6 ms·

It's not just Facebook, but also Twitter and Reddit. The Republican guy that shot the pizza place in DC today was driven by a conspiracy theory marketed on Red

It's not just Facebook, but also Twitter and Reddit. The Republican guy that shot the pizza place in DC today was driven by a conspiracy theory marketed on Reddit. These social-media sites are literally dangerous.

andrewvijay 10y ago
I dont see this kind of influence from twitter and reddit. The personal feeling in facebook is far far higher than twitter and reddit. I have never used reddit. The active user share is no where close to facebook. Their reactions buttons are very much reflective of people's views.
- mozumder 10y ago
  Trump tweets lies to 16 million people at a time. The Pizza shop conspiracy was heavily marketed on Reddit, and I'll bet the shooter today got all his info from there. These platforms have a HUGE problem.
  - andrewvijay 10y ago
    I follow him but i have never seen his tweets though. They are big but not as big as facebook especially in the emerging markets. My mum uses FB everyday but she has no idea about reddit whatsoever. She has heard about the name twitter from some news channel. Do you understand the difference?
    - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
      > My mum uses FB everyday Facebook has 1.7 billion users; that is more than Twitter's 313 million and Reddit'a tens of millions [1]. I am agreeing with your point, in this limited case, albeit not with how you're making it. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
      - andrewvijay 10y ago
        Yo I'm from India.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    I've read quite a lot about that and I have yet to see anyone advocating for violence. This guy would appear to be a lone nutcase.
cmurf 10y ago
Hardly any different than fanatic religions. Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. I think the problem with digital walled gardens is when the filter totally prevents critical thinking and sometimes even the ensuing cognitive dissonance. Most will resolve the dissonance via withdrawal, not changing their minds. But even withdrawal is better than escalation. If the walled garden makes it easy for people to confuse belief and knowledge, it's a problem. If people with kooky beliefs are repressed, it's also a problem.
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  > Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. Yes, but their freedoms stop well before lynching people.
- usrusr 10y ago
  I think that the key difference between the human filter bubbles of old (in Germany we call that “Stammtisch“, after the table where the village pub's regulars meet to mutually confirm their shared beliefs) and the new filter bubble in social media is that the latter gives more of the appearance of professional journalism, with all the expectations we associate with that. And even if what we see in the social media bubble actually is professional, balanced journalism, it's still a much narrower selection compared to what we saw in the age of mainstream mass media. When we watched TV news or skimmed a newspaper, we would also selectively focus on our favorite topics. But other topics at least momentarily grazed or attention while we mentally tuned out or skimmed for more interesting headlines. With highly personalized online media (and yes, the social media filter bubble is just one method to achieve that) we are losing that weak connection to out-of-focus topics. The worst part is that we do not even notice, because when our personalized digest contains a certain amount of content that would be on general news we feel our desire stay up to date already satiated. If real news (as in what would have made it into mainstream mass media) would somehow disappear from our personalized feeds (leaving them with only the necessarily personalized stuff like niche hobbies, friends and very local content), we would go back to consuming more mainstream news channels again, making us less vulnerable to viral fakes and the like. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a solution since there is no way Facebook could do this (and they would not want anyway).
camillomiller 10y ago
Well, what's dangerous is that those sites operate in country where getting a gun is so damn easy
- pjc50 10y ago
  I'm kind of surprised that the interaction between bonkers US conspiracy politics and actual shootings is so _low_. It's as if the beliefs have a sort of ritual status that "everybody knows" they're not expected to act on.
  - omegaham 10y ago
    The biggest reason is that most of the Dale Gribbles of the world, just like the local college's Revolutionary Socialist club, are all talk. It takes a lot of commitment to actually carry out a shooting or bombing or whatever, and most people are happy to say "This is really bad. Someone oughta do something, and it's good thing that I'm aware of this unlike the rest of the sheeple" while doing absolutely nothing to effect that agenda. The people who actually manage to commit these acts are on an entirely different level of nuts. Pedestrian example: How many gung-ho teenagers talk about joining the military? How many of them actually go through with talking to a recruiter, going to MEPS, and signing on the dotted line? And that's for a cause that is widely accepted by society and confers actual benefits rather than guaranteed violent death or lifelong incarceration in an elaborate concrete box in rural Colorado.
- philovivero 10y ago
  Did you know in France they allow people to rent trucks? A lot of people don't share your irrational fear of guns.
  - jamespo 10y ago
    What's the primary function of a truck?
    - throwanem 10y ago
briandear 10y ago
Any proof it was a "Republican?" The WaPo story made no mention of political party. Do we say "Democrat guy" when referring to the Orlando shooter? He actually was a Democrat. James Holmes who shot up the Colorado movie theater -- also a registered Democrat and even volunteered for the Obama campaign. Andrew Stack who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building -- was a supporter of communism. John Patrick Bedell who shot police officers outside the Pentagon in 2008 -- registered Democrat and subscriber to the 9-11 "Truth" conspiracy, not to mention an extreme hater of Bush/Cheney. My point is that assuming facts not in evidence is exactly the problem. Now everyone who tends to agree with anti-Republican sentiment has their view reinforced by your own fake news. It works both ways. Fake news isn't a 'Republican' thing any more than it's a 'Democrat' thing. Plenty of fake stories circulate in places like Marin County about the 'vaccine conspiracies' or how this political or that has secret deals with "big oil" or whomever. Promoting an unproven narrative of a "Republican" shooter IS fake news unless there is actual evidence otherwise.
- mozumder 10y ago
  > Any proof it was a "Republican?" Yes. His party registration. https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch

andrewvijay 10y ago

I dont see this kind of influence from twitter and reddit. The personal feeling in facebook is far far higher than twitter and reddit. I have never used reddit. The active user share is no where close to facebook. Their reactions buttons are very much reflective of people's views.

mozumder 10y ago
Trump tweets lies to 16 million people at a time. The Pizza shop conspiracy was heavily marketed on Reddit, and I'll bet the shooter today got all his info from there. These platforms have a HUGE problem.
- andrewvijay 10y ago
  I follow him but i have never seen his tweets though. They are big but not as big as facebook especially in the emerging markets. My mum uses FB everyday but she has no idea about reddit whatsoever. She has heard about the name twitter from some news channel. Do you understand the difference?
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > My mum uses FB everyday Facebook has 1.7 billion users; that is more than Twitter's 313 million and Reddit'a tens of millions [1]. I am agreeing with your point, in this limited case, albeit not with how you're making it. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
    - andrewvijay 10y ago
      Yo I'm from India.
- Natsu 10y ago
  I've read quite a lot about that and I have yet to see anyone advocating for violence. This guy would appear to be a lone nutcase.

cmurf 10y ago

Hardly any different than fanatic religions. Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. I think the problem with digital walled gardens is when the filter totally prevents critical thinking and sometimes even the ensuing cognitive dissonance. Most will resolve the dissonance via withdrawal, not changing their minds. But even withdrawal is better than escalation. If the walled garden makes it easy for people to confuse belief and knowledge, it's a problem. If people with kooky beliefs are repressed, it's also a problem.

aaronbrethorst 10y ago
> Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. Yes, but their freedoms stop well before lynching people.
usrusr 10y ago
I think that the key difference between the human filter bubbles of old (in Germany we call that “Stammtisch“, after the table where the village pub's regulars meet to mutually confirm their shared beliefs) and the new filter bubble in social media is that the latter gives more of the appearance of professional journalism, with all the expectations we associate with that. And even if what we see in the social media bubble actually is professional, balanced journalism, it's still a much narrower selection compared to what we saw in the age of mainstream mass media. When we watched TV news or skimmed a newspaper, we would also selectively focus on our favorite topics. But other topics at least momentarily grazed or attention while we mentally tuned out or skimmed for more interesting headlines. With highly personalized online media (and yes, the social media filter bubble is just one method to achieve that) we are losing that weak connection to out-of-focus topics. The worst part is that we do not even notice, because when our personalized digest contains a certain amount of content that would be on general news we feel our desire stay up to date already satiated. If real news (as in what would have made it into mainstream mass media) would somehow disappear from our personalized feeds (leaving them with only the necessarily personalized stuff like niche hobbies, friends and very local content), we would go back to consuming more mainstream news channels again, making us less vulnerable to viral fakes and the like. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a solution since there is no way Facebook could do this (and they would not want anyway).

camillomiller 10y ago

Well, what's dangerous is that those sites operate in country where getting a gun is so damn easy

pjc50 10y ago
I'm kind of surprised that the interaction between bonkers US conspiracy politics and actual shootings is so _low_. It's as if the beliefs have a sort of ritual status that "everybody knows" they're not expected to act on.
- omegaham 10y ago
  The biggest reason is that most of the Dale Gribbles of the world, just like the local college's Revolutionary Socialist club, are all talk. It takes a lot of commitment to actually carry out a shooting or bombing or whatever, and most people are happy to say "This is really bad. Someone oughta do something, and it's good thing that I'm aware of this unlike the rest of the sheeple" while doing absolutely nothing to effect that agenda. The people who actually manage to commit these acts are on an entirely different level of nuts. Pedestrian example: How many gung-ho teenagers talk about joining the military? How many of them actually go through with talking to a recruiter, going to MEPS, and signing on the dotted line? And that's for a cause that is widely accepted by society and confers actual benefits rather than guaranteed violent death or lifelong incarceration in an elaborate concrete box in rural Colorado.
philovivero 10y ago
Did you know in France they allow people to rent trucks? A lot of people don't share your irrational fear of guns.
- jamespo 10y ago
  What's the primary function of a truck?
  - throwanem 10y ago

briandear 10y ago

Any proof it was a "Republican?" The WaPo story made no mention of political party. Do we say "Democrat guy" when referring to the Orlando shooter? He actually was a Democrat. James Holmes who shot up the Colorado movie theater -- also a registered Democrat and even volunteered for the Obama campaign. Andrew Stack who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building -- was a supporter of communism. John Patrick Bedell who shot police officers outside the Pentagon in 2008 -- registered Democrat and subscriber to the 9-11 "Truth" conspiracy, not to mention an extreme hater of Bush/Cheney. My point is that assuming facts not in evidence is exactly the problem. Now everyone who tends to agree with anti-Republican sentiment has their view reinforced by your own fake news. It works both ways. Fake news isn't a 'Republican' thing any more than it's a 'Democrat' thing. Plenty of fake stories circulate in places like Marin County about the 'vaccine conspiracies' or how this political or that has secret deals with "big oil" or whomever. Promoting an unproven narrative of a "Republican" shooter IS fake news unless there is actual evidence otherwise.

mozumder 10y ago
> Any proof it was a "Republican?" Yes. His party registration. https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch