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The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

newyorker.com

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Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#131

Post by MrMember »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

I see it all the time. An article with a title like "People are outraged about [topic author wants you to be outraged about]," and then the "article" is nothing but two tweets from random people.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#132

Post by mcrad »

lmm wrote: post #80
mcrad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you agree the business model is manipulative, but that the ones being manipulated should be the "target to blame" for their stupidity?

One man's manipulation is another's customer service. The business model is to give you more of what you read, share and reply to, and less of what you don't. I don't see how that's "manipulation" any more than my local coffeeshop selling me good coffee so that I'll keep coming back and buying more coffee from them is "manipulation". If your social media experience is "awful" I think that's a reflection of you rather…

Interesting. I thought the point of the article was about a manipulative business model and its corresponding damage to society. Looking at your individual experience compared to another's is irrelevant.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#133

Post by notatcomputer68 »

Vrondi wrote: post #126
sonnyblarney wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? " It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness. When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term. For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over thing…

There is zero differwnce between this and the old fashioned practice of picking two or three random people on the street to ask an opinion of. Reporters have been giving "man on the street" opinions of news stories forever. The only difference is that with Twitter a reporter cam actually see a larher number of opinions easily, which are already public, without dragging a cameraman down the sidewalk.

1. People on sidewalk are people. "Tweeters" may or may not be people.

2. A person can have at most one spot on a sidewalk, but multiple Twitter accounts.

3. People can organize an outpouring of opinion I Twitter. "Let's all tweet this at the same time" you can't organize happening to be on a sidewalk when the journo comes looking.

4. There is a certain personality type that joins Twitter. This is not the case to the same extent for sidewalks.

5. Tweet speed among Twitter users is more different (less than one to hundreds per day) than time spent walking sidewalks.

6. People on sidewalks are ASKED their opinion. People on Twitter speak without being asked. The people who aren't talking about a subject will have less strong views.

7. People on the sidewalk are in the same country as the journalist.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#134

Post by vlehto »

antpls wrote: post #77
vlehto wrote: post #62

What bothers me more than anything in that article is superficially smart people pouring all of their concentration onto stupidity of obviously stupid people. With my university educated 25 - 35-year-old social circle, I can easily generate boring conversation about Trump, climate change denialism, right wing activism, situation in Palestine or how facebook is cancer to regular people. 15 years ago my 15-year-old soc…

Stupidness and smartness are two subjective concepts. In some parts of the world, all individuals have an opinion, a right to express their opinions, and a right to disagree with others' opinions. What we see on online social networks is a mirror of the inequalities in rights and wealth amongst people.

I'm clearly somehow not communicating my stuff well enough. I'm not into dividing people into categories by IQ. I'm frustrated how people use their limited resource of attention.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#135

Post by cuboidGoat »

BeniBoy wrote: post #75
sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

It is sometimes even worse than that. My girlfriend used to work at a gouvernement service which specialised in "social media surveillance". Her job was basically to screenshot outrage reaction from random people on tweeter and sending that to government officials in a newsletter. The idea was for them to feel how the populace was reacting to current events.. The ultimate echo room!

Wire that to a neural implant, and you almost have the plot of the book "Interface" by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#136

Post by [deleted] »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #47
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on, are you saying that people who drop off of / don't participate in social media aren't taking a stance? It certainly seems like one to me...

Your stance is removing yourself from the conversation. Meanwhile, in this moderate preacher and congregation allegory, the congregation has not left the building, because there is no leader to explain to them why they need to shut the trolls out of their life, so they are sitting ducks to become radicalized. This is what grandparent was saying afaict - moderating voices leaving the conversation capitulate the space…

[deleted]

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#137

Post by Angostura »

eksemplar wrote: post #98
Angostura wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways to use Twitter that aren't social media per se and which are useful. I work with a school and they Tweet out stuff bout what is happening at the school, photos of student activities, etc which parents love. They tweet out thanks to organisations that they are working with or who have come to visit. People working there follow the Twitter accounts of education specialists, regulators, other schools…

I’m European, so using twitter in that way would be really illegal. Having children of my own, I’m really happy they weren’t shared on an American social media-platform for the entire world to see. We do have digital platforms for sharing stuff like that, but they are operated by the schools and the data is encrypted, access locked to the correct parties and the data is t kept forever. That way, you can actually also…

Not surprisingly, we only ever use photographs where all children and their parents have given informed consent, otherwise we would be in breach of GDPR.

Parents are asked whether to select whether photos can be used for

1. Inside for school displays 2. For training purposes 3. In school newsletters 4. On the school website 5. For publicity purposes, including Twitter, press releases.

I too am a parent, if the school want to say 'well done to the football team for winnning the London championships', and have a photo of the team with the trophy that's fine by me. Some parents agree, some disagree. Some disagree until their kids tell them that they would like to be in the photo.

Names aren't used on the Twitter account.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#138

Post by randomsearch »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #64
randomsearch wrote: post #63

“Enragement is engagement.” Social media is full of hot air and a lot of people producing nothing. Who cares. Most of the tweets on twitter are written by a tiny minority of people who like to hate or judge rather than act. Quit social media and leave that crowd to waste their time whilst you build something that actually improves the world.

> whilst you build something that actually improves the world Or, failing that, chat on Hacker News ;-P Seriously though, I'm thankful that the quality of this forum is so high. When I see YouTube comment threads, I sometimes forget that Internet forums can be worthwhile, if they're done right and attract the right folks.

I agree. I learn so much from HN.

I wouldn’t count HN as “social media” per se, anymore than Stack Overflow or a topical discussion forum.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#139

Post by lmm »

mcrad wrote: post #132
lmm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man's manipulation is another's customer service. The business model is to give you more of what you read, share and reply to, and less of what you don't. I don't see how that's "manipulation" any more than my local coffeeshop selling me good coffee so that I'll keep coming back and buying more coffee from them is "manipulation". If your social media experience is "awful" I think that's a reflection of you rather…

Interesting. I thought the point of the article was about a manipulative business model and its corresponding damage to society. Looking at your individual experience compared to another's is irrelevant.

It could hardly be more relevant. If the business model is a particular kind of manipulation then most users should experience that manipulation. How could we ever hope to judge whether the business model is manipulating people except by looking at more people's experiences?

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#140

Post by wingerlang »

eksemplar wrote: post #100
wingerlang wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you’ll follow a few interest points and miss everything they post because you don’t visit every hour and it’ll drown in the feed if you don’t. As long as you don't feel the need to see everything they post you should be fine. I honestly think all the regular people on twitter are either unemployed or spending so much work time on social media that they ought to be fired. I'm a regular that finds some value in Twit…

I probably should have said Danes. Americans have taken to twitter in a different way than we have, I still don’t get how you have time for it though, or how you get value from your time there, but that might just be me,

I probably spend 10-15 minutes per day (or less) on Twitter.

I follow 60 accounts and maybe 10-15 of them are very active. They tend to be either high profile people in my community meaning they comment or share resources quite often. Or they are developers and share progress on their projects. Both types I find value in.

For me I think the best thing is to simply unsubscribe to someone whenever you start finding that their tweets bring 25% value rather than 75%. I do the same with Youtube, I give them some leeway but once I find myself not really watching their videos I just unsubscribe.

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