To me this just reads like fear mongering and shilling for the status quo political establishment. I've recently been learning a bit about Russian history and it has similarities to their conservative nobility throughout the 19th century trying through various means to suppress the spread of liberalism in the public and intelligentsia: the point being that Russia had serious social ills like serfdom and radical political ideas were absolutely warranted. Social media is destabilizing for the influence of establishment sources of information and more of the public (right and left) is finding out more accurate information about how the world works, then coming to natural conclusions about how to address various social ills. Polarization may be increasing, but people forming stronger opinions is also exactly what you would expect in the face of increased revelation about unsolved social problems. Ultimately, I'm optimistic about the long term effects of social media on politics.
The case against social media is stronger than you think
111–120 of 304 posts
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#112I've seen numerous posts from researchers on X demonstrating that people high in psychopathy, low in empathy, and low in cognitive ability are overrepresented on social media. They post more often and fuel polarisation in politics. The extremism is entertaining to others and rewarded with exposure. Political moderates don't tend to get as emotionally invested and are less likely to voice their opinions in the first place. But underlying the extremism and polarisation are real issues. There's often an overlooked middleground that technology can step in to highlight
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#113Full 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.
People should be able to say things without those things following them around for the rest of their lives.
> As in real life.
No, your proposal is very different to real life. In real life, the things you say will eventually be forgotten. You won't be fired for things you said or did years ago, because people will have moved on.
Having a convenient index of everything anyone has ever shared is very different to real life.
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#114Full 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.
Real life needs full anonymity too. Not everywhere, but it's critical to have some. For instance a political vote needs to be anonymous. Access to public space typically is (you're not required to identify to walk the street) even if that anonymity can be lifted etc. Real life is complex, and for good reasons, if we want to take it as a model we should integrate it's full complexity as well.
In the United States, political votes are not anonymous. There is a database of how someone voted.
If you’re out in public, you’re also not fully anonymous. You display metadata such as race, gender, age, behavior. Now you could wear a ski mask during broad daylight but I doubt if you’d be allowed inside a bank. And the bank has a right to judge you for that.
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#115The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.
If you're talking about reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk, I really don't think anonymity is the problem here, because the opinions I've seen people express anonymously aren't much different to the opinions I've seen people express with their names attached.
If anything, the ones where people have attached their names tend to be a bit more extreme. Maybe attaching your name to something makes it feel more important to signal what group you're in.
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#116Full 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.
Looking at any random fullrealname Facebook account will disabuse you of this notion. People will tie vile shit to their identities without a second thought. Rather than sacrifice the cover that anonymity grants vulnerable people, journalists, and activists, I think we should come at this issue by placing restrictions on how social media platforms direct people to information. The impulse to restrict and censor indiv…
> cover that anonymity grants [] journalists
Quite the contrary, a core journalism principle is accountability and transparency. Readers must know who the reporter is to assess credibility, context, and potential conflicts of interest. Attribution builds trust, allows audiences to verify the source, and distinguishes reporting from anonymous or propagandistic material. This is different from covering source anonymity, but the audience is still relying on the journalist’s _known_ integrity that they’re not just making up some bullshit source.
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> The media should not be deciding what is true, they should be reporting what they see.
Largely I don't think the media has been dictating anything. They've just been reporting on the growing body of evidence showing that social media is harmful.
What you'd call "trial by media" is just spreading awareness and discussion of the evidence we have so far which seems like a very good thing. Social media moves faster than scientific consensus, and there's a long history of industry doing everything they can to slow that process down and muddy the waters. We've seen facebook doing exactly that already by burying child safety research.
A decade or more of "Do thing, say nothing" is not a sound strategy when the alternative is letting the public know about the existing research we have showing real harms and letting them decide for themselves what steps to take on an individual level and what concerns to bring to their representatives who could decide policy to mitigate those harms or even dedicate funding to further study them.
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm struggling to understand your point, especially since the conclusion you posit is rather glib and dismissive. Net-negative is not quantifiable. But it is definitely qualifiable. I don't think you have to think of things in terms of "hate it more than I like it" when you have actual examples on social media of children posting self-harm and suicide, hooliganism and outright crimes posted for viewership, blatant mi…
My point is that "More and more people declaring social media net-negative" doesn't mean anything, and it certainly isn't a valid "first step towards changing anything" because it isn't actionable. >I don't think you have to think of things in terms of "hate it more than I like it" when you have actual examples on social media of children posting self-harm and suicide, hooliganism and outright crimes posted for viewe…
While I appreciate the idea that moving without factual data is often detrimental (which is what I believe you're implying here), I don't share the opinion that SM deserves any benefit of the doubt.
I'm old enough to have lived as an adult pre-SM, and from my perspective the overwhelming impact of social media has been more inflammatory, degrading, divisive, etc., etc., etc., than whatever positives you think you're getting.
A family friend's teenage daughter isn't allowed a cell phone, and thus has zero presence or view into SM spaces. Unlike nearly all her friends, she doesn't suffer from depression, anxiety, or any other common malady that is so prevalent today with the youth. Yes it's anecdotal, but it's also stark.
We got along just fine before SM, and we'd be just fine again without it.
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#119The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.
I don’t think it has much to do with being named. It’s the assumption that most people have that what they’re reading is being said by someone whose opinion they would actually value if they knew them.
Disclosing names wouldn’t help. People actually knowing the person would help.
Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think
#120Part 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…
There's a concerted assault on social media from the powers that be because social media is essentially decentralised media, much harder for authoritarians to shape and control than centralised media. Social media is why the masses have finally risen up in opposition to what Israel's been doing in Gaza, even though the genocide has been going on for over half a century: decentralised information transmission allowed…
It's not decentralized at all. It represents a total commercialization of the town square.
The situation you reference with regard to Israel/Gaza is only possible because TikTok is partially controlled by Chinese interests. But it also goes to show that TikTok could have easily been banned or censored by western governments. Just kick them off the App Stores and block the servers. For example, there is no support Net Neutrality in the USA that would defend them if the government wanted to quietly throttle their network speed.
Social media as it exists now is not decentralized in any meaningful capacity.