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72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

205 points by bezmenov 6y ago

noisy_boy 6y ago
Only if they had the will power to stop contributing to it.
smitty1e 6y ago
Articles whining about ProblemX are tedious in a capitalist system. Convert all of that whining energy into improving the situation, so as to do more than perpetuate it. Now, if there is substantial ReasonY that ProblemX cannot be addressed, there is genuine basis for complaint.
- mkmk2 6y ago
  Sure, whining is tedious, but polling a populace to get an overview of public opinion seems to be a different thing.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Ok, so we should have no articles about Covid19, climate change, Boeing crash or 2008. May i ask how does the public even realise a problen exists? Secondly, if you are going to make that argument, you should highlight our system is democratic. Slaves in enjoyed capitalist system too, you know.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Slavery still exists. Illegally, in places many don’t go, for various reasons, all of which are wrong, because slavery. And also legally, in American prisons as forced servitude, which is also wrong, because slavery.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      I am not clear what point you are making
- lm28469 6y ago
  > you should spend time fixing the problems also > don't talk about the problems How does that work ? No one is going to solve these multi faceted issues alone in their garage. Creating a discussion around them is part of the solution
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    And what to do thet do when solving it? Talk about possible solutions. Instead whining is constantly "someone else should do it"! Which is neither helpful nor wise.
    - lm28469 6y ago
      What if someone who never thought about the issue and doesn't talk about it in his circles find this article, start thinking about it and end up finding your "solutions" ? If you don't want to read it you don't have to, I really don't see the issue here. Doing something, even as small as that, is still better than doing nothing or actively trying to shut down people talking about it...
      - smitty1e 6y ago
        My point here is that: word != deed If we hate Twitter, but aren't using, for example, Mastadon, then what are we doing to inject competition?
laser 6y ago
Kind of interesting that the intro for the wikipedia on Conservatism in the United States [1] says "Conservative philosophy is also derived in part from ... laissez-faire economics (i.e. economic freedom and deregulation)" but that in this circumstance [2] the self-identified "conservative" group members were the most likely to support more regulation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ft_2020.07.22_techcompanies_02.png https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ft_20...
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  This is a rather lazy strawman. Monopolies and cartels have always been the primary threat to efficiency in all free market models. All serious proponents of free market economics have always identified the importance of regulating monopolistic and cartel-like behaviour (aside from the anarchists, which is mostly an extremist form of libertarianism).
- poilcn 6y ago
  All these terms are too wide to describe one person's position on certain topic. They could be anti-regulation in terms of "government influences who, how, when, where operates in some economy sector" as it leads to market capture and control of the regulatory organizations by the companies they were supposed to regulate, but pro-regulation in terms of trust-busting companies having above-government power, like it happened to Rockefeller's "Standard Oil".
rvz 6y ago
Meanwhile, the major social networks (if not all of them) are still very good at creating echo-chambers and filter bubbles. So nothing has changed since 2016.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  To be honest, I like some of those bubbles. I have much more trouble of finding value in engaging in some sanitized, corporate, mainstream, pop culture that looks like the abused child of advertisers, special interest and propaganda. Yes, some are insular and don't really develop if that is your thing, but you can always have multiple bubbles.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    I tried logged out youtube without initalization and the value just plain wasn't there. Even a bad day for it was far superior to the generic mass market lowest common denominator schlock. Which I suppose demonstrates why old media lost. Their approach was rather one size fits most with many lowest common denominator. Discovery is a damn useful service which is kind of obvious in retrospect with reviewers and guides being something people pay for.
    - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      I can't stand algorithmic timelines, obsessively keep Twitter on latest mode even when it automatically tries to trick you back with the "You're back home" nonsense. Never thought I'd be one of those people but I'm ashamed to say YouTube had got me now, think it's a combination that it just seems to really know what you'd enjoy watching and the fact the default logged out versions content is so painfully bad that I'd never want to engage with that version of YouTube anyway.
- oprah 6y ago
  > Filter bubbles are seen as critical enablers of Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, and other populist political phenomena, and search and social media companies have been criticised for failing to prevent their development. Yet, there is scant empirical evidence for their existence, or for the related concept of ‘echo chambers’: indeed, search and social media users generally appear to encounter a highly centrist media diet that is, if anything, more diverse than that of non-users. https://www.doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1426 https://www.doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1426
apatheticonion 6y ago
It blows my mind. The US has an international reputation for being pro-corporate so from the outside, it makes sense that social networks get away with the lack of accountability they have. However, a large portion of humanity use social networking tools so US legislation has a direct affect on everyone and potentially (inadvertently) it has an effect on the democratic processes of other nations. At what point does it become an international issue?
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  As someone not from the US, I am so glad that the networks are located there. The US also has a pro-freedom reputation and that is currently really valuable. I never held back with criticism towards the US and won't do so in the future, but on this issue I would staunchly run with the worst hillbilly rednecks you can imagine firing freedom bullets in every direction without an ounce of shame. Democracy has nothing to do with content restrictions.
  - kypro 6y ago
    I kind of agree. If these social media sites were located in Europe I expect it would be much worse. I live in the UK and here we have thought police units who will knock on your door to "check your thinking" if you post jokes that are too controversial. While it's obviously a problem that billion dollar foreign internet companies are regulating what we can say online they are at least, for the time being, more aligned to the values of free-speech than many European governments.
    - bzb3 6y ago
      Thanks for posting this. Every time I hear of someone saying that there should me more Internet services based in Europe, I cringe. And I say this as a European.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    I can sympathize with this point, but let's not pretend that this "freedom" represents democracy any better. What we've seen in the past decade regarding the impact modern advertisement has on elections and public privacy to me is a testament to social media in the current state being anything but benefitial to democracy. That said, I don't have a solution.
negamax 6y ago
Gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating. What does a world without social networks look like? I don't think we want that anymore. Because social networks do serve a required function. For Twitter, I love the fact that I can follow some people that I look upto and get their real time musings. For Facebook, it's about connecting to friends and people I know and being able to reach out without phone numbers etc. We are trying to solve this problem the wrong way. So again, gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating
- andreareina 6y ago
  Food can be (and there are those that are) designed to optimize for the desire to eat more. Slot machines payouts are designed to encourage people to play one more time. There are games that are famous for eliciting "one more turn... oh my god it's 5 a.m. already". When a stimulus reliably elicits a particular response on a large enough population, you can reasonably say that it's the stimulus and not the individual's failure to apply moderation/critical thinking/what-have-you.
  - negamax 6y ago
    No it's definitely individual failure. If I get fat by eating burgers and sweets everyday. It's my fault.
- cheschire 6y ago
  What required function do social networks fill? Your wording implies objective requirements exist in the general sense which can only be fulfilled by social networks. The two things you've said are access to "real time musings" which is absolutely not a requirement in the objective sense, and connecting to friends and people, which is a requirement that can be easily fulfilled by other applications. Phones and email are still completely viable methods for communicating with anyone. Chat programs such as Signal or Apple Messenger or WhatsApp really only add the additional functionality of group SMS. Otherwise standard SMS is fine. I think your point about moderating your eating is a good and valid point though. Let's take the metaphor further. Let's say social networks as they exist today are like restaurants that serve 3500 calorie meals. Sure, a person could choose to pay $30 for a 3500 meal and then moderate their consumption and take the rest home in a doggy bag, but that clearly is not what is happening. Instead what is happening is people are eating the whole dish. And on top of that, the restaurant is adding a ton of stuff that makes the food taste more addictive, and other stuff that makes you not feel full so that you'll want to order that dessert too. And to beat the metaphor to death, I just don't go to restaurants anymore, I make my meals at home.
preordained 6y ago
When, I don't know, +90% of public discourse is flowing through a handful of platforms, and they are cutting out what they don't like, teasing out what they do like a gardener sculpting shrubbery to present some customized, skewed version of the public consciousness...yah, it's a problem. I think the publisher vs platform provisions do need to be revisited. I think small niche sites and forums could be allowed more latitude in how they curate, but at a certain scale a higher expectation of neutrality should be enforced. Really, just limited to taking down obscenity, porn, gore, etc. If any more grey curating is applied (i.e. these platforms attempting to deem for themselves what is "hate speech") there should significant penalties for not applying it generally; for instance, taking down a Trump tweet addressing BLM for being deemed racist in some way, and yet giving a pass to others saying "white loves don't matter" or the like. A few giant platforms can't be allowed to be the grand arbiters of what is acceptable public speech and what isn't. The influence they have is scary.
- johnny22 6y ago
  and you can define obscenity? or is it "I know it when i see it" again. There is no neutral.
  - preordained 6y ago
    Fine, porn or gore or profanity, list of slurs. If you want to begin curating other nebulous concepts like "hate speech" at scale, it should be explicitly defined and you should held to being clear when you are acting upon violations for it, and responsible for applying your policy broadly and not cherry picking. "There is no neutral" so we'll just make it up as we go is just a ridiculous pass that big platforms are exploiting to the ill of society.
    - johnny22 6y ago
      that's what we've always done, make it up as we go along, since societies and language change. I doubt you'll find it easy to really split what's porn and what is art. or even what gore vs art is.
fuzzy2 6y ago
Even after reading the article, I’m not sure how to understand the question. Is it: "Social media companies are censoring me and must be regulated" or are they perhaps mixing the platform with the content? Because if Trump writes on Twitter, that’s not Twitter. It’s Trump. IMHO, social media companies don’t have a lot of political influence. It’s the reach they create for platform users that’s "the problem".
- jojobas 6y ago
  It's not about Trump posting on Twitter, it's about Twitter choosing what to show you "trending" based on their management's political beliefs.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    That's what I though "how very dare they show me a tweet from that ultra left politician tony blair"
- pferde 6y ago
  Social media do actually have a lot of political influence - at least those which curate and promote certain content. They are the ones who control what kind of information gets consumed by more eyeballs and what kind of information gets suppressed, or at least displayed less prominently. It's not about "social media companies are censoring me", but rather "social media companies are censoring what I see".
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Yeh is it "I don't agree with president Trump" or more conservative twitter users objecting to companies tweeting about BLM or Pride. I actually suspect the latter.
- rvz 6y ago
  Given the evidence of blacklisting and censoring trending Twitter users and hashtags via screenshots of the leaked admin tool, they have a lot of political influence and have access to that tool which can be used to crush anyone or any tweets they don't like. President or protestor. The moment they censored anyone re-posting that admin tool on Twitter, it tells you that not only it exists but that they also still actively use it.
aspenmayer 6y ago
I guess I’m one of the 28%. Politicians, the government, megacorporations other than social media, and the police as well as entire associated bureaucratic law enforcement organizations have too much influence, period. The protests on all sides are a reaction to and expression of that rejection of unwanted, nonconsensual influence over free people. Social media is the megaphone of this protest movement. This is the establishment trying to chop the heads off the hydra, while counterprotesting heads stir up trouble and confuse the narrative on all sides. Will it work? For whom?
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  Pfizer and Exxon don’t get to decide which hashtags are allowed to be on trending or what stories people should see in their feed.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    However, their lobbyists in DC will threaten to give the other guy or gal more money than they’ll give their regular congresscritters if they don’t play ball. This is not Schoolhouse Rock. Laws don’t exist. They’re memes that have force of law, and like all memes, laws are subject to mutation and deep frying, as well as appropriation and recontextualization.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >However, their lobbyists in DC will threaten to give the other guy or gal more money than they’ll give their regular congresscritters if they don’t play ball The difference between being able to censor whatever unilaterally and having to get a legislator to do it for you could not be more massive. Having to play the lobbying game adds a huge amount of time, expense and outside scrutiny making it much harder to do bad things. Sure the fact that regulatory capture is possible and doable at a certain scale is bad but it's infinitly better than bigCos being able to act unilaterally. It's like the difference between the cops being able to kick down your door on a whim and them having to get a warrant and at least look like idiots on the official record and make other people who share no upside condone their stupidity.
netcan 6y ago
Twitter set out to be the public square, the place where matters of importance are discussed by the people. I think JD was serious about that, still is. The problem is that Twitter is a private public square. That contradiction is not something JD can accept, because "his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It isn't reconcilable. We don't have many examples, in modern times, of of non-companies filling roles like Twitter of FB fill. But, that doesn't mean they can't exist. The WWW itself is a platform for speech and is a "public square." Wikipedia is another example. A really good example, if you think about it. If wikipedia was a commercial company, imagine the issues they'd be facing... all that authority as an information source. Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook? This isn't a question you could ask about Toyota. If Facebook fell off the edge of the disc, we would very quickly have a replacement. People wouldn't lack for social media. If Toyota fell off the disc, we would have fewer cars. Rebuilding that capacity would require real resources.. Until then, we'd lack for cars. This last part is key. Commercial viability is nearly a non-issue. Social media can be viable on a tiny fraction of its current revenue. This explodes the number of possible actions. I really hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow... I hope, but I can't say I'm optimistic.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  I don't fully understand what you're trying to argue here. > Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook? Are you saying that if FB had a smaller headcount or budget, they'd be less influential? A company's headcount and budget are largely a function of the market, and the market highly values FB. If you have a problem with the economics of FB, you have a problem with the market forces that created it. But you end with: > I hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow If you're not happy that the market created conditions for companies like FB to grow to the size that they are, and you're also not happy that regulation is possibly in the future of these companies, then how would you like to see this scenario play out?
  - 6y ago
d--b 6y ago
It's interesting though. The networks really were created to increase connection/communication between people, and it did in many ways. What was unexpected is the effect. One had expected that people would feel less concerned by the state of the world, cause they would talk to their friends and family rather than bingeing on the global news. But instead, this increase in connections created a sort of phase transition in society. It's kind of similar to the article that was posted here the other day, where scientists realized that atoms in a solid glass were more connected to each other than in liquid glass. In a way, social media literally "cristallized" polarization.
Nasrudith 6y ago
The whole question is frankly deeply stupid on so many levels. First off it is push pollingly worded to get directly contradictory groups (those conplaining about too much and too moderation) while pushing a clear agenda. Second the very concept is meaningless. What is a proper level of influence for social media? It can't even be defined. It only leads to intellectual abominations like obscenity and know it when I see it which leads to "Whatever the fuck the person in power wants narcicistically imposed upon all."
LockAndLol 6y ago
They really should've added the question "Which social media accounts do you have" and then just summed that up. Do you think those companies would have that much power without its users?
lazyjones 6y ago
It's not the social media, it's mainstream mass media who decide to report on "hashtags", memes and viral videos and bring them to the wider public. Lazy journalists who don't investigate facts anymore and only care about trends and outrages and whose "ultimate editor" is now Twitter, as Bari Weiss alleged.
- originalvichy 6y ago
  This is closer to the truth. The internet’s main currency is attention. It is a sea of information and the only places that get noticed are the ones given attention to. Mainstream media is in a feedback loop with the internet.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  Exactly. Like Bari Weiss said, "Twitter has become the editor". US journalists now write articles to satisfy their twitter following.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  There's more money and opportunity for journalists to use tools like Twitter because that's where the public's attention is. With media outlets incentivizing things like CTR, journalists are going to use whatever gets more eyeballs. And since people aren't directly paying for their news anymore, reporting using tools like Twitter is what makes them the most money. If you're going to criticize "lazy journalists", you also have to acknowledge the system that makes it impossible to generate serious revenue without sites like Twitter and FB, because that's effectively what those companies have done.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
I just realized how social can fix this issue. Every account has a default setting that is ultra-curated content, works nicely, politically correct, etc. Deep in the options, you can ‘unlock’ all (requires 18+ notification, verification, or whatever depending on laws), then it will be an absolutely uncurated FILO sort of absolutely everything going a mile a minute. The unlocked settings would let you upload code-snippets to do curating, so people could share things and invent new ways to curate. This solves the issue with the risk of censorship.
- everdrive 6y ago
  The issue is the speed and magnification of ideas, not necessarily the "adult" content.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Then in the uncurated version, they could disable the like button, which is what makes things go viral...
blue52 6y ago
Yes, they do because they can get away with everything that the other non-"social" companies cannot.
torresjrjr 6y ago
I've recently written a pair of explanatory articles regarding the Fediverse, the decentralised social media network. https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediverse https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediv... https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-20-what-is-the-fediverse https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-20-what-is-the-fedive... The solution to centralised power and control already exists and is thriving, with approximately 2 million users strong. Take a moment to learn about the Fediverse and you'll be asking yourself why you didn't know about this before. Don't complain, act for Internet freedom.
darkerside 6y ago
Funny that this didn't pop up on my Google News feed
draw_down 6y ago
I think defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, oil & gas firms, and banks have too much political influence. Not that I’m in love with Facebook, I’m certainly not.
87tau 6y ago
While social media seem to be the problem, I find myself internally conflicted. On the one hand I see myself as a supporter of democracy, freedom of speech and liberty of expression, but I'm dismayed by the self harm these ideals are causing at the moment. It's the feeling of being unable to defend against painfully obvious (to me) propaganda but also the worry that I don't close doors to the freedom these platforms allow. Why do information campaigns seem to be failing against the propoganda mills? Living in underdeveloped part of the world I believed for the most of my life that it was lack of education but having in the US for the past few years I had to firmly discard that notion. I currently believe that it is the inherited values that society imparts on us, and that serves as a lens to view facts that is being manipulated. The last company I worked for our executives, all highly educated and good natured, for most parts, held political opinions that I thought were only held by the 'idiots' captured by someone on cell phone videos. They had built a successful company on highly educated immigrant workforce, with major workforce still outside the US, headquarter located in a deep 'blue' state with the founder and chairman of the company an immigrant and PhD holder a first generation immigrant but everyone still a vehement, vocal supporter of current anti-immigrants, anti-science, anti-obama/hillary, anti-medicine propaganda. I don't think it's simply dismissable as biased by financial profit. Is it because everyone near them believes in such and these opinions are manifestation of values they grew up with? Is social media just giving it a loud-speaker. We need to address that somehow I feel.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Think of Democracy as a system that embodies the wishes & will of the average voter (not the average citizen). Now imagine that you invented a system that would get tens of millions more people emotionally engaged to vote, but they happened to also be the least educated, least nuanced, least mature voters - people who seldom voted before. Then imagine your surprise when intelligent debate disappears, and politics devolves into reality television. That is what we've done. Imagine if we allowed the average person dictact Climate Change policy, rather than the scientists? ...oh wait, we've done that as well...
  - Proven 6y ago
torgian 6y ago
I recently finished playing Watch Dogs 2, and the missions go over this very problem. Social media’s impact on politics and how data is used to influence the masses. Quite scary actually, that the real thing is happening.
charliebrownau 6y ago
No fucking shit 99% of mainstream ARE GLOBAL LEFT POLITICAL ACTIVISTS/POLITICAL ARM for the state, remaining 1% is controlled zio "right wing"
qbaqbaqba 6y ago
What about NGOs?

205 points by bezmenov 6y ago

Only if they had the will power to stop contributing to it.

Articles whining about ProblemX are tedious in a capitalist system. Convert all of that whining energy into improving the situation, so as to do more than perpetuate it. Now, if there is substantial ReasonY that ProblemX cannot be addressed, there is genuine basis for complaint.

mkmk2 6y ago
Sure, whining is tedious, but polling a populace to get an overview of public opinion seems to be a different thing.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Ok, so we should have no articles about Covid19, climate change, Boeing crash or 2008. May i ask how does the public even realise a problen exists? Secondly, if you are going to make that argument, you should highlight our system is democratic. Slaves in enjoyed capitalist system too, you know.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Slavery still exists. Illegally, in places many don’t go, for various reasons, all of which are wrong, because slavery. And also legally, in American prisons as forced servitude, which is also wrong, because slavery.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    I am not clear what point you are making
lm28469 6y ago
> you should spend time fixing the problems also > don't talk about the problems How does that work ? No one is going to solve these multi faceted issues alone in their garage. Creating a discussion around them is part of the solution
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  And what to do thet do when solving it? Talk about possible solutions. Instead whining is constantly "someone else should do it"! Which is neither helpful nor wise.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    What if someone who never thought about the issue and doesn't talk about it in his circles find this article, start thinking about it and end up finding your "solutions" ? If you don't want to read it you don't have to, I really don't see the issue here. Doing something, even as small as that, is still better than doing nothing or actively trying to shut down people talking about it...
    - smitty1e 6y ago
      My point here is that: word != deed If we hate Twitter, but aren't using, for example, Mastadon, then what are we doing to inject competition?

laser 6y ago

Kind of interesting that the intro for the wikipedia on Conservatism in the United States [1] says "Conservative philosophy is also derived in part from ... laissez-faire economics (i.e. economic freedom and deregulation)" but that in this circumstance [2] the self-identified "conservative" group members were the most likely to support more regulation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ft_2020.07.22_techcompanies_02.png https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ft_20...

AmericanChopper 6y ago
This is a rather lazy strawman. Monopolies and cartels have always been the primary threat to efficiency in all free market models. All serious proponents of free market economics have always identified the importance of regulating monopolistic and cartel-like behaviour (aside from the anarchists, which is mostly an extremist form of libertarianism).
poilcn 6y ago
All these terms are too wide to describe one person's position on certain topic. They could be anti-regulation in terms of "government influences who, how, when, where operates in some economy sector" as it leads to market capture and control of the regulatory organizations by the companies they were supposed to regulate, but pro-regulation in terms of trust-busting companies having above-government power, like it happened to Rockefeller's "Standard Oil".

rvz 6y ago

Meanwhile, the major social networks (if not all of them) are still very good at creating echo-chambers and filter bubbles. So nothing has changed since 2016.

raxxorrax 6y ago
To be honest, I like some of those bubbles. I have much more trouble of finding value in engaging in some sanitized, corporate, mainstream, pop culture that looks like the abused child of advertisers, special interest and propaganda. Yes, some are insular and don't really develop if that is your thing, but you can always have multiple bubbles.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  I tried logged out youtube without initalization and the value just plain wasn't there. Even a bad day for it was far superior to the generic mass market lowest common denominator schlock. Which I suppose demonstrates why old media lost. Their approach was rather one size fits most with many lowest common denominator. Discovery is a damn useful service which is kind of obvious in retrospect with reviewers and guides being something people pay for.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    I can't stand algorithmic timelines, obsessively keep Twitter on latest mode even when it automatically tries to trick you back with the "You're back home" nonsense. Never thought I'd be one of those people but I'm ashamed to say YouTube had got me now, think it's a combination that it just seems to really know what you'd enjoy watching and the fact the default logged out versions content is so painfully bad that I'd never want to engage with that version of YouTube anyway.
oprah 6y ago
> Filter bubbles are seen as critical enablers of Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, and other populist political phenomena, and search and social media companies have been criticised for failing to prevent their development. Yet, there is scant empirical evidence for their existence, or for the related concept of ‘echo chambers’: indeed, search and social media users generally appear to encounter a highly centrist media diet that is, if anything, more diverse than that of non-users. https://www.doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1426 https://www.doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1426

apatheticonion 6y ago

It blows my mind. The US has an international reputation for being pro-corporate so from the outside, it makes sense that social networks get away with the lack of accountability they have. However, a large portion of humanity use social networking tools so US legislation has a direct affect on everyone and potentially (inadvertently) it has an effect on the democratic processes of other nations. At what point does it become an international issue?

raxxorrax 6y ago
As someone not from the US, I am so glad that the networks are located there. The US also has a pro-freedom reputation and that is currently really valuable. I never held back with criticism towards the US and won't do so in the future, but on this issue I would staunchly run with the worst hillbilly rednecks you can imagine firing freedom bullets in every direction without an ounce of shame. Democracy has nothing to do with content restrictions.
- kypro 6y ago
  I kind of agree. If these social media sites were located in Europe I expect it would be much worse. I live in the UK and here we have thought police units who will knock on your door to "check your thinking" if you post jokes that are too controversial. While it's obviously a problem that billion dollar foreign internet companies are regulating what we can say online they are at least, for the time being, more aligned to the values of free-speech than many European governments.
  - bzb3 6y ago
    Thanks for posting this. Every time I hear of someone saying that there should me more Internet services based in Europe, I cringe. And I say this as a European.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I can sympathize with this point, but let's not pretend that this "freedom" represents democracy any better. What we've seen in the past decade regarding the impact modern advertisement has on elections and public privacy to me is a testament to social media in the current state being anything but benefitial to democracy. That said, I don't have a solution.

negamax 6y ago

Gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating. What does a world without social networks look like? I don't think we want that anymore. Because social networks do serve a required function. For Twitter, I love the fact that I can follow some people that I look upto and get their real time musings. For Facebook, it's about connecting to friends and people I know and being able to reach out without phone numbers etc. We are trying to solve this problem the wrong way. So again, gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating

andreareina 6y ago
Food can be (and there are those that are) designed to optimize for the desire to eat more. Slot machines payouts are designed to encourage people to play one more time. There are games that are famous for eliciting "one more turn... oh my god it's 5 a.m. already". When a stimulus reliably elicits a particular response on a large enough population, you can reasonably say that it's the stimulus and not the individual's failure to apply moderation/critical thinking/what-have-you.
- negamax 6y ago
  No it's definitely individual failure. If I get fat by eating burgers and sweets everyday. It's my fault.
cheschire 6y ago
What required function do social networks fill? Your wording implies objective requirements exist in the general sense which can only be fulfilled by social networks. The two things you've said are access to "real time musings" which is absolutely not a requirement in the objective sense, and connecting to friends and people, which is a requirement that can be easily fulfilled by other applications. Phones and email are still completely viable methods for communicating with anyone. Chat programs such as Signal or Apple Messenger or WhatsApp really only add the additional functionality of group SMS. Otherwise standard SMS is fine. I think your point about moderating your eating is a good and valid point though. Let's take the metaphor further. Let's say social networks as they exist today are like restaurants that serve 3500 calorie meals. Sure, a person could choose to pay $30 for a 3500 meal and then moderate their consumption and take the rest home in a doggy bag, but that clearly is not what is happening. Instead what is happening is people are eating the whole dish. And on top of that, the restaurant is adding a ton of stuff that makes the food taste more addictive, and other stuff that makes you not feel full so that you'll want to order that dessert too. And to beat the metaphor to death, I just don't go to restaurants anymore, I make my meals at home.

preordained 6y ago

When, I don't know, +90% of public discourse is flowing through a handful of platforms, and they are cutting out what they don't like, teasing out what they do like a gardener sculpting shrubbery to present some customized, skewed version of the public consciousness...yah, it's a problem. I think the publisher vs platform provisions do need to be revisited. I think small niche sites and forums could be allowed more latitude in how they curate, but at a certain scale a higher expectation of neutrality should be enforced. Really, just limited to taking down obscenity, porn, gore, etc. If any more grey curating is applied (i.e. these platforms attempting to deem for themselves what is "hate speech") there should significant penalties for not applying it generally; for instance, taking down a Trump tweet addressing BLM for being deemed racist in some way, and yet giving a pass to others saying "white loves don't matter" or the like. A few giant platforms can't be allowed to be the grand arbiters of what is acceptable public speech and what isn't. The influence they have is scary.

johnny22 6y ago
and you can define obscenity? or is it "I know it when i see it" again. There is no neutral.
- preordained 6y ago
  Fine, porn or gore or profanity, list of slurs. If you want to begin curating other nebulous concepts like "hate speech" at scale, it should be explicitly defined and you should held to being clear when you are acting upon violations for it, and responsible for applying your policy broadly and not cherry picking. "There is no neutral" so we'll just make it up as we go is just a ridiculous pass that big platforms are exploiting to the ill of society.
  - johnny22 6y ago
    that's what we've always done, make it up as we go along, since societies and language change. I doubt you'll find it easy to really split what's porn and what is art. or even what gore vs art is.

fuzzy2 6y ago

Even after reading the article, I’m not sure how to understand the question. Is it: "Social media companies are censoring me and must be regulated" or are they perhaps mixing the platform with the content? Because if Trump writes on Twitter, that’s not Twitter. It’s Trump. IMHO, social media companies don’t have a lot of political influence. It’s the reach they create for platform users that’s "the problem".

jojobas 6y ago
It's not about Trump posting on Twitter, it's about Twitter choosing what to show you "trending" based on their management's political beliefs.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  That's what I though "how very dare they show me a tweet from that ultra left politician tony blair"
pferde 6y ago
Social media do actually have a lot of political influence - at least those which curate and promote certain content. They are the ones who control what kind of information gets consumed by more eyeballs and what kind of information gets suppressed, or at least displayed less prominently. It's not about "social media companies are censoring me", but rather "social media companies are censoring what I see".
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Yeh is it "I don't agree with president Trump" or more conservative twitter users objecting to companies tweeting about BLM or Pride. I actually suspect the latter.
rvz 6y ago
Given the evidence of blacklisting and censoring trending Twitter users and hashtags via screenshots of the leaked admin tool, they have a lot of political influence and have access to that tool which can be used to crush anyone or any tweets they don't like. President or protestor. The moment they censored anyone re-posting that admin tool on Twitter, it tells you that not only it exists but that they also still actively use it.

aspenmayer 6y ago

I guess I’m one of the 28%. Politicians, the government, megacorporations other than social media, and the police as well as entire associated bureaucratic law enforcement organizations have too much influence, period. The protests on all sides are a reaction to and expression of that rejection of unwanted, nonconsensual influence over free people. Social media is the megaphone of this protest movement. This is the establishment trying to chop the heads off the hydra, while counterprotesting heads stir up trouble and confuse the narrative on all sides. Will it work? For whom?

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
Pfizer and Exxon don’t get to decide which hashtags are allowed to be on trending or what stories people should see in their feed.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  However, their lobbyists in DC will threaten to give the other guy or gal more money than they’ll give their regular congresscritters if they don’t play ball. This is not Schoolhouse Rock. Laws don’t exist. They’re memes that have force of law, and like all memes, laws are subject to mutation and deep frying, as well as appropriation and recontextualization.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >However, their lobbyists in DC will threaten to give the other guy or gal more money than they’ll give their regular congresscritters if they don’t play ball The difference between being able to censor whatever unilaterally and having to get a legislator to do it for you could not be more massive. Having to play the lobbying game adds a huge amount of time, expense and outside scrutiny making it much harder to do bad things. Sure the fact that regulatory capture is possible and doable at a certain scale is bad but it's infinitly better than bigCos being able to act unilaterally. It's like the difference between the cops being able to kick down your door on a whim and them having to get a warrant and at least look like idiots on the official record and make other people who share no upside condone their stupidity.

netcan 6y ago

Twitter set out to be the public square, the place where matters of importance are discussed by the people. I think JD was serious about that, still is. The problem is that Twitter is a private public square. That contradiction is not something JD can accept, because "his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It isn't reconcilable. We don't have many examples, in modern times, of of non-companies filling roles like Twitter of FB fill. But, that doesn't mean they can't exist. The WWW itself is a platform for speech and is a "public square." Wikipedia is another example. A really good example, if you think about it. If wikipedia was a commercial company, imagine the issues they'd be facing... all that authority as an information source. Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook? This isn't a question you could ask about Toyota. If Facebook fell off the edge of the disc, we would very quickly have a replacement. People wouldn't lack for social media. If Toyota fell off the disc, we would have fewer cars. Rebuilding that capacity would require real resources.. Until then, we'd lack for cars. This last part is key. Commercial viability is nearly a non-issue. Social media can be viable on a tiny fraction of its current revenue. This explodes the number of possible actions. I really hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow... I hope, but I can't say I'm optimistic.

save_ferris 6y ago
I don't fully understand what you're trying to argue here. > Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook? Are you saying that if FB had a smaller headcount or budget, they'd be less influential? A company's headcount and budget are largely a function of the market, and the market highly values FB. If you have a problem with the economics of FB, you have a problem with the market forces that created it. But you end with: > I hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow If you're not happy that the market created conditions for companies like FB to grow to the size that they are, and you're also not happy that regulation is possibly in the future of these companies, then how would you like to see this scenario play out?
- 6y ago

d--b 6y ago

It's interesting though. The networks really were created to increase connection/communication between people, and it did in many ways. What was unexpected is the effect. One had expected that people would feel less concerned by the state of the world, cause they would talk to their friends and family rather than bingeing on the global news. But instead, this increase in connections created a sort of phase transition in society. It's kind of similar to the article that was posted here the other day, where scientists realized that atoms in a solid glass were more connected to each other than in liquid glass. In a way, social media literally "cristallized" polarization.

Nasrudith 6y ago

The whole question is frankly deeply stupid on so many levels. First off it is push pollingly worded to get directly contradictory groups (those conplaining about too much and too moderation) while pushing a clear agenda. Second the very concept is meaningless. What is a proper level of influence for social media? It can't even be defined. It only leads to intellectual abominations like obscenity and know it when I see it which leads to "Whatever the fuck the person in power wants narcicistically imposed upon all."

LockAndLol 6y ago

They really should've added the question "Which social media accounts do you have" and then just summed that up. Do you think those companies would have that much power without its users?

lazyjones 6y ago

It's not the social media, it's mainstream mass media who decide to report on "hashtags", memes and viral videos and bring them to the wider public. Lazy journalists who don't investigate facts anymore and only care about trends and outrages and whose "ultimate editor" is now Twitter, as Bari Weiss alleged.

originalvichy 6y ago
This is closer to the truth. The internet’s main currency is attention. It is a sea of information and the only places that get noticed are the ones given attention to. Mainstream media is in a feedback loop with the internet.
throw_m239339 6y ago
Exactly. Like Bari Weiss said, "Twitter has become the editor". US journalists now write articles to satisfy their twitter following.
save_ferris 6y ago
There's more money and opportunity for journalists to use tools like Twitter because that's where the public's attention is. With media outlets incentivizing things like CTR, journalists are going to use whatever gets more eyeballs. And since people aren't directly paying for their news anymore, reporting using tools like Twitter is what makes them the most money. If you're going to criticize "lazy journalists", you also have to acknowledge the system that makes it impossible to generate serious revenue without sites like Twitter and FB, because that's effectively what those companies have done.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

I just realized how social can fix this issue. Every account has a default setting that is ultra-curated content, works nicely, politically correct, etc. Deep in the options, you can ‘unlock’ all (requires 18+ notification, verification, or whatever depending on laws), then it will be an absolutely uncurated FILO sort of absolutely everything going a mile a minute. The unlocked settings would let you upload code-snippets to do curating, so people could share things and invent new ways to curate. This solves the issue with the risk of censorship.

everdrive 6y ago
The issue is the speed and magnification of ideas, not necessarily the "adult" content.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Then in the uncurated version, they could disable the like button, which is what makes things go viral...

blue52 6y ago

Yes, they do because they can get away with everything that the other non-"social" companies cannot.

torresjrjr 6y ago

I've recently written a pair of explanatory articles regarding the Fediverse, the decentralised social media network. https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediverse https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediv... https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-20-what-is-the-fediverse https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-20-what-is-the-fedive... The solution to centralised power and control already exists and is thriving, with approximately 2 million users strong. Take a moment to learn about the Fediverse and you'll be asking yourself why you didn't know about this before. Don't complain, act for Internet freedom.

darkerside 6y ago

Funny that this didn't pop up on my Google News feed

draw_down 6y ago

I think defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, oil & gas firms, and banks have too much political influence. Not that I’m in love with Facebook, I’m certainly not.

87tau 6y ago

While social media seem to be the problem, I find myself internally conflicted. On the one hand I see myself as a supporter of democracy, freedom of speech and liberty of expression, but I'm dismayed by the self harm these ideals are causing at the moment. It's the feeling of being unable to defend against painfully obvious (to me) propaganda but also the worry that I don't close doors to the freedom these platforms allow. Why do information campaigns seem to be failing against the propoganda mills? Living in underdeveloped part of the world I believed for the most of my life that it was lack of education but having in the US for the past few years I had to firmly discard that notion. I currently believe that it is the inherited values that society imparts on us, and that serves as a lens to view facts that is being manipulated. The last company I worked for our executives, all highly educated and good natured, for most parts, held political opinions that I thought were only held by the 'idiots' captured by someone on cell phone videos. They had built a successful company on highly educated immigrant workforce, with major workforce still outside the US, headquarter located in a deep 'blue' state with the founder and chairman of the company an immigrant and PhD holder a first generation immigrant but everyone still a vehement, vocal supporter of current anti-immigrants, anti-science, anti-obama/hillary, anti-medicine propaganda. I don't think it's simply dismissable as biased by financial profit. Is it because everyone near them believes in such and these opinions are manifestation of values they grew up with? Is social media just giving it a loud-speaker. We need to address that somehow I feel.

koheripbal 6y ago
Think of Democracy as a system that embodies the wishes & will of the average voter (not the average citizen). Now imagine that you invented a system that would get tens of millions more people emotionally engaged to vote, but they happened to also be the least educated, least nuanced, least mature voters - people who seldom voted before. Then imagine your surprise when intelligent debate disappears, and politics devolves into reality television. That is what we've done. Imagine if we allowed the average person dictact Climate Change policy, rather than the scientists? ...oh wait, we've done that as well...
- Proven 6y ago

torgian 6y ago

I recently finished playing Watch Dogs 2, and the missions go over this very problem. Social media’s impact on politics and how data is used to influence the masses. Quite scary actually, that the real thing is happening.

charliebrownau 6y ago

No fucking shit 99% of mainstream ARE GLOBAL LEFT POLITICAL ACTIVISTS/POLITICAL ARM for the state, remaining 1% is controlled zio "right wing"

qbaqbaqba 6y ago

What about NGOs?