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Don't let social media think for you

disgustinglyoptimistic.com

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Re: Don't let social media think for you

#161

Post by [deleted] »

jonfromsf wrote: post #68
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?…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#162

Post by karmanyaahm »

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…

I think rrrrrrrrrrrryan is talking about the ideal scenario, in the real world there will always be some biases.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#163

Post by jiofih »

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…

I’ll refrain from commenting on the first point - you already accused me of “bias and reactivity” and now that I asked you to flesh out your thoughts you turn to personal attacks, just like you did with the author. That’s something to reflect on.

It’s not “the negative interactions of the few” when you have thousands upon thousands of people jumping into the latest issue of the day. Usually they’re people from all over the world, without any access to context or more information on whatever is going on, which means there is no room for analytical thought - you watch the events unfold from afar, without interjecting, or you join the mob. See the recent basecamp controversy.

You’re intentionally ignoring the evidence as “not the majority”, “the lazy”, but it’s a fact that this is happening, and happening on platforms like Twitter and Reddit. We didn’t have this on Usenet, forums, news sites or any other previous media tool - it is evidently a product of social media, it’s format and reach today. The existence of this phenomenon was not even in question in the article, the point is how to interpret these events.

Those quotes are not statements of absolute truth, but the author is trying to paint, in broad and colorful swathes for illustration purposes, the mentality that emerges from this phenomenon.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#164

Post by neolog »

munificent wrote: post #131
coldtea wrote: post #92

It's not that the people who form a twitter mob don't think or "let twitter think for them". It's that they actively enjoy hurting someone as a mob. They get a kick out of it, and it's not discouraged (as would be actually forming a mob out in the streets be). If anything, it's encouraging, and gives them not just the joy of kicking someone who is down, but also "good person" credits (because the one getting kicked i…

It's interesting that this comment and its replies use the third person "they" where many other comments in this thread use "we" (or the even more othering and accusatory "Americans"). I agree completely that one of the main drivers of mob behavior is that it feels good. However, I don't pretend to be immune to that dark corner of human psychology. We are a tribal species. Our evolutionary history is imprinted with t…

> However, I don't pretend to be immune to that dark corner of human psychology.

I honestly don't think I have that impulse, and I know other people who don't seem to either. It's always disturbing when I see my peers turning into a mob.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#165

Post by young_unixer »

unethical_ban wrote: post #158
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 ve…

I don't think those are the important differences.

Reddit has most of that, and a significant amount of subs there are just cesspools of hate.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#166

Post by cvwright »

bluGill wrote: post #146
cvwright wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just goes to show how the fundamental design decisions guide how the system as a whole will behave. Short messages and no coherent threading makes for a perfect breeding ground for snark and hot takes. It's hard to say something thoughtful in 280 characters, but it's easy to say something nasty. You can spend tons of money on trust & safety, tweaks to the UI, whatever. But a bad system design is still a bad system de…

Facebook doesn't have the same 280 character limit, yet it suffers from similar problems.

Good point. Another hypothesis then: The real problem is the ad-driven "curation" that selects for drama and outrage to keep users "engaged" so they stay on the site for longer to view more ads.

This would explain why "social media" like FB and Twitter are so much worse than their predecessors (blogs, forums, email, sms, ...). All of the previous media could be bad too, but this is different.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#167

Post by listenallyall »

Syonyk wrote: post #105
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's Vegas in your pocket, without any of the regulations and rules Vegas casinos have to abide by > I'm in favor of some regulation on this sort of stuff You really nailed the problem but I am not so sure about your solution. The gambling industry's regulations do not do very much to reduce the volume of lives ruined by the gambling industry. We've been gambling since the paleolithic period, and like other vices,…

> The gambling industry's regulations do not do very much to reduce the volume of lives ruined by the gambling industry. No, but if I walk into a casino, there's at least some chance I can come out with more money than I went in with. Consider a slot machine app. Not only do you have no idea what the payout is, you're guaranteed to lose money if you pay for any coins in that game, which I assure you, people do. For r…

Not defending online casinos, but there are some people who enjoy playing slot machines even without the possibility of winning money, just like some people like playing Candy Crush -- or Call of Duty, for that matter.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#168

Post by coldtea »

munificent wrote: post #131
coldtea wrote: post #92

It's not that the people who form a twitter mob don't think or "let twitter think for them". It's that they actively enjoy hurting someone as a mob. They get a kick out of it, and it's not discouraged (as would be actually forming a mob out in the streets be). If anything, it's encouraging, and gives them not just the joy of kicking someone who is down, but also "good person" credits (because the one getting kicked i…

It's interesting that this comment and its replies use the third person "they" where many other comments in this thread use "we" (or the even more othering and accusatory "Americans"). I agree completely that one of the main drivers of mob behavior is that it feels good. However, I don't pretend to be immune to that dark corner of human psychology. We are a tribal species. Our evolutionary history is imprinted with t…

>It's interesting that this comment and its replies use the third person "they" where many other comments in this thread use "we" (or the even more othering and accusatory "Americans").

Well, I for one don't use Twitter or pile on for mob jobs elsewhere. At worst, I can bore someone with my multiple responses and counter-arguments on HN!

>I agree completely that one of the main drivers of mob behavior is that it feels good. However, I don't pretend to be immune to that dark corner of human psychology.

I'm not immune to other dark corners of human psychology, but I'm pretty immune to that. I hate mobs, and I might even argue the opposite way than those who have the upper hand in such a situation, just for balancing things out (a sort of "devil's advocate").

I think because of some spectrum issues, one of my problems is the opposite, being too neutral to bond with my peer group (even if I have one).

So, even though I'm generally leftist, for example, and can defend even Stalin with the best of them, I can also argue for conservative positions just as easily (and at the very least, don't reject the arguments of the other side immediately and impulsively, as many do. I have to analyze them to death, and will happily accept one if it sounds logical to me.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#169

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#170

Post by lurker619 »

sharken wrote: post #113
beaconstudios wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large-scale community is an oxymoron, and I think the sooner we realise that the better. Communities are built on trust and relationships, what happens at social platforms is that people with "large communities" are just creating followings the same way that celebrities always have, which are a weird modern corruption of the idea of a community (or if you want the academic term for it, a parasocial relationship).

I think of Hacker News as a community, but it's still large enough that you don't really notice who is posting. What makes a difference to me are the insights you get here combined with thoughtful answers, as in rarely the lowest common denominator type of discussions. For that there are all too many forgettable social media sites.

Exactly. Many times I've typed out a comment and at the last moment refrain from posting, because I feel it doesn't really add to the discussion. I'd rather there be less higher-quality comments, than many comments like mine justing adding +1. Ironically, I almost deleted this comment.
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