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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

#171

Post by throw737858 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #119
douglaswlance wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your goal is to better understand your reality, you would learn more about the world by reading books than by watching the news.

Books don't let you know that genocide is happening at the time, that the bars have been closed yet again, nor that you should probably postpone that trip due to bad weather. Books might capture the feelings of now: 1984 wasn't making predictions, but illustrated the concerns of the current time. Same for the things in "A Brave new World". Reading books about the history of cooking isn't going to give you much of a w…

[flagged]

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#172

Post by jiofih »

tester34 wrote: post #59
jiofih wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get informed on things happening on the other side of the world? (please don’t say Twitter!)

Generally: a) Through friends b) It's so big that's almost everywhere and you cannot escape it c) I don't get informed (but may later in time) Of course it's not perfect approach

a) and b) just mean you’re relying on someone else who watches the news, so the same drawbacks apply…

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#173

Post by coldtea »

jjulius wrote: post #114
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…

>... and it's not discouraged... There are a lot of people who have been speaking out against "cancel culture", would that not be a form of trying to discourage social media mobs?

Sure, that's in a sense a movement to discourage this.

But my point was that it is still a niche movement, in the sense that when you're acting as part of an internet mob or a cancel mob or any kind of social mob, you don't get much of a backlash for it (even if you're not just a cog, but a prominent part of one).

Whereas if you were being a jerk in some other way, you'd immediately be called on that.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#174

Post by cindarin »

SamBam wrote: post #97
slightwinder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But did they really do such wrong that the 10,000th voice is needed? Size is power, and size comes from Engagment. Each voice gives more attention to the problem and prevents it from sinking in the ocean of meaninglessness of twitter. At least for the moment the topic is trending. > I am ashamed to say I've done it myself, back when I was on Twitter. My feed would start lighting up with some really Bad thing that s…

> And now you are here; is this not the same? ...no, because I'm not participating in a mob here?

It's not the actions that we need to address, just the number of people doing them?

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#175

Post by kwyjibo1230 »

I agree with the sentiments about mob rule on social media being extremely negative.

The thing that always amuses me about any sites with ratings is that most people (the site owners, the reviewees, the reviewers) often assume that everyone has the same barometer for 1-5 stars. That's very likely not the case.

Take Goodreads as an example. My Personal barometer is

* 5 star = I would re-read this multiples because it was so interesting/engaging/life changing.

* 4 star = I really liked this book. I probably wouldn't re-read it but it was memorable.

* 3 star = Pretty good book.

* 2 star = Book had some flaws or it didn't appeal to me for specific reasons. I didn't like it.

* 1 star = I did not like this book at all, and I would tell people not to read it.

I think there are probably a lot of people that disagree with my barometer :) Maybe their 5 star is anything "pretty good" or above, and their 1 star is "this author should be banned from authorship, that's how much I disliked this book."

Curious to see what other folks' barometers are.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#176

Post by beloch »

"Within five minutes of this decision I became distracted by my phone and started scrolling through twitter. One of the trending topics was "Lauren Hough, Goodreads" and since I was determined to procrastinate on my literary endeavours for as long as possible (what's another five minutes on a five year record?), I decided to have a look. "

It sounds like Hough knows how to whip up some social media outrage to generate free press. The author of this piece would never have heard about Hough or her book were it not for a little incendiary language lighting a giant signal fire of hate on the endless pile of fuel that is twitter. The author of this post literally let social media select a book for him/her to read. If you go on to read Hough's book because of this post on HN, you can join the club!

It does make you wonder how many awesome books will go completely ignored over the next decade because their authors didn't know how or weren't willing to ride the social media hate wave.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#177

Post by anigbrowl »

throwkeep wrote: post #63
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…

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?…

Twitter is largely a platform for self-promotion. This Hough lady wanted to promote her snarky attitude and encourage her followers to dunk on people who leave book reviews on GoodReads. it's a good example of 'be careful what you ask for'; if you cultivate attention in order to be toxic, you can't really complain when that rebounds upon you.

It's often not the case that people see a mob forming and jump in, in most cases. What people see is someone they know quote-tweeting an obnoxious person, or someone they already follow saying something obnoxious, and they condemn the obnoxious behavior. The more engagement an original tweet gets the more likely other people are to see it in their feed, regardless of whether it's obnoxious, funny, or whatever.

One time I replied to a sanctimonious statement from a politician with a mildly critical but also mildly witty reply, read a few other tweets and went on with my day. I don't get notifications from Twitter and was astonished to find the next day that my tweet had blown up and been quoted in a national publication. In fact all of my 'high performing' tweets over the years have been casual witticisms, but I've never seen one take off in real time because I only look at it intermittently. I suggest that rather than an angry mob, what you're seeing is simply the aggregation of multiple similar reactions. Few to none of those were necessarily invested with enormous significance by the people making them, unlike a real world mob.

This is not to say, of course, that theren't people who like going around condemning others, and Twitter does have a habit of showing you multiples of people posting about the same thing, as opposed to showing The Thing once and observing that 10 people you follow have left comments about it.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#178

Post by cindarin »

askafriend wrote: post #156
cindarin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 preve…

What you have to say is very interesting. However, it is not the content of the article.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#179

Post by anigbrowl »

beaconstudios wrote: post #101
qsort wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why isn't the mob a top priority? Part of that is the incentives going in the opposite direction, as other commenters have noted. Even assuming they are in good faith, though, I believe it is an extremely difficult problem. Building and maintaining large scale communities is next to impossible, you can't just turn off a switch and make the mob go away, a mob is, by definition, out of control. Historically, we have…

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).

People with huge followings are just e-celebs, but one can be a (shallow) part of a large community of people with similar interests in a particular topic. To the extent that you have somethin gin common with other people, and to the extent that that thing is unusual or costly in some fashion, you'll typically going to feel a sense of connection to someone you hear or read about without necessarily knowing them.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#180

Post by anigbrowl »

throwkeep wrote: post #155
vlunkr wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have tweets come up in chronological rather than selected order, and it's still crap on a regular bases because people are crap. There's not much you can do besides unfollowing people who are consistently annoying or vapid.

I think retweets/quote tweets are a bigger problem. I can understand why a large number of people I follow might tweet about the same thing, but I don't need to see that thing reproduced 10 times.

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