14 ms·

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the

by ufo 4y ago

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms whatsoever (other than invisible spam filters). I think Yishan is hitting the nail on the head by focusing the discussion on user behavior instead of on the content itself.

MikePlacid 4y ago
> I think Yishan is nailing the nail on the head by focusing the discussion on user behavior instead of on the content itself. But user behavior problem can be solved cheaply, easily and in a scalable way: Give each user an ability to form the personal filter. Basically, all what I need is: 1. I want to read what person A writes - always. 2. I want to read what person B writes - always, except when talking to person C. 3. I want to peek through a filter of the person I like - to discover more interesting to me persons. 4. Show me random people posts like 3-4 (configurable) times per day. This is basically how my spinal brain worked in unmoderated Fido-over-Usenet groups (Upd: yes, this “oh how everyone will die without moderation” problem is that old). Some server help will be great, sure, but there is nothing here that is expensive or not scalable. PS: centralized filtering is needed only when you are going after some content, not noise.
- ufo 4y ago
  I disagree, we can't frame this discussion on only the content. My whatsapp "feed" is doing just fine. The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. It hurts when I meet in real life a friend that you haven't met in a while, and then find out that they've been radicalized. The radical Bolsonaro whatsapp groups are a mix of top down and grass roots content. On one end there is the central "propaganda office", or other top political articulators. On the bottom are the grassroots group chats: neightborhoods, churches, biker communities, office mates, etc. Memes and viral content flow in both directions. The contents and messages that ressonate in the lower levels are actively distributed by the central articulators, which have a hierarchy of group chats to circulate new propaganda as widely as possible. You can see this happen in real time when a political conundrum happens,e.g a corruption scandal. The central office will A-B test various messages in their group chats and then the one that resonates better with their base gets amplified and suddenly they manage to "change the topic" on the news. The end result is that we just had 4 years of political chaos, where the modus operandi of the goverment was to put out fires by deflecting the public discourse whenever a new crisis emerged. It's not merely a content problem that could be solved by a better filtration algorithm. It's a deeper issue of how social media can affect human behavior. How quickly ideas can spread, how easy it became for people to self-organize into "bubbles", and so on.
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    > The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. If you do not like hateful politics, just filter them out - of your own feed. My solution, if implemented, will give you exactly that opportunity.
    - acdha 4y ago
      How precisely does that protect you from the people who are seeking those out? Filtering your feed doesn’t cause them not to vote against their interests, firebomb your store, or attempt to assassinate leaders.
      - didericis 4y ago
        People are not seeking those groups out of nowhere. Most of them are getting pushed there from automated platforms bombarding them with things they can't stand. The automated outrage machines are what radicalize people, not the private message groups. By the time you have private message groups propagating the same messaging the damage has already been done. To get people out, you need to cut off the source of the outrage and soothe whatever fear is being ramped up. Censoring the outrage and dismissing/patronizing people from a position of authority doesn't work, it just acts as an accelerant. I think the crazy groups will sputter out if there's enough space for venting, free association, and ability for the average person to turn off things they don't want to see. I think that last point is the key. Millions of people are bombarded with things they really don't like in systems they have no way to really manage themselves. The legitimate complaints will filter up and out of the crazy circles if people are allowed to form their own groups and don't feel forced to pack themselves together around the loudest people who can given them a voice on the big automated feeds they don't really understand. People have a much better chance at effectively communicating with their neighbor or family member or old friend with a different perspective than a stranger online with a different perspective, and they are much more likely to engage when in a frame of mind that will actually accept differences of opinion if they are managing their own connections and exposure themselves.
- slg 4y ago
  Personal user filtering can't be the only form of moderation. There is some content that I don't care if it exists as long as I don't see it. Spam is one example of this. However there is some content that its existence on the platform makes me less likely to use the platform even if I never see it. I'm sure Yishan knows this from his time at Reddit. They seem to go through a controversy about this every year or two[1] with most of the offenders focussed on either hate or porn. /r/jailbait is one of the early examples that comes to mind. It hosted risqué, but apparently legal photos of underage girls. Reddit couldn't just tell people "Don't visit those subreddits if you don't want to see that content". Most people found the content objectionable enough to want it removed completely. Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    > Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. To me it’s kind of perverse logic. If a platform hosts persons that some powerful group of people want to be removed - than I can trust the platform to less likely to remove me, when and if I cross some powerful or just loud and anger people. Like: there is a lot of people in the US that I do not like, but I rather live in a country with 14th Amendment than in a country without one. I’ve tried both :)
    - slg 4y ago
      It’s funny you mention the 14th Amendment. It is a little over 150 years old. For the first century interracial marriage wasn't on the list of protections provided by the 14th. When enough people consistently say you shouldn't be allowed to do something, we won't allow you to do it. When enough people say you should be allowed, you will be. Maybe that is cynical, but that is life in a democracy. Churchill was right about it being the worst form of government.
      - 4y ago
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Also: 1(b) I want to read what person A writes about #hashtag 1(c) I never want to see person A's posts about #hashtag The latter can be bluntly accomplished by hiding everything about #hashtag, but sometimes you don't want to do that (you still want to see stuff on the topic, just not written by that person).
- vintermann 4y ago
  This is the amazing thing Yishan misses. He claims there's no difference between spam filtering, moderation and censorship. How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? Ask, can you consent to this? For spam filtering, the answer is obviously hell yes. That's pretty much how we define spam: stuff we don't want, and which essentially no one wants. Moderation is when it's still about you and what you want for yourself, but where you concede that some people may want it. And it may be more or less OK that some people want it, but this is not the place for it. If you don't want religion or politics in your game discussion group, that's moderation. Censorship is about controlling what other people want, in order to shape their opinions and beliefs. You can't coherently consent to it. You're not worried that there's some magically seductive piece of propaganda that will turn you into a Nazi, or a furry for that matter. No, you're worried that there's a seductive piece of propaganda that will work on other people. That's the defining aspect of censorship, that it's for other people's sake, not your own. Now, censors will often claim that they're only doing it for themselves, that they just get so disgusted by furries (or whatever) that they just don't want to deal with it. A way to test that, is to see how transparent they are about their supposed moderation. If it's moderation, being transparent about it is perfectly fine. But for the censor, transparency is not possible, because even letting the poor flock know that the seductive information exists, could tempt them to go look for it. Another way, of course, is whether they are content with moderating their own spaces. People that try their damndest to eliminate the thing they hate from existence with DDoS attacks, targeted harassment, or preventing communication they're not even a party to, are obviously censorious, not merely "moderating". Now, there's a separate discussion of when, if ever, it's appropriate to censor. Maybe if we're talking about people who can't meaningfully consent and are easily manipulated (i.e. children). Maybe if there's some sort of existential issue at stake (e.g. national security). But let's not pretend, like Yishan Wong does, that consent doesn't matter.
  - astrange 4y ago
    > How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? That would be two years (2012-14).
- astrange 4y ago
  This doesn't work and it seems like you ignored his entire point. If moderation is being done to reduce the tone of angry conversations, then you have to actually effectively reduce it. If every person out there is running a personal filter list and ignoring your mods' decisions then there is no way to do that and the emotional state is completely uncontrollable. Which you'll find you won't enjoy. You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours; surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use?
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’ve participated in such kind of discussions in 1990s when we were moving our Fido group to Usenet. Fido was very strictly moderated, since data was carried over people’s personal phone lines and nobody wanted to spend money on carrying garbage. But Usenet has no such restrictions and eventually we decided to go unmoderated, because no matter whom we elected - and we knew these people rather personally over the years - moderator’s powers were always abused. Going unmoderated was scary to me at first - I was for keeping the moderation, yes, but the experience turned out to be quite enjoyable - I just needed to teach my spinal brain those simple rules I’ve outlined. Now to your arguments. Why on earth I would want to control your (for example) emotional state? You are a grown up person, your medical decisions are yours to take, not mine. Yes, angry conversations are long and stupid and are always reduced to “inventive” cursing - but a lot of people seem to enjoy this style of “argument” - who am I to stop them? Why stop others’ fun? All I want is - not to read and preferably not even to see such kind of “discussions”. > You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours But I can. All I ask is just some help from the server. > surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use? It’s much easier than you think. I do not object to people hiring cleaning companies to clean their houses, but I prefer to clean my house myself. And this Dyson handheld helps very much. Same goes for moderation - why delegate this dirty work to others, especially when I’ve observed how even reasonable people I personally know tend to abuse this power?
    - astrange 4y ago
      Yes, I do remember Usenet - not very well! That was a while ago. I wasn't a heavy user, but it was a bit of a smaller world back then - that tends to make people behave a bit better (obviously not always…), but there were also fewer other places to go if you got tired of it, it was mainly for personal use, and there wasn't a feeling that someone "owned" it. These days if a forum has bad vibes people will want to leave it, and there's more of a customer service attitude because they know someone runs it. (Or for a professional/project mailing list, a non-abusive-workplace attitude maybe.) Similarly the people running it feel more responsible so they want to mod it more. It's mostly just annoying if there's a lot of intense arguments on it, not necessarily bad for business, but if they get really bad there's the worry it drives away new users and eventually gets you legal attention over users, say, stalking each other, or planning crimes, or posting terrorism threats. > It’s much easier than you think. It was in the 90s, I just don't think killfile technology has kept up with the rate of modern posting on something like Twitter. There is block and mute but there's not, say, OCR to stop people from screenshotting you and attracting new harassers for years after the fact. Though I think Twitter just laid off all their mods so we'll see how it goes.
originalvichy 4y ago
I actually went into a deep dive of any statistical efforts that showed bans on twitter based on American political leanings. Apparently in both studies I found the most statistically significant user behavior for bans was if the user had a tendency to post articles from low quality online ”news” sites. So essentially even the political controversy around moderation boils down to the fact that one side, the right, is happily posting low quality news/fake news that they either get banned for disinformation or other rule-breaking behavior. https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5 https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5
- leereeves 4y ago
  The first concern is identifying "fake news". One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, and the NY Post was accused of being a low quality site. Now we know it's true. On the other hand, the Steele Dossier was considered legitimate news at the time and "many of the dossier’s most explosive claims...have never materialized or have been proved false."[1]. So I'd like to know exactly what the study's authors considered low-quality news, but unfortunately I couldn't find a list in the paper you linked. In my experience, most people tend to declare sources "high-quality" or "low-quality" based on whether they share the same worldview. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-private-spies-news-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-pr...
  - haberman 4y ago
    I had the same skepticism as you, but the study authors did attempt to be fair by letting a set of politically balanced laypeople (equal number Democrat and Republican) adjudicate the trustworthiness of sites. They also had journalists rate the sites, but they present the results of both results (layperson-rated and journalist-rated). I wish they had included the list so we could see for ourselves. It's still possible that there are flaws in the study. But the it appears to take the concern of fairness more seriously than most.
    - leereeves 4y ago
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
This to me is a vital point. One of the things rarely touched on about Twitter / FB et al are that they are transmission platforms and then a discovery / recommendation layer on top. The "algorithm" is this layer on top and it is assumed that this actively sorts people into their bubbles and people passively follow - there is much discussion about splitting the companies AT&T style to improve matters. But countries where much of the discourse is on WhatsApp do not have WhatsApp to do this recommendation - it is done IRL (organically) - and people actively sort themselves. The problem is not (just) the social media companies. It lies in us. The solution if we are all mired in the gutter of social media, is to look up and reach for the stars.
- avivo 4y ago
  I think this gets almost all the way there but not quite — there is one more vital point: How we act depends on our environment and incentives. It is possible to build environments and incentives that make us better versions of ourselves. Just like GPT-3, we can all be primed (and we all are primed all the time, by every system we use). The way we got from small tribes to huge civilizations is by figuring out how to create those systems and environments. Yes, the algorithm is not the problem alone, but a good algorithm can help fix the problems — since it creates the "loss function" (the incentives) for the humans using the platform (I go into that in more detail here https://twitter.com/metaviv/status/1529879799862378497 https://twitter.com/metaviv/status/1529879799862378497 and here https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bridging-based-ranking https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bridging-based-rank... for those who are curious). So it's not about "reaching for the stars" or complaining about how humanity is too flawed. It's about carefully building the systems that take us to those stars!
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    What a great reply thank you. i agree
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    But there are communities that make it work and I believe these are negatively affected by general rules we try to establish for social media through some systems. I don't believe any system can be a solution, it isn't a requirement for a lot of communities either. I don't know what differentiates these groups from others, probably more detachment from content and statements. There is also simply a difference between people that embraced social media to put themselves out there and ghosts that have multiple pseudonyms. Content creators are a different beast, they have to be more public on the net, but that comes with different problems again. I believe it is behavior and education that would make social media work, but not with the usual approaches. I don't think crass expressions with forbidden words or topics are a problem, on the contrary they can be therapeutic. Just saying because this will be the first thing some people will try to change. Ban some language, ban some content, the usual stuff.
didericis 4y ago
Everything in that thread seems correct, but it doesn't address why its so bad on social media sufficiently, as those philosophical language and principal problems apply to all forms of written communication that have managed to avoid the problems of social media, including wide open written communication (remember actual bulletin boards instead of virtual bulletin boards? Wide open text forums are not a new thing) I'm very confident at this point that the problem is the enormous size of the rooms where everyone is talking. I don't think user behavior will ever be better in a sufficiently large room. Effective communication requires shared context which is impossible to establish when a room is sufficiently large and sufficiently diverse. What we're seeing with increased political polarization is I think an attempt by most people to differentiate themselves into groups of like minded people not just so they can form echo chambers, but so they can actually talk and be heard, and hear what other people are saying. You don't get that when the room becomes global in scale, you just get a bunch of noise, as is mentioned. I think we're in a particularly nasty situation in tech because most of the people involved in creating and administering these platforms have a huge blindspot when it comes to the lack of context hopping ability in the average person, because the people that tend to get into tech tend to be very open to global connectivity and actually do have somewhat of a capacity to hop around and absorb a huge range of different contexts (although much more superficially than I think they realize/that's the price of extreme openness). I am also fairly confident the solution is to create user managed and federated platforms. The problem would I think solve itself if people were better able to control what online social groups they expose themselves to. We've been organizing ourselves for thousands of years into a hierarchical networks of different families/towns/cities/states because those are the only long term stable systems that can deal with the huge variations in contextual difference between people. You can still have egalitarian cosmopolitan global villages for people who want that, and you can still have emissaries and exchange programs and global shared interest channels and encourage cooperation amongst different groups and avoid conflict, but I think the idea of a singular all encompassing global village was always a terribly thought out, completely untenable idea that would never work at scale. I was going to write an article on this a long time ago after a similar thread came up here, but I don't have any clout and ended up getting swamped in other things, so I never did. Properly making this case would also require a lot of research and historical comparison to really evaluate, but the more time passes, the stronger and stronger my hunch is that we need to do almost exactly the opposite of what most people seem to think we should and allow people to differentiate themselves instead of forcing them to be together and all play by the same rules. The echo chambers will become less echoey if you allow people to build their own and feel safe enough to poke their heads out of when they feel sufficiently understood in their corner. The echo chambers are the result of gamed automated feeds where people are trying to signal I want my space by pulling harder and harder in a direction that makes them less and less likely to be bombarded with stuff they don't want entering their space involuntarily.
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
The same kind of polarizing, brinkmanship-like content that people complain comes from social media algorithms is present on spades on every non-algorithmic community I've spent time on: from HN, to Usenet, to Matrix/Discord rooms, to 4chan. I used to agree with this consensus but even after trying to concertedly avoid these platforms I find this kind of content throughout every English-speaking community even on topics that aren't politics. I've changed my viewpoint; while algorithms don't help, I think getting angry at them is just shooting the messenger.
- purplerabbit 4y ago
  Are you saying that you've come across non-English-speaking communities that don't have this problem? If so, could you elaborate?
darig 4y ago
photochemsyn 4y ago
This point he made aligns with non-specific features of user behavior: > "In fact, once again, I challenge you to think about it this way: could you make your content moderation decisions even if you didnʻt understand the language they were being spoken in?" However, I think discussions of controversial subjects often fall under 'this content is a problem' type of thinking. I was banned from all the major Reddit Covid subreddits for politely noting that a lab leak was entirely plausible, even likely. I was banned from their major news subreddits for regularly discussing the economic agendas behind the vast majority of military invasions in both the present day and historically - for example, I'd note that the USA-Russia split seems to have got started in 2003 when Putin rejected an Exxon bid for majority control of Russia oil production, and then started jailing the Wall Street-linked oligarchs like Khodorkovsky. I was also banned from the Ukraine subreddit for noting that a negotiated settlement to the regional war was inevitable, even if Ukraine had to relinquish some territory inhabited mainly by Russia-speaking citizens. Banned from Neoliberal, for pointing out failures of neoliberalism. Etc. In none of those cases did I start hurling nasty insults, spam-posting, etc. Clearly those subreddits and their mods have a particular 'keep the conversation on our preferred message' agenda, i.e. 'align with the hive mind or be excommunicated'. (Eventually I tired of this and deleted my account at Reddit). Now, if Elon can change Twitter such that polite, even-tempered but off-desired-message content isn't actively suppressed, it will be a much better platform. However, will advertisers and other sources of revenue be pleased with such changes? That may be a major factor in how it all plays out.
- RugnirViking 4y ago
  you've been banned from EVERY major subreddit on all of those topics and you were just "politely noting" things? I struggle to believe you. Especially the one about noting economic causes of war...
  - dns_snek 4y ago
    You're surprised by the fact that subreddit moderators abuse their power to remove content and eventually ban users who post content they disagree with? Dozens if not hundreds of popular subreddits even have bots in place that will automatically ban you from subreddit (A) if you ever engage on any "wrong-think" subreddit (B) in any capacity, even if you're not a member of subreddit (A).
jackcosgrove 4y ago
The problem is not the algorithms. It is the internet itself. The internet enables multicast communication, whereas before we could only afford broadcast communication. Broadcast requires the same message to be sent to all, so it forces that message to be moderate and non-polarizing. We always harbored the ability to be polarized according to our beliefs, but the technology didn't yet exist to allow that.
- taneq 4y ago
  Multicast communication is fine. It's the humans that are the problem. :P
- vasvir 4y ago
  I believe the underlying problem is the actual human programming deep in our genes. People tend to get organized in clans (i.e. football teams in Europe, political parties etc) and to host polarized opinions such as conspiracy theories that tend to question the status quo. There are two reasons for that: 1. Psychological Reason: It is tempting for an non educated man to adopt an opinion that derides existing knowledge because these guys now feel taller and not at a disadvantage when confronted with the more elaborate and complex nature of the truth or with educated people. 2. Biological Reason: People polarize against common accepted truths (i.e. Covid) as a safety precaution measure against humanity annihilation due to Lemming behavior. So in the case the majority belief ends up in a catastrophic event the 10%, 5%, 1%, 0.001% minority will survive.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    This seems to imply that the educated man is always right and should not be questioned by others. Regardless of the education level of the questioner (or of the educated man), I can't see that being a good thing.
    - vasvir 4y ago
      I didn't want to imply that. Educated people can be wrong alright. However really educated people are rarely absolute in their positions because they know that the world is not black and white and almost always the answer is "it depends" and "let's see it from the other side". However polarizing views are attracting to non educated minds because they often give their believers simplistic views, potential enemies and pseudo-arguments that can nail the other "educated" or even just common-sense people. It's frightening really to see in action the amount of flattering it goes on in such cases.
Spooky23 4y ago
It’s more nuanced than that. Social media has created watering holes for everything. Once communities of people who earnestly believe crazy shit. If you believed in alien lizard people controlling the world or in 1980, your options to collaborate with fellow lunatics were limited. Today, that’s a real thing with followers.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Not that limited. People like LaRouche managed.
  - blodkorv 4y ago
    yes but not anyone with an computing device could. Today he can easily start a group on social media and spread this thoughts and idea.
t-3 4y ago
USians are heavily propagandized to believe that everyone else is too stupid to form their own opinions and is being manipulated by malicious media and elite cabals to think the wrong things. So we see demands for censorship, meddling with school curricula, etc. Isolation from opposing views due to pandemic lockdowns + remote work boom + network effect helps to keep the divide from healing.
DeathArrow 4y ago
The algorithms are tuned to vastly extend the time users spend on a network. They are going to moderate stuff if it improves the time spent on that network. Of course there are political reasons for which algorithms also do content filtering and censorship but the money reason trumps all: the more time you spend on a network, the more ads you see, the more time you spend on a network, the more content you produce and the more you interact with others and that produces a smell that will attract other small insects which will be served ads, will produce more content and interaction.
pyinstallwoes 4y ago
In a form of putting this at a level of meta-tiers (no, not the company, ugh, why did they ruin one of my favorite words): 1. Is information a neutral abstract unit? 2. Is information as an abstract unit charged with a particular strange attractor? 3. Does language/words hold a particular charge? 4. Is language the life-form and humans the host-form?
- kubanczyk 4y ago
  What's a "charge" or "charged"? Examples?
  - pyinstallwoes 4y ago
    If I say something and you have an emotional response and or behavior response that contributes towards negative emotions/behavior vs positive emotions/behavior. Beyond the obvious, let's just suspend what we think is common sense. "I love you" vs "I hate you" There is a charge associated with both those sentences and probably at the discrete unit word level which may be associated with particular vowel structures/sounds. I've vaguely looked into a "universal language" of phenotypes/sounds/grammars. I believe it was like 16 and associated roughly 16 base sounds to 16 emotions and may even have found some evidence for cross-species use.
gverrilla 4y ago
Brazilian here. This explanation is indeed lacking. You cannot look at social media platforms in an isolate manner: there is overlap between users, and it's not like all users are equal - a small minority (which accepts new entrants through viral tickets) is the one with more weigh on creating/disseminating content. Saying whatsapp is dominant is a little lacking: it has the greatest number of users, DAO, etc, yes... But whatsapp is more fore social-bubbles: it's hard to interact with people you don't know (unless you join a group, but then again you will only be there if it's accessible through your bubble); and also there are no paid ads - we know there is an industry of fake newsvertisements where people PAY to establish top-down content by force. So it goes something like this for a user, using a real anecdote as an example: 1) Get exposed to content they never seen before, like let's say "The UN in reality is run by satanist pedophiles". This is more likely to happen outside of one's bubble - therefore not on whatsapp. 2) Get exposed again and again, either to the content, or high-reach influencers, or ads, or a mixture of the 3. 3) Search google for "UN satanist pedophile". Now you can read "real theory" by "very legitimate people" in long form explaining the proofs, history, motivation, etc for the conspiracy. 4) Radicalization 5) Now you need validation for your behavior/beliefs. 6) You identify and approach or get approached by liked-minded lunatics. 7) They invite you to the whatsapp group "only for believers". 8) Now you feel part of a group and ready to "act". 9) You take part in a nazi rally [a] a: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlQkEAfX_xA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlQkEAfX_xA
- neves 4y ago
  It is impressive how these are coordinated.
neves 4y ago
And in WhatsApp groups there is no moderation to prevent the obnoxious behavior described in the thread. The far right fabricates militants to reproduce these bad behaviors and pollute every discussion group.
specialist 4y ago
Polarization predates social media. Polarization, partisanship, and radicalization receive a great deal of academic attention. (I can't speak to the public mind, or political hobbyists.) The book Why We Are Polarized [2020] by Ezra Klein surveys what was known at the time. Nationalization of politics, consolidation of media, death of journalism, election reform, campaign spending. TLDR: Politics used to have weird coalitions, where party was not strongly associated with positions. Then people sorted. Then people's identities (positions) fused into a kind of super identity. Now party is a strong predictor of position. Rachel Bitecofer https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer researched (negative) partisanship and used to talk about it. I don't know of an otherwise good intro. People have always self-radicalized. Pamphlets and zines. Social media made it a self renewing pandemic. Root cause is probably a combo of algorithmic hate machines and social isolation. (People are increasingly anxious and isolated. These para-social relationships fill the void.)
ngcc_hk 4y ago
Thought TikTok algorithm should be a concern.
kjkjadksj 4y ago
The big tell that its not all social medias fault is that the narrative changes with the decade on the exact cause even if the outcome of radicalization is the same. 25 years ago people were blaming AM radio hosts for political radicalization. The only truth imo is that radicalization is highly profitable so media will favor it on any platform that is in vogue.
ravenstine 4y ago
I wonder what makes HN so different in this regard. Is it because social media ties everything to identity while HN puts little emphasis on identity?

by ufo 4y ago

MikePlacid 4y ago

> I think Yishan is nailing the nail on the head by focusing the discussion on user behavior instead of on the content itself. But user behavior problem can be solved cheaply, easily and in a scalable way: Give each user an ability to form the personal filter. Basically, all what I need is: 1. I want to read what person A writes - always. 2. I want to read what person B writes - always, except when talking to person C. 3. I want to peek through a filter of the person I like - to discover more interesting to me persons. 4. Show me random people posts like 3-4 (configurable) times per day. This is basically how my spinal brain worked in unmoderated Fido-over-Usenet groups (Upd: yes, this “oh how everyone will die without moderation” problem is that old). Some server help will be great, sure, but there is nothing here that is expensive or not scalable. PS: centralized filtering is needed only when you are going after some content, not noise.

ufo 4y ago
I disagree, we can't frame this discussion on only the content. My whatsapp "feed" is doing just fine. The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. It hurts when I meet in real life a friend that you haven't met in a while, and then find out that they've been radicalized. The radical Bolsonaro whatsapp groups are a mix of top down and grass roots content. On one end there is the central "propaganda office", or other top political articulators. On the bottom are the grassroots group chats: neightborhoods, churches, biker communities, office mates, etc. Memes and viral content flow in both directions. The contents and messages that ressonate in the lower levels are actively distributed by the central articulators, which have a hierarchy of group chats to circulate new propaganda as widely as possible. You can see this happen in real time when a political conundrum happens,e.g a corruption scandal. The central office will A-B test various messages in their group chats and then the one that resonates better with their base gets amplified and suddenly they manage to "change the topic" on the news. The end result is that we just had 4 years of political chaos, where the modus operandi of the goverment was to put out fires by deflecting the public discourse whenever a new crisis emerged. It's not merely a content problem that could be solved by a better filtration algorithm. It's a deeper issue of how social media can affect human behavior. How quickly ideas can spread, how easy it became for people to self-organize into "bubbles", and so on.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  > The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. If you do not like hateful politics, just filter them out - of your own feed. My solution, if implemented, will give you exactly that opportunity.
  - acdha 4y ago
    How precisely does that protect you from the people who are seeking those out? Filtering your feed doesn’t cause them not to vote against their interests, firebomb your store, or attempt to assassinate leaders.
    - didericis 4y ago
      People are not seeking those groups out of nowhere. Most of them are getting pushed there from automated platforms bombarding them with things they can't stand. The automated outrage machines are what radicalize people, not the private message groups. By the time you have private message groups propagating the same messaging the damage has already been done. To get people out, you need to cut off the source of the outrage and soothe whatever fear is being ramped up. Censoring the outrage and dismissing/patronizing people from a position of authority doesn't work, it just acts as an accelerant. I think the crazy groups will sputter out if there's enough space for venting, free association, and ability for the average person to turn off things they don't want to see. I think that last point is the key. Millions of people are bombarded with things they really don't like in systems they have no way to really manage themselves. The legitimate complaints will filter up and out of the crazy circles if people are allowed to form their own groups and don't feel forced to pack themselves together around the loudest people who can given them a voice on the big automated feeds they don't really understand. People have a much better chance at effectively communicating with their neighbor or family member or old friend with a different perspective than a stranger online with a different perspective, and they are much more likely to engage when in a frame of mind that will actually accept differences of opinion if they are managing their own connections and exposure themselves.
slg 4y ago
Personal user filtering can't be the only form of moderation. There is some content that I don't care if it exists as long as I don't see it. Spam is one example of this. However there is some content that its existence on the platform makes me less likely to use the platform even if I never see it. I'm sure Yishan knows this from his time at Reddit. They seem to go through a controversy about this every year or two[1] with most of the offenders focussed on either hate or porn. /r/jailbait is one of the early examples that comes to mind. It hosted risqué, but apparently legal photos of underage girls. Reddit couldn't just tell people "Don't visit those subreddits if you don't want to see that content". Most people found the content objectionable enough to want it removed completely. Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  > Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. To me it’s kind of perverse logic. If a platform hosts persons that some powerful group of people want to be removed - than I can trust the platform to less likely to remove me, when and if I cross some powerful or just loud and anger people. Like: there is a lot of people in the US that I do not like, but I rather live in a country with 14th Amendment than in a country without one. I’ve tried both :)
  - slg 4y ago
    It’s funny you mention the 14th Amendment. It is a little over 150 years old. For the first century interracial marriage wasn't on the list of protections provided by the 14th. When enough people consistently say you shouldn't be allowed to do something, we won't allow you to do it. When enough people say you should be allowed, you will be. Maybe that is cynical, but that is life in a democracy. Churchill was right about it being the worst form of government.
    - 4y ago
gnicholas 4y ago
Also: 1(b) I want to read what person A writes about #hashtag 1(c) I never want to see person A's posts about #hashtag The latter can be bluntly accomplished by hiding everything about #hashtag, but sometimes you don't want to do that (you still want to see stuff on the topic, just not written by that person).
vintermann 4y ago
This is the amazing thing Yishan misses. He claims there's no difference between spam filtering, moderation and censorship. How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? Ask, can you consent to this? For spam filtering, the answer is obviously hell yes. That's pretty much how we define spam: stuff we don't want, and which essentially no one wants. Moderation is when it's still about you and what you want for yourself, but where you concede that some people may want it. And it may be more or less OK that some people want it, but this is not the place for it. If you don't want religion or politics in your game discussion group, that's moderation. Censorship is about controlling what other people want, in order to shape their opinions and beliefs. You can't coherently consent to it. You're not worried that there's some magically seductive piece of propaganda that will turn you into a Nazi, or a furry for that matter. No, you're worried that there's a seductive piece of propaganda that will work on other people. That's the defining aspect of censorship, that it's for other people's sake, not your own. Now, censors will often claim that they're only doing it for themselves, that they just get so disgusted by furries (or whatever) that they just don't want to deal with it. A way to test that, is to see how transparent they are about their supposed moderation. If it's moderation, being transparent about it is perfectly fine. But for the censor, transparency is not possible, because even letting the poor flock know that the seductive information exists, could tempt them to go look for it. Another way, of course, is whether they are content with moderating their own spaces. People that try their damndest to eliminate the thing they hate from existence with DDoS attacks, targeted harassment, or preventing communication they're not even a party to, are obviously censorious, not merely "moderating". Now, there's a separate discussion of when, if ever, it's appropriate to censor. Maybe if we're talking about people who can't meaningfully consent and are easily manipulated (i.e. children). Maybe if there's some sort of existential issue at stake (e.g. national security). But let's not pretend, like Yishan Wong does, that consent doesn't matter.
- astrange 4y ago
  > How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? That would be two years (2012-14).
astrange 4y ago
This doesn't work and it seems like you ignored his entire point. If moderation is being done to reduce the tone of angry conversations, then you have to actually effectively reduce it. If every person out there is running a personal filter list and ignoring your mods' decisions then there is no way to do that and the emotional state is completely uncontrollable. Which you'll find you won't enjoy. You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours; surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use?
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’ve participated in such kind of discussions in 1990s when we were moving our Fido group to Usenet. Fido was very strictly moderated, since data was carried over people’s personal phone lines and nobody wanted to spend money on carrying garbage. But Usenet has no such restrictions and eventually we decided to go unmoderated, because no matter whom we elected - and we knew these people rather personally over the years - moderator’s powers were always abused. Going unmoderated was scary to me at first - I was for keeping the moderation, yes, but the experience turned out to be quite enjoyable - I just needed to teach my spinal brain those simple rules I’ve outlined. Now to your arguments. Why on earth I would want to control your (for example) emotional state? You are a grown up person, your medical decisions are yours to take, not mine. Yes, angry conversations are long and stupid and are always reduced to “inventive” cursing - but a lot of people seem to enjoy this style of “argument” - who am I to stop them? Why stop others’ fun? All I want is - not to read and preferably not even to see such kind of “discussions”. > You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours But I can. All I ask is just some help from the server. > surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use? It’s much easier than you think. I do not object to people hiring cleaning companies to clean their houses, but I prefer to clean my house myself. And this Dyson handheld helps very much. Same goes for moderation - why delegate this dirty work to others, especially when I’ve observed how even reasonable people I personally know tend to abuse this power?
  - astrange 4y ago
    Yes, I do remember Usenet - not very well! That was a while ago. I wasn't a heavy user, but it was a bit of a smaller world back then - that tends to make people behave a bit better (obviously not always…), but there were also fewer other places to go if you got tired of it, it was mainly for personal use, and there wasn't a feeling that someone "owned" it. These days if a forum has bad vibes people will want to leave it, and there's more of a customer service attitude because they know someone runs it. (Or for a professional/project mailing list, a non-abusive-workplace attitude maybe.) Similarly the people running it feel more responsible so they want to mod it more. It's mostly just annoying if there's a lot of intense arguments on it, not necessarily bad for business, but if they get really bad there's the worry it drives away new users and eventually gets you legal attention over users, say, stalking each other, or planning crimes, or posting terrorism threats. > It’s much easier than you think. It was in the 90s, I just don't think killfile technology has kept up with the rate of modern posting on something like Twitter. There is block and mute but there's not, say, OCR to stop people from screenshotting you and attracting new harassers for years after the fact. Though I think Twitter just laid off all their mods so we'll see how it goes.

originalvichy 4y ago

I actually went into a deep dive of any statistical efforts that showed bans on twitter based on American political leanings. Apparently in both studies I found the most statistically significant user behavior for bans was if the user had a tendency to post articles from low quality online ”news” sites. So essentially even the political controversy around moderation boils down to the fact that one side, the right, is happily posting low quality news/fake news that they either get banned for disinformation or other rule-breaking behavior. https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5 https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5

leereeves 4y ago
The first concern is identifying "fake news". One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, and the NY Post was accused of being a low quality site. Now we know it's true. On the other hand, the Steele Dossier was considered legitimate news at the time and "many of the dossier’s most explosive claims...have never materialized or have been proved false."[1]. So I'd like to know exactly what the study's authors considered low-quality news, but unfortunately I couldn't find a list in the paper you linked. In my experience, most people tend to declare sources "high-quality" or "low-quality" based on whether they share the same worldview. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-private-spies-news-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-pr...
- haberman 4y ago
  I had the same skepticism as you, but the study authors did attempt to be fair by letting a set of politically balanced laypeople (equal number Democrat and Republican) adjudicate the trustworthiness of sites. They also had journalists rate the sites, but they present the results of both results (layperson-rated and journalist-rated). I wish they had included the list so we could see for ourselves. It's still possible that there are flaws in the study. But the it appears to take the concern of fairness more seriously than most.
  - leereeves 4y ago

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

This to me is a vital point. One of the things rarely touched on about Twitter / FB et al are that they are transmission platforms and then a discovery / recommendation layer on top. The "algorithm" is this layer on top and it is assumed that this actively sorts people into their bubbles and people passively follow - there is much discussion about splitting the companies AT&T style to improve matters. But countries where much of the discourse is on WhatsApp do not have WhatsApp to do this recommendation - it is done IRL (organically) - and people actively sort themselves. The problem is not (just) the social media companies. It lies in us. The solution if we are all mired in the gutter of social media, is to look up and reach for the stars.

avivo 4y ago
I think this gets almost all the way there but not quite — there is one more vital point: How we act depends on our environment and incentives. It is possible to build environments and incentives that make us better versions of ourselves. Just like GPT-3, we can all be primed (and we all are primed all the time, by every system we use). The way we got from small tribes to huge civilizations is by figuring out how to create those systems and environments. Yes, the algorithm is not the problem alone, but a good algorithm can help fix the problems — since it creates the "loss function" (the incentives) for the humans using the platform (I go into that in more detail here https://twitter.com/metaviv/status/1529879799862378497 https://twitter.com/metaviv/status/1529879799862378497 and here https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bridging-based-ranking https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bridging-based-rank... for those who are curious). So it's not about "reaching for the stars" or complaining about how humanity is too flawed. It's about carefully building the systems that take us to those stars!
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  What a great reply thank you. i agree
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  But there are communities that make it work and I believe these are negatively affected by general rules we try to establish for social media through some systems. I don't believe any system can be a solution, it isn't a requirement for a lot of communities either. I don't know what differentiates these groups from others, probably more detachment from content and statements. There is also simply a difference between people that embraced social media to put themselves out there and ghosts that have multiple pseudonyms. Content creators are a different beast, they have to be more public on the net, but that comes with different problems again. I believe it is behavior and education that would make social media work, but not with the usual approaches. I don't think crass expressions with forbidden words or topics are a problem, on the contrary they can be therapeutic. Just saying because this will be the first thing some people will try to change. Ban some language, ban some content, the usual stuff.

didericis 4y ago

Everything in that thread seems correct, but it doesn't address why its so bad on social media sufficiently, as those philosophical language and principal problems apply to all forms of written communication that have managed to avoid the problems of social media, including wide open written communication (remember actual bulletin boards instead of virtual bulletin boards? Wide open text forums are not a new thing) I'm very confident at this point that the problem is the enormous size of the rooms where everyone is talking. I don't think user behavior will ever be better in a sufficiently large room. Effective communication requires shared context which is impossible to establish when a room is sufficiently large and sufficiently diverse. What we're seeing with increased political polarization is I think an attempt by most people to differentiate themselves into groups of like minded people not just so they can form echo chambers, but so they can actually talk and be heard, and hear what other people are saying. You don't get that when the room becomes global in scale, you just get a bunch of noise, as is mentioned. I think we're in a particularly nasty situation in tech because most of the people involved in creating and administering these platforms have a huge blindspot when it comes to the lack of context hopping ability in the average person, because the people that tend to get into tech tend to be very open to global connectivity and actually do have somewhat of a capacity to hop around and absorb a huge range of different contexts (although much more superficially than I think they realize/that's the price of extreme openness). I am also fairly confident the solution is to create user managed and federated platforms. The problem would I think solve itself if people were better able to control what online social groups they expose themselves to. We've been organizing ourselves for thousands of years into a hierarchical networks of different families/towns/cities/states because those are the only long term stable systems that can deal with the huge variations in contextual difference between people. You can still have egalitarian cosmopolitan global villages for people who want that, and you can still have emissaries and exchange programs and global shared interest channels and encourage cooperation amongst different groups and avoid conflict, but I think the idea of a singular all encompassing global village was always a terribly thought out, completely untenable idea that would never work at scale. I was going to write an article on this a long time ago after a similar thread came up here, but I don't have any clout and ended up getting swamped in other things, so I never did. Properly making this case would also require a lot of research and historical comparison to really evaluate, but the more time passes, the stronger and stronger my hunch is that we need to do almost exactly the opposite of what most people seem to think we should and allow people to differentiate themselves instead of forcing them to be together and all play by the same rules. The echo chambers will become less echoey if you allow people to build their own and feel safe enough to poke their heads out of when they feel sufficiently understood in their corner. The echo chambers are the result of gamed automated feeds where people are trying to signal I want my space by pulling harder and harder in a direction that makes them less and less likely to be bombarded with stuff they don't want entering their space involuntarily.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

The same kind of polarizing, brinkmanship-like content that people complain comes from social media algorithms is present on spades on every non-algorithmic community I've spent time on: from HN, to Usenet, to Matrix/Discord rooms, to 4chan. I used to agree with this consensus but even after trying to concertedly avoid these platforms I find this kind of content throughout every English-speaking community even on topics that aren't politics. I've changed my viewpoint; while algorithms don't help, I think getting angry at them is just shooting the messenger.

purplerabbit 4y ago
Are you saying that you've come across non-English-speaking communities that don't have this problem? If so, could you elaborate?

darig 4y ago

photochemsyn 4y ago

This point he made aligns with non-specific features of user behavior: > "In fact, once again, I challenge you to think about it this way: could you make your content moderation decisions even if you didnʻt understand the language they were being spoken in?" However, I think discussions of controversial subjects often fall under 'this content is a problem' type of thinking. I was banned from all the major Reddit Covid subreddits for politely noting that a lab leak was entirely plausible, even likely. I was banned from their major news subreddits for regularly discussing the economic agendas behind the vast majority of military invasions in both the present day and historically - for example, I'd note that the USA-Russia split seems to have got started in 2003 when Putin rejected an Exxon bid for majority control of Russia oil production, and then started jailing the Wall Street-linked oligarchs like Khodorkovsky. I was also banned from the Ukraine subreddit for noting that a negotiated settlement to the regional war was inevitable, even if Ukraine had to relinquish some territory inhabited mainly by Russia-speaking citizens. Banned from Neoliberal, for pointing out failures of neoliberalism. Etc. In none of those cases did I start hurling nasty insults, spam-posting, etc. Clearly those subreddits and their mods have a particular 'keep the conversation on our preferred message' agenda, i.e. 'align with the hive mind or be excommunicated'. (Eventually I tired of this and deleted my account at Reddit). Now, if Elon can change Twitter such that polite, even-tempered but off-desired-message content isn't actively suppressed, it will be a much better platform. However, will advertisers and other sources of revenue be pleased with such changes? That may be a major factor in how it all plays out.

RugnirViking 4y ago
you've been banned from EVERY major subreddit on all of those topics and you were just "politely noting" things? I struggle to believe you. Especially the one about noting economic causes of war...
- dns_snek 4y ago
  You're surprised by the fact that subreddit moderators abuse their power to remove content and eventually ban users who post content they disagree with? Dozens if not hundreds of popular subreddits even have bots in place that will automatically ban you from subreddit (A) if you ever engage on any "wrong-think" subreddit (B) in any capacity, even if you're not a member of subreddit (A).

jackcosgrove 4y ago

The problem is not the algorithms. It is the internet itself. The internet enables multicast communication, whereas before we could only afford broadcast communication. Broadcast requires the same message to be sent to all, so it forces that message to be moderate and non-polarizing. We always harbored the ability to be polarized according to our beliefs, but the technology didn't yet exist to allow that.

taneq 4y ago
Multicast communication is fine. It's the humans that are the problem. :P
vasvir 4y ago
I believe the underlying problem is the actual human programming deep in our genes. People tend to get organized in clans (i.e. football teams in Europe, political parties etc) and to host polarized opinions such as conspiracy theories that tend to question the status quo. There are two reasons for that: 1. Psychological Reason: It is tempting for an non educated man to adopt an opinion that derides existing knowledge because these guys now feel taller and not at a disadvantage when confronted with the more elaborate and complex nature of the truth or with educated people. 2. Biological Reason: People polarize against common accepted truths (i.e. Covid) as a safety precaution measure against humanity annihilation due to Lemming behavior. So in the case the majority belief ends up in a catastrophic event the 10%, 5%, 1%, 0.001% minority will survive.
- brigandish 4y ago
  This seems to imply that the educated man is always right and should not be questioned by others. Regardless of the education level of the questioner (or of the educated man), I can't see that being a good thing.
  - vasvir 4y ago
    I didn't want to imply that. Educated people can be wrong alright. However really educated people are rarely absolute in their positions because they know that the world is not black and white and almost always the answer is "it depends" and "let's see it from the other side". However polarizing views are attracting to non educated minds because they often give their believers simplistic views, potential enemies and pseudo-arguments that can nail the other "educated" or even just common-sense people. It's frightening really to see in action the amount of flattering it goes on in such cases.

Spooky23 4y ago

It’s more nuanced than that. Social media has created watering holes for everything. Once communities of people who earnestly believe crazy shit. If you believed in alien lizard people controlling the world or in 1980, your options to collaborate with fellow lunatics were limited. Today, that’s a real thing with followers.

emodendroket 4y ago
Not that limited. People like LaRouche managed.
- blodkorv 4y ago
  yes but not anyone with an computing device could. Today he can easily start a group on social media and spread this thoughts and idea.

t-3 4y ago

USians are heavily propagandized to believe that everyone else is too stupid to form their own opinions and is being manipulated by malicious media and elite cabals to think the wrong things. So we see demands for censorship, meddling with school curricula, etc. Isolation from opposing views due to pandemic lockdowns + remote work boom + network effect helps to keep the divide from healing.

DeathArrow 4y ago

The algorithms are tuned to vastly extend the time users spend on a network. They are going to moderate stuff if it improves the time spent on that network. Of course there are political reasons for which algorithms also do content filtering and censorship but the money reason trumps all: the more time you spend on a network, the more ads you see, the more time you spend on a network, the more content you produce and the more you interact with others and that produces a smell that will attract other small insects which will be served ads, will produce more content and interaction.

pyinstallwoes 4y ago

In a form of putting this at a level of meta-tiers (no, not the company, ugh, why did they ruin one of my favorite words): 1. Is information a neutral abstract unit? 2. Is information as an abstract unit charged with a particular strange attractor? 3. Does language/words hold a particular charge? 4. Is language the life-form and humans the host-form?

kubanczyk 4y ago
What's a "charge" or "charged"? Examples?
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  If I say something and you have an emotional response and or behavior response that contributes towards negative emotions/behavior vs positive emotions/behavior. Beyond the obvious, let's just suspend what we think is common sense. "I love you" vs "I hate you" There is a charge associated with both those sentences and probably at the discrete unit word level which may be associated with particular vowel structures/sounds. I've vaguely looked into a "universal language" of phenotypes/sounds/grammars. I believe it was like 16 and associated roughly 16 base sounds to 16 emotions and may even have found some evidence for cross-species use.

gverrilla 4y ago

Brazilian here. This explanation is indeed lacking. You cannot look at social media platforms in an isolate manner: there is overlap between users, and it's not like all users are equal - a small minority (which accepts new entrants through viral tickets) is the one with more weigh on creating/disseminating content. Saying whatsapp is dominant is a little lacking: it has the greatest number of users, DAO, etc, yes... But whatsapp is more fore social-bubbles: it's hard to interact with people you don't know (unless you join a group, but then again you will only be there if it's accessible through your bubble); and also there are no paid ads - we know there is an industry of fake newsvertisements where people PAY to establish top-down content by force. So it goes something like this for a user, using a real anecdote as an example: 1) Get exposed to content they never seen before, like let's say "The UN in reality is run by satanist pedophiles". This is more likely to happen outside of one's bubble - therefore not on whatsapp. 2) Get exposed again and again, either to the content, or high-reach influencers, or ads, or a mixture of the 3. 3) Search google for "UN satanist pedophile". Now you can read "real theory" by "very legitimate people" in long form explaining the proofs, history, motivation, etc for the conspiracy. 4) Radicalization 5) Now you need validation for your behavior/beliefs. 6) You identify and approach or get approached by liked-minded lunatics. 7) They invite you to the whatsapp group "only for believers". 8) Now you feel part of a group and ready to "act". 9) You take part in a nazi rally [a] a: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlQkEAfX_xA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlQkEAfX_xA

neves 4y ago
It is impressive how these are coordinated.

neves 4y ago

And in WhatsApp groups there is no moderation to prevent the obnoxious behavior described in the thread. The far right fabricates militants to reproduce these bad behaviors and pollute every discussion group.

specialist 4y ago

Polarization predates social media. Polarization, partisanship, and radicalization receive a great deal of academic attention. (I can't speak to the public mind, or political hobbyists.) The book Why We Are Polarized [2020] by Ezra Klein surveys what was known at the time. Nationalization of politics, consolidation of media, death of journalism, election reform, campaign spending. TLDR: Politics used to have weird coalitions, where party was not strongly associated with positions. Then people sorted. Then people's identities (positions) fused into a kind of super identity. Now party is a strong predictor of position. Rachel Bitecofer https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer researched (negative) partisanship and used to talk about it. I don't know of an otherwise good intro. People have always self-radicalized. Pamphlets and zines. Social media made it a self renewing pandemic. Root cause is probably a combo of algorithmic hate machines and social isolation. (People are increasingly anxious and isolated. These para-social relationships fill the void.)

ngcc_hk 4y ago

Thought TikTok algorithm should be a concern.

kjkjadksj 4y ago

The big tell that its not all social medias fault is that the narrative changes with the decade on the exact cause even if the outcome of radicalization is the same. 25 years ago people were blaming AM radio hosts for political radicalization. The only truth imo is that radicalization is highly profitable so media will favor it on any platform that is in vogue.

ravenstine 4y ago

I wonder what makes HN so different in this regard. Is it because social media ties everything to identity while HN puts little emphasis on identity?