151–160 of 304 posts
"everyone publicly talking in the same room" social media really sucks. I've really enjoyed the smaller-scale, better-curated interaction on mastodon. It feels like a giant step forward in how people can connect and socialize online.
A giant step forward into the echo chamber
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There a lot of money in social media, literally hundreds of billions of dollars. I expect the case against it will continue to grow, like the case against cigarettes did. I will say this, and this is anecdotal, but other events this week have been an excellent case study in how fast misinformation (charitably) and lies (uncharitably) spread across social media, and how much social media does to amp up the anger and t…
> If social media turns up the anger that much, I don't think it's worth the cost. It doesn't. It's just that when people can publish whatever with impunity, they do just that. Faced with the reality of what they're calling for they would largely stop immediately. I believe the term for that is "keyboard warrior".
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> Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. If users chose who to follow this is hardly a problem. Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine.
> Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine. Err... well, no, it was always a big problem, still is, and is made even more so by the technology of our day.
Because all new accounts need to be verified by an actual human, we can filter out 99% of spam before other users see it, and between a dozen mods for a community of 140k people we only need to spend ~15 minutes a week cleaning out spam.
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I feel like regardless of all else, the fact of algorithmic curation is going to be bad, especially when it's contaminated by corporate and/or political interests. We have evolved to parse information as if its prevalence is controlled by how much people talk about it, how acceptable opinions are to voice, how others react to them. Algorithmic social media intrinsically destroy that. They change how information sprea…
No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation? Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who…
You start with almost nothing on a given platform but over time you build up a wide variety of sources that you can continue to monitor for quality and predictive power over time.
Idea: Use person C's website
This was never a good idea for A and B but turned out to be a great idea for C
C derives the benefit, C became a billionaire, but it is taking a very long time for A and C to realise they are not getting a good deal
Sadly in 2025 A and B believe there is no other way to communicate via the internet other than through C
C could disappear and the internet would live on, and A and B would indeed be able to communicate
A and B pay internet subscription fees, but generally do not pay subscription fees to C
The internet is worth something, people are willing to pay for it; C's value is questionable, few would be willing to pay for it
If not for the internet, C would not be a billionaire
If not for the internet, A and B could not communicate via C
The case for the internet is stronger than the case for C
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I feel like regardless of all else, the fact of algorithmic curation is going to be bad, especially when it's contaminated by corporate and/or political interests. We have evolved to parse information as if its prevalence is controlled by how much people talk about it, how acceptable opinions are to voice, how others react to them. Algorithmic social media intrinsically destroy that. They change how information sprea…
No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation? Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who…
This is exactly why it's a problem. It doesn't even matter whether the algorithm is trained specifically on negative content. The result is the same: negative content is promoted more because it sees more engagement.
The result is more discontent in society, people are constantly angry about something. Anger makes a reasonable discussion impossible which in turn causes polarisation and extremes in society and politics. What we're seeing all over the world.
And the user sourced content is a problem too because it can be used for anyone to run manipulation campaigns. At least with traditional media there was an editor who would make sure fact checking was done. The social media platforms don't stand for the content they publish.
The missing link to our epistemic collapse is language. The acceleration of language, which is arbitrary, accelerates language distortion. The contagion on social media is merely a symptom of the disease of language. “Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades” https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2102061118
acceleration? as in the literal speed at which we translate information through language?
The initial conditions are arbitrary, very indirect perception. How we ever assumed we were communicating is quite strange. Everything is primate, every word is first a negotiation for status. Then control. Perhaps manipulation. That words words refer directly to anything outside of a momentary context is impossible. Plus every word isn't simply arbitrary, it's metaphors, and they separate things by attributes that are based in folk science/psychology. We basically have to unlearn and replace words.
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No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation? Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who…
> Also, studies have shown people focus more on negative ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias ) and sensational ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)#Salien... ) things (and thus post/upvote/view them more), so an algorithm that doesn't explicitly push negativity and sensationalism may appear to. This is exactly why it's a problem. It doesn't even matter whether the algorithm is trained s…
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> Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine. Err... well, no, it was always a big problem, still is, and is made even more so by the technology of our day.
Not really? On something like Xenforo2, there's a setting that makes a new account's posts invisible until that account is manually approved by a mod - in conjunction with the spam prevention tools - https://xenforo.com/docs/xf2/spam/#content - we really don't need to do much work. Because all new accounts need to be verified by an actual human, we can filter out 99% of spam before other users see it, and between a d…
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A giant step forward into the echo chamber
I interpret this as "I expect my opinions to be heard by people who don't want to hear them". Show me the ill effects of having an opt-in, consent-based social space where it's not infiltrated by unwelcome participants?
These networks appeal to control freaks who subscribe to many massive blocklists so they don't have to confront challenging ideas. I oppose them on the grounds that being a control freak is bad for the individual and society in general.
Unfortunately, we are all unwelcome participants in society at large. This is the idea behind protests for example. Real life is not consent-based, so the more time you spend in these networks the more poorly acclimated to reality you will become and the more removed you will be from the public arena of ideas.
The ill-effects are that whatever (political?) faction that embraces these sort of networks will become mentally weak and will continue to lose debates, and eventually (political?) power.