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Don't let social media think for you

disgustinglyoptimistic.com

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Re: Don't let social media think for you

#61

Post by bluGill »

wussboy wrote: post #48
bluGill wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found facebook became more valuable to me once I decided I would only post about things I want my friends to know. That is pictures of my kid's new bike, or a video of the baby babbling. Facebook does a very good job of ensuring my close friends and family keep up with the cute little things in life. I'm still working on getting out of all the groups that waste space. Sadly many useful things have moved to facebook…

Interesting. I had the opposite experience to this. Even though all I ever wanted to know about was what was happening to my friend's kids, my feed was taken over with political and social justice outrage. Outrage sells.

It matters what everyone clicks like on. So you need to be careful there, and also help others be careful.

There is way too much political outrage for sure. You just have to wade through it. Hopefully you can join me in spreading the facebook is about family message and get others to stop posting politics. (this is hard, it is so tempting to bait your political friends)

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#62

Post by croon »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #18
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to let you know a bit about the reality you share with others. The stuff on the news is often things that are affecting others directly (do you want to avoid the area of town with unmasked protesters?) and indirectly (Is your neighbor going to increase racism towards Asian Americans in part because of folks linking a virus to a country?). News doesn't always have the most important things to you, but it…

> 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 so, you may need to keep at least somewhat up to date on current events. How would you do so without news?

Further; painting all "news" with the same brush is getting real old. It's not a single organism.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#63

Post by throwkeep »

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…

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? Instead spending their time creating tools and methods to censor non-mob participants? (e.g. those who were exploring the lab leak hypothesis) Why isn't the mob a top priority?

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#64

Post by hirundo »

Brendinooo wrote: post #56

After reading the quote at the beginning, the article didn't go the way I thought it would. I end up seeing a lot more shades of gray because of my experience on Twitter. If you ever ask yourself "how could someone possibly believe...", that someone is on Twitter and probably wants to tell you why. I generally operate under the stance of "the platform is neutral, it's what we make of it that matters". I'm not entirel…

> I generally operate under the stance of "the platform is neutral, it's what we make of it that matters". I'm not entirely sure that's true

I left the platform when I found that neutrality not to be true. I could tolerate the insanity from other users by simply not following them. But when Twitter itself started to censor direct messages due to links in them to an article they did not approve of, I made of it an exit.

I will gladly participate in a neutral forum that includes some of the wonderful voices I used to follow on Twitter. I really hope that one or more emerges that are driven by protocols rather than proprietary platforms.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#65

Post by cindarin »

jiofih wrote: post #51
cindarin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no analysis here. There's no detail whatsoever; those are intentionally omitted, supposedly to protect the readers from being bored. Instead, the blogger offers only opinion with no support at best, and falsehoods presented as truth at worst. I choose not to let them think for me. I will not disavow social media simply because some blogger expressed their own irrational, negative opinions of it.

Very edgy. But you’re not making any sense. The article has a clear message about mob mentality which you’re simply choosing to ignore. It’s an opinion piece, it doesn’t need “truths”. You can disagree if you want, but not discredit it.

I am ignoring nothing. It is obvious that the author is stating that social media causes breakdowns into unruly mobs. I disagree with that sentiment. The author and I have differing opinions.

However, the author decided to post a longform article on the topic with no evidence to support their claims, and in some cases, outright lies. I don't believe that claims should go unchallenged, especially when made on such flimsy ground.

Don't allow your biases and reactionary tendencies to force you into the mob mentality you claim to stand against.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#66

Post by dataviz1000 »

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…

Remember Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" from secondary school? [0] Fundamentally these coordinated social media attacks are witch hunts. When the 'good feminists' viciously attacked Margret Atwood accusing her of being a 'bad feminist' as she strongly supported due process defending a male professor being accused of sexually impropriety is the moment when these modern witch hunts went too far. More so than when Reddit misidentified the Boston Bomber or other instances. The moment they attacked Margret Atwood they attacked the very idea of due process which she strongly warned women about in her book "The Handmaid's Tale". Nonetheless, it is part of the human condition how we organize into social structures whether being a small town in New England or a capitalist economy to join groups attacking someone else since it prevents the focus of the attack being on ourselves.

The only way out is through due process and supporting it even for the worst of the worst.

(EDIT: Weak downvoting this comment without responding with a counter comment.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#67

Post by corndoge »

throwkeep wrote: post #63
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…

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?…

Engagement

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#68

Post by jonfromsf »

throwkeep wrote: post #63
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…

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?…

because it makes money. Why would they want to stop it? People have a weird mental model where they think private companies are the government. They're just a group of people getting paid to make money for investors.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#69

Post by BeetleB »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #11
tester34 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but what's the point of watching news? why bother?

The point is to let you know a bit about the reality you share with others. The stuff on the news is often things that are affecting others directly (do you want to avoid the area of town with unmasked protesters?) and indirectly (Is your neighbor going to increase racism towards Asian Americans in part because of folks linking a virus to a country?). News doesn't always have the most important things to you, but it…

As a former news junkie, I can confidently state that getting a view of the (rest of the) world by watching the news will give you an extremely skewed view of the world. Just look at how much coverage they give to one event (e.g. the recent Israel-Gaza conflict) vs others with an order of magnitude more casualties to get an idea of the skewness.

An exercise I came up with years ago: On a piece of paper write down the most important issues in the world. If they match the exposure that the typical news media provides, then you've lost the ability to have an independent perspective.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#70

Post by root_axis »

Live by the sword die by the sword. The author in question wanted to share and cash in on her story by selling it to the masses, when someone among the masses reacted with very mild criticism to her work she antagonized them publicly and the masses didn't like that. Oh well, be nice online if you want to harvest the denizens of the internet to make a living.
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