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I’m taking it as a given that any sufficiently large social network is a gigantic propaganda machine of interest to domestic and foreign nation-state actors. E

by yojo 5mo ago

I’m taking it as a given that any sufficiently large social network is a gigantic propaganda machine of interest to domestic and foreign nation-state actors. Entertaining the thought experiment where all the normies join the fediverse: now you’ve got a big juicy target maintained by hobbyists. When it’s Lazarus Group vs Randall, the over-worked sys admin who stood up a node in his spare time, who do you think wins? Social networks are cancer. Just ban the lot of them and move on.

dpoloncsak 5mo ago
>Just ban the lot of them and move on. How do you define social network, though? Is Facebook a social network, even though it includes a marketplace? Is HN a social network? Is Newgrounds a social network....? Seems difficult to stomp out effectively
- hoppyhoppy2 5mo ago
  We could start by stomping out the Linux kernel mailing lists; that cancer is at the root of so many other social networks' software.
- 0x5FC3 5mo ago
  We can come up with a definition and refine it. Maybe something like: algorithmic content suggestions trying to maximize engagement and time on app (leave out chronological + explicit follow). Banning is not the way to go about things. India is always ban happy -> a competitive exam in a state? Take down internet in the whole state to curb cheating. Outright banning hard to deal with stuff sets a bad precedent.
  - svachalek 5mo ago
    You don't ban the users or the internet, you make it illegal to do shitty psyops on the public. They were making plenty of money on chronological friend feeds.
    - repeekad 5mo ago
      How do you ban psyops? Require every user register with a gov ID so there’s someone to go after? What’s a psyop vs a grassroots contrarian movement like LGBT used to be? Anonymity online seems the ultimate double edge sword. I prefer privacy over government prescribed safety.
      - idle_zealot 5mo ago
        You investigate and punish groups found to be running psyops, simple as. No need to automate the whole process with ID checks, these organizations make and spend money so the tracks are there to find. If suspected drag them into discovery and gather evidence like you would for financial fraud or criminal conspiracy.
        pibaker 5mo ago
        Sure, let's just give the state a pretext to jail anyone espousing opinions they don't like for running a psyop. Surely no government will abuse this power and brand anyone in their opposition as a psyop bot army that needs to be removed from the internet.
        idle_zealot 5mo ago
        If they want to they'll do that under any pretense they can get away with. See the current administration declaring intent to treat pro-LGBT speech or anti-fascist speech as indicative of participation in terrorist groups. You just can't let a government get this bad, and the set of rules and procedures you need to reign in a tyrant are pretty different from the ones you need to keep a system stable and functioning under normal operation.
        pibaker 5mo ago
        Right now you can in fact express pro LGBT or anti fascist opinions despite the administration's efforts to stop you precisely because there are no such regulations. Had a previous US administration thought that the US is a stable and functional democracy that can be entrusted with such a law, you will be in trouble.
  - neop1x 5mo ago
    Exaclty, the main problem is that they are deciding what content to serve you. They are often mixing posts from accounts which I don't follow with posts from accounts I follow without asking. Then thr are pushing auto-play and infinite scrolling. It would have been a completely different experience if they just showed posts from people I follow and showed them sorted by date.
- reaperducer 5mo ago
  Seems difficult to stomp out effectively So just give up because something is hard? Sounds like the tech industry and its never-ending quest for low-hanging fruit. "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas."
  - Ajedi32 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - dpoloncsak 5mo ago
    I'm sorry if my comment came off dismissive, I was just remarking the idea of banning social media seems like we're going down the wrong alley. I like other commenter's ideas of outlawing the underlying tech. I'm more-so just asking how to make a distinction between a post on Reddit (commonly called social media) and a post on Stack-Overflow (not commonly referred to as social media). Discord vs Teams...etc. I think user 0x5FC3 correctly identifies the root of the issue, and any (if implemented) regulation should be based on the algorithmic serving, but I hold a firm belief that you cannot and should not try to outlaw math. From my first glance at this issue, it seems tricky
    - reaperducer 5mo ago
      It still reads like a bunch of deflection, which is the usual response from industries from big oil to fast food to tobacco to pharmaceuticals. Delay delay delay and continue reap the profits in the meantime by making people talk in circles instead of addressing the problem. Let Q4 figure it out, just keep the Q2 gravy train rolling. Also, nobody is trying to outlaw math. That's just a silly hyperbolic talking point.
      - spunker540 5mo ago
        Saying “ban social media” is a lot like saying to solve lung cancer we must “ban cigarette lighters” when lighters are actually quite useful outside of smoking cigarettes and banning lighters doesn’t really fix the problem.
      - 5mo ago
Barbing 5mo ago
Randall’s eagle eye friend and fellow US-based sysadmin notices attacks on his own server, reports it to his congressperson, and the fed stands up protection for the whole fediverse in short order. The government in the US will prevent others from immediately physically infringing on your rights, say to brew beer. So they’d help us online too even at the expense of corporate platforms right?
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
whatshisface 5mo ago
The idea that they would ban their propaganda networks, but not their alternatives, is really baffling...
- juanani 5mo ago
  [dead]
pibaker 5mo ago
You are worrying about domestic nation state actors, and you are calling social media to be banned by whom? Some mysterious administrative entity that is surely not a part of the domestic nation state doing the very propaganda you are railing against? Surely the people with the power to ban the lot of social media don't have their own propaganda to shove down your throat. Surely they will only ban the bad ones where foreign agents spread dangerous ideas and keep the good ones where only upright citizens of their own country can talk about how great everything is.
- gigatree 5mo ago
  Shhh if you say too much you’re gonna rattle their “the government will save us if we vote hard enough” worldview
  - voakbasda 5mo ago
    They should be rattled. The US didn’t vote its way to independence from the England. Freedom never comes without a cost paid in blood, but people don’t want to admit that anymore.
    - gigatree 5mo ago
      You should look up how the rest of Britain’s colonies got independence :)
      - fragmede 5mo ago
        Some of them, perhaps. India doesn't seem like a good one to look up though.
- seivan 5mo ago
  [dead]
- mxkopy 5mo ago
  So what, we shouldn’t even try? What is the point of this argument?
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> Social networks are cancer. Just ban the lot of them and move on I've been pushing for the under-14 ban, which is popular in almost every country with polling, and holy shit is it a pigpen to wade through.
- nemomarx 5mo ago
  Just find a good technical solution that doesn't require handing over your id, yeah?
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > find a good technical solution that doesn't require handing over your id, yeah? In a perfect world, sure. In the real world, the political demand for a solution to this problem means we'll get a lot of crummy solutions.
- Razengan 5mo ago
  Why don't you be a better parent or just repress your own child instead of oppressing everyone else's children whether they want to or not?
autoexec 5mo ago
> now you’ve got a big juicy target maintained by hobbyists. You'd have a much larger number of targets which makes things somewhat more difficult for those looking to exploit them since they'd have to track down the various platforms and navigate a variety of systems each with their own rules and culture. Fewer of them would allow ads at all and none of them would match facebook in terms of being as easy to weaponize. "Pay us to attack this platform's userbase" is a core part of facebook's business model. You'd also be much better off when the people maintaining the system are hobbyists because they actually care about the platform and moderation. That's a massive improvement over facebook which does as little as they possibly can, only enough to be able to claim that they do "something" at the next congressional hearing, while still making sure that they can actively censor what they want. Moderation on major social media platforms seem to frustrate the efforts of legitimate users more than spammers and scammers. I'd put my money on "Randall, the over-worked sys admin" over the half-assed AI moderator bots employed by Musk and Zuckerberg
spunker540 5mo ago
What exactly would you like banned and how would you define what should be banned and what shouldn’t? I assume you want FB and Insta banned. What about Reddit? YouTube? Hacker news? Discord? X? Dating apps? Snapchat? WhatsApp? iMessage? Gmail? Just curious where exactly you draw the line, and how you’d implement the ban.

by yojo 5mo ago

dpoloncsak 5mo ago

>Just ban the lot of them and move on. How do you define social network, though? Is Facebook a social network, even though it includes a marketplace? Is HN a social network? Is Newgrounds a social network....? Seems difficult to stomp out effectively

hoppyhoppy2 5mo ago
We could start by stomping out the Linux kernel mailing lists; that cancer is at the root of so many other social networks' software.
0x5FC3 5mo ago
We can come up with a definition and refine it. Maybe something like: algorithmic content suggestions trying to maximize engagement and time on app (leave out chronological + explicit follow). Banning is not the way to go about things. India is always ban happy -> a competitive exam in a state? Take down internet in the whole state to curb cheating. Outright banning hard to deal with stuff sets a bad precedent.
- svachalek 5mo ago
  You don't ban the users or the internet, you make it illegal to do shitty psyops on the public. They were making plenty of money on chronological friend feeds.
  - repeekad 5mo ago
    How do you ban psyops? Require every user register with a gov ID so there’s someone to go after? What’s a psyop vs a grassroots contrarian movement like LGBT used to be? Anonymity online seems the ultimate double edge sword. I prefer privacy over government prescribed safety.
    - idle_zealot 5mo ago
      You investigate and punish groups found to be running psyops, simple as. No need to automate the whole process with ID checks, these organizations make and spend money so the tracks are there to find. If suspected drag them into discovery and gather evidence like you would for financial fraud or criminal conspiracy.
      - pibaker 5mo ago
        Sure, let's just give the state a pretext to jail anyone espousing opinions they don't like for running a psyop. Surely no government will abuse this power and brand anyone in their opposition as a psyop bot army that needs to be removed from the internet.
        idle_zealot 5mo ago
        If they want to they'll do that under any pretense they can get away with. See the current administration declaring intent to treat pro-LGBT speech or anti-fascist speech as indicative of participation in terrorist groups. You just can't let a government get this bad, and the set of rules and procedures you need to reign in a tyrant are pretty different from the ones you need to keep a system stable and functioning under normal operation.
        pibaker 5mo ago
        Right now you can in fact express pro LGBT or anti fascist opinions despite the administration's efforts to stop you precisely because there are no such regulations. Had a previous US administration thought that the US is a stable and functional democracy that can be entrusted with such a law, you will be in trouble.
- neop1x 5mo ago
  Exaclty, the main problem is that they are deciding what content to serve you. They are often mixing posts from accounts which I don't follow with posts from accounts I follow without asking. Then thr are pushing auto-play and infinite scrolling. It would have been a completely different experience if they just showed posts from people I follow and showed them sorted by date.
reaperducer 5mo ago
Seems difficult to stomp out effectively So just give up because something is hard? Sounds like the tech industry and its never-ending quest for low-hanging fruit. "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas."
- Ajedi32 5mo ago
  [dead]
- dpoloncsak 5mo ago
  I'm sorry if my comment came off dismissive, I was just remarking the idea of banning social media seems like we're going down the wrong alley. I like other commenter's ideas of outlawing the underlying tech. I'm more-so just asking how to make a distinction between a post on Reddit (commonly called social media) and a post on Stack-Overflow (not commonly referred to as social media). Discord vs Teams...etc. I think user 0x5FC3 correctly identifies the root of the issue, and any (if implemented) regulation should be based on the algorithmic serving, but I hold a firm belief that you cannot and should not try to outlaw math. From my first glance at this issue, it seems tricky
  - reaperducer 5mo ago
    It still reads like a bunch of deflection, which is the usual response from industries from big oil to fast food to tobacco to pharmaceuticals. Delay delay delay and continue reap the profits in the meantime by making people talk in circles instead of addressing the problem. Let Q4 figure it out, just keep the Q2 gravy train rolling. Also, nobody is trying to outlaw math. That's just a silly hyperbolic talking point.
    - spunker540 5mo ago
      Saying “ban social media” is a lot like saying to solve lung cancer we must “ban cigarette lighters” when lighters are actually quite useful outside of smoking cigarettes and banning lighters doesn’t really fix the problem.
    - 5mo ago

Barbing 5mo ago

Randall’s eagle eye friend and fellow US-based sysadmin notices attacks on his own server, reports it to his congressperson, and the fed stands up protection for the whole fediverse in short order. The government in the US will prevent others from immediately physically infringing on your rights, say to brew beer. So they’d help us online too even at the expense of corporate platforms right?

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

whatshisface 5mo ago

The idea that they would ban their propaganda networks, but not their alternatives, is really baffling...

juanani 5mo ago
[dead]

pibaker 5mo ago

You are worrying about domestic nation state actors, and you are calling social media to be banned by whom? Some mysterious administrative entity that is surely not a part of the domestic nation state doing the very propaganda you are railing against? Surely the people with the power to ban the lot of social media don't have their own propaganda to shove down your throat. Surely they will only ban the bad ones where foreign agents spread dangerous ideas and keep the good ones where only upright citizens of their own country can talk about how great everything is.

gigatree 5mo ago
Shhh if you say too much you’re gonna rattle their “the government will save us if we vote hard enough” worldview
- voakbasda 5mo ago
  They should be rattled. The US didn’t vote its way to independence from the England. Freedom never comes without a cost paid in blood, but people don’t want to admit that anymore.
  - gigatree 5mo ago
    You should look up how the rest of Britain’s colonies got independence :)
    - fragmede 5mo ago
      Some of them, perhaps. India doesn't seem like a good one to look up though.
seivan 5mo ago
[dead]
mxkopy 5mo ago
So what, we shouldn’t even try? What is the point of this argument?

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago

> Social networks are cancer. Just ban the lot of them and move on I've been pushing for the under-14 ban, which is popular in almost every country with polling, and holy shit is it a pigpen to wade through.

nemomarx 5mo ago
Just find a good technical solution that doesn't require handing over your id, yeah?
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > find a good technical solution that doesn't require handing over your id, yeah? In a perfect world, sure. In the real world, the political demand for a solution to this problem means we'll get a lot of crummy solutions.
Razengan 5mo ago
Why don't you be a better parent or just repress your own child instead of oppressing everyone else's children whether they want to or not?

autoexec 5mo ago

> now you’ve got a big juicy target maintained by hobbyists. You'd have a much larger number of targets which makes things somewhat more difficult for those looking to exploit them since they'd have to track down the various platforms and navigate a variety of systems each with their own rules and culture. Fewer of them would allow ads at all and none of them would match facebook in terms of being as easy to weaponize. "Pay us to attack this platform's userbase" is a core part of facebook's business model. You'd also be much better off when the people maintaining the system are hobbyists because they actually care about the platform and moderation. That's a massive improvement over facebook which does as little as they possibly can, only enough to be able to claim that they do "something" at the next congressional hearing, while still making sure that they can actively censor what they want. Moderation on major social media platforms seem to frustrate the efforts of legitimate users more than spammers and scammers. I'd put my money on "Randall, the over-worked sys admin" over the half-assed AI moderator bots employed by Musk and Zuckerberg

spunker540 5mo ago

What exactly would you like banned and how would you define what should be banned and what shouldn’t? I assume you want FB and Insta banned. What about Reddit? YouTube? Hacker news? Discord? X? Dating apps? Snapchat? WhatsApp? iMessage? Gmail? Just curious where exactly you draw the line, and how you’d implement the ban.