- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Social media isn’t broken. It’s working exactly how it was meant to. We just need to break free of it.
first of all, it’s a broad overgeneralization to assume that all social media is created with the intention to manipulate people. there was honest people running social media, but it’s long past. (in the corporate domain)
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social media can be useful if it presents non-emotional, non-brigading content. rational discourse is one of the valuable options possible. throwing away the whole internet because Xitter sucks is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
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but yes, social media is the new Volksempfänger and manipulates people (social engineering)
But it’s not possible to get unbiased content on the internet. Everything exists with an agenda behind it, for the sole reason that hosting anything is going to constantly cost money.
This wasn’t a huge deal when individuals were paying to host and share content to a small audience, it was a small amount of money and you could see their motives clearly (a forum for a hobby, a passion project, an online store, etc…).
Social media is different because it presents itself as a public forum where anything can be shared and hosted (for free) to as many people as you want. But they’re still footing a very large bill and the wide net of content makes their motives completely opaque. Nobody cares that much about the headaches of maintaining a free and open public forum, and any profit motive is just another way to sell manipulation.
yeah the commercialization of the internet is the problem, 100%. if it were hobby projects, it wouldn’t suck so hard.
But that’s not profitable.
well i guess we’d have a better time thinking about non-profitable alternatives, then.
rational discourse is one of the valuable options possible.
Yeah, can’t say that I’ve seen a lot of that on social media.
You don’t need social media to do rational discourse, anyway. All you need is two-way communication, a problem that the Internet solved long before any Facebooks or Twitters popped up. You can have rational discourse on IRC, an email list, or even through instant messaging.
throwing away the whole internet because Xitter sucks is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
I know you’re being hyperbolic here, but unfortunately there are a lot of people now who really do see social media as “the whole Internet”. And they have thrown a lot away as a result.
rational discourse on IRC
Hahahahahahahaha
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Should just be people can’t be fixed…
As long as you know you’re in an echo chamber there’s nothing wrong with it. Everything is an echo chamber of varying sizes.
No shit. Unless the Internet becomes democratised and publicly funded like other media in other countries like the BBC or France24, social media will always be toxic. They thrive in provocations and there are studies to prove it, and social media moguls know this. Hell, there are people who make a living triggering people to gain attention and maintain engagement, which leads to advertising revenue and promotions.
As long as profit motive exists, the social media as we know it can never truly be fixed.
Yes and yes. What is crazy to me is that the owners of social media want more than profits. They also have a political agenda and are willing to tip the scales against any politician who opposes their interests or the interests of their major shareholders. Facebook promoted right wing disinformation campaigns against leaders who they disliked such as mark Carney. Their shareholders should be sued into oblivion and their c levels thrown into prison. Yet our legal system forbids this.
The article argues that extremist views and echo chambers are inherent in public social networks where everyone is trying to talk to everyone else. That includes Fediverse networks like Lemmy and Mastodon.
They argue for smaller, more intimate networks like group chats among friends. I agree with the notion, but I am not sure how someone can build these sorts of environments without just inviting a group of friends and making an echo chamber.
Its performing as expected
I mean, I feel like just shutting it down would solve at least some problems. Shuttering it all, video sharing platforms included.
Not a situation most anyone would agree on, but it’s an idea.
The amount of comments thinking that Lemmy is totally not like a typical social media is absurd.
Guys, we only don’t have major tracking of users here.That’s it! Everything else is the fucking same shit you’d see on facebook. The moment Lemmy gets couple tens of millions of users, we gonna become 2nd facebook.
Lemmy doesn’t have a neural net prediction/recommendation engine. This is a HUGE difference.
And for the same reasons folks got hooked on old reddit, folks get hooked on Lemmy (its me I’m folks please unplug me from the machine I can’t log out)
It’s not a typical social media because it’s decentralized, but it’s not immune to all the problems of social media by any means. I’m not sure why you’re using Facebook as an example rather than reddit.
It’s that there’s no incentive to have 80 million bots manipulate everything. Our user base is too small, and likely too jaded about fake internet points to be a target for scammers, ai slop bots, or advertisers.
Or at least that’s what I thought when I drink a refreshing Pepsi! hiss-crack! glugg glugg Aaaah!! PEPSI! The brown fizz that satisfies! Pepsi!
… If there are people to mislead with misinformation, or people with money to buy things, there will be incentive. I learned about this in this great book called
Lemmy is basically 30 or 40 Linux meme platforms begging for donations, full of people bitching about AI and politics, and recycling old reddit shitposts. I love it. I am home here. I love you all.
But, we aren’t running communities with millions of people trading crypto and stonks. There’s instances that are full on socialists. A pig butchering scam here would founder so badly they would banish anyone foolish enough to try it to redemtuon by spamming the comment sections of cooking blog posts before being summarily executed.
We have herd immunity.
Sorry but you are naive. That’s really all I can say about your view.
Just trying to be funny is all…
Exactly. Once we are a mainstream page to visit, it will go down as fast as any other page like this before.
That’s the real benefit of the Fediverse. Even if one instance becomes known for hosting bots, we can defederate them. Each instance isn’t the population of the whole. Plus, we don’t need to be huge. There’s no benefit from it.
Facebook has lots of miss information and scams too, which here on Lemmy don’t have. Edit: if Lemmy was Facebook, then we would follow friends and share our locations and our photos
yes, and no. what really Facebook lacks (along the top social medias) is strong negative feedback.
I don’t think the village idiot is going that far with the flat earth conspiracy when is publicly downvoted to oblivion
Reddit has downvotes. That hasn’t saved it from misinformation, trolls, and radicalization.
I beg to disagree.
The reason all these delusional posts getting even upvoted to begin with is due to many like-minded people are gathered together in the same sub. As an example, reddit’s r/democrats and r/republicans. One is clearly more sane than another, yet try to say something in a wrong sub - get downvoted to oblivion. But if you spill your delusional shit in a r/republicans - upvotes galore and comments of praise.
Facebook groups are the same shit. And so is Lemmy. One thing in hexbear that is allowed could/will be the reason you got a ban in .world. Up/Downvotes cant fix that.
tl;dr Village idiots can join together to accumulate their own conspiracies in a big ass circlejerk, and social media has no power to stop it.
I haven’t used FB in half a decade, but at least with respect to reddit, there are definitely more good “features” in the threadiverse than just lack of tracking.
Not saying there aren’t any issues or that scaling to 10 M MAUs won’t create new problems, but lack of tracking isn’t the only differentiating factor.
Yeah decentralization and open source software and protocols being big ones. It means that if the “main” culture turns reactionary, that we’re not trapped in the same spaces as the shithead just because we share a platform.
There could absolutely be two main fediverses, with no changes to the technology.
Yeah, op is clearly ignoring some very important differences that have actual, material consequences that are pretty obvious. The argument is that there’s no perfect solution therefore they’re all the same/similar. Which isn’t a great argument.
As long as people worship themselves (but also, paradoxically, require everyone’s attention and approval all the time just to make it to the next day), it will continue being that way. For those who see it for what it is and are disgusted by it, we have Lemmy/discussion boards.
Getting banned from Facebook. After a decade of clapping back against racists. Has been the best thing in my life. So glad to be out of there. Just wish I could have saved my pics first.
Ofcourse not. The issue with social media are the people. Algorithms just bring out the worst in us but it didn’t make us like that, we already were.
From my point of view something that brings out the worst in us sounds like a really big part of the issue.
We’ve always been modified by our situations, so why not create better situations rather than lamenting that we don’t have the grit to break through whatever toxic society we find ourselves graphed onto?
Sorry I know I’m putting a lot on your comment that I know you didn’t mean, but I see this kind of unintentional crypto doomerism a lot. I think it holds people to an unhealthy standard.
It is a big part of the issue, but as Lemmy clearly demonstrates, that issue doesn’t go away even when you remove the algorithm entirely.
I see it a lot like driving cars - no matter how much better and safer we make them, accidents will still happen as long as there’s an ape behind the wheel, and probably even after that. That’s not to say things can’t be improved - they definitely can - but I don’t think it can ever be “fixed,” because the problem isn’t it - it’s us. You can’t fix humans by tweaking the code on social media.
Sounds like it’s time to delete it, then.
Neat.
Release the epstein files then burn it all down.
Because how to use it is baked into what it is. Like many big tech products, it’s not just a tool but also a philosophy. To use it is also to see the world through its (digital) eyes.
I think just going back to internet forums circa early 2000s is probably a better way to engage honestly. They’re still around, just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.
I’m talking stuff like SomethingAwful, GaiaOnline, Fark, Newgrounds forum, GlockTalk, Slashdot, vBulletin etc.
These types of forums allowed you to discuss timely issues and news if you wanted. You could go a thousand miles deep on some bizarre subculture or stick to general discussion. They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.
just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.
Boowahahahahaha, I’ve used those with PSP default web browser. With Nintendo Wii web browser. With Java phone web browser (admittedly that was only to read, and very slowly).
Anyway, have clumsy sweaty big fingers (unfortunately due to my behavior girls don’t extrapolate that feature anywhere anymore), strongly prefer anything with physical keys.
They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.
Images, links, enormous smilies’ sets, colored text.
That’s what I’ve been hoping for with Reddit and now Lemmy. I don’t care about individuals, I care about topic based discussion.
My problem with forums is they are more like a club, where you get loss of off-topic discussion by people who happen to share an interest. I don’t care what tech nerds think about medicine on a tech nerd forum, and joining dozens of forums to get the right discussion is a huge pain.
Forums are cool, and I use a few, but I really want a place that connects different subjects.
Anything that is topic focussed rather than following individuals is a big difference, and then take away the engagement algorithm and it’s much better.