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MeToo is an interesting example. I suspect that Facebook and Twitter have their own linear algebra models of who is interested in what, and that factors into t

by jpfed 8y ago

MeToo is an interesting example. I suspect that Facebook and Twitter have their own linear algebra models of who is interested in what, and that factors into their choices of what content from your friends makes it into your stream. After the wave of MeToo posts on Facebook and Twitter had died down, I asked my friends on Facebook to characterize how many MeToo posts they'd seen. Liberals reported seeing far more MeToo posts than conservatives did. Something I didn't ask about, but have seen after the fact, is that conservatives and liberals seem to have a totally different idea of what MeToo is about. Algorithmic balkanization may have contributed to these differing ideas, and cordoned most of the MeToo-related activity in a liberal cluster of the social graph. I saw a lot of personal stories of harassment and abuse from my friends. The sheer volume of them was undeniable. I could never say, given the experiences my friends reported, that it was mostly symbolic. Those experiences were very much concrete. It is possible that my particular subset of the social graph is disproportionately affected by sexual harassment and assault, which would affect the validity of any conclusions about the broader society I might draw from what I saw. But, for the subset of the social graph I observed, there is simply no way to call it symbolic.

oarabbus_ 8y ago
>Liberals reported seeing far more MeToo posts than conservatives did. This could be "confirmation bias" or perhaps more accurately the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon... liberals tend to be more in-tune with the MeToo movement and therefore would be more likely to recall having seen it.
- jpfed 8y ago
  Yes, that is possible. Part of MeToo, as interpreted by liberals, was establishing a sort of quorum of those who had been victimized. The fact that other survivors were coming out with their experiences made it seem safer for each person to feel like they could reveal their own experiences. If liberals were disproportionately likely to notice the quorum, then they would be disproportionately likely to contribute their own stories, resulting in a positive feedback loop. That may be an even better explanation for the discrepancies than algorithmic balkanization. In either case, for the people that I observed posting about it, MeToo was not symbolic; it was explicitly grounded in personal experience. But it's possible that the messages propagated differently in different areas of the social network, such that some others viewed it as symbolic.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
everdrive 8y ago
I think you're right. It's much less political, but I used to upload stuff to facebook that I thought might shock my friends. I eventually realized that this content of mine was showing up in almost no one's feed. [edit] It wasn't political or graphic material, just more "internet meme-y" than many of them were used to.
belorn 8y ago
I would say it is both a mostly symbolic movement and a collection of real personal stories that most people know a victim that is either have a friend or friend to a friend. Lets imagine we had a movement like metoo here in Europe talking about violence from immigrants. You would get thousands of personal stories documenting people being robbed, beaten, threatened, raped or target of other forms of crime. The people behind the movement would highlight the over representation that those immigrants have in the crime statistics, and the crimes would be very concrete. What would the conclusions be drawn about the initiative by the broader society? I predict that the difference between conservatives and liberals would be a mirror image of the same difference conservatives and liberals has over metoo.
- jpfed 8y ago
  I would be very surprised if these situations would be mirrors of one another. The way MeToo played out in my social media, I never saw friend A sharing an experience that friend-of-friend B posted. Rather, friend A shared their direct experience. Re-shared stories would have no doubt caused an inflated sense of actual prevalence... but that's simply not what I observed. I have many friends that reported their own direct experiences with sexual harassment and assault. I would actually be pretty shocked if anything like that number had directly experienced violence from immigrants.
  - belorn 8y ago
    Interesting. I have the opposite experience with no friends talking about sexual harassment but several who are victim of crimes committed by immigrants. It make some sense however given that data here in Sweden. 6% of people are victim of either sexual assault or harassment and around 6% of people are victim of either assault or robbery. Sexual assault has mostly female victims and assault and robbery has mostly male victims. And the blame towards immigrants shows up clear in the data. Immigrants in Sweden are 400% over represented for assault and robbery and almost 500% in regard to sexual assault. For those cities which has a very high proportion of immigrants this translate to directly to a lot of people being victims of crime committed by immigrants. The data is what the data is. We can discuss different interpretation of it, but the general point is that movement like MeToo is not about informing the public about crime statistics. It is a symbol by one political side about an issue they find important, which they highlight through the use of mass reports of personal experiences. The right could do the exact same thing, and I remember a few times they tried and failed to do so.

by jpfed 8y ago

oarabbus_ 8y ago

>Liberals reported seeing far more MeToo posts than conservatives did. This could be "confirmation bias" or perhaps more accurately the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon... liberals tend to be more in-tune with the MeToo movement and therefore would be more likely to recall having seen it.

jpfed 8y ago
Yes, that is possible. Part of MeToo, as interpreted by liberals, was establishing a sort of quorum of those who had been victimized. The fact that other survivors were coming out with their experiences made it seem safer for each person to feel like they could reveal their own experiences. If liberals were disproportionately likely to notice the quorum, then they would be disproportionately likely to contribute their own stories, resulting in a positive feedback loop. That may be an even better explanation for the discrepancies than algorithmic balkanization. In either case, for the people that I observed posting about it, MeToo was not symbolic; it was explicitly grounded in personal experience. But it's possible that the messages propagated differently in different areas of the social network, such that some others viewed it as symbolic.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

everdrive 8y ago

I think you're right. It's much less political, but I used to upload stuff to facebook that I thought might shock my friends. I eventually realized that this content of mine was showing up in almost no one's feed. [edit] It wasn't political or graphic material, just more "internet meme-y" than many of them were used to.

belorn 8y ago

I would say it is both a mostly symbolic movement and a collection of real personal stories that most people know a victim that is either have a friend or friend to a friend. Lets imagine we had a movement like metoo here in Europe talking about violence from immigrants. You would get thousands of personal stories documenting people being robbed, beaten, threatened, raped or target of other forms of crime. The people behind the movement would highlight the over representation that those immigrants have in the crime statistics, and the crimes would be very concrete. What would the conclusions be drawn about the initiative by the broader society? I predict that the difference between conservatives and liberals would be a mirror image of the same difference conservatives and liberals has over metoo.

jpfed 8y ago
I would be very surprised if these situations would be mirrors of one another. The way MeToo played out in my social media, I never saw friend A sharing an experience that friend-of-friend B posted. Rather, friend A shared their direct experience. Re-shared stories would have no doubt caused an inflated sense of actual prevalence... but that's simply not what I observed. I have many friends that reported their own direct experiences with sexual harassment and assault. I would actually be pretty shocked if anything like that number had directly experienced violence from immigrants.
- belorn 8y ago
  Interesting. I have the opposite experience with no friends talking about sexual harassment but several who are victim of crimes committed by immigrants. It make some sense however given that data here in Sweden. 6% of people are victim of either sexual assault or harassment and around 6% of people are victim of either assault or robbery. Sexual assault has mostly female victims and assault and robbery has mostly male victims. And the blame towards immigrants shows up clear in the data. Immigrants in Sweden are 400% over represented for assault and robbery and almost 500% in regard to sexual assault. For those cities which has a very high proportion of immigrants this translate to directly to a lot of people being victims of crime committed by immigrants. The data is what the data is. We can discuss different interpretation of it, but the general point is that movement like MeToo is not about informing the public about crime statistics. It is a symbol by one political side about an issue they find important, which they highlight through the use of mass reports of personal experiences. The right could do the exact same thing, and I remember a few times they tried and failed to do so.