Don't let social media think for you • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#151

Post by sattoshi » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

It's such an unpleasant experience speaking to someone who has bought into some form of group-think on a topic. One of my college friends, otherwise an extremely bright guy would frustrate me immensely whenever any political topic came up.

Not because we disagreed, but rather because I felt I was talking to John Oliver or whatever other pundit he recently listened to on a topic. Same points. Same statements. Same words.

Discussing the root of his propositions were impossible, because they weren't his. He didn't think about them, someone else did.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#152

Post by cratermoon » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

Not letting social media think for you applies equally well to HN comment sections.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#153

Post by aeturnum » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #127

SamBam wrote: post #42

The mob is a huge problem with Twitter (and adjacent social media), and the issue with a mob is purely that of its size. It's the size that makes the mob, and everyone who has ever considered chiming in to add their voice why so-and-so was bad should stop to think about whether the world really needs that additional voice. Each individual voice may be perfectly right . So-and-so may really have done wrong. But did th…

HANGMAN: Now, you're wanted for murder. For the sake of my analogy, let's just assume that you did it. Now, John Ruth wants to take you back to Red Rock to stand trial for murder. And if you're found guilty, the people of Red Rock will hang you in the town square. And, as the hangman, I will perform the execution. And if all those things end up taking place, that's what civilized society calls justice. However, if th…

>The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man.

>And that dispassion is the very essence of justice.

>For justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice.

Based on the reporting I've read on the internal cultures of police departments and the wider "law enforcement" community (federal law enforcement, prison administration, etc) I am pretty skeptical that "justice" is dispassionate. Instead, I think these groups wrap themselves in a myth of dispassion while they place thumbs (and larger things) on the scale in a way that reflects their personal beliefs and biases.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#154

Post by qpwoeirut » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

randphys wrote: post #71

jonfromsf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it makes money. Why would they want to stop it? People have a weird mental model where they think private companies are the government. They're just a group of people getting paid to make money for investors.

Is it really only the job of government to make ethical decisions? Surely companies and employees can and should try to be ethical. Just because there is profit involved doesn't mean that we should throw out our humanity.

In the end, the government answers to the people and companies answer to shareholders. Of course I agree that companies should be ethical, but they currently have no incentive to do so other than their own morals and I'd imagine those are pretty quickly squashed in the face of shareholders looking for profits and an "everybody else is doing it" argument.

Companies like Twitter and Facebook exist and thrive because they have taken the less ethical route.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#155

Post by throwkeep » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

vlunkr wrote: post #74

throwkeep wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is a particularly well refined mob machine. No room for nuance, distribution at the speed of light directly into your feed and/or Trending, participants immediately rewarded for generating and spreading outrage. I get that a lot of this was unintentional, but the dynamic has now been known for a decade and has only gotten worse. Why has Twitter the company and its employees not taken action to deal with this?…

What could be changed about twitter to make this better? The entire design feeds right into this. I've heard it said that it was intended to be a place for good discussion, but I really don't believe that. Good discussion isn't had 140 characters at a time. The whole point of the site is to give everyone a megaphone.

A good start would be:

Remove the algorithmic feed

Remove the Trending bar

Increase character length

Ban witch hunts

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#156

Post by askafriend » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

cindarin wrote: post #95

jiofih wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you’re not on Twitter much? Mobs are an almost daily occurrence in my feed. What are the lies? Where is your challenge of them? So far you’ve only tried to directly discredit the author and not offered any counterpoints.

I thought you believed truth and evidence were not necessary when sharing an opinion? What changed your opinion so quickly? Is it only necessary because I disagree with you? "my biggest gripe with social media. There is no room for nuance, there is no room for grey. Every interaction is based on reaction alone - reflection is rendered moot, because there will always be another scandal that needs attending to." That i…

> Blaming the medium for the negative interactions of the few is lazy, tired, and wholly uninteresting to me.

The medium (in this case Twitter) is in fact a part of the problem and there are very specific features that contribute to it. The quote tweet feature is a good example. It fundamentally amplifies and encourages combative exchanges and negativity through its design.

In fact looking at how a platform can prevent or encourage certain kinds of behavior/interactions is super interesting when you dive deep - I don't find it lazy or tired at all.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#157

Post by cratermoon » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #58

pessimizer wrote: post #13

It's bizarre to use an author who demands 5/5 star reviews and insults personally people who gave her 4/5 star reviews in a take about nuance criticizing the people who criticized her for doing that . Blogs are also social media, this is just additional pile-in. I think this is supposed to be better because it uses too many words, tries to make the personality flaws that it ascribes to reviewers universal, and has a…

Aggravatingly, in a lot of circumstances, 5/5 means "acceptable" and anything less is varying degrees of "unacceptable". That's not good, but it's very real. Uber drivers who fall below 4.6 can lose business, so a 4 rating can literally cost them money. Given that they might as well just go to a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system. There are a number of situations where I'd love to give somebody 4 stars as a way of saying "…

Rating systems online are generally skewed. Look at ebay or other marketplaces. Anything less than 95.5% favorable is treated as a problem or worse[1][2]. Look at restaurant ratings - 4 stars is not good. As best I can tell, there are really only two "true" ratings: good or bad. Part of the problem is that anytime a reviewer has a bad experience and comes away unsatisfied, they tend to go give a 1-star rating to "punish" the seller. The 5-star reviews typically only come from a. someone who had a memorably good experience and is very motivated to say so or b. fake. Someone who gets an "ordinary" experience in the transaction has little or no motivation to rate, so there's nothing in the middle.

A star rating system I know of that makes sense and is relatively uncontroversial is the independent groups like AAA hotel ratings, where the number of stars is more-or-less objective based on the amenities, making them more of a classification than a rating.

1. https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/ebay/seller.htm

2. https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/ebay/seller.htm

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#158

Post by unethical_ban » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #76

There are so many comments here blaming Twitter while blissfully unaware that HN fuels the exact same online outrage. Almost every day there's a " did bad thing to me" article on the front page and people immediately pick up their pitchforks and join the mob. You cannot fix the problem without acknowledging that we are all part of it.

Crucial distinction:

* Individual identities are less important/influential on HN than twitter

* The community is much smaller on HN than twitter

* The conversation is more nuanced. We have paragraphs vs. 240 characters

* We have voting to squelch really low effort or trolling. The informal guidelines of the community discourage downvoting an otherwise decent post because you don't agree.

---

This all adds up to a very different kind of "mob action".

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#159

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #153

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HANGMAN: Now, you're wanted for murder. For the sake of my analogy, let's just assume that you did it. Now, John Ruth wants to take you back to Red Rock to stand trial for murder. And if you're found guilty, the people of Red Rock will hang you in the town square. And, as the hangman, I will perform the execution. And if all those things end up taking place, that's what civilized society calls justice. However, if th…

>The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. >And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. >For justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice. Based on the reporting I've read on the internal cultures of police departments and the wider "law enforcement" community (federal law enforcement, prison administration, etc) I am pretty skeptical that…

It should probably be noted that the hangman proves to be quite passionate before the film is through.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#160

Post by jfengel » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #149

unholythree wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve noticed a unfortunate conflation of word lynching with racism motivated homocide lately. Even from authorities (newspapers, lawyers, some state ACLU) that have to know they aren’t always the same. I think the nuance of these specific injustices is important because the solutions are different. A killing could even be lawful but racist and therefor unjust, but that’s a distinct (albeit important) problem from mob…

Lone Star beer used to have images under their bottle caps as puns[1]. One of them used an image of a noose as part of the puzzle, which was completely unrelated to race, or death - it was simply using the word as a similar word to "news". Someone went apeshit on Twitter[2], and now all the puns are gone while Lone Star reviews them for sensitivity. I'm politically liberal, and I'm fucking ashamed of the fact that th…

There's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to death. That's what they're for. The puzzle may not be related to death, but the noose is.

And in the US there's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to race. They are being used, today, as racist threats. When a noose appears, lynching is the assumed meaning, and not just by black people [1].

So it's a good thing that Lone Star is taking a look at the entire project. Using a noose was a mistake. One presumably made in good faith, but a mistake nonetheless. So the right thing to do is pull not just it, but to make sure that they didn't make other mistakes -- a sign of good faith.

I'm all for accepting a good and sincere apology. A lot of people have made bad and insincere apologies, and not only does that not help, it makes things worse by giving people an excuse to pretend that good apologies aren't worth doing. This is a good choice and I'd encourage people to take that.

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/554694-amazon-closi...