7 ms·

I have two reactions to these kinds of pieces. The first is to think "of course they are - outrage is the easiest form of engagement and social media is all ab

I have two reactions to these kinds of pieces. The first is to think "of course they are - outrage is the easiest form of engagement and social media is all about easy engagement as that means more eyes to sell." The second is that there is a delegation of responsibility in these articles. The tone is a "Facebook/Twitter made me act like a jerk." The algorithms may be tuned to surface content that will ruffle your feathers, but the reaction is yours as is the decision to engage with social media at all.

nonotreally 6y ago
Fuck you. I didn't actually mean that, but I want you to notice that you felt the outrage. Yes, you can learn to regulate yourself. But everyone doesn't currently live in that world. Manipulating people on a really large scale is super easy right now because of how easy it is to rile people up.
- eckza 6y ago
  And why do you think that is? Because nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore. Why should they - they don't need to - we've pathologized everything, from behavioral issues to depression (nobody ever says "I am depressed", they say "I have depression", which is another thing entirely and delegates all responsibility to manage oneself to outside forces). And another pathology: "I acted like an idiot because an Internet Website made me feel things and I couldn't control myself. Now I need Someone Else to make decisions on my behalf". That's how personal liberty gets extinguished.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    "nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore" Why do you think anyone did before? You were allowed to kill your wife if you caught her cheating. Is a century with two world wars giving you the idea that emotions were kept in check?
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      > Is a century with two world wars giving you the idea that emotions were kept in check? Yes. On a grand scale, boys who were utterly terrified put that behind them and fought anyway.
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        How about the fact that we had decades of war because ambition, greed and anger ruled the day?
        robertlagrant 6y ago
        That's not a fact.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > Because nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore. In real life there's real consequences for lying and being a shadow manipulator is usually more difficult than not. On the internet there's real consequences to telling the truth and being a shadow manipulator is way easier than not.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    > nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore Compared to when? > nobody ever says "I am depressed", they say "I have depression", which is another thing entirely and delegates all responsibility to manage oneself to outside forces Good. That's exactly what psychologists have been telling people for decades: do not victimize mental illness because self-blaming only pushes the problem further.
    - Rule35 6y ago
      > > delegates all responsibility to manage oneself to outside forces > Good. That's exactly what psychologists have been telling people for decades No, neither phrase says "I am bad because I'm depressed". But one pushes the person out of the locus of control. > > nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore > Compared to when? Compared to when they couldn't broadcast it. Why perform helplessness if nobody is there to see? Ditto rage, etc.
      - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
        > But one pushes the person out of the locus of control. Mental illness does that. Also many other things, like going hungry. > Compared to when they couldn't broadcast it. In some mythical past or a real point in time? When people where never emotion-driven and completely rational 500 years ago? 1500? 5000?
        Rule35 6y ago
        > > But one pushes the person out of the locus of control. > Mental illness does that. Also many other things, like going hungry. No, being hungry doesn't have to make you helpless, and doesn't for most people. Locus of control isn't about actual control, it's about feeling that your actions actually impact things. A prisoner in a dungeon could feel in control in a way that a free and wealthy person may not. The over-medicalization of problems (even if they are at root, medical) contributes to learned helplessness. And this is one of the biggest things to revert when helping a depressed person, to prove that they can indeed influence events. > > Compared to when they couldn't broadcast it. > In some mythical past or a real point in time? I first saw a sob story followed by a pay-me link on LiveJournal ~20 years ago. This is around when it became practical for people to beg to the world. Before this you either went to friends and family, or were just able to complain (not collect money) so there wasn't the same motive. And twenty years before that people pretty much didn't have any editorial reach unless they owned the media so the weaponized sob story was just employed by panhandlers and family. > When people where never emotion-driven and completely rational 500 years ago? 1500? 5000? You're having this argument with yourself because those are words you're trying to shove into my mouth. I'm talking about the ability to be performative effectively, not about emotion. These are actually two totally unrelated things. Many emotional people don't dump this on others, and many performative people aren't feeling what they claim to be suffering.
  - nonotreally 6y ago
    > "I acted like an idiot because an Internet Website made me feel things and I couldn't control myself. Now I need Someone Else to make decisions on my behalf". I don't think this is crazy. We're products of our environment. Our environment now includes TikTok and Facebook. This isn't a question of "is this how it should be", rather a statement of how it is. If you're a man, ask yourself "why don't I wear a dress?". I assume it isn't because you weighed the pros and cons, but rather because of the environment you're born into and inhabit. Personal responsibility for an individual is great. But if we're designing optimal societies, we should pay attention to how incentives are being used to manipulate us. If your claim boils down to "I am strong enough to control myself" it reminds me of "ads don't work on me". _I just don't buy it_. If that were true you wouldn't eat Oreos, or use Bounty paper towels, or own a Song or Samsung tv. The truth is that we are all heavily influenced by our peers, our environment and now, social media.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  > Yes, you can learn to regulate yourself. But everyone doesn't currently live in that world Humans are not going to turn into stoics anytime soon. Also, decades of advertisement are teaching billions of people to "follow your dreams", "your opinion is important", "just do it", "indulge yourself", "act on impulse". It's not surprising that selfishness, ruggedness, entitlement, contentiousness come out of it. Furthermore, our ability to "regulate ourselves" depends on many aspects often out of our immediate control: being in good mental and physical health, not under social and financial pressure, not hungry or cold, not treated badly in our workplaces or society and so on. It's easy to act "stoic" when your life is good.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
ok, so Facebook/Twitter has obviously already decided it is to their benefit that people act like jerks. So what if they figured out that they could determine who was most likely to be goaded into acting like jerks - like - hey, user 20018 just lost their child, they joined a group for support for people with family members dying of cancer, and their football team lost last night! Start pushing our most highly provocative content at user 20018 stat! At some point there is a delegation of at least some responsibility - when is that?
- Applejinx 6y ago
  It looks like they delegate (or have formerly delegated) this type of intention, to paying customers. That of course doesn't mean the userbase: you'd call it 'advertisers' but Facebook got in some trouble over selling off extremely granular access to targeted advertising, to state actors, foreign governments etc: basically whoever's willing to pay enough. So, if you're trying to create domestic terrorists, it's extremely valuable to be fed information just like your example represents, to sell off access to that demographic. Facebook doesn't have to consider it 'provocative content', they see it as 'feeding a demographic to a paying customer'. If you're smart enough about your targeting, you can turn it to 'provoke susceptible people into committing acts of terrorism at rates substantially higher than the baseline likelihood of this'. So it's the foreign intelligence agency that is thinking of 'provoking', and Facebook sort of shrugs and fills the order for targeted demographics, without itself thinking much about whether anything is 'provocative'.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    good point, the poster I was responding to suggested that delegation of responsibility was happening from the user of facebook not taking responsibility for their own actions, but I guess there is delegation at several levels.
iNate2000 6y ago
Right. And my reaction has been to mostly stay away from Facebook and Twitter. But I’m not the one rioting.
zarkov99 6y ago
Well, yes, but this isn't a new problem and society long ago decided that sometimes it has to protect people from themselves. We prosecute drug dealers, we punish cigarette manufacturers, we enforce seat belt laws. I think we will be better off when we understand that social media in its current form is much worse than cigarettes, perhaps even, all things considered, worse than drugs.
ramblerman 6y ago
I think you are breaking this down into a sociological statement vs one of individual responsibility. The first is more useful because the system as a whole may have emergent properties. E.g. think of the opioid crisis and the extra profit incentives for doctors, sales reps creating a vicious cycle. Hence this is also the best place to frame, and fix the problem. Of course promoting individual responsibility is good, "don't do drugs" but it is usually not enough.
vishnugupta 6y ago
Not just the social media but also the print and TV news. At least here in India about 80% of all the news is rage inducing. Because that’s what drives the TRP which in turn means more advertising money. And then we have artificially induced rage through sports, mostly cricket, where spectators get riled up and vent it out on, where else, Twitter.

nonotreally 6y ago

Fuck you. I didn't actually mean that, but I want you to notice that you felt the outrage. Yes, you can learn to regulate yourself. But everyone doesn't currently live in that world. Manipulating people on a really large scale is super easy right now because of how easy it is to rile people up.

eckza 6y ago
And why do you think that is? Because nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore. Why should they - they don't need to - we've pathologized everything, from behavioral issues to depression (nobody ever says "I am depressed", they say "I have depression", which is another thing entirely and delegates all responsibility to manage oneself to outside forces). And another pathology: "I acted like an idiot because an Internet Website made me feel things and I couldn't control myself. Now I need Someone Else to make decisions on my behalf". That's how personal liberty gets extinguished.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  "nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore" Why do you think anyone did before? You were allowed to kill your wife if you caught her cheating. Is a century with two world wars giving you the idea that emotions were kept in check?
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    > Is a century with two world wars giving you the idea that emotions were kept in check? Yes. On a grand scale, boys who were utterly terrified put that behind them and fought anyway.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      How about the fact that we had decades of war because ambition, greed and anger ruled the day?
      - robertlagrant 6y ago
        That's not a fact.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > Because nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore. In real life there's real consequences for lying and being a shadow manipulator is usually more difficult than not. On the internet there's real consequences to telling the truth and being a shadow manipulator is way easier than not.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  > nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore Compared to when? > nobody ever says "I am depressed", they say "I have depression", which is another thing entirely and delegates all responsibility to manage oneself to outside forces Good. That's exactly what psychologists have been telling people for decades: do not victimize mental illness because self-blaming only pushes the problem further.
  - Rule35 6y ago
    > > delegates all responsibility to manage oneself to outside forces > Good. That's exactly what psychologists have been telling people for decades No, neither phrase says "I am bad because I'm depressed". But one pushes the person out of the locus of control. > > nobody takes responsibility for their actions or emotions anymore > Compared to when? Compared to when they couldn't broadcast it. Why perform helplessness if nobody is there to see? Ditto rage, etc.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      > But one pushes the person out of the locus of control. Mental illness does that. Also many other things, like going hungry. > Compared to when they couldn't broadcast it. In some mythical past or a real point in time? When people where never emotion-driven and completely rational 500 years ago? 1500? 5000?
      - Rule35 6y ago
        > > But one pushes the person out of the locus of control. > Mental illness does that. Also many other things, like going hungry. No, being hungry doesn't have to make you helpless, and doesn't for most people. Locus of control isn't about actual control, it's about feeling that your actions actually impact things. A prisoner in a dungeon could feel in control in a way that a free and wealthy person may not. The over-medicalization of problems (even if they are at root, medical) contributes to learned helplessness. And this is one of the biggest things to revert when helping a depressed person, to prove that they can indeed influence events. > > Compared to when they couldn't broadcast it. > In some mythical past or a real point in time? I first saw a sob story followed by a pay-me link on LiveJournal ~20 years ago. This is around when it became practical for people to beg to the world. Before this you either went to friends and family, or were just able to complain (not collect money) so there wasn't the same motive. And twenty years before that people pretty much didn't have any editorial reach unless they owned the media so the weaponized sob story was just employed by panhandlers and family. > When people where never emotion-driven and completely rational 500 years ago? 1500? 5000? You're having this argument with yourself because those are words you're trying to shove into my mouth. I'm talking about the ability to be performative effectively, not about emotion. These are actually two totally unrelated things. Many emotional people don't dump this on others, and many performative people aren't feeling what they claim to be suffering.
- nonotreally 6y ago
  > "I acted like an idiot because an Internet Website made me feel things and I couldn't control myself. Now I need Someone Else to make decisions on my behalf". I don't think this is crazy. We're products of our environment. Our environment now includes TikTok and Facebook. This isn't a question of "is this how it should be", rather a statement of how it is. If you're a man, ask yourself "why don't I wear a dress?". I assume it isn't because you weighed the pros and cons, but rather because of the environment you're born into and inhabit. Personal responsibility for an individual is great. But if we're designing optimal societies, we should pay attention to how incentives are being used to manipulate us. If your claim boils down to "I am strong enough to control myself" it reminds me of "ads don't work on me". _I just don't buy it_. If that were true you wouldn't eat Oreos, or use Bounty paper towels, or own a Song or Samsung tv. The truth is that we are all heavily influenced by our peers, our environment and now, social media.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
> Yes, you can learn to regulate yourself. But everyone doesn't currently live in that world Humans are not going to turn into stoics anytime soon. Also, decades of advertisement are teaching billions of people to "follow your dreams", "your opinion is important", "just do it", "indulge yourself", "act on impulse". It's not surprising that selfishness, ruggedness, entitlement, contentiousness come out of it. Furthermore, our ability to "regulate ourselves" depends on many aspects often out of our immediate control: being in good mental and physical health, not under social and financial pressure, not hungry or cold, not treated badly in our workplaces or society and so on. It's easy to act "stoic" when your life is good.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

ok, so Facebook/Twitter has obviously already decided it is to their benefit that people act like jerks. So what if they figured out that they could determine who was most likely to be goaded into acting like jerks - like - hey, user 20018 just lost their child, they joined a group for support for people with family members dying of cancer, and their football team lost last night! Start pushing our most highly provocative content at user 20018 stat! At some point there is a delegation of at least some responsibility - when is that?

Applejinx 6y ago
It looks like they delegate (or have formerly delegated) this type of intention, to paying customers. That of course doesn't mean the userbase: you'd call it 'advertisers' but Facebook got in some trouble over selling off extremely granular access to targeted advertising, to state actors, foreign governments etc: basically whoever's willing to pay enough. So, if you're trying to create domestic terrorists, it's extremely valuable to be fed information just like your example represents, to sell off access to that demographic. Facebook doesn't have to consider it 'provocative content', they see it as 'feeding a demographic to a paying customer'. If you're smart enough about your targeting, you can turn it to 'provoke susceptible people into committing acts of terrorism at rates substantially higher than the baseline likelihood of this'. So it's the foreign intelligence agency that is thinking of 'provoking', and Facebook sort of shrugs and fills the order for targeted demographics, without itself thinking much about whether anything is 'provocative'.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  good point, the poster I was responding to suggested that delegation of responsibility was happening from the user of facebook not taking responsibility for their own actions, but I guess there is delegation at several levels.

iNate2000 6y ago

Right. And my reaction has been to mostly stay away from Facebook and Twitter. But I’m not the one rioting.

zarkov99 6y ago

Well, yes, but this isn't a new problem and society long ago decided that sometimes it has to protect people from themselves. We prosecute drug dealers, we punish cigarette manufacturers, we enforce seat belt laws. I think we will be better off when we understand that social media in its current form is much worse than cigarettes, perhaps even, all things considered, worse than drugs.

ramblerman 6y ago

I think you are breaking this down into a sociological statement vs one of individual responsibility. The first is more useful because the system as a whole may have emergent properties. E.g. think of the opioid crisis and the extra profit incentives for doctors, sales reps creating a vicious cycle. Hence this is also the best place to frame, and fix the problem. Of course promoting individual responsibility is good, "don't do drugs" but it is usually not enough.

vishnugupta 6y ago

Not just the social media but also the print and TV news. At least here in India about 80% of all the news is rage inducing. Because that’s what drives the TRP which in turn means more advertising money. And then we have artificially induced rage through sports, mostly cricket, where spectators get riled up and vent it out on, where else, Twitter.