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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

#181

Post by slightwinder »

grishka wrote: post #175
slightwinder wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, for example, you can't just discuss something on Twitter with your followers. That is a problem with the platform. Nothing is stopping you from changing the platform. You want it to be different, but don't want to use the different that already exists? > Even when that doesn't happen, many of your followers would still miss your posts if you don't appease the algorithm because they would still use the algorithm…

There usually isn't "too much content" when you only see content from accounts you follow, and especially when there are no logo accounts, only people.

That's your personal setting. Many people follow a huge amount of accounts, of which many are just plain people.

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

#182

Post by delichon »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #70
delichon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you mind sharing this extension? I would prefer if it also shows the retweets of people you follow as that is an endorsement no matter what people say.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/control-panel-for-t...

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

#184

Post by taeric »

1718627440 wrote: post #159
magzter wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree that strict moderation is the key but there's obviously a certain threshold of users and activity that is hit where this becomes unfeasible - ycombinator user activity is next to nothing compared to sites like Facebook/twitter/reddit. Even on Reddit, you see smaller subreddits able to achieve this. But just like a public park, if 2 million people rock up it's going to be next to impossible to police…

> there's obviously a certain threshold of users and activity that is hit where this becomes unfeasible Not really. If 5 people can moderate 1000, surely 5000 can moderate 1 million. Divide et impera, it's not a new idea. Just keep in mind that in a free market there is supposed to be no profit. If there is, then something is wrong. In this case the companies just don't feel like moderating and following laws.

I'm sure that some of this is influenced by the behavior of the people being moderated? Back to the parks example, it is usually assumed most visitors are in good faith. If there is expectation otherwise, things are usually a bit tougher.

For parks, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that people have to physically be there. That alone is a bit of a moderating factor, I would presume. With online, even 5 people can't moderate 1000 bad faith collaborators?

I don't know that we truly have a way to ensure "person is on other side of this account." And in places that are made to be interfaced from corporations, that isn't even strictly the desire.

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

#185

Post by dinfinity »

lemming wrote: post #74
Zak wrote: post #54

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…

LLMs aren’t people, and the authors have not convinced me that they will behave like people in this context. 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 usi…

LLMs don't learn, though.

The fundamental problem with social media (and many other things) is humans, specifically our biological makeup and (lack of) overriding mechanisms. One could argue that pretty much everything we call 'civilised behavior' is an instance of applying a cultural override for a biological drive. Without it, we are very close to shit-flinging murderous apes.

For so many of our problems what goes wrong is that we fail to stop our biological drive from taking the wheel to the point where we consciously observe ourselves doing things we rationally / culturally know we should not be doing.

Now the production side of media/content/goods evolves very fast and does not have a similarly strong legacy biological drive holding it back, so it is very, very good (and ever improving) at exploiting the sitting duck that is our biological makeup (food engineering, game engineering etc. are very similar to social media engineering in this regard).

The only reliable defense against that is training ourselves to not give in to our biological drives when they are counterproductive. For some that might be 'disconnect completely' (i.e. take away the temptations altogether), but having a healthy approach to encountering the temptations is far more robust. I am of the opinion that labeling the social media purveyors and producers in general as evil abusers is not necessarily inaccurate, but counterproductive in that it tends to absolve individuals of their responsibility in the matter. Imagine telling a heroin addict: "you can't help it, it's those evil dealers that are keeping you hooked to the heroin".

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

#187

Post by xanderlewis »

gyomu wrote: post #132
xanderlewis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you now have platforms no one will care about I would care, and I imagine there are others who would too. I don’t use social media anymore (at all!) because of this. If I could have the chronological feed restored and no intrusion of other content I’d redownload immediately. There must be a market for this.

There's plenty of options, take your pick. The latest one that I've been hearing about is https://retro.app , there are others. The issue of course is that your friends won't be on it, most of them won't sign up even if you beg them, and most likely none of you will be using the service anymore 6 months from now.

Well, yes. That is the problem. I just want the old Instagram and Twitter back.

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

#188

Post by everdrive »

setnone wrote: post #186

Here is the moment of appreciation for HN, a social media that arguably doesn't need to be fixed.

This is a clear equivocation; no one looks at HN and believes it fits into the same category as Facebook or Tiktok. It is social in some definitional sense of the word, but is obviously not what people mean when they say "social media."

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

#189

Post by barbazoo »

AuthAuth wrote: post #75
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

I've been wanting to setup something like a 3rd place that tries only to break even. I'm unfortunately not a very social person. 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 nothi…

Hypothetical that I’d be happy to deal with when the time comes. We always imagine the worst case I get that. But once something like this takes off I imagine the whole point is to have created a community. And a community has lots of people that can do things together. I don’t know, I just don’t think this is something worrying about.

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

#190

Post by 1718627440 »

taeric wrote: post #184
1718627440 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's obviously a certain threshold of users and activity that is hit where this becomes unfeasible Not really. If 5 people can moderate 1000, surely 5000 can moderate 1 million. Divide et impera, it's not a new idea. Just keep in mind that in a free market there is supposed to be no profit. If there is, then something is wrong. In this case the companies just don't feel like moderating and following laws.

I'm sure that some of this is influenced by the behavior of the people being moderated? Back to the parks example, it is usually assumed most visitors are in good faith. If there is expectation otherwise, things are usually a bit tougher. For parks, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that people have to physically be there. That alone is a bit of a moderating factor, I would presume. With online, even 5 people ca…

Yes, that probably also claims a factor.

What I was arguing was that employing enough people to moderate should be just cost of business. If that would cost to much there should simply be no business. However the big social media business are right now far from going bankrupt.

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