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> The friction was both a drag on productivity AND a safety mechanism to prevent mass spread of inaccurate or low quality content. I don't think this is correc

by chopin 6y ago

> The friction was both a drag on productivity AND a safety mechanism to prevent mass spread of inaccurate or low quality content. I don't think this is correct. I remember a bunch of outlets from the seventies and eighties which had all of: far reach, inaccurate and low quality content. It was just restricted to few influential people with enough money. I think this is the reason why social media are fought that hard: these people lose their influence (not that I am fond of social media). The past was not that rose as we like to paint it.

nathanyz 6y ago
I agree that it wasn't perfect, no doubt about that. It definitely restricted the ability to mass communicate into fewer hands. In general, the reduction in communication friction is THE big advance brought about by the Internet. Instant, effortless, and basically free communication for everyone everywhere. Businesses like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are economically incentivized to push as hard as possible to get you to consume and create more so that they can show more ads. That means that when a video catches the attention of 50 people long enough to show an ad, then they can quickly encourage the spread of that video very rapidly to maximize that attention grabbing clip. Nowhere in that equation is there an evaluation of the benefit/harm of that content to the end user. The evaluation is solely on whether it grabs attention. Because the product now being sold is human attention and its being bought by advertisers. The humans being influenced have no say and don't actually reap any gains from the transaction. Car wrecks are attention grabbing and slow down traffic even the other side of the highway as people gawk. But of course they are not great for anyone....UNLESS you somehow have a business model that makes more money when there are more car wrecks. What happens then?
- chopin 6y ago
  Good points but all of this holds true for traditional media either. Just recently the Spiegel (a somewhat reputable weekly journal in Germany) had a series of completely or partial made up stories. The maker was able to place them because they fit so well into Spiegel's narrative. Such that (almost) nobody asked questions. We are lied to from all sides.
g_p 6y ago
It's a good point - the past was far from perfect. Long before the current "user generated content" fact-level problem, I remember (some) traditional internet forums offering the same problem as we have today - inane parroting of plausible sounding content, almost as mantras, to anyone who asked a question. I learned from those days that you had to be careful as what you read on a forum was highly likely (at least in some circles where expertise is limited, the topic is complicated, and questions are plentiful) to be plain nonsense, or pseudo science. On the other hand though, the increase in friction arguably reduces the scale of the problem you cite - making it financially based is far from ideal, but it at least reduced the breadth of the problem space to some extent.

by chopin 6y ago

nathanyz 6y ago

I agree that it wasn't perfect, no doubt about that. It definitely restricted the ability to mass communicate into fewer hands. In general, the reduction in communication friction is THE big advance brought about by the Internet. Instant, effortless, and basically free communication for everyone everywhere. Businesses like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are economically incentivized to push as hard as possible to get you to consume and create more so that they can show more ads. That means that when a video catches the attention of 50 people long enough to show an ad, then they can quickly encourage the spread of that video very rapidly to maximize that attention grabbing clip. Nowhere in that equation is there an evaluation of the benefit/harm of that content to the end user. The evaluation is solely on whether it grabs attention. Because the product now being sold is human attention and its being bought by advertisers. The humans being influenced have no say and don't actually reap any gains from the transaction. Car wrecks are attention grabbing and slow down traffic even the other side of the highway as people gawk. But of course they are not great for anyone....UNLESS you somehow have a business model that makes more money when there are more car wrecks. What happens then?

chopin 6y ago
Good points but all of this holds true for traditional media either. Just recently the Spiegel (a somewhat reputable weekly journal in Germany) had a series of completely or partial made up stories. The maker was able to place them because they fit so well into Spiegel's narrative. Such that (almost) nobody asked questions. We are lied to from all sides.

g_p 6y ago

It's a good point - the past was far from perfect. Long before the current "user generated content" fact-level problem, I remember (some) traditional internet forums offering the same problem as we have today - inane parroting of plausible sounding content, almost as mantras, to anyone who asked a question. I learned from those days that you had to be careful as what you read on a forum was highly likely (at least in some circles where expertise is limited, the topic is complicated, and questions are plentiful) to be plain nonsense, or pseudo science. On the other hand though, the increase in friction arguably reduces the scale of the problem you cite - making it financially based is far from ideal, but it at least reduced the breadth of the problem space to some extent.