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Toxicity on Social Media

thenoisyroom.com

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Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#21

Post by card_zero »

OK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly:

> The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor.

That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're moderates in the sense that anti- is the conventional position to take. But they have opinions. (They could also be in the minority, and this fear of speaking up would still be a bad thing.)

Otherwise, if they're truly moderate, but are frightened into silence supposedly, what would they be saying if they dared? "Everybody listen to me, I have no strong opinion on this matter"?

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#22

Post by seltzerboys »

krapp wrote: post #10
hermitcrab wrote: post #7

New social trends and technologies frequently cause some level of moral panic. Moral panics of the past have been caused by all sorts of things, that now seem rather quaint: novels, bicycles, comics, television, videos, heavy metal, dungeons and dragons etc. But social media feels very different. It really does seem to be causing major societal disruption.

The current social panic always feels very different. But people literally believe social media is the sole cause of all of modern society's problems, that it's a mind-control platform and a cancer on society. I've seen people say they would welcome a fascist dictatorship if only it meant destroying social media. I've seen people say they want "algorithms" made illegal. It's obvious from the hyperbole around the disc…

if you strip social media down to its essential parts it's clear that it can easily cause huge problems for a society. it's basically a never-ending 24/7 stream of information amplified out to anywhere in the world that is:

1. insanely low-effort to post 2. requires NO discernment, proof, credibility, or peer review to post 3. 'viral' in that opinions circulate because other people have interacted with them, not because they are right or meaningful. so bad news, good news, real news and fake news all travel at the same speed, lowering discernment even further 4. echo chambers are baked into the form. people are more likely to interact with content they agree with vs. content that is true or impactful. this creates circles of people agreeing with each other on increasingly niched-down topics.

it is extremely different from newspapers and television.

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#23

Post by krapp »

BoredPositron wrote: post #16
krapp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current social panic always feels very different. But people literally believe social media is the sole cause of all of modern society's problems, that it's a mind-control platform and a cancer on society. I've seen people say they would welcome a fascist dictatorship if only it meant destroying social media. I've seen people say they want "algorithms" made illegal. It's obvious from the hyperbole around the disc…

You: Other people are unhinged hyperbolists. Here, let me characterize them hyperbolically to prove it, therefore I am the calm rational one and by the way, civilization may collapse and the CIA might be behind this. I mean wtf. Is this your parody account?

You see, you're doing the thing.

Every bit of hyperbole I mentioned is practically quoted verbatim from some thread or another here, it is what people believe, and you can't even bring yourself to approach me in good faith because I've committed wrongthink by defending the existence of social media even implicitly.

The CIA and other governments are running influence campaigns across social media. The links between the major social media platforms and intelligence agencies are well known and well documented. And civilization is threatened by numerous factors, such as our over-investment in AI and the mass deskilling and destabilization that will create, creeping fascism and increasing political violence in a multipolar world, climate change leading to mass famine, pandemics in a post-scientific age, etc.

But people want to destroy social media (and by extension, want to destroy the freedom of communication it allows) rather than bother to consider that the real problem is the same problem we've always had - government and corporate interests trying to control our lives and manufacture consent through fear and panic.

They ran the same playbook prior to social media but the process was so normalized because they controlled so much of the media and culture that no one really even noticed it. Now people notice but they can't distinguish between the symptom and the disease.

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#24

Post by rcxdude »

energy123 wrote: post #14
JimmyBuckets wrote: post #9

This seems like a great idea. Even without the linked surveys. Two questions I have: - how you does this handle the fact that a lot of accounts on social media platforms are bots that maybe controlled by a small number of people. - how do we actually get this implemented?

Regulating the algorithm is my favorite answer. Ban the recommendation engine on large social media sites. Make it a chronological feed of who you follow. Make it boring. I don't know all the details, but something like this.

I agree, recommendation algorithms are a huge part of the problem. Consciously choosing what you interact with is a very important part of media consumption IMO and most social media sites give you very little tools to do that (no, having likes/dislikes affect your personalised feed is not enough, especially when that also becomes 'engagement' and boosts it everyone's feed in general). These algorithms should be dumber in all areas except spam prevention (and even then, if there's less stuff in your feed you didn't specifically choose to see, spam should be a much smaller problem anyway).

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#25

Post by BoredPositron »

krapp wrote: post #23
BoredPositron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You: Other people are unhinged hyperbolists. Here, let me characterize them hyperbolically to prove it, therefore I am the calm rational one and by the way, civilization may collapse and the CIA might be behind this. I mean wtf. Is this your parody account?

You see, you're doing the thing. Every bit of hyperbole I mentioned is practically quoted verbatim from some thread or another here, it is what people believe, and you can't even bring yourself to approach me in good faith because I've committed wrongthink by defending the existence of social media even implicitly. The CIA and other governments are running influence campaigns across social media. The links between th…

Case closed.

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#26

Post by dependsontheq »

I have been working on a monitoring and prebunking system for digital manipulation and desinformation. We are focusing not on the content or narrative but on the psychological patterns and manipulation techniques that are used.

It's the most disturbing thing I have ever worked on, there is much more out there than moste people realize and a lot of it uses deceptive dark patterns.

If somebody is interested in talking more about this or is working on similar things, always welcome!

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#27

Post by krapp »

BoredPositron wrote: post #25
krapp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see, you're doing the thing. Every bit of hyperbole I mentioned is practically quoted verbatim from some thread or another here, it is what people believe, and you can't even bring yourself to approach me in good faith because I've committed wrongthink by defending the existence of social media even implicitly. The CIA and other governments are running influence campaigns across social media. The links between th…

Case closed.

This is what I get for trying to have a serious conversation here.

Congratulations on the endorphin hit. You really zinged me. I need to find where the grownups hang out.

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#28

Post by bell-cot »

energy123 wrote: post #14
JimmyBuckets wrote: post #9

This seems like a great idea. Even without the linked surveys. Two questions I have: - how you does this handle the fact that a lot of accounts on social media platforms are bots that maybe controlled by a small number of people. - how do we actually get this implemented?

Regulating the algorithm is my favorite answer. Ban the recommendation engine on large social media sites. Make it a chronological feed of who you follow. Make it boring. I don't know all the details, but something like this.

But as with pretty much every cardinal sin of late-stage capitalism - there are a whole lot of very entitled people, who are both very accustomed to and skilled at getting their own way, who are heavily invested in opposing any real solution to the problem.

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#29

Post by tardedmeme »

dependsontheq wrote: post #26

I have been working on a monitoring and prebunking system for digital manipulation and desinformation. We are focusing not on the content or narrative but on the psychological patterns and manipulation techniques that are used. It's the most disturbing thing I have ever worked on, there is much more out there than moste people realize and a lot of it uses deceptive dark patterns. If somebody is interested in talking…

How do you convince people that your system is not itself disinformation?

Re: Toxicity on Social Media

#30

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

ketzu wrote: post #18

> toxic tweets receive ~86% more retweets The part that annoys me about the toxicity, or repetetive and annoying topics on reddit, HN, etc. is not that I am unaware that the content is produced by a small fraction. (I underestimated the count! I guessed 2%) It's that people espouse it: They upvote and retweet it. > Both sides develop wildly inaccurate beliefs about who the other side actually is. That was a guess I h…

> People have a strawman version of their out-groups in mind and quickly map people to that if an unknown person says something that indicates they might be part of the out-group.

I think something that is not calibrated in the post and also missing in this reply is that believes and actions do not need to be aligned.

Both groups say around 10% of members support political violence, however no democratic president is pardoning wholesale domestic terrorists. And the 90% of republicans who condemn political violence are not repudiating, removing themselves or condeming the fact that far right groups are the most dangerous demo according to the FBI, or that most political violence occurs in rep states, or the direct correlation of the NRA infiltration into rep campaigning and mass shootings...

Like if you say you dislike violence but defend the system that creates the violence and pardon the people who commit the violence and share the table and take the money from the violent people... your "beliefs" are not worth much.

The whole conversation about out-groups is less relevant when discussing left wing policy due to the fact that it is not orchestrated AROUND in and outgroups. Right wing ideology is de-facto a ingroup political theory where some people must be excluded. When you add morality being justified due to being in group you end up with some very concerning politics where actions are judged on beloning to the group and not the morality of the action or the consequences.

See the blue collar protect the children anti abortion crew voting for a new york millionaire owner of a beuty pagent who was best friend with the worlds best known human child trafficker...

The believe system collapses the second you put the right tee shirt on, and that is what makes polling those people irrelevant. They simply will support whatever is in front of them as long as they belong to the in group. War bad in ukraine, war good in Iran. Taxes bad in 2018, tariff taxes good now. Sillicon Valley tech people all leftwing indian soy boys in 2016 now all alpha podcast ai cool guys who fund our president.

nothing matters as long as you wear the tee shirt

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