7 ms·

I think this is the biggest takeaway for me: > We saw this dynamic metastasize in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when well-intentioned claims of “silence i

I think this is the biggest takeaway for me: > We saw this dynamic metastasize in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when well-intentioned claims of “silence is violence” (recalling the powerful 1987 ACT-UP “Silence = Death” campaign) spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. Yet public posts were subject to popular scrutiny and judged based on sincerity, originality, and tone. Not surprisingly, many people defaulted to posting a somber plain black square. But this generated criticism of its own by clogging the feed with an informational blackout during a moment when community resource sharing was critically important. Amid a chaotic time, the platform functioned exactly as designed: amplification of emotions, uptick in user interaction, growth in platform engagement and data cultivation. Cha-ching, the platform cashes in. In other words, any large movement or discussion on "clearnet" spaces gets subverted by the algorithms and profit motive of the platform they live on. However, where I disagree with the author is considering mainstream "dark forest" platforms like reddit or 4chan to be countercultural. In fact, I'd argue that mainstream social media can never be countercultural. While there may be no "algorithm" controlling the narrative you see on 4chan (or a straightforward and ostensibly fair one on a site like reddit), the content you see (and by extension, the narrative) is shaped by profit motive: From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the platform

retrac 6y ago
> While there may be no "algorithm" controlling the narrative you see on 4chan (or a straightforward and ostensibly fair one on a site like reddit), the content you see (and by extension, the narrative) is shaped by profit motive: From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion I've realized I have exactly one outlet free of this left. It's an IRC channel I've been in since the 90s. I thought about it and none of us are there for any reason other than that we have a common interest and like each other. No money involved, no names involved, and it's one of the more supportive and insightful communities I've ever found online. We've sometimes wondered why it's such a different community from the other places, and this article articulates why quite well, I think. We're old-timers holding out in a little pocket of what has been almost fully absorbed by corporate social media. I'm sure there are others. And I'm sure they won't tell you where to find them, either.
- JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
  I find plenty of these types of communities through Discord, and I think that is part of the equation that's left out here. I don't really like discord much, but the reason I get when I do is to go check in on those friends. Usually these communities are just people that I've met playing games. I don't know that these would qualify as counter-culture or subculture, but they are free of marketing and advertising, and people are there because we have shared interests. The conversations are organic and not curated for us and we are isolated from anyone else we don't want to be part of that group. So, my gut tells me that the younger generations are using Discord like people used IRC.
  - YinglingLight 6y ago
    Old farts still had irl friends. The amount of teens who have no tangible friendships outside of Discord is sobering.
    - narag 6y ago
      My son has a group of friends at the Uni, some of them in his same school, some of them in nearby schools, some of them are in the neighbourhood... half of them are from high school, the other half are from Minecraft discord groups. They have a weekly meeting in a Uni cafeteria and use indistinctly Discord or Instagram as chat. Instagram has replaced WhatsApp as the regular phone chat. All of them have wider net-only groups of acquitances.
    - phatfish 6y ago
      Teens/young adults surely have far more opportunities to make real life friends than working age adults. They are at least required to attend school. I would say that this is more the lifestyle of adults after being out of education for a few years. They are the group that can ignore all real life interaction if they want, Covid has increased the likelihood of this.
  - smolder 6y ago
    They do use discord like we used IRC, but discord is centralized under one company. So, they will eventually do what companies do and try to find that sweet spot of "how much abuse can our users take" versus "how much money can we extract from our market position" as with all such free services. Discord is a trap, both in the latent monetization sense mentioned, and the sense that all your communications there are gobbled up with little to no privacy guarantee.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the platform This is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users.
- helen___keller 6y ago
  > This is making the perfect the enemy of the good. To be fair, I'm not saying that we should all ditch Reddit and only congregate on obscure message boards with maximum user limits; I'm simply saying that a place like a default subreddit should never be considered counter-cultural. > Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users. Strong disagree. Naked propaganda is downvoted, sure, but good propaganda is never naked. Add enough eyeballs and increasingly sophisticated and coordinated actors will find a way to get their message to the top.
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  Voting systems often amplify propaganda spam. Every day r/science has multiple posts upvoted to the top with titles exaggerating findings, and/or linking to shoddy studies. Upvote/Downvote is very susceptible to headlines that exploit confirmation bias, and bot activity.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  >> From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the platform > Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users. I disagree: crowdsourced moderation can only really take care of the most obvious crap, so it doesn't really take care of this problem.
  - 6y ago
partyboat1586 6y ago
>spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. >timely public statement Being a public figure sounds exhausting.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  This happened to random 18 year old college kids who were just not active on social media. I saw it first hand. I actually saw an entire group of girls let go of one of their friends who didn't post in support of BLM along with them. She had like 60 followers on Instagram (mostly family).
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  It is, but to be clear I think the point there was not about public figures per se but about everyday people. Everyday (albeit obviously left-leaning) people would post the black squares out of a sense of obligation, and then the responses would be split between praising them for standing up for "black lives", versus half the people criticizing the poster of the black square for making a silly symbolic gesture. (I view it as the latter - a stupid symbolic gesture - BUT the context of the whole "silence is violence" meme is why these NPCs were in a double-bind: damned if you do, damned if you don't)
- toyg 6y ago
  With great power comes great responsibility.
TameAntelope 6y ago
What you're saying is and isn't true. One example of a countercultural movement that's been in the news recently is the DDoSecrets leaks/hacks (they get upset if you aren't clear that they're hackers). They've got a strong Twitter presence that helps them get their message out, but they conduct no "real" business on Twitter. So a counterculture can use the mainstream platforms, but they choose to do so only as a microphone, not as a gathering place. Edit: That said, one of the members of a related group just (as in, after I wrote this but before editing was made unavailable) got banned from Twitter, so maybe they can't actually use the platform as a microphone for very long. It looks like the law is getting involved, specifically related to the Verkada hack.
- satellite2 6y ago
  It seems like a very strong stance to say that the publicly advertised leaks and hacks are not financially motivated.
  - TameAntelope 6y ago
    I've thought a lot about what you're saying here, and I see no indication that's the case (corrupt/ulterior financial motivations related to their leaks/hacks). I am very curious how the members of DDoSecrets make their money, though (not that it's any of my business), mostly because the Twitter accounts I've been following seem to have a pretty strong disgust response to the idea of making money off of hacking in general.
    - satellite2 6y ago
      My bad, I tought you were talking in general. I'm not familiar with DDoSecrets so I cannot say much about their case specifically. What I can say though is that generally the threat model for attackers slightly more sophisticated than script kiddies suggests that the preparations involve a non negligible amount of time from highly specialized engineers and that somehow, someone has to pay for it.
      - 6y ago
SyzygistSix 6y ago
>n fact, I'd argue that mainstream social media can never be countercultural. I would say that is pretty much true by definition. Online countercultural elements are open source software and other collaborative platforms like Bandcamp and similar sites where people are trading tracks and what they have created. Torrenting is still countercultural. What the counterculture has in common now is that while the individualism is still present in the creation of music/software and the political/social choice to collaborate, the collective action of collaboration is the focus of attention, not individual fashion and identity. That kind of individualism has been sold back to us ad nauseum and its apotheosis is Instagram.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Online countercultural elements are open source software Open source is mainstream now, even Microsoft are doing it.
  - cue_the_strings 6y ago
    There's open source, and then there's open source. vscode, .net core, redis, mysql, qt vs vim, dwm (suckless jn general), weechat, ...
old_fart_dev 6y ago
Social media is the neighborhood bar, virtualized, with infinite seats at the bar, but no beer nuts (or beer). Truly one of the saddest places in the world - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJW19nlzb3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJW19nlzb3Q Anyone can pull up a seat to the bar and many people do. Inmate conversations are drowned out by shouting matches over politics, sports, or whatever has raised passions that day. And there's constant yells of "What the #@$@ are you looking at?" coming from random patron to another. And hundreds of bar promotions for any and everything under the sun. Doubt members of the countercultural are going to want to hang out at the largest Buffalo Wild Wings...

retrac 6y ago

> While there may be no "algorithm" controlling the narrative you see on 4chan (or a straightforward and ostensibly fair one on a site like reddit), the content you see (and by extension, the narrative) is shaped by profit motive: From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion I've realized I have exactly one outlet free of this left. It's an IRC channel I've been in since the 90s. I thought about it and none of us are there for any reason other than that we have a common interest and like each other. No money involved, no names involved, and it's one of the more supportive and insightful communities I've ever found online. We've sometimes wondered why it's such a different community from the other places, and this article articulates why quite well, I think. We're old-timers holding out in a little pocket of what has been almost fully absorbed by corporate social media. I'm sure there are others. And I'm sure they won't tell you where to find them, either.

JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
I find plenty of these types of communities through Discord, and I think that is part of the equation that's left out here. I don't really like discord much, but the reason I get when I do is to go check in on those friends. Usually these communities are just people that I've met playing games. I don't know that these would qualify as counter-culture or subculture, but they are free of marketing and advertising, and people are there because we have shared interests. The conversations are organic and not curated for us and we are isolated from anyone else we don't want to be part of that group. So, my gut tells me that the younger generations are using Discord like people used IRC.
- YinglingLight 6y ago
  Old farts still had irl friends. The amount of teens who have no tangible friendships outside of Discord is sobering.
  - narag 6y ago
    My son has a group of friends at the Uni, some of them in his same school, some of them in nearby schools, some of them are in the neighbourhood... half of them are from high school, the other half are from Minecraft discord groups. They have a weekly meeting in a Uni cafeteria and use indistinctly Discord or Instagram as chat. Instagram has replaced WhatsApp as the regular phone chat. All of them have wider net-only groups of acquitances.
  - phatfish 6y ago
    Teens/young adults surely have far more opportunities to make real life friends than working age adults. They are at least required to attend school. I would say that this is more the lifestyle of adults after being out of education for a few years. They are the group that can ignore all real life interaction if they want, Covid has increased the likelihood of this.
- smolder 6y ago
  They do use discord like we used IRC, but discord is centralized under one company. So, they will eventually do what companies do and try to find that sweet spot of "how much abuse can our users take" versus "how much money can we extract from our market position" as with all such free services. Discord is a trap, both in the latent monetization sense mentioned, and the sense that all your communications there are gobbled up with little to no privacy guarantee.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the platform This is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users.

helen___keller 6y ago
> This is making the perfect the enemy of the good. To be fair, I'm not saying that we should all ditch Reddit and only congregate on obscure message boards with maximum user limits; I'm simply saying that a place like a default subreddit should never be considered counter-cultural. > Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users. Strong disagree. Naked propaganda is downvoted, sure, but good propaganda is never naked. Add enough eyeballs and increasingly sophisticated and coordinated actors will find a way to get their message to the top.
drak0n1c 6y ago
Voting systems often amplify propaganda spam. Every day r/science has multiple posts upvoted to the top with titles exaggerating findings, and/or linking to shoddy studies. Upvote/Downvote is very susceptible to headlines that exploit confirmation bias, and bot activity.
tablespoon 6y ago
>> From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the platform > Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users. I disagree: crowdsourced moderation can only really take care of the most obvious crap, so it doesn't really take care of this problem.
- 6y ago

partyboat1586 6y ago

>spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. >timely public statement Being a public figure sounds exhausting.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
This happened to random 18 year old college kids who were just not active on social media. I saw it first hand. I actually saw an entire group of girls let go of one of their friends who didn't post in support of BLM along with them. She had like 60 followers on Instagram (mostly family).
__blockcipher__ 6y ago
It is, but to be clear I think the point there was not about public figures per se but about everyday people. Everyday (albeit obviously left-leaning) people would post the black squares out of a sense of obligation, and then the responses would be split between praising them for standing up for "black lives", versus half the people criticizing the poster of the black square for making a silly symbolic gesture. (I view it as the latter - a stupid symbolic gesture - BUT the context of the whole "silence is violence" meme is why these NPCs were in a double-bind: damned if you do, damned if you don't)
toyg 6y ago
With great power comes great responsibility.

TameAntelope 6y ago

What you're saying is and isn't true. One example of a countercultural movement that's been in the news recently is the DDoSecrets leaks/hacks (they get upset if you aren't clear that they're hackers). They've got a strong Twitter presence that helps them get their message out, but they conduct no "real" business on Twitter. So a counterculture can use the mainstream platforms, but they choose to do so only as a microphone, not as a gathering place. Edit: That said, one of the members of a related group just (as in, after I wrote this but before editing was made unavailable) got banned from Twitter, so maybe they can't actually use the platform as a microphone for very long. It looks like the law is getting involved, specifically related to the Verkada hack.

satellite2 6y ago
It seems like a very strong stance to say that the publicly advertised leaks and hacks are not financially motivated.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  I've thought a lot about what you're saying here, and I see no indication that's the case (corrupt/ulterior financial motivations related to their leaks/hacks). I am very curious how the members of DDoSecrets make their money, though (not that it's any of my business), mostly because the Twitter accounts I've been following seem to have a pretty strong disgust response to the idea of making money off of hacking in general.
  - satellite2 6y ago
    My bad, I tought you were talking in general. I'm not familiar with DDoSecrets so I cannot say much about their case specifically. What I can say though is that generally the threat model for attackers slightly more sophisticated than script kiddies suggests that the preparations involve a non negligible amount of time from highly specialized engineers and that somehow, someone has to pay for it.
    - 6y ago

SyzygistSix 6y ago

>n fact, I'd argue that mainstream social media can never be countercultural. I would say that is pretty much true by definition. Online countercultural elements are open source software and other collaborative platforms like Bandcamp and similar sites where people are trading tracks and what they have created. Torrenting is still countercultural. What the counterculture has in common now is that while the individualism is still present in the creation of music/software and the political/social choice to collaborate, the collective action of collaboration is the focus of attention, not individual fashion and identity. That kind of individualism has been sold back to us ad nauseum and its apotheosis is Instagram.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Online countercultural elements are open source software Open source is mainstream now, even Microsoft are doing it.
- cue_the_strings 6y ago
  There's open source, and then there's open source. vscode, .net core, redis, mysql, qt vs vim, dwm (suckless jn general), weechat, ...

old_fart_dev 6y ago

Social media is the neighborhood bar, virtualized, with infinite seats at the bar, but no beer nuts (or beer). Truly one of the saddest places in the world - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJW19nlzb3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJW19nlzb3Q Anyone can pull up a seat to the bar and many people do. Inmate conversations are drowned out by shouting matches over politics, sports, or whatever has raised passions that day. And there's constant yells of "What the #@$@ are you looking at?" coming from random patron to another. And hundreds of bar promotions for any and everything under the sun. Doubt members of the countercultural are going to want to hang out at the largest Buffalo Wild Wings...