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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 the

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.
- warrenm 3y ago
  >1: The Mark Twain adage "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." "The one who first states a case seems right: Until the other comes and cross-examines." Proverbs 18:17 Reserving judgement until one has all (or, at least, most) of the facts is the first step towards preventing the spread of lies. "Always tell the truth. Or, at least don't lie." --Jordan Peterson Humans are very quick to spread rumors, gossip, half-heard/misheard 'facts', uncorroborated/unsourced/unevidenced stories, etc because we have an innate desire to tell others something "secret". To feel like we are in a position of authority or power because we know something you don't. And sometimes we can tell the truth that looks especially bad. My dad likes to tell this story from when he was about 12. One Monday morning, his little brother walked into Kindergarten with a giant black eye. His teacher asked what happened, and he replied, "my brother hit me in the head with a baseball bat." This, of course, was obvious cause for alarm. So they pulled my dad out of class and asked him what happened to his little brother, to which he replied, "I hit him in the head with a baseball bat." As they were getting ready to call their dad for a parent-teacher conference - possibly even to consider pressing charges on behalf of the injured child, they went and found their 9-year-old sister, and asked her what happened to her little brother. She told them, "oh - my older brother hit him in the head with a baseball bat." But she went on to provide context: "he was hitting pop flies to me to catch to practice for softball season, and our little brother ran behind him while he was on a backswing, and got knocked down." Neither brother lied about what happened. Indeed, they both "told the truth". But neither told enough of the story to prevent/correct some likely misconceptions about what had happened. Had they been asked, "why did you brother hit you"/"why did you hit your brother", either would have filled-in the 10 seconds of backstory necessary to change the impression of the adults asking from horror over abuse to sympathy for an accident, and relief it was not more serious than "just" a black eye. As data and information moves in ever-larger volumes ever-faster around the world, curating it into something that is both understandable and which contains enough context to be able to come to a proper conclusion about what you're seeing/hearing is becoming possibly the biggest issue facing society as a whole. 10 seconds of video probably doesn't have enough context to be fully understood - especially when it could be cut together, deep-faked, dubbed, etc Solve the problem of ensuring information is reliable, accurate, and contains enough context to be understood properly, and you'll have solved social media

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.

warrenm 3y ago
>1: The Mark Twain adage "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." "The one who first states a case seems right: Until the other comes and cross-examines." Proverbs 18:17 Reserving judgement until one has all (or, at least, most) of the facts is the first step towards preventing the spread of lies. "Always tell the truth. Or, at least don't lie." --Jordan Peterson Humans are very quick to spread rumors, gossip, half-heard/misheard 'facts', uncorroborated/unsourced/unevidenced stories, etc because we have an innate desire to tell others something "secret". To feel like we are in a position of authority or power because we know something you don't. And sometimes we can tell the truth that looks especially bad. My dad likes to tell this story from when he was about 12. One Monday morning, his little brother walked into Kindergarten with a giant black eye. His teacher asked what happened, and he replied, "my brother hit me in the head with a baseball bat." This, of course, was obvious cause for alarm. So they pulled my dad out of class and asked him what happened to his little brother, to which he replied, "I hit him in the head with a baseball bat." As they were getting ready to call their dad for a parent-teacher conference - possibly even to consider pressing charges on behalf of the injured child, they went and found their 9-year-old sister, and asked her what happened to her little brother. She told them, "oh - my older brother hit him in the head with a baseball bat." But she went on to provide context: "he was hitting pop flies to me to catch to practice for softball season, and our little brother ran behind him while he was on a backswing, and got knocked down." Neither brother lied about what happened. Indeed, they both "told the truth". But neither told enough of the story to prevent/correct some likely misconceptions about what had happened. Had they been asked, "why did you brother hit you"/"why did you hit your brother", either would have filled-in the 10 seconds of backstory necessary to change the impression of the adults asking from horror over abuse to sympathy for an accident, and relief it was not more serious than "just" a black eye. As data and information moves in ever-larger volumes ever-faster around the world, curating it into something that is both understandable and which contains enough context to be able to come to a proper conclusion about what you're seeing/hearing is becoming possibly the biggest issue facing society as a whole. 10 seconds of video probably doesn't have enough context to be fully understood - especially when it could be cut together, deep-faked, dubbed, etc Solve the problem of ensuring information is reliable, accurate, and contains enough context to be understood properly, and you'll have solved social media