72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/22/most-americans-say-social-media-companies-have-too-much-power-influence-in-politics/

by bezmenov • 6 years ago

205 112 6 years ago

pewresearch.org

noisy_boy• 6 years ago

Only if they had the will power to stop contributing to it.

smitty1e2• 6 years ago

Articles whining about ProblemX are tedious in a capitalist system.

Convert all of that whining energy into improving the situation, so as to do more than perpetuate it.

Now, if there is substantial ReasonY that ProblemX cannot be addressed, there is genuine basis for complaint.

mkmk2• 6 years ago

Sure, whining is tedious, but polling a populace to get an overview of public opinion seems to be a different thing.

ClumsyPilot2• 6 years ago

Ok, so we should have no articles about Covid19, climate change, Boeing crash or 2008. May i ask how does the public even realise a problen exists?

Secondly, if you are going to make that argument, you should highlight our system is democratic. Slaves in enjoyed capitalist system too, you know.

aspenmayer6• 6 years ago

Slavery still exists. Illegally, in places many don’t go, for various reasons, all of which are wrong, because slavery. And also legally, in American prisons as forced servitude, which is also wrong, because slavery.

lm284692• 6 years ago

you should spend time fixing the problems

also

don't talk about the problems

How does that work ? No one is going to solve these multi faceted issues alone in their garage. Creating a discussion around them is part of the solution

Nasrudith5• 6 years ago

And what to do thet do when solving it? Talk about possible solutions. Instead whining is constantly "someone else should do it"! Which is neither helpful nor wise.

laser• 6 years ago

Kind of interesting that the intro for the wikipedia on Conservatism in the United States [1] says "Conservative philosophy is also derived in part from ... laissez-faire economics (i.e. economic freedom and deregulation)" but that in this circumstance [2] the self-identified "conservative" group members were the most likely to support more regulation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ft_20...

AmericanChopper• 6 years ago

This is a rather lazy strawman. Monopolies and cartels have always been the primary threat to efficiency in all free market models. All serious proponents of free market economics have always identified the importance of regulating monopolistic and cartel-like behaviour (aside from the anarchists, which is mostly an extremist form of libertarianism).

poilcn• 6 years ago

All these terms are too wide to describe one person's position on certain topic. They could be anti-regulation in terms of "government influences who, how, when, where operates in some economy sector" as it leads to market capture and control of the regulatory organizations by the companies they were supposed to regulate, but pro-regulation in terms of trust-busting companies having above-government power, like it happened to Rockefeller's "Standard Oil".

rvz2• 6 years ago

Meanwhile, the major social networks (if not all of them) are still very good at creating echo-chambers and filter bubbles. So nothing has changed since 2016.

raxxorrax2• 6 years ago

To be honest, I like some of those bubbles. I have much more trouble of finding value in engaging in some sanitized, corporate, mainstream, pop culture that looks like the abused child of advertisers, special interest and propaganda.

Yes, some are insular and don't really develop if that is your thing, but you can always have multiple bubbles.

Nasrudith5• 6 years ago

I tried logged out youtube without initalization and the value just plain wasn't there. Even a bad day for it was far superior to the generic mass market lowest common denominator schlock. Which I suppose demonstrates why old media lost.

Their approach was rather one size fits most with many lowest common denominator. Discovery is a damn useful service which is kind of obvious in retrospect with reviewers and guides being something people pay for.

oprah• 6 years ago

Filter bubbles are seen as critical enablers of Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, and other populist political phenomena, and search and social media companies have been criticised for failing to prevent their development. Yet, there is scant empirical evidence for their existence, or for the related concept of ‘echo chambers’: indeed, search and social media users generally appear to encounter a highly centrist media diet that is, if anything, more diverse than that of non-users.

https://www.doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1426

apatheticonion• 6 years ago

It blows my mind. The US has an international reputation for being pro-corporate so from the outside, it makes sense that social networks get away with the lack of accountability they have.

However, a large portion of humanity use social networking tools so US legislation has a direct affect on everyone and potentially (inadvertently) it has an effect on the democratic processes of other nations.

At what point does it become an international issue?

raxxorrax2• 6 years ago

As someone not from the US, I am so glad that the networks are located there.

The US also has a pro-freedom reputation and that is currently really valuable. I never held back with criticism towards the US and won't do so in the future, but on this issue I would staunchly run with the worst hillbilly rednecks you can imagine firing freedom bullets in every direction without an ounce of shame.

Democracy has nothing to do with content restrictions.

kypro• 6 years ago

I kind of agree. If these social media sites were located in Europe I expect it would be much worse.

I live in the UK and here we have thought police units who will knock on your door to "check your thinking" if you post jokes that are too controversial. While it's obviously a problem that billion dollar foreign internet companies are regulating what we can say online they are at least, for the time being, more aligned to the values of free-speech than many European governments.

Kaze404• 6 years ago

I can sympathize with this point, but let's not pretend that this "freedom" represents democracy any better. What we've seen in the past decade regarding the impact modern advertisement has on elections and public privacy to me is a testament to social media in the current state being anything but benefitial to democracy.

That said, I don't have a solution.

kobalsky• 6 years ago

Cold war CIA wouldn't have dreamt with the power that social networks, streaming sites and tech companies have over electoral processes in other countries.

I live in a small city in the ass end of the world, but my local politicians, who live a few miles from my home, fork money (a lot of money) over to FB and Google so I can see their ads. They have a huge impact on who gets elected.

negamax2• 6 years ago

Gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating.

What does a world without social networks look like? I don't think we want that anymore. Because social networks do serve a required function.

For Twitter, I love the fact that I can follow some people that I look upto and get their real time musings.

For Facebook, it's about connecting to friends and people I know and being able to reach out without phone numbers etc.

We are trying to solve this problem the wrong way. So again, gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating

andreareina• 6 years ago

Food can be (and there are those that are) designed to optimize for the desire to eat more. Slot machines payouts are designed to encourage people to play one more time. There are games that are famous for eliciting "one more turn... oh my god it's 5 a.m. already".

When a stimulus reliably elicits a particular response on a large enough population, you can reasonably say that it's the stimulus and not the individual's failure to apply moderation/critical thinking/what-have-you.

negamax2• 6 years ago

No it's definitely individual failure. If I get fat by eating burgers and sweets everyday. It's my fault.

cheschire• 6 years ago

What required function do social networks fill? Your wording implies objective requirements exist in the general sense which can only be fulfilled by social networks.

The two things you've said are access to "real time musings" which is absolutely not a requirement in the objective sense, and connecting to friends and people, which is a requirement that can be easily fulfilled by other applications.

Phones and email are still completely viable methods for communicating with anyone. Chat programs such as Signal or Apple Messenger or WhatsApp really only add the additional functionality of group SMS. Otherwise standard SMS is fine.

I think your point about moderating your eating is a good and valid point though.

Let's take the metaphor further. Let's say social networks as they exist today are like restaurants that serve 3500 calorie meals. Sure, a person could choose to pay $30 for a 3500 meal and then moderate their consumption and take the rest home in a doggy bag, but that clearly is not what is happening. Instead what is happening is people are eating the whole dish. And on top of that, the restaurant is adding a ton of stuff that makes the food taste more addictive, and other stuff that makes you not feel full so that you'll want to order that dessert too.

And to beat the metaphor to death, I just don't go to restaurants anymore, I make my meals at home.

rbecker2• 6 years ago

Your analogy assumes the problem is overconsumption of social media. But what about concentration? 3-4 companies control ~90% of global social media. I don't think people would be as worried if that control was spread more evenly across hundreds of smaller companies.

Nasrudith5• 6 years ago

Control is a misleading phrase in that context - it isn't the same sort of control as Murdoch over his empire or the infamous Sinclair Media scripted message.

They aren't the same type of control at all, implying it is deeply disingenuous like claiming beating your kids with a baseball bat and scolding them doesn't make a difference because it is just punishing them either way.

tacocataco• 6 years ago

A private Discord channel is the best social media.

You invite certain people, people can share things, text or even voice chat. You can curate, you have more control of what comes down stream.

hawkoy• 6 years ago

I have thought about this before. I believe internet lacks enough echo chambers. In real world, people automatically segregate based on their income bracket, community, values, lifestyle, job, family (kids or not?), healthcare, accessibility to various things, etc. People have all sorts of stereotypes and things they expect other people to conform to based on visible factors. This isn't possible online. There is too little information and our stereotypes will never be correct (too big number). It shocks people. In real life, oh that's a catholic person. Of course I would expect them to say this. Too much difference in opinions leads to defensiveness rather than acceptance. You cannot accept 180 degrees but you can accept 10 degrees slightly left.

preordained2• 6 years ago

When, I don't know, +90% of public discourse is flowing through a handful of platforms, and they are cutting out what they don't like, teasing out what they do like a gardener sculpting shrubbery to present some customized, skewed version of the public consciousness...yah, it's a problem.

I think the publisher vs platform provisions do need to be revisited. I think small niche sites and forums could be allowed more latitude in how they curate, but at a certain scale a higher expectation of neutrality should be enforced. Really, just limited to taking down obscenity, porn, gore, etc. If any more grey curating is applied (i.e. these platforms attempting to deem for themselves what is "hate speech") there should significant penalties for not applying it generally; for instance, taking down a Trump tweet addressing BLM for being deemed racist in some way, and yet giving a pass to others saying "white loves don't matter" or the like.

A few giant platforms can't be allowed to be the grand arbiters of what is acceptable public speech and what isn't. The influence they have is scary.

johnny222• 6 years ago

and you can define obscenity? or is it "I know it when i see it" again. There is no neutral.

preordained2• 6 years ago

Fine, porn or gore or profanity, list of slurs. If you want to begin curating other nebulous concepts like "hate speech" at scale, it should be explicitly defined and you should held to being clear when you are acting upon violations for it, and responsible for applying your policy broadly and not cherry picking. "There is no neutral" so we'll just make it up as we go is just a ridiculous pass that big platforms are exploiting to the ill of society.

fuzzy2• 6 years ago

Even after reading the article, I’m not sure how to understand the question. Is it: "Social media companies are censoring me and must be regulated" or are they perhaps mixing the platform with the content? Because if Trump writes on Twitter, that’s not Twitter. It’s Trump.

IMHO, social media companies don’t have a lot of political influence. It’s the reach they create for platform users that’s "the problem".

jojobas• 6 years ago

It's not about Trump posting on Twitter, it's about Twitter choosing what to show you "trending" based on their management's political beliefs.

C1sc0cat2• 6 years ago

That's what I though "how very dare they show me a tweet from that ultra left politician tony blair"

pferde• 6 years ago

Social media do actually have a lot of political influence - at least those which curate and promote certain content. They are the ones who control what kind of information gets consumed by more eyeballs and what kind of information gets suppressed, or at least displayed less prominently.

It's not about "social media companies are censoring me", but rather "social media companies are censoring what I see".

C1sc0cat2• 6 years ago

Yeh is it "I don't agree with president Trump" or more conservative twitter users objecting to companies tweeting about BLM or Pride.

I actually suspect the latter.

rvz2• 6 years ago

Given the evidence of blacklisting and censoring trending Twitter users and hashtags via screenshots of the leaked admin tool, they have a lot of political influence and have access to that tool which can be used to crush anyone or any tweets they don't like. President or protestor.

The moment they censored anyone re-posting that admin tool on Twitter, it tells you that not only it exists but that they also still actively use it.

aspenmayer6• 6 years ago

I guess I’m one of the 28%. Politicians, the government, megacorporations other than social media, and the police as well as entire associated bureaucratic law enforcement organizations have too much influence, period. The protests on all sides are a reaction to and expression of that rejection of unwanted, nonconsensual influence over free people. Social media is the megaphone of this protest movement. This is the establishment trying to chop the heads off the hydra, while counterprotesting heads stir up trouble and confuse the narrative on all sides. Will it work? For whom?

read_if_gay_2• 6 years ago

Pfizer and Exxon don’t get to decide which hashtags are allowed to be on trending or what stories people should see in their feed.

aspenmayer6• 6 years ago

However, their lobbyists in DC will threaten to give the other guy or gal more money than they’ll give their regular congresscritters if they don’t play ball. This is not Schoolhouse Rock. Laws don’t exist. They’re memes that have force of law, and like all memes, laws are subject to mutation and deep frying, as well as appropriation and recontextualization.

wwright2• 6 years ago

You think that Pfizer doesn’t have a whole team dedicated to managing what gets reported on them by TV news and major papers?

throwaway_kufu2• 6 years ago

Social media companies are megacorporations. Not just that even among the megacorps they are 2nd to big pharma in terms of lobbying budgets.

You call social media the megaphone of the protests, but when Trump went to threaten the protesters “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” he did it on social media.

Nasrudith5• 6 years ago

It isn't exclusive but it is deeply disingenuous to say it isn't their megaphone. That it can be used Trump to post doesn't subtract from it being the medium depend upon it. But unlike Trump who can give press releases, speeches to the nation, and press conferences essentially any time he wants the people lack that reach.

netcan4• 6 years ago

Twitter set out to be the public square, the place where matters of importance are discussed by the people. I think JD was serious about that, still is.

The problem is that Twitter is a private public square. That contradiction is not something JD can accept, because "his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It isn't reconcilable.

We don't have many examples, in modern times, of of non-companies filling roles like Twitter of FB fill. But, that doesn't mean they can't exist.

The WWW itself is a platform for speech and is a "public square." Wikipedia is another example. A really good example, if you think about it. If wikipedia was a commercial company, imagine the issues they'd be facing... all that authority as an information source.

Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook? This isn't a question you could ask about Toyota.

If Facebook fell off the edge of the disc, we would very quickly have a replacement. People wouldn't lack for social media. If Toyota fell off the disc, we would have fewer cars. Rebuilding that capacity would require real resources.. Until then, we'd lack for cars.

This last part is key. Commercial viability is nearly a non-issue. Social media can be viable on a tiny fraction of its current revenue. This explodes the number of possible actions.

I really hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow... I hope, but I can't say I'm optimistic.

save_ferris2• 6 years ago

I don't fully understand what you're trying to argue here.

Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook?

Are you saying that if FB had a smaller headcount or budget, they'd be less influential? A company's headcount and budget are largely a function of the market, and the market highly values FB. If you have a problem with the economics of FB, you have a problem with the market forces that created it. But you end with:

I hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow

If you're not happy that the market created conditions for companies like FB to grow to the size that they are, and you're also not happy that regulation is possibly in the future of these companies, then how would you like to see this scenario play out?

fendy3002• 6 years ago

Imo the party which makes the values of FB high is the problem. It isn't just some companies that want to put advertisements for their products. The companies want to dominate the market and shut down their competitions, even to the point that our privacy start to be intrused.

The best scenario is for FB to stay at early 2000 version, where our feeds full of friend's stories, games and some ads. Now it's full of media, arguably some pushes political agenda, intrusive advertising (tracking ads), and a few of friend's feed.

Then imo, not all regulations are good. Because fb is a political platform, the regulation for sosmed is more likely full with political agenda too.

netcan4• 6 years ago

To the first part, I meant that the range of possible worlds is very broad. Resources aren't a limiting factor. Facebook could continue to do facebook regardless of financial burdens placed on them. If not, someone else can. This wasn't the case for most monopolies of the past. In the past, there was a real concern of "oops. We killed smelting. No more steel."

To the second part... I don't have full answers. I would like this scenario play out to a free media outcome. Decentralisation, and ideally, a lot of commercialisation too. More wikipedias, WWWs. Fewer FBs. Disintermediation. Commodification of bottlenecks like youtube has... owning the relationship between video maker and video watcher. The ideals that made the internet work in the first place.

That's not something a politician can give us though. No one decided that wikipedia or WWW would win. It happened. What I want from politicians is a laundry list:

(1) Trustbusting. The Facebook's acquisitions of whatsapp & IG should never have happened, for example. Youtube should be split from Google (and adwords from search... off topic).

Also, modern antitrust needs to recognize the economic realities of these businesses. This isn't a railroad monopoly or Bell. There are no capital costs and there is no major danger of harming the public interest by sinking the industry. Social media will exist whether or not FB is worth $1trn. That money does not represent "capital" in the productive capacity sense, it just represents earning potential.

(2) Different rules for giant companies. Rules should apply only to designated giant companies. The biggest problems are size related. Be explicitly skeptical of size. Data laws. Copyright enforcement. User content liability. Fairness requirements. etc. A normal regulator will enforce the monopolies which create the underlying problems. We need an explicitly "large company" set of rules, including tax rules.

(3) Much stronger fair use and public domain rules. A complete rethinking. Eg, if a politician gives an interview... this should be public domain or under extremely strong fair use protection.

This is another area where we need to consider modern economic realities. For said political interview, you could preserve most of the financial value (and incentive) with a copyright limited to one week.

(4) Non-consumer rights in regards to monopolies. If facebook, youtube or amazon ban you, this is a public matter. It's more akin to blackballing than "please leave this bar." Everyone needs protections from monopolies, especially non consumers. Once companies are in that size range, they need to

(5) Data use transparency laws. FB political advertising is an extreme example. Half the shit they do wouldn't stand the light of day. Some of it is borderline treason. Shine that light. Full data dumps of ads, targeting criteria, etc. Publish ad matching algorithms. Give the public access to everything the advertiser has access to...

... the list gets long.

dexen5• 6 years ago

Excellent post, one nitpick:

Wikipedia is another example [of the public square]

Quite the opposite; Wikipedia is explicitly based on published reliable sources. They have a specific rule[1] excluding information that was not published in such way.

There are certain advantages to this rule, and its utility has been validated through Wikipedia's long, and ongoing, run. Nonetheless this cathedral mindset cannot be compared to a public square in any way other than being a very opposite.

In particular the published reliable sources rule excludes general blogs and public forums and the likes, thus excluding the majority of discourse & voices on the internet. Even expert sources, if self-published, can only be used in limited way and with caution.

[1] "If no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

jfk13• 6 years ago

Naturally, there's a relevant XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/978/

lr4444lr• 6 years ago

You're not wrong, but I think you're missing his key point, which is that a forum for free thought simply isn't if it's policed by content moderators around a set of culture rules, no matter how high-minded the intentions. Now for sure, WP has moderators, and they are human, but they're pretty tightly bound to enforce only the rules of admission. They're not vested with the power and mission to censor opinions deemed odious or disharmonious. I'm sure abuses happen and the slope is slippery, but moderators tend to respond to conflict there. Not predefine and block it's alleged precursors.

throw_m2393392• 6 years ago

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

This is wikipedia co-founder writing this.

netcan4• 6 years ago

I'm not saying that wikipedia is equivalent in every way to twitter, vis-a-vis the public square concept. It is a very important media though, and faces a lot of the same issues.

Whatever issues social media has encountered around politics, covid, etc. are arguably more acute for wikipedia... because of its authority and role as a source of objective information. Meanwhile, it has handled everything much better by default. That's why we don't think of it as part of the social media problem.

dgellow• 6 years ago

If someone else is always confused by the use of acronyms, "JD" here is for "Jack Dorsey" (twitter co-founder and CEO).

SiVal• 6 years ago

Twitter and FB could be replaced quickly, because their technology is not their primary asset. Their primary asset is their hundreds of millions of users who are there mainly because of the other hundreds of millions of users.

Not surprisingly, network effects are pervasive on the network, and with everything moving to the network, network effects will dominate almost everything unless something is done to deal explicitly with network-effect-based monopolies. Just imagine email if you couldn't email anyone who didn't have an email address at the same company you have yours. Almost all email would begin to consolidate in the winning company, which would then begin telling people what could and couldn't be said in email. They could cut you off from email and destroy businesses for violating whatever "terms of service" they felt like imposing or even accidentally. Too bad for you.

I think the answer to network-effects monopolies is to force them to switch to an open protocol once they crossed a threshold of a certain number of users. They could then continue to offer services, but other companies and agencies could also put you on "the network". Companies could stay small and retain full control or grow and be forced to open so their competitors and users couldn't be locked out (or in).

smt88• 6 years ago

It is not easy to run the infrastructure for a Facebook clone, even with 10M users. Technology is absolutely part of their entrenchment.

xxpor2• 6 years ago

I don't get why people are so quick to replace private authoritarianism with government authoritarianism. At least with the first version you have the theoretical option of escaping.

aspenmayer6• 6 years ago

I don't get why people are so quick to replace private authoritarianism with government authoritarianism. At least with the first version you have the theoretical option of escaping.

I’d like to run the numbers on how long fugitives escape justice when they’re targeted by bounty hunters, placed on most wanted lists or other red notices, or both. It’s not always good innocent guys getting caught by good innocent law enforcement, either. Entrapment and parallel construction exist. Ideally the crimes or criminal intent to justify all this apparatus actually exist too, right? Some people may not care about justifications; feels over reals, basically.

The people involved may believe they are correct to work for private authoritarian companies, or public ones; I guess that’s hypercapitalism for you.

tmaly2• 6 years ago

Twitter is a private public square

So ABC, NBC, CBS are all private companies and they are much older than Twitter. How is it that they can be regulated by the FCC?

astura• 6 years ago

FCC only regulates broadcasts that go over the public airways; cable TV isn't regulated by the FCC.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

Does this point to a social media platform which is publicly funded, publicly funded internet infrastructure, and publicly funded web access?

Do we not want a public square?

godshatter• 6 years ago

I don't trust governments not to coopt such a system and make it political in one way or another.

I'd prefer we go a federated route, like Mastodon. That way the servers are private, but the system as a whole is not controlled by a central authority. Can't find a server that will let you express what you want to express? Roll your own. Don't want to hear about Emacs ever again, join a vi-only server, or a never-emacs server.

thephyber3• 6 years ago

fell off the edge of the disc

What in the flat world... ? /s

thephyber3• 6 years ago

The problem is that Twitter is a private public square.

What were the public public squares and the private public squares before Twitter was developed?

Understanding the historic context of these forums is pretty important.

I would argue there have only been remarkably few public public squares since property became privatized.

netcan4• 6 years ago

so... jericho?

d--b• 6 years ago

It's interesting though. The networks really were created to increase connection/communication between people, and it did in many ways.

What was unexpected is the effect. One had expected that people would feel less concerned by the state of the world, cause they would talk to their friends and family rather than bingeing on the global news.

But instead, this increase in connections created a sort of phase transition in society. It's kind of similar to the article that was posted here the other day, where scientists realized that atoms in a solid glass were more connected to each other than in liquid glass. In a way, social media literally "cristallized" polarization.

Nasrudith5• 6 years ago

The whole question is frankly deeply stupid on so many levels. First off it is push pollingly worded to get directly contradictory groups (those conplaining about too much and too moderation) while pushing a clear agenda. Second the very concept is meaningless. What is a proper level of influence for social media? It can't even be defined. It only leads to intellectual abominations like obscenity and know it when I see it which leads to "Whatever the fuck the person in power wants narcicistically imposed upon all."

LockAndLol• 6 years ago

They really should've added the question "Which social media accounts do you have" and then just summed that up.

Do you think those companies would have that much power without its users?

lazyjones• 6 years ago

It's not the social media, it's mainstream mass media who decide to report on "hashtags", memes and viral videos and bring them to the wider public. Lazy journalists who don't investigate facts anymore and only care about trends and outrages and whose "ultimate editor" is now Twitter, as Bari Weiss alleged.

originalvichy• 6 years ago

This is closer to the truth. The internet’s main currency is attention. It is a sea of information and the only places that get noticed are the ones given attention to.

Mainstream media is in a feedback loop with the internet.

save_ferris2• 6 years ago

There's more money and opportunity for journalists to use tools like Twitter because that's where the public's attention is.

With media outlets incentivizing things like CTR, journalists are going to use whatever gets more eyeballs. And since people aren't directly paying for their news anymore, reporting using tools like Twitter is what makes them the most money.

If you're going to criticize "lazy journalists", you also have to acknowledge the system that makes it impossible to generate serious revenue without sites like Twitter and FB, because that's effectively what those companies have done.

throw_m2393392• 6 years ago

Exactly. Like Bari Weiss said, "Twitter has become the editor". US journalists now write articles to satisfy their twitter following.

blue52• 6 years ago

Yes, they do because they can get away with everything that the other non-"social" companies cannot.

mensetmanusman2• 6 years ago

I just realized how social can fix this issue.

Every account has a default setting that is ultra-curated content, works nicely, politically correct, etc.

Deep in the options, you can ‘unlock’ all (requires 18+ notification, verification, or whatever depending on laws), then it will be an absolutely uncurated FILO sort of absolutely everything going a mile a minute.

The unlocked settings would let you upload code-snippets to do curating, so people could share things and invent new ways to curate.

This solves the issue with the risk of censorship.

everdrive• 6 years ago

The issue is the speed and magnification of ideas, not necessarily the "adult" content.

mensetmanusman2• 6 years ago

Then in the uncurated version, they could disable the like button, which is what makes things go viral...

torresjrjr• 6 years ago

I've recently written a pair of explanatory articles regarding the Fediverse, the decentralised social media network.

https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediv...

https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-20-what-is-the-fedive...

The solution to centralised power and control already exists and is thriving, with approximately 2 million users strong. Take a moment to learn about the Fediverse and you'll be asking yourself why you didn't know about this before. Don't complain, act for Internet freedom.

darkerside• 6 years ago

Funny that this didn't pop up on my Google News feed

87tau• 6 years ago

While social media seem to be the problem, I find myself internally conflicted. On the one hand I see myself as a supporter of democracy, freedom of speech and liberty of expression, but I'm dismayed by the self harm these ideals are causing at the moment. It's the feeling of being unable to defend against painfully obvious (to me) propaganda but also the worry that I don't close doors to the freedom these platforms allow.

Why do information campaigns seem to be failing against the propoganda mills?

Living in underdeveloped part of the world I believed for the most of my life that it was lack of education but having in the US for the past few years I had to firmly discard that notion. I currently believe that it is the inherited values that society imparts on us, and that serves as a lens to view facts that is being manipulated.

The last company I worked for our executives, all highly educated and good natured, for most parts, held political opinions that I thought were only held by the 'idiots' captured by someone on cell phone videos. They had built a successful company on highly educated immigrant workforce, with major workforce still outside the US, headquarter located in a deep 'blue' state with the founder and chairman of the company an immigrant and PhD holder a first generation immigrant but everyone still a vehement, vocal supporter of current anti-immigrants, anti-science, anti-obama/hillary, anti-medicine propaganda.

I don't think it's simply dismissable as biased by financial profit. Is it because everyone near them believes in such and these opinions are manifestation of values they grew up with? Is social media just giving it a loud-speaker. We need to address that somehow I feel.

koheripbal2• 6 years ago

Think of Democracy as a system that embodies the wishes & will of the average voter (not the average citizen).

Now imagine that you invented a system that would get tens of millions more people emotionally engaged to vote, but they happened to also be the least educated, least nuanced, least mature voters - people who seldom voted before.

Then imagine your surprise when intelligent debate disappears, and politics devolves into reality television.

That is what we've done.

Imagine if we allowed the average person dictact Climate Change policy, rather than the scientists? ...oh wait, we've done that as well...

bzb32• 6 years ago

Since the effects of regulations put in place around climate change are enjoyed/suffered by all citizens, and not only scientists, it's appropriate that everybody gets to dictate what those regulations are.

em-bee2• 6 years ago

it still is lack of education. it's the moral education that is lacking. education in justice (part of that is social justice if you like, but don't mistake that with social justice warriors, those are not about actual social justice, but rather they are political correctness gangsters)

education in equality. education against racism. education to help people out of poverty. education about diversity. education about critical analysis and discourse. education about religions. (even atheists should have a better understanding about the various religions and vice versa)

people claim a right not to be subjected to ideas that they don't agree with. they want to live in a bubble. this is part of the problem.

these are just some of the points that current education is missing. i am sure we can find a few more.

ganoushoreilly2• 6 years ago

Who determines what is moral as the baseline? That's the problem. You could argue your morals are right, the opposite side could argue theirs are right. People do have a right to not be subjected to ideas they don't like. I think part of the problem is hard line stances against ideas, then yelling at people that they're not "moral" ends up pushing people further away.

The 2A arguments are a good example of this. By default you would think many of the 2A advocates would be against federal forces policing (ignoring any context, not taking sides, just using an example). In fact many of the left that aren't pro 2A are calling them out for just that. But from their perspective, for years they've been told they are foolish, uneducated, or just simple people that are wrong. After all of that treatment for their stance on 2A, why would they be open to discussions from the same individuals on other topics?

So the problem is two fold. Both sides are ignorant, both sides get hyper focused on their causes, and don't care about the other sides perspective, or the collateral damage the hardline stances have.

In order for anything to work or be peaceful, we have to stop trying to change each others positions on everything, but instead realize, that for a functioning society, we have to accept, not everyone is going to get what they want.

It's tough. It requires calm discussions on both sides and notably hyperawareness about how one projects themselves. Online media makes it infinitely worse when you don't have the human behavioral cues as part of the narrative. It's why you can read the same line two or three ways and get two or three things out of it based upon the state of mind you enter the conversation at.

torgian• 6 years ago

I recently finished playing Watch Dogs 2, and the missions go over this very problem. Social media’s impact on politics and how data is used to influence the masses.

Quite scary actually, that the real thing is happening.

qbaqbaqba• 6 years ago

What about NGOs?

72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

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