13 ms·

The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

161 points by uptown 8y ago

cuboidGoat 8y ago
Am amused that the repeat posting of "extremely normal website" on twitter has, from here at least, made twitter the current top google result for "extremely normal website". https://www.google.com/search?q=extremely+normal+website https://www.google.com/search?q=extremely+normal+website
moneytide1 8y ago
Social media does away with the good ole natural moderation that happens if someone belches out a self centered monologue in a public space and immediately receives glares and scoffs from strangers within earshot.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Ever been to a large meeting when there's a hot political issue? People can be nasty in person too, unless there is very good moderation, and sometimes even then.
  - briandear 8y ago
    The recent Cupertino City Council meeting about Valco had this on vivid display: 9 hours of vitriolic nonsense. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/19/differences-of-opinion-emerge-about-the-future-of-vallco-at-tuesday-night-meeting/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/19/differences-of-opinio...
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    Mostly stupid/unsuccessful people. The elite is very good at disagreeing with each other on a polite manner. I work in the public sector, as a manager who is on a board that designs suggestions for our national digitization strategies. I know how to play the game now, but the most eye opening thing to me when I was starting out was how people disagree at those levels of society. If you want to say that you think something is a bad idea, you sugarcoat it to hell and back, focusing first on complimenting your counterpart on where you think they are successful. Then you politely present your view and the facts that support it. In public it’s different, here you’ll sometimes get heated for the audience, but you’ll still be beat friends once the cameras stop rolling. The reason behind this is that the world evolves around compromise. These days you’re seeing more and more people who don’t understand how necessary compromise is, but hopefully we’ll kick them out before we destroy our democracy.
    - afarrell 8y ago
      Note that this sort of thing is explicitly advised in books like How to Win Friends and Influence People, which is 90 years old—-So it is an old game. > hopefully we’ll kick them out I’d prefer that they learn. “Kick the bastards out” just leads to a cycle of interns building your product.
    - watwut 8y ago
      Unfortunately, this is also how elite enables those who abuse power as long as those mistreated are not part of elite. This how and why bullies and abusers keep and gain powerful positions. This is how sexual assault becomes sex scandal and this is why Jerry Sandusky could abuse so many boys. This is how outright self-serving lies become part of consensus. This works the way you described because those people have little personal stake at policies they pursue while people loosing/gaining housing, getting probation or prison time, being able/unable to pay for layer/healthcare or otherwise touched by those policies don't participate.
      - eksemplar 8y ago
        I think it’s the last bit. That people don’t participate. I can’t remeber how many hearings we’ve done on changes that got nothing but crackpot replies because no regular folks want to spend time participating in the society they live in anymore. Only in one area do people actually take action, schools. If we close down a school, for various reasons but typically efficiency (money), parents will open a new private school in its place. I’m Danish so the laws are a little complicated, but basically a private school gets as much funding as a public school and that means we save no money by closing a public school that gets replaced by a private one. So our school system is extremely democratic, because you can’t make changes without the parents. Now, our school system isn’t the only system that works like this, most of them do really. But almost every other system is run mainly by professional bureaucrats who make the plans, because they are never opposed by anyone, because nobody participate. I mean, crackpots participation has probably gone up over the years, but real involvement from real people with realist plans are almost nonexistent. I consider crackpots people too by the way, but you can’t power a city with special unicorn rays or by having a voulanteer threadmill. Which are the only two responses we got to a recent hearing on which power plant to build. Want actual influence or real change? Then get involved.
intended 8y ago
> Sample bummer-based sentence: “Your identity is packified by bummer.” Sample marginalia, scrawled by this reviewer with sufficient desperate emphasis to literally tear the page: “Please stop saying bummer!” That was a fun line to read in a serious article.
Analemma_ 8y ago
It's turning out that social media is like nuclear fission: it's not that it's inherently bad, and a smarter species than us probably could use it safely with no problems. But our stupid ape brains with their tribalist tendencies and short reward circuits weren't ready for it.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go away as those who make their business making noise, either celebs or those who report on them, will just keep going with it. It may become purely PR providence though - I can see regular people giving up the notion of actively tweeting entirely.
- mc32 8y ago
  Yep. I find Twitter useful by following accounts which tailor to my taste in information consumption. They typically broadcast very useful information, and stay clear of politics and especially stay clear of politicizing for brownie points. Now, I can see Twitter being a very annoying place if all you are following are accounts which are looking to "engage" their audience and get retweets and mentions, etc., and try to be cool, set tone, influence, and throw signals --all of these mostly add noise.
- rococode 8y ago
  I feel that many regular people have given up the notion of actively tweeting their own content. The friends I follow on Twitter don't tweet very often nowadays, and when they do it's often in response to a tweet made by an account with a large following. I mostly stay on Twitter to keep up to date with news from certain groups and organizations (for example, YC). To me, at least, it doesn't really feel like "Facebook with short posts only" anymore, but more "place where you can read and comment on casual thoughts and updates from your favorite celebs and companies".
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    >place where you can read and comment on casual thoughts and updates from your favorite celebs and companies Sounds like hell
rqs 8y ago
> The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual behavior. I don't think this is the right target to blame. The much deeper reason is people ARE stupid, while think they are clever and correct. You, me, all the others included. And at the same time, the education once applied to us, failed. Simply put, it's not a technology problem, it's a sociology problem. Around the year 2002, when I was connected to the Internet for the first time, I thought it was a magic place where you can discuss with people on a topic until the truth emerges and learned, then everybody come to a conclusion and live happily ever after. That thought was the very first few which been destroyed. Because I instead found people are more likely to turn discussion into a "clan war" and mob each other instead. And that was long before Twitter or even Google is a thing. Here is a book that many people may already read, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-Mind/dp/1434100553 https://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-Mind/dp/143410055...
- acomjean 8y ago
  I think Jaron's argument is that there was a choice to either "take payment for internet services" or "have them free and market". The later won out and now its not just marketing it manipulating to keep engagement so they can market more. that's my takeaway of Jaron's points in his Tavis Smiley interview. (The transcript seems to not be there anymore) part 1 https://wgby.org/episode/57812 https://wgby.org/episode/57812 part 2 https://wgby.org/episode/57813 https://wgby.org/episode/57813 edit:payback has the transcript (click to show) https://web.archive.org/web/20180206043916/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/computer-scientist-author-jaron-lanier-part-1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180206043916/http://www.pbs.or... https://web.archive.org/web/20180214180024/http://www.pbs.org:80/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/computer-scientist-author-jaron-lanier-part-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180214180024/http://www.pbs.or...
- GW150914 8y ago
  I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the future and only told us about the extent of the internet in this time, I think that a lot of people could have extrapolates the shit-show of today from what we’d experienced back then. The only semi-surprise was the move to mobile devices opening the internet up to people who are almost too stupid to live. Not just tribal, not just willing to fight for their version of reality, but dumb as rocks. There used to at least be a filter (which steadily widened) of needing to know how to use a computer and get online. That is just gone now, and we’re in the true agora. It is not fun, and all of which is to say it is as you say, a sociology problem. BJT it exists in this form because of powerful and ubiquitous technology. It’s also true that the underlying sociological problem has been ruthlessly capitalized on by people who realized we warring primates could be readily exploited for attention and therefore, revenue. It was always going to be messy, but instead of people trying to fight against then current, some of the richest, most powerful and brightest people are actively trying to sweep people away for money.
intended 8y ago
in the 90s, I read about how religious extremists in certain countries were targeting moderates. This seemed very odd at the time, because the moderate position just seemed the normal sensible person position. Over time though, moderate preachers were singled out, and in some cases killed, because they didn’t take a stand. This created a chilling effect. Coupled with incendiary and emotional images (“look at these pictures, look at what they’ve done to our children! You are either with us or with them.”), and no push back or ability to prevent such polarization, extremism grew stronger. This is the gist of what I remember, it’s been years and many other crises since then. However I am struck, as to how social media is creating those same dynamics - but now for everything from gender, race, religion, politics, nationality, to brand loyalty and maybe even gaming. The best solution I saw for dealing with social media was dropping off it altogether.
- kwyjibo1230 8y ago
  Forcing you to "drop off" social media seems like the exact chilling effect you describe (assuming you are a moderate), rather than being a stance. It's happening!
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    How would you act instead? In the eyes of a someone with a sufficiently incompatible position you are a loonie who gets ignired after the dirst dissenting statement with a simple mouse click, never to be seen or heard from again on that platform. This is just so much easier than in the real world.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - intended 8y ago
      theres about 3 options. 1) Exit social media and save yourself. This is the best option 2) With unending patience, choose an individual and just interact with them at a human level till both sides achieve understanding ( no matter how distasteful or difficult the process ). This does not scale 3) Begin to invest in PR, think tanks, media firms, groups and so on to craft a message to sway large groups of people at one go. This scales and what most people are resorting to, and what is creating the problem in the first place.
dajohnson89 8y ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42322746 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42322746 (2017) >A former Facebook executive has criticised the social network for ripping society apart during a question and answer session.
netwanderer2 8y ago
I added Twitter to my firewall blocked list so now anytime I click on a Twitter link it just doesn't work at all. Won't waste my time in the cesspool if I can't even go there.
ckastner 8y ago
The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual behavior. Social-media platforms know what you’re seeing, and they know how you acted in the immediate aftermath of seeing it, and they can decide what you will see next in order to further determine how you act—a feedback loop that gets progressively tighter until it becomes a binding force on an individual’s free will. And that's why algorithmic order has won over chronological order in feeds.
freshwaters 8y ago
The most alarming part of the article for me was the reference to climate change and its impending consequences. I I may say I've been living under quite a rock for I hadn't thought of it as mentioned here in this paragraph: " The book’s most fascinating and disturbing chapter is about how the Internet, the primary vector of information about climate change, is increasingly a vector of the problem itself. The world’s data centers already have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry, even as people continue to speak of “the cloud” as though it were a barely corporeal entity. As temperatures rise, our information technologies will function less efficiently—increased heat and humidity will hamper the flow of wireless transmissions and satellite communications—and a vicious cycle will commence. (Bridle makes a similar point about cryptocurrency, that supposedly revolutionary and transformative technology: if its rate of growth continues, by next year Bitcoin alone will account for the same level of carbon output as the entire United States.) Even more depressing is the contention that climate change could actually wind up making us stupider: he cites research showing that human cognitive ability decreases significantly with higher atmospheric concentration of carbon. “Carbon dioxide clouds the mind: it directly degrades our ability to think clearly, and we are walling it into our places of education and pumping it into the atmosphere,” he writes. “The crisis of global warming is a crisis of the mind, a crisis of thought, a crisis in our ability to think another way to be. Soon, we shall not be able to think at all.”" I am genuinely in an odd state of distress at this point. While I continue to function normally in society and keep living as though it is something so far away in the future, a special place in a deep corner of my mind still seems to nudge every once in a while when I am alone and drive me to borderline insanity.
- czechdeveloper 8y ago
  This actually paralyses me a bit. Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that very beautiful nature I wanted to visit. Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service they don't really need to survive. Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another item in vicious cycle or consumption. But what can I do. I want my enjoyment of those stuff back. I want to be motivated to create and experience, yet I can't as I see the other side of that. I want to enjoy good stuff, but I can't.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
"...Like Lanier’s book, though in a very different register, it risks presenting the Internet as both the manifestation and cause of all of our deepest problems..." A friend of mine sent me a link recently with some stuff that Taleb's currently working on. The internet, the collection of data storage and transmission instantaneously anywhere on the planet, is not a problem. The problem is that humans are hard-wired for small social groups, not mobs. What we need is some new sense of morality and common wisdom around what's an appropriate piece of technology to make and use and what isn't. It's very, very reminiscent of how hard drugs was first introduced to transport and commercialization. At first it was open season, with lots of pain and loss of life as a result. Then there was a ton of over-reaction. Hopefully the pendulum is swinging back the other way, towards liberalization and education. As a libertarian, it's tempting to rant at government for making so many drugs criminal 100-120 years ago, but it might have been the best of a bunch of bad choices at the time. Likewise, busting up Big Tech could end up being a bad idea in the long-term and the best thing we can do right now to return some sanity to public discourse. I'll leave that to others to decide. But something needs to be done. Something drastic, I'm afraid.
- spacehome 8y ago
  Unfortunately, it looks like we're wired for mobs, too. Participants in mobs act very differently and self-report afterwards that the subjective experience is an altered state. It sounds like echos of an evolutionary history that had a fair bit of mobbing.
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    I completely agree. It's interesting to look at the history of warfare and how it relates to population density. In general, as farming got more and more advanced, large-scale warfare really took off. The difference was that people were limited geographically. So tribal chiefs (and later dictator/kings/lords) were able to geographically isolate and deal with unrest. This has fallen apart several times. The French Revolution comes to mind. The Chinese "People's Courts". In each case you had tens of thousands or more in a self-reinforcing feedback loop driving one another emotionally. These things do not end well. So if it's a choice between strong, totalitarian governments, the emotional mob-rule we're currently developing, and some controls on tech? Count me as a vote for some controls on tech. From here it looks like all three are happening simultaneously anyway. Better to choose your poison than get all three.
netwanderer2 8y ago
I think the article hits the nail right on its head, nobody really knows anything anymore. Not the person running it, or the person sitting at the top has gotten any clue about the very systems that they have created. Mark Zuckerberg said in his first public statement when the news of Facebook privacy issues broke out that it was absolutely impossible and ridiculous for anyone to think Facebook could ever had any stake at all in the election. Less than a year later, his tone has changed significantly as he had more time to learn of what's really going on inside the platform that he created and has been running it as the CEO himself, with thousands of employees working under him. I think this tells the tale of our AI future. As the system reaches a level so complex that it's very likely no single individual, not even the creator of the AI network himself, will understand how everything really works. How can we prevent an engine, that has gotten too big for its own good, to collapse when we are incapable of even servicing it? The truth is NOBODY knows anything anymore because we are all drowning in the sea of information. There is too much of it and it's like a bag of wires all tangled up. The more we learn the more we realize that we know nothing. Our path to enlightenment is completely blocked by the same knowledge that we have accumulated. It's like the modern Alzheimer disease in which the accumulated beta-amyloid protein has blocked all of our neural pathways. The question is, is there even a way to unlearn what we have learned?
vlehto 8y ago
What bothers me more than anything in that article is superficially smart people pouring all of their concentration onto stupidity of obviously stupid people. With my university educated 25 - 35-year-old social circle, I can easily generate boring conversation about Trump, climate change denialism, right wing activism, situation in Palestine or how facebook is cancer to regular people. 15 years ago my 15-year-old social circle would discuss climate change, US election system, nature of capitalism, future of internet and how to approach war in philosophic sense. Notice the difference? Those discussions were not too intelligent, but at least the subject matter was actually challenging. This piece seems symptomatic of the disease. The writer appears potentially capable brain user. But fails on several occasions to actually use that brain. And it seems like the culprit is again over concentration on the stupidity of the stupid people. Feels like wasted effort and the left leaning boogie mans he does offer as culprit don't seem to be at all believable. Where are the people looking to engage the smartest person they know of? (HN is quite solid, but also very coding specific.) Has there ever been a time when that was an actual thing? How could I do that?
- antpls 8y ago
  Stupidness and smartness are two subjective concepts. In some parts of the world, all individuals have an opinion, a right to express their opinions, and a right to disagree with others' opinions. What we see on online social networks is a mirror of the inequalities in rights and wealth amongst people.
  - vlehto 8y ago
    I'm clearly somehow not communicating my stuff well enough. I'm not into dividing people into categories by IQ. I'm frustrated how people use their limited resource of attention.
randomsearch 8y ago
“Enragement is engagement.” Social media is full of hot air and a lot of people producing nothing. Who cares. Most of the tweets on twitter are written by a tiny minority of people who like to hate or judge rather than act. Quit social media and leave that crowd to waste their time whilst you build something that actually improves the world.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  > whilst you build something that actually improves the world Or, failing that, chat on Hacker News ;-P Seriously though, I'm thankful that the quality of this forum is so high. When I see YouTube comment threads, I sometimes forget that Internet forums can be worthwhile, if they're done right and attract the right folks.
  - randomsearch 8y ago
    I agree. I learn so much from HN. I wouldn’t count HN as “social media” per se, anymore than Stack Overflow or a topical discussion forum.
- notacoward 8y ago
  Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd when people use the same media they condemn to exhibit the same behavior they condemn, and end by advocating the response they themselves have clearly not chosen? Apparently we all want those other rage-filled folks to quit social media and improve the world.
  - iamdave 8y ago
    Integrity was never a prerequisite for public debate.
tim333 8y ago
Social media is kind of awful but the regular news services are too, in their own way, always focusing on what's gone wrong. I try to counter it a bit by following people like Pinker who look at the reality that most things are getting better. Though I still follow the latest bad stuff going down.

161 points by uptown 8y ago

Am amused that the repeat posting of "extremely normal website" on twitter has, from here at least, made twitter the current top google result for "extremely normal website". https://www.google.com/search?q=extremely+normal+website https://www.google.com/search?q=extremely+normal+website

moneytide1 8y ago

Social media does away with the good ole natural moderation that happens if someone belches out a self centered monologue in a public space and immediately receives glares and scoffs from strangers within earshot.

skybrian 8y ago
Ever been to a large meeting when there's a hot political issue? People can be nasty in person too, unless there is very good moderation, and sometimes even then.
- briandear 8y ago
  The recent Cupertino City Council meeting about Valco had this on vivid display: 9 hours of vitriolic nonsense. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/19/differences-of-opinion-emerge-about-the-future-of-vallco-at-tuesday-night-meeting/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/19/differences-of-opinio...
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Mostly stupid/unsuccessful people. The elite is very good at disagreeing with each other on a polite manner. I work in the public sector, as a manager who is on a board that designs suggestions for our national digitization strategies. I know how to play the game now, but the most eye opening thing to me when I was starting out was how people disagree at those levels of society. If you want to say that you think something is a bad idea, you sugarcoat it to hell and back, focusing first on complimenting your counterpart on where you think they are successful. Then you politely present your view and the facts that support it. In public it’s different, here you’ll sometimes get heated for the audience, but you’ll still be beat friends once the cameras stop rolling. The reason behind this is that the world evolves around compromise. These days you’re seeing more and more people who don’t understand how necessary compromise is, but hopefully we’ll kick them out before we destroy our democracy.
  - afarrell 8y ago
    Note that this sort of thing is explicitly advised in books like How to Win Friends and Influence People, which is 90 years old—-So it is an old game. > hopefully we’ll kick them out I’d prefer that they learn. “Kick the bastards out” just leads to a cycle of interns building your product.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Unfortunately, this is also how elite enables those who abuse power as long as those mistreated are not part of elite. This how and why bullies and abusers keep and gain powerful positions. This is how sexual assault becomes sex scandal and this is why Jerry Sandusky could abuse so many boys. This is how outright self-serving lies become part of consensus. This works the way you described because those people have little personal stake at policies they pursue while people loosing/gaining housing, getting probation or prison time, being able/unable to pay for layer/healthcare or otherwise touched by those policies don't participate.
    - eksemplar 8y ago
      I think it’s the last bit. That people don’t participate. I can’t remeber how many hearings we’ve done on changes that got nothing but crackpot replies because no regular folks want to spend time participating in the society they live in anymore. Only in one area do people actually take action, schools. If we close down a school, for various reasons but typically efficiency (money), parents will open a new private school in its place. I’m Danish so the laws are a little complicated, but basically a private school gets as much funding as a public school and that means we save no money by closing a public school that gets replaced by a private one. So our school system is extremely democratic, because you can’t make changes without the parents. Now, our school system isn’t the only system that works like this, most of them do really. But almost every other system is run mainly by professional bureaucrats who make the plans, because they are never opposed by anyone, because nobody participate. I mean, crackpots participation has probably gone up over the years, but real involvement from real people with realist plans are almost nonexistent. I consider crackpots people too by the way, but you can’t power a city with special unicorn rays or by having a voulanteer threadmill. Which are the only two responses we got to a recent hearing on which power plant to build. Want actual influence or real change? Then get involved.

intended 8y ago

> Sample bummer-based sentence: “Your identity is packified by bummer.” Sample marginalia, scrawled by this reviewer with sufficient desperate emphasis to literally tear the page: “Please stop saying bummer!” That was a fun line to read in a serious article.

Analemma_ 8y ago

It's turning out that social media is like nuclear fission: it's not that it's inherently bad, and a smarter species than us probably could use it safely with no problems. But our stupid ape brains with their tribalist tendencies and short reward circuits weren't ready for it.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go away as those who make their business making noise, either celebs or those who report on them, will just keep going with it. It may become purely PR providence though - I can see regular people giving up the notion of actively tweeting entirely.

mc32 8y ago
Yep. I find Twitter useful by following accounts which tailor to my taste in information consumption. They typically broadcast very useful information, and stay clear of politics and especially stay clear of politicizing for brownie points. Now, I can see Twitter being a very annoying place if all you are following are accounts which are looking to "engage" their audience and get retweets and mentions, etc., and try to be cool, set tone, influence, and throw signals --all of these mostly add noise.
rococode 8y ago
I feel that many regular people have given up the notion of actively tweeting their own content. The friends I follow on Twitter don't tweet very often nowadays, and when they do it's often in response to a tweet made by an account with a large following. I mostly stay on Twitter to keep up to date with news from certain groups and organizations (for example, YC). To me, at least, it doesn't really feel like "Facebook with short posts only" anymore, but more "place where you can read and comment on casual thoughts and updates from your favorite celebs and companies".
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  >place where you can read and comment on casual thoughts and updates from your favorite celebs and companies Sounds like hell

rqs 8y ago

> The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual behavior. I don't think this is the right target to blame. The much deeper reason is people ARE stupid, while think they are clever and correct. You, me, all the others included. And at the same time, the education once applied to us, failed. Simply put, it's not a technology problem, it's a sociology problem. Around the year 2002, when I was connected to the Internet for the first time, I thought it was a magic place where you can discuss with people on a topic until the truth emerges and learned, then everybody come to a conclusion and live happily ever after. That thought was the very first few which been destroyed. Because I instead found people are more likely to turn discussion into a "clan war" and mob each other instead. And that was long before Twitter or even Google is a thing. Here is a book that many people may already read, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-Mind/dp/1434100553 https://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-Mind/dp/143410055...

acomjean 8y ago
I think Jaron's argument is that there was a choice to either "take payment for internet services" or "have them free and market". The later won out and now its not just marketing it manipulating to keep engagement so they can market more. that's my takeaway of Jaron's points in his Tavis Smiley interview. (The transcript seems to not be there anymore) part 1 https://wgby.org/episode/57812 https://wgby.org/episode/57812 part 2 https://wgby.org/episode/57813 https://wgby.org/episode/57813 edit:payback has the transcript (click to show) https://web.archive.org/web/20180206043916/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/computer-scientist-author-jaron-lanier-part-1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180206043916/http://www.pbs.or... https://web.archive.org/web/20180214180024/http://www.pbs.org:80/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/computer-scientist-author-jaron-lanier-part-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180214180024/http://www.pbs.or...
GW150914 8y ago
I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the future and only told us about the extent of the internet in this time, I think that a lot of people could have extrapolates the shit-show of today from what we’d experienced back then. The only semi-surprise was the move to mobile devices opening the internet up to people who are almost too stupid to live. Not just tribal, not just willing to fight for their version of reality, but dumb as rocks. There used to at least be a filter (which steadily widened) of needing to know how to use a computer and get online. That is just gone now, and we’re in the true agora. It is not fun, and all of which is to say it is as you say, a sociology problem. BJT it exists in this form because of powerful and ubiquitous technology. It’s also true that the underlying sociological problem has been ruthlessly capitalized on by people who realized we warring primates could be readily exploited for attention and therefore, revenue. It was always going to be messy, but instead of people trying to fight against then current, some of the richest, most powerful and brightest people are actively trying to sweep people away for money.

intended 8y ago

in the 90s, I read about how religious extremists in certain countries were targeting moderates. This seemed very odd at the time, because the moderate position just seemed the normal sensible person position. Over time though, moderate preachers were singled out, and in some cases killed, because they didn’t take a stand. This created a chilling effect. Coupled with incendiary and emotional images (“look at these pictures, look at what they’ve done to our children! You are either with us or with them.”), and no push back or ability to prevent such polarization, extremism grew stronger. This is the gist of what I remember, it’s been years and many other crises since then. However I am struck, as to how social media is creating those same dynamics - but now for everything from gender, race, religion, politics, nationality, to brand loyalty and maybe even gaming. The best solution I saw for dealing with social media was dropping off it altogether.

kwyjibo1230 8y ago
Forcing you to "drop off" social media seems like the exact chilling effect you describe (assuming you are a moderate), rather than being a stance. It's happening!
- gmueckl 8y ago
  How would you act instead? In the eyes of a someone with a sufficiently incompatible position you are a loonie who gets ignired after the dirst dissenting statement with a simple mouse click, never to be seen or heard from again on that platform. This is just so much easier than in the real world.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - intended 8y ago
    theres about 3 options. 1) Exit social media and save yourself. This is the best option 2) With unending patience, choose an individual and just interact with them at a human level till both sides achieve understanding ( no matter how distasteful or difficult the process ). This does not scale 3) Begin to invest in PR, think tanks, media firms, groups and so on to craft a message to sway large groups of people at one go. This scales and what most people are resorting to, and what is creating the problem in the first place.

dajohnson89 8y ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42322746 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42322746 (2017) >A former Facebook executive has criticised the social network for ripping society apart during a question and answer session.

netwanderer2 8y ago

I added Twitter to my firewall blocked list so now anytime I click on a Twitter link it just doesn't work at all. Won't waste my time in the cesspool if I can't even go there.

ckastner 8y ago

The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual behavior. Social-media platforms know what you’re seeing, and they know how you acted in the immediate aftermath of seeing it, and they can decide what you will see next in order to further determine how you act—a feedback loop that gets progressively tighter until it becomes a binding force on an individual’s free will. And that's why algorithmic order has won over chronological order in feeds.

freshwaters 8y ago

The most alarming part of the article for me was the reference to climate change and its impending consequences. I I may say I've been living under quite a rock for I hadn't thought of it as mentioned here in this paragraph: " The book’s most fascinating and disturbing chapter is about how the Internet, the primary vector of information about climate change, is increasingly a vector of the problem itself. The world’s data centers already have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry, even as people continue to speak of “the cloud” as though it were a barely corporeal entity. As temperatures rise, our information technologies will function less efficiently—increased heat and humidity will hamper the flow of wireless transmissions and satellite communications—and a vicious cycle will commence. (Bridle makes a similar point about cryptocurrency, that supposedly revolutionary and transformative technology: if its rate of growth continues, by next year Bitcoin alone will account for the same level of carbon output as the entire United States.) Even more depressing is the contention that climate change could actually wind up making us stupider: he cites research showing that human cognitive ability decreases significantly with higher atmospheric concentration of carbon. “Carbon dioxide clouds the mind: it directly degrades our ability to think clearly, and we are walling it into our places of education and pumping it into the atmosphere,” he writes. “The crisis of global warming is a crisis of the mind, a crisis of thought, a crisis in our ability to think another way to be. Soon, we shall not be able to think at all.”" I am genuinely in an odd state of distress at this point. While I continue to function normally in society and keep living as though it is something so far away in the future, a special place in a deep corner of my mind still seems to nudge every once in a while when I am alone and drive me to borderline insanity.

czechdeveloper 8y ago
This actually paralyses me a bit. Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that very beautiful nature I wanted to visit. Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service they don't really need to survive. Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another item in vicious cycle or consumption. But what can I do. I want my enjoyment of those stuff back. I want to be motivated to create and experience, yet I can't as I see the other side of that. I want to enjoy good stuff, but I can't.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

"...Like Lanier’s book, though in a very different register, it risks presenting the Internet as both the manifestation and cause of all of our deepest problems..." A friend of mine sent me a link recently with some stuff that Taleb's currently working on. The internet, the collection of data storage and transmission instantaneously anywhere on the planet, is not a problem. The problem is that humans are hard-wired for small social groups, not mobs. What we need is some new sense of morality and common wisdom around what's an appropriate piece of technology to make and use and what isn't. It's very, very reminiscent of how hard drugs was first introduced to transport and commercialization. At first it was open season, with lots of pain and loss of life as a result. Then there was a ton of over-reaction. Hopefully the pendulum is swinging back the other way, towards liberalization and education. As a libertarian, it's tempting to rant at government for making so many drugs criminal 100-120 years ago, but it might have been the best of a bunch of bad choices at the time. Likewise, busting up Big Tech could end up being a bad idea in the long-term and the best thing we can do right now to return some sanity to public discourse. I'll leave that to others to decide. But something needs to be done. Something drastic, I'm afraid.

spacehome 8y ago
Unfortunately, it looks like we're wired for mobs, too. Participants in mobs act very differently and self-report afterwards that the subjective experience is an altered state. It sounds like echos of an evolutionary history that had a fair bit of mobbing.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  I completely agree. It's interesting to look at the history of warfare and how it relates to population density. In general, as farming got more and more advanced, large-scale warfare really took off. The difference was that people were limited geographically. So tribal chiefs (and later dictator/kings/lords) were able to geographically isolate and deal with unrest. This has fallen apart several times. The French Revolution comes to mind. The Chinese "People's Courts". In each case you had tens of thousands or more in a self-reinforcing feedback loop driving one another emotionally. These things do not end well. So if it's a choice between strong, totalitarian governments, the emotional mob-rule we're currently developing, and some controls on tech? Count me as a vote for some controls on tech. From here it looks like all three are happening simultaneously anyway. Better to choose your poison than get all three.

netwanderer2 8y ago

I think the article hits the nail right on its head, nobody really knows anything anymore. Not the person running it, or the person sitting at the top has gotten any clue about the very systems that they have created. Mark Zuckerberg said in his first public statement when the news of Facebook privacy issues broke out that it was absolutely impossible and ridiculous for anyone to think Facebook could ever had any stake at all in the election. Less than a year later, his tone has changed significantly as he had more time to learn of what's really going on inside the platform that he created and has been running it as the CEO himself, with thousands of employees working under him. I think this tells the tale of our AI future. As the system reaches a level so complex that it's very likely no single individual, not even the creator of the AI network himself, will understand how everything really works. How can we prevent an engine, that has gotten too big for its own good, to collapse when we are incapable of even servicing it? The truth is NOBODY knows anything anymore because we are all drowning in the sea of information. There is too much of it and it's like a bag of wires all tangled up. The more we learn the more we realize that we know nothing. Our path to enlightenment is completely blocked by the same knowledge that we have accumulated. It's like the modern Alzheimer disease in which the accumulated beta-amyloid protein has blocked all of our neural pathways. The question is, is there even a way to unlearn what we have learned?

vlehto 8y ago

What bothers me more than anything in that article is superficially smart people pouring all of their concentration onto stupidity of obviously stupid people. With my university educated 25 - 35-year-old social circle, I can easily generate boring conversation about Trump, climate change denialism, right wing activism, situation in Palestine or how facebook is cancer to regular people. 15 years ago my 15-year-old social circle would discuss climate change, US election system, nature of capitalism, future of internet and how to approach war in philosophic sense. Notice the difference? Those discussions were not too intelligent, but at least the subject matter was actually challenging. This piece seems symptomatic of the disease. The writer appears potentially capable brain user. But fails on several occasions to actually use that brain. And it seems like the culprit is again over concentration on the stupidity of the stupid people. Feels like wasted effort and the left leaning boogie mans he does offer as culprit don't seem to be at all believable. Where are the people looking to engage the smartest person they know of? (HN is quite solid, but also very coding specific.) Has there ever been a time when that was an actual thing? How could I do that?

antpls 8y ago
Stupidness and smartness are two subjective concepts. In some parts of the world, all individuals have an opinion, a right to express their opinions, and a right to disagree with others' opinions. What we see on online social networks is a mirror of the inequalities in rights and wealth amongst people.
- vlehto 8y ago
  I'm clearly somehow not communicating my stuff well enough. I'm not into dividing people into categories by IQ. I'm frustrated how people use their limited resource of attention.

randomsearch 8y ago

“Enragement is engagement.” Social media is full of hot air and a lot of people producing nothing. Who cares. Most of the tweets on twitter are written by a tiny minority of people who like to hate or judge rather than act. Quit social media and leave that crowd to waste their time whilst you build something that actually improves the world.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
> whilst you build something that actually improves the world Or, failing that, chat on Hacker News ;-P Seriously though, I'm thankful that the quality of this forum is so high. When I see YouTube comment threads, I sometimes forget that Internet forums can be worthwhile, if they're done right and attract the right folks.
- randomsearch 8y ago
  I agree. I learn so much from HN. I wouldn’t count HN as “social media” per se, anymore than Stack Overflow or a topical discussion forum.
notacoward 8y ago
Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd when people use the same media they condemn to exhibit the same behavior they condemn, and end by advocating the response they themselves have clearly not chosen? Apparently we all want those other rage-filled folks to quit social media and improve the world.
- iamdave 8y ago
  Integrity was never a prerequisite for public debate.

tim333 8y ago

Social media is kind of awful but the regular news services are too, in their own way, always focusing on what's gone wrong. I try to counter it a bit by following people like Pinker who look at the reality that most things are getting better. Though I still follow the latest bad stuff going down.