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Social media doesn't have a content problem, it has a design problem. Nobody would care about QAnon if it was just some random chat room somewhere with 100 memb
by skohan 6y ago
Social media doesn't have a content problem, it has a design problem. Nobody would care about QAnon if it was just some random chat room somewhere with 100 members, but the problem is that Facebook basically endorses this type of content and puts it in front of your aging relatives' eyeballs.
Censoring specific content doesn't solve the design problem - social media will still be an engine for driving social divisions, aggressive behavior, and a general escalation of the level of alarm in society. All it will accomplish will be to give certain groups an ability to bias the direction the toxic impact on society tilts.
I think there are ways you could try to resolve the design problem, for instance:
1. Anti-trust regulation/interoperability requirements to make it harder for a few players to own so much of the online discourse.
2. Regulation on algorithmically generated content feeds, and the use of ML to drive engagement.
- Closi 6y agoAgreed with a third addition: limits to how much content can be shared. The constant encouragement to share / retweet / recycle any content does not help. If people only posted their own unique content, and only people they were directly friends with could see it, half the battle would be solved. Instead if my aunt ‘likes’ a post that one of her own friends ‘shared’ then suddenly it’s in my feed. Screw that, I don’t need to see it. This stuff isn’t viral because it’s good content, it’s mostly viral because facebook is designed to encourage ‘virality’ to increase the amount of new content you see to make you revisit the app. Censorship is not the answer, but legislation is required to cut down on the incentive these companies have to design their apps to spread crap and make things viral.
- skohan 6y agoYes exactly - and I think it's compounded by the somewhat greedy approach that these organizations take in terms of trying to manage content delivery with the least amount of human hands possible in deciding what you should see. This kind of blind algorithmic delivery is what led to this really strange, anti-social content appearing on "children's" youtube a few years ago. These platforms are literally designed to command your attention as much as possible. We have a history of regulating things which are unreasonably effective at hijacking the human reward system - like gambling, and narcotics. Sometimes I feel like we're an equivalent period to when you could buy cocaine or heroin over the counter at the chemist because society hasn't yet recognized the cost of failing to put some controls on it yet.
- Guthur 6y agomaybe just segregate the "discussions", (spoilers; they aren't actually real discussions as civil individual would recognize) and then everyone can sit in their own little fluffy echo chamber and be happy.
- skohan 6y agoI actually think this is a real one. One of the main problems with Twitter is that suddenly people with radically different conflicting beliefs and contexts are in the same room talking past eachother
- golergka 6y ago> Facebook basically endorses Is it Facebook, or are it just a tool for people to endorse it on their own?
- fendy3002 6y agoSocial media need to be prohibited from promoting political groups / ads, and prohibited from making money from political parties. The only political promotion they can / need to show is encouragement people to vote. Should be the same with news promotion. I think except disaster, no news are allowed to be promoted by social media. However users are free to follow any group / pages they like, whether it is political or news group, and add the regulation of feed algorithm as op suggested. Social media that failed to follow that need to be regulated as news / political platform.