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I would say that certain technologies perpetuate and amplify the voice of people, but not necessarily their destructiveness. Correct information is equally perp

by beaner 9y ago

I would say that certain technologies perpetuate and amplify the voice of people, but not necessarily their destructiveness. Correct information is equally perpetuated and amplified. The ratio of correct to incorrect information seems unaffected. For this reason I am not convinced there's an actual problem.

runesoerensen 9y ago
I think the problem here is that Google's tweet results actually have been shown to display a fairly high ratio of incorrect information at some particularly critical times. I don't know why you'd say "the ratio of correct to incorrect information seems unaffected" - clearly the number of people exposed to incorrect information would be lower if Google did not show those tweets? That's not surprising since they're essentially scraping Twitter. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have a voice, but perhaps leave it to Twitter to rank tweets until Google's SNR ratio is better. Twitter just have a lot more signals to rank their users' tweets by (and for instance better assess whether tweets are being promoted by a botnet/voting ring).
- beaner 9y ago
  Does Google not also display counter claims from tweets in its results? If it can't discern fact from fake, it's hard to see how it wouldn't.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    Do you remember the bad old days of website SEO, way back at the dawn of time? Back then someone could have just asserted that "good" sites will obviously appear as often as "bad" ones in results, if the search engine is unable to tell them apart. But of course that presumes either the "bad" sites aren't doing anything to game the search rankings, or that the "good" sites are just as effective at gaming the rankings, and we know for a fact that neither of these was the case. It took serious effort on the part of search engines to weed out the "bad" results, promote the "good" ones and close off the most effective ways to game the system. We are going through that all over again now. Social media -- and yes, this includes important parts of Google search now, since they've decided to include social-media platforms prominently in results -- can be gamed the same way SERPs got gamed. And instead of just being gamed by people who want to sell you things (as in the bad old days of SEO), now they're also being gamed by political entities for the express purpose of swaying the course of nations. These platforms wield enormous influence; it's not out of the question that, say, Twitter could literally be in a position to prevent or allow a major war. But the people who own and run these platforms are absolutely convinced of their own brilliance, and absolutely convinced that they could only be beaten by someone who has better tech skills than they do, when they're currently being played like a fiddle by people who have old-fashioned media and PR skills.
  - makomk 9y ago
    One of the fundamental social problems with Twitter is that counterclaims and retractions don't generally go viral in the same way that bullshit does. It's probably not one that you'll hear journalists talking about much, because it would make their own screw-ups look a lot more harmful and destructive.
deleted 9y ago
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by beaner 9y ago

runesoerensen 9y ago

I think the problem here is that Google's tweet results actually have been shown to display a fairly high ratio of incorrect information at some particularly critical times. I don't know why you'd say "the ratio of correct to incorrect information seems unaffected" - clearly the number of people exposed to incorrect information would be lower if Google did not show those tweets? That's not surprising since they're essentially scraping Twitter. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have a voice, but perhaps leave it to Twitter to rank tweets until Google's SNR ratio is better. Twitter just have a lot more signals to rank their users' tweets by (and for instance better assess whether tweets are being promoted by a botnet/voting ring).

beaner 9y ago
Does Google not also display counter claims from tweets in its results? If it can't discern fact from fake, it's hard to see how it wouldn't.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  Do you remember the bad old days of website SEO, way back at the dawn of time? Back then someone could have just asserted that "good" sites will obviously appear as often as "bad" ones in results, if the search engine is unable to tell them apart. But of course that presumes either the "bad" sites aren't doing anything to game the search rankings, or that the "good" sites are just as effective at gaming the rankings, and we know for a fact that neither of these was the case. It took serious effort on the part of search engines to weed out the "bad" results, promote the "good" ones and close off the most effective ways to game the system. We are going through that all over again now. Social media -- and yes, this includes important parts of Google search now, since they've decided to include social-media platforms prominently in results -- can be gamed the same way SERPs got gamed. And instead of just being gamed by people who want to sell you things (as in the bad old days of SEO), now they're also being gamed by political entities for the express purpose of swaying the course of nations. These platforms wield enormous influence; it's not out of the question that, say, Twitter could literally be in a position to prevent or allow a major war. But the people who own and run these platforms are absolutely convinced of their own brilliance, and absolutely convinced that they could only be beaten by someone who has better tech skills than they do, when they're currently being played like a fiddle by people who have old-fashioned media and PR skills.
- makomk 9y ago
  One of the fundamental social problems with Twitter is that counterclaims and retractions don't generally go viral in the same way that bullshit does. It's probably not one that you'll hear journalists talking about much, because it would make their own screw-ups look a lot more harmful and destructive.

deleted 9y ago

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