7 ms·

When confronting the utopian side, by contrast, the relevant question becomes sharper: Should these companies even exist at all? I am coming towards this concl

When confronting the utopian side, by contrast, the relevant question becomes sharper: Should these companies even exist at all? I am coming towards this conclusion as well. As individuals, the easier and more frictionless our communications with others, the greater our opportunities to live, love, learn, and collaborate. As a species, we have evolved to live in small social groups with radically different norms and life patterns. That's a survival and evolution benefit, not a bug. As long as we can remain peaceful and not harm one another, we want the maximum possible diversity in humanity, not some utopian norm for the entire species. We have a wonderful example of large numbers of people instantly communicating with one another. They're called mobs. Because at some point in scaling, and it happens probably between 75-500 people, powerful emotions are the only thing that can sustain the instant feedback loop we've created. We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it.

jxub 9y ago
Gustave Le Bon, the prominent French psychologist, has a copious amount of writing on the concept of mobs and their behaviour: A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first...A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images invoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed facts....Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images.
makomk 9y ago
What you're basically saying, I think, is that there shouldn't be any easy way for ordinary people to communicate directly with each other and organise politically. That it's too dangerous to allow them to do this without the press acting as gatekeepers first. That certainly does seem to be the underlying subtext of a lot of the recent criticism of Facebook. It's also an astounding line of thinking, because it basically says that it's politically unacceptable, even a danger to democracy, for ordinary people to actually have power and not just the illusion that they do. (Edit: to be fair, I should probably add that the press wouldn't be the only powerful institution that has the ability to enable or gatekeep activism and organising, just one of the most important. The more fundamental difference is whether you need to have one of those powerful institutions backing your cause.)
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  No, they've always been able to do what you say, even before these apps. The issue is the speed at which it happens, turns ordinary sensible people into members of a mob. That's clearly a problem.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  Thanks for your comment because I am not saying that at all. All I'm saying is that a certain amount of friction is a necessary part of our survival as a species. I'm not making any comments about the press or people organizing or any of that. Some message boards, including HN, have a delay between the time you read a comment and when you are allowed to form a reply. This cuts way back on flame wars. It's also a nice example of purposely introducing some friction for a larger good. I don't know how much friction is needed or where it should go. I'm just now reaching the conclusion about Facebook and social media. This utopia they've all been preaching is actually a dystopia, a horrible thing indeed. I'm nowhere near having any thoughts about a solution.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    There are ways in which humans self-organise, amplifying individual intelligence and empathy, and ways in which humans self-disorganise, amplifying the naive ambition, greed, and poor choices of powerful individuals. The challenge is to distinguish between the two. The FB memo is self-serving nonsense, because it tries to deny there's a problem. In fact the problem existed outside FB before FB and the rest were created. Why do we have an economy in which a social network exists primarily to amplify the power of persuasive media? Why do our political fitness functions reward this outcome, instead of the other possible outcomes that social networks could generate? This isn't a problem that can be fixed with more or better software, because it's not a technical problem - it's about politics and values, and how our political economy rewards certain behaviours while punishing, or at least strongly disincentivising, others.
  - cousin_it 9y ago
    Yeah. I felt much more free and creative when writing LiveJournal posts, which were guaranteed to be seen by my 10-100ish "friends", than when writing Reddit or HN posts, which must compete with tons of other posts to get seen by 0-infinity people.
forgottenpass 9y ago
> We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it. I am uncomfortable with this, but I find myself agreeing. All the "problems" with Twitter stem from liking low-friction communication in theory, but hating it in practice. I think that in some way it is workable, but people approach it in a way that sets everyone up for failure. People want their phone to ding, then make them feel good because their friends are nice to them. Twitter is not that. Twitter can never be that. Twitter is the internet. If you apply the last 3 decades of common knowledge about interacting on the internet, it's fine. But it reduces the utility (and therefore engagement) of Twitter, so the marketed idea has to be that twitter is something more.
- dannykahneman 9y ago
  I understand the discomfort, I feel it myself. However, I believe that friction, and adding delays, makes it more likely that people engage system 2 thinking (slow). When communication is frictionless, we engage more of our type i system. See: drunk arguments.
  - forgottenpass 9y ago
    Yeah, but at the same drunk arguments kinda prove my case too. Drunk arguments are fun, but they're their own thing. People worth knowing, know how to have a drunk argument and still get along with everyone during and after it. It's an abnormal interaction, but as long as the participants know the different ground rules and constraints, you'll be fine. If you use Twitter like it's facebook, it's not going to be fun.
kps 9y ago
> We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it. This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]
essayist 9y ago
Arguably, mobs have gotten a bad rap.[1] Bond argues that mobs end up being the way we see them on video largely because of how they are treated (ringed by armored cops with shields and bombarded with tear gas, say). FedEx, firefighting teams, the Hurricane Harvey response[2], and soldiers in battle offer other examples of people instantly communicating with one another. I don't have a brief for Facebook, and it does seem that what we (perhaps falsely) think of as "mob rule" is more prevalent in social media than face-to-face. [1] https://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/07/21/3093/ https://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/07/21/3093/ [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/social-media-becomes-savior-hurricane-harvey-relief-n796701 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/social-media-becom...

jxub 9y ago

Gustave Le Bon, the prominent French psychologist, has a copious amount of writing on the concept of mobs and their behaviour: A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first...A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images invoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed facts....Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images.

makomk 9y ago

What you're basically saying, I think, is that there shouldn't be any easy way for ordinary people to communicate directly with each other and organise politically. That it's too dangerous to allow them to do this without the press acting as gatekeepers first. That certainly does seem to be the underlying subtext of a lot of the recent criticism of Facebook. It's also an astounding line of thinking, because it basically says that it's politically unacceptable, even a danger to democracy, for ordinary people to actually have power and not just the illusion that they do. (Edit: to be fair, I should probably add that the press wouldn't be the only powerful institution that has the ability to enable or gatekeep activism and organising, just one of the most important. The more fundamental difference is whether you need to have one of those powerful institutions backing your cause.)

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
No, they've always been able to do what you say, even before these apps. The issue is the speed at which it happens, turns ordinary sensible people into members of a mob. That's clearly a problem.
DanielBMarkham 9y ago
Thanks for your comment because I am not saying that at all. All I'm saying is that a certain amount of friction is a necessary part of our survival as a species. I'm not making any comments about the press or people organizing or any of that. Some message boards, including HN, have a delay between the time you read a comment and when you are allowed to form a reply. This cuts way back on flame wars. It's also a nice example of purposely introducing some friction for a larger good. I don't know how much friction is needed or where it should go. I'm just now reaching the conclusion about Facebook and social media. This utopia they've all been preaching is actually a dystopia, a horrible thing indeed. I'm nowhere near having any thoughts about a solution.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  There are ways in which humans self-organise, amplifying individual intelligence and empathy, and ways in which humans self-disorganise, amplifying the naive ambition, greed, and poor choices of powerful individuals. The challenge is to distinguish between the two. The FB memo is self-serving nonsense, because it tries to deny there's a problem. In fact the problem existed outside FB before FB and the rest were created. Why do we have an economy in which a social network exists primarily to amplify the power of persuasive media? Why do our political fitness functions reward this outcome, instead of the other possible outcomes that social networks could generate? This isn't a problem that can be fixed with more or better software, because it's not a technical problem - it's about politics and values, and how our political economy rewards certain behaviours while punishing, or at least strongly disincentivising, others.
- cousin_it 9y ago
  Yeah. I felt much more free and creative when writing LiveJournal posts, which were guaranteed to be seen by my 10-100ish "friends", than when writing Reddit or HN posts, which must compete with tons of other posts to get seen by 0-infinity people.

forgottenpass 9y ago

> We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it. I am uncomfortable with this, but I find myself agreeing. All the "problems" with Twitter stem from liking low-friction communication in theory, but hating it in practice. I think that in some way it is workable, but people approach it in a way that sets everyone up for failure. People want their phone to ding, then make them feel good because their friends are nice to them. Twitter is not that. Twitter can never be that. Twitter is the internet. If you apply the last 3 decades of common knowledge about interacting on the internet, it's fine. But it reduces the utility (and therefore engagement) of Twitter, so the marketed idea has to be that twitter is something more.

dannykahneman 9y ago
I understand the discomfort, I feel it myself. However, I believe that friction, and adding delays, makes it more likely that people engage system 2 thinking (slow). When communication is frictionless, we engage more of our type i system. See: drunk arguments.
- forgottenpass 9y ago
  Yeah, but at the same drunk arguments kinda prove my case too. Drunk arguments are fun, but they're their own thing. People worth knowing, know how to have a drunk argument and still get along with everyone during and after it. It's an abnormal interaction, but as long as the participants know the different ground rules and constraints, you'll be fine. If you use Twitter like it's facebook, it's not going to be fun.

kps 9y ago

> We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it. This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]

essayist 9y ago

Arguably, mobs have gotten a bad rap.[1] Bond argues that mobs end up being the way we see them on video largely because of how they are treated (ringed by armored cops with shields and bombarded with tear gas, say). FedEx, firefighting teams, the Hurricane Harvey response[2], and soldiers in battle offer other examples of people instantly communicating with one another. I don't have a brief for Facebook, and it does seem that what we (perhaps falsely) think of as "mob rule" is more prevalent in social media than face-to-face. [1] https://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/07/21/3093/ https://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/07/21/3093/ [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/social-media-becomes-savior-hurricane-harvey-relief-n796701 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/social-media-becom...