[HN Gopher] Some biologists and ecologists think social media is... ___________________________________________________________________ Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity Author : Tomte Score : 162 points Date : 2021-06-26 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.vox.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com) | mudil wrote: | It sure feels thought provoking to read an article or a paper | that essentially predict how the future will unfold, or what we | need to do to prevent something from developing in the future. | And yet, the future is inherently unpredictable, and these | exercises in predicting fail more often than not. Even if there | is something that could be predicted becomes the reality, the | degree of expression of that reality could not have been | predicted. | thethethethe wrote: | This might be an unpopular opinion but I am getting very tired of | academics thinking they can comment cross discipline and | journalists somehow think it is worthy of writing an article | about. This scientist isn't bringing any interesting, new ideas | to the table, they are just repeating the same talking points | pushed by mainstream "liberal" politicians. | | > My sense is that social media in particular -- as well as a | broader range of internet technologies, including algorithmically | driven search and click-based advertising -- have changed the way | that people get information and form opinions about the world. | And they seem to have done so in a manner that makes people | particularly vulnerable to the spread of misinformation and | disinformation. | | This is such an unbelievably shallow take. Much of the "truth" | mainstream liberals have been pushing in the past year has turned | out to be false. In the past, before the internet and social | media, the media lied to the public all the time. It was probably | easier because regular people didn't have a good way to spread | primary information quickly. The media got most of their | information from government press conferences and, if the | government didn't like what an organization was saying, the | government would stop inviting those journalists to those press | conferences. There's a whole book about it, it's called | Manufacturing Consent. That type of information control is no | longer possible now that everyone can livestream from their | phones to millions of people and the establishment is mad about | it. Now they are trying to wrestle back control of information by | writing think pieces about the dangers of "algorithms" and | threatening tech giants with anti-trust action. | | Its ironic because I feel like these people are the reason social | media is a threat to society. They want to use it to manipulate | the public like they always have and are willing to go to great | lengths to do so. | dragonwriter wrote: | > This might be an unpopular opinion but I am getting very | tired of academics thinking they can comment cross discipline | | If academics can't comment cross discipline, no one else can | comment at all. | thethethethe wrote: | I never said that they cant, it's more that people are | writing articles about their opinions when they are bringing | nothing new to the table. Why doesn't vox write articles | about a grocery store clerk or trucker's opinion on social | media and society? Why does some biologist somehow know more | about this stuff than other people who aren't sociologists? | This is why conservatives think academics are snooty and | elitist | anigbrowl wrote: | I am absolutely interested in the opinions of biologists | and ecologists on this topic because they are in the | business of studying complex systems, competing populations | etc. | thethethethe wrote: | I'd be interested too if they wrote a paper about it | instead of repeating mainstream talking points in a Vox | article | amanaplanacanal wrote: | I didn't know that being concerned about the impact of social | media was strictly a liberal position. | thethethethe wrote: | Im not saying that it is, that is just the perspective that I | believe this article is being written from. American | conservatives are concerned about censorship, American | liberals are concerned about "misinformation and | disinformation". This article is firmly on the | diss/misinformation side of the debate | sitkack wrote: | "Stewardship of global collective behavior." | | https://www.pnas.org/content/118/27/e2025764118 | | Abstract | | > Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how | the actions and properties of groups emerge from the way | individuals generate and share information. In humans, | information flows were initially shaped by natural selection yet | are increasingly structured by emerging communication | technologies. Our larger, more complex social networks now | transfer high-fidelity information over vast distances at low | cost. The digital age and the rise of social media have | accelerated changes to our social systems, with poorly understood | functional consequences. This gap in our knowledge represents a | principal challenge to scientific progress, democracy, and | actions to address global crises. We argue that the study of | collective behavior must rise to a "crisis discipline" just as | medicine, conservation, and climate science have, with a focus on | providing actionable insight to policymakers and regulators for | the stewardship of social systems. | grawprog wrote: | I think social media needs to be redefined. What the average | person thinks social media is is very different than what it | actually is. | | I think a lot of people think big social media platforms are | actually communication platforms, they're not. They're designed | intentionally to be difficult to communicate on. | | That the not the purpose of them, it's in the name 'social media' | they are the media, you are the social. They are creating media | based on the things users post. They're not made to facilitate | communication between friends, family, coworkers, etc... | | They are designed specifically for users to generate monetizable | content and data. They use a veneer of 'connecting the world | together' so users will generate content that drives clicks and | makes them money. | | A true global communication platform would look nothing like the | social media we have today. It would be designed around allowing | people to communicate easily and freely, it would give you | control over who and what you interact with and it would allow | you to maintain granular levels of privacy. | | Ya know...like other systems designed to facilitate | communications...like say the telephone system... | v_london wrote: | These are some very good points. For me the biggest problem | with existing social networks is how difficult it is to get to | know new people through the applications. Despite us spending | more time online than being present on the physical world (this | is probably also a problem, but one for another time), we get | remarkably little real social interaction out of these hours | spent. | | Good news is that the seeds of better social do exist. I'm | trying to set up one of them, http://www.reason.so/ which will | match people with similar interests into small (3-10 people) | group chats with the intention of creating small communities | where it's easy to discuss things you find interesting semi- | privately (i.e. somewhere between a public Twitter thread and a | private group message). By keeping the chats small you also get | rid of clickbait, astroturfers and "thought leaders" who only | want to build an audience instead of actually interacting with | other people. | | The biggest problem with setting up a social network like | Reason is probably monetarisation. People just aren't ready to | pay for social media when Facebook, Clubhouse and co are free. | coopierez wrote: | That looks interesting. How do you plan on moderating the | platform? | krapp wrote: | Social media is as successful as it is precisely because it | works so well as a communications paradigm. No popular social | media platform is difficult to communicate on, they draw in so | many users because they're easy to use. | | My mother who can barely use Windows knows how to chat with me | on Facebook. People use social media to communicate between | friends, family, coworkers etc all the time. That's _how_ all | of that monetizable data gets generated. | | Yes, the purpose of social media is to profit from user- | generated content and data, but it still works as intended for | 99% of people. | ppf wrote: | >it still works as intended for 99% of people. | | I would argue that it _feels_ like it works, for 99% of | people. I strongly believe that "social media" is a low- | quality and unsatisfactory replacement for meaningful social | interaction and bonding. | carapace wrote: | > I would argue that it _feels_ like it works | | But that's effectively the same thing if you can't get | users to change networks/platforms, eh? | | > I strongly believe that "social media" is a low-quality | and unsatisfactory replacement for meaningful social | interaction and bonding. | | Sure. It's easy-bake oven internet for non-geeks. But they | don't care. The cupcakes taste fine (to them.) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy-Bake_Oven | krapp wrote: | Social media was never intended to be a replacement for | meaningful social interaction or bonding, any more than | telephones or letter writing, or the generation of forums | and personal websites it more or less replaced. | ben_w wrote: | I dunno, _replacing_ it was exactly the vibe I got from | the Facebook people when my employers sent us to a | Facebook dev conference in London. | | Whole thing creeped me out. | grawprog wrote: | That's not quite what I meant. Sure you can chat directly | fairly easy through Facebook, but communicate is more than | just that. Keeping to the Facebook example, much of the | 'communication' is done through user or group wall posts. | | It is notoriously difficult to browse through, responses are | sorted in non-intuitive ways, sometimes responses are hidden | for no apparent reason, yet people regularly use it to | communicate. | | When people post status updates or pictures or whatever, | they're trying to communicate, how many times have you gotten | status or upload notifications from people you haven't talked | to in years, but it never showed you your best friend's new | baby pictures or something like that? | | Twitter, It's designed around a character limit that strictly | discourages longform communication. Yet, you get people | trying to write blog posts using it, much to the chagrin of | many HN commenters, and generally, the quality of most | communication suffers greatly on twitter because of the | inherent design. | cvwright wrote: | Wow, well said. We are trying to build something like this with | Circles. https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios | | It's E2E encrypted, so the server can't datamine your posts or | meddle with your timeline. Built on Matrix underneath, so | building federated communities will be straightforward. | | Let me know if you'd like to try it out. | mrfusion wrote: | > true global communication platform would look nothing like | the social media we have today. | | Perhaps it would look like that brief golden age when everyone | had a self hosted blog and we subscribed to each other with RSS | readers. | lovemenot wrote: | Not everyone chose to do that then. and I don't think of it | as a golden age. | | I wouldn't know how many deliberately chose not to self- | promote in that way, but it is probably far more than those | who chose to blog. | | I think system architecture is part of the present problem, | but it is not at the root. Even during your so-called Golden | Age the deeper issue was already manifest, though not yet | scaled. | [deleted] | [deleted] | softwaredoug wrote: | I'm more interested in what would cause people to ignore their | doctor and choose to believe whatever insane thing is on social | media about, say, vaccines. There's always been places you could | go and find nonsense. But what's different about this moment? | What's drawing people to nonsense? | | IMO social media gets the blame, but it's just the vehicle for | something darker happening. Something more about widespread | nativism that distrusts an educated, cosmopolitan elite. | | Just because we see this on social media, doesn't make social | media the cause. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | On the other hand... have you considered that your doctor, | politicians and scientists may also effected by social media in | their professional advice you are supposed to take because they | are an authority? | | We don't need to get into all the times doctors have been way | wrong. Now those people who might know that are within your ear | shot, perhaps a little less than the lunatics who just want to | talk shit. | | Maybe you are right, maybe it's not social media but an extreme | polarization for another reason and social media is speeding it | along? Maybe that's just what we do over time? | | Either way, I can't accept the appeal to authority you started | with. I have personally be on the wrong side of a diagnosis and | it's a good thing I didn't listen to my doctor in favor of | information I discovered first on social media. | relax88 wrote: | I agree with your point, but social media certainly appears to | amplify the effect, regardless of what the root cause may be. | | I wonder if perhaps the main problem is that social media | changes the structure of human interaction by allowing those | with similar ideas to congregate instead of being spread across | the network in a diffuse manner. | | Like in the 1970s if you believed that Aliens were here on | Earth and abducting people, the vast majority of people you | interacted with would think you're a crackpot. It would be very | difficult to find validation that your ideas are good. | | Today you simply need to open a Facebook group for UFO | conspiracy theorists and you've got all of the confirmation | bias you need. It has never been easier to find people who | agree with you. | DoingIsLearning wrote: | Umberto Eco said it best: | | "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when | they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without | harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now | they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's | the invasion of the idiots." | cvwright wrote: | I see no problem with letting idiots say idiotic things. As | your quote shows, the world has survived the idiots for a | very long time. | | The problem with social media is not that there are people | saying things that are dumb or wrong. | | The problem is that the platforms survive by finding the most | virulent idiocy and spreading it as widely as possible. | MrRadar wrote: | I think science fiction author Charles Stores put it best in this | 2016 blog post[1]: | | > 2007 is when the human species accidentally invented telepathy | (via the fusion of twitter, facebook, and other disclosure- | induction social media with always-connected handheld internet | devices). Telepathy, unfortunately, turns out to not be all about | elevated Apollonian abstract intellectualism: it's an emotion | amplifier and taps into the most toxic wellsprings of the | subconscious. As implemented, it brings out the worst in us. | Twitter and Facebook et al are fine-tuned to turn us all into | car-crash rubberneckers and public execution spectators. It can | be used for good, but more often it drags us down into the dim- | witted, outraged weltanschauung of the mob. | | [1] https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/01/some- | am... | maverick-iceman wrote: | Humans simply didn't evolve to live in communities as large as | the ones which enabled us to really push our foot on the gas in | terms of technological and civilization progress. | | People look at social media but it started waaay earlier, back in | old Mesopotamia. | | Mesopotamic Urbanization>Ability to | write>Journals>Newspapers>Radio>TV>Internet>Social Media | | Social media is just the last step in the process. Each and every | step of the process contributed to make humans learn about how | many humans are there in the world and this somehow makes us feel | less special. | | When we wrap our minds around how many humans are there in the | world, we feel insignificant and we feel like we don't matter at | all. In a sense our sense of worth feels diluted by the immense | quanity of people who are just like us. | | This creates anxiety and resentment. Our brain is still the same | as we had back in pre-Mesopotamic eras. | underseacables wrote: | I think the global reduction in in person communication is a | grave risk to humanity. We used to spend so much time together, | doing things together, I'm talking in the office to the roller | rink. Perhaps this just shows how old I am, but I really felt | like that was better for humanity. Global communication and | interaction is great and all, but I really miss sitting around | the backyard with friends talking | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | Text based communication is the cause. Not social media. | Anytime I go to a bar, people are paying attention their | friends if something is going on, watching a band, or on their | phone. Stranger interaction declines heavily the more people | that are there. | | I've noticed this since the advent of texting. Not since the | advent of social media. It's absurd to me honestly that someone | would prioritize someone on their phone over the person who | took the time and effort to physically be present and engage | with them that day. | | >I really miss sitting around the backyard with friends talking | | I do as well. But it makes me wonder now, if people always have | been flakey and unwilling to hang out with new people. I swear | when I was a kid, asking someone to hang out or do something | was easy, even if you met them one time. It's almost as if | unlimited media and instant communication halts people from | pursuing anything with other people unless they have something | they dont. | kingsuper20 wrote: | >I think the global reduction in in person communication is a | grave risk to humanity. | | You know, that could be. | | I'll present a meta-hypothesis. Diversity is generally | dangerous and global communications/global movement drives | everyone closer to hazardous behavior. Without the filtering of | slow tempos, things get sporty. | CodeGlitch wrote: | > I think the global reduction in in person communication is a | grave risk to humanity. | | I'm not sure I agree. For the most part of humanity, we have | been at war, murdering each other, enslaving each other, and | numerous other atrocities... Including nearly a nuclear war. | | The reduction in in person communication is due to the increase | in global communication... Which I think is a net benefit. | Social media is a bump in the road, and my hope is that we'll | overcome the likes of Twitter soon. | dantheman wrote: | There's no reason to not do that; in fact its easier than ever | to invite and plan things. | tayo42 wrote: | yeah I don't get that point, its not like people are deciding | to scroll facebook instead of going to their friends bbq. | maybe you could make the point that people pick activites for | how good of a social media post it would make. | | But that's not even what this article is about, its | discussing the spread of misinformation and social media | being full of low information content. | slipframe wrote: | I think that ubiquitous global communication is the "Great | Filter" that prevents intelligent civilizations from colonizing | the universe. Before any intelligent species can hope to tackle | a problem like that, they invent something like the internet. | And once they've invented an internet, they become addicted to | low latency communication and will never stray far from it, at | least not in significant numbers. Even one year of latency | becomes utterly intolerable once an intelligent species has | been using an internet for a few generations. | marcosdumay wrote: | > at least not in significant numbers | | That's ok. Insignificant numbers are more than enough to | colonize an entire galaxy on geologic timescales. | | The thing about the "Great Filter" is that it is great. If | you can even imagine an exception for your candidate filter, | then it's not great enough. | slipframe wrote: | I'm thinking that if you sent a dozen people to Alpha | Centari, it wouldn't make any difference because that is | under the threshold of people that would be required to | establish a self-sustaining colony that, in turn, sends out | similar expeditions in the future. | | Do that sort of stunt as much as you like, it won't become | something more. It's like trying to jump over a building by | hopping a bunch. You can hop one time or one billion times, | you won't clear the building because after each failed hop | you're back to square one. | nitrogen wrote: | _under the threshold of people that would be required to | establish a self-sustaining colony_ | | Such a small group of people, armed with current genetic | engineering and future artificial means of reproduction, | could bring with them enough genetic diversity and | reproductive capacity to reach colonizing scale. | | _You can hop one time or one billion times, you won 't | clear the building because after each failed hop you're | back to square one._ | | Despite the first part of my reply, this point about | minimum activation energy is relevant to a _lot_ of | contexts, from escaping poverty to switching careers, | from getting fit to overcoming medical conditions. This | is a pretty good analogy that I might use in the future. | slipframe wrote: | I think genetics is actually the easy part. A few dozen | or so people, selected for strong health, probably | contain enough genetic material in their groins to start | a colony. More would doubtlessly be better, but I think | such things have been done by humans on earth before. | Frozen eggs/sperm and women willing to be surrogate | mothers help a lot too; you wouldn't need artificial womb | technology, necessarily. | | The hard part I think is "playing factorio IRL" on a | planet we weren't evolved to cope with. Bootstrapping | industry sufficient even to create additional shelters | would be very challenging. Maybe we could practice this | on Mars. | throwaaskjdfh wrote: | I suspect the Great Filter is that sufficiently intelligent | life has no interest in expansion, and doesn't communicate at | all. | ben_w wrote: | Only stable if the whole society can force itself to not | even want to expand. | | If 1 per billion wants to expand, out of a population of 8 | billion, you have 8 expansionists. If each of them breaks | the social conventions and have twice as many offspring as | the sustainers (and if the desire is heritable), after 30 | generations they're now equal in number to the sustainers. | Cambridge University is in the order of 30 generations old. | | https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_ | p... | birdyrooster wrote: | Humans will never make it, but our computers will. The | internet is the singularity now. | bckr wrote: | This comment is probably about 3 or 4 decades too early. | dasil003 wrote: | The media narrative that social media is the cause of these | societal ills, especially environmental problems is laughable. | | The real danger technology poses is the increased leverage of | ever-increasing automation consolidating in the hands of | oligarchs who using it to enrich themselves and isolate | themselves from the consequences with no regard for broader | impact on the planet or future generations. | | Despite the problems with social media, removing it would have no | beneficial effect on this trajectory towards environmental | catastrophe. To the contrary, I still believe that lowered | barriers to global communication and information access are | generally good for society. Sure it hasn't resulted in becoming a | nation of philosopher kings in the utopian ideal envisioned by | those early Berkeley engineers, but the problems we are seeing | are just the same old dance of populism and propaganda that have | always been at the heart of large scale politics. | bumby wrote: | Don't you think social media impacts policy though? | | Take your example of automation. Wouldn't the way to counteract | this be through smarter policy (like an automation tax as an | off-the-cuff example). | | I think the angle of the paper is that social media makes | enacting smart policy that much harder because weaponized | misinformation can be used to stymie such policy. | JoshTko wrote: | There is simply too much noise/signal. We truly need a protected | class of speech/news that cannot lie by law. This is similar to | standardizing currency in order to facilitate trade without risk, | except for information. | ineedasername wrote: | I don't think that would work. Whether or not something is a | lie might only ever be known to the person who says/writes it. | It could just be a mistake. Or part of the truth so incomplete | as to make someone believe something that isn't true. | | Human speech just doesn't lend itself to the type of formalism | required for this to be possible. If you want the closest | approximation, look at legal jargon, specifically for | contracts: It is a set of speech standards that evolved over | centuries in an effort to reduced ambiguity in transactions. As | a result, it is extremely verbose to the point of | incomprehensibility by outsiders, and it's still possible to | deliberately misuse it without easy detection. | errantmind wrote: | I understand the appeal but I don't want the government | deciding what can and can't be said. | | Free speech is important for a free society, although we are | moving away in recent years with all of the platform censorship | and truth labeling. While this censorship is technically legal, | these platforms are used like public land and are training | generations of people to undervalue freedom of expression. | gnull wrote: | One crucial difference that seems to break the analogy is that | money is a utilitarian tool. It doesn't have an absolute, | "true" price or way of managing it. Anything that makes people | feel happy and economy grow is good, and is "true" way to run | money. | | Truth is not like that. It's must be absolute, and it should | not be defined arbitrarily based on what improves people's | well-being. (Or maybe it should, but that's going to be a | different kind of truth.) | polalavik wrote: | But who will be the arbiter of truth? | pessimizer wrote: | We'll end up with licensing of journalists, just like every | fascist state. People without a license will not be limited | in what they can say, but they will be limited in what they | can record or distribute, especially if it crosses state | lines or borders. It'll be like what authoritarians say about | driving: speaking may be a right, but being heard is a | privilege. Free speech will be defined down to making noise | with your mouth when outside of the company of anyone who | might be offended or exposed to disloyalty. | | We'll be prosecuted for sending communications across state | lines to mislead a child under Texas's Anti-Critical Race | Theory statute. | | We're nearly there already, happy to ban clearly-marked | Iranian, Russian, and Chinese state media. Those actions have | already been used by private media to ban US journalists by | associations as weak as sharing the same opinions as enemy | media outlets. | stuntkite wrote: | I'm currently not that busy really. Let me know when the | arbiter position opens up and I'll rearrange my schedule. | forgotmypw17 wrote: | Web of Trust | wwweston wrote: | Any society that is premised on the rule of law already has | to solve that problem in the enforcement; there is no rule of | law without arbitration of facts relating to whether the law | is upheld or not. | | So, probably the courts. That's an imperfect solution, but it | beats the hell out of the position that any attempt to | arbitrate the truth is unacceptably oppressive. | | On another level: _everyone_ has an obligation to arbitrate | the truth as honestly and ably as they 're capable, in every | domain they have responsibility for, first and foremost in | training themselves to be more careful about their own blind | spots, tendencies, incentives, and limits, and then in | exercising whatever influence and authority they have. | errantmind wrote: | The courts are specialists in the law, not the truth. I | sincerely doubt them deciding what is true and what isn't | "beats the hell out of the position that any attempt to | arbitrate the truth is unacceptably oppressive". It would | quickly turn into a dystopian nightmare. | | Have you never thought about why freedom of speech is an | important and worthy fundamental right? | wwweston wrote: | > The courts are specialists in the law, not the truth | | You're confusing the fact that courts are legal | institutions directed by legal professionals with the | conception that's _all_ they are. In fact, a court is a | process. That process is guided by law, and results in | legal findings, but it is not limited to the legal sphere | when it comes to findings of fact and truth. Where a | court lacks specialists in truth, advocates on both sides | will find whatever ways they can to bring them to the | discussion. | | And again, there is no such thing as rule of law | _without_ examining questions truth. You want liability | for poor engineering standards? Courts must ascertain | what good engineering standards are. You want murder to | be illegal, and people to be tried for violating murder | laws? Courts must ascertain evidence, often scientific | evidence relating to whether or not someone is guilty. A | court without capacity or authority to weigh in on truth | cannot apply the law. | | > Have you never thought about why freedom of speech is | an important and worthy fundamental right? | | Enough to know that speech and robust discourse are in | fact a significant part of courtroom proceedings. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Courts currently do a decent job at determining _some_ truth | (whodunnit) - while a lot of innocents get convicted (and | sometimes death row 'd, in the more backwards corners of the | world), it's pretty good within its limited domain of | truthseeking. | thethethethe wrote: | This begs the question that truth can be formalized. Who gets | to decide what is truth? That's incredible power and it's | unlikely that people will agree on who gets to wield it. If | some does have that power, how do we know that they won't | control the "truth" to build an autocracy? | whatever1 wrote: | And don't forget that truth also depends on the observer. If | for some reason my sensor is not calibrated properly, my | "truth" will be different compared to your truth. It does not | mean I necessarily lie, or that I do it intentionally. | | Academia has been trying for centuries to crack this nut, and | it is not easy. | anigbrowl wrote: | That's why it's useful to distinguish between | misinformation (false statements made by people who | sincerely believe them) and disinformation (false | statements by people who know them to be false). | Philosopher Harry Frankfurter also argues persuasively for | a category of bullshit statements, which are made by people | who don't care about their truth or falsehood. | [deleted] | mrfusion wrote: | I thought this xkcd had a humorous take on this idea | https://xkcd.com/2481/ | pelasaco wrote: | But not all social media are the same. HN for example, is the | only social media that I consume completely (news feeds + comment | section). Everything else I limit as much as I can.. what makes | HN so much better than the others? Lack of ads? Moderation? | CodeGlitch wrote: | I don't consider HN to be social media. It's a forum isn't it? | Mostly anonymous and no "pushing" of feeds or content. | thethethethe wrote: | From Wikipedia: | | > Social media are interactive technologies that allow the | creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career | interests, and other forms of expression via virtual | communities and networks | | Sounds like social media to me | igravious wrote: | Please read properly what you copy-pasted. | | "[...] via virtual communities and networks" | | (Friend and follower (and so on) relations create these | virtual communities and networks, these don't exist on HN.) | | Ergo, HN is not social media. | | Facebook is social media, Twitter is social media. IRC is | not, HN is not. Tiktok is, SnapChat is. Reddit isn't, | Slashdot isn't. Google+ was, Orkut was. LWN isn't, Ars | Technica isn't. | | Social media implies a massive global social graph which | under-girds the communication flows - not rooms, forums, | articles, channels, "subreddits", spaces, etc. | CodeGlitch wrote: | > Social media are interactive technologies that allow the | creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career | interests, and other forms of expression via virtual | communities and networks | | This description would include email and SMS - and no one | describes those as social networks. | | HN is a forum. | thethethethe wrote: | To start, social media != social network. I am saying | that HN and other forums are a form of social media, | albeit a very primitive form. Forums enable individuals | to interact to create and exchange information, as | opposed to mass media where things are centrally | distributed and consumed with no input. | | > This description would include email and SMS | | I would absolutely consider SMS and email to be a social | network, they are just limited and have fewer features. | | Definition of social network from wikipedia: | | > A social network is a social structure made up of a set | of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), | sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions | between actors | | > no one describes those as social networks | | I do acknowledge that there is a more nebulous popular | definition of social media which refers to the major | platforms. However, when you try to define what makes | them different than email and SMS, things get | challenging. If email, an network of independent actors | exchanging information isn't a social network, then what | set of features would make it a social network and why? | All of the major platforms have different sets of | features, some of them overlapping. What set of common | features makes them a social network and why? | bckr wrote: | Intention of the creators and, yes, moderation. The exact same | HTML/CSS/JS could power a community devoted to fighting a holy | war against Lizard people. | pelasaco wrote: | but not all moderation are the same too, right? I mean reddit | has moderation, but IMO, there, it doesn't work as good as | here. | bckr wrote: | That's why I mention intention of the creators. Reddit is | meant to be "the front page of the Internet", which means | it needs to be enormous and serve many different | communities. | anigbrowl wrote: | That's because Reddit has a million subreddits and to some | extent they compete with each other. You may find this | study of virtual conflict dynamics interesting: | https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/ | pessimizer wrote: | I think a big part of it was that it was seeded (and | continues to be watered with) people who are looking for | funding and/or people whose hopes are already dependent on | YC and other sources of financing. People have to behave | well, or there are consequences far beyond the forum. | pessimizer wrote: | It's an ego-vehicle for billionaires; a bauble to show off. HN | isn't really a business or a public service. It's a rich man's | hobby spun-off, and its only purpose and governance is to make | him happy enough to continue to bother. | | It's an aging salon, and reflects the product of the current | mood and amount of attention given by its host. | motohagiography wrote: | What a relief it was to read that these particular people were so | concerned about misinformation prevailing, as most of what they | consider misinformation is many of us call freedom, leadership, | faith, and courage. | | Social media is horrible for lots of reasons, mainly because it | throws everyone who would never normally encounter each other | into the same bucket of crabs, but their framing of the problem | essentially reduces to being concerned the wrong kind of crabs | are climbing too far. | docdeek wrote: | There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that | seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the | internet and evolution, a character opines: | | "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. | Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve | fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll | evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and | their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution | occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to | adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs | in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get | something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, | and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. | That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from | happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the | same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one | corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional | differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media | world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, | records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species | diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual | diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing | faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're | planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And | it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its | tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. | Global uniformity." | adt2bt wrote: | See: Edison bulbs in every dark bar worldwide. This phenomenon | is real. | amelius wrote: | On the other hand, are tribes or nations which are not | intimately connected to the western world that much better off? | | And science evolved greatly in the highly interconnected parts | of the world. | [deleted] | FooBarBizBazz wrote: | I dunno. Every time species from that big Eurasian land mass -- | say, house cats -- showed up on an island, there was an | extinction event. Every time an isolated tribe meets | "civilization", 90% of the tribe drops dead from unfamiliar | pathogens. Being wired in to the big Evolution Chamber seems to | forge a kind of strength (not that it's peaceful). Evolution | has more dice to roll. | lamontcg wrote: | So you're saying a wide varity of echo chambers is a good thing | to avoid intellectual monoculture? | klipt wrote: | I think echo chambers are part of the problem. Previously | you'd love in your village and have to get along with other | villagers (or move, which took a lot of effort) so people had | to learn to compromise more. | | Now everyone can live in virtual echo chambers where everyone | agrees with them and they never need to compromise. So they | start viewing anyone who disagrees with them as pure evil. | jack_pp wrote: | That's a pessimistic way of putting it. | | "In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the | top ten books, records, movies, ideas"... but aren't those | brought about by evolution as well? And as far as I can see the | top ten keeps changing, evolving. | | My argument is that the internet has enabled hyper-evolution. | You get access to the best possible information, you have | through torrents and libgen access to all the media and books | ever produced at your fingertips, free of charge. What you | might've figured out in 30 years of your own trials and | tribulations can now be learned in a couple of years reading | books. Of course pride and arrogance keeps us from learning but | that's a different story and will probably be weeded out by | evolution much faster now than ever before thanks to free | access to information. | horsawlarway wrote: | But isn't this _exactly_ why you end up slowing down? You get | groups trapped in local maxima of behavior. | | An isolated group is forced to find novel solutions because | they don't have a body of evidence to lean back on. | | In comparison, if you have an existing, known solution to a | problem it usually makes sense to just use that. | | It might be sub-optimal, but the odds you develop something | better are low. So it benefits _you_ to use the established | method. | | But the _group_ at large would benefit more from having lots | of people try novel things, because otherwise innovation | stagnates as the "known" solution takes precedence | everywhere. | bumby wrote: | > _if you have an existing, known solution to a problem it | usually makes sense to just use that. It might be sub- | optimal, but the odds you develop something better are | low._ | | There's ways around this, though. For example, occasionally | accepting a method that's worse in the short term can | eventually lead to a better long term solution. There | likelihood of accepting a worse solution can be | proportional to how much worse it is to the current | solution. The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm does exactly | this to avoid local maxima. | | Meaning you just need _some_ people to take a seemingly | worse idea and run with it occasionally. I think there will | always be a few brave or naive souls willing to do that. | jack_pp wrote: | > In comparison, if you have an existing, known solution to | a problem it usually makes sense to just use that. | | Depends on the problem. If the problem is complex enough, | say nutrition, then you see constantly changing narratives | and theories and even competing ones in the present. | There's no Best Solution(tm) way to nourish ourselves yet | so people experiment and the top competing theories are | being actively discussed and debated. Sure there are keto / | vegan / paleo nuts out there but they're just test subjects | really. Same argument can be said about software dev, | there's no best language or best framework; or about ways | to earn money, employment vs entrepreneurship is not a | settled debate. | | Can you name some problem that you feel has stagnated in | the modern world? | Ko76 wrote: | I am a big Crichton fan and wish he was around to skewer | Fuckerberg & Co. | | Truth is we haven't got to 5 billion online. Just getting 3 | billion online has run into massive issues that has split the | net in many ways no one imagined. It doesn't look like we will | ever get to 5 billion. | | So there is some baked in natural resistance. Andrew Odlyzko is | looking like he was onto something when he said Metcalfe and | Reeds Law of network growth would not hold. | | Primarily the limitation is the 6 inch chimp brain and the | Dunbar number. If the avg chimp has the channel capacity for a | 100 ppl max what's the point of all this connectivity? | | We are taking our sweet time to realise it. | prox wrote: | Nicholas Taleb puts forth the same ideas, where he believes in | fractalistic localities, in order to improve anti fragility. | jdmoreira wrote: | On the other hand if "global uniformity" stops us from nuking | each other to smithereens than maybe it's not a bad thing. | Sure... we might not innovate enough, hopefully we don't | decline to the point of pre-industrial levels but at least we | might have a chance to make it out alive; instead of being in a | creative destruction process akin to evolution. | paulpauper wrote: | H | 2939223 wrote: | Globalism is the great filter. Social media is the first taste. | | COVID as an example, would have previously been a contained | regional outbreak. Globalism made it an instant problem for | every continent. Social media exacerbated responses in most | every country. | | Interconnectivity is fragility. | ben_w wrote: | Plenty of global pandemics before COVID. Globalisation is how | we got so many viable vaccinations so quickly. | | _Monocultures_ are fragile. The only part of globalisation | that gives me cause for concern is that it can make bigger | monopolies that would otherwise be possible. | specialist wrote: | The Last Archive's It Came From Outer Space [S01E06] helped me | better understand Crichton. | | https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-6-it-came-fr... | | My own TLDR: Explains how the trauma and betrayal experienced | by Boomers impacted that generation, and how it may have forged | Crichton's personal philosophy. | cortesoft wrote: | I get the sentiment, and there might be nuggets of truth to the | idea, but there are some fundamental aspects of biological | evolution that make it different. | | Biology evolves through mutation propagation, and larger | populations tend to regress mutations to the mean more than | smaller populations. | | Behavior changes don't require any mutations, and they can be | shared in all directions (unlike mutations, which can only be | shared with descendants) This already fundamentally changes how | societies can evolve. | | Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would have | decreased after we became globally connected. This hasn't been | the case, as we have continued to innovate and create new | things even after we have been globally connected. | | While our global society does propagate some homogeneity | (McDonalds and Starbucks everywhere), it also lets innovations | spread very quickly, which gives more chances for amazing new | things to propagate. | tracerbulletx wrote: | Agree 100% with everything you said here. Continuing with the | example of food, the ability to watch a Youtube video about | an emerging food trend on Saturday, try making it on Sunday | because they taught me how to do it, then watch 5 more | channels doing the same idea in different ways, and | eventually understand the idea enough to use the techniques | does not seem to be restricting the evolution of ideas in any | way and seems to actually rapidly accelerate it. | version_five wrote: | > Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would | have decreased after we became globally connected. This | hasn't been the case | | I read the argument as being about diversity. There are | innovations, but as you point out in the next paragraph, they | spread quickly, which could be good, but also destroys a lot | of diversity. Look at how different UI design trends spread | e.g. I don't consider that a clear win. Having many less | connected groups could potentially lead to more, and more | diverse innovations, vs. everyone jumping on the same | bandwagon | | The other thing that spreads more quickly is disease (here I | mean metaphorically). If everything is the same, it gets | infected the same way, and I believe there is an element of | that when you look at online discourse, at dark patterns and | other user hostile business practices, etc. | | There are some reasons homogeneity is good, especially | locally in time, but it presents an evolutionarily | disadvantage over longer scales, which is what I took to be | the point of the MC quote | ElViajero wrote: | > Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would | have decreased after we became globally connected. | | It is not only about "innovation" but about cultural | diversity. For good or bad, a globalized world is | standardizing culture around the world. Hollywood was a very | powerful starting point as allowed everyone to see what the | USA produces. | | > innovations spread very quickly | | That is the point. There are less and less pockets of | different approaches. In one side of the world someone | invents a new app and people is using it in the other side of | the world 3 days later. Innovation may be fast, but it is not | diverse but there is a convergence of ideas and ways of | thinking. If we get it right it is fantastic, if we get it | wrong there are no alternatives. | | A good example, hot topic, is cryptocurrencies. If it is | something good they are everywhere, if it is a mistake then | it is consuming an incredible amount of resources for no use. | If you had pockets of innovation the impact would be smaller | and it will take more time to copy it if it becomes | successful. | meh99 wrote: | They don't require a biological mutation but they do require | a change in agency, social state. | | Take society as an organism in the abstract and it definitely | needs to mutate. | | Crichton was a pop science author, right-wing believer in | America. His idea small groups get things done was lost on | this guy who watched entire corporations publish his books | and movies. I'd take his philosophy and science creds with a | grain of salt. | | The masses were too busy collectively validating his banal | artistic efforts, so of course he would balk at collectivism | philosophically while ignoring it took a village to lift him | up. | | Those folks are scared that if everyone can have time to | write mediocre sci fi they'd have to get real jobs. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | > unlike mutations, which can only be shared with descendants | | Actually, transgenesis happens. E.g. bacteria can share genes | horizontally with plasmids. And viruses may bring genes from | unrelated species. | RGamma wrote: | Diversity: bottom-up | | Uniformity: top-down | mrkramer wrote: | Wasn't early Facebook all about connecting with friends and | family and looking for boyfriend/girlfriend? Today I only hear | something like "fake news, hate, racism, violence" etc. | | I wonder what has changed? I think that it is not Facebook's | management fault but the reality kicked in. Medium like Facebook | is convenient for all type of content and interaction unlike | Instagram for example which is more for showing off with photos | and following other people's lives. | justbored123 wrote: | Well, I don't know how your friends and families are, but mine | are quite racist and quite hateful of minorities and they were | that way long before the internet. | | Facebook just shows that, it doesn't change it. I think that | most people (specially white, heterosexual and not poor) were | simply living in a bubble of ignorance thinking the world was a | much better place that it actually is and social media simply | popped that bubble and showed reality for everybody to see. And | now they are angry at Social media in a classical shoot the | messenger reaction. | donatj wrote: | I'm 90% sure it's when they started personalizing the feeds. | You only see things the algorithm thinks you're going to like, | but it has a very shallow idea of you as a human being limited | to your outward expression. | | Then It pushes you further and further to the extremes of what | it thinks you like. | | People were warning about filter bubbles even before Facebook | did it. | bckr wrote: | > People were warning about filter bubbles even before | Facebook did it. | | Makes me think of "reality tunnels"[] written of long before | Zuck made his website. | | [] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Reality_tunnel | sewercake wrote: | There's a lot of 'political' content on instagram. do a quick | google search for 'politigram' and you'll see what I'm talking | about. That being said, there are definitely per-platform | affordances that may change the degree and extent to which its | expressed (and, crucially, to whom). | mrfusion wrote: | They didn't get enough engagement with positive social | interactions so they had to harness the worst parts of our | psyche. | | Sounds eerily similar to this: | | > Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a | perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would | be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, | entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the | programming language to describe your perfect world, but I | believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality | through misery and suffering. | drewcoo wrote: | If the threat is misinformation and use of social media is the | risk, then I'd expect a comparison to baseline mass media | misinformation. And everyone seems to agree that there is a | frightening amount of that. | | No comparison against control and this is only evidence that | scientists publish clickbait. | PicassoCTs wrote: | The problem is, that social media and the hate waves it | generates, can be used to hack the elite - the decision makers. | It convinces them, that more social media, more china style | social media control is necessary. Fear is a strong vector. And | if you can create the proof that you are needed, you control the | market. | incrudible wrote: | _" For example, the paper says that tech companies have "fumbled | their way through the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, unable to | stem the 'infodemic' of misinformation" that has hindered | widespread acceptance of masks and vaccines"_ | | The numbers on masks and vaccines show that acceptance _is_ | widespread. What are we looking for here, approval rates to rival | Kim Jong Un? The worst thing that could happen to what little is | left of social cohesion is an even stricter attempt at | controlling information. | | Sure, some information shared on social media is misinformation. | Some information coming from mainstream media is misinformation, | too. In some cases, the authorities will spread misinformation. | After all, some of the "evidence" used to argue that masks are | ineffective came from the CDC itself. | | With the politicization of everything, even facts can not be | considered neutral anymore. For every verifiable fact, there's a | set of other verifiable facts that may be omitted to achieve the | desired effect. Fact-checks are used for propaganda. When | consuming information, always keep your salt dispenser at hand. | LarryEt wrote: | It seems many people have a completely unscientific view of | reality in that they have absolute certainty in what they | believe to be true. | | I think there are people who are looking for North Korea level | approval ratings on things. If you have zero uncertainty in | what you think is true then anything contradictory is naturally | "misinformation". | anigbrowl wrote: | If you wanna go around arguing the Earth is flat, you need to | have something more persuasive than 'do the research.' Not | that you personally believe in a flat earth, but it's a good | example of why we shouldn't treat epistemological uncertainty | as the starting point; there is so much evidence for Earth | being round and so little offered in favor of it being flat | that its roundness should be treated as a fact unless | extraordinary new evidence to the contrary is produced. If | someone comes along insisting on its flatness without | overcoming that bar, then it's OK to treat them as either a | fool or a troll and reject their opinions. | incrudible wrote: | Do you believe this is an appropriate analogy, given our | very limited understanding of the COVID situation? | | If so, I would implore you to ponder the shape of the | surface that we inhabit _without_ the hindsight of 1000 | years of R &D. | twirligigue wrote: | Yes, and as much as I dislike political correctness, I | sometimes wonder if it's a response, perhaps even a necessary | response, to the accelerating politicisation and polarisation | brought on by the web. If all events and even facts must be | framed according to a simplifying narrative then I wonder if | the human mind/brain is doing something similar in order to | operate stably? This could be the origin of the _ego_ -- a set | of unacknowledged fears and desires which shape a personal | story or set of goals through which we attempt to organise our | lives. | enteeentee wrote: | Ive often joked about this being the great filter. (Fermi | paradox) | freebuju wrote: | Misinformation and scarcity of quality information on social | media platforms was bound to happen when these platforms hit | critical mass. Moderating SM is damn near impossible to do | effectively. It is also easy to game SM. From fake clicks/views | (bots) to old accounts used for astroturfing etc, the information | market is not at a level playing field. | | And since they are all run on some form of hyper-intelligent ML | algorithm, none of it from a user perspective is intuitive | anymore. | | The bigger risk in my opinion is how SM and use of it on digital | devices has impacted human behavior. More specifically, | psychologically. Dopamine hits and instant gratification must | have rewired our brains in the past ~2 decades. | baby wrote: | History repeats itself. The same thing happened when the phone | was invented, and radio, and tv, and the mail, and newspapers, | etc. | DoreenMichele wrote: | Long before social media, most movies, TV shows and the like in | the US came out of California and New York. These are very urban | places and I spent a lot of my life feeling kind of like "I must | be doing it wrong" because my life didn't seem to match up with | what I was seeing in popular media. | | I eventually concluded that for most of America, what we see on | TV and in movies doesn't match our lives. | | I think the internet is actually an opportunity to give push back | against that and better develop local or regional identifies | elsewhere and give them a voice. | falsaberN1 wrote: | You are expected to believe that what a movie offers is an | idealized, exaggerated or just plain fantastic take on real | life. Examples exist that cannot tell reality from fiction, but | that's generally the gist of it. | | However, much more people are willing to believe that what they | see in social media is real. Now think of how many people are | feeling "they must be doing it wrong", with that in mind. | baldanders wrote: | I believe that we are going to start seeing the rise of purposely | stripped-down software, ie text-only social media platforms or | social media platforms with hard-caps on the number of | connections you can add per account. Information technology will | begin to be viewed through a more biological lens. The best | analogy I can think of is our current relationship with food. We | acknowledge that our biological reward systems can be hijacked | via junk food and we have erected massive systems to curtail | these destructive impulses. Despite this, there are still those | who gorge themselves on unhealthy food due to their lack of | education and/or an inability to afford healthier food. As soon | as the negative effects of social media begin to manifest | themselves in the upper classes (students failing classes en | masse, severe incompetence in the job market, increased | generation of brain-dead media) new platforms will be created to | allow people to take advantage of technology without being caught | up in the biological loopholes that modern social media create. | The majority of the lower classes will continue to use | exploitative platforms, which will probably become much worse as | it is made more explicit that their user-base is made up of a | cattle-caste. Much like food, I predict that the health-conscious | platforms will erect paywalls and other barriers to entry that | will further cement the class divide. It would take me hours to | really flesh out what I'm trying to say here but I think that I | was able to squeeze some of it out. | justbored123 wrote: | > contributing to phenomena such as "election tampering, disease, | violent extremism, famine, racism, and war." | | Sorry, but what are you talking about? The holocaust happened | before social media, segregation and slavery happened before | social media, religious extremism has been going on for at least | 2000 years and its latest incarnation like in the middle east | happened before social media. We had 2 world wars before social | media, election tampering? Did you forgot about the Gore vs Bush | fiasco before social media? I could go on all day, what are you | talking about? | | This is the best we had had it on all those fronts today after | social media. You are making no sense. The first "cross- | disciplinary" change we need is more historians combating this | type of unbelievable childish ignorance and lack of perspective | of reality. | electrondood wrote: | I 100% think that social media is shrinking our collective | attention spans, and the cumulative effects of this are | unpredictable. | | Infinitely scrolling through flashy, zero-effort "snackable" | content is the equivalent of mental junk food. | ko29 wrote: | Like HN. | WillDaSilva wrote: | Definitely true to some extent. I think the degree to which | it applies corresponds to how deeply a person engages with an | individual post/thread. Having long conversations in the | comments of a post is probably not conductive to shortening | attention spans. Ideally we could mimic the sorts of deep | conversations that can be had with small groups of | people/friends in-person. Maybe Hacker News would benefit | from live updating comment threads so that people wouldn't | have to refresh the page frequently to have a back-and-forth | conversation. | specialist wrote: | Every new communications media has the same lifecycle. | | Initial enthusiasm, lots of disruption & creativity, then | captured by reactionaries and traditionalists. Spasms of | overreach and overcorrection. Cycles of purges and remything. | | Obelisks, cuneiform, drums, papyrus, pigeons, pony express, | paper, moveable type, radio waves, light beams. | | The disruption to society and culture is always the same. The | only variable is impact predetermined by production costs. | | Lather, rinse, repeat. | | The trick for us plebes is finding untapped margins and eddies, | do our own thing, maybe find our tribe. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-26 23:01 UTC)