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30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in t

30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light. It's probably going to raise a lot of discussions about what constitutes normal human behavior. We might finally stop pretending they are perfect humans. After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. It might also be a bad thing because society would expect oversharing as the norm and would consider anyone who doesn't put their private lives on display, to be hiding something. Either way social media is here to stay. But it will change, this is version 1.

pat_space 9y ago
I have no passcode on my phone. I don't expect privacy anymore.
martin-adams 9y ago
I see it like a credit report. Have a bad credit report, it makes you look bad. Have no credit report, it means you're a risk because there is no data on your behaviour. As the world leans in to using social as a form of credit check, we will have to learn the right way to use it for a very different purpose than it was designed for.
- acobster 9y ago
  I also see it like a credit report, but for a different reason: some companies make money by recording your activity and selling your data. They use their profits to corner the market and create an oligopoly so powerful that people just accept it as a fact of life. Finally, when people realize the power they've given these companies and the danger they're in (see: Equifax), they are outraged, but the companies are basically an institution at this point.
- VLM 9y ago
  Legacy TV during non-prime time is full of commercials about credit cleaning services and similar; perhaps that's the future of social media. I would be willing to pay a modest sum of money to a startup willing to provide bland and inoffensive social media "filler" content. This is already the norm for celebrities, but at some point it can be automated for the masses. Give me a giant list of checkboxes to select the message I'd like to provide to corporate data miners, then I never have to be bothered with facebook again...
- notyourwork 9y ago
  It is a good analogy, a character report if you will.
CPLX 9y ago
Social norms will change. But the concept of social norms will not go away. There will always be some norms that society deems taboo to violate. Therefore, there will always be reputational risks to someone by having a long record of social behavior in the public domain.
Pigo 9y ago
It's really funny when people bring up things people said or did 10 years ago as way to knock them down a peg. If anything, it should show that a person has the capacity to change and mature if they are no longer acting the embarrassing way. It does bother me that people are expected to behave perfectly their entire lives in order to be a leader. It creates a situation that caters to psychopaths.
- dwighttk 9y ago
  >it should show that a person has the capacity to change and mature if they are no longer acting the embarrassing way. I mean, it can show that, or it can show that they have gotten better at image cultivation. And the latter is much easier to believe about a person running for office. (I'm not saying that is good.)
  - Pigo 9y ago
    I guess my point was, who is capable of being honest and not being embarrassing at some point? A lot of comments seemed to assume I was talking about Trump, probably because that's all some people know how to talk about. But I'm talking about everyone. The only people who never say or do anything imperfect online have some sort of complex or maybe afraid of being punished by their Scientology buddies. Our brains don't finish developing until we're 26.
- tachyonbeam 9y ago
  What makes it even worse is that there are always people who will try to put forward the worst possible (mis)interpretation of what you said, ie: in the guise of social "justice", and the domain of what constitutes acceptable discourse (the overton window) is constantly shrinking. There is a fair chance that some of what you posted, which was considered perfectly acceptable and maybe humorous 10 years ago, is now considered toxic / harmful / triggering / misogynistic / oppressive / etc. Heck, what you say now can put you in trouble today. There are a number of opinions that I hold which I consider to be fairly balanced and mild, but am afraid to discuss online, because I think they could put me at risk. If you upset the online twitter mob, they're not going to fight you with coherent arguments and thoughtful discourse. They're going to insult you, threaten you, publicly shame you, and maybe get you fired from your job.
mic47 9y ago
> We might finally stop pretending they are perfect humans. This is good thing. Once everyone will be embarased by his history, > We probably will stop caring about online privacy. This would be bad, I would rather this to happen: "We probably will stop pretending of being perfect and become more honest."
tempodox 9y ago
> After realizing that everyone ... post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. 1. “We” never did care about online privacy to begin with, that's what made social media and all the other surveillance monetizers what they are. 2. Caring about online privacy is about much more than “posting stupid things”.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  I'd say there are at least two kinds of privacy: 1) Social privacy from your peers and the public. 2) Technological privacy from customer profiling, data brokers, etc. The OP who was channeling Mark Zuckerberg circa 2010 was talking about the first kind of privacy, "surveillance monetizers" are the second. I think people are much more comfortable with violations of their "technological privacy" by "surveillance monetizers" because they're so secretive and behind the scenes. It's harder to understand the violations, let alone be bothered by them.
api 9y ago
We've already come to terms with human imperfection in politics. Clinton was known as "slick willie" for his philandering. Obama wasn't known for much personal impropriety but his last name was Hussein Obama which is phonetically similar to both Saddam Hussein and Osama. Trump... well... my god Trump... the guy is such a walking scandal and fountain of political incorrectness he's just overflowed the integer and nobody cares. I mean his team is not even really denying the whole porn star thing. The thing that concerns me about social media is the way it can be used as a training data set to train propaganda bots. Now that is scary.
- shortoncash 9y ago
  This new fear around propaganda bots seems unwarranted. I've gotten mail advertising specific political newsletters or products for as long as I've been an adult. Someone was aggregating information and targeting me long before social media was around. I feel as if the political class is just upset that they are not protected by the usual gatekeepers and that this is a non-issue.
  - api 9y ago
    I think we're in the early stages of the development of what I've termed the propaganda doomsday machine. Think of it as the PR equivalent of the hydrogen bomb. What I'm concerned about is the combination of AI and big data to generate autonomous personalized intelligent agents that can actually converse with you, or at least can tailor propaganda to your specific cognitive profile with an incredible degree of insight and accuracy. Think of it as the ability to dispatch an army of billions of con artists with each tasked to work on an individual target person and with the benefit of "fleet-wide learning." I've heard this called "AI-assisted demagoguery." Keep in mind that it doesn't need to work on everyone. A system like that with a ~10% success rate at changing peoples' minds could allow its wielders to quite literally conquer any democratic nation. That would be enough to sway nearly every election. Non-democratic nations wouldn't be immune either as such technologies could be used to foment revolutions, though I suspect that the smarter autocrats would invest as much as it took to make sure they were the wielders and not others. You can see this in China right now where its autocrats are deploying a system very much like this against their population. 5-10% success rates could just be the beginning. As we say in information security: "attacks only get better." Iterative development and the ensuing arms race could eventually yield systems that exploit tremendous insight about the structure and function of the human mind down to the neurological level. Unfortunately unlike software we cannot patch our brains to fix vulnerabilities. Eventually it may not be possible to engage in honest public discourse at all, since any person in the public square would have a high chance of not being a person at all but an AI-powered con artist attempting to sell you something or change your mind. I"ve also thought that this -- not Terminators shooting people with lasers -- is what an AI takeover would look like. The ultimate intelligences behind it might be AIs but are more likely to be super-wealthy and politically powerful humans wielding AI as a tool to cognitively enslave the rest of humanity to themselves. Also what's this "the political class" stuff? If you're talking about Trump vs. Clinton, both of them are incredibly wealthy and highly connected insiders. Trump has somehow managed to pose as an outsider but 10 minutes of reading about his background and connections will disabuse you of that. He's as much an insider as Clinton, albeit in a different clique of the global superclass. The people who funded Cambridge Analytica were also members of the global superclass. What we're seeing here is not insiders assaulting the elite but different camps of elites waging propaganda wars against each other. It's the haves vs. the haves, not the haves vs. the have-nots.
VLM 9y ago
Use of social media seems to be a exponential or power law distribution where a tiny fraction of people are responsible for most posting, then the next one percent down are half as active, then the next percent down is another half lower yet, and so forth. Not entirely different than criminal activity or any other hobby. Similar to criminal activity, a very small number of very active social media people will simply be disqualified from office, and it won't really matter to most people. "Either way social media is here to stay." Like CB radio, or telegrams, or pro sports, or newspapers, or TV, or vinyl records, or magazines, etc. Note that none of those have entirely disappeared, but have gone from utterly culturally dominant and universal, to "is that still around?".
Slansitartop 9y ago
> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light. In 30 years, the candidates for president will either be bizarre freaks like Trump, or the kind of people who locked down their social media profiles early or were good at covering their tracks. > After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. People have been saying stuff like this for ages, I've seen no evidence things will play out that way. In fact, you're literally parroting points Mark Zuckerberg made circa 2010 [1], when he was trying to push more public content to increase "engagement" with Facebook. However, many, many people are reacting to social media by caring about their privacy more. Facebook's original selling point was that was restricted to your peer group. Snapchat's selling point was self-destructing messages. People are locking down the privacy settings on their social media accounts private or deleting them entirely. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-says-privacy-is-no-longer-a-social-norm.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Face...
overgard 9y ago
I definitely don't support the guy, but to an extent we're already here with Trump. If that guys twitter feed didn't kill his political ambitions it probably points to the fact that people don't really care about their politicians presenting themselves as squeaky clean. It will probably take a decade for this to become the new normal though.
- losteric 9y ago
  Have you seen how Trump supporters treat other politicians? Trump gets a pass on anything because he's on "their team", opponents are under a hyper-partisan microscope where even reasonable normal behavior is criticized.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    That's completely normal in partisan politics. This stuff occupies the same headspace as cheering on a football team for most people. Which is to say, when you make being a member of a political group part of your identity, you are inclined to defend it as you would yourself: with irrational non-objective gusto.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Sounds like politics, generally. The only thing odd about Trump is how tactless he is.
  - overgard 9y ago
    Of course people are always going to use social media for ammo, I just think the era where politicians can reasonably expect to curate a public image that's wildly different from their personal lifestyle is essentially over. And honestly that might be a good thing -- much like mutually assured destruction with nuclear missiles, if every politician knows their opponents can dig up bad stuff about them easily it might elevate the discourse since low blows will lead to a vicious cycle for everyone
- wlll 9y ago
  I suspect that this was linked to people seeing Trump as different to the status quo. Yeah, he was rude, made incoherent outbursts, etc. etc. but that set him apart from the career politicians that had gone before. I'm pretty sure that any "regular" candidates for political office in the future will still be judged harshly by what they have done in the past. I think that what Trump stood for got him a pass.
greggarious 9y ago
>30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. You're assuming the United States exists in 30 years, and that it still elects its leader by popular vote :)
- cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
  It would really be a change if we elected the president by popular vote because we don't now and haven't ever.
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  You're assuming the United States elects its leader by popular vote. I guess you didn't check the latest results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
  - greggarious 9y ago
    >You're assuming the United States elects its leader by popular vote. We do currently, albeit indirectly. I could see a future where we no longer hold elections and have the electoral college pick the president without any pretense of voting.
drinchev 9y ago
> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light. Considering that the leader of the free world is currently using twitter the same way as some of my friends do it, I really doubt that the social media will be such a significant way to check politicians. More or less it will happen the opposite ( already happening ), where the politicians will judge the "average" citizen, by analysing tons of social media posts and reactions to them.
- riq_ 9y ago
  > Considering that the leader of the free world nit: I think you are referring to Trump, the president of the USA. But I doubt he is the "leader of the free world", whatever that means.
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    The President of the US used to be referred to as the leader of the free world with some credibility. That is less true today but the term remains.
    - Raphmedia 9y ago
      That title was only valid from 1940 until around the end of the cold war. How can the "Free World" be free if it is dominated by a single foreign nation? If anything, that title should be given to an organization.
      - adventured 9y ago
        The title isn't: dominator of the free world. It's leader of the free world. You can lead without conquering or dominating. Ideally in this use concept, the free world willingly follows. Whatever the most powerful nation in the so called free world is, that will always be the leader (even if people don't like it), particularly if there's an outsized difference in economic & military capability as is the case with the US vs everybody else.
YaxelPerez 9y ago
Relevant xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/1370/ https://m.xkcd.com/1370/
rsp1984 9y ago
Trump bragged about "grabbing women by the p*y" on tape only 13 years ago and he still became president. No matter the amount of stupid or disrespectful stuff someone says on (social) media, many voters actually don't seem to care that much about it.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  They care; they just have a different perspective than you on acceptable behaviour - one more driven by power dynamics and authoritarianism.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    "A new study on the personal values of Trump supporters suggests they have little interest in altruism but do seek power over others, are motivated by wealth, and prefer conformity." http://www.psypost.org/2018/03/study-trump-voters-desire-power-others-motivated-wealth-prefer-conformity-50900 http://www.psypost.org/2018/03/study-trump-voters-desire-pow...
matz1 9y ago
I think this how lgbt gaining more and more acceptance, the more it exposed through social media, the more it talked about, it become more normal.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
Yeah, can you imagine how stupid it would be to have the leader of the free world post ridiculous status updates for everyone to see, and it would get dissected for hours on end by CNN? Man, I sure am glad I didn't wake up in that world this morning.
sklivvz1971 9y ago
> After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. Online privacy is not about posting rude stuff on Twitter, come on
4684499 9y ago
> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. At least it's public, people will eventually accept no body is perfect, let alone when they were teenagers. I concern more about Google. They monitor everything users did, they memorize everything users did even you delete your account, they use data for everything that may not benefit users.
squozzer 9y ago
Let's hope in the future that we won't judge others so harshly, either past or present. But I doubt it, because we have an oversupply of friends / job candidates / political aspirants, all vying for a piece of us.
djsumdog 9y ago
The leaders of tomorrow are the leaders of today. Prescott Bush groomed his son to be president and the same with W and H.W. Obama was most likely sifted out of the pool in U Chicago by all the Strauss followers. The Clintons are a pretty powerful family and had Hillary won, it would have been a continuation of the Bush Clinton dynasty. Trump might seem like an outlier, but he's more like Reagan: an actor. He's a puppet on stage and the corporations actually running the show know they can play him. He's there to distract America from all the interest groups that really run things and they selected him because he's so out there. Make no mistake, the future leaders will either be groomed from an early age to be very careful with their public image or the puppet masters will latch onto actors who will be bombastic to keep America distracted. The rules are different for the rich. Their PR departments build worlds around them that use social networking. If there's any doubt, remember Obama joked about predator droning people interested in his daughter and people laughed.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  The Clintons are powerful now, but Bill came from rather inauspicious origins.
- eldavido 9y ago
  I don't see it man. I think this was the most democratic election in US history, where the people finally got what they really wanted - a blustering populist without a shred of actual policy experience. I mean, come on - the wall, tariffs, and now the death penalty for drug dealers? Is there any mainstream academic/intellectual on either side of the aisle that's really "running the show" here? I don't think so.
  - ataturk 9y ago
    It's even worse than that--Trump is the last stand of Americans voting a fix for what is broken. If this fails, it's revolution.
  - rovek 9y ago
    > the wall, tariffs, and now the death penalty for drug dealers? I think this backs up djsumdog's point that Trump's purpose, or the one for which he's being used, is misdirection.
mtgx 9y ago
It's not just about being able to discredit candidates. An even bigger issue is using this data to manipulate voters, which is the main thing revealed about Cambridge Analytica in the story.
- chabes 9y ago
  > An even bigger issue is using this data to manipulate voters Really. The fact that the comments in this thread hardly talk about the actual issue is concerning..
  - smartness 9y ago
    This is the most terrifying about this Facebook situation. It's scary how easily people can be manipulated.
samstave 9y ago
We need a #DELETETWITTER as well, esp. considering current POliTicians post stUpid drivel conStantly.
mikenew 9y ago
The problem with social media isn't that we aren't sure how much privacy we want to have or how long the things we say should stick around. The problem is that social media is a gamification of social interaction, and it causes us to behave in ways that we normally wouldn't. In normal life, people don't take turns loudly stating their political opinions to a room of people and then looking to see how many people agree with them. They also don't have product placements or subtle advertising injected into their normal conversations. They also don't obsessively and continuously call up other people to see if they have any interesting new content to share. Social Media is not just a tool that we use to communicate with each other along the lines of a phone or messaging service. It is a platform that is designed to be addictive and to carefully meter out hits of dopamine to keep people coming back. The current popular social media platforms aren't popular because they provide a nice service that people enjoy, they're popular because they exploit weaknesses in human behavior and cause people to use them obsessively and unhealthily. The customers that are funding these platforms and driving the design are not the people that use them, they are advertisers that want their ads to be as targeted, subtle, and as widely viewed as possible. I agree that social media is not going away, but unless there is a fundamental shift in the way it's designed it may be "here to stay" in the way that gambling is "here to stay". Okay in moderation, but dangerous and fundamentally designed to take something from you.
cptskippy 9y ago
> After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. Online privacy isn't just about hiding the stupid stuff you post online. Do you wear a name tag on your shirt with PII at all times when you go out in public or interact with others in a public setting? Why not? I'd love for everyone who says "I don't care about online privacy" to start wearing badges in public with a unique identifier and all the information available about them on the internet for others to see.
- gnode 9y ago
  This could become a reality forced upon us by technological means with applications like FindFace (A Russian face recognition app which matches strangers' faces to their VK profiles). Unfortunately, I can imagine this just becoming the new normal.
ymse 9y ago
There's an interesting case going on in Norway right now. The head of the Justice Ministry is being impeached because she made a post on Facebook saying that the police should be able to withdraw the passports of suspected terrorists without a court case. When the labour party objected publicly, she accused them of being "in favour of terrorism" (again on Facebook I believe), which was very unfortunate seeing that their youth division were the target of the 2011 terror attack on Utøya. So right now other parties in government are questioning her ability to serve as Minister of Justice and Public Security and she will likely have to leave her post this week. I could not find any sources in English, but it's the headline of any .no news sites at the moment: https://www.nrk.no/norge/krf-har-holdt-skjebnemote-om-mistillitsforslaget-mot-listhaug-1.13969687 https://www.nrk.no/norge/krf-har-holdt-skjebnemote-om-mistil...

pat_space 9y ago

I have no passcode on my phone. I don't expect privacy anymore.

martin-adams 9y ago

I see it like a credit report. Have a bad credit report, it makes you look bad. Have no credit report, it means you're a risk because there is no data on your behaviour. As the world leans in to using social as a form of credit check, we will have to learn the right way to use it for a very different purpose than it was designed for.

acobster 9y ago
I also see it like a credit report, but for a different reason: some companies make money by recording your activity and selling your data. They use their profits to corner the market and create an oligopoly so powerful that people just accept it as a fact of life. Finally, when people realize the power they've given these companies and the danger they're in (see: Equifax), they are outraged, but the companies are basically an institution at this point.
VLM 9y ago
Legacy TV during non-prime time is full of commercials about credit cleaning services and similar; perhaps that's the future of social media. I would be willing to pay a modest sum of money to a startup willing to provide bland and inoffensive social media "filler" content. This is already the norm for celebrities, but at some point it can be automated for the masses. Give me a giant list of checkboxes to select the message I'd like to provide to corporate data miners, then I never have to be bothered with facebook again...
notyourwork 9y ago
It is a good analogy, a character report if you will.

CPLX 9y ago

Social norms will change. But the concept of social norms will not go away. There will always be some norms that society deems taboo to violate. Therefore, there will always be reputational risks to someone by having a long record of social behavior in the public domain.

Pigo 9y ago

It's really funny when people bring up things people said or did 10 years ago as way to knock them down a peg. If anything, it should show that a person has the capacity to change and mature if they are no longer acting the embarrassing way. It does bother me that people are expected to behave perfectly their entire lives in order to be a leader. It creates a situation that caters to psychopaths.

dwighttk 9y ago
>it should show that a person has the capacity to change and mature if they are no longer acting the embarrassing way. I mean, it can show that, or it can show that they have gotten better at image cultivation. And the latter is much easier to believe about a person running for office. (I'm not saying that is good.)
- Pigo 9y ago
  I guess my point was, who is capable of being honest and not being embarrassing at some point? A lot of comments seemed to assume I was talking about Trump, probably because that's all some people know how to talk about. But I'm talking about everyone. The only people who never say or do anything imperfect online have some sort of complex or maybe afraid of being punished by their Scientology buddies. Our brains don't finish developing until we're 26.
tachyonbeam 9y ago
What makes it even worse is that there are always people who will try to put forward the worst possible (mis)interpretation of what you said, ie: in the guise of social "justice", and the domain of what constitutes acceptable discourse (the overton window) is constantly shrinking. There is a fair chance that some of what you posted, which was considered perfectly acceptable and maybe humorous 10 years ago, is now considered toxic / harmful / triggering / misogynistic / oppressive / etc. Heck, what you say now can put you in trouble today. There are a number of opinions that I hold which I consider to be fairly balanced and mild, but am afraid to discuss online, because I think they could put me at risk. If you upset the online twitter mob, they're not going to fight you with coherent arguments and thoughtful discourse. They're going to insult you, threaten you, publicly shame you, and maybe get you fired from your job.

mic47 9y ago

> We might finally stop pretending they are perfect humans. This is good thing. Once everyone will be embarased by his history, > We probably will stop caring about online privacy. This would be bad, I would rather this to happen: "We probably will stop pretending of being perfect and become more honest."

tempodox 9y ago

> After realizing that everyone ... post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. 1. “We” never did care about online privacy to begin with, that's what made social media and all the other surveillance monetizers what they are. 2. Caring about online privacy is about much more than “posting stupid things”.

Slansitartop 9y ago
I'd say there are at least two kinds of privacy: 1) Social privacy from your peers and the public. 2) Technological privacy from customer profiling, data brokers, etc. The OP who was channeling Mark Zuckerberg circa 2010 was talking about the first kind of privacy, "surveillance monetizers" are the second. I think people are much more comfortable with violations of their "technological privacy" by "surveillance monetizers" because they're so secretive and behind the scenes. It's harder to understand the violations, let alone be bothered by them.

api 9y ago

We've already come to terms with human imperfection in politics. Clinton was known as "slick willie" for his philandering. Obama wasn't known for much personal impropriety but his last name was Hussein Obama which is phonetically similar to both Saddam Hussein and Osama. Trump... well... my god Trump... the guy is such a walking scandal and fountain of political incorrectness he's just overflowed the integer and nobody cares. I mean his team is not even really denying the whole porn star thing. The thing that concerns me about social media is the way it can be used as a training data set to train propaganda bots. Now that is scary.

shortoncash 9y ago
This new fear around propaganda bots seems unwarranted. I've gotten mail advertising specific political newsletters or products for as long as I've been an adult. Someone was aggregating information and targeting me long before social media was around. I feel as if the political class is just upset that they are not protected by the usual gatekeepers and that this is a non-issue.
- api 9y ago
  I think we're in the early stages of the development of what I've termed the propaganda doomsday machine. Think of it as the PR equivalent of the hydrogen bomb. What I'm concerned about is the combination of AI and big data to generate autonomous personalized intelligent agents that can actually converse with you, or at least can tailor propaganda to your specific cognitive profile with an incredible degree of insight and accuracy. Think of it as the ability to dispatch an army of billions of con artists with each tasked to work on an individual target person and with the benefit of "fleet-wide learning." I've heard this called "AI-assisted demagoguery." Keep in mind that it doesn't need to work on everyone. A system like that with a ~10% success rate at changing peoples' minds could allow its wielders to quite literally conquer any democratic nation. That would be enough to sway nearly every election. Non-democratic nations wouldn't be immune either as such technologies could be used to foment revolutions, though I suspect that the smarter autocrats would invest as much as it took to make sure they were the wielders and not others. You can see this in China right now where its autocrats are deploying a system very much like this against their population. 5-10% success rates could just be the beginning. As we say in information security: "attacks only get better." Iterative development and the ensuing arms race could eventually yield systems that exploit tremendous insight about the structure and function of the human mind down to the neurological level. Unfortunately unlike software we cannot patch our brains to fix vulnerabilities. Eventually it may not be possible to engage in honest public discourse at all, since any person in the public square would have a high chance of not being a person at all but an AI-powered con artist attempting to sell you something or change your mind. I"ve also thought that this -- not Terminators shooting people with lasers -- is what an AI takeover would look like. The ultimate intelligences behind it might be AIs but are more likely to be super-wealthy and politically powerful humans wielding AI as a tool to cognitively enslave the rest of humanity to themselves. Also what's this "the political class" stuff? If you're talking about Trump vs. Clinton, both of them are incredibly wealthy and highly connected insiders. Trump has somehow managed to pose as an outsider but 10 minutes of reading about his background and connections will disabuse you of that. He's as much an insider as Clinton, albeit in a different clique of the global superclass. The people who funded Cambridge Analytica were also members of the global superclass. What we're seeing here is not insiders assaulting the elite but different camps of elites waging propaganda wars against each other. It's the haves vs. the haves, not the haves vs. the have-nots.

VLM 9y ago

Use of social media seems to be a exponential or power law distribution where a tiny fraction of people are responsible for most posting, then the next one percent down are half as active, then the next percent down is another half lower yet, and so forth. Not entirely different than criminal activity or any other hobby. Similar to criminal activity, a very small number of very active social media people will simply be disqualified from office, and it won't really matter to most people. "Either way social media is here to stay." Like CB radio, or telegrams, or pro sports, or newspapers, or TV, or vinyl records, or magazines, etc. Note that none of those have entirely disappeared, but have gone from utterly culturally dominant and universal, to "is that still around?".

Slansitartop 9y ago

> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light. In 30 years, the candidates for president will either be bizarre freaks like Trump, or the kind of people who locked down their social media profiles early or were good at covering their tracks. > After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. People have been saying stuff like this for ages, I've seen no evidence things will play out that way. In fact, you're literally parroting points Mark Zuckerberg made circa 2010 [1], when he was trying to push more public content to increase "engagement" with Facebook. However, many, many people are reacting to social media by caring about their privacy more. Facebook's original selling point was that was restricted to your peer group. Snapchat's selling point was self-destructing messages. People are locking down the privacy settings on their social media accounts private or deleting them entirely. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-says-privacy-is-no-longer-a-social-norm.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Face...

overgard 9y ago

I definitely don't support the guy, but to an extent we're already here with Trump. If that guys twitter feed didn't kill his political ambitions it probably points to the fact that people don't really care about their politicians presenting themselves as squeaky clean. It will probably take a decade for this to become the new normal though.

losteric 9y ago
Have you seen how Trump supporters treat other politicians? Trump gets a pass on anything because he's on "their team", opponents are under a hyper-partisan microscope where even reasonable normal behavior is criticized.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  That's completely normal in partisan politics. This stuff occupies the same headspace as cheering on a football team for most people. Which is to say, when you make being a member of a political group part of your identity, you are inclined to defend it as you would yourself: with irrational non-objective gusto.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Sounds like politics, generally. The only thing odd about Trump is how tactless he is.
- overgard 9y ago
  Of course people are always going to use social media for ammo, I just think the era where politicians can reasonably expect to curate a public image that's wildly different from their personal lifestyle is essentially over. And honestly that might be a good thing -- much like mutually assured destruction with nuclear missiles, if every politician knows their opponents can dig up bad stuff about them easily it might elevate the discourse since low blows will lead to a vicious cycle for everyone
wlll 9y ago
I suspect that this was linked to people seeing Trump as different to the status quo. Yeah, he was rude, made incoherent outbursts, etc. etc. but that set him apart from the career politicians that had gone before. I'm pretty sure that any "regular" candidates for political office in the future will still be judged harshly by what they have done in the past. I think that what Trump stood for got him a pass.

greggarious 9y ago

>30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. You're assuming the United States exists in 30 years, and that it still elects its leader by popular vote :)

cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
It would really be a change if we elected the president by popular vote because we don't now and haven't ever.
theandrewbailey 9y ago
You're assuming the United States elects its leader by popular vote. I guess you didn't check the latest results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
- greggarious 9y ago
  >You're assuming the United States elects its leader by popular vote. We do currently, albeit indirectly. I could see a future where we no longer hold elections and have the electoral college pick the president without any pretense of voting.

drinchev 9y ago

> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light. Considering that the leader of the free world is currently using twitter the same way as some of my friends do it, I really doubt that the social media will be such a significant way to check politicians. More or less it will happen the opposite ( already happening ), where the politicians will judge the "average" citizen, by analysing tons of social media posts and reactions to them.

riq_ 9y ago
> Considering that the leader of the free world nit: I think you are referring to Trump, the president of the USA. But I doubt he is the "leader of the free world", whatever that means.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  The President of the US used to be referred to as the leader of the free world with some credibility. That is less true today but the term remains.
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    That title was only valid from 1940 until around the end of the cold war. How can the "Free World" be free if it is dominated by a single foreign nation? If anything, that title should be given to an organization.
    - adventured 9y ago
      The title isn't: dominator of the free world. It's leader of the free world. You can lead without conquering or dominating. Ideally in this use concept, the free world willingly follows. Whatever the most powerful nation in the so called free world is, that will always be the leader (even if people don't like it), particularly if there's an outsized difference in economic & military capability as is the case with the US vs everybody else.

YaxelPerez 9y ago

Relevant xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/1370/ https://m.xkcd.com/1370/

rsp1984 9y ago

Trump bragged about "grabbing women by the p*y" on tape only 13 years ago and he still became president. No matter the amount of stupid or disrespectful stuff someone says on (social) media, many voters actually don't seem to care that much about it.

WalterSear 9y ago
They care; they just have a different perspective than you on acceptable behaviour - one more driven by power dynamics and authoritarianism.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  "A new study on the personal values of Trump supporters suggests they have little interest in altruism but do seek power over others, are motivated by wealth, and prefer conformity." http://www.psypost.org/2018/03/study-trump-voters-desire-power-others-motivated-wealth-prefer-conformity-50900 http://www.psypost.org/2018/03/study-trump-voters-desire-pow...

matz1 9y ago

I think this how lgbt gaining more and more acceptance, the more it exposed through social media, the more it talked about, it become more normal.

TallGuyShort 9y ago

Yeah, can you imagine how stupid it would be to have the leader of the free world post ridiculous status updates for everyone to see, and it would get dissected for hours on end by CNN? Man, I sure am glad I didn't wake up in that world this morning.

sklivvz1971 9y ago

> After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. Online privacy is not about posting rude stuff on Twitter, come on

4684499 9y ago

> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. At least it's public, people will eventually accept no body is perfect, let alone when they were teenagers. I concern more about Google. They monitor everything users did, they memorize everything users did even you delete your account, they use data for everything that may not benefit users.

squozzer 9y ago

Let's hope in the future that we won't judge others so harshly, either past or present. But I doubt it, because we have an oversupply of friends / job candidates / political aspirants, all vying for a piece of us.

djsumdog 9y ago

The leaders of tomorrow are the leaders of today. Prescott Bush groomed his son to be president and the same with W and H.W. Obama was most likely sifted out of the pool in U Chicago by all the Strauss followers. The Clintons are a pretty powerful family and had Hillary won, it would have been a continuation of the Bush Clinton dynasty. Trump might seem like an outlier, but he's more like Reagan: an actor. He's a puppet on stage and the corporations actually running the show know they can play him. He's there to distract America from all the interest groups that really run things and they selected him because he's so out there. Make no mistake, the future leaders will either be groomed from an early age to be very careful with their public image or the puppet masters will latch onto actors who will be bombastic to keep America distracted. The rules are different for the rich. Their PR departments build worlds around them that use social networking. If there's any doubt, remember Obama joked about predator droning people interested in his daughter and people laughed.

Simon_says 9y ago
The Clintons are powerful now, but Bill came from rather inauspicious origins.
eldavido 9y ago
I don't see it man. I think this was the most democratic election in US history, where the people finally got what they really wanted - a blustering populist without a shred of actual policy experience. I mean, come on - the wall, tariffs, and now the death penalty for drug dealers? Is there any mainstream academic/intellectual on either side of the aisle that's really "running the show" here? I don't think so.
- ataturk 9y ago
  It's even worse than that--Trump is the last stand of Americans voting a fix for what is broken. If this fails, it's revolution.
- rovek 9y ago
  > the wall, tariffs, and now the death penalty for drug dealers? I think this backs up djsumdog's point that Trump's purpose, or the one for which he's being used, is misdirection.

mtgx 9y ago

It's not just about being able to discredit candidates. An even bigger issue is using this data to manipulate voters, which is the main thing revealed about Cambridge Analytica in the story.

chabes 9y ago
> An even bigger issue is using this data to manipulate voters Really. The fact that the comments in this thread hardly talk about the actual issue is concerning..
- smartness 9y ago
  This is the most terrifying about this Facebook situation. It's scary how easily people can be manipulated.

samstave 9y ago

We need a #DELETETWITTER as well, esp. considering current POliTicians post stUpid drivel conStantly.

mikenew 9y ago

The problem with social media isn't that we aren't sure how much privacy we want to have or how long the things we say should stick around. The problem is that social media is a gamification of social interaction, and it causes us to behave in ways that we normally wouldn't. In normal life, people don't take turns loudly stating their political opinions to a room of people and then looking to see how many people agree with them. They also don't have product placements or subtle advertising injected into their normal conversations. They also don't obsessively and continuously call up other people to see if they have any interesting new content to share. Social Media is not just a tool that we use to communicate with each other along the lines of a phone or messaging service. It is a platform that is designed to be addictive and to carefully meter out hits of dopamine to keep people coming back. The current popular social media platforms aren't popular because they provide a nice service that people enjoy, they're popular because they exploit weaknesses in human behavior and cause people to use them obsessively and unhealthily. The customers that are funding these platforms and driving the design are not the people that use them, they are advertisers that want their ads to be as targeted, subtle, and as widely viewed as possible. I agree that social media is not going away, but unless there is a fundamental shift in the way it's designed it may be "here to stay" in the way that gambling is "here to stay". Okay in moderation, but dangerous and fundamentally designed to take something from you.

cptskippy 9y ago

> After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy. Online privacy isn't just about hiding the stupid stuff you post online. Do you wear a name tag on your shirt with PII at all times when you go out in public or interact with others in a public setting? Why not? I'd love for everyone who says "I don't care about online privacy" to start wearing badges in public with a unique identifier and all the information available about them on the internet for others to see.

gnode 9y ago
This could become a reality forced upon us by technological means with applications like FindFace (A Russian face recognition app which matches strangers' faces to their VK profiles). Unfortunately, I can imagine this just becoming the new normal.

ymse 9y ago

There's an interesting case going on in Norway right now. The head of the Justice Ministry is being impeached because she made a post on Facebook saying that the police should be able to withdraw the passports of suspected terrorists without a court case. When the labour party objected publicly, she accused them of being "in favour of terrorism" (again on Facebook I believe), which was very unfortunate seeing that their youth division were the target of the 2011 terror attack on Utøya. So right now other parties in government are questioning her ability to serve as Minister of Justice and Public Security and she will likely have to leave her post this week. I could not find any sources in English, but it's the headline of any .no news sites at the moment: https://www.nrk.no/norge/krf-har-holdt-skjebnemote-om-mistillitsforslaget-mot-listhaug-1.13969687 https://www.nrk.no/norge/krf-har-holdt-skjebnemote-om-mistil...