4 ms·
Not the root cause, no. I'd say the root cause is reliance on advertising for income because that means that you now need to draw as many viewers/users as possi
by smcn 4y ago
Not the root cause, no. I'd say the root cause is reliance on advertising for income because that means that you now need to draw as many viewers/users as possible, and that's why they start to create content which maximizes reactions or engagement.
- slg 4y agoBut advertising still isn't the root cause. Why does this type of content draw more viewers?
- smcn 4y agoAre you trying to say that biology is the root cause? The content is successful as it emits a reaction from us. Whether a good reaction or a bad one, we still engage with it. Whether you're binge watching a TV show you love or hate scrolling a subreddit that makes you angry, the content is designed to elicit some form of reaction that keeps you coming back or memetically passing it on. However that is not a new development in our biology, we've always been that way. It's just that we're exploiting those aspects of ourselves more and more. Weaponising it to extract as much profit as possible. You could go another way, I guess, and say that capitalism is the root cause as "profit at any cost" allows the justification of these actions.
- slg 4y agoThere are two aspects to the root cause. You mentioned the first part, basic human biology pushes us towards content that elicits a reaction. The second part is that lies inherently have an advantage over the truth to elicit a reaction because they are only limited by human imagination while the truth is limited obviously by the truth. As long as humans have the free will to engage with whatever content they choose, there is a natural human reaction to engage with lies. Therefore, the idea that truth eventually wins out over lies is inherently flawed. It isn't the fault of capitalism or algorithms. The problem is human nature doesn't respond properly to bad speech. We can't change human nature, so the only option left is stopping bad speech.
- smcn 4y agoWe haven't recently invented the concept of a lie, so the idea of "that's just how we are" rings hollow. People are being radicalised by qanon, incels, redpill, the alt-right, <insert the group you dislike> at an increased rate because they're being force fed this content on a daily basis, and they're being siloed into custom fit echochambers by algorithms optimising for their engagement.
- slg 4y agoWhich brings us back to my original point. Algorithms are just a multiplier. If you give people two history books, one with actual history and one with interesting conspiracy theories sprinkled throughout, most people are going to find the one with the conspiracies more interesting. Stopping people from photocopying the book will help slow the spread of the false information in the book, but it does nothing to stop the underlying problem that people are writing fake history books.
- smcn 4y agoIt's a multiplier sure, but this is a completely new issue we're having (at least on this scale). It's caused by social media, that's not really up for debate. You cannot prevent lies or deception, that's not within the realm of what we're capable of. Don't let good be the enemy of perfect.
- slg 4y agoThis isn't a new issue created by either social media or the internet. It is an innate problem with absolute free speech and has directly led to the US entering multiple wars over the last 125 years. It doesn't matter if the lies are disseminated through newspapers, cable TV, or Twitter. Mass media is just an amplification device. That has been true for centuries. The only new aspect is that the rate of amplification is increasing which leads to the underlying issue becoming even more problematic.
- 4y ago