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I have a lot of respect for Tim Berners-Lee, but he's basically incorrect about this. The problem with social networks is not a technology problem, it is funda

I have a lot of respect for Tim Berners-Lee, but he's basically incorrect about this. The problem with social networks is not a technology problem, it is fundamental to what social networks are. We don't call Stack Overflow a social network, because it's got a purpose, even though it has a lot of the same features as facebook. The problem with social networks isn't the software, it's that they aren't for a particular purpose, because if they did most people wouldn't go there (as most people don't go to Stack Overflow, because most people aren't programmers). If you want to make a social network with a billion users, you have to make it general purpose, and that means you do not have a narrow enough focus to keep the conversation on task (because there is no task). This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting, because there is no focus/task to keep it from doing so. They're "social", with everything that makes socializing (facial expressions, tone of voice, only so many people able to talk at once) removed. You're not going to fix that with technology, because the thing that needs "fixing" is fundamental to what they are. The problem with social networks, is that they're social.

aeturnum 6y ago
I agree with you that the "networking" aspect of social networks is functioning, but I happen to think it is functioning to make the "social" aspect less pleasant. > This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting You are right that this will always happen, but I do not think it will be the dominant interaction. One of the reasons this interaction comes up so much is that platforms optimize for it - bickering and shouting is engaging. It gets clicks and eyeballs and shares. Jerry Springer was a popular tv show (and good for that team) but it's wrong to say that we can only make TV like Jerry Springer. There's a great deal of research in the UX / Social Science world on "affordances" - UI features basically. They're the nouns and verbs that we have in digital spaces. Often the research is very basic but it is out there. I think social media companies could do a lot better with the affordances they give to people. They could be more playful. They could be more free form. They could slow down conversations where people are rapidly tagging each other and sentiment analysis suggests they are fighting. Etc, etc. The human brain is a very complex thing and one of its primary purposes, as far as we can tell, is to be social - the thing you say isn't a task. I don't believe being social isn't a task. I just think we're very bad at helping our brains be social (a thing they evolved to do for millions of years) in a medium we just invented maybe fifty years ago. We can get better, but only if we try.
stuaxo 6y ago
It's not that. It's as simple as: use of recommendation algorithms + forums at scale. When you do this, people are automatically shown things that piss them off (outrage has higher engagement). The bigger the scale, the worse it is. Once you get past a certain scale you could get the same effect without the algorithm, but the algorithm makes it much worse.
- fellellor 6y ago
  The motivation behind using algorithms that optimise for engagement is to build massive networks with billions of users. So, ultimately it does come down to what is the business objective for the network in the first place because that forces you to make these choices.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I will concede one thing, GME was an outrage driven investment. Because there was a story about "evil" short sellers doing "evil" things everyone was collectively mad at them and social media networks spread this all over the place, even Youtube.
twoWhlsGud 6y ago
Let's see. I log into Facebook. I type "vaccine" into the search page. The first autocomplete entry is "vaccine injury stories" - that looks interesting, let's see what that finds. Okay, so the first entry is "Looking for vaccine info" (Boring!), the second is a "Vaccines save lives" group (not what I searched for), and the third is "see all groups for "vaccine injury stories"" That seems more like it. What does that find? Ah, here we go, "COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects" - a group with 66k members. And lots of juicy, fascinating stories of bad things happening after someone got vaccinated. And 10 minutes later, even I, who knows that in a country that has delivered almost 100M shots, shots that don't protect against stroke or heart attack (or eczema or whatever), there are going to be a lot of folks who get the vaccine and then have something bad happen to them can't help but feel at least a little more worried about the prospect of getting one of those shots. (I don't have to imagine the effect of these stories on folks with a weaker stats background - I just have to talk to my relatives...) And that's something that's not necessary, but is extremely lucrative for FB. And that's a problem for anyone who likes living in a functioning democracy.
- bryan_w 6y ago
  Your problem is that people are allowed to find people and talk about things that you think they shouldn't talk about? Even in your example, you had to go digging pretty far for that group -- you didn't accidentally happen upon it. If you people are motivated to find bad information, they will. That's the nature of the internet. If you don't want people to be able to gather and share information, then unplug your Ethernet cables because that's what the internet is all about; FB or no FB.
halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
I disagree. You can create mechanics around the network that reduce the amount of toxicity. Ephemerality being a big one. If there's no history, there's less of this cached aggression potential by raging over words said in the past. Ephemeral constructs focuses the conversation to the now since whatever current context you're in is fleeting. Internal fragmentation (siloing) within a larger network being another. Silo might be a dirty word right now but I think combining ephemeral spaces with more siloing can help reduce the "bad things".
- narag 6y ago
  I agree with both generality and technical means. But I would add a third reason: there's people that want social networks to be that way. They want a place where they can make concerted attacks against other people that thinks different so they can express their ideas and make others shut up. And somehow this people has got their way.
  - 3grdlurker 6y ago
    I probably just haven’t spent a lot of time in social media to actually see this happen, but where I’ve caught wind of people claiming to being silenced (cancelled) by some “woke” crowd of sorts, they aren’t actually being silenced and instead remain able to post their side of the story. So is this really a problem? How come so much of right-wing politics of the last four/five years were framed in such a narrative? For all of the things said about people in the internet being easily offended “snowflakes” these days, I’ve noticed that people who claim to being cancelled actually have (1) said something divisive or not clear enough so as to cause a public uproar, and (2) are simply taking on a victimhood mindset when justifiably-outraged people react to their content, instead of coming to terms with the fact that people are allowed to disagree with them when they post controversial thoughts on social media.
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      If someone was successfully silenced, then I guess by definition you wouldn't hear their complaint. What you can hear, are the near misses, like people employed by an institution that took a vote about whether to fire them, and decided that it wouldn't. Or people who took a hit and recovered, like they were fired but found another job later... maybe a less paying one, but they can still afford an internet connection. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. I assume that for each person who spoke bluntly and lost or nearly-lost their job, there are at least ten people who decided to keep quiet. > said something divisive or not clear enough so as to cause a public uproar That's in my opinion quite sad that being "not clear enough" is a punishable offense these days. In the past, people were less hysterical... well, probably the hysterical ones were just less interconnected. Like, seriously, if someone says a genuinely stupid thing once, would you fire them from their job? This seems completely crazy to me. Did we completely lose the ability to forgive / forget / ignore?
amelius 6y ago
I don't think you can make that assertion that easily. For example, would it be true if there was 1 capable moderator per user on the network?
lmm 6y ago
If it was a human problem then we'd expect all social networks to show the same behaviour. But they don't; the "online abuse, bullying and harassment" he talks about is overwhelmingly a Twitter phenomenon, and the roots of it can be found in Twitter design decisions. Bullying does happen on e.g. Facebook, but that's actually a very different interaction pattern (it's people in the same social group attacking other members of the same social group - whereas Twitter harassment is overwhelmingly happening between strangers).
- mistermann 6y ago
  Have you ever waded into the comments section of posts on the front page of /r/all? Not only will you find plenty of bullying, you'll also find plenty of misinformation, but not the kind that's had the conspiracy theory label attached so it evades our awareness. This is one thing that I never see mentioned in articles like this: the degree to which social media shapes non-conspiracy-theorist's perception of reality. It is right there in front of our noses, but so hard to see.
  - bryan_w 6y ago
    Exactly. There are so many people who have an extremely cynical view of the world based on what they learned online. The idea of an honest politician or company seems impossible to them. I just hope that it doesn't lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.
  - lmm 6y ago
    Is that noticeably different from any other information source? Traditional newspapers/TV present a very misleading picture of reality too.
    - mistermann 6y ago
      They do, but newspapers don't allow readers to distribute misinformation among themselves, or vote threads full of self-reinforcing misinformation to the front page of /r/all. The thought shaping at scale capability of Reddit is massive, and seems to go mostly unnoticed as everyone is laser focused on QAnon and conspiracy theorists (which quite conveniently are very common topics of discussion in these threads).
marakv2 6y ago
I disagree, it's because of post weighting and weighted newsfeeds. Provide the feed based on post time, allow you to agree or disagree to view hidden posts due to friends votes (down and up). That's it. I useto enjoy FB(like 10 years ago), until I lost the ability to scroll through a time based list of posts.
nirui 6y ago
> The problem with social networks isn't the software, it's that they aren't for a particular purpose ... The problem with social networks, is that they're social Let's take look how Hacker News is designed: A discussion platform that utilize tree structure to keep discussions structured, easy to track and on point. There are many different kind of designs, the flat-list one for example, which causes less structured and often ineffective discussions. The problem of social networks is not just due to social factors, software design plays a key role. You know, most physical real-world bars/clubs, which are also social places, couldn't generate that level of toxicity. Even the toxicity on Reddit is no match for the top social networks. Those systems are what I called "moderated-islands", on each island, there are people who wants to keep things in check. On the social networks however, the people who checks things are the same people who post the content, and moderation is done directly under the content they've posted, there is no "the third eye". Then, you introduce the feature that prevents your users to from structured discussions, and then give them a "How popular U R" counter ... It's more complicated than "It's just social".
powerapple 6y ago
our first thought is not really our thought. However, on Twitter we hit reply immediately after we read something. In real life, many people aren't capable to think deeply when having a face to face conversation, that's why we keep the topic casual and maybe mostly wasteful words. And we are expected to discuss politics, real issues on twitter in real time. There is no going back, but I really liked the BBS time where I have to download all messages and only reply to them once or twice a day. In real life you won't go social with others debating on a heated topic, maybe we shouldn't do it on social network, slow down a little bit, we don't have to change the world in one day.
naravara 6y ago
I have no "purpose" when I go to a party besides drinking, eating, and socializing. Yet they rarely devolve into tribal bickering and infighting. Human beings have plenty of natural regulating mechanisms to keep social interactions from becoming sour of hostile. We've even replicated or adapted many of them to work in pseudonymous/anonymous spaces like bulletin boards, IRC, Usenet, etc.

aeturnum 6y ago

I agree with you that the "networking" aspect of social networks is functioning, but I happen to think it is functioning to make the "social" aspect less pleasant. > This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting You are right that this will always happen, but I do not think it will be the dominant interaction. One of the reasons this interaction comes up so much is that platforms optimize for it - bickering and shouting is engaging. It gets clicks and eyeballs and shares. Jerry Springer was a popular tv show (and good for that team) but it's wrong to say that we can only make TV like Jerry Springer. There's a great deal of research in the UX / Social Science world on "affordances" - UI features basically. They're the nouns and verbs that we have in digital spaces. Often the research is very basic but it is out there. I think social media companies could do a lot better with the affordances they give to people. They could be more playful. They could be more free form. They could slow down conversations where people are rapidly tagging each other and sentiment analysis suggests they are fighting. Etc, etc. The human brain is a very complex thing and one of its primary purposes, as far as we can tell, is to be social - the thing you say isn't a task. I don't believe being social isn't a task. I just think we're very bad at helping our brains be social (a thing they evolved to do for millions of years) in a medium we just invented maybe fifty years ago. We can get better, but only if we try.

stuaxo 6y ago

It's not that. It's as simple as: use of recommendation algorithms + forums at scale. When you do this, people are automatically shown things that piss them off (outrage has higher engagement). The bigger the scale, the worse it is. Once you get past a certain scale you could get the same effect without the algorithm, but the algorithm makes it much worse.

fellellor 6y ago
The motivation behind using algorithms that optimise for engagement is to build massive networks with billions of users. So, ultimately it does come down to what is the business objective for the network in the first place because that forces you to make these choices.
imtringued 6y ago
I will concede one thing, GME was an outrage driven investment. Because there was a story about "evil" short sellers doing "evil" things everyone was collectively mad at them and social media networks spread this all over the place, even Youtube.

twoWhlsGud 6y ago

Let's see. I log into Facebook. I type "vaccine" into the search page. The first autocomplete entry is "vaccine injury stories" - that looks interesting, let's see what that finds. Okay, so the first entry is "Looking for vaccine info" (Boring!), the second is a "Vaccines save lives" group (not what I searched for), and the third is "see all groups for "vaccine injury stories"" That seems more like it. What does that find? Ah, here we go, "COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects" - a group with 66k members. And lots of juicy, fascinating stories of bad things happening after someone got vaccinated. And 10 minutes later, even I, who knows that in a country that has delivered almost 100M shots, shots that don't protect against stroke or heart attack (or eczema or whatever), there are going to be a lot of folks who get the vaccine and then have something bad happen to them can't help but feel at least a little more worried about the prospect of getting one of those shots. (I don't have to imagine the effect of these stories on folks with a weaker stats background - I just have to talk to my relatives...) And that's something that's not necessary, but is extremely lucrative for FB. And that's a problem for anyone who likes living in a functioning democracy.

bryan_w 6y ago
Your problem is that people are allowed to find people and talk about things that you think they shouldn't talk about? Even in your example, you had to go digging pretty far for that group -- you didn't accidentally happen upon it. If you people are motivated to find bad information, they will. That's the nature of the internet. If you don't want people to be able to gather and share information, then unplug your Ethernet cables because that's what the internet is all about; FB or no FB.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago

I disagree. You can create mechanics around the network that reduce the amount of toxicity. Ephemerality being a big one. If there's no history, there's less of this cached aggression potential by raging over words said in the past. Ephemeral constructs focuses the conversation to the now since whatever current context you're in is fleeting. Internal fragmentation (siloing) within a larger network being another. Silo might be a dirty word right now but I think combining ephemeral spaces with more siloing can help reduce the "bad things".

narag 6y ago
I agree with both generality and technical means. But I would add a third reason: there's people that want social networks to be that way. They want a place where they can make concerted attacks against other people that thinks different so they can express their ideas and make others shut up. And somehow this people has got their way.
- 3grdlurker 6y ago
  I probably just haven’t spent a lot of time in social media to actually see this happen, but where I’ve caught wind of people claiming to being silenced (cancelled) by some “woke” crowd of sorts, they aren’t actually being silenced and instead remain able to post their side of the story. So is this really a problem? How come so much of right-wing politics of the last four/five years were framed in such a narrative? For all of the things said about people in the internet being easily offended “snowflakes” these days, I’ve noticed that people who claim to being cancelled actually have (1) said something divisive or not clear enough so as to cause a public uproar, and (2) are simply taking on a victimhood mindset when justifiably-outraged people react to their content, instead of coming to terms with the fact that people are allowed to disagree with them when they post controversial thoughts on social media.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    If someone was successfully silenced, then I guess by definition you wouldn't hear their complaint. What you can hear, are the near misses, like people employed by an institution that took a vote about whether to fire them, and decided that it wouldn't. Or people who took a hit and recovered, like they were fired but found another job later... maybe a less paying one, but they can still afford an internet connection. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. I assume that for each person who spoke bluntly and lost or nearly-lost their job, there are at least ten people who decided to keep quiet. > said something divisive or not clear enough so as to cause a public uproar That's in my opinion quite sad that being "not clear enough" is a punishable offense these days. In the past, people were less hysterical... well, probably the hysterical ones were just less interconnected. Like, seriously, if someone says a genuinely stupid thing once, would you fire them from their job? This seems completely crazy to me. Did we completely lose the ability to forgive / forget / ignore?

amelius 6y ago

I don't think you can make that assertion that easily. For example, would it be true if there was 1 capable moderator per user on the network?

lmm 6y ago

If it was a human problem then we'd expect all social networks to show the same behaviour. But they don't; the "online abuse, bullying and harassment" he talks about is overwhelmingly a Twitter phenomenon, and the roots of it can be found in Twitter design decisions. Bullying does happen on e.g. Facebook, but that's actually a very different interaction pattern (it's people in the same social group attacking other members of the same social group - whereas Twitter harassment is overwhelmingly happening between strangers).

mistermann 6y ago
Have you ever waded into the comments section of posts on the front page of /r/all? Not only will you find plenty of bullying, you'll also find plenty of misinformation, but not the kind that's had the conspiracy theory label attached so it evades our awareness. This is one thing that I never see mentioned in articles like this: the degree to which social media shapes non-conspiracy-theorist's perception of reality. It is right there in front of our noses, but so hard to see.
- bryan_w 6y ago
  Exactly. There are so many people who have an extremely cynical view of the world based on what they learned online. The idea of an honest politician or company seems impossible to them. I just hope that it doesn't lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.
- lmm 6y ago
  Is that noticeably different from any other information source? Traditional newspapers/TV present a very misleading picture of reality too.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    They do, but newspapers don't allow readers to distribute misinformation among themselves, or vote threads full of self-reinforcing misinformation to the front page of /r/all. The thought shaping at scale capability of Reddit is massive, and seems to go mostly unnoticed as everyone is laser focused on QAnon and conspiracy theorists (which quite conveniently are very common topics of discussion in these threads).

marakv2 6y ago

I disagree, it's because of post weighting and weighted newsfeeds. Provide the feed based on post time, allow you to agree or disagree to view hidden posts due to friends votes (down and up). That's it. I useto enjoy FB(like 10 years ago), until I lost the ability to scroll through a time based list of posts.

nirui 6y ago

> The problem with social networks isn't the software, it's that they aren't for a particular purpose ... The problem with social networks, is that they're social Let's take look how Hacker News is designed: A discussion platform that utilize tree structure to keep discussions structured, easy to track and on point. There are many different kind of designs, the flat-list one for example, which causes less structured and often ineffective discussions. The problem of social networks is not just due to social factors, software design plays a key role. You know, most physical real-world bars/clubs, which are also social places, couldn't generate that level of toxicity. Even the toxicity on Reddit is no match for the top social networks. Those systems are what I called "moderated-islands", on each island, there are people who wants to keep things in check. On the social networks however, the people who checks things are the same people who post the content, and moderation is done directly under the content they've posted, there is no "the third eye". Then, you introduce the feature that prevents your users to from structured discussions, and then give them a "How popular U R" counter ... It's more complicated than "It's just social".

powerapple 6y ago

our first thought is not really our thought. However, on Twitter we hit reply immediately after we read something. In real life, many people aren't capable to think deeply when having a face to face conversation, that's why we keep the topic casual and maybe mostly wasteful words. And we are expected to discuss politics, real issues on twitter in real time. There is no going back, but I really liked the BBS time where I have to download all messages and only reply to them once or twice a day. In real life you won't go social with others debating on a heated topic, maybe we shouldn't do it on social network, slow down a little bit, we don't have to change the world in one day.

naravara 6y ago

I have no "purpose" when I go to a party besides drinking, eating, and socializing. Yet they rarely devolve into tribal bickering and infighting. Human beings have plenty of natural regulating mechanisms to keep social interactions from becoming sour of hostile. We've even replicated or adapted many of them to work in pseudonymous/anonymous spaces like bulletin boards, IRC, Usenet, etc.