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There’s a big difference between fiction when the viewer knows it’s make believe and when it’s presented as factual. Nobody is committing genocide because they

by acdha 2mo ago

There’s a big difference between fiction when the viewer knows it’s make believe and when it’s presented as factual. Nobody is committing genocide because they saw a violent movie whereas Facebook shares responsibility for at least one recognized genocide and a number of smaller scale events where the company amplified hateful content and was very slow to take it down. A key distinction here is choice: I don’t accidentally start watching a slasher movie or listening to gangster rap, but Facebook / TikTok / X will ensure that I see unrequested content if it’s something their algorithms reward for “engagement” (i.e. it sells ads), it won’t be labeled, and they won’t let you reliably control it because they’d lose money if Facebook had a “only show my actual friends’ posts” default. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

asdf88990 2mo ago
> There’s a big difference between fiction when the viewer knows it’s make believe and when it’s presented as factual. The difference is far more nuanced and borders on inconsequential when it comes to mass media influence on society. Just because something is presented as fiction or for entertainment doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact your psyche or your perception of the world and others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinion#Work_with_entertainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...
- acdha 2mo ago
  It’s complicated, yes, but my point is essentially just that someone saying “<ethnicity> are stealing our country! Force them out!” is specifically calling for violence directed against that group in a way that, say, a movie full of mayhem probably isn’t. That’s because, say, Paramount has editorial control and will never greenlight anything close to what many Facebook / X accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers say every day.
  - asdf88990 2mo ago
    The movie builds the narrative and the subconscious biases which is more sinister. This isn’t dismissing what Meta is doing, but Cinema in the West has been just as complicit and involved.
carlosjobim 2mo ago
You certainly accidentally start listening to gangster rap when it's played on TV, on the radio, or on the auto playlists from streaming services. Or you wouldn't turn on your radio by accident, but then you wouldn't open Facebook by accident either. Gangster rap has inspired a lot of murders and other violent crime world wide, I don't think anybody would deny that anymore. So if we treat it as harmless entertainment, then we should apply the same standard to content published on social media. Publishing genocidal content would be beyond that, nobody would disagree. Still, what music do you think that African child soldiers listen to when they go on a raid to burn a village and kill everybody they find? As for violent movies or torture horror movies which are so celebrated in mainstream culture, their impact on viewers minds and souls are probably worse than a lot of what people here don't like on Facebook.
- wpietri 2mo ago
  > Gangster rap has inspired a lot of murders and other violent crime world wide What's your evidence for this? You seem to be making the claim that without gangster rap there's a bunch of violent crime that wouldn't have happened. But it seems more plausible to me that the bulk of that crime is due to the drug trade and other social and economic factors, and that gangster rap is just the musical expression of what's already going on. And I'd expect the same to be true of, say, country music. Are you also going to claim that people who listened to a lot of Johnny Cash were more inclined to shoot people, possibly in Reno, just to watch them die? Did many Merle Haggard fans turn to crime because of him? Personally, I listened to plenty of Ice T, NWA, and Snoop. Sometimes I still do. I have yet to become a stick-up kid or pack a 9 mil. Should I be worried? If there's some sort of threshold dosage, I might go over it at any time.
  - carlosjobim 2mo ago
    Well argued. Now will you apply all your same arguments to social media "rage bait"?
- acdha 2mo ago
  > Gangster rap has inspired a lot of murders and other violent crime world wide, I don't think anybody would deny that anymore Citation needed here. I haven’t known anyone to do that despite it being pretty mainstream and U.S. crime rates have been going down for ages so there doesn’t appear to be a general correlation (repeat for the video games which have been so railed against). I think most people understand the difference between entertainment and reality in that context. What makes social media different is that it’s portrayed as real: people get constant reinforcement that “people like me” think horrible things about Muslims, LGBTQ, liberals, etc. and use that to justify “strike first” messaging. We’ve seen that same playbook in the past (Bosnia, Rwanda, etc.) but those required more money and state control of media whereas social media is far more accessible to even a small minority of extremists looking to spread their messages. > Still, what music do you think that African child soldiers listen to when they go on a raid to burn a village and kill everybody they find? I note that you conspicuously omit the white-coded heavy metal used by other war criminals, but more importantly you’d need to again submit show some data supporting causation rather than simple popularity and answer the big question about whether it’s the case that the music has that effect or simply that people trying to indoctrinate use music which is already popular because it’s familiar and had the mood they wanted. For example, I don’t think anyone would say Metallica inspires torture despite it being used in the American torture program in Guantanamo — almost all of the millions of people who listen to their albums have never engaged in serious violence and the people who committed war crimes would’ve picked something else if they were in a different cultural context.

by acdha 2mo ago

asdf88990 2mo ago

> There’s a big difference between fiction when the viewer knows it’s make believe and when it’s presented as factual. The difference is far more nuanced and borders on inconsequential when it comes to mass media influence on society. Just because something is presented as fiction or for entertainment doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact your psyche or your perception of the world and others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinion#Work_with_entertainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...

acdha 2mo ago
It’s complicated, yes, but my point is essentially just that someone saying “<ethnicity> are stealing our country! Force them out!” is specifically calling for violence directed against that group in a way that, say, a movie full of mayhem probably isn’t. That’s because, say, Paramount has editorial control and will never greenlight anything close to what many Facebook / X accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers say every day.
- asdf88990 2mo ago
  The movie builds the narrative and the subconscious biases which is more sinister. This isn’t dismissing what Meta is doing, but Cinema in the West has been just as complicit and involved.

carlosjobim 2mo ago

You certainly accidentally start listening to gangster rap when it's played on TV, on the radio, or on the auto playlists from streaming services. Or you wouldn't turn on your radio by accident, but then you wouldn't open Facebook by accident either. Gangster rap has inspired a lot of murders and other violent crime world wide, I don't think anybody would deny that anymore. So if we treat it as harmless entertainment, then we should apply the same standard to content published on social media. Publishing genocidal content would be beyond that, nobody would disagree. Still, what music do you think that African child soldiers listen to when they go on a raid to burn a village and kill everybody they find? As for violent movies or torture horror movies which are so celebrated in mainstream culture, their impact on viewers minds and souls are probably worse than a lot of what people here don't like on Facebook.

wpietri 2mo ago
> Gangster rap has inspired a lot of murders and other violent crime world wide What's your evidence for this? You seem to be making the claim that without gangster rap there's a bunch of violent crime that wouldn't have happened. But it seems more plausible to me that the bulk of that crime is due to the drug trade and other social and economic factors, and that gangster rap is just the musical expression of what's already going on. And I'd expect the same to be true of, say, country music. Are you also going to claim that people who listened to a lot of Johnny Cash were more inclined to shoot people, possibly in Reno, just to watch them die? Did many Merle Haggard fans turn to crime because of him? Personally, I listened to plenty of Ice T, NWA, and Snoop. Sometimes I still do. I have yet to become a stick-up kid or pack a 9 mil. Should I be worried? If there's some sort of threshold dosage, I might go over it at any time.
- carlosjobim 2mo ago
  Well argued. Now will you apply all your same arguments to social media "rage bait"?
acdha 2mo ago
> Gangster rap has inspired a lot of murders and other violent crime world wide, I don't think anybody would deny that anymore Citation needed here. I haven’t known anyone to do that despite it being pretty mainstream and U.S. crime rates have been going down for ages so there doesn’t appear to be a general correlation (repeat for the video games which have been so railed against). I think most people understand the difference between entertainment and reality in that context. What makes social media different is that it’s portrayed as real: people get constant reinforcement that “people like me” think horrible things about Muslims, LGBTQ, liberals, etc. and use that to justify “strike first” messaging. We’ve seen that same playbook in the past (Bosnia, Rwanda, etc.) but those required more money and state control of media whereas social media is far more accessible to even a small minority of extremists looking to spread their messages. > Still, what music do you think that African child soldiers listen to when they go on a raid to burn a village and kill everybody they find? I note that you conspicuously omit the white-coded heavy metal used by other war criminals, but more importantly you’d need to again submit show some data supporting causation rather than simple popularity and answer the big question about whether it’s the case that the music has that effect or simply that people trying to indoctrinate use music which is already popular because it’s familiar and had the mood they wanted. For example, I don’t think anyone would say Metallica inspires torture despite it being used in the American torture program in Guantanamo — almost all of the millions of people who listen to their albums have never engaged in serious violence and the people who committed war crimes would’ve picked something else if they were in a different cultural context.