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The same could be said about the internet in general. Take a stroll away from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc and you can find some really interesting places

The same could be said about the internet in general. Take a stroll away from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc and you can find some really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content. The problem is that a majority of people are just absolutely manipulated by their emotions and dive head first into the feedback loop designed by social media to provide an addictive stream of never-ending engagement.

agumonkey 9y ago
Last month I was kicked from twitter, since I was trying to be more productive I didn't trigger the reset process. I did spend less time refreshing some timeline. But 1) I did miss some of my "audience" (feels like an audience more than friends, but I'm twisted) 2) I'm now way less aware of lots of news. Two days ago was the first time in years that I thought to myself "what ? I didn't know that" about an event. Not sure if this is bad or good, but it's an important difference.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  > 2) I'm now way less aware of lots of news. Two days ago was the first time in years that I thought to myself "what ? I didn't know that" about an event. Not sure if this is bad or good, but it's an important difference. I would suggest it's good. Most news in my view is "junknews", even from reputable outlets (including independent media). Why? Very rarely is any news actionable in any way. It's likely that very little of what you and I see each day fundamentally changes how we live our daily lives. Most of it is entertainment and us humans just like to "know" things - there are more effective ways to be informed about the world if that is the honest objective. Spending an equivalent amount of time reading books or going outside into the streets/community is likely far more useful for nearly everyone. Outsource getting the most important updates to people you know; they'll enjoy knowing "stuff" and keeping you up-to-date. Catching up on news can always come later anyway (e.g., if you need to cram for an "exam"; i.e., voting).
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    I do agree to some extent, I mostly despise the mass medias. Especially when you're tech saavy and with the web, they're mostly blurry and late to everything. Also they do create emotional bubbles on stuff that do absolutely nothing (say greece debt, which was the end of the world, then onto the next fad). So I often wanted to disconnect from this. But still my surprise about that event I missed was high and genuine. Maybe I could "quantify" that as higher surprise newsfeed process :p
spike021 9y ago
Really? I find "really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content" all the time. If not for Facebook or Twitter I likely would've never found The Athletic, a newer news media website for sports. I doubt they'd have just advertised on ESPN or some other sports broadcast channel website. Some of the content there has been incredibly insightful and meaningful. I even find articles from there on Twitter that I wouldn't normally have seen since I have the content from there filtered to what I like in my day to day consumption.
- optimuspaul 9y ago
  I might argue that you are in a minority there. I don't doubt that finding good content is possible on Facebook and Twitter, but to be fair it was outside those conclaves that the quality content was actually residing. Back in the day I definitely discovered new things on those platforms, but it has been some time. Most things I see there now are short attention span low quality memes and crap. Might have more to say about who I follow and friend compared to who you follow and friend than anything else. To that I say, good job, I wish I had the time and patience to curate my social graph better.
  - coatmatter 9y ago
    I used to think that I knew how to use Facebook properly and that it was everyone else who was using it wrong and getting the wrong rubbish things in their feed. Then I realised what was more likely the case was that only a small proportion out of my friends going back over a decade is interesting in any way. And out of that segment, only a small number are on my level reciprocally communicative terms - the rest are way above my "league" (I don't comment on their posts, and they don't comment on mine). So here was the conundrum: Continue trusting the sorting algorithm by posting and sharing links to a very small obliging audience (as well as continuing to read and comment on links shared by another, but not necessarily the same small group), or change something? I went for the deactivation experiment. So far so good (I think?). At least Twitter has a larger pool of "talent" to start with, but it still doesn't make "curation" any easier and most users* would probably concede it's a massive waste of time. Admittedly, Facebook Memories has made me realise that past-me is a poorer version of current-me and if the trend (hopefully) continues, future-me will also cringe at current-me. Seriously, there's so little time to waste: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html * Of course, there's probably a minority who have gotten employment or work connections through Twitter but I'd say that's a small minority compared to main userbase.
dmix 9y ago
Are you assuming they would have sought out longer form or higher tier content otherwise? My dad was extremely happy using Stumbleupon for years. It was about as high-pace low-quality you could get on the internet. I showed him sites like Reddit and elsewhere but he was very content with just Stumbling. People like to blame FB/Twitter for low quality content without considering the huge market for that stuff. People aren't the ignorant sponges who can be pushed/pulled in whatever direction other people think is better for them, which is how everyone seems to treat the average internet user or voter. Much like trying to blame the whole "obesity crisis" on some evil capitalist food producers, without considering the natural evolution of the workplace, evolving urban environments, technology, chemistry, or just standard irrational human behaviour to be lazy and knowingly make bad choices. I'm sure quite a few ivory tower intellectuals had their way they'd ban tabloids like National Enquirer and trashy reality TV like Big Brother. But I doubt that would suddenly make these demographics any better informed or better citizens. We can try to push back against straight up lying, at least when it goes beyond entertainment, but demand will always find supply in the marketplace...
- raquo 9y ago
  I definitely think that dumb content makes the consumer dumber with repeated exposure just like smart/educational content makes them smarter (well, in simple terms). I don't think there is a baseline intelligence level for each person below which they can't possibly fall regardless of what they do. So yes, platforms making dumb content more available do make people dumber long term. I don't know what to do about it, but at least we have to recognize that this is a legit problem.
  - dmix 9y ago
    > I definitely think that dumb content makes the consumer dumber with repeated exposure Sure, but even if that turns out to be the case what concerns me is how often people automatically take the next step and assume that it should or CAN be controlled top-down, and that doing so will surely result in the average/lowest common denominator consumer suddenly becoming smarter and less ignorant. Basically the assumption that it is such a significant problem, that people would be far better informed/smarter if we just banned/regulated what some central organization or individual mega-corporations deem as not good content. That's a significant leap - and one that I feel is very often disconnected in these discussions. Just because problem X exists, doesn't mean solution Y will solve it. Or that problem X is a significant enough problem that the rewards will warrant the costs/risks of attempting to fix it.
rhizome 9y ago
The problem is that a majority of people are just absolutely manipulated by their emotions and dive head first into the feedback loop designed by social media to provide an addictive stream of never-ending engagement. Wow, harsh. My sense is that the problem is that these other sites are simply not very findable, and Google search results have been getting steadily and measurably worse over the last several years.
- lghh 9y ago
  > Google search results have been getting steadily and measurably worse over the last several years I have an inclination to agree, but how is that measurable?
  - pascalxus 9y ago
    Someone needs to build a search engine that does'nt depend on page rank. Page rank is the thing that filters out 99.9% of the internet: it's the millions of pages you don't see that could potentially have better answers in it. Now, surely, there's a lot of junk in that 99%, but I'd be willing to bet there's a lot of gold nuggets in there too. Google's fundamental assumption and it's biggest weakness is that: Excellent content will always have an excellent source to upvote it with links. This isn't always true. If ever another search engine were to supplant google, it would probably take advantage of this weakness. This weakness is even bigger in niche areas that google AI is not able to recognize.
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      I don't know how much Google realizes it, but "walled gardens" are a fundamental threat to the quality of their search. Since most "normal user" internet activity is now locked up behind login pages on Facebook, the value of PageRank grows more dubious by the day. This leaves institutional and commercial websites as the corpus of "open content" available for Google to index/test, and while they are sometimes useful, the incentives are much less straightforward when you bring in money and organizational politics. Depending on the organic voice of the users who were publishing personal web pages and just wanted to discuss their interests and share the best information available got Google where it was, but now that lifeblood is locked down and thoroughly controlled by Google's competitors. Nowadays, many hobbyists and small businesses even forgo the web site entirely and just operate out of a Facebook page or group. Worse still, open forums typically either completely disallow links with accurate anchor text or explicitly tell search engines to ignore them with rel=nofollow. This makes PageRank even less valuable, because the shared URL is not associated with link text. Some forums will transparently place anything containing a URL in a moderation queue, leaving no information at all for a search crawler to extract (ostensibly to prevent spam, but I've found in practice it's more often used by niche forum operators to block out competitors and get higher prices for ads; you can even see this on reddit, as many subreddit mods configure AutoModerator to filter any URLs pointing to unapproved domains). Google was designed for the web as it stood in 1999. It's not 1999 anymore. Sadly, hyper-aggressive legal restrictions like the CFAA and the RAM Copy Doctrine mean that a useful search for the 2018 web is unlikely to materialize (at least in the U.S. or countries that impose similar restrictions).

agumonkey 9y ago

Last month I was kicked from twitter, since I was trying to be more productive I didn't trigger the reset process. I did spend less time refreshing some timeline. But 1) I did miss some of my "audience" (feels like an audience more than friends, but I'm twisted) 2) I'm now way less aware of lots of news. Two days ago was the first time in years that I thought to myself "what ? I didn't know that" about an event. Not sure if this is bad or good, but it's an important difference.

coatmatter 9y ago
> 2) I'm now way less aware of lots of news. Two days ago was the first time in years that I thought to myself "what ? I didn't know that" about an event. Not sure if this is bad or good, but it's an important difference. I would suggest it's good. Most news in my view is "junknews", even from reputable outlets (including independent media). Why? Very rarely is any news actionable in any way. It's likely that very little of what you and I see each day fundamentally changes how we live our daily lives. Most of it is entertainment and us humans just like to "know" things - there are more effective ways to be informed about the world if that is the honest objective. Spending an equivalent amount of time reading books or going outside into the streets/community is likely far more useful for nearly everyone. Outsource getting the most important updates to people you know; they'll enjoy knowing "stuff" and keeping you up-to-date. Catching up on news can always come later anyway (e.g., if you need to cram for an "exam"; i.e., voting).
- agumonkey 9y ago
  I do agree to some extent, I mostly despise the mass medias. Especially when you're tech saavy and with the web, they're mostly blurry and late to everything. Also they do create emotional bubbles on stuff that do absolutely nothing (say greece debt, which was the end of the world, then onto the next fad). So I often wanted to disconnect from this. But still my surprise about that event I missed was high and genuine. Maybe I could "quantify" that as higher surprise newsfeed process :p

spike021 9y ago

Really? I find "really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content" all the time. If not for Facebook or Twitter I likely would've never found The Athletic, a newer news media website for sports. I doubt they'd have just advertised on ESPN or some other sports broadcast channel website. Some of the content there has been incredibly insightful and meaningful. I even find articles from there on Twitter that I wouldn't normally have seen since I have the content from there filtered to what I like in my day to day consumption.

optimuspaul 9y ago
I might argue that you are in a minority there. I don't doubt that finding good content is possible on Facebook and Twitter, but to be fair it was outside those conclaves that the quality content was actually residing. Back in the day I definitely discovered new things on those platforms, but it has been some time. Most things I see there now are short attention span low quality memes and crap. Might have more to say about who I follow and friend compared to who you follow and friend than anything else. To that I say, good job, I wish I had the time and patience to curate my social graph better.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  I used to think that I knew how to use Facebook properly and that it was everyone else who was using it wrong and getting the wrong rubbish things in their feed. Then I realised what was more likely the case was that only a small proportion out of my friends going back over a decade is interesting in any way. And out of that segment, only a small number are on my level reciprocally communicative terms - the rest are way above my "league" (I don't comment on their posts, and they don't comment on mine). So here was the conundrum: Continue trusting the sorting algorithm by posting and sharing links to a very small obliging audience (as well as continuing to read and comment on links shared by another, but not necessarily the same small group), or change something? I went for the deactivation experiment. So far so good (I think?). At least Twitter has a larger pool of "talent" to start with, but it still doesn't make "curation" any easier and most users* would probably concede it's a massive waste of time. Admittedly, Facebook Memories has made me realise that past-me is a poorer version of current-me and if the trend (hopefully) continues, future-me will also cringe at current-me. Seriously, there's so little time to waste: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html * Of course, there's probably a minority who have gotten employment or work connections through Twitter but I'd say that's a small minority compared to main userbase.

dmix 9y ago

Are you assuming they would have sought out longer form or higher tier content otherwise? My dad was extremely happy using Stumbleupon for years. It was about as high-pace low-quality you could get on the internet. I showed him sites like Reddit and elsewhere but he was very content with just Stumbling. People like to blame FB/Twitter for low quality content without considering the huge market for that stuff. People aren't the ignorant sponges who can be pushed/pulled in whatever direction other people think is better for them, which is how everyone seems to treat the average internet user or voter. Much like trying to blame the whole "obesity crisis" on some evil capitalist food producers, without considering the natural evolution of the workplace, evolving urban environments, technology, chemistry, or just standard irrational human behaviour to be lazy and knowingly make bad choices. I'm sure quite a few ivory tower intellectuals had their way they'd ban tabloids like National Enquirer and trashy reality TV like Big Brother. But I doubt that would suddenly make these demographics any better informed or better citizens. We can try to push back against straight up lying, at least when it goes beyond entertainment, but demand will always find supply in the marketplace...

raquo 9y ago
I definitely think that dumb content makes the consumer dumber with repeated exposure just like smart/educational content makes them smarter (well, in simple terms). I don't think there is a baseline intelligence level for each person below which they can't possibly fall regardless of what they do. So yes, platforms making dumb content more available do make people dumber long term. I don't know what to do about it, but at least we have to recognize that this is a legit problem.
- dmix 9y ago
  > I definitely think that dumb content makes the consumer dumber with repeated exposure Sure, but even if that turns out to be the case what concerns me is how often people automatically take the next step and assume that it should or CAN be controlled top-down, and that doing so will surely result in the average/lowest common denominator consumer suddenly becoming smarter and less ignorant. Basically the assumption that it is such a significant problem, that people would be far better informed/smarter if we just banned/regulated what some central organization or individual mega-corporations deem as not good content. That's a significant leap - and one that I feel is very often disconnected in these discussions. Just because problem X exists, doesn't mean solution Y will solve it. Or that problem X is a significant enough problem that the rewards will warrant the costs/risks of attempting to fix it.

rhizome 9y ago

The problem is that a majority of people are just absolutely manipulated by their emotions and dive head first into the feedback loop designed by social media to provide an addictive stream of never-ending engagement. Wow, harsh. My sense is that the problem is that these other sites are simply not very findable, and Google search results have been getting steadily and measurably worse over the last several years.

lghh 9y ago
> Google search results have been getting steadily and measurably worse over the last several years I have an inclination to agree, but how is that measurable?
- pascalxus 9y ago
  Someone needs to build a search engine that does'nt depend on page rank. Page rank is the thing that filters out 99.9% of the internet: it's the millions of pages you don't see that could potentially have better answers in it. Now, surely, there's a lot of junk in that 99%, but I'd be willing to bet there's a lot of gold nuggets in there too. Google's fundamental assumption and it's biggest weakness is that: Excellent content will always have an excellent source to upvote it with links. This isn't always true. If ever another search engine were to supplant google, it would probably take advantage of this weakness. This weakness is even bigger in niche areas that google AI is not able to recognize.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    I don't know how much Google realizes it, but "walled gardens" are a fundamental threat to the quality of their search. Since most "normal user" internet activity is now locked up behind login pages on Facebook, the value of PageRank grows more dubious by the day. This leaves institutional and commercial websites as the corpus of "open content" available for Google to index/test, and while they are sometimes useful, the incentives are much less straightforward when you bring in money and organizational politics. Depending on the organic voice of the users who were publishing personal web pages and just wanted to discuss their interests and share the best information available got Google where it was, but now that lifeblood is locked down and thoroughly controlled by Google's competitors. Nowadays, many hobbyists and small businesses even forgo the web site entirely and just operate out of a Facebook page or group. Worse still, open forums typically either completely disallow links with accurate anchor text or explicitly tell search engines to ignore them with rel=nofollow. This makes PageRank even less valuable, because the shared URL is not associated with link text. Some forums will transparently place anything containing a URL in a moderation queue, leaving no information at all for a search crawler to extract (ostensibly to prevent spam, but I've found in practice it's more often used by niche forum operators to block out competitors and get higher prices for ads; you can even see this on reddit, as many subreddit mods configure AutoModerator to filter any URLs pointing to unapproved domains). Google was designed for the web as it stood in 1999. It's not 1999 anymore. Sadly, hyper-aggressive legal restrictions like the CFAA and the RAM Copy Doctrine mean that a useful search for the 2018 web is unlikely to materialize (at least in the U.S. or countries that impose similar restrictions).