Myths about Social Media
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Myths about Social Media
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Re: Myths about Social Media
#2The noosphere is so young, so recently emerged. That a couple early aggressive/exploitative/disruptive signals would dominate & run amock is unsurprising. That we mistake the whole enterprise as maligned while it is only so few causing chaos is unsurprising but tragic.
I feel like we are all demanding too much, insisting on certainty & comfort. We both need to let these companies figure their own paths out- allow the diversity of their approaches- while also starting to let users band together & do their own moderation, create their own socialized defenses & overlays. I dont want to tell these companies what to do, how to handle these problems, but right now most of their terms of service prevent users & others from mounting any kind of their own defense. Ultimately the only people I trust to tell us who the bad users are are other users, and we're not all going to agree. I think that's ok, and that we should embrace sovereignty: we should let more democratic form of social-media-ing emerge.
This researcher has such a better problem redefinition than our simple fears project. I'd love to have more hope that the world could engage the real problems, could avoid the convenient frustrated blame-games & bully-pulpit regulation the drums of conflict & tension beat for.
Re: Myths about Social Media
#3I'd say the fundamental problem with social media is that current incentives strongly encourage companies to make bad social networks.
Cutting advertising and mass spying out of the picture could be enough to all but completely solve the problem. But there may be other ways to fix it. Maybe significantly increasing the liability and risk platforms are exposed to for widely-posted/shared content.
Re: Myths about Social Media
#4I posted this because of this interview Michael Bang Petersen did last October (there's a transcript but you have to click to see it, then scroll down to where Petersen appears):
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/does-socia...
I thought it was surprisingly excellent, with lots of insights cutting directly against the most hyped notions.
Re: Myths about Social Media
#5Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets:
Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media
No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false.
Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful
No, research suggests that online hate reflects offline frustrations that make them hateful both online & offline. The hateful are few in numbers but they are attracted to politics and, hence, are much more visible.
Myth 3: Social media are echo chambers
No, research shows that, for most, social media breaks the bubble. We are more connected to "the others" on social media than in our offline lives. That is why it feels unpleasant - because it is the most hateful "others" we meet.
Re: Myths about Social Media
#6No post body was provided.
Re: Myths about Social Media
#7Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets: Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false. Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful No, research suggests that online hate reflects…
Yeah, these are general features of mass media that predate the internet.
Much of the hysteria about social media is signal boosted by the traditional media establishment that it disrupted
Re: Myths about Social Media
#8[dead]
Re: Myths about Social Media
#9I'd say the fundamental problem with social media is that current incentives strongly encourage companies to make bad social networks. Cutting advertising and mass spying out of the picture could be enough to all but completely solve the problem. But there may be other ways to fix it. Maybe significantly increasing the liability and risk platforms are exposed to for widely-posted/shared content.
Rather than try to corner company's into regulating & providing speech through checks & balances on their profitability, I'd really like to see online speech be something that users are broadly capable of moderating independently. Most moderation & curation services & systems should be opt in & separate. And ideally should function across sites, allow us to comment & reveal problematic users that work across sites (or to ignore those who are un-invested, low quality sock puppets).
Trying to change what these companys are, what they do: it seems like a truly sisyphean struggle. I don't see any hope of coercing them into becoming better. To me, the onus to be a responsible, healthy, positive society lies on the members of society; we lack the technical starting place to begin to experience these platforms in our own manner, lack the ability to start to self govern. But the conventional attitude right now seems to be that heightened centralization, amplified stronger louder more-active regulation & clamping down, that, as you propose, bigger sticks is the only win. To me, the bigger stick option is mad, is rampant destruction; we cannot place all the responsibilities of society upon an entity. Society has to have it's own stake in here, we can't just pass the buck & demand someone else fix the social quagmires.
But society must be given a chance to defend itself. Something the currently freedomless, constrained, walled gardens quite explicitly forbid.
Re: Myths about Social Media
#10I think we do not have problem with different opinions, but instead we have problem of dogma's or in other words side1 does not talk to side2, as "open dialogue" with "stand open to be corrected" is gone.
News (especially MSM) is not doing it's job but instead doing psy-ops and further polarizing the society, while "alternative/poor/amateur media" (like Joe Rogan, etc,..) are "filling the gap" where for example Sanjay Gupta came from the other side and that was good, but we'd need this to happen a lot more ~100x, so then we would not need to reach to any totalitarian censorship which is further amplifying the problem and solving almost nothing (i.e. fact checkers are with very limited value, often biased and partial incomplete)