Don't let social media think for you • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#81

Post by qsort » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

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?…

> Why isn't the mob a top priority?

Part of that is the incentives going in the opposite direction, as other commenters have noted.

Even assuming they are in good faith, though, I believe it is an extremely difficult problem. Building and maintaining large scale communities is next to impossible, you can't just turn off a switch and make the mob go away, a mob is, by definition, out of control.

Historically, we have solved this problem by effectively limiting access to large scale communication, with small elites acting as gatekeepers. Social media tore down the metaphorical wall, allowing any random person to talk to anybody who will listen.

This is, by and large, a good thing. However, those elites did play a role, because they could keep each other in check and enforce standards of behavior that would prevent the worst abuses.

So the question is not how we go back to the 70s or something (yet again, the change is overall in the right direction), but how we can replace the missing piece. Needless to say, I don't even know where to start.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#82

Post by wayoutthere » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

seneca wrote: post #46

weezin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently deleted a lot of social media accounts. My concerns are any accounts I created for important things using social media accounts, and losing track of what behavior is publicly acceptable in the ever changing Overton window. I feel like the benefits to productivity and mental health will exceed those concerns greatly though.

> "losing track of what behavior is publicly acceptable in the ever changing Overton window" The largest benefit of abandoning social media is probably the realization that the "very online" type don't actually dictate social mores, and can (and should) be largely ignored. That feeling that the Twitter mob can tell you what is acceptable is "[letting] social media think for you", and is exactly the problem.

This is it. People who are “very online” are a small percentage of the population — one that is almost the polar opposite of people in meatspace. They tend to be a lot more isolated from society and radicalized by the echo chamber they exist in.

Those with strong offline relationships tend not to have time to participate in these communities enough to influence them.

I find the media is particularly egregious in giving these voices an outsized level of influence because journalists are lazy and source stories on Twitter and try to manufacture drama and page views. But this media is consumed by “less online” people which contributes to the view that those opinions are more prevalent than they really are.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#83

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #72

throwkeep wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

> Why has Twitter the company and its employees not taken action to deal with this? Because it's not their job to moderate this stuff. Angry, pissed off, outraged users are, from the perspective of social media companies, the best users. They refresh constantly (so more ad views), they come back constantly, and if they've gone away for too long, you can just figure out what's likely to piss them off the most, send th…

> it's Vegas in your pocket, without any of the regulations and rules Vegas casinos have to abide by

> I'm in favor of some regulation on this sort of stuff

You really nailed the problem but I am not so sure about your solution. The gambling industry's regulations do not do very much to reduce the volume of lives ruined by the gambling industry.

We've been gambling since the paleolithic period, and like other vices, its regulation serves largely to hide it from public view, rather than actually fix any social problems. Regulating social media in any meaningful way will do the same; compliance with these regulations will force the issue further into the corporate depths and away from public view.

We already know the social media firms collude with governments around the world in secretive tribunals to deal with issues of "national security." We don't want to encourage further developments on this front.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#84

Post by splithalf » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

randphys wrote: post #71

jonfromsf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it really only the job of government to make ethical decisions? Surely companies and employees can and should try to be ethical. Just because there is profit involved doesn't mean that we should throw out our humanity.

Work requires compromising ourselves. We do this for survival. There is no way to make most tech ethical. It’s an economic reality that is quite evident in the historical data. When was the last time we had an ethical tech company? We have apple, facebook and google, all evil in slightly different ways, all taking more from humanity than they give back.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#85

Post by mavsman » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #57

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…

> Each individual voice may be perfectly right. So-and-so may really have done wrong. But did they really do such wrong that the 10,000th voice is needed? This is how I felt yesterday reading the repl.it thread.

If you don't feel like it will perpetuate it, what thread are you talking about?

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#86

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

abnry wrote: post #79

dionidium wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the mob can literally set you on fire, then you should be worried about the mob, but, crucially, the mob on social media can't actually hurt you ; they can only convince other people to hurt you. It's those other people , the people who hold positions of responsibility and authority -- your boss, your dean, anybody with the power to hire or fire you -- who are really responsible here. The shame of cancel culture…

And what drives these decision makers to act so shamefully is the reputational economy. Yes, sometimes a boycott will damage the bottom line, but most often it is the damage to one's status within the wider society that is being protected by the decision to fire someone. If you personally want to avoid this, reduce your dependence on reputation.

Reputation is also often the cause for corporations venturing into "anti-racism," and censorship territory.

When the telecoms were buying up media companies and film/tv studios, suddenly all of their most expensive assets (actors & personalities) started falling out due to cancel culture. Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Rosanne Barr, etc., must have driven the execs at AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon completely nuts. The highest paid CEO used to be CBS's, until they also got him on cancel culture. If CBS's most profitable asset, Judge Judy, were a man, she'd already have been cancelled a decade ago. (She's fought with CBS execs over her exorbitant contract for over a decade now.)

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#87

Post by slightwinder » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

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?…

> Why has Twitter the company and its employees not taken action to deal with this?

They did. They tried many things, still do. But it's hard to fix without wasting the whole platform and becoming another reddit. What makes Twitter great is also what makes it aweful.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#88

Post by throw67456756 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

arrozconcosas wrote: post #52

Social media is great for finding people with similar interests. I like to cook a certain type of food, and there is a community there of people who share ideas and the dishes they have made. I like it. It's great. If 'hate' is your 'interest', then you can find lots of people with similar hate online.

I used to approach social media this way but lately it's become miserable. Politics has seeped into every corner, including real life, and everyone seems radicalized to one extreme or another. For example, I like art, most artists are leftists, same thing with writing and writers, and a few other areas. My views do not align to any particular side. Now years ago, this wouldn't have been a problem, most people did not have a problem being friends with people of different views. But now, if I want to participate in any community I have to bite my tongue. I see people getting bullied and ostracized for the most minor stuff. There's a mob waiting around every corner. I have to keep any politics completely out of any accounts (instead I know have one for just politics, which probably makes it sound obsessed, but what else is there to do). In some, like writing, I've stopped participating. Meanwhile the communities just get more and more toxic and political and it sucks all the fun away to even consume them.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#89

Post by mavsman » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #76

There are so many comments here blaming Twitter while blissfully unaware that HN fuels the exact same online outrage. Almost every day there's a " did bad thing to me" article on the front page and people immediately pick up their pitchforks and join the mob. You cannot fix the problem without acknowledging that we are all part of it.

These are two really good points. I feel much more innocent attacking a large corporation than I do individuals.

> You cannot fix the problem without acknowledging that we are all part of it.

I think this one is even more important because it's more far-reaching and applicable. It's easy to point fingers but hard to look inside and cleanse the inner vessel.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#90

Post by qsort » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

randphys wrote: post #71

jonfromsf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it really only the job of government to make ethical decisions? Surely companies and employees can and should try to be ethical. Just because there is profit involved doesn't mean that we should throw out our humanity.

The point is, there are a lot of conflicting ways to be 'ethical'. It's not like we have a universal loss function we should minimize.

Any moral dilemma slightly more complicated than 'is killing wrong' is a tradeoff, and sometimes you can't blame people if they prefer a point on the curve different from the point on the curve you like.

Maybe in this case they are just wrong -- I have no sympathy for Twitter either. But I'd rather companies, in general, not try and play God. Even more so, I really would rather the government not try and play God.