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Maximizing community engagement, trolling and advertising are related. They're different heads of the same multiheaded demon. All 3 are concerned with attentio
by swayvil 4y ago
Maximizing community engagement, trolling and advertising are related. They're different heads of the same multiheaded demon.
All 3 are concerned with attention. Are hungry for it.
If social media could be optimized to deliver engaging conversation to everybody then the demon would be slain. Because the hunger would be satisfied.
Does that sound right?
- actionfromafar 4y agoEngaging conversation is not as intense as raging. The hunger can never be satisfied.
- sfink 4y agoSeems reasonable to me, if you reduce it to putting the demon to sleep. The demon is always there. A forum filled with engaging, productive conversation can and will slide back to toxic crap if there isn't something keeping it in check. It may be "optimized" for engaging conversation, but what does that mean in practice? If it's fully or mostly automated, then it's relying on metrics, and humans will always always always find a way to maximize the score :: effort ratio of any metric. Low effort is incompatible with engaging productive conversation. If it's done fully or mostly manually, then that means actively keeping that demon snoozing.