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The case against social media is stronger than you think

arachnemag.substack.com

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Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#61

Post by Lerc »

majormajor wrote: post #14
Lerc wrote: post #11

Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack. A lot of things suck right now. Social media definitely give us the ability to see that. Using your personal ideology to link correlations is not the same thing as finding causation. There will be undoubtedly be some damaging aspects of social media, simply because it is large and complex. It would be hi…

It's increasingly discussed in traditional media too so let's toss out that first line glib dismissal. More and more people declaring it's net-negative is the first step towards changing anything. Academic "let's evaluate each individual point about it on its own merits" is not how this sort of thing finds political momentum. (Or we could argue that "social media" in the Facebook-era sense is just one part of a large…

I did not consider it a glib dismissal, and I would not consider traditional media an appropriate avenue to litigate this either. Trial by media is a term used to describe something that generally think shouldn't occur.

The appropriate place to find out what is and isn't true is research. Do research, write papers, discuss results, resolve contradictions in findings, reach consensus.

The media should not be deciding what is true, they should be reporting what they see. Importantly they should make clear that the existence of a thing is not the same thing as the prevalence of a thing.

>Academic "let's evaluate each individual point about it on its own merits" is not how this sort of thing finds political momentum.

I think much of my post was in effect saying that a good deal of the problem is the belief that building political momentum is more important than accuracy.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#62

Post by slg »

NoahZuniga wrote: post #47
slg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that instance, the anonymity is treating the symptom and not the root cause of the problem you fear. The actual problem is a society that does not tolerate dissent.

You might live in an extremely free country and have no fear about political prosecution but still fear social prosecution. If someone I was friends with made racist remarks, they wouldn't be prosecuted for that. But I would stop being their friend. Similarly if I was the only one in my friend group against racism and advocate firefly against it, they would probably stop being my friends.

>If someone I was friends with made racist remarks, they wouldn't be prosecuted for that. But I would stop being their friend.

So you want your friend to be able to anonymously express their racism while being able to hide it from you? I can't imagine advocating for that as a desired goal rather than a negative side effect.

>Similarly if I was the only one in my friend group against racism and advocate firefly against it, they would probably stop being my friends.

If we are talking about a society level problem, I think it is a little silly to think a society as toxic as this hypothetical one could be saved by anonymous internet posting.

For the record, I'm not as against anonymous posting as the person who started this specific comment thread, I just think this line of argument is advocating for a band-aid over bigger issues.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#63

Post by [deleted] »

IshKebab wrote: post #12
abnercoimbre wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Soon as I read: > I am going to focus on the putative political impacts of social media I closed the tab.

Yeah I closed it when I saw the size of the scroll bar. If you need 100k words to make your point write a book.

[deleted]

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#64

Post by greyadept »

_wire_ wrote: post #2

These question-begging, click-bait something-is-something-other-than-you-think posts are something less entertaining than the poster thinks.

The author could have made the same points without using words like “polemicizing”, “putative”, and “epistemic”.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#65

Post by gdulli »

scarface_74 wrote: post #7

I really hate the narrative that social media has increased polarization knowing that my still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow south where they were literally separated from society because of the color of their skin. The country has always been hostile to “other”. People just have a larger platform to get their message out.

But we made progress away from that and now we've regressed back towards it recently, aided by social media.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#66

Post by hbarka »

Full anonymity in social media should not be allowed. It becomes a cover for bad actors (propagandists, agents, disinformation, bots, age-inappropriate, etc.) It doesn’t have to be a full identity, but knowing your user metadata is open during interactions can instill a sense of responsibility and consequence of social action. As in real life.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#68

Post by sethammons »

cramsession wrote: post #59

Without social media, we'd be left with mainstream media, which is a very narrow set of channels that those in power can control. Despite rampant censorship on social media, it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice.

> it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice.

I think it can amplify propaganda but still give people a voice, which is better than no voice I think

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#69

Post by bluebarbet »

alisonatwork wrote: post #44
logicchains wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's increasingly discussed in traditional media too so let's toss out that first line glib dismissal. Traditional media is the absolute worst possible source for anything related to social media because of the extreme conflict of interest. Decentralised media is a fundamental threat to the business model of centralised media, so of course most of the coverage of social media in traditional media will be negative.

Unfortunately most of what people understand as "social media" is not decentralized, and most of the biggest names on Substack in particular come directly out of "traditional media", which is exactly why it's not a real alternative. Substack is just another newspaper except now readers have to pay for every section they want to read.

The difference between traditional and social media is not just technical. Traditional media hosts a profession (journalism) with a code of ethics, editorial oversight, minimal standards, a mission of truth-seeking. It's easy to be cynical but those things have generally served us well. The Substack jungle is not a good replacement.
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