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We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

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Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#281

Post by viridian »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #255
giantg2 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see logic taught in schools. Like philosophy of argument style courses. Of course this won't fix all the problems, since it depends on the acceptance and practice of the knowledge presented (US grades and high school graduation rates aren't great). But maybe it would give us a chance at being a little better. I think citizenship tests should be extended to all via school curriculum. If we require people w…

Immigrants are required to possess a modicum of knowledge about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the system of government, not to mention some level of command of the English language (my wife teaches citizenship courses to immigrants). I, myself, am a naturalized citizen, from Canada, and I had to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, forbear allegiance to foreign powers etc. It's a ritual,…

I tend to agree actually, and would go a step further and suggest that citizenship should be a requirement to vote in any election, and that persons born in the US should not be granted citizenship without being able to pass the citizenship test.

I'm less comfortable granting people a bid based on general knowledge and intelligence though, I think the uninterested citizenry is a far larger problem than the uneducated citizenry.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#282

Post by visarga »

gjulianm wrote: post #207
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #115

In an earlier era, people's opinions were shaped by a small number of newspapers and newscasts. Some of these old media were so biased and agenda driven that they caused wars. Not that much has changed, except that people now rely on centralized, AI-driven funnels of information and entertainment. Democracy has always been fragile, barely functional, easily corrupted, warped by money. The best and only way to defend…

> Not that much has changed, A lot has changed. If you didn't like a newspaper or a broadcast, you stopped seeing it. They built a reputation that they had to maintain somewhat. You knew most of the time who was behind each piece. Now? You see content that a lot of people dislike because it generates controversy and engagement and attacks, lies get way more exposure than truths. A lot of publications come from unknow…

The best thing for the people would be to re-assert control over what we see and how. That means a new level of control over the interface, filters and ranking of our feeds and search results.

Of course that would be the worst thing for Google, FB and Twitter (and their advertising clients) because they desire our attention more than anything.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#283

Post by [deleted] »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #275
neogodless wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only utility Facebook gives me is Messenger, which I have to use because several family members use it. The only utility it offers over other messaging platforms is slightly better support for media and GIFs (maybe?) And network effects. I would really prefer they join me where I am, on Discord, which is where my local friends, neighbors and online friends go to exchange messages. (It doesn't support video sharin…

I stopped using Messenger once they started with the ads. Signal is a great replacement. The chat heads on Android were cool but I don’t find I really miss them.

[deleted]

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#284

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

fsociety wrote: post #269
mucholove wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroin is illegal for a reason. We have an opioid epidemic for a reason You can choose to see it as a revealed preference or you can call it unhinged addiction. I am in the “unhinged addiction” camp. We create and shape markets by defining the rules. As an example the supposedly free NYSE will stop trading if a stock is going down a certain percentage points in a day.

Have you ever used heroin (don’t).. this is an unfair comparison for people who have struggled with a heroin addiction.

Or even nicotine?

I can tell you that getting off social networks was a hell of a lot easier than getting off nicotine (i still haven't succeeded with the latter, to be honest).

Like, the hyperbole associated with social networks just astounds me. They are just websites. They have been carefully engineered to be addictive, like many other services, but there's nobody at Facebook coming round to people's houses and forcing them to open the app.

I actually think that social media is addictive because people like talking to other people, and these tools facilitate this.

Is HN addictive? Is it more like heroin than the NYT?

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#285

Post by esja »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #115

In an earlier era, people's opinions were shaped by a small number of newspapers and newscasts. Some of these old media were so biased and agenda driven that they caused wars. Not that much has changed, except that people now rely on centralized, AI-driven funnels of information and entertainment. Democracy has always been fragile, barely functional, easily corrupted, warped by money. The best and only way to defend…

Filter bubbles existed before, but they were nowhere near as narrow as they are today. Only fifteen years ago it was normal for most people to either watch or at least be aware of the same shows (including nightly news) as their neighbours, work colleagues, and school friends. That is no longer the case at all.

I think a lot more attention needs to be paid to the ML recommenders that companies like Facebook are deploying, and the assumptions going into these algorithms, and the externalities they are creating. In my opinion they are playing a similar role in our social crises as the Gaussian copula played in the financial crisis.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#286

Post by [deleted] »

arethuza wrote: post #219
FriedrichN wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the fact with journalism you know who's responsible for the bit they publish. And that the publisher can't hide behind the fact that they're 'not responsible for user generated content'. In most countries media is regulated, you're not allowed to advertise everywhere or publish lies. When Facebook says 'free speech' they actually mean 'free enterprise'.

And what is published is visible to everyone - who knows what is in targetted ads other than the people who are targetted?

[deleted]

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#287

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

salimmadjd wrote: post #158
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #115

In an earlier era, people's opinions were shaped by a small number of newspapers and newscasts. Some of these old media were so biased and agenda driven that they caused wars. Not that much has changed, except that people now rely on centralized, AI-driven funnels of information and entertainment. Democracy has always been fragile, barely functional, easily corrupted, warped by money. The best and only way to defend…

Agreed! The mainstream media has no problem with disinformation, it only has a problem with democratization of disinformation. With social media more people have access and some amount of power as the $billion media entities, and the old guards don’t like it.

How do you define "mainstream"?

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#288

Post by viridian »

salimmadjd wrote: post #158
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #115

In an earlier era, people's opinions were shaped by a small number of newspapers and newscasts. Some of these old media were so biased and agenda driven that they caused wars. Not that much has changed, except that people now rely on centralized, AI-driven funnels of information and entertainment. Democracy has always been fragile, barely functional, easily corrupted, warped by money. The best and only way to defend…

Agreed! The mainstream media has no problem with disinformation, it only has a problem with democratization of disinformation. With social media more people have access and some amount of power as the $billion media entities, and the old guards don’t like it.

This is it right here. Most people are comfortable using the Times as a high quality news source, in spite of it's role in manufacturing consent for the Iraq war under false pretenses.

The bad behavior isn't the problem, the problem is that the current power players in media are now having to compete with Hungarian content farms and it's cutting into their market, with the added industry wide damage that the content farmers don't give a damn about covering their bad actions with good PR.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#289

Post by neogodless »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #275
neogodless wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only utility Facebook gives me is Messenger, which I have to use because several family members use it. The only utility it offers over other messaging platforms is slightly better support for media and GIFs (maybe?) And network effects. I would really prefer they join me where I am, on Discord, which is where my local friends, neighbors and online friends go to exchange messages. (It doesn't support video sharin…

I stopped using Messenger once they started with the ads. Signal is a great replacement. The chat heads on Android were cool but I don’t find I really miss them.

I'm glad you were able to move all of your contacts to Signal! That hasn't worked for me, though many people have joined me on Discord. My siblings are sort of straddling between Messenger and Discord, just like me, but they tend to be more responsive on Messenger. Perhaps they only use Discord to appease me.

I've never enjoyed the chat heads and always disabled them right away. I don't notice ads in Messenger, though I mostly use it from a desktop browser with uBlock Origin enabled!

But as a I said, I only use Messenger because I have to, as it is the primary messaging service family members tend to stick to.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#290

Post by esja »

geertj wrote: post #191
lordnacho wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same inclinations as you. I see there are various kinds of bias from different sources, and that you have to be able to think critically in order to maintain some sort of perspective. I also think that we need a bunch of different perspectives, so in that way it's good there's a lot of people talking. But we also live in a world that is more educated than ever, and a lot of those people who went to school…

How many of the people that think the virus isn’t real are critical thinkers though (meaning Occam’s razor, the scientific method, etc)? It’s not just education per se that we need, but education in critical thinking, and also history.

It would be wonderful if epistemology was taught in schools and universities. But it would need to be embedded into every subject and focused on practical exercises. Whenever I've seen this sort of thing taught, the students learn about good reasoning methods, but they don't really internalise them.
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