The case against social media is stronger than you think • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by Lerc » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:44 PM UTC

solid_fuel wrote: post #25

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…

There a lot of money in social media, literally hundreds of billions of dollars. I expect the case against it will continue to grow, like the case against cigarettes did. I will say this, and this is anecdotal, but other events this week have been an excellent case study in how fast misinformation (charitably) and lies (uncharitably) spread across social media, and how much social media does to amp up the anger and t…

>There a lot of money in social media, literally hundreds of billions of dollars. I expect the case against it will continue to grow, like the case against cigarettes did.

I don't think it follows that something making money must do so by being harmful. I do think strong regulation should exist to prevent businesses from introducing harmful behaviours to maximise profits, but to justify that opinion I have to believe that there is an ability to be profitable and ethical simultaneously.

>events this week have been an excellent case study in how fast misinformation (charitably) and lies (uncharitably) spread across social media

On the other hand The WSJ, Guardian, and other media outlets have published incorrect information on the same events. The primary method that people had to discover that this information was incorrect was social media. It's true that there was incorrect information and misinformation on social media, but it was also immediately challenged. That does create a source of conflict, but I don't think the solution is to accept falsehoods unchallenged.

If anything education is required to teach people to discuss opposing views without rising to anger or personal attacks.

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

#32

Post by qarl » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:48 PM UTC

rkomorn wrote: post #29

blitz_skull wrote: post #24

The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.

They're unfortunately not much more capable of responsibly connecting with people non-anonymously, I'd say. See examples like finding someone's employer on LinkedIn to "out" the employee's objectionable behavior, doxxing, or to the extreme, SWATing, etc.

Yeah. People use their real identities on Facebook, and it doesn't help a bit.

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

#33

Post by scarface_74 » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:48 PM UTC

nextaccountic wrote: post #23

scarface_74 wrote: post #7

I really hate the narrative that social media has increased polarization knowing that my still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow south where they were literally separated from society because of the color of their skin. The country has always been hostile to “other”. People just have a larger platform to get their message out.

One of the factors that led to the Rwandan genocide was the broadcast of the RLTM radio station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Radio_station... The radio didn't create the divide, and it wasn't the sole factor in the genocide, but it engrained in the population a sense of urgency in eliminating the Tutsi, along with a stream of what was mostly fake news to show that the other side is already commiting…

And there wasn’t a history of genocide of other before then? Hitler in Germany and the mass murder in Tulsa in 1921 didn’t need social media.

History has shown people don’t need a reason to hate and commit violence against others.

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

#34

Post by dfxm12 » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

linguae wrote: post #15

scarface_74 wrote: post #7

I really hate the narrative that social media has increased polarization knowing that my still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow south where they were literally separated from society because of the color of their skin. The country has always been hostile to “other”. People just have a larger platform to get their message out.

As someone whose grandparents endured Jim Crow, I largely agree in the sense that social media did not create America’s divides. Many of the divides in American society are very old and are very deep, with no easy fixes. Unfortunately algorithmic social media is one of the factors adding fuel to the fire, and I believe it’s fair to say that social media has helped increase polarization by recommending content to its…

Unfortunately algorithmic social media is one of the factors adding fuel to the fire

Saying social media fans the flames is like saying ignorance is bliss. Mainstream media (cable news, radio, newspapers, etc) only gives us one, largely conservative, viewpoint. If you're lucky, you'll get one carefully controlled opposing viewpoint (out of many!). As you say, our choices are usually evil and not quite as evil.

Anger is not an unreasonable reaction when you realize this. When you realize that other viewpoints exist, the mainstream media and politicians are not acting in anyone's best interest but their own, there really are other options (politically, for news, etc.). Social media is good at bringing these things to light.

There are no easy fixes to the divides you're talking about, but failing to confront them and just giving in to the status quo, or worse, continuing down our current reactionary transcript, is probably the worst way to approach them.

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

#35

Post by stevage » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #17

Social media would be entirely different if there were no monetization on political content. There's a whole lot of ragebaiting/engagement-farming for views. I don't know how to filter for political content, but it's worth a shot. People are free to say whatever they want, but they don't need to get paid for it.

Strangely I never see political content on YouTube. Maybe the algorithm worked out quickly I'm simply not interested. Whereas twitter/mastodon/bluesky are awash in it, to the point of making those platforms pretty unusable for me.

I guess the difference is that YouTube content creators don't casually drop politics in because it will alienate half their audience and lose revenue. Whereas on those other platforms the people I follow aren't doing it professionally and just share whatever they feel like sharing.

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

#36

Post by jacobedawson » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:51 PM UTC

blitz_skull wrote: post #24

The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.

The strongest counterpoint to that is the intense chilling effect that zero anonymity would have on political dissent and discourse that doesn't match the status quo or party line. I feel that would be much more dangerous for our society than occasionally suffering the consequence of some radicalized edge cases.

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

#37

Post by sedawkgrep » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:51 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #16

majormajor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's increasingly discussed in traditional media too so let's toss out that first line glib dismissal. More and more people declaring it's net-negative is the first step towards changing anything. Academic "let's evaluate each individual point about it on its own merits" is not how this sort of thing finds political momentum. (Or we could argue that "social media" in the Facebook-era sense is just one part of a large…

"net-negative" sounds like a rigidly defined mathematically derived result but it's basically just a vibe that means "I hate social media more than I like it."

I'm struggling to understand your point, especially since the conclusion you posit is rather glib and dismissive.

Net-negative is not quantifiable. But it is definitely qualifiable.

I don't think you have to think of things in terms of "hate it more than I like it" when you have actual examples on social media of children posting self-harm and suicide, hooliganism and outright crimes posted for viewership, blatant misinformation proliferation, and the unbelievable broad and deep affect powerful entities can have on public information/opinion through SM.

I think we can agree all of these are bad, and a net-negative, without needing any mathematic rigor.

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

#38

Post by stevage » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:52 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #12

abnercoimbre wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Soon as I read: > I am going to focus on the putative political impacts of social media I closed the tab.

Yeah I closed it when I saw the size of the scroll bar. If you need 100k words to make your point write a book.

Huh, I often have the reverse sentiment with a lot of books: this should have been a blog post. There's often a good intro which lays out the thesis, but each chapter is way too long, spelling out details that are obvious or superfluous.

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

#39

Post by stevage » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:53 PM UTC

profsummergig wrote: post #28

I used to be disappointed in myself that I didn't understand Discord well enough to use it. Now I'm glad I never understood it well enough to use it.

Huh. I'm on a few discords. They're very easy and obvious to use, and I really enjoy them. And because they are generally well divided by channel, it's easy to avoid the bits you don't want.

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

#40

Post by XorNot » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:55 PM UTC

blitz_skull wrote: post #24

The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.

What a bizarre conclusion given the multiple high profile individuals and politicians who overtly and directly called for violent oppression and civil war against their political enemies on the last week.