8 ms·

Too many words, but the basic analysis is good. A lot of what's being currently said about "disinformation" is completely incoherent and makes little sense if

Too many words, but the basic analysis is good. A lot of what's being currently said about "disinformation" is completely incoherent and makes little sense if you just track it over time. As late as in 2014 social media was presented as a force for good. ("Wisdom of the crowds", etc.) Just couple years later it was rebranded as some kind of machine where evil people brainwash idiots into becoming evil people. Who are the idiots? Well, given that YouTube and Facebook have billions of users, it seems most humans on the planet are shoved into that category now. Everything they see and say needs to be carefully curated by professionals, lest the crowds go mad. Meanwhile, what are the incentives to, say, post an intelligent and comprehensive YouTube comment? There were none in 2014 and there are none right now. The UI, the up-voting process, the very (lack of) structure in how comments are displayed and sorted all encourage verbal vomit, and that's exactly what YouTube gets. In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say. I recommend everyone to read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media. Despite being written in 1964 it presents a much more useful analytical framework to really understand social media than anything I've seen published in the last few years.

mistermann 5y ago
> The UI, the up-voting process, the very (lack of) structure in how comments are displayed and sorted all encourage verbal vomit, and that's exactly what YouTube gets. In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say. I think you might be literally the first person I've ever encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement or negative. Very often, people "know" that it is not the problem, yet oddly have a very strong aversion to sharing how it is they know that. I think it would be kind of hilarious if this was in fact (but unknown) one of the root causes of our problems, but no one has the ability to even consider the idea.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  > I think you might be literally the first person I've ever encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement or negative. So they give you a downvote, a quippy snarky Tweet in response to disagree with you that there is a lack of thoughtful, deep thinking about topics.
- vngzs 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is the joke in multiple John Oliver web segments [0]. It's pretty well-understood that the YouTube design is not conducive to long-form discussion. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbw0gJHHBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbw0gJHHBk
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  I thought it was well known that the algorithms optimise for stress and anger, because it drives more engagement. I think it might even be involuntarily - the algorithms may have been set to train for enhanced engagement, and hate and anger happen to be the solution.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    Definitely, the effect of algorithms gets discussed regularly - but I can't recall encountering any significant discussions about the effects of design (UI, functionality, etc) of social media platforms. As far as I can tell, the idea is almost completely off the radar.
    - zestyping 5y ago
      I talk about this all the time. I find it simply insane that, out of the entire design space of possible mechanisms for computer-mediated communication, every major platform has somehow decided that typing comments into small boxes that are indented under other small boxes is the only solution. There are countless dimensions of design variables that haven't even been considered.
autokad 5y ago
Liberals loved social media when they were using it to their benefit, remember the Obama Universities? how he was praised for using organized efforts to bring up content you want and burry content you don't want. Someone who worked for his administration came to us and showed us some of the dasboards that they use and some tips and tricks (including buying fake accounts to get followers that will lead to organic followers). They got so good at it, they berried dissenting view to the point they didn't even hear it anymore, and were completely blind sided when they found out people actually disagreed with them. The real subversion of democracy was the blaming of 'fake news' for Trump beating Clinton. It was used do discredit the election and discredit the views of the millions that voted for him. To be clear, the dems/liberals dont want to get rid of fake news and control, they just want to be the only ones controlling it. This is why its 'no surprise' that big tech agrees with them, big tech was helping them in the first place! they just want more power to silence the right.
- ascar 5y ago
  You might be inclined to think it's "the left" who is downvoting you, so I wanna clarify why at least I did. I am a European and mostly neutral on American politics. I downvoted because your comment reeks of a them vs us fallacy and your comment is not in the spirit of an interesting discourse, but just about discrediting an opposing faction which isn't even directly related to the comment you replied to.
  - autokad 5y ago
    depending on which country, Europeans are not neutral on American politics, so I take your disclaimer for a grain of salt. For one, it was 100% related to the original comment, as it opined on 'but social media was considered good in 2014'. This is not a 'hem vs us fallacy' example. I wasn't saying either you have to agree with me, or you are the enemy, although hacker news is thinking that way now. I got flagged for that comment, which had no business being flagged. Downvote me all you want, flag me all you want. you will not silence me, I will no longer hide my silence and I will speak freely.
rectang 5y ago
What if what drives YouTube profits isn't necessarily substance, but engagement (to a first-order approximation)? Perhaps the comments are already optimized, each as a sort of micro-clickbait? There seem to be a lot of users who are highly motivated to participate in the "U! No U!! NO U!!!!" back and forth.
foobarian 5y ago
> In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say. That makes me think of the Russian math culture. Imagine if there was some way to create incentives via some Social Media NG to encourage that kind of thoughtful discourse.
didibus 5y ago
> As late as in 2014 social media was presented as a force for good. ("Wisdom of the crowds", etc.) Just couple years later it was rebranded as some kind of machine where evil people brainwash idiots into becoming evil people. Who are the idiots? Well, given that YouTube and Facebook have billions of users, it seems most humans on the planet are shoved into that category now I don't think that's true, because from what I remember there is less than 1% of viewers who leave comments. So the "idiots" I guess would be small vocal minorities. The question is how far their influence goes? But it's very possible that a ton of people don't engage in the comments and discussions on social media, because they don't find the design of it suitable for intelligent discourse, and maybe that leaves you with only idiotic comments.
tshaddox 5y ago
I've seen some informal analysis that claims that the ubiquity of smartphones and the successful transition of the massive social networks to mobile is what specifically led to many of the alleged negative societal effects (increased political polarization, for example, although there are many other examples). The thinking goes that it's the all-day thumb-scrolling addiction loop on a tiny device that leads to these negative outcomes even more so than what was supposedly already happening with the pre-smartphone rise of social media. Your mention of 2014 might be compatible with this line of thinking. Facebook famously abandoned its mobile HTML5 stack and "went all in" on mobile in 2012. They also acquired Instagram in late 2011, and WhatsApp in 2013.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  I've seen some informal analysis that claims that the ubiquity of smartphones and the successful transition of the massive social networks to mobile is what specifically led to many of the alleged negative societal effects (increased political polarization, for example, although there are many other examples). Of course you've seen such analysis, it's fairly ubiquitous. But as the parent and the article argue, it's completely incoherent. Not that phones haven't given polarization and propaganda a bit of a push but because these things are just parts of long-term trends that need to be looked at. And a lot of the "social media opens people to evil" complaints came loudly from mainstream media who were understandably upset at loosing their semi-monopoly trend-setting (ie, propaganda). Of course, a lot of the forces that effectively hacked social media were the extreme right, which I'd hardly a fan of. But this wasn't "a sudden rise in propaganda" but a relative democratization of propaganda. If you want a non-propagandistic way of disseminating information, you need to go much further back than 1990, probably look at a whole different method of communicating.
- taurath 5y ago
  One other way to think about it is that a massive content fork started happening around the time of the internet. In the "beginning", as the article states, there was the big 3 networks, and a bunch of fringe radio programs, and movie theatres, and newspapers. Broadly highly consolidated. A bit more emphasis on local things. Then there was cable. You were certainly going to get more perspectives, but your age group is probably going to still only watch a few channels. And still radio and newspapers, and movies. Now there's youtube, twitch, cable, crunchyroll, radio, podcasts, social media. 10,000 channels of content. You as an individual mix and match based on your own preferences and interests. Its also available everywhere. As is conversing with friends. It seems like pure logic that it is much harder to create a consensus in a winner take all political system.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
Since 2014 the subscribers of social network became more aware of the wholesale snooping and privacy violations that are hidden behind the "terms and condition" of their social networks. I wonder if the whole disinformation narrative isn't in part an attempt to deflect public attention from the issue of privacy violations, an attempt to present the social network services as protectors of the realm, of finding some indirect justification and relativization for the business practices of these companies. I mean you might get a sense who is pushing the argument, if you think of who is to gain from it. The article lists Alex Stamos, formerly Facebook’s chief security officer as a member of the Aspen institute 'Commission on Information Disorder', among others. The article also says that 'it's all theater', but is drawing some very different conclusion; the 'disinformation' argument is supposed to support the claim that targetted advertising is actually working: " Ironically, to the extent that this work creates undue alarm about disinformation, it supports Facebook’s sales pitch. What could be more appealing to an advertiser, after all, than a machine that can persuade anyone of anything? This understanding benefits Facebook, which spreads more bad information, which creates more alarm. Legacy outlets with usefully prestigious brands are taken on board as trusted partners, to determine when the levels of contamination in the information ecosystem (from which they have magically detached themselves) get too high. For the old media institutions, it’s a bid for relevance, a form of self-preservation. For the tech platforms, it’s a superficial strategy to avoid deeper questions. A trusted disinformation field is, in this sense, a very useful thing for Mark Zuckerberg." Also the article mentions that for the political class 'disinformation' is a way to explain away their own failings "the Establishment needs the theater of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump...A common account of social media’s persuasive effects provides a convenient explanation for how so many people thought so wrongly at more or less the same time. More than that, it creates a world of persuasion that is legible and useful to capital—to advertisers, political consultants, media companies, and of course, to the tech platforms themselves. It is a model of cause and effect in which the information circulated by a few corporations has the total power to justify the beliefs and behaviors of the demos. In a way, this world is a kind of comfort" Different people are drawing different conclusions from the same data, fascinating...

mistermann 5y ago

> The UI, the up-voting process, the very (lack of) structure in how comments are displayed and sorted all encourage verbal vomit, and that's exactly what YouTube gets. In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say. I think you might be literally the first person I've ever encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement or negative. Very often, people "know" that it is not the problem, yet oddly have a very strong aversion to sharing how it is they know that. I think it would be kind of hilarious if this was in fact (but unknown) one of the root causes of our problems, but no one has the ability to even consider the idea.

jimbokun 5y ago
> I think you might be literally the first person I've ever encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement or negative. So they give you a downvote, a quippy snarky Tweet in response to disagree with you that there is a lack of thoughtful, deep thinking about topics.
vngzs 5y ago
I'm pretty sure this is the joke in multiple John Oliver web segments [0]. It's pretty well-understood that the YouTube design is not conducive to long-form discussion. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbw0gJHHBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbw0gJHHBk
notanzaiiswear 5y ago
I thought it was well known that the algorithms optimise for stress and anger, because it drives more engagement. I think it might even be involuntarily - the algorithms may have been set to train for enhanced engagement, and hate and anger happen to be the solution.
- mistermann 5y ago
  Definitely, the effect of algorithms gets discussed regularly - but I can't recall encountering any significant discussions about the effects of design (UI, functionality, etc) of social media platforms. As far as I can tell, the idea is almost completely off the radar.
  - zestyping 5y ago
    I talk about this all the time. I find it simply insane that, out of the entire design space of possible mechanisms for computer-mediated communication, every major platform has somehow decided that typing comments into small boxes that are indented under other small boxes is the only solution. There are countless dimensions of design variables that haven't even been considered.

autokad 5y ago

Liberals loved social media when they were using it to their benefit, remember the Obama Universities? how he was praised for using organized efforts to bring up content you want and burry content you don't want. Someone who worked for his administration came to us and showed us some of the dasboards that they use and some tips and tricks (including buying fake accounts to get followers that will lead to organic followers). They got so good at it, they berried dissenting view to the point they didn't even hear it anymore, and were completely blind sided when they found out people actually disagreed with them. The real subversion of democracy was the blaming of 'fake news' for Trump beating Clinton. It was used do discredit the election and discredit the views of the millions that voted for him. To be clear, the dems/liberals dont want to get rid of fake news and control, they just want to be the only ones controlling it. This is why its 'no surprise' that big tech agrees with them, big tech was helping them in the first place! they just want more power to silence the right.

ascar 5y ago
You might be inclined to think it's "the left" who is downvoting you, so I wanna clarify why at least I did. I am a European and mostly neutral on American politics. I downvoted because your comment reeks of a them vs us fallacy and your comment is not in the spirit of an interesting discourse, but just about discrediting an opposing faction which isn't even directly related to the comment you replied to.
- autokad 5y ago
  depending on which country, Europeans are not neutral on American politics, so I take your disclaimer for a grain of salt. For one, it was 100% related to the original comment, as it opined on 'but social media was considered good in 2014'. This is not a 'hem vs us fallacy' example. I wasn't saying either you have to agree with me, or you are the enemy, although hacker news is thinking that way now. I got flagged for that comment, which had no business being flagged. Downvote me all you want, flag me all you want. you will not silence me, I will no longer hide my silence and I will speak freely.

rectang 5y ago

What if what drives YouTube profits isn't necessarily substance, but engagement (to a first-order approximation)? Perhaps the comments are already optimized, each as a sort of micro-clickbait? There seem to be a lot of users who are highly motivated to participate in the "U! No U!! NO U!!!!" back and forth.

foobarian 5y ago

> In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say. That makes me think of the Russian math culture. Imagine if there was some way to create incentives via some Social Media NG to encourage that kind of thoughtful discourse.

didibus 5y ago

> As late as in 2014 social media was presented as a force for good. ("Wisdom of the crowds", etc.) Just couple years later it was rebranded as some kind of machine where evil people brainwash idiots into becoming evil people. Who are the idiots? Well, given that YouTube and Facebook have billions of users, it seems most humans on the planet are shoved into that category now I don't think that's true, because from what I remember there is less than 1% of viewers who leave comments. So the "idiots" I guess would be small vocal minorities. The question is how far their influence goes? But it's very possible that a ton of people don't engage in the comments and discussions on social media, because they don't find the design of it suitable for intelligent discourse, and maybe that leaves you with only idiotic comments.

tshaddox 5y ago

I've seen some informal analysis that claims that the ubiquity of smartphones and the successful transition of the massive social networks to mobile is what specifically led to many of the alleged negative societal effects (increased political polarization, for example, although there are many other examples). The thinking goes that it's the all-day thumb-scrolling addiction loop on a tiny device that leads to these negative outcomes even more so than what was supposedly already happening with the pre-smartphone rise of social media. Your mention of 2014 might be compatible with this line of thinking. Facebook famously abandoned its mobile HTML5 stack and "went all in" on mobile in 2012. They also acquired Instagram in late 2011, and WhatsApp in 2013.

joe_the_user 5y ago
I've seen some informal analysis that claims that the ubiquity of smartphones and the successful transition of the massive social networks to mobile is what specifically led to many of the alleged negative societal effects (increased political polarization, for example, although there are many other examples). Of course you've seen such analysis, it's fairly ubiquitous. But as the parent and the article argue, it's completely incoherent. Not that phones haven't given polarization and propaganda a bit of a push but because these things are just parts of long-term trends that need to be looked at. And a lot of the "social media opens people to evil" complaints came loudly from mainstream media who were understandably upset at loosing their semi-monopoly trend-setting (ie, propaganda). Of course, a lot of the forces that effectively hacked social media were the extreme right, which I'd hardly a fan of. But this wasn't "a sudden rise in propaganda" but a relative democratization of propaganda. If you want a non-propagandistic way of disseminating information, you need to go much further back than 1990, probably look at a whole different method of communicating.
taurath 5y ago
One other way to think about it is that a massive content fork started happening around the time of the internet. In the "beginning", as the article states, there was the big 3 networks, and a bunch of fringe radio programs, and movie theatres, and newspapers. Broadly highly consolidated. A bit more emphasis on local things. Then there was cable. You were certainly going to get more perspectives, but your age group is probably going to still only watch a few channels. And still radio and newspapers, and movies. Now there's youtube, twitch, cable, crunchyroll, radio, podcasts, social media. 10,000 channels of content. You as an individual mix and match based on your own preferences and interests. Its also available everywhere. As is conversing with friends. It seems like pure logic that it is much harder to create a consensus in a winner take all political system.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

Since 2014 the subscribers of social network became more aware of the wholesale snooping and privacy violations that are hidden behind the "terms and condition" of their social networks. I wonder if the whole disinformation narrative isn't in part an attempt to deflect public attention from the issue of privacy violations, an attempt to present the social network services as protectors of the realm, of finding some indirect justification and relativization for the business practices of these companies. I mean you might get a sense who is pushing the argument, if you think of who is to gain from it. The article lists Alex Stamos, formerly Facebook’s chief security officer as a member of the Aspen institute 'Commission on Information Disorder', among others. The article also says that 'it's all theater', but is drawing some very different conclusion; the 'disinformation' argument is supposed to support the claim that targetted advertising is actually working: " Ironically, to the extent that this work creates undue alarm about disinformation, it supports Facebook’s sales pitch. What could be more appealing to an advertiser, after all, than a machine that can persuade anyone of anything? This understanding benefits Facebook, which spreads more bad information, which creates more alarm. Legacy outlets with usefully prestigious brands are taken on board as trusted partners, to determine when the levels of contamination in the information ecosystem (from which they have magically detached themselves) get too high. For the old media institutions, it’s a bid for relevance, a form of self-preservation. For the tech platforms, it’s a superficial strategy to avoid deeper questions. A trusted disinformation field is, in this sense, a very useful thing for Mark Zuckerberg." Also the article mentions that for the political class 'disinformation' is a way to explain away their own failings "the Establishment needs the theater of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump...A common account of social media’s persuasive effects provides a convenient explanation for how so many people thought so wrongly at more or less the same time. More than that, it creates a world of persuasion that is legible and useful to capital—to advertisers, political consultants, media companies, and of course, to the tech platforms themselves. It is a model of cause and effect in which the information circulated by a few corporations has the total power to justify the beliefs and behaviors of the demos. In a way, this world is a kind of comfort" Different people are drawing different conclusions from the same data, fascinating...