> authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe He somehow never forgets to bring this up.
I often have my country of origin in mind as well when I think about politics, is that surprising?
Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
21–30 of 274 posts
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#22Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
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Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#23I have read most of Cal's books and they are good. His fight against social media is... I don't know, extreme. The problem to me isn't social media per se. The real problem is self-discipline/control. Cal crusades against social media, but I don't see him crusade against video games, or watching TV for example. I think a good/better metric is total screen time. My children are given an allowance in the form of screen…
I think the difference is it's a little easier to control other forms of "screen time". That other stuff is pure entertainment and they don't have the addictive aspect of a feed.
I would argue staunchly, that Fortnite (PS4 online version) is every bit as "addictive" as a FB feed. Ultimately, all they provide are shots of dopamine.
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#24I have read most of Cal's books and they are good. His fight against social media is... I don't know, extreme. The problem to me isn't social media per se. The real problem is self-discipline/control. Cal crusades against social media, but I don't see him crusade against video games, or watching TV for example. I think a good/better metric is total screen time. My children are given an allowance in the form of screen…
> The problem to me isn't social media per se. The real problem is self-discipline/control. I'd agree with you if it was firmly established that all people have full, conscious agency. But the very existence of compulsive behavior personalities and addiction demonstrates that agency is unequally distributed. While person A may easily be able to walk away from the dopamine bar by sheer force of will, person B may not.…
You are 100% right, of course. I guess we still need more evolution.
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#25Is there any evidence that people would be more productive without Facebook? I bet they'd just watch more Netflix.
Edit: Plus, it's really not that hard to not use social media once you finish school if you don't feel it's beneficial.
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#26I'm rather bothered that I know nothing about Soros except a bunch of vague, negative feelings about him that have pop-culturally osmosed to me through constant usage of his name in 4channish/the_donaldish media. He's some kind of evil mastermind destroying civilisation with his vast wealth. I know this is almost certainly not true, but I'm so bothered that this is my immediate thought. I feel like the alt-right has…
Have you tried reading something about it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#1992_pound_short
George Soros is an investor that has never been shy about using his wealth to support his political positions (that are generally very liberal).
Now you know pretty much all there is to know, and why the al-right hates him. Oh, and that he survived Nazi-Germany occupated Hungary. The last thing especially hurts the feelings of the alt-right - although I prefer to call them Nazis.
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#27Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
Do you honestly think your examples are even in the same league as Facebook?
Were TV ads ever as granular in its tracking as Facebook is today?
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#28Interesting article. The whole smoke screen idea is in a way interesting but at the same time; isn't it exactly what is to be expected from commercial providers of social media? I'm not sure if you catch my drift, but since when do we expect for-profit companies to act in societies best interest? To protect your brand does sometimes include admitting wrong doings or sketchy behavior - if we wish to browse through soc…
> since when do we expect for-profit companies to act in societies best interest?
We don't have for-profit companies because of some fundamental ideological commitment to capitalism uber alles. We have them because we judge their operation to be in society's best interest. When a particular one fails to do that, it raises a legitimate question about whether it should be allowed to continue with those actions or even be allowed to exist in its current form.
If a company is not acting on society's best interest, it should be made to or abolished.
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#29I'm rather bothered that I know nothing about Soros except a bunch of vague, negative feelings about him that have pop-culturally osmosed to me through constant usage of his name in 4channish/the_donaldish media. He's some kind of evil mastermind destroying civilisation with his vast wealth. I know this is almost certainly not true, but I'm so bothered that this is my immediate thought. I feel like the alt-right has…
It's also been experimentally proven that people have issues discerning fake news online. Our news literacy is falling rapidly. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818...
Why do you think it is falling? As far as I can see, the article does not mention repeating this experiment over time.
Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
#30I'm rather bothered that I know nothing about Soros except a bunch of vague, negative feelings about him that have pop-culturally osmosed to me through constant usage of his name in 4channish/the_donaldish media. He's some kind of evil mastermind destroying civilisation with his vast wealth. I know this is almost certainly not true, but I'm so bothered that this is my immediate thought. I feel like the alt-right has…
It's also been experimentally proven that people have issues discerning fake news online. Our news literacy is falling rapidly. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818...
I was under the assumption that our news literacy was never high enough to begin with. So to say "fall rapidly" seems misleading.