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The case against social media is stronger than you think

arachnemag.substack.com

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Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#211

Post by make_it_sure »

Lerc wrote: post #11

Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack. A lot of things suck right now. Social media definitely give us the ability to see that. Using your personal ideology to link correlations is not the same thing as finding causation. There will be undoubtedly be some damaging aspects of social media, simply because it is large and complex. It would be hi…

seems that you're the guy that likes to be against the norm, even if you're wrong. Social media being controlled by corporations and algorithms built to create addiction should be enough, unless you have other motives to ignore all this.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#213

Post by enaaem »

Llamamoe wrote: post #13
Lerc wrote: post #11

Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack. A lot of things suck right now. Social media definitely give us the ability to see that. Using your personal ideology to link correlations is not the same thing as finding causation. There will be undoubtedly be some damaging aspects of social media, simply because it is large and complex. It would be hi…

I feel like regardless of all else, the fact of algorithmic curation is going to be bad, especially when it's contaminated by corporate and/or political interests. We have evolved to parse information as if its prevalence is controlled by how much people talk about it, how acceptable opinions are to voice, how others react to them. Algorithmic social media intrinsically destroy that. They change how information sprea…

Social media should be liable for the content that their automatic curation put forward. If a telecom company actively gives your number to scammers to call you up, they should not hide behind the argument that it is not them scamming you, but someone else. Applying regular anti-fraud and defamation laws will probably put an end to algorithmic curation.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#214

Post by topspin »

adrr wrote: post #129
freshtake wrote: post #125

The problem is that our thoughts, opinions, and ultimately actions are the product of our exposure. Social media gives a small number of companies (and their algorithms) unparalleled and unchecked control over our exposure. We should be educating children at a young age about the benefits and risks of social media. We haven't adapted the way we educate society in light of massive tech changes. This will likely be a t…

People have stopped reading the news and rely on social media as their main news source. Thats the scariest thing.

> Thats the scariest thing.

Written "news" is frequently a report about a series of X posts by various authorities, thought leaders and celebrities, embedded directly in the story.

Square that circle.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#215

Post by fercircularbuf »

giardini wrote: post #162
slg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If someone I was friends with made racist remarks, they wouldn't be prosecuted for that. But I would stop being their friend. So you want your friend to be able to anonymously express their racism while being able to hide it from you? I can't imagine advocating for that as a desired goal rather than a negative side effect. >Similarly if I was the only one in my friend group against racism and advocate firefly agains…

sig says "So you want your friend to be able to anonymously express their racism while being able to hide it from you? I can't imagine advocating for that as a desired goal rather than a negative side effect." Deceit is a characteristic of our humanity. We all deceive others and ourselves. If people are to be allowed to be fully expressive as humans they need to be able to deceive. And so they require anonymity. See…

I don't see the logic in this argument. What's the difference from your argument if I state that murder is a characteristic of our humanity? If people are to be allowed to be fully expressive as humans they need to be able to murder.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#217

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

hedayet wrote: post #205

I used to spend 4+ hours a day glued to Facebook. Last November I hit a tipping point and quit social media altogether: Facebook: deactivated Twitter: deleted my account altogether LinkedIn: removed the app—now I only post and check messages via desktop with a news-feed eradicator Google + Chrome + Youtube on mobile: deleted. now I just use Safari in incognito mode. Once the apps were no longer at my fingertips, quit…

Individual quitting could be a bad solution for the systemic effects of social media though, if it leaves the remaining population of social media users even more radicalized. (I'm assuming that individual quitters tend to be more level-headed than the average user. If you self-assess as being high-risk for radicalization, then yeah I support individual quitting in your particular case.)

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#218

Post by camgunz »

armchairhacker wrote: post #96
rightbyte wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. If users chose who to follow this is hardly a problem. Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine.

How will users choose who to follow? This was a real problem when I tried Mastodon/Lemmy/Bluesky, I saw lots of chronological posts but none of them were interesting. Unfortunately, classical forums may have dealt with spam better because there were less people online back then. Classical forums that exist today have mitigations and/or are overrun with spam.

What used to happen is there would be human-powered networks ("if you like me, check out X/Y/Z"), rather than algorithm-powered networks. Sadly, the existence and dominance of algorithm-powered networks has withered humans' networking muscle. We can probably build it back though.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#219

Post by raziel2p »

parasti wrote: post #183
isodev wrote: post #4

I think to be clear that’s “The case against algorithmic*” social media”, the kind that uses engagement as a core driver.

I recently learned that Tiktok has a thing called "Streak Pets". Imagine taking a dopamine addiction-inducing activity and imagine gamifying that to maximize engagement in that activity. Imagine the brainstorming sessions at Tiktok where they navigate around the glaring issue of the fried brain circuitry of their own users.

mind-blowing. like tamagochis for the modern age.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#220

Post by camgunz »

nradov wrote: post #159
doctor_blood wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really? On something like Xenforo2, there's a setting that makes a new account's posts invisible until that account is manually approved by a mod - in conjunction with the spam prevention tools - https://xenforo.com/docs/xf2/spam/#content - we really don't need to do much work. Because all new accounts need to be verified by an actual human, we can filter out 99% of spam before other users see it, and between a d…

So then you end up with power tripping mods who abuse their position to push certain narratives. In some cases we've even seen foreign governments paying mods on popular sites such as Reddit to push their propaganda.

This is a problem with centralization, not with mods.
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