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The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

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Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#41

Post by Gibbon1 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #20
intended wrote: post #13

in the 90s, I read about how religious extremists in certain countries were targeting moderates. This seemed very odd at the time, because the moderate position just seemed the normal sensible person position. Over time though, moderate preachers were singled out, and in some cases killed, because they didn’t take a stand. This created a chilling effect. Coupled with incendiary and emotional images (“look at these pi…

Those exact same dynamics have existed since humanity started forming groups and civilizations. Thaddeus Stevens was considered an extremist due to his views on slavery and many revolutions have been fought due to the gulf between two portions of society having grown too large to bridge. Social media just makes those divides more readily apparent because people now have instant access to those they harshly disagree w…

> Those exact same dynamics

My fear is all the leaders of the US and Europe who remember the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century are dead. And the power of divisive tribal politics is too tempting to the new generation.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#42

Post by DanielBMarkham »

"...Like Lanier’s book, though in a very different register, it risks presenting the Internet as both the manifestation and cause of all of our deepest problems..."

A friend of mine sent me a link recently with some stuff that Taleb's currently working on.

The internet, the collection of data storage and transmission instantaneously anywhere on the planet, is not a problem. The problem is that humans are hard-wired for small social groups, not mobs. What we need is some new sense of morality and common wisdom around what's an appropriate piece of technology to make and use and what isn't.

It's very, very reminiscent of how hard drugs was first introduced to transport and commercialization. At first it was open season, with lots of pain and loss of life as a result. Then there was a ton of over-reaction. Hopefully the pendulum is swinging back the other way, towards liberalization and education.

As a libertarian, it's tempting to rant at government for making so many drugs criminal 100-120 years ago, but it might have been the best of a bunch of bad choices at the time. Likewise, busting up Big Tech could end up being a bad idea in the long-term and the best thing we can do right now to return some sanity to public discourse. I'll leave that to others to decide. But something needs to be done. Something drastic, I'm afraid.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#43

Post by [deleted] »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

"What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? " It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness. When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term. For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over thing…

[deleted]

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#44

Post by matklnz »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

"What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? " It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness. When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term. For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over thing…

But that's the job of a journalist... to create controversies where there are none. To divide society to get you hooked on news.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#45

Post by dionidium »

User23 wrote: post #22
onion2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

I believe the parent's point is that many of the opinions people tweet are somehow illegitimate. I won't hazard to guess what criteria or authority is supposed to determine legitimacy.

Not illegitimate, just unrepresentative of larger samples.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#46

Post by jazzyjackson »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #17
GW150914 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the future and only told us about the extent…

BBSes were never as great of an advertising buy as an image-adjacent to an Instagram pic. Nobody looking at a BBS could anticipate why BBSes would eventually vanish, while Instagram is truly here to stay.

I would be curious to know your theory on why BBS's vanished, and also why you suppose Instagram is here for good.

Because of the advertising revenue, or something eles?

For contrast, I just figure BBS died due to eternal September on the hardware scaling side - the rate at which people became computers users increased much faster than the rate at which people became sysadmins and moderators.

So, the internet became unmoderated, un-administered.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#47

Post by jazzyjackson »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #19
kwyjibo1230 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing you to "drop off" social media seems like the exact chilling effect you describe (assuming you are a moderate), rather than being a stance. It's happening!

Hang on, are you saying that people who drop off of / don't participate in social media aren't taking a stance? It certainly seems like one to me...

Your stance is removing yourself from the conversation.

Meanwhile, in this moderate preacher and congregation allegory, the congregation has not left the building, because there is no leader to explain to them why they need to shut the trolls out of their life, so they are sitting ducks to become radicalized.

This is what grandparent was saying afaict - moderating voices leaving the conversation capitulate the space to the radicals.

The moderating voices are tired of explaining to people that the earth is not flat, so they are leaving. So the flat earthers can take to the pulpit.

FWIW my strategy is to build a better church down the road. I don't know if I can make it more appealing than the megachurch dominated by trolls, but I think a lot of people are looking for something different.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#48

Post by rqs »

mcrad wrote: post #31
rqs wrote: post #9

> The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual behavior. I don't think this is the right target to blame. The much deeper reason is people ARE stupid, while think they are clever and correct. You, me, all the others included. And at the same time, the education once applied to us, failed. Simply put, it's not a technology problem, it's a sociology problem. Around the year 2002, when I was…

So you agree the business model is manipulative, but that the ones being manipulated should be the "target to blame" for their stupidity?

How about I put it this way: Tech companies (at least in the beginning) didn't realize how easy it is to turn some people into mobs.

Also notice, I'm not saying people are stupid so don't blame the business model.

I rather going to say: Go blame the business model, and while you at it, don't forget to also notify people that maybe they should be more wiser when posting stuff.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#49

Post by will4274 »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

"What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? " It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness. When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term. For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over thing…

> When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term.

What do you think when you read an article in a newspaper saying "an anonymous source at the state department who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation"? News organizations know how to make something out of nothing in print as well as online - so you're better off focusing on the identity of the speaker than the medium

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#50

Post by spacehome »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #42

"...Like Lanier’s book, though in a very different register, it risks presenting the Internet as both the manifestation and cause of all of our deepest problems..." A friend of mine sent me a link recently with some stuff that Taleb's currently working on. The internet, the collection of data storage and transmission instantaneously anywhere on the planet, is not a problem. The problem is that humans are hard-wired f…

Unfortunately, it looks like we're wired for mobs, too. Participants in mobs act very differently and self-report afterwards that the subjective experience is an altered state. It sounds like echos of an evolutionary history that had a fair bit of mobbing.
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