4 ms·
By 'architecture of the internet', the authors mean the nature of social media feeds.
by cjs_ac 4mo ago
By 'architecture of the internet', the authors mean the nature of social media feeds.
- goda90 4mo agoAnd the feeds are largely the way they are due to unregulated greed.
- rapnie 4mo agoThere is a different root cause then, perhaps.
- BackacheDescent 4mo agoIsn’t the title inappropriate then? Shouldn’t it include “social media”?
- eapressoandcats 4mo agoI think the implication is that the architecture of the internet inevitably leads to social media companies driving for maximum engagement. It’s definitely not explicitly stated though.
- wg0 4mo agoIf that's what they mean, fully agreed.
- slg 4mo agoThe problem is more specifically "algorithmic feeds" which isn't require by or exclusive to social media. For example, news sites and media sites like Youtube and Spotify (which arguably have social aspects, but most people don't use them like social media) also contribute in similar ways. The root problem is the algorithm optimizing for attention mixing with human nature that tends to make negative reactions more powerful than positive reactions which causes the algorithms to create a sort of polarization death spiral.
- jason_oster 4mo agoIf we are going to be pedantic, let's do it correctly. The specific, direct problem is advertising, where the money flows. Algorithmic feeds are designed to capture attention, and the reason for attention capture is eyes on advertisements. Having identified the true root of the problem, I would recommend directing resources towards dismantling advertising. Focusing on anything else is wasted effort.
- slg 4mo agoThat’s not the root. The root is capitalism’s need for constant growth. You can still create a successful business via advertising without the need to turn to algorithmic attention maximizing feeds if the only goal was serving customers and keeping workers employed. The problem is that whoever put up the capital to start the business is unlikely to be satisfied with that. This is why independent media and worker owned media is seeing a rise in popularity. Sustainability is obviously much easier to achieve than perpetual growth.
- bit-anarchist 4mo agoYou can't have perpetual sustainability without perpetual growth. Also, capitalism doesn't need perpetual growth either (anymore than other system, that is). Independent and worker-owned media are still facets of capitalism, for starters.
- setopt 4mo ago> You can't have perpetual sustainability without perpetual growth. That sounds self-contradicting. How do you define «sustainability» in that case?
- bit-anarchist 4mo agoThe property of preserving/sustaining itself.
- plastic-enjoyer 4mo agoI think there’s too much focus on the internet and social media here. We should look back to the printing press as the origin and mass media, and trace the development through to radio and television. The risk for democracy is not social media per se, but mass media.
- eapressoandcats 4mo agoThe thing about mass media is that there were gatekeepers due to constraints on the amount of content. This didn’t necessarily mean the content was good or neutral, but it generally limited how “out there” stuff could be especially since you need a fairly broad audience and everyone had to see the same things. With social media everyone can choose their own adventure, and create their own alternate realities, and that doesn’t prevent the social media companies from scaling.
- lukas221 4mo agobefore mass media we had the priests and the Church which decided what is truth and what is not.
- patcon 4mo agoI've come to understand religion as simply a way to share a stabilized consensus reality in the high dimensional space of all possible beliefs. As in, it was easy for us to evolve to see the same physical reality (sight, sound, smell, etc) but we had to evolve spiritual predispositions in order to create arbitrary attractors in value space, which could pull us toward something shared. This, in turn, allowed civilizations to grow larger even as language complexified our imagined world into much higher dimensions (compared to more primitive animal minds) So spirituality (and it's inevitable scaled system of religions) is both an oppressor and an enabler of getting here. Like a primitive form of governance that we evolved before we were thoughtful enough to invent governance ourselves :)
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- agumonkey 4mo agoIt goes beyond that. Even chat platforms can be a problem now. IMO, I'm no sociologist but I'd love the viewpoint of one, human societies were very much non flat in terms of information, and cheap infinite internet collapsed the thin hierarchical nature of information-sharing and communication.
- quotemstr 4mo ago> Even chat platforms can be a problem now. A problem for whom? If a form of government requires someone, somewhere, to prevent people talking to each other, this form of government is illegitimate. Period. The end.
- iamnothere 4mo agoI can’t believe you are downvoted. The enemies of free speech and association are out in force in this thread. What is even the purpose of a government if not to guarantee the rights of its people?
- agumonkey 4mo agofor the people themselves, i'm not thinking about political power wishing to control minds, simply the way human communication might fail when everything is flat (and again, i'm just a simple nerd, not a researcher). what used to be local is now global, a bad idea in a village can find resonnance in other places, people start to convince themselves. the depth of information is also reduced (see how every puppet candidate is using tiktok snippets to appear charming)
- intended 4mo agoWhat? We interfere with terror cells and criminal communication whenever we can. What is this absolute line in the sand you are drawing.
- didntcheck 4mo agoAnd, as usual, "risk/threat to democracy" is used to mean "support for parties I don't like" It wasn't long ago that the Twitter shoe was on the other foot, and many of those complaining now were quite happy to endorse the right of private companies to promote/suppress speech at will (with no hint of irony regarding their alleged ideological views on private companies)
- hilariously 4mo agoSo the question isn't "Do I like this party?" The question is "Are democratic institutions, elections, courts, and constitutional limits being respected?" That's a standard that can be applied to anyone, regardless of party. Both siding things because the biden admin made people mad about twitter is frankly disgusting.
- mschuster91 4mo ago> The question is "Are democratic institutions, elections, courts, and constitutional limits being respected?" That's a standard that can be applied to anyone, regardless of party. The thing is, sometimes the decisions of (other) democratic countries can be pretty braindead. The UK and its age verification nonsense, Spain and its holy crusade against La Liga stream pirates, the US and anything to do with abortions/LGBT/Black people/whatever the book ban lunatics are trying to push today, Germany's infamous "Pimmelgate" and "Mehrzweckeier" scandals... Suddenly, the question really is, whose laws to follow to what degree.
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo agoI don't think that is the question, and in the absence of algorithmic social media feeds I don't think anyone would consider it to be. Pimmelgate was a dispute for Germans to resolve under German law; it's absurd if anyone outside of Germany feels entitled to have an opinion about it.
- hilariously 4mo agoNo, it isn't - the US doesn't really have strong anti-discrimination laws and is not enforcing them with the current administration, the EEOC is mostly toothless, and I repeat, both siding things like "DEI" or "age verification" as bad as "throwing out elections" is disgusting and are not comparable.
- leoc 4mo agoThere's no clean separation between those things. The weakness and inadequacy of HTTP(S) and other protocols actively funnels people into the centralised services of big providers. It creates a world where storage is brittle and content is ephemeral, both directly due to its own failings and because it pushes people towards big providers who increasingly like things that way; and so on. Now human nature would be enough to tend to draw a lot of people towards lowest-common-denominator options, but a system which makes the alternatives frictionful and downright painful doesn't help either.
- LAC-Tech 4mo agoAnd by democracy they mean... people agreeing with each other and voting for the correct parties: broadband reduced civic participation, eroded social trust, and boosted voting for extreme-right and populist parties in Italy and Germany. Is the "extreme-right" party in Germany still chaired by a brown lesbian woman?
- protocolture 4mo agoThanks, saved me a read.
- rbanffy 4mo agoDon’t thank that. Read it yourself.
- protocolture 4mo agoI was all ready to read a story about how BGP and TCP/IP are a bad fit for democracy. I dont care about social media algorithms, as far as I am concerned its settled that they suck. Its also not "The architecture of the internet" in any way shape or form.
- rbanffy 4mo ago“The Internet” is more than its low-level transport layer.
- protocolture 4mo agoYou might be conflating "The Internet" with "The Web" which is common. And the OP article specifically says "Architecture". The architecture of a building is not a seat at a table inside the building, even if the building contains it.
- rbanffy 4mo agoI’d say “The Internet” includes “The Web” and when someone refers to its “architecture”, it can be a number of different things. If they wanted to be specific about the low level plumbing, they would probably use the proper names for the protocols and systems. And, sometimes, the architect of a building also designs the furniture and other equipment. Oscar Niemeyer’s headquarters of the French Communist Party is a great example of that, where the architect went on to design the building’siconic chairs.