5 ms·

Wow this touches really deeply and closely - given I use social media all. the. time. My love for the Web and freedom of discussion and how it would free us fr

Wow this touches really deeply and closely - given I use social media all. the. time. My love for the Web and freedom of discussion and how it would free us from the powers of authority. This was me imagining the future of information in the early 2000s. I'm thinking this may very well be a lie: as Sasha so eloquently and comedically touches several points about how these social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc) have developed algorithms to satisfy our most basic "monkey brain" instincts: we want information that is agreeable. The comparison he made with "fake scientists" on the internet getting more attention than nobel prize winners really hit me hard. The issue seems to be that with the internet we got rid of authority, but another type of hierarchy grew out of this: algorithm hierarchy. Where we don't have authorities in charge of giving us information, rather we have algorithms. An obvious solution to this (from a programmer's point of view) would be to allow users to freely and openly (through an open source kind of movement) change these algorithms to fit their needs. For instance I want information that is "not biased" and I can quickly get the "non biased algorithm" from github (as an example) and plug it into my social media. If I want information from academica I would get the "academia algorithm" and plug in. And so on. I don't know how something like this can help, but it seems we may need to stop thinking in terms of social media companies being the problem; it's the fact that we can't change these algorithms that is the problem.

r00fus 7y ago
I struggle as to how we could regulate massive companies like Facebook and Google from opening up their algorithms in a verifiable way. Perhaps a better way to attack this is to allow them to continue, but break them up - ie, mandate competition, and admit that monopolies in markets like search and social media (not to mention specific segments of advertising) are as dangerous as monopolies in operating systems or telephone services.
basch 7y ago
I over post this, and am turning into a broken record, but this is my favorite of all time article about predictive ai dystopia. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... my fear of everything being decided by algorithms that exist to please us, is us being trapped in the past and creativity being extinguished. if netflix makes shows based on what it knows will be popular, what happens to visionaries that have an idea nobody else can comprehend. risk, exploration, adventure, new, is replaced by nostalgia, familiarity, comfort. we can debate fighting google and facebook, or we can come up with a "Human Best Practices" behavior guide for how to best consume content, and spread it. There will always be temptation, moderation is either taught or learned. If not facebook, there will be another mind drug to over indulge. Spend effort countering the concept of unlimited "picked-just-for-me feed" or "whats popular with everyone today" intake, not attacking this specific villain. We need new ways to surface and propagate novel, intelligent, thought provoking content, AND we need to teach people to resist human hedonistic urges and impulses, and offer social support and encouragement to deviate from consuming new and fresh news. Watching the news (on tv anyway) is, and shouldnt be, looked up to. If I were making a tldr of guide v.01, it would start: "Supplant your facebook, google, and reddit intake with https://aldaily.com/ https://aldaily.com/ https://redef.com/ https://redef.com/ https://longform.org/ https://longform.org/ https://longreads.com/ https://longreads.com/ " and here i am now moving on to the next n.yc post.
- ripsawridge 7y ago
  It is not possible to over-post Adam Curtis. The range of ideas in his videos is fantastic.
- MiracleUser 7y ago
  I believe it's an economic problem. There is no reason all of these comfort services cant exist to help keep the peace among people uninterested in anything else. If they make up the majority of the economy, then we have other problems to solve though. After all, we do need comfort for sleep - so it could be .. maybe the role of BIG companies should be comfort focused. Visionaries can still exist - we would only need to improve their discoverability and ensure they are not at risk of financial crisis as a result of going outside the line
  - basch 7y ago
    discoverability is the end issue. facebook, reddit, google amplify what is popular, not necessarily ideas with depth. they in particular incentive things that can be consumed quickly and moved on from. a person consuming 100 links per hour upvotes at 10x the rate of someone consuming 10 links per hour. those shorter posts, bits, soundbytes, images, memes then gain 10x the amplification of longform content.
    - MiracleUser 7y ago
      what is popular is not necessarily without depth either. Also consider propagation of danger alerts. the longer time it takes to consume the average piece of media, the longer it takes for people to become aware of dangers. There are, of course, shortcuts for authorities to spread information about dangers already identified, but danger is a gradient. Maybe there is an inherent trade-off between quick, scanning behavior being good for safety and deep, thoughtful consumption being good for progress
mempko 7y ago
For a while, I thought decentralization could help with this problem. If people just published websites and there were no central social media, you can better control what content is seen and not seen. But then Google came around and aggregated these websites and made them searchable and now has it's own algorithm for maximum engagement. Sasha's idea of delaying the spread of information via a timer is very interesting. It can get people a chance to second guess their posts and also give a chance for something in-between to publish or not. If every retweet was delayed then the network spread slows down a lot which might have really interesting consequences. But ultimately I believe the problem we have is we have chosen the mall over the public park.
- t-writescode 7y ago
  An important question is how would it even be possible to have a public park without government intervention? You have to buy and maintain your own server and pay for uptime. That all costs a continued stream of knowledge and money and it’s very hard. Maybe not for you and I, but for many other people.
  - mempko 7y ago
    Interesting idea, a publicly funded social media site. That would allow the public to have input in how the software works.
protonfish 7y ago
We most definitely did not get rid of authority, we got rid of central authority. Every nation used to closely control media so all of their citizens were on the same page. What they believed was biased propaganda with a strong illusion of truth due to dominance in commonly consumed media channels and the echo chamber of talking to others who drank from the same trough. It was far from being high quality information but at least your neighbors had the same beliefs as you so it was less contentious. There never was an authority of truth - only a facade of one. Critical thinking by individuals was discouraged to avoid conflict. Now that people can get their information from anywhere they are completely unprepared to use their minds to separate the good from the bad so they try to find "authoritative sources" instead of using their own judgement. Except their are no authoritative sources, and there never were.
- MiracleUser 7y ago
  Do we have actual reason to believe that really high adoption rates of people using their own judgement actually is a good thing? I think there is inherent need for specialization to occur on digesting information and drawing conclusions from it. And when someone is good at it, we should want them to leverage other people parroting what they say to help signal boost
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I just don't buy it. Are there any of your beliefs which you'd want to abandon just because someone got on TV and told you they're wrong?
    - MiracleUser 7y ago
      the focus is more that I dont have the time or energy to form personal beliefs on everything talked about on TV (or by news authorities in general). It's easier to adopt someone else's beliefs and entertain that position than talk out of my ass or not be able to talk at all. If that belief is successfully challenged, I change it. It is also easier to change my belief on something if I did not form it myself. Most people lack strong beliefs on most things. news authorities exist because people are looking for them to help fill that gap and relieve the responsibility of forming beliefs on all the things relevant to the community each person is a part of
Aaronstotle 7y ago
My solution would be similar, but the user can use a drop down/settings menu to change algorithms rather than install a different algorithm from github.
ben_jones 7y ago
I frequently ask myself, if Hitler took power today - how many of our government officials, engineers, and soldiers, would get in line behind him. He would have no problem getting the census data and locations of subversives.
text_exch 7y ago
I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to combat exactly this issue. It's a single link every day to something interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily found online is incredibly valuable. [1] https://thinking-about-things.com https://thinking-about-things.com

r00fus 7y ago

I struggle as to how we could regulate massive companies like Facebook and Google from opening up their algorithms in a verifiable way. Perhaps a better way to attack this is to allow them to continue, but break them up - ie, mandate competition, and admit that monopolies in markets like search and social media (not to mention specific segments of advertising) are as dangerous as monopolies in operating systems or telephone services.

basch 7y ago

I over post this, and am turning into a broken record, but this is my favorite of all time article about predictive ai dystopia. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... my fear of everything being decided by algorithms that exist to please us, is us being trapped in the past and creativity being extinguished. if netflix makes shows based on what it knows will be popular, what happens to visionaries that have an idea nobody else can comprehend. risk, exploration, adventure, new, is replaced by nostalgia, familiarity, comfort. we can debate fighting google and facebook, or we can come up with a "Human Best Practices" behavior guide for how to best consume content, and spread it. There will always be temptation, moderation is either taught or learned. If not facebook, there will be another mind drug to over indulge. Spend effort countering the concept of unlimited "picked-just-for-me feed" or "whats popular with everyone today" intake, not attacking this specific villain. We need new ways to surface and propagate novel, intelligent, thought provoking content, AND we need to teach people to resist human hedonistic urges and impulses, and offer social support and encouragement to deviate from consuming new and fresh news. Watching the news (on tv anyway) is, and shouldnt be, looked up to. If I were making a tldr of guide v.01, it would start: "Supplant your facebook, google, and reddit intake with https://aldaily.com/ https://aldaily.com/ https://redef.com/ https://redef.com/ https://longform.org/ https://longform.org/ https://longreads.com/ https://longreads.com/ " and here i am now moving on to the next n.yc post.

ripsawridge 7y ago
It is not possible to over-post Adam Curtis. The range of ideas in his videos is fantastic.
MiracleUser 7y ago
I believe it's an economic problem. There is no reason all of these comfort services cant exist to help keep the peace among people uninterested in anything else. If they make up the majority of the economy, then we have other problems to solve though. After all, we do need comfort for sleep - so it could be .. maybe the role of BIG companies should be comfort focused. Visionaries can still exist - we would only need to improve their discoverability and ensure they are not at risk of financial crisis as a result of going outside the line
- basch 7y ago
  discoverability is the end issue. facebook, reddit, google amplify what is popular, not necessarily ideas with depth. they in particular incentive things that can be consumed quickly and moved on from. a person consuming 100 links per hour upvotes at 10x the rate of someone consuming 10 links per hour. those shorter posts, bits, soundbytes, images, memes then gain 10x the amplification of longform content.
  - MiracleUser 7y ago
    what is popular is not necessarily without depth either. Also consider propagation of danger alerts. the longer time it takes to consume the average piece of media, the longer it takes for people to become aware of dangers. There are, of course, shortcuts for authorities to spread information about dangers already identified, but danger is a gradient. Maybe there is an inherent trade-off between quick, scanning behavior being good for safety and deep, thoughtful consumption being good for progress

mempko 7y ago

For a while, I thought decentralization could help with this problem. If people just published websites and there were no central social media, you can better control what content is seen and not seen. But then Google came around and aggregated these websites and made them searchable and now has it's own algorithm for maximum engagement. Sasha's idea of delaying the spread of information via a timer is very interesting. It can get people a chance to second guess their posts and also give a chance for something in-between to publish or not. If every retweet was delayed then the network spread slows down a lot which might have really interesting consequences. But ultimately I believe the problem we have is we have chosen the mall over the public park.

t-writescode 7y ago
An important question is how would it even be possible to have a public park without government intervention? You have to buy and maintain your own server and pay for uptime. That all costs a continued stream of knowledge and money and it’s very hard. Maybe not for you and I, but for many other people.
- mempko 7y ago
  Interesting idea, a publicly funded social media site. That would allow the public to have input in how the software works.

protonfish 7y ago

We most definitely did not get rid of authority, we got rid of central authority. Every nation used to closely control media so all of their citizens were on the same page. What they believed was biased propaganda with a strong illusion of truth due to dominance in commonly consumed media channels and the echo chamber of talking to others who drank from the same trough. It was far from being high quality information but at least your neighbors had the same beliefs as you so it was less contentious. There never was an authority of truth - only a facade of one. Critical thinking by individuals was discouraged to avoid conflict. Now that people can get their information from anywhere they are completely unprepared to use their minds to separate the good from the bad so they try to find "authoritative sources" instead of using their own judgement. Except their are no authoritative sources, and there never were.

MiracleUser 7y ago
Do we have actual reason to believe that really high adoption rates of people using their own judgement actually is a good thing? I think there is inherent need for specialization to occur on digesting information and drawing conclusions from it. And when someone is good at it, we should want them to leverage other people parroting what they say to help signal boost
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I just don't buy it. Are there any of your beliefs which you'd want to abandon just because someone got on TV and told you they're wrong?
  - MiracleUser 7y ago
    the focus is more that I dont have the time or energy to form personal beliefs on everything talked about on TV (or by news authorities in general). It's easier to adopt someone else's beliefs and entertain that position than talk out of my ass or not be able to talk at all. If that belief is successfully challenged, I change it. It is also easier to change my belief on something if I did not form it myself. Most people lack strong beliefs on most things. news authorities exist because people are looking for them to help fill that gap and relieve the responsibility of forming beliefs on all the things relevant to the community each person is a part of

Aaronstotle 7y ago

My solution would be similar, but the user can use a drop down/settings menu to change algorithms rather than install a different algorithm from github.

ben_jones 7y ago

I frequently ask myself, if Hitler took power today - how many of our government officials, engineers, and soldiers, would get in line behind him. He would have no problem getting the census data and locations of subversives.

text_exch 7y ago

I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to combat exactly this issue. It's a single link every day to something interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily found online is incredibly valuable. [1] https://thinking-about-things.com https://thinking-about-things.com