Don't let social media think for you • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#221

Post by edmundsauto » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #72

throwkeep wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

> Why has Twitter the company and its employees not taken action to deal with this? Because it's not their job to moderate this stuff. Angry, pissed off, outraged users are, from the perspective of social media companies, the best users. They refresh constantly (so more ad views), they come back constantly, and if they've gone away for too long, you can just figure out what's likely to piss them off the most, send th…

> Angry, pissed off, outraged users are, from the perspective of social media companies, the best users

In the long term, these users make a community toxic and less viable in the long run. People don't come back after a long enough time.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#222

Post by unethical_ban » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

verall wrote: post #199

unethical_ban wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lone Star beer used to have images under their bottle caps as puns[1]. One of them used an image of a noose as part of the puzzle, which was completely unrelated to race, or death - it was simply using the word as a similar word to "news". Someone went apeshit on Twitter[2], and now all the puns are gone while Lone Star reviews them for sensitivity. I'm politically liberal, and I'm fucking ashamed of the fact that th…

Hey, as a fellow Lone Star drinker, I really don't think it's possible to separate the noose from its history, particularly in our great state. Sure, it's just a pun, but for many people it conjures a very particular image. They don't want to open their beer to an image of a noose, regardless its context. And really, the lone star is the emblem of the Republic of Texas which was founded in large part due to Mexico's…

I just don't like the stink that someone made about it, and don't think it's that big a deal. Even had they quietly said "sure" to removing it, that would have been one thing, but to pander to the sensitive crowd irks me.

All that stuff you said may be true in the strictest sense, but I still think one has to train themselves to get mad about that kind of thing. It's unnatural to instantly get infuriated and see hate in a bottle top, is all.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#223

Post by sigotirandolas » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #218

sbagel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% and in many cases communities like HN are worse than sites like twitter because it has upvotes and downvotes which effectively drowns out and silences marginalized voices. You can't downvote or flag a twitter post preventing others from reading it. I mention flagging because users here regularly flag opinions they strongly disagree with in mass as a way of removing them from discussions to great effect. HN cultu…

What might be a better mechanism to bring the best content forward, which doesn't suffer from this issue? Would you just advocate against downvoting in general, or is there something else you have in mind?

Traditional forums (such as phpBB) where posting "bumps" a thread are better in some regards. "Bumping" a thread at least requires you make more effort than clicking a button, posts inside a thread are unranked, and they encourage more in-depth discussion since threads can be long-lived.

RSS is great once you find interesting content but it doesn't help much in finding new content.

Otherwise... if you browse ranked boards such as HN/Reddit/etc., for topics such as politics (anything without a demonstrable answer, really), its also worth looking at both the stream of new comments, as well as the worst-rated comments. Most often the worst-rated comments are often just dumb spam or someone who makes no logical sense, but if someone tries to make a point and still gets massively downvoted for it (as opposed to just ignored), he may be striking on something.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#224

Post by LAC-Tech » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

croon wrote: post #62

LAC-Tech wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is to let you know a bit about the reality you share with others. Best case scenario is that you are shown a select few fragments of reality, strategically arranged. Worst case scenario is the fragments themselves are questionable. I don't feel like someone is trying to inform me when I watch the news. I feel like someone is trying to manipulate me.

> Best case scenario is that you are shown a select few fragments of reality, strategically arranged. Worst case scenario is the fragments themselves are questionable. 1) Things happen around the world that you can't observe. 2) People need to participate in democracy for democracy to work. 3) Things that happen elsewhere might affect things locally through latter order effects. Can we agree on those assumptions? If…

> Can we agree on those assumptions?

Kind of

1 - Sure. But the idea that your news of choice gives you a representative, unbiased picture of that is laughable.

2 - I disagree. Casting ballots to potentially swap heads of governments - who are largely symbolic and functionally impotent - barely qualifies as participating at all. Power in modern democracies spread very thin, and most of it is not elected.

3 - Sure, I suppose.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#225

Post by exporectomy » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #160

unethical_ban wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lone Star beer used to have images under their bottle caps as puns[1]. One of them used an image of a noose as part of the puzzle, which was completely unrelated to race, or death - it was simply using the word as a similar word to "news". Someone went apeshit on Twitter[2], and now all the puns are gone while Lone Star reviews them for sensitivity. I'm politically liberal, and I'm fucking ashamed of the fact that th…

There's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to death. That's what they're for. The puzzle may not be related to death, but the noose is. And in the US there's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to race. They are being used, today, as racist threats. When a noose appears, lynching is the assumed meaning, and not just by black people [1]. So it's a good thing that Lone Star is taking a look at the entire p…

The funny thing about this offense is it seems that was created by the offended so they could become victims of it. Nooses used to represent suicide or maybe western movie culture. The race thing seems to have been kind of resurrected by social media. Though I'm only an outside observer of American culture so perhaps the noose=suicide is because that's pretty much always been their only use in my country.

Does this picture suggest to you that he's planning to do some black people lynching in the holidays or something else?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/218bbe/not_tod...

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#226

Post by ggggtez » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

This subject was written about as well by the esteemed Jon Ronson, in "So you've been publicly shamed". Reading it today may sound quaint, but it's also interesting to know that he also wrote about Alex Jones several years before 2016.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#227

Post by ggggtez » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

kwyjibo1230 wrote: post #175

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…

I imagine many people use:

5 stars - I liked it

1 star. - I didn't like it

In fact, I imagine many people do this.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#228

Post by thewakalix » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

parafactual wrote: post #207

jrmg wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meme of "if you don't speak up, you're complicit" is part of this. I appreciate the sentiment, but there are just too many (terrible!) inequities in the world to live by this and not have it be a full time preoccupation.

Also, is social media really the best way to take action against terrible inequity? I would think if one believes the uninvolved are complicit, they would also look for more effective methods than saying something is bad on Twitter.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#229

Post by croes » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

Regardless of the whole Twitter thing. What's wrong with a 4-star rating? It's not a math exam where there are right and wrong answers and you can get 100% = 5stars with the right knowledge. It is always a subjective impression and even the best book ever will not get only 5 stars.

>From Lauren's perspective, what on earth could she possibly have done to garner a 5 star review? Been abused more?

Once again it is not an exam, there is no sure way to 100%, especially not 100% with 100% of the reviewers. Doesn't this show a similar mentality to the Twitter mob?

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#230

Post by colechristensen » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #100

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…

Also, if you end up having to announce your take on every "bad" thing that happens, your feed becomes nothing but commentary on the bad takes, almost always identical to everyone else, and you dillute or lose what makes you interesting in the process. I've seen this in my own feed. Any time some "bad" person is exposed, I'm almost guaranteed to scroll past 30 almost identical takes on it by the same 30 people on my f…

I have been thinking about this and related things for a long time now, while I haven't quite got the hang of putting it all together into words, this is my take on the current subject:

Humans have a need for a certain kind of emotional high, that in whatever way, people find a source. Some people find it in competition, drugs, sex, music, art, creation, fear, ... there's probably a whole taxonomy in there.

One of the ways people find it is in social displays of moral superiority. People hated this about organized religions and left in droves, and yet here we are with the exact same behavior.

There probably was a very valid evolutionary reason why this is so prevalent in humans, but like most things that make us feel good, uncontrolled they get taken to terrible extremes.

The point is recognizing that this behavior is a need finding a source of stimulation. If you want to fix it you have to find better sources for that feeling and recognize what is happening... and distribute that recognition into the public consciousness.