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I don't share your concern. I do see growing pains ahead but, personally, I feel like the death of free and open societies comes from centralized points of cont

I don't share your concern. I do see growing pains ahead but, personally, I feel like the death of free and open societies comes from centralized points of control that can be captured by power seeking actors. What we are seeing with the confluence of generative AI and the connectivity of the internet is the _diffusion_ of control. Memetics, and propaganda, are being diffused from the previous generation of "nation state" actors and media companies to message boards and feeds. In 2024, a kid with a few hundred dollars of hardware and an internet connection can out-meme the CIA from their parents' basement. Counter-intuitively, I believe this will be a net positive for a free society. The younger generations in my friend groups are already cultivating their own "networks of trust" for getting reliable information about the topics they care about. The internet they've inherited has far too high of a noise to signal ratio for them to not. Instead of news outlets (like the NYT, NPR, Fox, MSNBC, etc.), they talk about individual journalists (i.e. podcasters, X accounts, YouTube channels, etc.). There are going to be growing pains but, net-net, I think this will be good for cultivating a generation of independent thinkers. Note: I do have deep concerns about the centralization of moderation decisions and content recommendation algorithms in modern SaaS products.

sersi 2y ago
I used to think like you but the rise of the extreme right wing (and extreme left wing) in Europe and the US has convinced me I was wrong. You're right a kid with a hundred dollars of hardware and an internet connection might be able to out-meme the CIA but the problem is that the messages that get amplified seem to always be the most extreme. Moderate messages don't generate as much interest and this leads to an increase polarization of political discourse, an increase of extremism and voters who are all too willing to vote for demagogical opportunists who take advantage of that. The younger generations of my friend groups are like yours but they don't necessarily represent society. I don't have any friends who would vote for someone like Trump if they were in the US. I do have family who vote for the French extreme right wing and those people in my family who do represent the majority of the population are not smart enough to get reliable information.
sottol 2y ago
The other problem imo is that it just further erodes shared values and beliefs when everyone has their own network of trust. And a shared system of beliefs may be vital to a functioning society I'm starting to believe.

sersi 2y ago

I used to think like you but the rise of the extreme right wing (and extreme left wing) in Europe and the US has convinced me I was wrong. You're right a kid with a hundred dollars of hardware and an internet connection might be able to out-meme the CIA but the problem is that the messages that get amplified seem to always be the most extreme. Moderate messages don't generate as much interest and this leads to an increase polarization of political discourse, an increase of extremism and voters who are all too willing to vote for demagogical opportunists who take advantage of that. The younger generations of my friend groups are like yours but they don't necessarily represent society. I don't have any friends who would vote for someone like Trump if they were in the US. I do have family who vote for the French extreme right wing and those people in my family who do represent the majority of the population are not smart enough to get reliable information.

sottol 2y ago

The other problem imo is that it just further erodes shared values and beliefs when everyone has their own network of trust. And a shared system of beliefs may be vital to a functioning society I'm starting to believe.