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I post unpopular opinions from my account all the time. I'm fine with people downvoting it, as the current state of our society is an overton window that I kno
by moosey 7y ago
I post unpopular opinions from my account all the time. I'm fine with people downvoting it, as the current state of our society is an overton window that I know I simply, at times, fall outside of.
That being said, I've seen some powerful arguments against facebook already: the newsfeed algorithm, for example, is my most important one. It should be required, by law, to be a dumb feed.
Outside of that we have to look at the evil companies that you speak of otherwise, and why we don't speak out against them, and I would draw that the reality and rules that society lives under are distorted by the existence of social media, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, many changes need to occur, however I argue the things that make facebook addictive (getting likes), and thus valuable, are the things that encourage the worst societal behaviors and extremism, making it impossible enough for society to compromise enough to do something about those bad actors. You demonstrate the power of getting likes by the fact that you used a throwaway account for your comment.
I don't think that social media can effectively work unless it is stripped of the profit motive.
- throwaway84_TO 7y agoRegarding "using a throwaway account", please see my response to piffey below. In short, I don't have a main - I'm usually always just a reader. I actually wholeheartedly disagree with Karma-type systems in general and the concept of leveraging previously acquired "reputation". Sadly, one requires an account to comment and new accounts get throttled/rate-limited quite quickly (I've just realized). Re: the newsfeed algorithm, like I just replied to jeromegv, I agree and think promoting emotionally engaging posts, no matter the content (which I think we all sort of agree seems to be the way Facebook operates), is obviously problematic. Whether dumb (a.k.a. "rank by new") is the way to go, I don't know. Might just favor the loudest/most talkative, but perhaps you're right. Also I never made the claim that TikTok/WeChat/Telegram were evil. My point with that statement was more like that proverb: "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know".
- your-nanny 7y agoI'm not against karma systems generally, but they really need to be carefully designed so they don't encourage cheap sensationalist crap. Reward insight, nuance, demonstrated domain expertise, and respectful dialogue.
- lokidokiro 7y agoIf you get downvoted enough on this site, your comments will stop appearing altogether, so it actually is important to use a throwaway account for potentially unpopular opinions.