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The problem is specific to advertisements on the internet, and modern social media enabled by them. Ad companies have strong financial incentive to maximize us

The problem is specific to advertisements on the internet, and modern social media enabled by them. Ad companies have strong financial incentive to maximize user engagement. Over time, they discovered the best way to achieve that is promoting outrage culture. Angry people generate tons of clicks, page views, and comments. Before mass advertisements, content providers paid for bandwidth instead of earning money per views. I don’t believe internet had such polarizing effect back then.

kristopolous 3y ago
I think it's more complicated. You'll find lots of really organized and popular hate groups in telegram channels, on tor and other places where there is no real advertisement model. Back in the Usenet and BBS days there were lots of online hate stuff. https://timeline.com/white-supremacist-early-internet-5e91676eb847 https://timeline.com/white-supremacist-early-internet-5e9167... There's something deeper about the medium, structure, engagement - it's complicated but it also might be solvable somehow.
- Const-me 3y ago
  I agree the hate was always there, but this was equally true even before any internets. I don’t think it’s possible to do anything about that. Arresting all these people, or censoring their speech, or banning them from the internet is IMO less than ideal. Still, before the modern internet infested with ads, there was no incentive for platforms to actively promote these polarizing views. The opposite was true, because network bandwidth costed them money. Modern internet ecosystem does just that, at great scale. No longer these are small groups general population is unaware about and not interested in. The polarizing content is now actively promoted by both mainstream media, and huge social media platforms. It’s so profitable they can’t resist, and their shareholders don’t care about the externalities it causes to the general public. These externalities of ad tech aren’t limited to political polarization. For social media, mental health is another major one. Teenagers are especially vulnerable, and it seems there’s strong correlation between mental health and social media use. Here’s some article about the topic: https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/well-being/effect-of-social-media-on-teenagers/ https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/well-being/effect-o...
  - em-bee 3y ago
    hate was always there, but this was equally true even before any internets. I don’t think it’s possible to do anything about that this can be addressed by teaching people to be better and to get a better understanding of each other. on the individual level and in school, our education needs to focus on this.
    - Const-me 3y ago
      I agree in theory, but in practice I’m not sure that’s likely to happen. I think parents and peers have more influence on the children compared to the education system. For this reason, the real problem here isn’t “how to improve education” it’s “how to improve the society”. Sadly, this one is way harder to solve ‘coz education is only a part of that.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        i am not limiting education to school. of course parents and friends matter too. see my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37038109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37038109
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    There's a couple axioms we need to agree on. 1: The Mark Twain adage "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." 2: Given (1) Successful hate mongering is based on methods and patterns of propagating deceptions and lies that are distinct from good faith efforts of say historians or scholars 3: These methods are easier to do on how the web is currently configured than the scholarly ones. 4: The current configuration for the web is one of many. Choices were made in the late 80s/early 90s on which axioms of choice and constellation of ideas would be implemented to construct the web in a certain manner that still exist. 5: There exists some configuration C0 that makes the methods and patterns of lies and hate mongering more difficult then it currently is. 6: There exists some configuration C1 that makes the methods and patterns of good faith efforts less difficult then it currently is. If we can agree that these premises are all plausible then the next and way harder job is to show that C0 and C1 either can or cannot exist by discretely defining everything else in those other premises. We're talking probably multi-year PhD level work here. Maybe it involves rethinking network-routing or DNS, introducing new protocols like an SSL for cross-checking reliabilty - I have no idea. This is not trivial. We have real world analogs for this by gatekeeping titles and activities such as "doctor". But these legacy protections have atrophied due to the web and the institutional choices of the internet have eroded the earlier institutional choices of how we, say, use the term doctor and what significance and authority we bestow unto it. The cement of the internet has long dried and we sit here thinking the decisions of the 20th century are somehow taken as natural law. In reality, it's all mutable institutional choices that we've forgotten to continue questioning. Whether that is worth doing or a waste of time I have no idea.
- countWSS 3y ago
  > There's something deeper about the medium, structure, engagement Online communities bypass physical networking limit of social groups due shallow, memetic and low-cost nature of participation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

kristopolous 3y ago

I think it's more complicated. You'll find lots of really organized and popular hate groups in telegram channels, on tor and other places where there is no real advertisement model. Back in the Usenet and BBS days there were lots of online hate stuff. https://timeline.com/white-supremacist-early-internet-5e91676eb847 https://timeline.com/white-supremacist-early-internet-5e9167... There's something deeper about the medium, structure, engagement - it's complicated but it also might be solvable somehow.

Const-me 3y ago
I agree the hate was always there, but this was equally true even before any internets. I don’t think it’s possible to do anything about that. Arresting all these people, or censoring their speech, or banning them from the internet is IMO less than ideal. Still, before the modern internet infested with ads, there was no incentive for platforms to actively promote these polarizing views. The opposite was true, because network bandwidth costed them money. Modern internet ecosystem does just that, at great scale. No longer these are small groups general population is unaware about and not interested in. The polarizing content is now actively promoted by both mainstream media, and huge social media platforms. It’s so profitable they can’t resist, and their shareholders don’t care about the externalities it causes to the general public. These externalities of ad tech aren’t limited to political polarization. For social media, mental health is another major one. Teenagers are especially vulnerable, and it seems there’s strong correlation between mental health and social media use. Here’s some article about the topic: https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/well-being/effect-of-social-media-on-teenagers/ https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/well-being/effect-o...
- em-bee 3y ago
  hate was always there, but this was equally true even before any internets. I don’t think it’s possible to do anything about that this can be addressed by teaching people to be better and to get a better understanding of each other. on the individual level and in school, our education needs to focus on this.
  - Const-me 3y ago
    I agree in theory, but in practice I’m not sure that’s likely to happen. I think parents and peers have more influence on the children compared to the education system. For this reason, the real problem here isn’t “how to improve education” it’s “how to improve the society”. Sadly, this one is way harder to solve ‘coz education is only a part of that.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      i am not limiting education to school. of course parents and friends matter too. see my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37038109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37038109
- kristopolous 3y ago
  There's a couple axioms we need to agree on. 1: The Mark Twain adage "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." 2: Given (1) Successful hate mongering is based on methods and patterns of propagating deceptions and lies that are distinct from good faith efforts of say historians or scholars 3: These methods are easier to do on how the web is currently configured than the scholarly ones. 4: The current configuration for the web is one of many. Choices were made in the late 80s/early 90s on which axioms of choice and constellation of ideas would be implemented to construct the web in a certain manner that still exist. 5: There exists some configuration C0 that makes the methods and patterns of lies and hate mongering more difficult then it currently is. 6: There exists some configuration C1 that makes the methods and patterns of good faith efforts less difficult then it currently is. If we can agree that these premises are all plausible then the next and way harder job is to show that C0 and C1 either can or cannot exist by discretely defining everything else in those other premises. We're talking probably multi-year PhD level work here. Maybe it involves rethinking network-routing or DNS, introducing new protocols like an SSL for cross-checking reliabilty - I have no idea. This is not trivial. We have real world analogs for this by gatekeeping titles and activities such as "doctor". But these legacy protections have atrophied due to the web and the institutional choices of the internet have eroded the earlier institutional choices of how we, say, use the term doctor and what significance and authority we bestow unto it. The cement of the internet has long dried and we sit here thinking the decisions of the 20th century are somehow taken as natural law. In reality, it's all mutable institutional choices that we've forgotten to continue questioning. Whether that is worth doing or a waste of time I have no idea.
countWSS 3y ago
> There's something deeper about the medium, structure, engagement Online communities bypass physical networking limit of social groups due shallow, memetic and low-cost nature of participation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number