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The case against social media is stronger than you think

arachnemag.substack.com

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Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#91

Post by boplicity »

blitz_skull wrote: post #24

The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.

Plenty of people are perfectly willing to be publicly despicable online in their social media accounts, using their real names. Pretty easy to find them.

The problem is the leaders of the large social media organizations do not care about the consequences of their platforms enough to change how they operate. They're fine with hosting extremist and offensive content, and allowing extremists to build large followings using their platforms. Heck, they even encourage it!

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#92

Post by rightbyte »

armchairhacker wrote: post #83
Llamamoe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like regardless of all else, the fact of algorithmic curation is going to be bad, especially when it's contaminated by corporate and/or political interests. We have evolved to parse information as if its prevalence is controlled by how much people talk about it, how acceptable opinions are to voice, how others react to them. Algorithmic social media intrinsically destroy that. They change how information sprea…

No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation? Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who…

> Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors.

If users chose who to follow this is hardly a problem. Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#94

Post by cindyllm »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #93

You reap what you sew. Stupid and uninformed voices receiving equivalent status to wise scientific experts was a mistake. Witnessing the flat Earth crowd growing over the decades encapsulates everything wrong with social media.

[dead]

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#96

Post by armchairhacker »

rightbyte wrote: post #92
armchairhacker wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation? Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who…

> Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. If users chose who to follow this is hardly a problem. Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine.

How will users choose who to follow? This was a real problem when I tried Mastodon/Lemmy/Bluesky, I saw lots of chronological posts but none of them were interesting.

Unfortunately, classical forums may have dealt with spam better because there were less people online back then. Classical forums that exist today have mitigations and/or are overrun with spam.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#97

Post by NoahZuniga »

slg wrote: post #62
NoahZuniga wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might live in an extremely free country and have no fear about political prosecution but still fear social prosecution. If someone I was friends with made racist remarks, they wouldn't be prosecuted for that. But I would stop being their friend. Similarly if I was the only one in my friend group against racism and advocate firefly against it, they would probably stop being my friends.

>If someone I was friends with made racist remarks, they wouldn't be prosecuted for that. But I would stop being their friend. So you want your friend to be able to anonymously express their racism while being able to hide it from you? I can't imagine advocating for that as a desired goal rather than a negative side effect. >Similarly if I was the only one in my friend group against racism and advocate firefly agains…

These were just extreme examples to indicate that there can be social repercussions to dissenting.

Maybe a more convincing example is that if I advocate for making it easier to build housing because that will lower the cost of housing and many of my friends are homeowners, they might really not like me because lowering the cost of housing directly lowers their net worth.

Are these people evil for not wanting to lose their retirement savings (wrapped up in their home)?

Edit: also

> So you want your friend to be able to anonymously express their racism while being able to hide it from you?

While on the specific example of racism I'm pretty convinced of my moral correctness, I am not bold enough to declare that every bit of my worldview is the universally correct one. I am also not so bold to say that I will always be instantly convinced of my incorrectnes by a friend challenging my worldview (if they actually do have a better stance on some thing). My conclusion is that my friend should have some place to platform his better opinion without (having to fear) alienating me. And the only way to achieve this as far as I know is anonymous platforms.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#98

Post by gerdesj »

"In conclusion: " "...in particular in the U.S., but probably across Europe as well. ..."

The world is rather larger than the US and Europe. I physically endure myopia and frankly Mr Witkin seems to figuratively suffer from it.

I need only mention the name: TikTok.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#99

Post by cramsession »

nicce wrote: post #80
cramsession wrote: post #59

Without social media, we'd be left with mainstream media, which is a very narrow set of channels that those in power can control. Despite rampant censorship on social media, it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice.

Without social media, people would go out and talk face-to-face or even arrange meetings, like before social media.

That's not media, it's communication with people you know.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#100

Post by cramsession »

n1b0m wrote: post #75
cramsession wrote: post #59

Without social media, we'd be left with mainstream media, which is a very narrow set of channels that those in power can control. Despite rampant censorship on social media, it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice.

Its still propaganda just from Russian and Chinese bots.

The vast majority of bots are from Israel.
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