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At the risk of falling prey to "WhatAboutism" it is hard for me to be concerned here when we give such free reign to credit agencies and other traditional corpo

At the risk of falling prey to "WhatAboutism" it is hard for me to be concerned here when we give such free reign to credit agencies and other traditional corporate entities who can't be arsed to even keep their data secure. That has affected and inconvenienced me personally as opposed to the annoying buzz from the dumbasses who used to get their reality from a daily two hour hate from a minority of right-leaning pundits and who now thrive on fake news from Facebook and Twitter. Their pre-existing intellectual incuriosity is the root problem IMO, not the current medium on which they gorge their ignorance. And by the time the same clowns in Congress who think it's hunky dory to tax grad student tuition waivers craft anything to regulate Facebook, there will be a new and scarier kid on the block extracting and analyzing the information at a whole new unforeseen level. As others have said, large corporations are effectively the malevolent AIs Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking keep squawking about. Good luck with regulating that.

existencebox 9y ago
I'd typically be the first person to call you out on distracting from the core point, but in this case I agree wholeheartedly; I don't think you fall prey to the typical anti-patterns of whataboutism in that the broader context of American regulation and our prioritization of goals is very relevant to this discussion. The entire "Fake news" epidemic seems absurd to me. (and frankly, an intentional distraction) Tabloids have been around literally my entire life. The only difference now is that people apparently can no longer distinguish them from fact. (Not to mention as far back as our first presidents, you can find newspaper articles trumpeting that e.g. Jefferson was in a pact with Satan and his alcoholism would overturn the country. Somehow America prevailed then; what is different now.) Meanwhile, we have public schools in some states that can't afford more than 4 days a week, politicians for whom lying is absolutely a pathology with no one holding them accountable, and a literacy/numeracy rate far below many other first world countries. I have many thoughts on why this comes to pass but the cynic in me is focused heavily on that the incentives in the current system (for the current power-players at least) do not align with spending resources to have a highly educated population en-masse.
- a235 9y ago
  I would argue that the cause of the "Fake news" epidemic is partially due to the social media. Specifically, Information Overload is to blame. A few decades back we had and now loosing: - Traceable reputation -- which is now lost, and much harder to learn in our uncontrolled, random and sparse feed interactions. - Focus on topic -- social crises were build up, considered, reflected on. Nowadays, we moved into the realm of emotional reactions. Noone is expected to have mental capacity to consume as many pieces of disjoint information as we do today on social media. In an average feed, a president eats a kid, and a cat does a funny trick one after another. The prime incentives in the current social system is the instant gratification. This new system is easy to abuse, as we are moving further away from analytical to emotional consumption.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    > Information Overload is to blame. The information overload is due to centralization and advertising. Individuals can easily overcome information overload via compartmentalization, but Facebook works directly against that strategy by mixing sources, and mixing in advertisements. What we need to provide individuals is a decentralized communication network that has all the features and accessibility users want.

existencebox 9y ago

I'd typically be the first person to call you out on distracting from the core point, but in this case I agree wholeheartedly; I don't think you fall prey to the typical anti-patterns of whataboutism in that the broader context of American regulation and our prioritization of goals is very relevant to this discussion. The entire "Fake news" epidemic seems absurd to me. (and frankly, an intentional distraction) Tabloids have been around literally my entire life. The only difference now is that people apparently can no longer distinguish them from fact. (Not to mention as far back as our first presidents, you can find newspaper articles trumpeting that e.g. Jefferson was in a pact with Satan and his alcoholism would overturn the country. Somehow America prevailed then; what is different now.) Meanwhile, we have public schools in some states that can't afford more than 4 days a week, politicians for whom lying is absolutely a pathology with no one holding them accountable, and a literacy/numeracy rate far below many other first world countries. I have many thoughts on why this comes to pass but the cynic in me is focused heavily on that the incentives in the current system (for the current power-players at least) do not align with spending resources to have a highly educated population en-masse.

a235 9y ago
I would argue that the cause of the "Fake news" epidemic is partially due to the social media. Specifically, Information Overload is to blame. A few decades back we had and now loosing: - Traceable reputation -- which is now lost, and much harder to learn in our uncontrolled, random and sparse feed interactions. - Focus on topic -- social crises were build up, considered, reflected on. Nowadays, we moved into the realm of emotional reactions. Noone is expected to have mental capacity to consume as many pieces of disjoint information as we do today on social media. In an average feed, a president eats a kid, and a cat does a funny trick one after another. The prime incentives in the current social system is the instant gratification. This new system is easy to abuse, as we are moving further away from analytical to emotional consumption.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  > Information Overload is to blame. The information overload is due to centralization and advertising. Individuals can easily overcome information overload via compartmentalization, but Facebook works directly against that strategy by mixing sources, and mixing in advertisements. What we need to provide individuals is a decentralized communication network that has all the features and accessibility users want.