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That's what is called the echo chamber... slowly sliding into it with Facebook's engineering help. What it leads to, we were able to witness yesterday.

by kerng 6y ago

throwaway201103 6y ago
We've been witnessing it for at least a year.
- Shared404 6y ago
  But yesterday was enough for even those in denial to see it.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    I guess that depends on what they were denying. The Wired article is entirely about Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, et. al. facilitating extremism on the right, when certainly the reality is that they are facilitating it wherever they can get engagement, on either side of the political spectrum. I mean since October they basically shut down a lot of content that was very much right-of-center. Alex Jones was deplatformed a long time ago.
- bostik 6y ago
  For quite a bit longer, I think. The book Weapons of Math Destruction was published in 2016, and the conclusions therein were not exactly new at the time either.[ß] The business model of ad-based social media is focused on generating engagement, above all else. Nothing generates more engagement than outrage, fear, or playing to primal instincts. To satisfy that demand, content providers are encouraged to generate the maximal outrage and foment fear. Social media platforms are incentivised to direct people towards that content, because they make more money that way. The end result: social media platforms automate pile-on and radicalisation at the speed of lies, at global scale. Not because they are inherently evil, but because they are making money off of people being inherently terrible. ß: The real meat of the book is in the first two chapters, as far as I'm concerned. Everything else in there is just repeating the arguments.
guscost 6y ago
If Facebook did anything to contribute to the current unrest, it was supporting competing echo chambers that challenge the dominant one. The organic emergence of echo chambers is surely a problem, but let’s not pretend that the corporate-broadcaster world of the past was more virtuous. I believe that information being freed from top-down control is a necessary process for the improvement of our civilization. The alternative just leads to more corruption, slavery, and death.

That's what is called the echo chamber... slowly sliding into it with Facebook's engineering help. What it leads to, we were able to witness yesterday.

by kerng 6y ago

That's what is called the echo chamber... slowly sliding into it with Facebook's engineering help. What it leads to, we were able to witness yesterday.

throwaway201103 6y ago

We've been witnessing it for at least a year.

Shared404 6y ago
But yesterday was enough for even those in denial to see it.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  I guess that depends on what they were denying. The Wired article is entirely about Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, et. al. facilitating extremism on the right, when certainly the reality is that they are facilitating it wherever they can get engagement, on either side of the political spectrum. I mean since October they basically shut down a lot of content that was very much right-of-center. Alex Jones was deplatformed a long time ago.
bostik 6y ago
For quite a bit longer, I think. The book Weapons of Math Destruction was published in 2016, and the conclusions therein were not exactly new at the time either.[ß] The business model of ad-based social media is focused on generating engagement, above all else. Nothing generates more engagement than outrage, fear, or playing to primal instincts. To satisfy that demand, content providers are encouraged to generate the maximal outrage and foment fear. Social media platforms are incentivised to direct people towards that content, because they make more money that way. The end result: social media platforms automate pile-on and radicalisation at the speed of lies, at global scale. Not because they are inherently evil, but because they are making money off of people being inherently terrible. ß: The real meat of the book is in the first two chapters, as far as I'm concerned. Everything else in there is just repeating the arguments.

guscost 6y ago

If Facebook did anything to contribute to the current unrest, it was supporting competing echo chambers that challenge the dominant one. The organic emergence of echo chambers is surely a problem, but let’s not pretend that the corporate-broadcaster world of the past was more virtuous. I believe that information being freed from top-down control is a necessary process for the improvement of our civilization. The alternative just leads to more corruption, slavery, and death.