3 ms·

When is the American voter responsible for the quality of their clarity or their grasp on reality? Or should Facebook and Google be more in that business? How

When is the American voter responsible for the quality of their clarity or their grasp on reality? Or should Facebook and Google be more in that business? How do we have faith in the notion of citizen communal leadership if we think people can't handle Google giving you what you want? How much faith do we have when we think the members of our community aren't trustworthy as vanguards of clarity, so we want Facebook to step in and judge what counts as dangerous delusion?

creato 8y ago
Facebook is already making these decisions today with the algorithmic feed. They're already stepping in and deciding what people should see and what people should not see. It's stupid to pretend that the status quo is some hands-off natural state of the world, and get upset at the suggestion that the way this is already being done should change.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- threatofrain 8y ago
  If you can't trust people to understand that Facebook promoting the post of a peer in your network, which you curated, isn't as popular as you think it is (Facebook doesn't generate content; the people you accept do)... What does that say about what we think of their judgment capabilities, and whether they can take on a more serious democratic challenge like a policy debate on Brexit, or the Californian initiative process? I view the judgment necessary for Brexit or other public policy as more than a magnitude harder than judging whether peers or posts in your network are as popular as Facebook wants you to think. Your response again makes me ask whether we have esteem for the clarity of our peers. Is there even faith that people can manage their own click?
  - creato 8y ago
    It's hard to argue against this point without looking like an asshole. But no, I have little faith that many people (including at least one family member) can handle the firehose of bullshit from facebook. I have one family member that was always anti-vaccine, but it was not really an issue until she got on facebook. The degree of radicalization she has now reached is intense, and I pretty directly blame facebook for this. Her sub-network of friends that post about this regularly did not exist before facebook. There are many firehoses of bullshit, but facebook is a singular example that has connected enough people to it via people they already trust that it seems to be having a real impact on the world's decision making abilities.
headmelted 8y ago
This would be a valid point if we were talking about Google/Facebook/whoever giving people what they want or not. The question I raised is whether not people understand that this is what's happening. It's not explained at all to a user who visits the homepage, hence people believe Google is providing objective truths, when in reality they're not even attempting to.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  You're still feeding into my point about whether or not you trust your fellow peers to be agents of esteem and clarity in an activity of citizen communal leadership (democracy). Do you have esteem for your peers? If they can't get past this information judgment activity (Britney Spears isn't popular just because YouTube shows me), what happens when a more serious intellectual challenge comes along? Like Brexit? Does the slightest wind blow away the faith you have in the judgment of your peers?
  - headmelted 8y ago
    You and I agree that we're responsible for our own critical thinking, but the average person accepts as reality that Google is black and white with regards to facts (even though that is clearly not possible). That's not in itself on Google, but as democratic whims over the last few years have shown, the lack of awareness is having out-sized effects on all of us that still isn't being talked about. Social media may not be actively seeding viral nonsense, but it sure is making bank selling the petri dishes.
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
The American voter is under attack by entities seeking to confuse, mislead, and misinform him or her for their own profit and power. Isolated from reasonable or normative thought, uneducated in the mechanisms attacking their thought, and indoctrinated in these lies as cultural, social, and even patriotic standards to be upheld and identified with, we can hardly be expected to break this crushing mold and make choices with clarity and rational thinking. The first step, when one is able to temporarily rise above this suffocating morass, is to cry out that it must be torn down. Reform the first-past-the-post voting systems that generate and enforce an extremist 2-party system, stop powerful and wealthy entities from buying their own rules through lobbying and regulatory capture, adapt rules that were written without a concept for what they would mean in a world with broadcasting and instant copying of information, recognize that harmful externalities are not corrected by an irrational purely capitalistic economy...the list of injustices is long and reasonably obvious, from the outside. Tragically, though, these goals are next to impossible to achieve without a critical mass that the systems are actively repressing.

creato 8y ago

Facebook is already making these decisions today with the algorithmic feed. They're already stepping in and deciding what people should see and what people should not see. It's stupid to pretend that the status quo is some hands-off natural state of the world, and get upset at the suggestion that the way this is already being done should change.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
threatofrain 8y ago
If you can't trust people to understand that Facebook promoting the post of a peer in your network, which you curated, isn't as popular as you think it is (Facebook doesn't generate content; the people you accept do)... What does that say about what we think of their judgment capabilities, and whether they can take on a more serious democratic challenge like a policy debate on Brexit, or the Californian initiative process? I view the judgment necessary for Brexit or other public policy as more than a magnitude harder than judging whether peers or posts in your network are as popular as Facebook wants you to think. Your response again makes me ask whether we have esteem for the clarity of our peers. Is there even faith that people can manage their own click?
- creato 8y ago
  It's hard to argue against this point without looking like an asshole. But no, I have little faith that many people (including at least one family member) can handle the firehose of bullshit from facebook. I have one family member that was always anti-vaccine, but it was not really an issue until she got on facebook. The degree of radicalization she has now reached is intense, and I pretty directly blame facebook for this. Her sub-network of friends that post about this regularly did not exist before facebook. There are many firehoses of bullshit, but facebook is a singular example that has connected enough people to it via people they already trust that it seems to be having a real impact on the world's decision making abilities.

headmelted 8y ago

This would be a valid point if we were talking about Google/Facebook/whoever giving people what they want or not. The question I raised is whether not people understand that this is what's happening. It's not explained at all to a user who visits the homepage, hence people believe Google is providing objective truths, when in reality they're not even attempting to.

threatofrain 8y ago
You're still feeding into my point about whether or not you trust your fellow peers to be agents of esteem and clarity in an activity of citizen communal leadership (democracy). Do you have esteem for your peers? If they can't get past this information judgment activity (Britney Spears isn't popular just because YouTube shows me), what happens when a more serious intellectual challenge comes along? Like Brexit? Does the slightest wind blow away the faith you have in the judgment of your peers?
- headmelted 8y ago
  You and I agree that we're responsible for our own critical thinking, but the average person accepts as reality that Google is black and white with regards to facts (even though that is clearly not possible). That's not in itself on Google, but as democratic whims over the last few years have shown, the lack of awareness is having out-sized effects on all of us that still isn't being talked about. Social media may not be actively seeding viral nonsense, but it sure is making bank selling the petri dishes.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

The American voter is under attack by entities seeking to confuse, mislead, and misinform him or her for their own profit and power. Isolated from reasonable or normative thought, uneducated in the mechanisms attacking their thought, and indoctrinated in these lies as cultural, social, and even patriotic standards to be upheld and identified with, we can hardly be expected to break this crushing mold and make choices with clarity and rational thinking. The first step, when one is able to temporarily rise above this suffocating morass, is to cry out that it must be torn down. Reform the first-past-the-post voting systems that generate and enforce an extremist 2-party system, stop powerful and wealthy entities from buying their own rules through lobbying and regulatory capture, adapt rules that were written without a concept for what they would mean in a world with broadcasting and instant copying of information, recognize that harmful externalities are not corrected by an irrational purely capitalistic economy...the list of injustices is long and reasonably obvious, from the outside. Tragically, though, these goals are next to impossible to achieve without a critical mass that the systems are actively repressing.