6 ms·

I think there’s a story here that no one has talked about. It’s that the “traditional” media has fought back against social media by attacking them ruthlessly a

I think there’s a story here that no one has talked about. It’s that the “traditional” media has fought back against social media by attacking them ruthlessly and getting everyone to believe their some great blight on the world. Facebook et al are not doing anything traditional media hasn’t been doing since its inception. Spreading fake news? The original name for it was “Yellow Journalism”[1]. Making teenage girls insecure about themselves? Just look at magazines like Cosmopolitan from just a few years ago. Highlighting divisive, polarizing stories to drive engagement? Cable news doesn’t do anything else. Let’s not forget all the crazy racist, and seriously impactful shit local news has done over the years. Social media and the internet stole a lot of eyeballs from traditional media outlets. They’ve successfully responded by convincing everyone that Facebook and the rest of big tech is some crazy super villain. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

tqi 5y ago
Journalists love to talk about the danish study that paid people to quit Facebook and found that they were measurably happier. They conveniently ignore that the other measurable change was that people were less informed about current events/consumed less news. Which is a pretty unsurprising finding - the thing that people argue most about on social media is the very news/opinion clickbait that journalists produce. Put it another way, if peopled replaced time spent on social media with time spent reading NYT/FOX/CNBC/CNN, would they become more or less upset and polarized? My money would be on more...
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  I wager less upset but more polarized. While filter bubble is a term coined in the social media age, these news stations make for some of the easiest ways to create them IRL. one person of "authority", with complete, uncontested control on how to frame the news, typically gathering like minds who want to listen to it. At least comment sections challenging a news piece gives some avenue for the audience to consider other angles to the story. I may not agree with every comment here on how they interpret this bill, but it gives me a wider look on the issue than if I listened only to LATime's take on it.
sirspacey 5y ago
This is directly true. Facebook courted media corps in Davos, but wouldn’t agree to their demands, and so the media corps waged all out war. So disingenuous.
oblio 5y ago
> Facebook et al are not doing anything traditional media hasn’t been doing since its inception. "Quantity has a quality all its own" (presumably by Stalin) Traditional media was time and place bound. Its reach was maybe 10% (at most!) of that of social media. Social media is always on, always available. That changes a lot of things.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Traditional media was constrained to the TV, radio and newspapers. It didn't try to take over human communication. You could opt out entirely and still be able to participate in society just fine. Social media is a cancer that spread to a lot of day-to-day necessities and keeps spreading - some businesses don't even have websites anymore.
  - johnnyanmac 5y ago
    >some businesses don't even have websites anymore. I think that opens a differnet discussion altogether. Yelp can be considered a "social media". It's a website where users provide content (in this case, reviews) with some various algorithms made to encourage businesses to play ball to get high visibility. but I doubt any of the proposals discussed here would affect Yelp. Kids sure as heck aren't concerned with ratings over businesses they often can't pay for. So would it be bad if a company lacked a website and relied on Yelp, whose goal isn't the same as Instagram's?
Nextgrid 5y ago
Traditional media didn't take over human socialization. You could socialize without having "traditional media" watch over and control who you talk to and what you talk about. TV can absolutely be evil, but you can choose to not watch TV and still be able to socialize with peers using the telephone or paper mail back in the day. Nowadays, the "TV" (which now fits in your pocket) is also the primary way humans communicate, so you can't switch off the "TV" without also severely hampering your ability to communicate with other people. Hell, a lot of small businesses don't even have websites anymore, it's all in some bullshit social-media platform.

tqi 5y ago

Journalists love to talk about the danish study that paid people to quit Facebook and found that they were measurably happier. They conveniently ignore that the other measurable change was that people were less informed about current events/consumed less news. Which is a pretty unsurprising finding - the thing that people argue most about on social media is the very news/opinion clickbait that journalists produce. Put it another way, if peopled replaced time spent on social media with time spent reading NYT/FOX/CNBC/CNN, would they become more or less upset and polarized? My money would be on more...

johnnyanmac 5y ago
I wager less upset but more polarized. While filter bubble is a term coined in the social media age, these news stations make for some of the easiest ways to create them IRL. one person of "authority", with complete, uncontested control on how to frame the news, typically gathering like minds who want to listen to it. At least comment sections challenging a news piece gives some avenue for the audience to consider other angles to the story. I may not agree with every comment here on how they interpret this bill, but it gives me a wider look on the issue than if I listened only to LATime's take on it.

sirspacey 5y ago

This is directly true. Facebook courted media corps in Davos, but wouldn’t agree to their demands, and so the media corps waged all out war. So disingenuous.

oblio 5y ago

> Facebook et al are not doing anything traditional media hasn’t been doing since its inception. "Quantity has a quality all its own" (presumably by Stalin) Traditional media was time and place bound. Its reach was maybe 10% (at most!) of that of social media. Social media is always on, always available. That changes a lot of things.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Traditional media was constrained to the TV, radio and newspapers. It didn't try to take over human communication. You could opt out entirely and still be able to participate in society just fine. Social media is a cancer that spread to a lot of day-to-day necessities and keeps spreading - some businesses don't even have websites anymore.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  >some businesses don't even have websites anymore. I think that opens a differnet discussion altogether. Yelp can be considered a "social media". It's a website where users provide content (in this case, reviews) with some various algorithms made to encourage businesses to play ball to get high visibility. but I doubt any of the proposals discussed here would affect Yelp. Kids sure as heck aren't concerned with ratings over businesses they often can't pay for. So would it be bad if a company lacked a website and relied on Yelp, whose goal isn't the same as Instagram's?

Nextgrid 5y ago

Traditional media didn't take over human socialization. You could socialize without having "traditional media" watch over and control who you talk to and what you talk about. TV can absolutely be evil, but you can choose to not watch TV and still be able to socialize with peers using the telephone or paper mail back in the day. Nowadays, the "TV" (which now fits in your pocket) is also the primary way humans communicate, so you can't switch off the "TV" without also severely hampering your ability to communicate with other people. Hell, a lot of small businesses don't even have websites anymore, it's all in some bullshit social-media platform.