7 ms·

After spending a number of months on Lemmy as my primary social media, I actually think the fediverse makes one of the biggest issues of social media much worse

by kromem 3y ago

After spending a number of months on Lemmy as my primary social media, I actually think the fediverse makes one of the biggest issues of social media much worse. There's a very real and dangerous trend towards extremist positions as a result of social media bubbles. I'm sure most people have noticed how large family gatherings have shifted over the last 15 years, and how some family may no longer even be invited as a result of social media driven shifts. The fediverse makes these bubbles so much worse, with servers of like minded moderation creating a trend towards groupthink as opposed to representing a variety of opinions. So while it's promising from a standpoint of shrugging off corporate driven issues in managing social media, the fragmentary nature is perhaps the opposite of what social media actually needs, which is less bubble driven optimization with regression towards extremist means and more broad exposure and interaction with regression towards the normal mean.

inamberclad 3y ago
I think this is largely moot because just about every social media site will either allow you to select your communities or algorithms will filter for you based on your behavior.
chmod775 3y ago
> I'm sure most people have noticed how large family gatherings have shifted over the last 15 years, and how some family may no longer even be invited as a result of social media driven shifts. So because of social media bubbles, people split their families into bubbles too? If even in a real life setting, where no algorithm curates who they interact with, people choose to segregate despite of family bonds, then that sounds more like a people problem than a social media problem to me. There's definitely families out there who can get together despite holding diametrically opposed political opinions, even discussing them at the dinner table without getting overly emotional about it and needing to un-invite people from later gatherings. I'd call that a normal, functioning family.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  This is normal human behavior, per Schelling. Social media has made everyone's opinions more visible to others, which often turns out to be antithetical to maintaining friendly relations.
- Exoristos 3y ago
  It's a mental health problem. Social media etc. are actually driving people comparatively mad.
globalnode 3y ago
humans can't be trusted to not censure information they dislike. corporate or private people will all follow their own self interests. there is no version where this ends well.
- dmix 3y ago
  Humans have dealt with serious society-wise cultural issues rooted in base emotional desires like these many, many times before, and evolved beyond them. We can still develop common sense and a culture that is highly cautious of these attempts to censor everything, the stuff motivated by an ever expand hyper sensitivity to anything in shades of grey of something they don't like. We've experience half a decade where being censor-happy has become the norm, rather than merely cleaning up communities of the fringe edge cases that are truly bad. As usual with humans a good idea leaned on taken to the extreme, a hammer seeking nails. Definitely not the first time humans attempted something like this. The constant negative outcomes of these impulsive behaviours usually build up ad nauseam, and almost always result in cultural backlash which eventually turns into a new common sense. Democracy was built of a similar reaction to negative base desire for isolated hyper centralized authority. I'm confident a similar shift will happen in reaction to the hyper-ideological "everyone I disagree with should be banned from commenting" safe space movement. At least as long as the force of government doesn't turn it from merely cultural to criminal or regulatory as it already starting to in some countries.
  - globalnode 3y ago
    i hope so too!
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
> The fediverse makes these bubbles so much worse, with servers of like minded moderation creating a trend towards groupthink as opposed to representing a variety of opinions. You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed. > regression towards the normal mean. Yeah, the normal mean is something to strive for... If it already benefits you.
- naasking 3y ago
  > You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed. Creating a space where you don't have to face the fact that your fellow humans are sexist or racist is the very definition of a bubble.
- tired-turtle 3y ago
  What you described as a safe space can quickly become, ironically, an intolerant one, albeit not for you, as you self-selected by joining. I think OP is addressing the paradox of tolerance, hence the call for differing but not hateful opinions. There’s a fine line between the two and cloistering oneself among likeminded people seems to inevitably lead to some form of intolerance.
- nindalf 3y ago
  No one questions that living in a bubble is comfortable. But your comfort comes at a cost, which is that people you disagree with aren’t exposed to disagreements with you. They’re now in a bubble (or “safe space”) where everyone agrees with them, so they’re more convinced than ever that they’re right. And yeah ok, you say that’s not your responsibility. That’s fine, but then you shouldn’t be surprised when society is torn apart by these differences.
  - john-radio 3y ago
    This comment is the slippery slope fallacy because the person responding to you has rightly pointed out that not every situation that's described as a "groupthink bubble" actually is one; sometimes it's just people not wanting to hang out with guys who drop the N-word "as a joke" or overtly support authoritarianism or whatever. Maybe the assholes getting shown the door in such situations always tell themselves that "Society is about to get torn apart by me getting treated this way" but thinking it does not make it so.
673457e347 3y ago
[flagged]
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > but the other side of that is that moderate users will be able to move between communities at-will Nope. Banning users for simply being members of certain other communities has been a thing for quite a while now.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Nothing new. That existed before social media and the internet, too. Ban people from certain jobs because the communities they associated with.
    - mananaysiempre 3y ago
      (Illegal in many countries post the rise of social democracy, for what it’s worth—the US being a notable exception.)
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        Not really true for Germany during the cold war, pretty sure that wasn't the only example. Just think about things like security clearances.
        mananaysiempre 3y ago
        France specifically lists political affiliation among protected categories, while post-socialist countries flat out prohibit hiring decisions on anything unrelated to the ability to perform the job (and arguing “cultural fit” qualifies would be a difficult proposition, were the rejected hire to actually go to court). Governments may be allowed to be more discriminatory for national security reasons, and AFAICT security clearances are in part a backdoor to get this to be permissible in private employment as well. (Of course, it’s a different story if the political organization in question is actually banned, but in most civilized places that’s a very high bar—I’d argue that’s one of the qualifications of the moniker, even.)
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
People have always grouped together into communities with extremist views in the physical world. And I am not even talking about fringe elements. Many sects of all major religions for thousands of years have thought the entire outgroup is going to hell. The problem with social media is not that. It is the feed algorithms that make expressing any extremist position the only way to get other people to talk to you. Fix this problem and many of the problems will go away. Unfortunately, as it is a social coordination problem, the only way for this to happen is government regulation that either bans feed algorithms altogether, or ensures that users individually have full control over the algorithm for their own feed.
p-e-w 3y ago
The supposed "social media bubble" is a silly myth. The exact opposite is the case: On even the most algorithmically filtered social media platform, you cannot avoid encountering opinions and viewpoints that are dramatically different from what you find in your real-life circles. The real bubbles are your family, your workplace, and your friends. Most of them are the same nationality, roughly the same social class, and roughly the same level of education as you. Your colleagues, by definition, all work in the same business as you. You have (subconsciously) hand-picked your friends to align with you on a multitude of levels. Meanwhile, on Facebook or Reddit, you suddenly read a comment written by a veterinarian in Azerbaijan – someone who you would almost certainly never have met in real life and who is more different from you in every way than all the people you interact with as part of your daily routine.
- msmenardi 3y ago
  > on Facebook or Reddit, you suddenly read a comment written by a veterinarian in Azerbaijan – someone who you would almost certainly never have met in real life and who is more different from you in every way than all the people you interact with as part of your daily routine. that veterinarian may be more different than the people you see in everyday life, but the point of a social media bubble is that the veterinarian and you are likely to be very similar. Otherwise, why would you be on the same subreddit? How would you have met them on the internet if not because you were interested in common topics?
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    Interested in one common topic. If I like crocheting, interacting with people in a crocheting subreddit doesn't create a "filter bubble". The people in that sub are still going to have wildly different opinions and preferences from myself on any topic besides crocheting. And large subs like AskReddit are obviously being frequented by people from every imaginable background.
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      A forum on a single common topic can still create a filter bubble. For example, I know some music and outdoor-sports forums where the participants now post about not only those topics, but also a limited spectrum of US political rants or social-justice advocacy. If you come from somewhere else and you have different views or do not participate in such discussions, you can feel outright excluded from the club. On any anglophone forum, it can happen that just enough participants are North Americans with the same views, that their political and social concerns are considered relevant and important. Some Reddit subs have seen this, too. Obviously a moderation rule of “no politics” or “no off-topic” would help, but sometimes even the moderators are passionate about those same political or social concerns, and believe that preventing discussion of such would be fascist.
Foreignborn 3y ago
This "filter bubble" is not true, and does not seem to be the issue people think it is. We interact with more diverse people online outside of our bubble. It's actually our real life that's the bubble, and bubbles aren't necessarily bad. Link to paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2207159119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2207159119
- kromem 3y ago
  You didn't read more than the headline, did you? Directly from the abstract: "When individuals interact locally, the outcome is a stable plural patchwork of cross-cutting conflicts. By encouraging nonlocal interaction, digital media drive an alignment of conflicts along partisan lines, thus effacing the counterbalancing effects of local heterogeneity. The result is polarization, even if individual interaction leads to convergence. The model thus suggests that digital media polarize through partisan sorting, creating a maelstrom in which more and more identities, beliefs, and cultural preferences become drawn into an all-encompassing societal division." So the paper is supporting exactly what I'm saying. That in your local community you need to engage with differences of opinion to successfully navigate local social structures, but that online with an expanded network you can interact with only like minded people. Yes, the overall bubble is larger online than in real life, but as a result it allows for self-selecting subnetworks which align with confirming your biases and further radicalization rather than compromising with differences of opinion.
  - Foreignborn 3y ago
    I indeed read the paper. No snark needed. I disagree with your interpretation of the stable plural patchwork that you’ve represented here as supporting your claim. However, the nuance in difference of our opinion isn’t that important in the grand scheme. For your last two paragraphs, I think you are actually describing social sorting - which the paper asserts as the underlining mechanism for which polarization happens online. The filter bubble is colloquially known as not seeing differing opinions online, yet as the paper states is untrue. Online we counter more diverse opinions. That’s what I wanted to point out. Best of luck to you.
ipaddr 3y ago
By fragmenting you move off of a global platform with family and into a silo of like minds. That change means there is no need to pollute the global newsfeed with opposing views. Everyone can agree on a common dominator and family will start getting invited back to dinner.
- kromem 3y ago
  Right, because we all know the antivaxx member of the extended family never brings the topic up in person... People radicalized have their entire identity structured around a need for confirmation. When you only talk about a specific topic 24/7 online, what happens in person is that you still bend over backwards to tie every possible subject into that topic. A QAnon believer sees it everywhere and points it out to family. A flat earther is going to make some comment about NASA at dinner guaranteed. It existed previously in cult behavior, but that sociological structure has now been distributed from small local gatherings to global reach online.
INTPenis 3y ago
This is exactly what's happening. I never thought I'd make a positive comparison to twitter but twitter threw everyone into one big melting pot. People could block each other but by default they had to listen to a lot of differing opinions before they blocked anyone. In fedi borders are being drawn and they're creating these little bubbles of opinions. So you know that within your border your opinion will never be challenged because the admin already took care of that for you. If I were to find any glimmer of hope in that it would be that certain instances will be more inclusive and perhaps some borders will be drawn around that, but I'm not sure. I actually ran a node since 2017 but left in 2022 because of this very reason.
- kaffeeringe 3y ago
  What borders? Do you mean the basic rules of good behaviour?
  - didntcheck 3y ago
    No. Specific rules of political purity, and the transitive demand that you also cut off any nonbelievers lest ye be branded yourself
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  >but twitter threw everyone into one big melting pot. Threw everyone using twitter into one big melting pot.
Moldoteck 3y ago
Thing is, with current social media, bubbles are quite limited. Social media likes interactions and comments and the best way to gain those is by exposing totally opposite info to a person with certain views. This will also drive toxicity way up. The fediverse is more like some local cozy communities. Yes, there are some bad groups of ppl, but generally it's ok to be part of a smaller community compared to being exposed to constant hate, rage by social media algorithms to gain more interactions
nektro 3y ago
the extremism you're experiencing is definitely because you're on lemmy

by kromem 3y ago

inamberclad 3y ago

I think this is largely moot because just about every social media site will either allow you to select your communities or algorithms will filter for you based on your behavior.

chmod775 3y ago

> I'm sure most people have noticed how large family gatherings have shifted over the last 15 years, and how some family may no longer even be invited as a result of social media driven shifts. So because of social media bubbles, people split their families into bubbles too? If even in a real life setting, where no algorithm curates who they interact with, people choose to segregate despite of family bonds, then that sounds more like a people problem than a social media problem to me. There's definitely families out there who can get together despite holding diametrically opposed political opinions, even discussing them at the dinner table without getting overly emotional about it and needing to un-invite people from later gatherings. I'd call that a normal, functioning family.

anigbrowl 3y ago
This is normal human behavior, per Schelling. Social media has made everyone's opinions more visible to others, which often turns out to be antithetical to maintaining friendly relations.
Exoristos 3y ago
It's a mental health problem. Social media etc. are actually driving people comparatively mad.

globalnode 3y ago

humans can't be trusted to not censure information they dislike. corporate or private people will all follow their own self interests. there is no version where this ends well.

dmix 3y ago
Humans have dealt with serious society-wise cultural issues rooted in base emotional desires like these many, many times before, and evolved beyond them. We can still develop common sense and a culture that is highly cautious of these attempts to censor everything, the stuff motivated by an ever expand hyper sensitivity to anything in shades of grey of something they don't like. We've experience half a decade where being censor-happy has become the norm, rather than merely cleaning up communities of the fringe edge cases that are truly bad. As usual with humans a good idea leaned on taken to the extreme, a hammer seeking nails. Definitely not the first time humans attempted something like this. The constant negative outcomes of these impulsive behaviours usually build up ad nauseam, and almost always result in cultural backlash which eventually turns into a new common sense. Democracy was built of a similar reaction to negative base desire for isolated hyper centralized authority. I'm confident a similar shift will happen in reaction to the hyper-ideological "everyone I disagree with should be banned from commenting" safe space movement. At least as long as the force of government doesn't turn it from merely cultural to criminal or regulatory as it already starting to in some countries.
- globalnode 3y ago
  i hope so too!

ParetoOptimal 3y ago

> The fediverse makes these bubbles so much worse, with servers of like minded moderation creating a trend towards groupthink as opposed to representing a variety of opinions. You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed. > regression towards the normal mean. Yeah, the normal mean is something to strive for... If it already benefits you.

naasking 3y ago
> You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed. Creating a space where you don't have to face the fact that your fellow humans are sexist or racist is the very definition of a bubble.
tired-turtle 3y ago
What you described as a safe space can quickly become, ironically, an intolerant one, albeit not for you, as you self-selected by joining. I think OP is addressing the paradox of tolerance, hence the call for differing but not hateful opinions. There’s a fine line between the two and cloistering oneself among likeminded people seems to inevitably lead to some form of intolerance.
nindalf 3y ago
No one questions that living in a bubble is comfortable. But your comfort comes at a cost, which is that people you disagree with aren’t exposed to disagreements with you. They’re now in a bubble (or “safe space”) where everyone agrees with them, so they’re more convinced than ever that they’re right. And yeah ok, you say that’s not your responsibility. That’s fine, but then you shouldn’t be surprised when society is torn apart by these differences.
- john-radio 3y ago
  This comment is the slippery slope fallacy because the person responding to you has rightly pointed out that not every situation that's described as a "groupthink bubble" actually is one; sometimes it's just people not wanting to hang out with guys who drop the N-word "as a joke" or overtly support authoritarianism or whatever. Maybe the assholes getting shown the door in such situations always tell themselves that "Society is about to get torn apart by me getting treated this way" but thinking it does not make it so.

673457e347 3y ago

[flagged]

p-e-w 3y ago
> but the other side of that is that moderate users will be able to move between communities at-will Nope. Banning users for simply being members of certain other communities has been a thing for quite a while now.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Nothing new. That existed before social media and the internet, too. Ban people from certain jobs because the communities they associated with.
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    (Illegal in many countries post the rise of social democracy, for what it’s worth—the US being a notable exception.)
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Not really true for Germany during the cold war, pretty sure that wasn't the only example. Just think about things like security clearances.
      - mananaysiempre 3y ago
        France specifically lists political affiliation among protected categories, while post-socialist countries flat out prohibit hiring decisions on anything unrelated to the ability to perform the job (and arguing “cultural fit” qualifies would be a difficult proposition, were the rejected hire to actually go to court). Governments may be allowed to be more discriminatory for national security reasons, and AFAICT security clearances are in part a backdoor to get this to be permissible in private employment as well. (Of course, it’s a different story if the political organization in question is actually banned, but in most civilized places that’s a very high bar—I’d argue that’s one of the qualifications of the moniker, even.)

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

People have always grouped together into communities with extremist views in the physical world. And I am not even talking about fringe elements. Many sects of all major religions for thousands of years have thought the entire outgroup is going to hell. The problem with social media is not that. It is the feed algorithms that make expressing any extremist position the only way to get other people to talk to you. Fix this problem and many of the problems will go away. Unfortunately, as it is a social coordination problem, the only way for this to happen is government regulation that either bans feed algorithms altogether, or ensures that users individually have full control over the algorithm for their own feed.

p-e-w 3y ago

The supposed "social media bubble" is a silly myth. The exact opposite is the case: On even the most algorithmically filtered social media platform, you cannot avoid encountering opinions and viewpoints that are dramatically different from what you find in your real-life circles. The real bubbles are your family, your workplace, and your friends. Most of them are the same nationality, roughly the same social class, and roughly the same level of education as you. Your colleagues, by definition, all work in the same business as you. You have (subconsciously) hand-picked your friends to align with you on a multitude of levels. Meanwhile, on Facebook or Reddit, you suddenly read a comment written by a veterinarian in Azerbaijan – someone who you would almost certainly never have met in real life and who is more different from you in every way than all the people you interact with as part of your daily routine.

msmenardi 3y ago
> on Facebook or Reddit, you suddenly read a comment written by a veterinarian in Azerbaijan – someone who you would almost certainly never have met in real life and who is more different from you in every way than all the people you interact with as part of your daily routine. that veterinarian may be more different than the people you see in everyday life, but the point of a social media bubble is that the veterinarian and you are likely to be very similar. Otherwise, why would you be on the same subreddit? How would you have met them on the internet if not because you were interested in common topics?
- p-e-w 3y ago
  Interested in one common topic. If I like crocheting, interacting with people in a crocheting subreddit doesn't create a "filter bubble". The people in that sub are still going to have wildly different opinions and preferences from myself on any topic besides crocheting. And large subs like AskReddit are obviously being frequented by people from every imaginable background.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    A forum on a single common topic can still create a filter bubble. For example, I know some music and outdoor-sports forums where the participants now post about not only those topics, but also a limited spectrum of US political rants or social-justice advocacy. If you come from somewhere else and you have different views or do not participate in such discussions, you can feel outright excluded from the club. On any anglophone forum, it can happen that just enough participants are North Americans with the same views, that their political and social concerns are considered relevant and important. Some Reddit subs have seen this, too. Obviously a moderation rule of “no politics” or “no off-topic” would help, but sometimes even the moderators are passionate about those same political or social concerns, and believe that preventing discussion of such would be fascist.

Foreignborn 3y ago

This "filter bubble" is not true, and does not seem to be the issue people think it is. We interact with more diverse people online outside of our bubble. It's actually our real life that's the bubble, and bubbles aren't necessarily bad. Link to paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2207159119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2207159119

kromem 3y ago
You didn't read more than the headline, did you? Directly from the abstract: "When individuals interact locally, the outcome is a stable plural patchwork of cross-cutting conflicts. By encouraging nonlocal interaction, digital media drive an alignment of conflicts along partisan lines, thus effacing the counterbalancing effects of local heterogeneity. The result is polarization, even if individual interaction leads to convergence. The model thus suggests that digital media polarize through partisan sorting, creating a maelstrom in which more and more identities, beliefs, and cultural preferences become drawn into an all-encompassing societal division." So the paper is supporting exactly what I'm saying. That in your local community you need to engage with differences of opinion to successfully navigate local social structures, but that online with an expanded network you can interact with only like minded people. Yes, the overall bubble is larger online than in real life, but as a result it allows for self-selecting subnetworks which align with confirming your biases and further radicalization rather than compromising with differences of opinion.
- Foreignborn 3y ago
  I indeed read the paper. No snark needed. I disagree with your interpretation of the stable plural patchwork that you’ve represented here as supporting your claim. However, the nuance in difference of our opinion isn’t that important in the grand scheme. For your last two paragraphs, I think you are actually describing social sorting - which the paper asserts as the underlining mechanism for which polarization happens online. The filter bubble is colloquially known as not seeing differing opinions online, yet as the paper states is untrue. Online we counter more diverse opinions. That’s what I wanted to point out. Best of luck to you.

ipaddr 3y ago

By fragmenting you move off of a global platform with family and into a silo of like minds. That change means there is no need to pollute the global newsfeed with opposing views. Everyone can agree on a common dominator and family will start getting invited back to dinner.

kromem 3y ago
Right, because we all know the antivaxx member of the extended family never brings the topic up in person... People radicalized have their entire identity structured around a need for confirmation. When you only talk about a specific topic 24/7 online, what happens in person is that you still bend over backwards to tie every possible subject into that topic. A QAnon believer sees it everywhere and points it out to family. A flat earther is going to make some comment about NASA at dinner guaranteed. It existed previously in cult behavior, but that sociological structure has now been distributed from small local gatherings to global reach online.

INTPenis 3y ago

This is exactly what's happening. I never thought I'd make a positive comparison to twitter but twitter threw everyone into one big melting pot. People could block each other but by default they had to listen to a lot of differing opinions before they blocked anyone. In fedi borders are being drawn and they're creating these little bubbles of opinions. So you know that within your border your opinion will never be challenged because the admin already took care of that for you. If I were to find any glimmer of hope in that it would be that certain instances will be more inclusive and perhaps some borders will be drawn around that, but I'm not sure. I actually ran a node since 2017 but left in 2022 because of this very reason.

kaffeeringe 3y ago
What borders? Do you mean the basic rules of good behaviour?
- didntcheck 3y ago
  No. Specific rules of political purity, and the transitive demand that you also cut off any nonbelievers lest ye be branded yourself
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
InCityDreams 3y ago
>but twitter threw everyone into one big melting pot. Threw everyone using twitter into one big melting pot.

Moldoteck 3y ago

Thing is, with current social media, bubbles are quite limited. Social media likes interactions and comments and the best way to gain those is by exposing totally opposite info to a person with certain views. This will also drive toxicity way up. The fediverse is more like some local cozy communities. Yes, there are some bad groups of ppl, but generally it's ok to be part of a smaller community compared to being exposed to constant hate, rage by social media algorithms to gain more interactions

nektro 3y ago

the extremism you're experiencing is definitely because you're on lemmy