131–140 of 157 posts
It's incredibly weird to me that people are ok with demonizing feelings and tone. Who cares if people are 'hateful'? One man's hate is another slight aggresion, and american toxic positivity makes haters of us all even if we speak with the best of intentions.
I think the echo chamber one misses the point (or maybe the analogy of an echo chamber is bad). It's true that people are exposed to other views, but there is still the echo effect of what their bubble thinks of those other views. Two people discussing their differences is not the same as two (or N) bubbles hurling outrage at one another, which I think is closer to most of twitter - the echo chamber still applies wit…
I think that stretches the definition of 'echo chamber'. That's simply what a community is, a group of like-minded people with shared views. There's nothing automatically wrong with this. People can have shared criticisms of others if there is some meaningful difference between the groups that justifies that disagreement. I think people mistake 'hurling outrage' with simply two (or more) groups being fundamentally in…
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Are people talking about Jan 6 hateful? I don't get what you're saying.
How often do you seen an intellectual debate regarding Jan 6, rather than an emotional one in which the other side is vehemently attacked?
People who still talk about it this far after the 24 hr new cycle has moved on probably have strong emotions around it, so it makes sense that recent conversation is more emotionally charged.
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I would love to read the research he's referring to, but I couldn't find any links or citations. I intuitively believe that there's truth to all of these so called myths, but I'd love to be proven wrong. Anyone know where I can read more about this?
> I intuitively believe that there's truth to all of these so called myths, but I'd love to be proven wrong. His opinions are based on claimed research while yours are based on intuition. I’d sooner trust his opionions compared to yours because he at least could be exposed as a liar if it turns out that the research doesn’t back up his opinions. You on the other hand would at worst be called naive.
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> I intuitively believe that there's truth to all of these so called myths, but I'd love to be proven wrong. His opinions are based on claimed research while yours are based on intuition. I’d sooner trust his opionions compared to yours because he at least could be exposed as a liar if it turns out that the research doesn’t back up his opinions. You on the other hand would at worst be called naive.
As they say, a paper is worth the peer review performed on it.
This drives me nuts. The irony here is that one of the things social media does is force us to simplify our discourse to the point of infantilization. Subtly does not get traction. We need binary truths! Myths and myth-busters. None of the author's "myths" are myths. They are all true in a general sense. What the author is correctly pointing out is that there is more subtly. That to understand the real situation requ…
A further irony is the meta-complaining about simplification while being as bare-bones simplistic as it gets. “No! They are wrong!” Really? That’s not what the Twitter thread says at all. For example, it claims that misinformation is not a problem but that the real problem is biased sharing.
The Twitter thread makes a series of concrete claims about social media which can be fact checked. The comment above, however, does not. 4/10.
The "echo chambers are a myth" statement seems a bit disingenuous to me, and misses the increased algorithmic exposure to hate in social feeds that we otherwise would not see offline.
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Hate is toxic because it excludes people who cannot handle hate from discussion and closes their possibility for self expression. You don't want discussion to be only available for people with 'thick skin' because that is like 'only the strongest are allowed to eat'. I think as a society we are well past that. The opposite toxic behavior is of course labeling every disagreement as 'hateful'. Feelings and tone should…
I didn't say anything about toxicity, I don't know what that is and haven't found a clear definition. Hatred is a completely appropriate reaction to the percieved stupidity of others, its a human emotion like any other it can be expressed as vulgarities, capslock etc. but the expression isn't the problem here. You can clearly define vulgarity, or other types of unwanted behavior but this isn't enough for the self app…
Especially "percieved stupidity", if someone thinks he is smart, he should be smart enough to stop and think that maybe other person is right or try to understand why such person might think differently.
I understand mostly it is lack of time, I don't have time to understand point of view of each and every person on the internet, but still hatred is not a valid response until there is a really good reason.
Self appointed tone police have nothing to do with it - it is that as in the Twitter thread - normal people will withdraw from the discussion and person who is discussing with hatred will talk only with people like himself or will be left alone. Which leads to less people participating in discussion which leads to fruitless dung throwing.
So I see that there is no "self appointed tone police" it is just that people stop contributing when they face 'hatred' which leads to conclusion that - yes we are society and this is how it works.
Unfortunately, his solutions are non-starters. Openness and oversight of data and algorithms won't do anything without clear ethical requirements. All it will really do is slow down iteration. Prioritizing tools to shield against of hateful content is not in the best interest of social media platforms. Sharing is the main mechanism of retention. As for the offline stuff...we've been trying to do that since before the…
> Prioritizing tools to shield against of hateful content is not in the best interest of social media platforms It's well understood that hateful content is harmful to retention. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 3 long term projects at IG that were premised on this. All major social networks prioritize tools to reduce hate because they know that consuming and sharing of hateful content is bad for their…
Not sure how you are defining harmful here, but emotionally charged content designed to upset and anger leads to higher engagement numbers. I would argue that's quite harmful.
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I'm willing to concede this, but I find it incredible that this is true and yet users have very little control over how their timeline is filtered.
If you're talking about Facebook or Instagram, users actually have a lot of control! You can snooze or completely remove other users, groups, and pages. You can ask for "less content like this" and FB used ML to show you less of similar things. You can add keyword filters to the comments sections under your posts. You can block users from commenting or from posting in your group. You can even do all of these things w…
This works until FB/IG/Twitter starts "recommending" more content to your feed to keep you on the platform longer. As far as I know, there's no way to disable this.