10 ms·

How We Broke Democracy

13 points by metafunctor 10y ago

pohl 10y ago
My first thought after election day was that Brandolini's Law had been successfully weaponized, and that Firaxis should get busy adding it to the tech tree in Civ 6. Sam Biddle wrote an article[1] in The Intercept recently where he uses a phrase that would be a great name for this new tech:"Internet-Augmented Ignorance" The clickbait phenomenon appears to be a much bigger problem today than it did a week ago. A week ago, I thought of it as a mere annoyance. Now I fear it is an existential threat – especially in light of Zuckerberg's take: "I think the idea that fake news on Facebook—of which it’s a very small amount of the content—influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea." [1] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging-you-please-make-yourself-better/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging-you-...
- dictum 10y ago
  "Sam Biddle wrote an article [on] the clickbait phenomenon" Well, leave it to the experts.
  - pohl 10y ago
    The article that I linked to may be one that not everybody agrees with, but it is a well-written and thoughtful article that isn't anywhere near the clickbait-farm model. If the problem were merely that people selectively shared thoughtful but biased articles within their own information bubble, the problem would not be so severe. The clickbait problem, in contrast, is that people share – within milliseconds - articles that are designed merely to siphon money from that dopamine hit, with no good-faith effort to even make any sense whatsoever.
- cowardlydragon 10y ago
  What is the big-O of rolling back bullshit viral posts? The viral posts get to spread organically, at a rate through the social graph equal to the appeal chance. However, to refute it, you must first research the response with sufficient veracity / references. That is probably the original 10x. But then you must move the refutation, which seems to have a much reduced virality factor, to the necessary places the viral bullshit spread. That would require constant searches of the graph. If the graph is "secured", then locating the instances/replications of the viral bullshit could be practically impossible. Even if you had access, the viral bullshit can replicate, since the very thing that makes it viral makes it memorable, and you'd need to do constant sweeps of the social graph to repress it.
ryanx435 10y ago
this analysis completely ignores the fact that reddit.com is the 8th largest website in the united states and a primary source of news for large portions of its users. And I'm sure that pretty much every reddit user ever can attest that multiple viewpoints on political issues were HEAVILY debated and often led to flamewars. just saying that this is direct evidence against the article's conclusions. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com
- pohl 10y ago
  That sounds like something that needs to be measured in order to be claimed. I'm a reddit user, and I confine myself mostly to /r/rust Your observation that lively debate exists somewhere on Reddit is valid; no doubt about that. It's a stretch to suggest that this is the common case for Reddit users, though.
- rjeli 10y ago
  I strongly disagree re: heavily debated. /r/politics was literally moderated by paid shills. /r/the_donald and /r/hillaryclinton immediately banned and deleted all dissenting comments. Most subreddits explicitly chose a side and deleted opposing viewpoints, e.g. /r/trees deleting anti-Clinton (pro-weed) posts. To me, this is just more evidence of the polarization of politics (I am obviously on the right side, and my opponent is so abhorrent that silencing them is justified).
- bbctol 10y ago
  A flamewar is not a real connection of opposing sides that lets each understand the other, it's a progressive back-and-forth of increasingly simplified versions of the other's position until both sides hate each other more than when they started. It's still a part of the echo chamber phenomenon; just because there are people who hate each other shouting at each other, doesn't mean the inherent structure of the medium won't make each more rigid in their views.
  - judahmeek 10y ago
    I'm hoping that platforms like Pol.is can lead to a better future: https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq
mamon 10y ago
It's funny how leftists think that democracy is "broken" because they favourite candidate has lost democratic elections :) The truth is exactly the opposite: the fact that candidate so despised by elites, media, lobbysts has won with votes of common people is a sign that the democracy is working better than ever.
- plandis 10y ago
  It sounds like you didn't read the article which was more about news bubbles rather than being upset about one candidate or the other. Why not give the article a shot before insulting "the left"?
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    Why do you assume that? The conclusion sounds correct, the bubbles favor candidates that have no chance otherwise, because the bubbles protect people from outside influence. Essentially making "democracy" more "democratic".
    - pohl 10y ago
      I believe, as many do, that the health of a democracy is a function of the degree to which the citizenry is informed. Votes were cast, yes, and a candidate was selected. Those are necessary conditions for a healthy democracy – but not sufficient. The candidate that was selected showed himself during the campaign to be entirely unmoored from factual reality or consistency, and somehow he paid no political consequences for that. This is important for reasons above & beyond whether one's own candidate won or lost.
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        True. But don't forget how flawed Hillary was as a candidate. All the scandals. Too uncharismatic and un-empathetic to really resonate with voters. (It would not be a stretch to compare her to Kerry in this category.) She was completely an establishment candidate at a time of great anti-establishment sentiment. And the DNC put her on the express path to the nomination, which turned off a big chunk of her own party, and thereby (I strongly suspect) reduced turnout. With all those flaws, it's a measure of Trump's weakness that Hillary came as close as she did...
pfranz 10y ago
One other contributor (and I hear this often repeated but rarely substantiated) was 24 news. There's only so many facts to present (and facts are difficult to find and vet). To fill the extra time they focused more on pundits and opinions. Since this was now a majority of the content each side got stronger and more polarized. I still think this has a stronger effect than people realize because not everyone uses computers. I try to do what they recommend and it's tough to listen to both sides. They start with the basis you're already supporting them so they skip the "foundation" of their argument and the content generally is lies and condescension for the other (to be clear, I'm talking about both sides).
- noobiemcfoob 10y ago
  I don't believe the issue is an actual dearth of facts. The reality is (and presumably always will be) there are far too many facts to report them all, particularly in an entertaining way. Editors must make a selection of which facts are relevant and interesting enough to make it into... whatever it is they're editing. When that's political news, that selection bias becomes more important. And in today's age, it can be so extreme that both sides are operating with inconsistent perspectives. Not because someone is lying or misleading. /Then you add lying and misleading and the whole thing is a dumpster fire.
  - pohl 10y ago
    Also worth mentioning: hours upon hours of free, unedited broadcast of raw campaign rally footage and stump speeches.
  - bbctol 10y ago
    There's too many facts and not enough truth. There are enough individual facts, anecdotes, and incidents out there to support any possible narrative, and make people believe anything without directly lying to them. It's a serious problem of the information age that we have yet to fix.
  - pfranz 10y ago
    Yes, there's more raw data there, but it's not always useful until it's aggregated and analyzed. Not everyone has time to sift through raw CSPAN footage or census data (I try). People (myself included) rely on sources for that. If some breaking news is happening, spotty raw data from the front lines can be really misleading about what's actually happening. You can also see the money draining out of traditional long-form reporting (and polls). These outlets more and more rely on rhetoric, opinions, and emotions instead of facts. I think part of it is that incentives are misaligned. I didn't want to throw shade on one side, but the Les Moonves quote, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." I think in addition to a news businesses focusing on being the best and financially successful, there's focus in politics where the only goal for each side is on winning instead of being right or living up to some ideals.
dv_dt 10y ago
I think the humans have been dividing themselves up into tribes for a long time. While technology isn't completely blameless, Technology does provide another avenue where humans establish and patrol boundaries via social cues. And those cues can maybe be magnified by tech and exploited by political parties on both sides. I found this podcast particularly interesting (though maybe not 100% correct), but it discusses interesting urban/rural social and cultural boundaries. And I think it's fairly perceptive in the observation that completely unrelated political issues are bound together simply because they happened to fall on different sides of that cultural divide. I think that divide had formed long before the internet and certainly social media. It was also recorded just before the election which additionally makes for some prophetic elements. Cracked Podcast #148 http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-country/ http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-country/
- smpetrey 10y ago
  I completely agree. Humans will be humans and we will always have tribes. And that's okay. What needs to change is modern voting systems to accomadte the growing fractions of views. Such as, The Alternative Vote (Instant Run-off) [1] Also, The Cracked podcast is so fantastic! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE
roboneal 10y ago
The U.S. may appear to be a broken democracy to most but it is a functional constitutional republic. This was was the purposeful intent of the founders to safeguard the sovereign interests of the individual states.

13 points by metafunctor 10y ago

pohl 10y ago

My first thought after election day was that Brandolini's Law had been successfully weaponized, and that Firaxis should get busy adding it to the tech tree in Civ 6. Sam Biddle wrote an article[1] in The Intercept recently where he uses a phrase that would be a great name for this new tech:"Internet-Augmented Ignorance" The clickbait phenomenon appears to be a much bigger problem today than it did a week ago. A week ago, I thought of it as a mere annoyance. Now I fear it is an existential threat – especially in light of Zuckerberg's take: "I think the idea that fake news on Facebook—of which it’s a very small amount of the content—influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea." [1] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging-you-please-make-yourself-better/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging-you-...

dictum 10y ago
"Sam Biddle wrote an article [on] the clickbait phenomenon" Well, leave it to the experts.
- pohl 10y ago
  The article that I linked to may be one that not everybody agrees with, but it is a well-written and thoughtful article that isn't anywhere near the clickbait-farm model. If the problem were merely that people selectively shared thoughtful but biased articles within their own information bubble, the problem would not be so severe. The clickbait problem, in contrast, is that people share – within milliseconds - articles that are designed merely to siphon money from that dopamine hit, with no good-faith effort to even make any sense whatsoever.
cowardlydragon 10y ago
What is the big-O of rolling back bullshit viral posts? The viral posts get to spread organically, at a rate through the social graph equal to the appeal chance. However, to refute it, you must first research the response with sufficient veracity / references. That is probably the original 10x. But then you must move the refutation, which seems to have a much reduced virality factor, to the necessary places the viral bullshit spread. That would require constant searches of the graph. If the graph is "secured", then locating the instances/replications of the viral bullshit could be practically impossible. Even if you had access, the viral bullshit can replicate, since the very thing that makes it viral makes it memorable, and you'd need to do constant sweeps of the social graph to repress it.

ryanx435 10y ago

this analysis completely ignores the fact that reddit.com is the 8th largest website in the united states and a primary source of news for large portions of its users. And I'm sure that pretty much every reddit user ever can attest that multiple viewpoints on political issues were HEAVILY debated and often led to flamewars. just saying that this is direct evidence against the article's conclusions. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com

pohl 10y ago
That sounds like something that needs to be measured in order to be claimed. I'm a reddit user, and I confine myself mostly to /r/rust Your observation that lively debate exists somewhere on Reddit is valid; no doubt about that. It's a stretch to suggest that this is the common case for Reddit users, though.
rjeli 10y ago
I strongly disagree re: heavily debated. /r/politics was literally moderated by paid shills. /r/the_donald and /r/hillaryclinton immediately banned and deleted all dissenting comments. Most subreddits explicitly chose a side and deleted opposing viewpoints, e.g. /r/trees deleting anti-Clinton (pro-weed) posts. To me, this is just more evidence of the polarization of politics (I am obviously on the right side, and my opponent is so abhorrent that silencing them is justified).
bbctol 10y ago
A flamewar is not a real connection of opposing sides that lets each understand the other, it's a progressive back-and-forth of increasingly simplified versions of the other's position until both sides hate each other more than when they started. It's still a part of the echo chamber phenomenon; just because there are people who hate each other shouting at each other, doesn't mean the inherent structure of the medium won't make each more rigid in their views.
- judahmeek 10y ago
  I'm hoping that platforms like Pol.is can lead to a better future: https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq

mamon 10y ago

It's funny how leftists think that democracy is "broken" because they favourite candidate has lost democratic elections :) The truth is exactly the opposite: the fact that candidate so despised by elites, media, lobbysts has won with votes of common people is a sign that the democracy is working better than ever.

plandis 10y ago
It sounds like you didn't read the article which was more about news bubbles rather than being upset about one candidate or the other. Why not give the article a shot before insulting "the left"?
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Why do you assume that? The conclusion sounds correct, the bubbles favor candidates that have no chance otherwise, because the bubbles protect people from outside influence. Essentially making "democracy" more "democratic".
  - pohl 10y ago
    I believe, as many do, that the health of a democracy is a function of the degree to which the citizenry is informed. Votes were cast, yes, and a candidate was selected. Those are necessary conditions for a healthy democracy – but not sufficient. The candidate that was selected showed himself during the campaign to be entirely unmoored from factual reality or consistency, and somehow he paid no political consequences for that. This is important for reasons above & beyond whether one's own candidate won or lost.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      True. But don't forget how flawed Hillary was as a candidate. All the scandals. Too uncharismatic and un-empathetic to really resonate with voters. (It would not be a stretch to compare her to Kerry in this category.) She was completely an establishment candidate at a time of great anti-establishment sentiment. And the DNC put her on the express path to the nomination, which turned off a big chunk of her own party, and thereby (I strongly suspect) reduced turnout. With all those flaws, it's a measure of Trump's weakness that Hillary came as close as she did...

pfranz 10y ago

One other contributor (and I hear this often repeated but rarely substantiated) was 24 news. There's only so many facts to present (and facts are difficult to find and vet). To fill the extra time they focused more on pundits and opinions. Since this was now a majority of the content each side got stronger and more polarized. I still think this has a stronger effect than people realize because not everyone uses computers. I try to do what they recommend and it's tough to listen to both sides. They start with the basis you're already supporting them so they skip the "foundation" of their argument and the content generally is lies and condescension for the other (to be clear, I'm talking about both sides).

noobiemcfoob 10y ago
I don't believe the issue is an actual dearth of facts. The reality is (and presumably always will be) there are far too many facts to report them all, particularly in an entertaining way. Editors must make a selection of which facts are relevant and interesting enough to make it into... whatever it is they're editing. When that's political news, that selection bias becomes more important. And in today's age, it can be so extreme that both sides are operating with inconsistent perspectives. Not because someone is lying or misleading. /Then you add lying and misleading and the whole thing is a dumpster fire.
- pohl 10y ago
  Also worth mentioning: hours upon hours of free, unedited broadcast of raw campaign rally footage and stump speeches.
- bbctol 10y ago
  There's too many facts and not enough truth. There are enough individual facts, anecdotes, and incidents out there to support any possible narrative, and make people believe anything without directly lying to them. It's a serious problem of the information age that we have yet to fix.
- pfranz 10y ago
  Yes, there's more raw data there, but it's not always useful until it's aggregated and analyzed. Not everyone has time to sift through raw CSPAN footage or census data (I try). People (myself included) rely on sources for that. If some breaking news is happening, spotty raw data from the front lines can be really misleading about what's actually happening. You can also see the money draining out of traditional long-form reporting (and polls). These outlets more and more rely on rhetoric, opinions, and emotions instead of facts. I think part of it is that incentives are misaligned. I didn't want to throw shade on one side, but the Les Moonves quote, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." I think in addition to a news businesses focusing on being the best and financially successful, there's focus in politics where the only goal for each side is on winning instead of being right or living up to some ideals.

dv_dt 10y ago

I think the humans have been dividing themselves up into tribes for a long time. While technology isn't completely blameless, Technology does provide another avenue where humans establish and patrol boundaries via social cues. And those cues can maybe be magnified by tech and exploited by political parties on both sides. I found this podcast particularly interesting (though maybe not 100% correct), but it discusses interesting urban/rural social and cultural boundaries. And I think it's fairly perceptive in the observation that completely unrelated political issues are bound together simply because they happened to fall on different sides of that cultural divide. I think that divide had formed long before the internet and certainly social media. It was also recorded just before the election which additionally makes for some prophetic elements. Cracked Podcast #148 http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-country/ http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-country/

smpetrey 10y ago
I completely agree. Humans will be humans and we will always have tribes. And that's okay. What needs to change is modern voting systems to accomadte the growing fractions of views. Such as, The Alternative Vote (Instant Run-off) [1] Also, The Cracked podcast is so fantastic! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

roboneal 10y ago

The U.S. may appear to be a broken democracy to most but it is a functional constitutional republic. This was was the purposeful intent of the founders to safeguard the sovereign interests of the individual states.