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Myths about Social Media

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Re: Myths about Social Media

#21

Post by akomtu »

royalroad wrote: post #5

Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets: Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false. Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful No, research suggests that online hate reflects…

2. FB promotes content with the fastest growth of attention: upvotes, downvotes, comments. It's the opposite of HN, basically. The most engaging content doesnt have to be divisive, but since the majority are emotional beings, and have little interest in abstract thoughts, they react better to emotions. Maybe in a few centuries, the majority will be more concerned with thoughts, and less with emotions, and the equivalent of a flame war will be snarky scientists exchanging with obscure arguments about correctness of some irrelevant theorem, e.g. NP-deniers would reject the NP=P equality, NP-protagonists would support it, and the moderate minority would advocate for a middle ground - that neither statement is provable. Those moderates will be dismissed as Goedel-ists.

3. FB is like a big open club that admits anyone and everyone, and all events take place in the only hall room. Predictably, it turns into a shouting match and FB has to ban some members, and by banning some and not others ideas, the club necesserarily turns into an echo chamber.

Re: Myths about Social Media

#22

Post by codingdave »

"Research shows" needs citations. I get that they only had ten minutes to talk, but if you are going to post a long thread on twitter, adding sources would seem like a completely reasonable thing to do. Otherwise, this thread itself could be misinformation - we have no way to verify.

Re: Myths about Social Media

#23

Post by HWR_14 »

This is to Danish parliament. I wonder if the research he is quoting applies to (a) a larger country (b) with a heterogeneous population that (c) communicates primarily in English (where most misinformation seems to be aimed). Since he didn't link to the studies, it's hard to know. Giving him the benefit of the doubt that these studies really exist. But I certainly think those three factors may be important in his report not generalizing.

Re: Myths about Social Media

#24

Post by nomdep »

royalroad wrote: post #5

Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets: Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false. Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful No, research suggests that online hate reflects…

Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful

No, research suggests that online hate reflects offline frustrations that make them hateful both online & offline

That conclusion seems completely wrong to me. Sure, there are previous frustrations, but when you feel attacked online, you become hateful as a defense mechanism… and of course, there is always some YouTube channel ready to reinforce that anger.

And this happens with almost every social media since freenode

Re: Myths about Social Media

#25

Post by madrox »

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 internet. See how far that's gotten us.

If I had any solution to offer, I'd say it's to use large platform social media to funnel people to smaller communities where most of the real engagement happens (like Discord). We're already seeing it with brands that don't feel like they can reach their whole audience anymore. Politicians can do that too.

Re: Myths about Social Media

#26

Post by HWR_14 »

akomtu wrote: post #21
royalroad wrote: post #5

Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets: Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false. Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful No, research suggests that online hate reflects…

2. FB promotes content with the fastest growth of attention: upvotes, downvotes, comments. It's the opposite of HN, basically. The most engaging content doesnt have to be divisive, but since the majority are emotional beings, and have little interest in abstract thoughts, they react better to emotions. Maybe in a few centuries, the majority will be more concerned with thoughts, and less with emotions, and the equival…

The echo chamber isn't due to bans. It has to do with Facebooks algorithms featuring you news stories you think you will relate to.

Besides, I have yet to see anyone banned from any social media site whose absence makes the site worse. In fact, I blame the various social sites for not banning them sooner.

Re: Myths about Social Media

#27

Post by ckastner »

royalroad wrote: post #5

Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets: Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false. Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful No, research suggests that online hate reflects…

> Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful > No, research suggests that online hate reflects offline frustrations that make them hateful both online & offline.

That's just a sleight of hand. Sure, people may have been hateful before, but social media amplifies that hate exponentially.

Social media thrives on outrage, being addictive, and uses algorithmic ranking to feed it as much as possible.

> The hateful are few in numbers but they are attracted to politics and, hence, are much more visible.

Few in numbers? Have you seen what goes on during election years?

Who hasn't been talking about the January 6th events?

Re: Myths about Social Media

#28

Post by IAmEveryone »

teucris wrote: post #15
teucris wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did some digging, here is the paper he references on echo chambers/bubbles: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21582440198327...

My initial concern, based on reading the abstract, is that since this study only looks at Twitter and not Facebook, it isn’t enough evidence to make any conclusions about echo chambers in a general way as so many people get their news from Facebook.

Facebook tends towards people you know in real life, so it’d be closer to the echo chamber that is your immediate social circle, but possibly a bit more open because it doesn’t concentrate your attention as much as you probably do offline, i. e. 50 % with spouse and only seeing your high school buddy every two years.

I guess a lot depends on your job: if you work in healthcare or retail, you‘lo have pretty diverse interactions. Software developer in their home office? Not so much.

Re: Myths about Social Media

#29

Post by fullshark »

version_five wrote: post #13

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…

The vast majority of people's exposure to other views are just the dumbest iterations of said views, for the express purpose of "dunking" on them to further calcify their previously held positions also. At least on twitter the goal is to find morons on the other side of the ideological divide and mock them.

Re: Myths about Social Media

#30

Post by IAmEveryone »

pphysch wrote: post #7
royalroad wrote: post #5

Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets: Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false. Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful No, research suggests that online hate reflects…

Yeah, these are general features of mass media that predate the internet. Much of the hysteria about social media is signal boosted by the traditional media establishment that it disrupted

I doubt these dare-I-say-conspiracy theories.

Among other reasons, just consider that media suffered as much, financially, from monster.com and eBay, which devastated classifieds. For many local papers, that was the single largest change in the last two decades.

And I don’t remember any campaigns against those companies.

The individual journalist and editor actually writing and deciding on a story also doesn’t hold the grudges you assign to all of “media”. They don’t have the power to affect any change that could ever make the sort of difference needed to come back to them in any meaningful way. And they are unlikely to experience the strong emotions “media’ might have, because they haven’t experienced much of the loss that the industry has: they still have a job, for example. And by now, they are likely too young to know better times pre-internet.

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