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Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

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Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#81

Post by klyrs »

mc32 wrote: post #79
shadowfox wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The democratization is the problem. There is usually little due process In context of what the parent post, are you under the impression that gay people were cancelled after going through some due process?

I'm not under that impression. But I am under the impression that if we had had something like the democratized cancellation we have today that it would have been much, much worse. People having done a bad thing in the past does not excuse doing a bad thing today.

Are you suggesting that people who have experienced democratized cancellation for multiple generations would be much, much worse off compared to populations that did not experience that treatment?

edit: never did I say that a previous wrong justifies a wrong today. I'm challenging your assertion that this is "new." At the same time, I do think that some cases of so-called "cancel culture" are just fine, specifically when it's no different from any other business owner booting a customer for being abusive towards staff or other customers. Some examples of so-called "cancel culture" are in fact bad, and I agree that folks who said dumb shit 20 years ago should get some leeway if they've changed in the meantime.

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#82

Post by anamax »

bastardoperator wrote: post #24
samlevine wrote: post #18

I don't want social media to censor me, people I want to communicate with or people I don't ever want to communicate with. I want tools that help me communicate with other people. Learn things, get exposed to new ideas. And we can't have that with a huge system designed to prevent people from saying the wrong things. Our ability to communicate and learn freely is dependent on the ability for people we disagree with t…

Funny, I'm not censored on any platform. Then again I don't make violent threats, spread misinformation, use racist language, or harass people. I feel free to have these discussions, and I do all the time. What's the problem? You can communicate freely, but that doesn't mean there isn't consequences for things you speak and nobody has to host you while you're broadcasting it. I find this type of argument devolves int…

It doesn't matter whether you're offended by the word "bastardchild."

What matters is that I'm offended. Heck, "bastardchild" doesn't even have to offend me because it is clearly offensive to bastards and possibly children.

Your "justification" for such offensive behavior is no different than the offensive explanations by folks who wanted to have lawn jockeys.

How dare you. Your account should be deleted.

That's how cancel culture works.

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#84

Post by Krasnol »

wowokay wrote: post #70
Krasnol wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of argument is that? It's not like those people invented electrical power. They spread lies which cost lives. Every day. People DIE because of misinformation. Snake oil salesman were no heroes of humanity.

Information is subjective. Do you care what the pin to unlock my door is? If someone had a post asking for a unlock code and I posted mine that would be information to me but could be construed as misinformation by them. If someone makes a post about religion wouldn’t an atheist consider that misinformation?

FYI: Your weak attempt to water down scientific facts never worked on intelligent people. After the last years of Donald Trump and Covid, it doesn't work on even more people. The only remaining few this derailment attempt works for are the target group for misinformation and they don't have to be derailed further.

Think about that for a moment.

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#85

Post by specialist »

avgDev wrote: post #31
mellosouls wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this type of argument devolves into "I want to be a crappy person and not be judged for it or face consequences" Whereas I find your counter-argument devolves into "Crappy people are those who disagree with my point of view and they should face consequences"... The truth is there are extremes on both sides; but the censorship seems to be overwhelmingly driven by one.

The whole "cancel culture" concept has literally be around for years, it was just marketed now and used for politics. Humans have been cancelling people and things for eternity. People with extreme views that did not align with the majority were always pushed away. This even happened in medicine and science.

Socrates and Jesus are two noteworthy examples.

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#86

Post by specialist »

jeffrogers wrote: post #36
bastardoperator wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I'm not censored on any platform. Then again I don't make violent threats, spread misinformation, use racist language, or harass people. I feel free to have these discussions, and I do all the time. What's the problem? You can communicate freely, but that doesn't mean there isn't consequences for things you speak and nobody has to host you while you're broadcasting it. I find this type of argument devolves int…

What do you call it when you make a post that you assume your friends can see and only some are presented your post?

Listserv? Distribution list? Phone tree?

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#87

Post by austincheney »

JoshCole wrote: post #77
austincheney wrote: post #23

The solution is simple. Exchange the client/server model for a peer-to-peer model. By peer-to-peer and I mean literally IP to IP and not something like instant messenger that bounces messages through a central server. Only then can you assure a fix to interference. This requires: * Routes - both parties to be on IPv6 or either party to have something like port address translation on a IPv6 interface. * Identity - Thi…

Calling the problems faced by social media simple is the sort of hubris that only comes about because of the Dunning–Kruger effect. You're underestimating the complexity of the problem because you're under-informed. Some aspects of your proposal have been tried before. They aren't new. History indicates that your proposal fails to achieve long term product-market fit. It also fails this entirely because of being dece…

The problem is simple and two fold:

1) Social media has a profit motive to increase engagement

2) Social media has an expensive moderation problem

The solution is also simple, but certainly not easy. There are technology problems to solve.

When you remove access to the user content from the service provider they have nothing to moderate and cannot increase engagement through manipulation of the message (algorithms).

Most people (current developers) refuse to see this simplicity because alternatives are a world directly in conflict with their current livelihoods. This is a behavior called Cognitive Conservatism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_(belief_revision)

I will explain the alternative like this: content on demand directly at the source. Its like what Netflix did to cable and network television. Users take the content when they want it a la carte without waiting for a content provider to prescribe a fixed schedule. Instead of waiting for a media service to make features or content available, or even for their users to make user content available via upload, in a peer-to-peer reality the content is available the moment a user allows remote access. Facebook is like old cable television. You have to wait and hope the desired content appears when you want it to.

In a peer-to-peer world if you want family photos simply use your peer-to-peer application to connect to the remote family member's hard drive and browse or copy all those family photos you want without any web service in the middle. No uploads to Facebook. Just allow reading from a file system directory to authorized users across the internet. Now imagine that directness also applies to messaging, application access, video calls, and anything else digital. The best part of this model is that personal opinions will not dictate remote availability and simultaneously you have privacy in a way that isn't feasible on the current web.

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#88

Post by jeffrogers »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #60
jeffrogers wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were making the choice as to which friends you wanted to hear from or updates you wanted to receive from you're friends, then I take you point. When someone else, or their algorithm, makes these decisions that is something else and it may actually veer into censorship.

Hm. This argument falls flat to me. A feed is considered editorialized by you, but nearly any combo of content is editorialized to some degree. A magazine makes editorial decisions on where in the magazine articles are placed... this does not mean its censorship, it just means you haven't read the whole thing. Also, the tools exists on all of these social media products to actually go and check on your friends' pages…

Well, however someone might consider feeds, we don’t have the ability to truly take control of them. At least in the case of Facebook, they mostly decide what we see and they very deliberately make the case that they are not a media company like the magazines. They are claiming they are not editorializing because the machines are making the decisions. (Albeit with instructions from their engineers.)

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#89

Post by jeffrogers »

specialist wrote: post #86
jeffrogers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call it when you make a post that you assume your friends can see and only some are presented your post?

Listserv? Distribution list? Phone tree?

Those are different. In those cases content is sent to the intended recipients. Whether they see it or not is up to the receivers. In the case of some social media platforms, the platforms decide who should be sent the content, regardless of the sender’s intent.

Re: Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media

#90

Post by JoshCole »

austincheney wrote: post #87
JoshCole wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the problems faced by social media simple is the sort of hubris that only comes about because of the Dunning–Kruger effect. You're underestimating the complexity of the problem because you're under-informed. Some aspects of your proposal have been tried before. They aren't new. History indicates that your proposal fails to achieve long term product-market fit. It also fails this entirely because of being dece…

The problem is simple and two fold: 1) Social media has a profit motive to increase engagement 2) Social media has an expensive moderation problem The solution is also simple, but certainly not easy. There are technology problems to solve. When you remove access to the user content from the service provider they have nothing to moderate and cannot increase engagement through manipulation of the message (algorithms).…

Right. So in the example you just listed you hop online to play video games and because your friend group has your IP you get DDoSed during your competitive match and you don't get rank one in some video game. Instead the person who DDoSed you gets rank one.

So you arrange to have your IP address changed and you remove the people who had it and that works for a time, but it turns out that if they know you're username they can use that to discover your IP through the social graph. So it happens again and you realize what is going on and so you change you're username.

And for a time that works, but one day you're streaming to thousands of your fans and you accidentally tab to the wrong window and your username becomes visible and your IP gets leaked again and you get DDoSed.

You're not a technical person, but you're tired of it. A non-decentralized service hides your IP. You sign up. Because it is monetized it is free and so the sign up experience is frictionless.

We started in your world. There was a problem. The resolution of that problem resulted in leaving your world. In a market place in which everyone was allowed to compete with each other someone else offered a higher utility service than you did. Their service also had the benefit that poor people can use it, while your service is subtly oppressive and elitist requiring you to own resources like a stable internet connection, a router, a computer, and other things which many people don't have in order to have a complete experience online. So you were lower utility and you oppressed poor people.

We take as a given that you solved every technical problem. Your simple solution didn't work. So now you're going to have to complicate it. Also, this isn't hypothetical, because this evolution has literally played out historically already. So if you don't like it or don't find it to be realistic you can be frustrated with reality and history and humans. Because it be like that.

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