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What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. An

What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. And there is an increasing sophistication of actors who play the system. This means that political and societal activism is now manipulable at scales that were inconceivable some time ago. So the human factor has always been there (and arguably helped us when the memes were like "kill the sabertooth tiger!"). But the problem is growing because of technology, which is another thing that cannot lightheartedly be slowed down. So the least we can do is to be aware and minimize the damage

jandrese 5y ago
> What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. As opposed to TV, Radio, or Newspaper? Corporate control of media has always been a problem. We are just have less political will to regulate these massive media conglomerates now than we did in the past. This includes the old media companies too. Rupert Murdock has stomped all over American discourse.
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  yes. Larger scale; faster speed; larger populations
- Natsu 5y ago
  Those are differences of degree, not kind.
swiley 5y ago
The solution to this is to make the war these companies are waging on personal computing illegal, but it might be too late for that.
- notriddle 5y ago
  Not every issue is about general-purpose computing. Whether you have control over your own device or not, you still can't craft an Algorithm For Truth, because there isn't one. The information that you would want to know from a news site, like "Was the election stolen?", "Was Iraq actually hiding WMDs?", "Did Russia actually invade Ukraine?", "Did the moon landing really happen?", "Were these leaked documents forged?", those all exist outside of your computer. The closest you can possibly get is by establishing a chain of custody from whoever gathered the information leading to you, which your HTTPS connection already does. Figuring out whether the site you're connected to is actually telling the truth or not isn't something that having root access would help with.
fumar 5y ago
Isn’t this well documented by folks like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman with Manufacturing Consent (1988)? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
joe_the_user 5y ago
So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussion and helping people avoid an unbalanced relationship with social media? Could they "manipulate" their user base to achieve this? Wouldn't they simply loose their users to other venues that would provide a vacuous engagement fix? Moreover, a lot of FB is based on user generated content? How do you prevent that from being trolly/provocative/etc? Edit: my point would be the manipulation happens but it's much more a product of the generators of provocative content than the forums, which give a certain spin but can't help but provide a forum for what is viral. As an "exception that proves the rule", FB and mainstream social media successfully suppressed Guilliani's one, big hit-piece last election. They got tremendous heat for this and it was clearly something they couldn't keep doing for every bit of content. Just consider, the NY Post still gets a wide forum despite, imo, being the tissue of lies and a river of filth. Edit2: And FB provides rebuttal like for some number of overtly fake stories. Is that enough? Is that itself manipulation?
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  They already have emotional algorithms. Tilt the scales to happy stories instead of outrage porn.
- slipframe 5y ago
  > So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussion and helping people avoid an unbalanced relationship with social media? In the case of Facebook, it's not immediately apparent to me how the platform might be changed to facilitate more thoughtful conversation. But on the other hand, Twitter is an easy case: get rid of the comment limit and let people express their thoughts using more than pithy snippets.
  - codemonkey-zeta 5y ago
    But those snippets (like 7-second videos) are optimized for the attention economy in a way longer-form media is not. Even if Twitter made this change the traditional short pithy tweets would beat any long-form thoughtful comment.

jandrese 5y ago

> What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. As opposed to TV, Radio, or Newspaper? Corporate control of media has always been a problem. We are just have less political will to regulate these massive media conglomerates now than we did in the past. This includes the old media companies too. Rupert Murdock has stomped all over American discourse.

ILMostro7 5y ago
yes. Larger scale; faster speed; larger populations
Natsu 5y ago
Those are differences of degree, not kind.

swiley 5y ago

The solution to this is to make the war these companies are waging on personal computing illegal, but it might be too late for that.

notriddle 5y ago
Not every issue is about general-purpose computing. Whether you have control over your own device or not, you still can't craft an Algorithm For Truth, because there isn't one. The information that you would want to know from a news site, like "Was the election stolen?", "Was Iraq actually hiding WMDs?", "Did Russia actually invade Ukraine?", "Did the moon landing really happen?", "Were these leaked documents forged?", those all exist outside of your computer. The closest you can possibly get is by establishing a chain of custody from whoever gathered the information leading to you, which your HTTPS connection already does. Figuring out whether the site you're connected to is actually telling the truth or not isn't something that having root access would help with.

fumar 5y ago

Isn’t this well documented by folks like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman with Manufacturing Consent (1988)? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

joe_the_user 5y ago

So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussion and helping people avoid an unbalanced relationship with social media? Could they "manipulate" their user base to achieve this? Wouldn't they simply loose their users to other venues that would provide a vacuous engagement fix? Moreover, a lot of FB is based on user generated content? How do you prevent that from being trolly/provocative/etc? Edit: my point would be the manipulation happens but it's much more a product of the generators of provocative content than the forums, which give a certain spin but can't help but provide a forum for what is viral. As an "exception that proves the rule", FB and mainstream social media successfully suppressed Guilliani's one, big hit-piece last election. They got tremendous heat for this and it was clearly something they couldn't keep doing for every bit of content. Just consider, the NY Post still gets a wide forum despite, imo, being the tissue of lies and a river of filth. Edit2: And FB provides rebuttal like for some number of overtly fake stories. Is that enough? Is that itself manipulation?

thatguy0900 5y ago
They already have emotional algorithms. Tilt the scales to happy stories instead of outrage porn.
slipframe 5y ago
> So, as a serious question, what would Facebook do if it's owners woke up tomorrow and decided their only priority was providing thoughtful, substantial discussion and helping people avoid an unbalanced relationship with social media? In the case of Facebook, it's not immediately apparent to me how the platform might be changed to facilitate more thoughtful conversation. But on the other hand, Twitter is an easy case: get rid of the comment limit and let people express their thoughts using more than pithy snippets.
- codemonkey-zeta 5y ago
  But those snippets (like 7-second videos) are optimized for the attention economy in a way longer-form media is not. Even if Twitter made this change the traditional short pithy tweets would beat any long-form thoughtful comment.