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The internet is full of lemons, not only social media, SEO-influenced services, and services where money buys you reach. If you take any popular medical fact (

by clnq 4y ago

The internet is full of lemons, not only social media, SEO-influenced services, and services where money buys you reach. If you take any popular medical fact (for example, about diets), you will find countless published academic articles supporting and against it. This extends into other fields like physics, sociology, and politics too. But the contradictions there (while present) are not as overtly visible. Many popular news outlets are leaning towards reporting in a "flavor" their audience expects and mixing opinions into their reporting. By some studies, 80%+ of internet users admit to being duped at least once by fake news or misinformation online in 2022. That's the misinformation they spotted. 50%+ Americans say they read fake news online regularly. As for logging off, according to Reuters Institute, 41% of Americans actively avoided news in 2022. And anecdotally, my friends and I have withdrawn from social media like Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on significantly this year. It definitely feels like a lot of information online is misinformation, either synthesized intentionally or "broken-telephoned" into fantasy by mainstream media. I do not know how to deal with this personally but disengage from most of the online world. The signal-to-noise ratio of reliable information in many regions of the internet is meager. I mainly read Hacker News (which also sometimes features contradictory research or news), some academic journals, Wikipedia, some forums in my professional field, and some RSS news sources. Everything else on the internet has become too awash with contradictions and misinformation. I never thought I'd have to retreat so far from mainstream media and social media. Mass logging off is going to impact these areas of the internet seriously. I am scared of what AI language models will do to professional blogs, news, and academia. Editors and peer-reviewers there are already overwhelmed with unreliable information.

OhioMan2943 4y ago
I am interested to see which social media platforms double down on welcoming ai generated content and catering to the remaining users that prefer addictive content to social connection. This is speculative but we may see a very strong pivot from the "social" aspect to the addictive content aspect in publicly listed social media companies in order to continue to appease shareholders, which could, possibly, accelerate this potential reemphasis on real world communication and connection.
- seydor 4y ago
  Yep. Customizable TV is the future
drdrek 4y ago
Most probably it will solve itself. Altavista was a useful search engine until it was not, than it was replaced by google. Google was a useful search engine and its getting primed for a replacement. Usually things do not pan out as Utopia or Dystopia but some human middle ground of kinda shitty balance :)

by clnq 4y ago

OhioMan2943 4y ago

I am interested to see which social media platforms double down on welcoming ai generated content and catering to the remaining users that prefer addictive content to social connection. This is speculative but we may see a very strong pivot from the "social" aspect to the addictive content aspect in publicly listed social media companies in order to continue to appease shareholders, which could, possibly, accelerate this potential reemphasis on real world communication and connection.

seydor 4y ago
Yep. Customizable TV is the future

drdrek 4y ago

Most probably it will solve itself. Altavista was a useful search engine until it was not, than it was replaced by google. Google was a useful search engine and its getting primed for a replacement. Usually things do not pan out as Utopia or Dystopia but some human middle ground of kinda shitty balance :)