7 ms·

The internet has a lot of benefits. My issues aren't with the internet, but advancements made with social media. The addictive nature of many platforms. The h

The internet has a lot of benefits. My issues aren't with the internet, but advancements made with social media. The addictive nature of many platforms. The hivemind and lack of free thought I've noticed in many avenues of the internet. Having upvotes vs downvotes or likes vs dislikes encourages conformity. It encourages group think. This group think is ultimately what's driving me off the larger platforms on the internet and away from social media in general.

rileymat2 5y ago
People see what they want to see in it, other people see it causing divisiveness where you see it causing conformity. It will take us decades to understand the effects.
- zadokshi 5y ago
  I don’t think it’ll take decades to understand the many many obvious effects. Saying it’ll take decades to work out the effects feels like an attempt to obsfucate or deflect. Although I’d agree if you are referring to secondary effects — they will take a little longer to manifest. But we are certainly seeing some of those already.
- pojzon 5y ago
  We already know what are the effects of echo chambers. Ps. HN is also an echo chamber but here readers are more keen to ask questions.
  - tragictrash 5y ago
    I'm calling BS on this one, don't agree.
    - helloworld11 5y ago
      Bullshit indeed, but for your disagreement. Just a brief look at the general opinion regarding cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and a number of other positions clearly shows a certain hive mind tendency. It's not complete and there are indeed many dissenting voices with their own nuanced opinions, but the downvote and upvote system is also present to further encourage groupthink positions.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  In decades there won't be anyone around who remembers when things were different. We're in an interesting time right now, when at least 50% of people in first-world countries remember a time before the internet (obviously higher in countries with less internet adoption) In 70 years, everyone alive will have grown up in a world where the Internet was everywhere.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Yeah but in more time I think we'll eventually figure it out. The invention of Gutenberg's Printing Press was massively disruptive of both Europe and the Islamic world and in Europe kicked off hundreds of years of war. Eventually we got used to the fact that you can't trust everything you read on print. Hopefully we'll work something out with the internet as well.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  These aren't mutually exclusive. I see the internet as mostly segmenting us into separate echo chambers that do not want to compromise. In the past, most people learned some degree of empathy because while they support policy X they also talk to their neighbor who hates policy X because of reasons A, B, and C. Now people will just ignore their neighbor who hates X and instead go online and find a community that builds their identity atop hating a bevy of policies that include X. There's definitely pros to this as instead of having to hide things like your sexual orientation in your community due to bigotry you can go online and find others like you. There are also cons abound, where instead of (for example, not trying to push policy here) ranting about how nobody rides the bus and encountering your neighbor whose car broke down and is riding the bus you instead go online and talk to other people who think buses are stupid.
- Goety 5y ago
  >It will take us decades to understand the effects. No it will take time to characterize the effects. Today we know exactly how and why it was designed.
ButtSpark69 5y ago
upvotes & downvotes are just the most obvious solution to the noise problem that plagues the internet. Nothing at cost is a blessing and a curse at the same time. We won't solve the internet until we figure out how to solve these fundamental issues in a sustainable bottom-up and incentive-driven way. Which is clearly an immensely hard problem.
tqi 5y ago
What do you do to avoid groupthink outside of larger platforms?
- makk 5y ago
  Stay away from social media in general, is what they said.
- gadflyinyoureye 5y ago
  Read other groupthink. Pick a topic and read multiple views. Even horrible ones. Then you can understand, synthesize, and rebut views.
- lettergram 5y ago
  It may be controversial but I believe 3 things can be done: 1. Government grants for open source alternative development. Aka fed oversee and what not can apply for grants. 2. Label all social media and phones common carriers. 3. Require common carriers to be subject to FOIA and audits by citizens. This would include source code. They can still profit from being centralized for the time being, because of networking effects that likely won’t change. My final thought is that social media shouldn’t be tied to ones public identity.
  - Retric 5y ago
    The Overton window is a form of group think that’s pervasive across what people think of as the political spectrum. Outsider views isn’t simply pro and anti X, or even flat earth whack jobs it’s the full realm of possibilities. It’s easy to think of say communism in reference to the horrors of recent history, but it showed up before the US civil war. In the context of slavery and the often stated “need” to compensate people who owned slaves before freeing them it suddenly seems very different. Which just demonstrates how ideologies are shaped by the time period and why understanding history takes more than a history textbook. Actually reading old newspapers or political speeches is eye opening in the way that’s hard to summarize. https://www.loc.gov/newspapers/?dates=1920-1929 https://www.loc.gov/newspapers/?dates=1920-1929 first page of first newspaper The Evening Star (March 8, 1920) “Income tax on dividends held Invalid by Supreme Court Government To Refund Millions” alongside “President takes ride in Automobile” which was apparently newsworthy including the prohibition of taking his photo. Just as interesting “Woman instantly killed by an Auto” referring to a car accident was a front page story. Meanwhile “Democrats Figure Electoral Victory on “WET” plank” referring to a lighter version of prohibition while still prohibiting saloons and Whisky. “British to Sell no part of West Indies to the US” which shows the past wasn’t just a history timeline it was filled with unrealized possibilities.
loceng 5y ago
Peter Wang in the recent Lex Fridman interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ - gave me names for concepts I'd been noticing but couldn't quite put my finger on, essentially the pitfalls and externalized costs of "homogeneous demand" that's created via ads and algorithms - driving consumerism through making economy of scale easier to reach by generating more buyers at same time, and similarly leads to ideology or group think as you mention.
rconti 5y ago
Isn't that basically how society works? Social pressure encourages groupthink.
- btmiller 5y ago
  Access to audiences beyond a handful in size are much rarer than what you can easily find online.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    social media is the like the densest exchange of personal thought in human history
    - analognoise 5y ago
      It just turns out most of that thought isn't worth hearing, is easily manipulated externally and by emotions, and poorly educated. I've stared to think that handing everyone the "microphone" of something like YouTube is actually a way to prevent even moderately subversive thought from ever reaching the mainstream. Basically let people say what they want - but they have to complete with every other loud moron, while ignoring the manufacturing of consent through traditional channels. It's horribly dystopian. I almost long for a time when running a pirate radio station meant you had a political message you felt needed to be heard.
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        > a time when running a pirate radio station meant you had a political message you felt needed to be heard. I remember that feeling, that something could be important to say. It's completely gone though. There's only the compulsion to reply.
      - micromacrofoot 5y ago
        Most of anything isn't worth anything. Pirate radio stations generally weren't run by people who had things that needed to be heard, in the US most notable examples were simply people who thought broadcasting music illegally was worth getting raided by the feds.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
In these times of compassion when conformity's in fashion Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in - Bob Dylan, Foot of Pride (1983) rec. w/Sly+Robbie,Knopfler
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  http://www.bjorner.com/DSN06920%20-%201983%20Sessions.htm http://www.bjorner.com/DSN06920%20-%201983%20Sessions.htm (version #2 best, IMO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2roZjsv44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2roZjsv44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4siXnAuVb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4siXnAuVb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2UHrJg2h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2UHrJg2h4 (perf. Lou Reed, GE Smith)
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    Also, "Too Late" from Bootleg Series, Vol. 16
hooande 5y ago
group think exists because the average person has the average opinions. the more people that are in a sample, the more that sample's thinking will skew toward the average. if you don't like group think, avoid popular websites like this one and stick to smaller, more like minded communities
mbg721 5y ago
Even before social media got big, corporatization and consolidation had killed what made the 90s Internet so special. The reasons the corporate template started to rule the Internet in place of personal hobby websites are the same things that make Western society in general less vibrant. People want to participate, but everything is complex and they don't have enough time to be experts at everything (as with car maintenance, right-to-repair, and disposable/smart appliances that most people don't like); the threat of bad actors makes non-template sites dangerous or perceived as dangerous (as with letting kids go play outside); efficient template makers eat everybody else's lunch (as with franchise restaurants and soulless big-box stores); and when exhausted people are a captive audience, manipulative people with money can farm their attention (as with offline politics and advertising, and TV). The problem isn't new and it isn't really about group-think; it just caught up with the power of the Internet.

rileymat2 5y ago

People see what they want to see in it, other people see it causing divisiveness where you see it causing conformity. It will take us decades to understand the effects.

zadokshi 5y ago
I don’t think it’ll take decades to understand the many many obvious effects. Saying it’ll take decades to work out the effects feels like an attempt to obsfucate or deflect. Although I’d agree if you are referring to secondary effects — they will take a little longer to manifest. But we are certainly seeing some of those already.
pojzon 5y ago
We already know what are the effects of echo chambers. Ps. HN is also an echo chamber but here readers are more keen to ask questions.
- tragictrash 5y ago
  I'm calling BS on this one, don't agree.
  - helloworld11 5y ago
    Bullshit indeed, but for your disagreement. Just a brief look at the general opinion regarding cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and a number of other positions clearly shows a certain hive mind tendency. It's not complete and there are indeed many dissenting voices with their own nuanced opinions, but the downvote and upvote system is also present to further encourage groupthink positions.
pcthrowaway 5y ago
In decades there won't be anyone around who remembers when things were different. We're in an interesting time right now, when at least 50% of people in first-world countries remember a time before the internet (obviously higher in countries with less internet adoption) In 70 years, everyone alive will have grown up in a world where the Internet was everywhere.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Yeah but in more time I think we'll eventually figure it out. The invention of Gutenberg's Printing Press was massively disruptive of both Europe and the Islamic world and in Europe kicked off hundreds of years of war. Eventually we got used to the fact that you can't trust everything you read on print. Hopefully we'll work something out with the internet as well.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
These aren't mutually exclusive. I see the internet as mostly segmenting us into separate echo chambers that do not want to compromise. In the past, most people learned some degree of empathy because while they support policy X they also talk to their neighbor who hates policy X because of reasons A, B, and C. Now people will just ignore their neighbor who hates X and instead go online and find a community that builds their identity atop hating a bevy of policies that include X. There's definitely pros to this as instead of having to hide things like your sexual orientation in your community due to bigotry you can go online and find others like you. There are also cons abound, where instead of (for example, not trying to push policy here) ranting about how nobody rides the bus and encountering your neighbor whose car broke down and is riding the bus you instead go online and talk to other people who think buses are stupid.
Goety 5y ago
>It will take us decades to understand the effects. No it will take time to characterize the effects. Today we know exactly how and why it was designed.

ButtSpark69 5y ago

upvotes & downvotes are just the most obvious solution to the noise problem that plagues the internet. Nothing at cost is a blessing and a curse at the same time. We won't solve the internet until we figure out how to solve these fundamental issues in a sustainable bottom-up and incentive-driven way. Which is clearly an immensely hard problem.

tqi 5y ago

What do you do to avoid groupthink outside of larger platforms?

makk 5y ago
Stay away from social media in general, is what they said.
gadflyinyoureye 5y ago
Read other groupthink. Pick a topic and read multiple views. Even horrible ones. Then you can understand, synthesize, and rebut views.
lettergram 5y ago
It may be controversial but I believe 3 things can be done: 1. Government grants for open source alternative development. Aka fed oversee and what not can apply for grants. 2. Label all social media and phones common carriers. 3. Require common carriers to be subject to FOIA and audits by citizens. This would include source code. They can still profit from being centralized for the time being, because of networking effects that likely won’t change. My final thought is that social media shouldn’t be tied to ones public identity.
- Retric 5y ago
  The Overton window is a form of group think that’s pervasive across what people think of as the political spectrum. Outsider views isn’t simply pro and anti X, or even flat earth whack jobs it’s the full realm of possibilities. It’s easy to think of say communism in reference to the horrors of recent history, but it showed up before the US civil war. In the context of slavery and the often stated “need” to compensate people who owned slaves before freeing them it suddenly seems very different. Which just demonstrates how ideologies are shaped by the time period and why understanding history takes more than a history textbook. Actually reading old newspapers or political speeches is eye opening in the way that’s hard to summarize. https://www.loc.gov/newspapers/?dates=1920-1929 https://www.loc.gov/newspapers/?dates=1920-1929 first page of first newspaper The Evening Star (March 8, 1920) “Income tax on dividends held Invalid by Supreme Court Government To Refund Millions” alongside “President takes ride in Automobile” which was apparently newsworthy including the prohibition of taking his photo. Just as interesting “Woman instantly killed by an Auto” referring to a car accident was a front page story. Meanwhile “Democrats Figure Electoral Victory on “WET” plank” referring to a lighter version of prohibition while still prohibiting saloons and Whisky. “British to Sell no part of West Indies to the US” which shows the past wasn’t just a history timeline it was filled with unrealized possibilities.

loceng 5y ago

Peter Wang in the recent Lex Fridman interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ - gave me names for concepts I'd been noticing but couldn't quite put my finger on, essentially the pitfalls and externalized costs of "homogeneous demand" that's created via ads and algorithms - driving consumerism through making economy of scale easier to reach by generating more buyers at same time, and similarly leads to ideology or group think as you mention.

rconti 5y ago

Isn't that basically how society works? Social pressure encourages groupthink.

btmiller 5y ago
Access to audiences beyond a handful in size are much rarer than what you can easily find online.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  social media is the like the densest exchange of personal thought in human history
  - analognoise 5y ago
    It just turns out most of that thought isn't worth hearing, is easily manipulated externally and by emotions, and poorly educated. I've stared to think that handing everyone the "microphone" of something like YouTube is actually a way to prevent even moderately subversive thought from ever reaching the mainstream. Basically let people say what they want - but they have to complete with every other loud moron, while ignoring the manufacturing of consent through traditional channels. It's horribly dystopian. I almost long for a time when running a pirate radio station meant you had a political message you felt needed to be heard.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      > a time when running a pirate radio station meant you had a political message you felt needed to be heard. I remember that feeling, that something could be important to say. It's completely gone though. There's only the compulsion to reply.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      Most of anything isn't worth anything. Pirate radio stations generally weren't run by people who had things that needed to be heard, in the US most notable examples were simply people who thought broadcasting music illegally was worth getting raided by the feds.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

In these times of compassion when conformity's in fashion Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in - Bob Dylan, Foot of Pride (1983) rec. w/Sly+Robbie,Knopfler

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
http://www.bjorner.com/DSN06920%20-%201983%20Sessions.htm http://www.bjorner.com/DSN06920%20-%201983%20Sessions.htm (version #2 best, IMO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2roZjsv44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2roZjsv44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4siXnAuVb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4siXnAuVb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2UHrJg2h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2UHrJg2h4 (perf. Lou Reed, GE Smith)
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  Also, "Too Late" from Bootleg Series, Vol. 16

hooande 5y ago

group think exists because the average person has the average opinions. the more people that are in a sample, the more that sample's thinking will skew toward the average. if you don't like group think, avoid popular websites like this one and stick to smaller, more like minded communities

mbg721 5y ago

Even before social media got big, corporatization and consolidation had killed what made the 90s Internet so special. The reasons the corporate template started to rule the Internet in place of personal hobby websites are the same things that make Western society in general less vibrant. People want to participate, but everything is complex and they don't have enough time to be experts at everything (as with car maintenance, right-to-repair, and disposable/smart appliances that most people don't like); the threat of bad actors makes non-template sites dangerous or perceived as dangerous (as with letting kids go play outside); efficient template makers eat everybody else's lunch (as with franchise restaurants and soulless big-box stores); and when exhausted people are a captive audience, manipulative people with money can farm their attention (as with offline politics and advertising, and TV). The problem isn't new and it isn't really about group-think; it just caught up with the power of the Internet.