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This is great. But how do we build social media networks that reinforce centrality/influence of accurate truth-tellers, and penalize sensationalism, extremism e

This is great. But how do we build social media networks that reinforce centrality/influence of accurate truth-tellers, and penalize sensationalism, extremism etc.? This seems like one of the big hard problems of our era. If we can solve it, maybe this is a phase transition humanity is going through where we begin to operate on a higher level of complexity, similar to when life transitioned to multicellular.

zwaps 5y ago
the study itself is a bit "pnas'y". In fact, a lot of work studies information aggregation in different kinds of settings. As you, I think, suspect, things can also easily go the other way. Well known is the fact that extensive information / interaction networks can decrease diversity (a general fact of averaging mechanisms in network settings that holds even in Games on networks). A decrease in diversity in information aggregation is often detrimental (for example through correlation of errors, canceling out one mechanism of wisdom of crowds, or through conformism). Further, wisdom of crowds only exists (relative to individual guesses) if in growing networks the opinions are not controlled by influential groups or echo chambers (Jackson did work on this). This of course, is what ends up happening a lot, in part due due to aforementioned factors. Since the proposed mechanism relies on weighting accurate individuals higher, it is even more susceptible to such biases than just wisdom of crowds in general.
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  Funny. The rating mechanism makes this equivalent to a reputation based prediction market. These can also fail and are gameable. The key assumptions are that people form social networks according to DeGroot process, which is not actually true. People tend to maximize objective gain not information/influence gain - usually objective is not stated and there are various ones, from knowledge, entertainment, desirability, clout/influence and power, even financial ones. Unfortunately, this does result in a divergent scenario. As for feedback, current social networks have simplistic "like" system that only weights engagement in a hidden matter and generic desirability points with partial feedback scenario. Trying to get full feedback would require someone to be able to read likes of every user, not feasible. What could be feasible is guessing how "likeable" a post is - gaming the system. That said, the paper is rather high quality considering its limitations. Interesting that essentially listening to a moderate number of curated but not isolated experts had best results. (Top 5 interesting enough, this being ~33% of group.) The trick is in identifying these top performers in a real multiobjective scenario, and whether the selection strategy still works.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    >"Trying to get full feedback would require someone to be able to read likes of every user, not feasible." I think that with a fully transparent system this is not only feasible, but easy.
  - sysadm1n 5y ago
    > These can also fail and are gameable Gameable perhaps, but in proper meritocratic[0] systems, voting rings etc would be detected and the perpetrators hopefully banned and they would also lose the ability to participate again at a later stage, giving an incentive to play fairly next time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
  - machinehermiter 5y ago
    Thanks for this interaction. Going to think about this while I go on a walk.
hsndmoose 5y ago
Would this not require quantifying real, objective truth? How does one compute truth without relying on human input? (Which instead trends towards truthiness/the "feeling" of whether something is true.) I am not being dismissive, I genuinely would like to know.
- thih9 5y ago
  I’d guess it depends on the topic and scenario. > Would this not require quantifying real, objective truth? Could you give an example?
  - hsndmoose 5y ago
    I cannot. It's a philosophical question of what is truth. I don't know if it is possible for a human to obtain 100% objective truth about something.
- prox 5y ago
  It’s called a library in my idea of it. The sum of human knowledge, curated by experts in every field. I don’t think we can compute that last bit. We may not have to.
- meowkit 5y ago
  You can’t quantity or even know “objective truth”. We can get really close for somethings, but knowing objective truth is akin to being a god. At the end of the day, everything is a model relying on some axioms. Inter subjective truth, however, can be reached and is what we rely on most (a dollar bill is a fancy piece of cloth, but we all agree its worth a dollar). It is reached through consensus making. Gathering a consensus is traditionally done through government or hierarchy, ultimately leading up to a single human or single groups input as “truth”. This method has continually begun to disintegrate as communication tech gets better (printing press -> mobile phone internet). So the solution, to me, is to create consensus systems that rely on the input of many - use the law of large numbers, economic incentives, and the kaleidoscope of subjective truths to reach the most accurate objective truth we can.
gorwell 5y ago
And a way to mitigate or dissolve Twitter mobs. I imagine pile ons could be identified?
war1025 5y ago
> where we begin to operate on a higher level of complexity, similar to when life transitioned to multicellular. I've thought about this exact thing before and something to keep in mind is that there will be a split where part of the group consents to being absorbed into the mega-organism, and part will stay individuals. Humanity won't move in unison. If it happens, part of the group will stay behind, just the same as we still have single celled organisms.
justshowpost 5y ago
> networks that reinforce centrality/influence of accurate truth-tellers, and penalize sensationalism, extremism etc. I'm pretty sure CCP already built several such networks for us.
machinehermiter 5y ago
This type of language is real slippery though when we start applying it to subjects and ideas that are not falsifiable. I think when you apply this in that context you will inevitably end up with digital authoritarianism. I would say it is pretty trivial to increase the centrality of nodes in a network of non-falsifiable "true-tellers" with standard propaganda techniques. All the techniques from print/radio/tv work way better on digital networks.

zwaps 5y ago

the study itself is a bit "pnas'y". In fact, a lot of work studies information aggregation in different kinds of settings. As you, I think, suspect, things can also easily go the other way. Well known is the fact that extensive information / interaction networks can decrease diversity (a general fact of averaging mechanisms in network settings that holds even in Games on networks). A decrease in diversity in information aggregation is often detrimental (for example through correlation of errors, canceling out one mechanism of wisdom of crowds, or through conformism). Further, wisdom of crowds only exists (relative to individual guesses) if in growing networks the opinions are not controlled by influential groups or echo chambers (Jackson did work on this). This of course, is what ends up happening a lot, in part due due to aforementioned factors. Since the proposed mechanism relies on weighting accurate individuals higher, it is even more susceptible to such biases than just wisdom of crowds in general.

AstralStorm 5y ago
Funny. The rating mechanism makes this equivalent to a reputation based prediction market. These can also fail and are gameable. The key assumptions are that people form social networks according to DeGroot process, which is not actually true. People tend to maximize objective gain not information/influence gain - usually objective is not stated and there are various ones, from knowledge, entertainment, desirability, clout/influence and power, even financial ones. Unfortunately, this does result in a divergent scenario. As for feedback, current social networks have simplistic "like" system that only weights engagement in a hidden matter and generic desirability points with partial feedback scenario. Trying to get full feedback would require someone to be able to read likes of every user, not feasible. What could be feasible is guessing how "likeable" a post is - gaming the system. That said, the paper is rather high quality considering its limitations. Interesting that essentially listening to a moderate number of curated but not isolated experts had best results. (Top 5 interesting enough, this being ~33% of group.) The trick is in identifying these top performers in a real multiobjective scenario, and whether the selection strategy still works.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  >"Trying to get full feedback would require someone to be able to read likes of every user, not feasible." I think that with a fully transparent system this is not only feasible, but easy.
- sysadm1n 5y ago
  > These can also fail and are gameable Gameable perhaps, but in proper meritocratic[0] systems, voting rings etc would be detected and the perpetrators hopefully banned and they would also lose the ability to participate again at a later stage, giving an incentive to play fairly next time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
- machinehermiter 5y ago
  Thanks for this interaction. Going to think about this while I go on a walk.

hsndmoose 5y ago

Would this not require quantifying real, objective truth? How does one compute truth without relying on human input? (Which instead trends towards truthiness/the "feeling" of whether something is true.) I am not being dismissive, I genuinely would like to know.

thih9 5y ago
I’d guess it depends on the topic and scenario. > Would this not require quantifying real, objective truth? Could you give an example?
- hsndmoose 5y ago
  I cannot. It's a philosophical question of what is truth. I don't know if it is possible for a human to obtain 100% objective truth about something.
prox 5y ago
It’s called a library in my idea of it. The sum of human knowledge, curated by experts in every field. I don’t think we can compute that last bit. We may not have to.
meowkit 5y ago
You can’t quantity or even know “objective truth”. We can get really close for somethings, but knowing objective truth is akin to being a god. At the end of the day, everything is a model relying on some axioms. Inter subjective truth, however, can be reached and is what we rely on most (a dollar bill is a fancy piece of cloth, but we all agree its worth a dollar). It is reached through consensus making. Gathering a consensus is traditionally done through government or hierarchy, ultimately leading up to a single human or single groups input as “truth”. This method has continually begun to disintegrate as communication tech gets better (printing press -> mobile phone internet). So the solution, to me, is to create consensus systems that rely on the input of many - use the law of large numbers, economic incentives, and the kaleidoscope of subjective truths to reach the most accurate objective truth we can.

gorwell 5y ago

And a way to mitigate or dissolve Twitter mobs. I imagine pile ons could be identified?

war1025 5y ago

> where we begin to operate on a higher level of complexity, similar to when life transitioned to multicellular. I've thought about this exact thing before and something to keep in mind is that there will be a split where part of the group consents to being absorbed into the mega-organism, and part will stay individuals. Humanity won't move in unison. If it happens, part of the group will stay behind, just the same as we still have single celled organisms.

justshowpost 5y ago

> networks that reinforce centrality/influence of accurate truth-tellers, and penalize sensationalism, extremism etc. I'm pretty sure CCP already built several such networks for us.

machinehermiter 5y ago

This type of language is real slippery though when we start applying it to subjects and ideas that are not falsifiable. I think when you apply this in that context you will inevitably end up with digital authoritarianism. I would say it is pretty trivial to increase the centrality of nodes in a network of non-falsifiable "true-tellers" with standard propaganda techniques. All the techniques from print/radio/tv work way better on digital networks.