algorithm(s) on BlueSky sucks.
As a species we are greedy, self serving, and short sighted.
Social Media amplifies that, and we are well on our way to destroying ourselves.