4 ms·

The latest barrage of anti-SV articles from old media seem very focused on Trump. Where were these complaints before the election? I remember the press loving h

The latest barrage of anti-SV articles from old media seem very focused on Trump. Where were these complaints before the election? I remember the press loving how Obama used social media to his advantage. All of this reeks of political propaganda.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
There's a simple answer to that, and it is before Trump, it wasn't obvious that social media of all kinds was dominated by propaganda. Now we are aware, now there's a reaction. You are missing the causality. If there's a legitimate problem with society, why does it matter who points it out? I don't like the messenger was never a valid response to criticism.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  My point is that most people who aren’t politically motivated to say so don’t see this as a “legitimate problem”. I know I see no issue with social media. Is it really worse than TV or newspapers? I don’t think so.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    The feedback loops inherent in attention based (advertising funded) social media content selection are potentially more problematic than TV or newspapers. TV and newspapers have them, but they don't work as fast and it is harder to place content in those channels.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > before Trump, it wasn't obvious that social media of all kinds was dominated by propaganda There were tons of articles written about this before Trump, they just didn't get any page views until afterwards. (E.g. check my submission history from before the election.) It was very very obvious, but people didn't start caring about the issue until after the election when it started getting promoted by Democrats for propaganda purposes.
empath75 9y ago
I don’t think that people would care that much that trump used social media to his advantage. The problem is that foreign governments are using it to do illegal electioneering activity. If you have some evidence that foreign governments were buying ads to support Obama, I’d love to see it.
dawhizkid 9y ago
People working in tech have long known the dangers (or, at the very least, the fakeness) of social media...I wouldn't be surprised if tech workers are some of the least 'engaged' in social media relative to other demographics...
Jerry2 9y ago
Before, MSM was able to tell people what to think and they were the gatekeepers of "the truth" and were able to set agenda. Now they matter less and less and people just don't pay much attention to them since there's so much choice now. And you can actually bypass them and go straight to the source of news. And that's a problem for them. So they're publishing all these kinds of anti-SV, anti-social media articles in hope of turning the tide.
- api 9y ago
  Absolutely. I'm sure they are realizing that Trump's social media powered victory means that the entire center of gravity has moved and that next election all parties and candidates will mostly campaign online. Traditional media will be an afterthought. It's less about Trump per se and more about this larger shift.
  - mc32 9y ago
    Perhaps they see where one candidate spent less than half the other on ads and in addition how one candidate greatly undermined the need to make media buys --so they see a heretofore uncontested source of revenue disappearing right before them. The result is a double whammy of reduced spending and the spending that does occur goes to different kind of media.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I'm sure they're worried about their bottom lines, yeah, but clickbait web media is shallower, less informative, and more biased (in a variety of directions) than mainstream media was even at its worst. Everyone loses with the rise of clickbait news.
- chriswarbo 9y ago
  Whilst there are obvious downsides to having a few powerful organisations pushing (their version of) "the truth", there are some upsides: those orgs rely on their reputation, and they're great big targets for lawsuits or even just competition (if newspaper A is too blatant with their lies/spin, newspaper B can call them out on it). The difference with social media is that we still have a few powerful organisations, but they're no longer the source of content: if/when blatant lies are spread by Facebook, their reputation isn't at stake because everyone knows they didn't create those lies. With the amount of data moving through these systems, it also seems hard to blame them for not catching things effectively, since that's such a hard problem. Like people asking for YouTube uploads to be viewed by a human before approval: there's no way to make such a scheme workable, so we kind of let them off. Another tricky aspect of social media is the ability to target the audience quite narrowly. With a newspaper, everyone gets the same content, so the news being read by the impressionable or vulnerable is the same as the news being read by the skeptical and the expert. The latter can complain when something seems off, and that protects the former. Yet these days we can specifically target conspiracy theories, propaganda, etc. only to those we think will be vulnerable to it. The well-informed, skeptical experts won't complain, since they never even know it exists.
danso 9y ago
Seeing how the U.S. presidential election is one of the most important world events every 4 years, it's not surprising that people are perturbed about the possibility of tampering. But are you asserting that the media wasn't complaining about the effects and influence of Google and Facebook before Trump? Honest question: do you think the main difference between how Obama used his Twitter account (IMO, very dry and vanilla and bureaucratically) and how Trump uses his is in their politics, i.e. we could take this Trump's tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/931877599034388480 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/93187759903438848... > Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can’t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! And replace it Mad-Lib style with Republican targets: > Crooked Sarah Palin is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can’t stop, which is so good for the Democratic Party. Sarah, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! And you think we'd be able to find a similar tweet in content in @BarackObama's tweets during his time in office?
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The way the campaigns used Facebook and YouTube is probably more comparable. (Clinton's campaign used them too; the Trump/RNC apparatus was probably better https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-th... )
  - danso 9y ago
    I don't use FB enough anymore to know how Trump uses it vs Obama/etc., but I'll take you at your work, mostly for the fact that I rarely (in fact, I can't think of a single time right now) have heard journalists making substantive (or even flippant) complaints about how Trump and his campaign uses FB. OTOH, most of the journalists I know, besides complaining about him, follow Trump on Twitter. Many even have his tweets get treated as Twitter Notifications. To me the problem of Trump using Twitter is not political, but it's that he's using it for important, world-impacting communication when Twitter is inherently too reactionary of a medium for it. Both Trump and Obama have been heavily critical of North Korea. But there's a huge difference about Trump sending his thoughts via Twitter rather than speech/video address, or TV interview. In other words, I don't believe that Trump (nor any human, president or not) is above the kind of impulsive communication that Twitter is designed for.
maxerickson 9y ago
Bilton also wrote about it when Trump was still just the likely nominee: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/how-silicon-valley-created-donald-trump https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/how-silicon-valley-c...
trumpisyourdad 9y ago
LOLLIBCUCKZ

aaron-lebo 9y ago

There's a simple answer to that, and it is before Trump, it wasn't obvious that social media of all kinds was dominated by propaganda. Now we are aware, now there's a reaction. You are missing the causality. If there's a legitimate problem with society, why does it matter who points it out? I don't like the messenger was never a valid response to criticism.

malvosenior 9y ago
My point is that most people who aren’t politically motivated to say so don’t see this as a “legitimate problem”. I know I see no issue with social media. Is it really worse than TV or newspapers? I don’t think so.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The feedback loops inherent in attention based (advertising funded) social media content selection are potentially more problematic than TV or newspapers. TV and newspapers have them, but they don't work as fast and it is harder to place content in those channels.
Alex3917 9y ago
> before Trump, it wasn't obvious that social media of all kinds was dominated by propaganda There were tons of articles written about this before Trump, they just didn't get any page views until afterwards. (E.g. check my submission history from before the election.) It was very very obvious, but people didn't start caring about the issue until after the election when it started getting promoted by Democrats for propaganda purposes.

empath75 9y ago

I don’t think that people would care that much that trump used social media to his advantage. The problem is that foreign governments are using it to do illegal electioneering activity. If you have some evidence that foreign governments were buying ads to support Obama, I’d love to see it.

dawhizkid 9y ago

People working in tech have long known the dangers (or, at the very least, the fakeness) of social media...I wouldn't be surprised if tech workers are some of the least 'engaged' in social media relative to other demographics...

Jerry2 9y ago

Before, MSM was able to tell people what to think and they were the gatekeepers of "the truth" and were able to set agenda. Now they matter less and less and people just don't pay much attention to them since there's so much choice now. And you can actually bypass them and go straight to the source of news. And that's a problem for them. So they're publishing all these kinds of anti-SV, anti-social media articles in hope of turning the tide.

api 9y ago
Absolutely. I'm sure they are realizing that Trump's social media powered victory means that the entire center of gravity has moved and that next election all parties and candidates will mostly campaign online. Traditional media will be an afterthought. It's less about Trump per se and more about this larger shift.
- mc32 9y ago
  Perhaps they see where one candidate spent less than half the other on ads and in addition how one candidate greatly undermined the need to make media buys --so they see a heretofore uncontested source of revenue disappearing right before them. The result is a double whammy of reduced spending and the spending that does occur goes to different kind of media.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I'm sure they're worried about their bottom lines, yeah, but clickbait web media is shallower, less informative, and more biased (in a variety of directions) than mainstream media was even at its worst. Everyone loses with the rise of clickbait news.
chriswarbo 9y ago
Whilst there are obvious downsides to having a few powerful organisations pushing (their version of) "the truth", there are some upsides: those orgs rely on their reputation, and they're great big targets for lawsuits or even just competition (if newspaper A is too blatant with their lies/spin, newspaper B can call them out on it). The difference with social media is that we still have a few powerful organisations, but they're no longer the source of content: if/when blatant lies are spread by Facebook, their reputation isn't at stake because everyone knows they didn't create those lies. With the amount of data moving through these systems, it also seems hard to blame them for not catching things effectively, since that's such a hard problem. Like people asking for YouTube uploads to be viewed by a human before approval: there's no way to make such a scheme workable, so we kind of let them off. Another tricky aspect of social media is the ability to target the audience quite narrowly. With a newspaper, everyone gets the same content, so the news being read by the impressionable or vulnerable is the same as the news being read by the skeptical and the expert. The latter can complain when something seems off, and that protects the former. Yet these days we can specifically target conspiracy theories, propaganda, etc. only to those we think will be vulnerable to it. The well-informed, skeptical experts won't complain, since they never even know it exists.

danso 9y ago

Seeing how the U.S. presidential election is one of the most important world events every 4 years, it's not surprising that people are perturbed about the possibility of tampering. But are you asserting that the media wasn't complaining about the effects and influence of Google and Facebook before Trump? Honest question: do you think the main difference between how Obama used his Twitter account (IMO, very dry and vanilla and bureaucratically) and how Trump uses his is in their politics, i.e. we could take this Trump's tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/931877599034388480 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/93187759903438848... > Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can’t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! And replace it Mad-Lib style with Republican targets: > Crooked Sarah Palin is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can’t stop, which is so good for the Democratic Party. Sarah, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! And you think we'd be able to find a similar tweet in content in @BarackObama's tweets during his time in office?

maxerickson 9y ago
The way the campaigns used Facebook and YouTube is probably more comparable. (Clinton's campaign used them too; the Trump/RNC apparatus was probably better https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-th... )
- danso 9y ago
  I don't use FB enough anymore to know how Trump uses it vs Obama/etc., but I'll take you at your work, mostly for the fact that I rarely (in fact, I can't think of a single time right now) have heard journalists making substantive (or even flippant) complaints about how Trump and his campaign uses FB. OTOH, most of the journalists I know, besides complaining about him, follow Trump on Twitter. Many even have his tweets get treated as Twitter Notifications. To me the problem of Trump using Twitter is not political, but it's that he's using it for important, world-impacting communication when Twitter is inherently too reactionary of a medium for it. Both Trump and Obama have been heavily critical of North Korea. But there's a huge difference about Trump sending his thoughts via Twitter rather than speech/video address, or TV interview. In other words, I don't believe that Trump (nor any human, president or not) is above the kind of impulsive communication that Twitter is designed for.

maxerickson 9y ago

Bilton also wrote about it when Trump was still just the likely nominee: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/how-silicon-valley-created-donald-trump https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/how-silicon-valley-c...

trumpisyourdad 9y ago

LOLLIBCUCKZ