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I don't fully agree. One thing is having a built-in filter, but the other thing is encouraging harmful behavior. Not only has the filter now been removed, but t

I don't fully agree. One thing is having a built-in filter, but the other thing is encouraging harmful behavior. Not only has the filter now been removed, but the new entrants have been encouraged (through algorithms which promote divisive content) to produce and consume harmful content because it increases "engagement". There was a period of time where social media was just starting out where the filter has essentially been removed (anyone can easily join and start producing & consuming content) but harmful content wasn't yet encouraged. Social media was about keeping up with your friends' content, and while I'm sure harmful & divisive content was present, you had to explicitly seek it out (by liking/following the right accounts). Nowadays all social media uses algorithms that promote content that will yield the maximum amount of "engagement" on your part so you increase the time spend on the platform and the amount of ads watched.

dijonman2 5y ago
The definition of harmful content is a big sticking point with me. Engaging in civil discourse on a hot topic typically ends with one side being accused of something heinous. That’s not harmful. That’s blatant censorship.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Indeed there's no clear answer as to what content is "harmful", which is why I'm not advocating for censorship but merely to let the user be in control of what they see. Currently, the algorithm will prioritize content that produces the most "engagement", including even content that you otherwise have no link with and don't follow the user who posted it. Divisive, outrageous, hateful or blatantly fake content will typically generate tremendous amounts of engagement (as people start arguing over it) as opposed to mundane content such as updates from your friends. There's also no way to have "civil discourse" when the algorithm prioritizes the hottest takes as opposed to more reasonable arguments.
  - narag 5y ago
    There's another factor that I haven't see mentioned: I have no interest in most sections of the news. And even if I select only some kind of news, say "computers" I'm not very interested in consumer's hardware or commercial programs including apps or games, just programming, security and little more. But social media live on ads. They tend to promote contents that cater to wide audiences. If I'm only interested in a few niches, social media are a big waste of time. The contents and the discussions around them.
agumonkey 5y ago
aren't the algorithms only amplifying the average tendencies ?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Potentially, but that's still not an argument in its favour. Why should there be an "algorithm" to begin with? Unless you have thousands of "friends", you do not need an algorithm to keep up with them, a chronological timeline works just fine. If anything, maybe the algorithm should do the opposite and discourage arguments?
- ManuelKiessling 5y ago
  Maybe over time this moves the average in a worse direction.
powerslacker 5y ago
> There was a period of time where social media was just starting out where the filter has essentially been removed (anyone can easily join and start producing & consuming content) but harmful content wasn't yet encouraged. Prior to social media there was usenet, specialized forums, imageboards such as 4chan, and mass use of IRC. The average social media user would recoil in horror at the 'divisive' content that was common to that time period. REAL neonazis spread their message with impunity, anarchists gathered and distributed tutorials on how to make homemade weaponry, illegal pornography was rampant, and mass shooters were glorified. The 'divisive' content of today is quite tame and is focused primarily on promoting the interests of one of a handful of relatively similar political parties over the others. My point being that social media has amplified the voices of billions, but the money machine behind it has toned the violent poltical rhetoric of the net down to a dull roar. Anyone claiming otherwise is either misinformed or has something they want to sell you. </rant>
- escapedmoose 5y ago
  Many of those extra-divisive platforms are still around in one form or another, and are likely bigger than they were in the past (thanks again to reduced barriers to entry). But a normal person can avoid engaging in those platforms entirely by just… not going on them. Imo the danger of modern social media’s algorithmic feeds is that it draws in otherwise perfectly normal people, who would never voluntarily seek out the divisive content that gets promoted on their feeds. So now we have the worst of both worlds: platforms with violent political rhetoric are still highly available to those who would seek them out, and more average folks are drawn to seek them out by the “dull roar” that draws them in on the major social platforms.
  - powerslacker 5y ago
    > platforms with violent political rhetoric are still highly available to those who would seek them out I would submit that they are no longer highly available or their core userbase has moved on to the "dark web". The genius of the centralized social media platform is that it lives on advertising dollars. The advertisers will pull back whenever a platform becomes too uncontrolled. This was the case when Pewdiepie's accidental Nazi reference video was released. A massive pullback in advertising dollars 'forced' YouTube to reconsider its previously lax content policies and policing. That's not to say that YouTube is some pleasant walled garden, but rather that those creating videos and making real money from the site are incentivized to police their own behavior and rhetoric. Most people talking about 'divisive' content are talking around the Trump/QAnon fiasco. Which is very different from the internet I grew up on where even on a 'kids site' you would often see users calling for outright genocide of specific racial groups.
eightysixfour 5y ago
> Not only has the filter now been removed, but the new entrants have been encouraged (through algorithms which promote divisive content) to produce and consume harmful content because it increases "engagement". I agreed with this until I started seeing more information about how much divisive content there is on whatsapp, which isn’t algorithmic or driven by anything other than people, similar to old email forward chains. We don’t like the algorithmic feeds and everything else because they’re a big mirror that just reflects back how humans act, and we don’t like what we see. The algorithms themselves aren’t the problem IMO.
- narag 5y ago
  But Whatsapp doesn't promote any content. It's all private conversations, isn't it? I would say that Whatsapp is a big mirror, not of how humans act, but of how humans behave in other social media.
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    That’s my point - whatsapp doesn’t promote content, but it is still one of the largest distributors of disinformation content. This is a clear supporting argument that people share that without algorithmic any help.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Not only has the filter now been removed, but the new entrants have been encouraged (through algorithms which promote divisive content) to produce and consume harmful content because it increases "engagement". I think this narrative has been blown out of proportion. The “algorithm” has become an easy stand-in to blame nebulous programmers for people choosing to view content they want to see. The “algorithm” isn’t literally a model trained to recognize divisive content and promote it to as many people as possible. It doesn’t have motives or intentions. It’s literally just a recommendation engine that suggests similar content to people. Platforms without algorithms are still full of divisive content which spreads virally. Some of the worst content on the internet won’t be found on Facebook or other moderated platforms at all. You have to work to get to it, and people do the work to get there. No algorithms to blame, just people. We really need to stop giving people a pass and stop piling our complaints on to the “algorithm”. People who make bad choices and consume bad content are doing so on their own volition, and we need to treat it as such if you want to make progress on the solution. Railing against faceless personifications of algorithms isn’t going to get us anywhere on solving these social problems.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > The “algorithm” isn’t literally a model trained to recognize divisive content and promote it to as many people as possible. It doesn’t have motives or intentions. It’s literally just a recommendation engine that suggests similar content to people. Mostly agreed, though I don't believe "similarity" is the only factor - "engagement" is also a factor, likely a big one considering the business model of the company. Yes, the algorithm doesn't have intentions or political bias (yet?), however it doesn't take a genius to infer that divisive content will generate more engagement than other, mundane content, and even more so when the algorithm has been deployed to production and there's real-world data to prove this. > Platforms without algorithms are still full of divisive content which spreads virally. Without algorithms the only way this content would spread is for people to explicitly re-share it to their friends - it will not pop up "organically" otherwise. You will need to explicitly attach your name to it if you were to share it, and be ready to defend it and bear the risk of being ostracized from your group. This also means that as long as you choose your Facebook "friends" carefully, you can curate your feed and keep craziness or other irrelevant content at bay. > Some of the worst content on the internet won’t be found on Facebook or other moderated platforms at all. You have to work to get to it, and people do the work to get there. No algorithms to blame, just people. And thankfully that worst content has (yet?) to make it to my non-technical friends' Facebook feeds, so it seems like the system is working as designed? Twisted people will keep finding & producing said content, but it's contained and will not make its way onto mainstream platforms without explicit efforts from those people and everyone else on the network to re-share it multiple times. > People who make bad choices and consume bad content are doing so on their own volition Disagreed. People went onto Facebook (or other social media) to keep in touch with their friends & family, but over time, the algorithm was locking them into an echo chamber full of whatever divisive, harmful, false or outright crazy content it could find as long as it was driving "engagement" numbers up. If you could travel back in time and ask some of the people that stormed the Capitol or are forever lost in the QAnon conspiracy whether they thought they would do so when they initially joined Facebook, I bet they would call you crazy. In fact, I bet a large chunk of those people are old enough to know the "old" Internet and yet didn't turn to extremism until the craziness was delivered to them in a nice, harmless-looking format.

dijonman2 5y ago

The definition of harmful content is a big sticking point with me. Engaging in civil discourse on a hot topic typically ends with one side being accused of something heinous. That’s not harmful. That’s blatant censorship.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Indeed there's no clear answer as to what content is "harmful", which is why I'm not advocating for censorship but merely to let the user be in control of what they see. Currently, the algorithm will prioritize content that produces the most "engagement", including even content that you otherwise have no link with and don't follow the user who posted it. Divisive, outrageous, hateful or blatantly fake content will typically generate tremendous amounts of engagement (as people start arguing over it) as opposed to mundane content such as updates from your friends. There's also no way to have "civil discourse" when the algorithm prioritizes the hottest takes as opposed to more reasonable arguments.
- narag 5y ago
  There's another factor that I haven't see mentioned: I have no interest in most sections of the news. And even if I select only some kind of news, say "computers" I'm not very interested in consumer's hardware or commercial programs including apps or games, just programming, security and little more. But social media live on ads. They tend to promote contents that cater to wide audiences. If I'm only interested in a few niches, social media are a big waste of time. The contents and the discussions around them.

agumonkey 5y ago

aren't the algorithms only amplifying the average tendencies ?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Nextgrid 5y ago
Potentially, but that's still not an argument in its favour. Why should there be an "algorithm" to begin with? Unless you have thousands of "friends", you do not need an algorithm to keep up with them, a chronological timeline works just fine. If anything, maybe the algorithm should do the opposite and discourage arguments?
ManuelKiessling 5y ago
Maybe over time this moves the average in a worse direction.

powerslacker 5y ago

> There was a period of time where social media was just starting out where the filter has essentially been removed (anyone can easily join and start producing & consuming content) but harmful content wasn't yet encouraged. Prior to social media there was usenet, specialized forums, imageboards such as 4chan, and mass use of IRC. The average social media user would recoil in horror at the 'divisive' content that was common to that time period. REAL neonazis spread their message with impunity, anarchists gathered and distributed tutorials on how to make homemade weaponry, illegal pornography was rampant, and mass shooters were glorified. The 'divisive' content of today is quite tame and is focused primarily on promoting the interests of one of a handful of relatively similar political parties over the others. My point being that social media has amplified the voices of billions, but the money machine behind it has toned the violent poltical rhetoric of the net down to a dull roar. Anyone claiming otherwise is either misinformed or has something they want to sell you. </rant>

escapedmoose 5y ago
Many of those extra-divisive platforms are still around in one form or another, and are likely bigger than they were in the past (thanks again to reduced barriers to entry). But a normal person can avoid engaging in those platforms entirely by just… not going on them. Imo the danger of modern social media’s algorithmic feeds is that it draws in otherwise perfectly normal people, who would never voluntarily seek out the divisive content that gets promoted on their feeds. So now we have the worst of both worlds: platforms with violent political rhetoric are still highly available to those who would seek them out, and more average folks are drawn to seek them out by the “dull roar” that draws them in on the major social platforms.
- powerslacker 5y ago
  > platforms with violent political rhetoric are still highly available to those who would seek them out I would submit that they are no longer highly available or their core userbase has moved on to the "dark web". The genius of the centralized social media platform is that it lives on advertising dollars. The advertisers will pull back whenever a platform becomes too uncontrolled. This was the case when Pewdiepie's accidental Nazi reference video was released. A massive pullback in advertising dollars 'forced' YouTube to reconsider its previously lax content policies and policing. That's not to say that YouTube is some pleasant walled garden, but rather that those creating videos and making real money from the site are incentivized to police their own behavior and rhetoric. Most people talking about 'divisive' content are talking around the Trump/QAnon fiasco. Which is very different from the internet I grew up on where even on a 'kids site' you would often see users calling for outright genocide of specific racial groups.

eightysixfour 5y ago

> Not only has the filter now been removed, but the new entrants have been encouraged (through algorithms which promote divisive content) to produce and consume harmful content because it increases "engagement". I agreed with this until I started seeing more information about how much divisive content there is on whatsapp, which isn’t algorithmic or driven by anything other than people, similar to old email forward chains. We don’t like the algorithmic feeds and everything else because they’re a big mirror that just reflects back how humans act, and we don’t like what we see. The algorithms themselves aren’t the problem IMO.

narag 5y ago
But Whatsapp doesn't promote any content. It's all private conversations, isn't it? I would say that Whatsapp is a big mirror, not of how humans act, but of how humans behave in other social media.
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  That’s my point - whatsapp doesn’t promote content, but it is still one of the largest distributors of disinformation content. This is a clear supporting argument that people share that without algorithmic any help.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Not only has the filter now been removed, but the new entrants have been encouraged (through algorithms which promote divisive content) to produce and consume harmful content because it increases "engagement". I think this narrative has been blown out of proportion. The “algorithm” has become an easy stand-in to blame nebulous programmers for people choosing to view content they want to see. The “algorithm” isn’t literally a model trained to recognize divisive content and promote it to as many people as possible. It doesn’t have motives or intentions. It’s literally just a recommendation engine that suggests similar content to people. Platforms without algorithms are still full of divisive content which spreads virally. Some of the worst content on the internet won’t be found on Facebook or other moderated platforms at all. You have to work to get to it, and people do the work to get there. No algorithms to blame, just people. We really need to stop giving people a pass and stop piling our complaints on to the “algorithm”. People who make bad choices and consume bad content are doing so on their own volition, and we need to treat it as such if you want to make progress on the solution. Railing against faceless personifications of algorithms isn’t going to get us anywhere on solving these social problems.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> The “algorithm” isn’t literally a model trained to recognize divisive content and promote it to as many people as possible. It doesn’t have motives or intentions. It’s literally just a recommendation engine that suggests similar content to people. Mostly agreed, though I don't believe "similarity" is the only factor - "engagement" is also a factor, likely a big one considering the business model of the company. Yes, the algorithm doesn't have intentions or political bias (yet?), however it doesn't take a genius to infer that divisive content will generate more engagement than other, mundane content, and even more so when the algorithm has been deployed to production and there's real-world data to prove this. > Platforms without algorithms are still full of divisive content which spreads virally. Without algorithms the only way this content would spread is for people to explicitly re-share it to their friends - it will not pop up "organically" otherwise. You will need to explicitly attach your name to it if you were to share it, and be ready to defend it and bear the risk of being ostracized from your group. This also means that as long as you choose your Facebook "friends" carefully, you can curate your feed and keep craziness or other irrelevant content at bay. > Some of the worst content on the internet won’t be found on Facebook or other moderated platforms at all. You have to work to get to it, and people do the work to get there. No algorithms to blame, just people. And thankfully that worst content has (yet?) to make it to my non-technical friends' Facebook feeds, so it seems like the system is working as designed? Twisted people will keep finding & producing said content, but it's contained and will not make its way onto mainstream platforms without explicit efforts from those people and everyone else on the network to re-share it multiple times. > People who make bad choices and consume bad content are doing so on their own volition Disagreed. People went onto Facebook (or other social media) to keep in touch with their friends & family, but over time, the algorithm was locking them into an echo chamber full of whatever divisive, harmful, false or outright crazy content it could find as long as it was driving "engagement" numbers up. If you could travel back in time and ask some of the people that stormed the Capitol or are forever lost in the QAnon conspiracy whether they thought they would do so when they initially joined Facebook, I bet they would call you crazy. In fact, I bet a large chunk of those people are old enough to know the "old" Internet and yet didn't turn to extremism until the craziness was delivered to them in a nice, harmless-looking format.