5 ms·

What if it was not the fault of social media? What if the platforms were only there for people to express themselves in which ever way they felt comfortable doi

What if it was not the fault of social media? What if the platforms were only there for people to express themselves in which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly? It seems that this woman was not speaking to her father about her mental illness nor to her friends. Social media might have shocked the observer but the mask is only created in the minds of her followers ("I thought she was a one-dimensional happy person. I'm shocked to discover there is more to this person than her public profile!") Perhaps the real story here is about the audience of this woman's profile. They were naive in thinking that a collection of photos and posts represents a person in its entirety.

rchaud 8y ago
What if the platforms were only there for people to express themselves in which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly? If the social media companies limited themselves to just that, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The fact is, they specifically zero in on stuff that "engages", so if you happened to innocently like a friend's vacation photo, your feed will be modified to show you more of that stuff, because the machine thinks that's what you want to see all the time. If you're involved in animal rights advocacy, don't be surprised if your feed is full of horrible pictures of overcrowding and abusive conditions on farms. If you're interested in fitness, IG will show you a flood of semi-pornographic "workout routines" of fitness models, but very little about proper form. These are platforms where the search functionality is intentionally gimped to search for usernames and hashtags as opposed to actual text content, which a lot of IG posts have; it's not all just pics and videos.
- ppeetteerr 8y ago
  > which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly They are. Your argument seems to confound the author and the audience. Sure, the audience is shown only what they like. As you correctly point out, that is the engagement social media seeks to maximize. The author, on the other hand, is free to publish what they choose.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    The first sentence of my post was quoting the OP. I mistyped and didn't include the " >" symbol originally

rchaud 8y ago

What if the platforms were only there for people to express themselves in which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly? If the social media companies limited themselves to just that, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The fact is, they specifically zero in on stuff that "engages", so if you happened to innocently like a friend's vacation photo, your feed will be modified to show you more of that stuff, because the machine thinks that's what you want to see all the time. If you're involved in animal rights advocacy, don't be surprised if your feed is full of horrible pictures of overcrowding and abusive conditions on farms. If you're interested in fitness, IG will show you a flood of semi-pornographic "workout routines" of fitness models, but very little about proper form. These are platforms where the search functionality is intentionally gimped to search for usernames and hashtags as opposed to actual text content, which a lot of IG posts have; it's not all just pics and videos.

ppeetteerr 8y ago
> which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly They are. Your argument seems to confound the author and the audience. Sure, the audience is shown only what they like. As you correctly point out, that is the engagement social media seeks to maximize. The author, on the other hand, is free to publish what they choose.
- rchaud 8y ago
  The first sentence of my post was quoting the OP. I mistyped and didn't include the " >" symbol originally