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I find it very worrying that people want to force young people who are learning to form their own opinion to choose "correctly". For whatever value of correctly

I find it very worrying that people want to force young people who are learning to form their own opinion to choose "correctly". For whatever value of correctly. By contrast, what these kids are doing, trying to pressure and misinform each other, is exactly what I'd want them to do : they're learning. Maybe, God forbid, they'll learn how that works and when it's being done to them. And that, I'm sure, a decent fraction of them will disagree with you ... that's a very good thing indeed.

jonhendry18 8y ago
How do you know there are even kids behind the flop accounts, as opposed to adult trolls or whatever?
- jhobag 8y ago
  same inquiry could be made to ask you if you thought there were real people behind the boards/chans u were on as a kid as opposed to adult scammers or whatever. kids grow up on the internet like how we did but now the tables turned and they either figure it out or not its up to them
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Plus ... when it comes to "better" information sources. There we simply know for sure they're adult trolls and propagandists. People will need to learn to deal with them, protecting them is not possible. As if that's not bad enough, any attempts to protect them simply creates better tools for people to feed bad information to more people, and might result in outright censorship (if it hasn't already) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC_controversies
    - freeflight 8y ago
      > There we simply know for sure they're adult trolls and propagandists. This is a much-underestimated factor that didn't exist, on that scale, previously. When I was hanging out in chat groups in the late 90's I didn't have to worry about my conversational partner having, financially motivated and sinister, motives to change my opinions about certain topics. Except for straight up scams, but nobody had a vested financial interest in "convincing" me about something. These days there's a whole industry built around exactly that (social media marketing), the web is full of dishonest information players, even on a governmental level, on literally all sides. This isn't even that new, it's a development that the US military caught on years ago [0]. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
5thbootloader 8y ago
I find it more worrying that anyone would want to support this kind of learning. These young people are not being educated on how to identify misinformation; rather, they're being indoctrinated with values that encourage virtue signaling or worse, trolling. Living inside a bubble of criticism and misinformation doesn't lead one to immediately question and then reform the system. More often, people choose to adapt to their environment which only perpetuates the existing infrastructure. Instead of pointlessly debating each other on this app, a platform designed to capture attention and manipulate emotions, these people should take time to research and then carefully write an essay. Once they are satisfied with their opinions, they could share their thesis with the public and request contestation. If we simply continue with this twitter/facebook/instagram trend of summarizing our most important debates in 150 words or less in a brief amount of time, we're only going to become less educated and more vulnerable to coercion.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  > Instead of pointlessly debating each other on this app, a platform designed to capture attention and manipulate emotions Someone probably write this same thing about news papers when they were a recent invention. Television also. > these people should take time to research and then carefully write an essay. Once they are satisfied with their opinions, they could share their thesis with the public and request contestation. More people than ever before are now university educated, or presently attending university. That’s got to help counteract the misinformation trend.
  - 5thbootloader 8y ago
    > Someone probably write this same thing about news papers when they were a recent invention. Television also. Well, I don't think television or the news paper is a good place to debate either. They do however give people more than 30 seconds to think about their responses.
- matte_black 8y ago
  Unfortunately, I think that before society really figures this out there’s going to be at least one “lost” generation, that will be seriously hurt or screwed up and by such groupthink.

jonhendry18 8y ago

How do you know there are even kids behind the flop accounts, as opposed to adult trolls or whatever?

jhobag 8y ago
same inquiry could be made to ask you if you thought there were real people behind the boards/chans u were on as a kid as opposed to adult scammers or whatever. kids grow up on the internet like how we did but now the tables turned and they either figure it out or not its up to them
- candiodari 8y ago
  Plus ... when it comes to "better" information sources. There we simply know for sure they're adult trolls and propagandists. People will need to learn to deal with them, protecting them is not possible. As if that's not bad enough, any attempts to protect them simply creates better tools for people to feed bad information to more people, and might result in outright censorship (if it hasn't already) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC_controversies
  - freeflight 8y ago
    > There we simply know for sure they're adult trolls and propagandists. This is a much-underestimated factor that didn't exist, on that scale, previously. When I was hanging out in chat groups in the late 90's I didn't have to worry about my conversational partner having, financially motivated and sinister, motives to change my opinions about certain topics. Except for straight up scams, but nobody had a vested financial interest in "convincing" me about something. These days there's a whole industry built around exactly that (social media marketing), the web is full of dishonest information players, even on a governmental level, on literally all sides. This isn't even that new, it's a development that the US military caught on years ago [0]. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

5thbootloader 8y ago

I find it more worrying that anyone would want to support this kind of learning. These young people are not being educated on how to identify misinformation; rather, they're being indoctrinated with values that encourage virtue signaling or worse, trolling. Living inside a bubble of criticism and misinformation doesn't lead one to immediately question and then reform the system. More often, people choose to adapt to their environment which only perpetuates the existing infrastructure. Instead of pointlessly debating each other on this app, a platform designed to capture attention and manipulate emotions, these people should take time to research and then carefully write an essay. Once they are satisfied with their opinions, they could share their thesis with the public and request contestation. If we simply continue with this twitter/facebook/instagram trend of summarizing our most important debates in 150 words or less in a brief amount of time, we're only going to become less educated and more vulnerable to coercion.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
> Instead of pointlessly debating each other on this app, a platform designed to capture attention and manipulate emotions Someone probably write this same thing about news papers when they were a recent invention. Television also. > these people should take time to research and then carefully write an essay. Once they are satisfied with their opinions, they could share their thesis with the public and request contestation. More people than ever before are now university educated, or presently attending university. That’s got to help counteract the misinformation trend.
- 5thbootloader 8y ago
  > Someone probably write this same thing about news papers when they were a recent invention. Television also. Well, I don't think television or the news paper is a good place to debate either. They do however give people more than 30 seconds to think about their responses.
matte_black 8y ago
Unfortunately, I think that before society really figures this out there’s going to be at least one “lost” generation, that will be seriously hurt or screwed up and by such groupthink.