5 ms·

In the past it took real effort to broadcast your ideas to the world. People had to really believe in an idea to help it spread. These days a throwaway tweet o

In the past it took real effort to broadcast your ideas to the world. People had to really believe in an idea to help it spread. These days a throwaway tweet or blog post can be seen by millions before there’s been any chance to debate the argument on a smaller scale (and either refine or abandon it)

mancerayder 6y ago
Isn't it a good thing, that anyone can be seen by millions? You want to go back to the days where you had to own a newspaper or a radio station to be heard?
mynameisvlad 6y ago
When was the last time a tweet or any other online interaction of yours suddenly had millions of viewers? You're making it seem like this happens all the time. In reality, while it is easier to broadcast your message to people all around the world in modern times, people still need to "really believe in an idea to help it spread". Unless you're already famous, just because you put it on a platform with potential millions of viewers doesn't mean that you'll actually get millions of viewers without trying really hard.
- notsuoh 6y ago
  When the last time _my_ tweet reached millions of users is not the right question. We see that daily tweets go viral and are seen by millions, some things are seen by a billion people (though perhaps not virally in a short period of time). If people are pumping bitcoin with rampant speculation to get other people on the train to increase its value, just a handful need to go viral to increase value, not necessarily yours or mine specifically. It's like the Birthday Paradox. The chances that someone in a room shares my birthday are small, but the chances that two people in the room share a birthday is large. It just takes a few of the millions of tweets to go viral. I won't address your second point at length except to say that it's naive to think that with the ease of broadcasting, suddenly the wall is at rebroadcasting, which can be done with no more than a click and is significantly easier than creating the original message.
- jariel 6y ago
  This is a good point, but it's not the point that matters. Thee fact that 99% of Tweet are irrelevant doesn't abnegate the fact that millions of Tweets from 'nobodies' are broadcast daily and do impact the world. Journalists decide on an editorial angle and chose random tweets to support their narrative. Entire articles are written on random tweets. You don't remotely need to be 'famous' to have massive social media impact. In a civilization of self-seeking individuals, the objective of communications will be self-aggrandization there's little incentive in promoting the truth.
  - tacitusarc 6y ago
    I think the blame here lies almost entirely with the "journalists", as they are supposedly the experts with the discenment to know when a an online comment is news worthy (almost never) and when it is not (almost always). The point of having professions is the expectations that the professionals will be, well, professional.
- retrac 6y ago
  It's the ultra-modern equivalent of the modern TV soundbite of an off-the-cuff remark. Also a new phenomenon. And it really is a new phenomenon. Until the 20th century, almost no person's expression or idea would reach the global, national or even regional consciousness without having gone through many layers of slowly-building feedback and editorialization and comment. It's like if someone in the early 20th century took random excerpts of someone shouting on a soapbox at an intersection, but published it on the front page of a national newspaper unfiltered. I'm pretty sure no one back there would have seen much value in doing that.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  How would you know? The person who got the million views may have copied someone who copied someone who copied from you. You may have originated something but assumed you heard it from somewhere after it caught fire. The life of ideas and clichés is largely independent of celebrity - if it hadn't been one twitter star that picked up some pithy arrangement of words that fit the zeitgeist, it probably would have been another. The trying really hard part is just to be in the middle of things, and if you're successful at that, when you're the 1 out of 100 people who said the same thing, you're the one that gets the credit because you have 2M followers.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Worse, I think social media censorship exacerbates the issue in certain cases. For example pointing out that the number of unarmed Blacks killed by police is actually very low (https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/poll-44-of-liberals-say-more-than-1k-unarmed-black-americans-killed-by-police-in-2019-hint-super-wrong/ https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/poll-44-of-liberals-say-...) gets you mass reporting from dedicated activists and results in your post being blocked or account bans. Because the medium (Twitter) is itself editorializing the content through censorship, the mass amplification of bad ideas can happen unabated since others don’t get to push back. It’s funny that “virality” was once seen as a positive feature of social media. Gad Saad, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, explores the concept of “idea pathogens” (that infect minds and spread like viruses) in his book The Parasitic Mind (https://bookshop.org/books/the-parasitic-mind-how-infectious-ideas-are-killing-common-sense/9781621579595 https://bookshop.org/books/the-parasitic-mind-how-infectious...). You can hear him speak about this concept in his interview on the Jordan Peterson podcast (https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/gadsaad/ https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/gadsaad/). Social media is the breeding ground for idea pathogens.
- mempko 6y ago
  If someone told you two people are dieing every month from poisonous McDonald's burgers, would you consider that low? And would you defend McDonald's on internet forums?
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Should anyone defending McDonald’s be banned for doing so?
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    I would consider that low if they’re selling millions of burgers a month. Every large scale system has imperfections and it’s unreasonable to expect 100% safety or 100% perfection on some other metric. Then there’s the question of attributing the deaths. For example the people who died may have had other complicating factors. If it ends up being food poisoning at some unacceptable rate of occurrence with provable link to McDonalds burgers, I would welcome investigations and incremental improvements. What I wouldn’t do is call for McDonalds to be defunded/abolished, or for fast food to be replaced by an alternative food system, or label anyone who disagrees as racist, or inject my ideology into schools/companies, or censor those who disagree. Nor would I participate in repeated rioting resulting in several deaths and billions of Dollars of damage. Instead I would work within the system, in a legal and civil manner. I would welcome an open debate in the spirit of classical liberalism. I would want a nuanced understanding and nuanced set of actions to result. Lastly - would I spend time defending McDonalds on forums? Probably not since it’s not that important to me and I have other fast food choices. But I only have one local police force to depend on. And the safety of my own family and property hangs in the balance. So I would definitely engage on that topic.
pessimizer 6y ago
I really hate this. I grade myself a C on spontaneous insight, but an A+ on insight after multiple rounds of editing alternated with multiple rounds of defense from the nitpicking of smart friends. It makes you not want to venture anything online, or at least anything with your name attached to it. I have a deep fear that something dumb but pithy I've said will become a flag for morons long after I realized that I was completely wrong.
- lanstin 6y ago
  Same. I have a lot of ideas, a reasonably effective filter in the days time frame, and not much filter at the moment the idea pops up. I don’t post much and never where I expect many people will see it. I try mostly to agree with things I find true and important or fill factual data where I have the energy. (I posted answers to a lot of COVID questions on Twitter. Doubtful it had much effect but whatever.
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I agree with the sentiment but may I suggest it may not be a recent phonemon - Churchill's famous quote "a lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has its boots on" suggests that it's a human problem - we like to hear easy lies rather than hard truths, and the internet just machine guns lies now, instead of of old musket fire lies of yore.
copycatchiller 6y ago
Democratizing the spread of ideas can help prevents privileged groups from controlling discourse. In the past you were subject to what you could broadcast on radio/tv or publish in print -- many of these options were out of reach for POCs, women, ppl in poverty.
loceng 6y ago
Eric Weinstein discusses this with Lex Fridman in their latest interview - how communication was decoupled from being local to being decentralized, global, instantaneous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifX_JnBfxTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifX_JnBfxTY

mancerayder 6y ago

Isn't it a good thing, that anyone can be seen by millions? You want to go back to the days where you had to own a newspaper or a radio station to be heard?

mynameisvlad 6y ago

When was the last time a tweet or any other online interaction of yours suddenly had millions of viewers? You're making it seem like this happens all the time. In reality, while it is easier to broadcast your message to people all around the world in modern times, people still need to "really believe in an idea to help it spread". Unless you're already famous, just because you put it on a platform with potential millions of viewers doesn't mean that you'll actually get millions of viewers without trying really hard.

notsuoh 6y ago
When the last time _my_ tweet reached millions of users is not the right question. We see that daily tweets go viral and are seen by millions, some things are seen by a billion people (though perhaps not virally in a short period of time). If people are pumping bitcoin with rampant speculation to get other people on the train to increase its value, just a handful need to go viral to increase value, not necessarily yours or mine specifically. It's like the Birthday Paradox. The chances that someone in a room shares my birthday are small, but the chances that two people in the room share a birthday is large. It just takes a few of the millions of tweets to go viral. I won't address your second point at length except to say that it's naive to think that with the ease of broadcasting, suddenly the wall is at rebroadcasting, which can be done with no more than a click and is significantly easier than creating the original message.
jariel 6y ago
This is a good point, but it's not the point that matters. Thee fact that 99% of Tweet are irrelevant doesn't abnegate the fact that millions of Tweets from 'nobodies' are broadcast daily and do impact the world. Journalists decide on an editorial angle and chose random tweets to support their narrative. Entire articles are written on random tweets. You don't remotely need to be 'famous' to have massive social media impact. In a civilization of self-seeking individuals, the objective of communications will be self-aggrandization there's little incentive in promoting the truth.
- tacitusarc 6y ago
  I think the blame here lies almost entirely with the "journalists", as they are supposedly the experts with the discenment to know when a an online comment is news worthy (almost never) and when it is not (almost always). The point of having professions is the expectations that the professionals will be, well, professional.
retrac 6y ago
It's the ultra-modern equivalent of the modern TV soundbite of an off-the-cuff remark. Also a new phenomenon. And it really is a new phenomenon. Until the 20th century, almost no person's expression or idea would reach the global, national or even regional consciousness without having gone through many layers of slowly-building feedback and editorialization and comment. It's like if someone in the early 20th century took random excerpts of someone shouting on a soapbox at an intersection, but published it on the front page of a national newspaper unfiltered. I'm pretty sure no one back there would have seen much value in doing that.
pessimizer 6y ago
How would you know? The person who got the million views may have copied someone who copied someone who copied from you. You may have originated something but assumed you heard it from somewhere after it caught fire. The life of ideas and clichés is largely independent of celebrity - if it hadn't been one twitter star that picked up some pithy arrangement of words that fit the zeitgeist, it probably would have been another. The trying really hard part is just to be in the middle of things, and if you're successful at that, when you're the 1 out of 100 people who said the same thing, you're the one that gets the credit because you have 2M followers.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Worse, I think social media censorship exacerbates the issue in certain cases. For example pointing out that the number of unarmed Blacks killed by police is actually very low (https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/poll-44-of-liberals-say-more-than-1k-unarmed-black-americans-killed-by-police-in-2019-hint-super-wrong/ https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/poll-44-of-liberals-say-...) gets you mass reporting from dedicated activists and results in your post being blocked or account bans. Because the medium (Twitter) is itself editorializing the content through censorship, the mass amplification of bad ideas can happen unabated since others don’t get to push back. It’s funny that “virality” was once seen as a positive feature of social media. Gad Saad, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, explores the concept of “idea pathogens” (that infect minds and spread like viruses) in his book The Parasitic Mind (https://bookshop.org/books/the-parasitic-mind-how-infectious-ideas-are-killing-common-sense/9781621579595 https://bookshop.org/books/the-parasitic-mind-how-infectious...). You can hear him speak about this concept in his interview on the Jordan Peterson podcast (https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/gadsaad/ https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/gadsaad/). Social media is the breeding ground for idea pathogens.

mempko 6y ago
If someone told you two people are dieing every month from poisonous McDonald's burgers, would you consider that low? And would you defend McDonald's on internet forums?
- teddyh 6y ago
  Should anyone defending McDonald’s be banned for doing so?
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  I would consider that low if they’re selling millions of burgers a month. Every large scale system has imperfections and it’s unreasonable to expect 100% safety or 100% perfection on some other metric. Then there’s the question of attributing the deaths. For example the people who died may have had other complicating factors. If it ends up being food poisoning at some unacceptable rate of occurrence with provable link to McDonalds burgers, I would welcome investigations and incremental improvements. What I wouldn’t do is call for McDonalds to be defunded/abolished, or for fast food to be replaced by an alternative food system, or label anyone who disagrees as racist, or inject my ideology into schools/companies, or censor those who disagree. Nor would I participate in repeated rioting resulting in several deaths and billions of Dollars of damage. Instead I would work within the system, in a legal and civil manner. I would welcome an open debate in the spirit of classical liberalism. I would want a nuanced understanding and nuanced set of actions to result. Lastly - would I spend time defending McDonalds on forums? Probably not since it’s not that important to me and I have other fast food choices. But I only have one local police force to depend on. And the safety of my own family and property hangs in the balance. So I would definitely engage on that topic.

pessimizer 6y ago

I really hate this. I grade myself a C on spontaneous insight, but an A+ on insight after multiple rounds of editing alternated with multiple rounds of defense from the nitpicking of smart friends. It makes you not want to venture anything online, or at least anything with your name attached to it. I have a deep fear that something dumb but pithy I've said will become a flag for morons long after I realized that I was completely wrong.

lanstin 6y ago
Same. I have a lot of ideas, a reasonably effective filter in the days time frame, and not much filter at the moment the idea pops up. I don’t post much and never where I expect many people will see it. I try mostly to agree with things I find true and important or fill factual data where I have the energy. (I posted answers to a lot of COVID questions on Twitter. Doubtful it had much effect but whatever.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

I agree with the sentiment but may I suggest it may not be a recent phonemon - Churchill's famous quote "a lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has its boots on" suggests that it's a human problem - we like to hear easy lies rather than hard truths, and the internet just machine guns lies now, instead of of old musket fire lies of yore.

copycatchiller 6y ago

Democratizing the spread of ideas can help prevents privileged groups from controlling discourse. In the past you were subject to what you could broadcast on radio/tv or publish in print -- many of these options were out of reach for POCs, women, ppl in poverty.

loceng 6y ago

Eric Weinstein discusses this with Lex Fridman in their latest interview - how communication was decoupled from being local to being decentralized, global, instantaneous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifX_JnBfxTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifX_JnBfxTY