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I view it the opposite way: We underestimated as a society how many people were feeling bad. Addictions to alcohol is horrible, but their harm doesn’t scale. Wi

I view it the opposite way: We underestimated as a society how many people were feeling bad. Addictions to alcohol is horrible, but their harm doesn’t scale. With social networks, we suddenly see what we chose to ignore before: The swathes of MGTOWs, Incels, doubters, we also see the swathes of “scientific studies” which were provably wrong, the lies of the medias when you compare the scientific study and how the articles spin them. We should rather treat it as a brand new society with new balances, like after Gutemberg’s invention of the printer, which enabled communication and gave birth to Martin Luther, the accession of Bible translation to masses, the accession of The Encyclopedia, and more generally, the Humanists. And maybe, just maybe, we should have taken better care of so many people we’ve put in such horrible situations that content binging becomes better than their life. Rather than assuming they were just crybabies.

RichieAHB 7y ago
This is a difficult hypothesis to prove by virtue of the fact that if we didn't think people were feeling in certain ways this pre-FB, then it was presumably because we didn't have accurate data. It follows that if we didn't have the data then it's difficult to say whether FB et al tapped in to something that had yet to manifest itself in a subset of people, or had yet to become visible to society. Nevertheless, it's an interesting point that I hadn't really heard put this way before so thanks.
TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
> we should have taken better care of so many people we’ve put in such horrible situations... Rather than assuming they were just crybabies. It may seemed callused, but they _are_ just crybabies. Just because social media facilitates the formation of certain identity groups now does not mean that the cultures formed from those identities are good or productive. Just look at the increase in suicides, depression, school shootings, and general extremism since the spread of social media. Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO.
- Loughla 7y ago
  >we should have taken better care of so many people >Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO. Those are not the same thing. The first says to connect people to services that can help stem the negative and unproductive mentalities. Yours says to help them grow that negativity. These are not the same things.
- andrekandre 7y ago
  assuming that its true, "its online medias fault", then why havent we seen similar extremes forming in other countries? it seems extreme student violence, incels, increased violence, depression and suicide 1. seems to be more of an anerican phenomena (incels, student shootings) 2. started to sharply increase after 2008 financial crisis when huge swaths of people went through huge personal and societal stresses [0] so while online media can definitely be attributed to accelerating and manipulation of people being easier, i would posit that the seeds were already there in the culture and environment... [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-2008-financial-crisis-increased-suicide-rates-in-us-europe/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-2008-financial-crisis-in... [edit] just to clarify: this isnt to mean i give fb a free pass of course... they are making money off of manipulating people with this kind of misery and extremism which i find reprehensible
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
DanielBMarkham 7y ago
There are a lot of fallacies here. I'll take just one. If you'll allow, I'll use a political example from 15+ years ago. When young Bush was running for president, you'd see commentators on TV talking about which candidate had some demographic. Such-and-such had the 50+ white male vote, so-and-so had the hispanic vote, and so on. These people did not know what they were talking about, but it made for good TV. The people who knew what they were talking about, the folks like Karl Rove, knew that today they were looking to talk about subject X in context Y to a certain type of voter described by several adjectives in precinct 7 of the south side of Columbia, SC. Pick a word that describes a social problem, say homelessness. There's not one homelessness, there's a dozen or more, each with their own qualities. There's people who are the victim of a disaster, people who have medical bills, people with addiction problems, people living in poverty on purpose for religious reasons, etc. Not only do the reasons vary, the possible solutions vary by personality, demographic, geographic location and resources, and so on. Your response to my point demonstrates the problem. We talk about social problems in grand and expansive terms because we have to. Otherwise we'd spend forever in analysis. Politicians get elected based on grand visions for social problems expressed in expansive terms. But the actual problems themselves are highly nuanced. So what you're suggesting is that we throw everybody worldwide into one bucket, stick a label on them, and attempt to help them. That's only going to be a workable solution in only the most simple cases. In fact it's not workable. I'm being kind. Worse, for all of the cases where it doesn't help, you've just given over a monopoly of ideas, labels, and solutions to some company that's beholden to nobody, Facebook. So what will happen, what is happening now, is that people looking to exploit problems are working at the very detailed level. Right now there's probably some scammer looking to target 70+ white females in Sioux City Iowa who voted for Bernie last time. That guy is going to exploit the hell out of his target. There are thousands of targets like this. But when we identify the problem, all we get is how great it is to have some universal solution to addiction or something. Yes, in grand terms wouldn't it be great to have some solution to X? I'd love it. But that's not how these kinds of solutions work. What we're doing is enabling the people with bad intent to have their way while justifying it all with promises of how huge categories of people might be helped. That's bullshit, and it's the kind of bullshit we've put up with for far too long from SV, making money with one hand while giving out platitudes with another, trusting on the complexity of the application to hide what's really happening from the average voter. It's only continuing. Now, however, we're going to take it to the next level, regulatory capture.

RichieAHB 7y ago

This is a difficult hypothesis to prove by virtue of the fact that if we didn't think people were feeling in certain ways this pre-FB, then it was presumably because we didn't have accurate data. It follows that if we didn't have the data then it's difficult to say whether FB et al tapped in to something that had yet to manifest itself in a subset of people, or had yet to become visible to society. Nevertheless, it's an interesting point that I hadn't really heard put this way before so thanks.

TheAdamAndChe 7y ago

> we should have taken better care of so many people we’ve put in such horrible situations... Rather than assuming they were just crybabies. It may seemed callused, but they _are_ just crybabies. Just because social media facilitates the formation of certain identity groups now does not mean that the cultures formed from those identities are good or productive. Just look at the increase in suicides, depression, school shootings, and general extremism since the spread of social media. Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO.

Loughla 7y ago
>we should have taken better care of so many people >Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO. Those are not the same thing. The first says to connect people to services that can help stem the negative and unproductive mentalities. Yours says to help them grow that negativity. These are not the same things.
andrekandre 7y ago
assuming that its true, "its online medias fault", then why havent we seen similar extremes forming in other countries? it seems extreme student violence, incels, increased violence, depression and suicide 1. seems to be more of an anerican phenomena (incels, student shootings) 2. started to sharply increase after 2008 financial crisis when huge swaths of people went through huge personal and societal stresses [0] so while online media can definitely be attributed to accelerating and manipulation of people being easier, i would posit that the seeds were already there in the culture and environment... [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-2008-financial-crisis-increased-suicide-rates-in-us-europe/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-2008-financial-crisis-in... [edit] just to clarify: this isnt to mean i give fb a free pass of course... they are making money off of manipulating people with this kind of misery and extremism which i find reprehensible
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

DanielBMarkham 7y ago

There are a lot of fallacies here. I'll take just one. If you'll allow, I'll use a political example from 15+ years ago. When young Bush was running for president, you'd see commentators on TV talking about which candidate had some demographic. Such-and-such had the 50+ white male vote, so-and-so had the hispanic vote, and so on. These people did not know what they were talking about, but it made for good TV. The people who knew what they were talking about, the folks like Karl Rove, knew that today they were looking to talk about subject X in context Y to a certain type of voter described by several adjectives in precinct 7 of the south side of Columbia, SC. Pick a word that describes a social problem, say homelessness. There's not one homelessness, there's a dozen or more, each with their own qualities. There's people who are the victim of a disaster, people who have medical bills, people with addiction problems, people living in poverty on purpose for religious reasons, etc. Not only do the reasons vary, the possible solutions vary by personality, demographic, geographic location and resources, and so on. Your response to my point demonstrates the problem. We talk about social problems in grand and expansive terms because we have to. Otherwise we'd spend forever in analysis. Politicians get elected based on grand visions for social problems expressed in expansive terms. But the actual problems themselves are highly nuanced. So what you're suggesting is that we throw everybody worldwide into one bucket, stick a label on them, and attempt to help them. That's only going to be a workable solution in only the most simple cases. In fact it's not workable. I'm being kind. Worse, for all of the cases where it doesn't help, you've just given over a monopoly of ideas, labels, and solutions to some company that's beholden to nobody, Facebook. So what will happen, what is happening now, is that people looking to exploit problems are working at the very detailed level. Right now there's probably some scammer looking to target 70+ white females in Sioux City Iowa who voted for Bernie last time. That guy is going to exploit the hell out of his target. There are thousands of targets like this. But when we identify the problem, all we get is how great it is to have some universal solution to addiction or something. Yes, in grand terms wouldn't it be great to have some solution to X? I'd love it. But that's not how these kinds of solutions work. What we're doing is enabling the people with bad intent to have their way while justifying it all with promises of how huge categories of people might be helped. That's bullshit, and it's the kind of bullshit we've put up with for far too long from SV, making money with one hand while giving out platitudes with another, trusting on the complexity of the application to hide what's really happening from the average voter. It's only continuing. Now, however, we're going to take it to the next level, regulatory capture.