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Toxicity on Social Media
41–50 of 136 posts
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#42This proposal assumes that the social media of the next five years will be anything like the social media of the last ten.
It's an interesting initiative though. One that I also think could have unintended consequences that would additionally seed greater distrust in the media—which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I imagine that the people who already sense this distrust and distaste toward the impression of polarization that the media gives are becoming less and less likely to subject themselves to the nude opinions of anonymous strangers online.
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#43New social trends and technologies frequently cause some level of moral panic. Moral panics of the past have been caused by all sorts of things, that now seem rather quaint: novels, bicycles, comics, television, videos, heavy metal, dungeons and dragons etc. But social media feels very different. It really does seem to be causing major societal disruption.
Social media is more like the printing press than any of those things. It radically changed the economics of distributing information. The printing press brought down the Catholic church and the Kings of Europe. The disruption caused by social media and disintermediated free distribution is just getting started.
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#44OK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly: > The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor. That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're mo…
But that assumes a black-and-white viewpoint - one or the other. But there's a big nuanced gray area that is underrepresented everywhere.
Take immigration or refugees - the obvious thing is that you're either for or against it. But there's so many things in between, so much nuance, etc. And that takes reasonable adults to think and talk about.
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#45OK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly: > The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor. That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're mo…
> OK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly:
> The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor.
> That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're moderates in the sense that anti- is the conventional position to take. But they have opinions.
I don't follow your argument (which is different to the one in the article):
There's a small noisy pro-side, a small noisy anti-side and a majority, but not necessarily a moderate majority!
The article doesn't say anything about the majority being moderates, does it?
> Otherwise, if they're truly moderate, but are frightened into silence supposedly, what would they be saying if they dared? "Everybody listen to me, I have no strong opinion on this matter"?
Not necessarily true; there's a noisy pro minority, a noisey anti- minority and a silent majority. Who know if they are pro or anti or equally split?
And even if they were actually moderate, they could see opinions like "everyone should have guns" and "no one should have guns", and keep their majority moderate opinion of "people should be allowed guns depending on whether they cross some objective line into dangerous or neglectful behaviour".
That's both a moderate and a majority position, and yet you won't see it expressed in a forum because all the noise is being made by the two extremes.
The argument you're making is that the silent majority must necessarily be moderates, but that's not a requirement.
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
You: Other people are unhinged hyperbolists. Here, let me characterize them hyperbolically to prove it, therefore I am the calm rational one and by the way, civilization may collapse and the CIA might be behind this. I mean wtf. Is this your parody account?
You see, you're doing the thing. Every bit of hyperbole I mentioned is practically quoted verbatim from some thread or another here, it is what people believe, and you can't even bring yourself to approach me in good faith because I've committed wrongthink by defending the existence of social media even implicitly. The CIA and other governments are running influence campaigns across social media. The links between th…
i disagree that people would prefer a fascist dictatorship if it meant social media was done away with. i haven't ever seen that opinion anywhere on the entire internet.
however i agree that the CIA and other governments are running influence campaigns on social media. i think that's been proven actually.
the answer, as always, isn't 'destroy decentralized communication' or public discourse online. it's to have tighter regulations on how algorithms are configured. what's pushed vs. what's suppressed because it's obviously intentionally inflammatory/trolling.
this is an issue requiring extreme nuance. but to say that being worried about how social media today affects society is like 'the satanic panic' is kind of absurd.
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#47New social trends and technologies frequently cause some level of moral panic. Moral panics of the past have been caused by all sorts of things, that now seem rather quaint: novels, bicycles, comics, television, videos, heavy metal, dungeons and dragons etc. But social media feels very different. It really does seem to be causing major societal disruption.
The current social panic always feels very different. But people literally believe social media is the sole cause of all of modern society's problems, that it's a mind-control platform and a cancer on society. I've seen people say they would welcome a fascist dictatorship if only it meant destroying social media. I've seen people say they want "algorithms" made illegal. It's obvious from the hyperbole around the disc…
It comes down to the kind of society we want to create, not some existential threat. Social media has an outsized effect on everything from the food people eat to the medical care they receive. The incentives of social media create a great number of distortions within the social media sphere but also in the real world.
Is traveling to Tokyo just to sprint across the Shibuya Scramble for a slightly less-crowded Instagram selfie really a model of the good life? Should someone like Zuckerberg have this level of control over the activities and minds of the human race? Is Mr. Beast a role model for children by industrializing the exploitation of human virtue?
Human social pressure and follower mindsets are part of the human experience but systematically gaming those instincts in real-time so money flows to a social media company at all costs in some strange digital sharecropping scheme is what’s new and the hierarchy of others trying to capture a small piece of that pie creates these distortions.
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#48OK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly: > The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor. That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're mo…
I have a similar intuition to yours. On many topics it isn't so much self-censorship, it is simply that for many people there is rightly no motivation to go around announcing their nuanced, moderate, or no-opinion-but-unimpressed-by-extremes positions.
Even when people do have strong opinions on a topic (and a moderate opinion can also be strong), most people have better things to do with their lives than to go around blasting their opinions to the world as a hobby. And the few in this camp that do are not very likely to be amplified by the engagement algorithms.
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#49OK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly: > The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor. That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're mo…
Perhaps this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
Re: Toxicity on Social Media
#50New social trends and technologies frequently cause some level of moral panic. Moral panics of the past have been caused by all sorts of things, that now seem rather quaint: novels, bicycles, comics, television, videos, heavy metal, dungeons and dragons etc. But social media feels very different. It really does seem to be causing major societal disruption.
So did all those other things. And many of them did cause major societal disruption. And most of those were for the worse.