3 ms·

This is the central flaw of social media itself. As engineer by training this is positive feedback with a wide bandwidth loop gain which is ALWAYS a recipe of

This is the central flaw of social media itself. As engineer by training this is positive feedback with a wide bandwidth loop gain which is ALWAYS a recipe of unstable system behavior. Things that could "fix" social media: 1. Slow down the speed of replies - e.g. 24 hours instead of seconds 2. Reduce the gain - limit how many people can see your reply or post to a narrower range of people you know instead of broadcasting to the universe. This is exactly what you do with feedback systems like amplifiers or analog circuits to control their stability and prevent unstable behavior. :-)

pessimizer 4y ago
I don't think it has much to do with social media, other than if you were in the same physical space as many online influencers and trying to have a mundane conversation with them, there would be so many behavioral red flags that you would never follow them anywhere. Instead, it's the same effect as "nobody gets fired for buying IBM." If you follow the crowd, you won't get punished even if what you're doing turns out to have horrific consequences. At best, one could argue that echo chambers fool mob participants into overestimating the size of the crowd, but people on twitter are fully aware that there are people who hate them, and that they hate, and the most unhinged of them spend all day following those enemies around lobbing insults at them, and trying to get them fired or hurt. There's a significant and illustrative overlap between public opinion-havers and tv/press pundits: pundits got fired for being right about Iraq, CIA black sites, etc. Everybody who was wrong about those things is still being trotted around as if they were an expert on something. Because this is a game of playing it safe, not a game of truth. If something is dangerous, like deviating from the crowd or the boss, do the other thing. If you see a crowd of wolves surrounding a sheep, be a wolf, not a sheep.

pessimizer 4y ago

I don't think it has much to do with social media, other than if you were in the same physical space as many online influencers and trying to have a mundane conversation with them, there would be so many behavioral red flags that you would never follow them anywhere. Instead, it's the same effect as "nobody gets fired for buying IBM." If you follow the crowd, you won't get punished even if what you're doing turns out to have horrific consequences. At best, one could argue that echo chambers fool mob participants into overestimating the size of the crowd, but people on twitter are fully aware that there are people who hate them, and that they hate, and the most unhinged of them spend all day following those enemies around lobbing insults at them, and trying to get them fired or hurt. There's a significant and illustrative overlap between public opinion-havers and tv/press pundits: pundits got fired for being right about Iraq, CIA black sites, etc. Everybody who was wrong about those things is still being trotted around as if they were an expert on something. Because this is a game of playing it safe, not a game of truth. If something is dangerous, like deviating from the crowd or the boss, do the other thing. If you see a crowd of wolves surrounding a sheep, be a wolf, not a sheep.