9 ms·

Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

91 points by tylerhou 8y ago

sverige 8y ago
TL;DR The dinosaurs at The Atlantic take another stab at guessing what teenagers are doing instead of reading their publication.
- stefan_ 8y ago
  All the accounts quoted have <20k followers, some much less. Someone was looking for material.
  - panarky 8y ago
    Small accounts can be more influential than accounts that broadcast to millions of followers. Witness the power of small Whatsapp groups for example. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/whatsapp-india-killings.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/wh...
    - cheez 8y ago
      You should submit this to HN.
    - ouid 8y ago
      this webpage design is horrific.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    At one point Joe Rogan had 20k subscribers. Now he’s arguably the most influential interviewer in the world. All important things start small. It can be useful to pay attention to small, interesting phenomena.
- cheschire 8y ago
  I see it more as The Atlantic knowing who their paying audience is. It's definitely not the teens, probably their parents who also don't understand them and are looking for any clue.
Rjevski 8y ago
Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us information,” Dann said. “The fact that we’re all posting about these things means we all have to do research and it’s a lot of people completing these things together, not just one person, which makes us trust it more.” Are they sure? I bet it's just one big echo chamber of people copy/pasting each other, just like every trend on social media (memes, etc).
- soared 8y ago
  Where did you see that young people think flop accounts are news? The article is about discussing issues on instagram, there is no mention of news. Kids today grew up with the internet - knowing that big corporations we're slanting views/news from day 1 because they could go compare the same headline at fox, cnn, and nbc. Previous generations couldn't do that so easily. So a complete distrust of news shouldn't be surprising.. they aren't really very trustworthy in the first place. These teens don't need to trust the instagram accounts, which is the whole point. The account just makes a post to bring up a discussion point, whether or not that point is fact-checked is irrelevant. (Its mostly gossip with political/moral/idealogical/etc angles anyway)/
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    > All the while, an increasing number of teens are turning to these types of accounts for news, seeing them as more reliable and trustworthy than traditional media. It says it right there in the article. My point is that conventional news can be biased, but they're much harder to bias than this nonsense. Conventional news would pretty much require the entire media company to be on your side, which would require a lot of money. This would only require a few fake accounts to skew, at maybe 1% the cost of what it takes to skew conventional news.
    - 8y ago
thewizardofaus 8y ago
I think this has always happened among teens. When Facebook was popular among adolescent groups, FB pages existed that were identical to the messages shared on these "flop accounts".
- wrinkl3 8y ago
  And before that it was 4chan. Meme pages that touch on social and political issues are fairly integral to our net culture.
CPLX 8y ago
So, Tumblr, basically?
ddtaylor 8y ago
Sharing transgender memes apparently is "debate" ?
dawhizkid 8y ago
This might be the first tech trend (at least, that I'm aware of) that I was completely unaware of and do not understand at all because of my age (late twenties).
- esrauch 8y ago
  I think you are giving too much credit to the uniqueness of this. It seems not any different than subreddits or similar: they just making inflammatory meme posts based on hot topics and then people are discussing them in in the moderated comments.
nicky0 8y ago
ITT: Confused old people
baza89 8y ago
Just a few years ago these guys had the main mediums of information covered, sure there was internet, but up until now it wasn't in palms of everyones hands. And this new medium tends to be decentrilised, cheap for everyone to access and anyone can be the creator of content. And on the issue of quality of information, sure it can be shit. Memes, number of character restrictions etc, forum moderators being biased, thumbs ups and downs do seem like we are going back to coloseum times, boos and hoorays, instead of stating our arguments in words. It kind of does seem like we are going backwards. However big media is full of shit too, is censored in one way or the other, and is highly susceptible to corruption. Truth (the whole truth and nothing the truth) cannot be presented in 2000-3000 words. Those people at CERN take petabytes of information to be sure what is truth, on the stuff that is real and measurable. And even when they come up with an answer they say "We are 5 000 000 to 1 sure that this particle exists". And what we are mostly talking here about are abstract philosophical concepts and social sciences like economy, law, ethics, psychology etc. Unmeasurable things (at least pretty far from accurately and completely). These philosphical, wordsy, matters are thus super easy to manipulate with. Fake news, flops, deepfakes, resonating echo chambers.....All I see is big media being scared of loosing their power.
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
I don't see it as any different to any forum, IRC channel, social network group page, or group chat in an IM. 4chan, SA, Fark, car forums, etc etc. It's literally just teenagers making a group chat to shoot the shit. How is that anything new or controversial in any way? We did it on BBSes and IRC, then teens did it on MySpace and Facebook, now it's Instagram and Snapchat.

91 points by tylerhou 8y ago

TL;DR The dinosaurs at The Atlantic take another stab at guessing what teenagers are doing instead of reading their publication.

stefan_ 8y ago
All the accounts quoted have <20k followers, some much less. Someone was looking for material.
- panarky 8y ago
  Small accounts can be more influential than accounts that broadcast to millions of followers. Witness the power of small Whatsapp groups for example. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/whatsapp-india-killings.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/wh...
  - cheez 8y ago
    You should submit this to HN.
  - ouid 8y ago
    this webpage design is horrific.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  At one point Joe Rogan had 20k subscribers. Now he’s arguably the most influential interviewer in the world. All important things start small. It can be useful to pay attention to small, interesting phenomena.
cheschire 8y ago
I see it more as The Atlantic knowing who their paying audience is. It's definitely not the teens, probably their parents who also don't understand them and are looking for any clue.

Rjevski 8y ago

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us information,” Dann said. “The fact that we’re all posting about these things means we all have to do research and it’s a lot of people completing these things together, not just one person, which makes us trust it more.” Are they sure? I bet it's just one big echo chamber of people copy/pasting each other, just like every trend on social media (memes, etc).

soared 8y ago
Where did you see that young people think flop accounts are news? The article is about discussing issues on instagram, there is no mention of news. Kids today grew up with the internet - knowing that big corporations we're slanting views/news from day 1 because they could go compare the same headline at fox, cnn, and nbc. Previous generations couldn't do that so easily. So a complete distrust of news shouldn't be surprising.. they aren't really very trustworthy in the first place. These teens don't need to trust the instagram accounts, which is the whole point. The account just makes a post to bring up a discussion point, whether or not that point is fact-checked is irrelevant. (Its mostly gossip with political/moral/idealogical/etc angles anyway)/
- Rjevski 8y ago
  > All the while, an increasing number of teens are turning to these types of accounts for news, seeing them as more reliable and trustworthy than traditional media. It says it right there in the article. My point is that conventional news can be biased, but they're much harder to bias than this nonsense. Conventional news would pretty much require the entire media company to be on your side, which would require a lot of money. This would only require a few fake accounts to skew, at maybe 1% the cost of what it takes to skew conventional news.
  - 8y ago

thewizardofaus 8y ago

I think this has always happened among teens. When Facebook was popular among adolescent groups, FB pages existed that were identical to the messages shared on these "flop accounts".

wrinkl3 8y ago
And before that it was 4chan. Meme pages that touch on social and political issues are fairly integral to our net culture.

CPLX 8y ago

So, Tumblr, basically?

ddtaylor 8y ago

Sharing transgender memes apparently is "debate" ?

dawhizkid 8y ago

This might be the first tech trend (at least, that I'm aware of) that I was completely unaware of and do not understand at all because of my age (late twenties).

esrauch 8y ago
I think you are giving too much credit to the uniqueness of this. It seems not any different than subreddits or similar: they just making inflammatory meme posts based on hot topics and then people are discussing them in in the moderated comments.

nicky0 8y ago

ITT: Confused old people

baza89 8y ago

Just a few years ago these guys had the main mediums of information covered, sure there was internet, but up until now it wasn't in palms of everyones hands. And this new medium tends to be decentrilised, cheap for everyone to access and anyone can be the creator of content. And on the issue of quality of information, sure it can be shit. Memes, number of character restrictions etc, forum moderators being biased, thumbs ups and downs do seem like we are going back to coloseum times, boos and hoorays, instead of stating our arguments in words. It kind of does seem like we are going backwards. However big media is full of shit too, is censored in one way or the other, and is highly susceptible to corruption. Truth (the whole truth and nothing the truth) cannot be presented in 2000-3000 words. Those people at CERN take petabytes of information to be sure what is truth, on the stuff that is real and measurable. And even when they come up with an answer they say "We are 5 000 000 to 1 sure that this particle exists". And what we are mostly talking here about are abstract philosophical concepts and social sciences like economy, law, ethics, psychology etc. Unmeasurable things (at least pretty far from accurately and completely). These philosphical, wordsy, matters are thus super easy to manipulate with. Fake news, flops, deepfakes, resonating echo chambers.....All I see is big media being scared of loosing their power.

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago

I don't see it as any different to any forum, IRC channel, social network group page, or group chat in an IM. 4chan, SA, Fark, car forums, etc etc. It's literally just teenagers making a group chat to shoot the shit. How is that anything new or controversial in any way? We did it on BBSes and IRC, then teens did it on MySpace and Facebook, now it's Instagram and Snapchat.