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Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#11

Post by jacoblyles »

sillysaurus wrote: post #5
drakaal wrote: post #2

Nor do they love science. Most of the things they post are not accurate. The picture of the universe and a synapse for example springs to mind. They are just a "Like" farm. They use their tracking of likes to mine relationships so you can get personalized spam that appears that it came from your friends.

I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.

>this is a good and powerful thing.

... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others.

There is no "good ignorance".

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#13

Post by [deleted] »

jacoblyles wrote: post #11
sillysaurus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.

>this is a good and powerful thing. ... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others. There is no "good ignorance".

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#14

Post by aaron695 »

sillysaurus wrote: post #5
drakaal wrote: post #2

Nor do they love science. Most of the things they post are not accurate. The picture of the universe and a synapse for example springs to mind. They are just a "Like" farm. They use their tracking of likes to mine relationships so you can get personalized spam that appears that it came from your friends.

I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.

I think the problem is within the supposed science field sudo science is getting more traction.

People who have done science degrees are coming out and still believing in forms of magic like organic, chiropractics, chemical free, anthropomorphizing animals etc.

It's a fine line, should we appease the masses and try and get more scientists or try and at least get the supposed scientists practising and believing in actual science.

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#15

Post by pshin45 »

TeeDub wrote: post #10
drakaal wrote: post #2

Nor do they love science. Most of the things they post are not accurate. The picture of the universe and a synapse for example springs to mind. They are just a "Like" farm. They use their tracking of likes to mine relationships so you can get personalized spam that appears that it came from your friends.

In hindsight, I shouldn't have been so surprised to hear of groups farming likes for profit... Are there any good articles that talk about this practice? Seems like that could be interesting...

Not sure if this is exactly what you're talking about, but it's a good read nonetheless - For just $68, the author was able to create a 100% fake Twitter celebrity (a tech and social media guru) with tens of thousands of followers and a "verified account" checkmark, as well as his own Wikipedia page, personal website, etc.

http://qz.com/74937/how-to-become-internet-famous-without-ev...

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#16

Post by saraid216 »

sillysaurus wrote: post #5
drakaal wrote: post #2

Nor do they love science. Most of the things they post are not accurate. The picture of the universe and a synapse for example springs to mind. They are just a "Like" farm. They use their tracking of likes to mine relationships so you can get personalized spam that appears that it came from your friends.

I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.

> I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science.

The absolute only good thing about this is that it fights fire with fire: that is, it uses tribalism to fight tribalism.

But that's all it is. Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity, and it's a problem whether or not magical woo is involved. It's the same kind of thing when people think that calling out a fallacy is some kind of argumentative coup d'etat.

Or let's bring this back to software and business. How exactly do you feel when your sales team drastically overpromises your engineering capabilities?

That's how I feel.

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#17

Post by iamdave »

jacoblyles wrote: post #11
sillysaurus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.

>this is a good and powerful thing. ... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others. There is no "good ignorance".

>There is no "good ignorance".

This can't be stated enough; (the following is anecdotal) the amount of blatantly incorrect information being spread through the use of what I dub 'feel good infographics' across the internet is astonishing. The viewer looks at something, feels good about what they've read and then shares it because it passed their own personal sentiment analysis.

It's kind of frightening because it sets the stage for all sorts of astroturfing and conditioning to spread; if anything we should look at the Boston Bomber/Reddit incident as evidence of this feel good propaganda. People were so eager to attach to the notion that they had 'caught the bastard' only for the truth to come out later that they had completely fingered the wrong guy.

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#18

Post by janardanyri »

jacoblyles wrote: post #11
sillysaurus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.

>this is a good and powerful thing. ... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others. There is no "good ignorance".

We're all ignorant of the vast majority of facts relevant to almost anything. Comprehension is expensive and scarce. That being the case, simple extensions of good faith count for a lot.

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#19

Post by potatolicious »

gkoberger wrote: post #4

I don't know if it's necessarily fair to call out "I F*cking Love Science". The same could be said about Reddit/9gag/thousands of other Facebook groups/etc. It's an Internet-wide problem, not just one FB group.

On top of what raganwald said, the difference between IFLS and Reddit is that this is a curated stream done by one person, rather than an aggregation of user-generated content.

Reddit is morally different, since arguably you cannot hold them directly responsible for content generated by their users, they are strictly a conduit.

Similarly, we don't blame Facebook when their users post pirated content, we rightly blame the individual who pirated it in the first place.

You're right though, this isn't different than a curated stream of pirated content (e.g., many other Facebook groups), but as raganwald said, the fact that we can't catch them all doesn't mean it's wrong to catch one.

Re: Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists

#20

Post by polemic »

Would've been great if the author had contacted Elise to discuss the article.

Of course content should be used legally, but IFLS has grown so quickly that I think it's fair to defend Elise as having made an honest mistake, or simply not considering the issue until now.

Instead, Alex comes off as overly bitter, utterly failing to advance the cause of a "mutually beneficial relationship". Presumably in the pursuit of blog impressions.

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