Tim Berners-Lee: We need social networks where bad things happen less

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/15/tim-berners-lee-we-need-social-networks-where-bad-things-happen-less

by wombatmobile • 5 years ago

115 131 5 years ago

theguardian.com

imwillofficial• 5 years ago

Imwill: “We need a reality where bad things happen less”

mycall• 5 years ago

LinkedIn? It might go to show that specialized social networks can minimize malintent, although I personally don't use LinkedIn and only assumed since it is business focused, there would be less [d|m]isinformation there.

herval2• 5 years ago

You’d think. I’ve seen everything on Linkedin comments and posts, from harassment to openly racist comments. Occam’s Razor explanation here is it’s a smaller problem because it’s _used less_ for general discussion than the other networks

boring_twenties• 5 years ago

My LinkedIn feed is much worse than my Facebook feed. That is not meant as praise for the latter -- it's around 50% irrelevant crap, but the former is 95%+.

I suppose it's fair to say that there isn't as much outright malicious disinformation on my LinkedIn feed, but to me it's a distinction without a difference -- crap is crap.

edit: And at least when I see crap on Facebook, it's usually my own fault to an extent: it's almost always from someone I follow directly. LinkedIn seems intent on populating my feed with almost entirely stuff from people I don't know, about subjects I couldn't care less about, just because one of my connections "liked" it.

ses1984• 5 years ago

If your feed is just content you don't care for, that's infinitely better than disinformation and hate.

api• 5 years ago

LinkedIn is full of banal spam instead of triggering propaganda spam.

mc32• 5 years ago

Linked in is people selling themselves, their career, their made up expertise, etc. Always someone trying to make a buck directly (products & services) or indirectly (self promotion). I’ve never gone to a Lyons Club, though from the little I’ve heard it’s selling but also helping and Linked in doesn’t have much helping (with the exception of the professional side of things it works for many people one way or another).

UncleOxidant4• 5 years ago

Yeah, people aren't going to shitpost if if they think that might impact their ability to find work. So for the most part LI posts are pretty bland. But bland maybe isn't so bad when you compare with the dumpster fire that is FB?

sneak6• 5 years ago

LinkedIn doesn't allow you to put your email address into your name field, so that people can contact you directly off of LinkedIn, and naturally prevents you from a) contacting all of your contacts at once, either serially or in a single action, and b) snoops on all of your DMs, in and out.

LinkedIn exists to benefit Microsoft, not you.

1-6• 5 years ago

I live with the premise that people are inherently bad and build around that concept.

herval2• 5 years ago

People aren’t inherently bad, but they’re inherently _different_ - and just like any other animal, people tend to react to _difference_ with mistrust. The thing IMO that social media _amplifies_ is your exposure to people/points of view you wouldn’t ever get in real life, or find people that share your worldview and “bond” with them, forming larger groups.

doctor_eval2• 5 years ago

I believe that individuals are almost universally good. Groups, on the other hand...

FpUser• 5 years ago

I have similar view

UncleOxidant4• 5 years ago

But does the group dynamic just amplify individual "badness"? Does it turn those "good" people bad or were those "good" people good just because there were certain social obligations and when a group throws off those restraints does it just give people permission to be their "bad" selves?

I feel like philosophy has been debating this issue for millennia.

amelius8• 5 years ago

Selfish or egocentric maybe. But inherently bad, no.

bmitc• 5 years ago

Not gonna happen. Social networks just tap into and amplify what’s already going on: humanity.

hezag• 5 years ago

"[...] Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature.

The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities."

- Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What it Really Stands for" (1917);

optimalsolver• 5 years ago

Funny she wrote that while Europeans were slaughtering each other by the millions. And what does an un-caged human actually look like?As a social species, we're always going to be in some form of bonded existence.

Fricken• 5 years ago

All mediums of exchange will amplify certain kinds of information, and suppress others, hence the phrase "The Medium is the message".

Marshall McLuhan, using his theory of media, was effective at diagnosing the downsides of social media decades long before it became the dominant medium through which our worldviews are shaped.

I don't think Tim, nor anybody else in the tech industry* was listening when McLuhan claimed "peer to peer electronic media" would bring out our tribal impulses, but here we are. The internet is a bunch of identity groups, each working with distinct sets of facts, all of them suspicious and distrustful of the others, who enjoy beating on one another for sport.

Of course, humans are inherently tribal, and civilization is a hack. For it work we have to suppress, and find safe outlets for our basic tribal impulses.

*Zuckerberg has claimed to be a McLuhan fan, but if he actually understands what McLuhan was saying, then he's straight up evil.

pixl972• 5 years ago

Zuck likely understands McLuhan very well, and it has made him billions to the point that he cares not for your trifle notions of good or evil.

yurielt• 5 years ago

HE says so many interesting things, yet what the guardian chooses to showcase is a minor point in the interview(Particularly when he talks about a topic he is not as knowledgeable of)? Casually enough a point that goes in favour of the nu guardian's agenda ( More censorship on social media). Honestly this is definitely not the first time they do this, this is reaching insulting levels, particularly with such a distinguished guest for the interview.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

Solid sounds like a nice idea, kind of like Urbit without the feudalism and for normal people but I think it also sounds a lot like the semantic web. (which is no surprise given that Berners-Lee is on board I suppose).

I'm not too optimistic about this and I don't think it will see widespread adoption, in particular not without any kind of legal framework behind it.

When Berners-Lee talks he still has essentially the early web mindset. Build it, and individuals will come voluntarily because it looks nice and we'll make friendly communities... somehow. I think if that was enough Mastodon would have already replaced Twitter.

indigochill• 5 years ago

I think if that was enough Mastodon would have already replaced Twitter.

For some of us, it has. ;)

For others who are fine with Twitter, well, there's still Twitter.

I realized earlier today we're still in the era of AOL. Only now AOL is called FAANG and instead of snail-mailing you plastic discs, they pre-install on all your hardware. The people who either prefer the corporate ecosystem or simply don't know any better hang out there while the wild west waits just outside.

TameAntelope4• 5 years ago

Social networks ought to be less... social. Instead of text boxes, we should provide options for reactions and that's it. Maybe there are a lot of options, but the idea that anyone can share any thought at any time is probably too much.

Limiting how people can interact and reward people for reacting positively, is a great 1/2 punch way to prevent the nastiest people from entering into a positive feedback loop.

Yeah, it's not as free, but I think we've gathered enough evidence that freedom (in this social media context) causes more problems than it solves.

Jakobeha• 5 years ago

Your approach is actually used a lot. There are a lot of apps already out there which only allow you to communicate with reactions (e.g. Clash Royale). However, these reactions seem very artificial and impersonal. There is no real community, and you never feel like people are truly being "nice" to you because they might only be doing it for the in-game reward. Social media as is is already too impersonal, just reactions would make it worse.

I think what we really need is exclusivity and accountability. So you can't just be messaged by random people, and if people messaging you are being assholes they will at minimum be kicked off your network. I think this is similar to how "real" friend groups work, how they worked before social media. The main problem is it's hard to find new people.

TameAntelope4• 5 years ago

Yep, I saw how communication in M:tG Arena worked, and I thought about how much less toxic that community is, possibly as a result. There's still ways to troll, but they're limited and hard to cause any real trouble with.

My problem with accountability is that it doesn't seem to matter. Facebook users have shown us that even linking terrible content back to real people won't stop the real people from sharing those terrible content. Anonymity (or its inverse) isn't the answer.

Has anyone tried putting up a paywall to use comments? I feel like surely someone has, but I can't think of an org off the top of my head.

TheRealNGenius2• 5 years ago

Just curious, what would be your take on reactions combined with text comments? I think that it would kind of be like giving a face to an otherwise impersonal comment, kind of like emoji. Not really sure though, currently experimenting on this kind of idea: https://www.wndr.xyz

sneak6• 5 years ago

Social interaction is not better facilitated by hobbling communication between parties.

TameAntelope4• 5 years ago

Agreed!

I don't think the goal should be to maximally facilitate social interaction anymore. We've proven there are enough bad actors that it poisons the well.

So, given the above, how can we still enable some interaction? How can we get the value out of crowdsourcing without creating an opportunity for toxicity?

amelius8• 5 years ago

I think reactions can be text, but they shouldn't be shared with everybody by default.

E.g. you post a picture, and I comment on it. Doesn't mean your mother should see the comment too.

km3r• 5 years ago

Interestingly, I used to use Instagram like this, only posting stories, and only reacting to others stories. It makes the interactions more personal and often spurs a nice private conversation.

gnicholas• 5 years ago

The problem with emoticons/reactions is that there's no way to indicate whether you are reacting to the linked item or your friend's commentary on it. For example, imagine your friend posts a link to a news story about RBG's death, commenting "so sad that RBG died, and now Trump gets to replace her". What would it mean to have a reaction of an angry face or +1 or thumbs-up? Does angry face mean you're angry at the news, or angry at your friend's reaction? Does +1 mean you agree with the news, or agree with your friend's reaction?

Among close friends, it would be obvious most of the time. But most of our social media contacts are not close friends, and it's not clear what these reactions would mean.

TheRealNGenius2• 5 years ago

Would you treat hackernews or reddit as social networks in the same sense? We have text boxes for comments, but I don't see nearly the same level of "cancel culture" that seems to happen on Twitter. I think that providing reactions is an interesting concept, perhaps this would pair well with text in providing additional context?

EGreg• 5 years ago

My cofounder and I met Tim and his team back in 2015, when they had just started building it. We actually had about a 5 year head start on them, and wound up building this social network.

Here's what I think the future of social networking will be:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-social-networkin...

sneak6• 5 years ago

Why does everyone seem to think "something needs to be done" about social media? We didn't blame the cellphone carriers for "allowing" racist groups to coordinate organized violence. Why are we blaming Facebook?

Facebook didn't cause or perpetuate the situation in the USA, it simply reflects it, as any communications tool.

Let me tell you: Facebook sadly has no monopoly on partisan lies and associated screaming, or rampant misinformation.

amelius8• 5 years ago

Why does everyone think "something needs to be done" about social media?

Facebook offers shitty controls, and reads and influences our conversations. Unlike cellphone carriers.

sneak6• 5 years ago

Same could be said for television, newspapers, and the church, all of which have reflected society's misinformation and misconceptions back onto it for a very long time.

pgsimp• 5 years ago

Everybody thinks that, because it is the leftist agenda and pushed in all media channels (who also happen to compete with social networks for clicks). The ultimate goal behind that narrative is of course censorship and control.

I'm disappointed that TBL, who seems to be very smart, falls for it so easily. Like when he mentions "feminist bloggers" - these people get toxic replies because they write toxic articles and messages (basically "all men are assholes", so naturally some men get angry about the insult). Haven't experiments in fact found that men receive much more hate messages than women, they just don't make such a fuzz about it?

I don't think TBL actually advocates for censorship (except with his "curation" idea) when he asks for better controls. Good muting, blocking and reporting features go a long way towards making social networks usable.

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

Social networks cannot exist and not devolve on today’s internet. Here is why:

1. They cannot be monetized via anything but ads. Sure a few people will pay for access to a social network. But the majority will not pay $0.01 because the friction of the transaction will prevent them. Moreover, an SN operator can make a lot more money from ads than from subscriptions, at least until proven otherwise. As a result any useful value that an SN provides will quickly be overtaken by more and more intrusive ads.

2. General purpose social networks are relatively boring. I mean how often do you actually hang out with a proportional representation of the general public? No, we want topic or interest based social networks. We want to form consumer tribes, political tribes, sports tribes, etc. We want to talk to people from our school, work, neighborhood, yoga practice, etc.

3. All that is overshadowed by the fact that most people straight up don’t have anything interesting to say. Think of the average person. Do you expect them to wow you with what they are working on even once a month? Chances are, most people will post pictures of their lunch or repost a stupid meme that they finally discovered. Twitter sort of solves this by letting you follow leaders in their fields, but still the SNR is so low that it’s really difficult to find meaningful interactions and unless you are one of those leaders nobody gives a crap about what you shout into the void.

The only thing I can see being a path forward is small communities forming their own very limited in size networks with some common authentication platform to help people jump between them. Discord is sort of that, but far cry from a sustainable model.

UncleOxidant4• 5 years ago

Social networks cannot exist and not devolve on today’s internet... They cannot be monetized via anything but ads.

I tend to think of IRC as sort of a proto-social network (channels are kind of like tribes - there's usually a topic that is of common interest for those participating). It has existed for a long time without ads or even monetization.

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

IRC isn’t accessible by most people. It discriminates based on technical knowledge, which isn’t necessarily bad because it leads to mostly people with some level of education or intelligence (on average) finding it.

crowbahr• 5 years ago

That would be more applicable if IRC had the broad appeal or ease of use of major social networks, however despite being around longer it has been repeatedly eclipsed in user count by every contending service.

IRC has no power to shape national discourse, international politics or even quotidian humdrum discussion topics because it has a high barrier to entry, low user friendliness and no additional features.

Personally I wouldn't have it any other way: IRC is perfect as is, but it is not a social network that has ever gained enough steam to devolve. It's like saying your family blog has a great comment section, therefore all comments sections can be great without devolving: that's not even universally true for family blog comment sections.

Jiocus• 5 years ago

Being text-based, and chat, I'd guess IRC is many times lighter to (financially) sustain for a set amount of users, compared to many web based social network today.

Page loads, reloads, dynamic content, rich media and more does add up to amazing amounts of data. As the user base grows, monetization or financial donations becomes a requirement if such a platform will be sustainable. A lot of processing and data transfers "need" to happen to simply read a short text message from a friend.

How could we design social platforms as streamlined as IRC? What technologies do we have? HTML works. How do we keep the online experience and rich media we are accustomed to today while going for an affordable architecture.

Solving the ads and monetization issue should be tackled from multiple angles. Not just asking where the money will come from. I believe more could be discussed about creating sustainable, lightweight solutions as well.

amelius8• 5 years ago

They cannot be monetized via anything but ads.

What if ads were banned?

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

Then VCs wouldn’t invest as much into social networks.

newman8r5• 5 years ago

I've been working on a network of small communities and I'd tend to agree that these are the path forward. Even so, all 3 points you make are valid. I have no idea how I'd ever monetize the thing, and the only way I've been able to find interesting people is via direct recruiting (on average, the organic users have less to say).

I've been trying to open the network up to the public more, but I'm starting to realize that making the communities more insular and invite-only had been more successful - but that's very hard to scale.

The site is https://podaero.com - always appreciate new users.

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

I run a community Discord of about 80 people currently. I personally would pay something like $100-200/year for a nice network for these people as the administrator. If the network grew more, I might be willing to pay more. Discoverability is a thing though. This community is deliberately private but is discoverable from two other social networks, and centered around a business which ultimately makes money from the community.

In other words, the meetup model might work for these kinds of communities.

halfmatthalfcat6• 5 years ago

I've been doing the same thing but around live TV. The goal is each show is its own community that essentially forms and disperses as the shows are live and then end.

https://couchmate.com

snarf212• 5 years ago

I agree with you but you have given the solution as well. Add VAT on all digital advertising and keep raising it until ads aren't the least friction way for people. As long as the social media is encouraged to leverage for profit, they will. We have to force them into a model that has different incentives.

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

You don’t think that would just lead to even more intrusive ads in an attempt to make them more effective to offset the cost?

cbozeman• 5 years ago

Your third point is the second most important, but the most important is number one by far. People are willing to let social media turn into a shitshow because they're not invested. It didn't cost them anything and it doesn't continue to cost them anything, so it has no value.

Starship Troopers (both the book and the movie) hit the nail on the head... "Something given has no value."

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

TANSTAAFL :)

The thing is that if your social network gave you more value than $10/month, you’d sign up for it, no? Remember when texting on your mobile phone was a separate plan that cost about $10-20/month? People fell over themselves to sign up for that because it gave them access to a large social network, one that consisted of people you actually meet in real life and that are presumably worth keeping up with. I don’t use Facebook because nobody on there really is worth my time to keep up with, and I can’t bring myself to try to curate my feed/friends list because that’s just work, all the while FB will keep polluting it with ads anyways. Instagram is mildly more worth it to me because you can actually find some meaningful connections on there as a photographer, but I suspect that’s 100% temporary.

AlexandrB• 5 years ago

But the book (as I understand) is straight faced, while the movie is biting satire. Aren't the two saying opposite things with that line?

mro_name2• 5 years ago

indeed. Like online snipers. Shooting from cover. They don't expose themselves while insulting.

That asymmetry enables toxicity. And volume will make it a matter of time until arbitrary toxic things eventually show up.

Participation must require more committment than opening a free account.

I wonder how those free accounts without any accountability get any credibility.

u801e3• 5 years ago

They cannot be monetized via anything but ads. Sure a few people will pay for access to a social network. But the majority will not pay $0.01 because the friction of the transaction will prevent them.

This could be done by the ISP hosting an instance of the service that can inter-operate with other hosted instances on other ISPs. They already do this with email and many of them did with usenet.

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

So you want your ISP to offer the Facebook Package, the Twitter Package, the Slack Package, the Discord Package, the Instagram Package, the Tik Tok package, and with any of them you can get the AOL package? Sort of like the opposite of net neutrality? Plus do you really want Comcast to have control over what most people see as news via social media? The same Comcast that is very politically connected and regularly lobbies state and federal legislatures to blatantly advance their own interests.

j16sdiz• 5 years ago

Here in Hong Kong, lots of isp have stop providing email. Lots of internet users are mobile-only and never had an ISP email to begin with.

_2d302• 5 years ago

All that is overshadowed by the fact that most people straight up don’t have anything interesting to say. Think of the average person. Do you expect them to wow you with what they are working on even once a month? Chances are, most people will post pictures of their lunch or repost a stupid meme that they finally discovered. Twitter sort of solves this by letting you follow leaders in their fields, but still the SNR is so low that it’s really difficult to find meaningful interactions and unless you are one of those leaders nobody gives a crap about what you shout into the void.

Imagine the implications of actually believing this, because if you thought hard enough about it, you probably don't believe it. For example, if you truly believed this, you must think most people straight up don't have any friends. I mean, why would anyone want to be friends with someone who straight up doesn't have anything interesting to say?

Like, do you think the average person, hanging out with their average friends on a regular basis is just mind-numbingly, dumbfoundedly bored? Why do you think they keep hanging out with all those average people? You think they derive zero meaning from their interactions with anyone who isn't a "leader in their field". The dim view you have on humanity blows my mind. There's meaning to be had all around for these average people.

This is exactly why average people hate the proverbial elites. You (ostensibly elite) view them as worthless plebs whose social interactions with their friends are so worthless, they don't even deserve the chance to share them online. Only so-called leaders in their field should be allowed to interact publicly online. Their interactions are the only ones with meaning in your view.

When I'm on FB or Instagram or Snapchat, and I see the plenty of average people I know interacting, I see all sorts of wonderful, meaningful human interactions. Today, my old high school math teacher posted a joke image of the side effects of the COVID vaccine which included hugs from his grandchildren. His son replied about how he can't wait for him and his grandson to be with him again and many of his friends commented about how touched they were. Who gives a fuck if it's a cringeworthy, stupid meme they discovered? It was a wonderful expression of humanity from completely average, nobodies.

There's so much wrong with social networks, but the plebs having no meaning and nothing interesting to say isn't one of them.

IgorPartola14• 5 years ago

I think you are taking what I said a bit out of context. Most people have a half dozen close friends and they find that person interesting or pleasant to be around or whatever it is they see in them. But hand a average person a megaphone in front of a crowd of 10,000 people and they won’t know what to say and will run out of steam quickly. Global social networks are that megaphone. This is why your feed, while having some gems, is also likely full of reposted memes, personality quizzes, and other retweeted/reposted content. If you have no actual special connection to the person who is posting the meme/quiz/repost, it is just noise to you, no?

I firmly believe that technology like social networks can bring people closer together and enrich lives of everyone, from luminaries to ordinary folks. And I believe we should build better networks. But if I throw a dart at a completely random Facebook post and read it, there is a very good chance it’ll be a lot less interesting than a random post from e.g. Neil deGrasse Tyson or Neil Patrick Harris or Obama. My point is that having these huge global networks doesn’t actually achieve the goal of furthering friendships or increasing the quality of content the participants read.

bryan_w3• 5 years ago

I agree, there's a lot of valuable posts on my feed. A lot of posts here seem to be written by people who don't use social media

cageface• 5 years ago

This is an excellent summary of the problems with social networks as currently implemented. All the incentives are pre-wired to make them horrible places.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

I would beg to differ about the monetisation.

See how many people pay crazy money for Bloomberg terminal just to be part of the in crowd.

A social network could work for a few bucks a month I think.

naravara2• 5 years ago

1. They cannot be monetized via anything but ads. Sure a few people will pay for access to a social network. But the majority will not pay $0.01 because the friction of the transaction will prevent them. Moreover, an SN operator can make a lot more money from ads than from subscriptions, at least until proven otherwise. As a result any useful value that an SN provides will quickly be overtaken by more and more intrusive ads.

I don't know about this. It may well be that only being ad driven can monetize them to $billion+ valuations. But I don't know if it is for sure that you can't have a more modest, but still very respectable business worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars by monetizing in other ways.

It should also be clear that social media's monetization strategy isn't just about ads, it's about data farming to serve highly targeted ads. They're not just selling out full page ad spreads and selling classifieds like in a newspaper. Those would be perfectly fine monetization plans that just focus on self-reported areas of interest and some very basic geolocation. There is some incentive to drive engagement to get eyeballs but it's not nearly as strong because they just need you to log in and hang out. They don't need you to interact constantly to collect data on your emotional state and receptivity.

Waterluvian• 5 years ago

I have the perfect site for you then.

https://cancel.pointless.click

thomastjeffery2• 5 years ago

We don't need "social networks". We need forums, or something similar.

The problem with social networks is moderation. Moderation can only really be done well by users; not by some corporate top-down approach like Facebook, Twitter, et al have been trying.

halfmatthalfcat6• 5 years ago

Couldn't agree more. The community self-policing (and having the tools to do it correctly) is the path to actually sustainable online communities.

amelius8• 5 years ago

How would that work for the echo-chambers of conspiracy theorists?

rossdavidh• 5 years ago

I have a lot of respect for Tim Berners-Lee, but he's basically incorrect about this. The problem with social networks is not a technology problem, it is fundamental to what social networks are. We don't call Stack Overflow a social network, because it's got a purpose, even though it has a lot of the same features as facebook. The problem with social networks isn't the software, it's that they aren't for a particular purpose, because if they did most people wouldn't go there (as most people don't go to Stack Overflow, because most people aren't programmers). If you want to make a social network with a billion users, you have to make it general purpose, and that means you do not have a narrow enough focus to keep the conversation on task (because there is no task). This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting, because there is no focus/task to keep it from doing so. They're "social", with everything that makes socializing (facial expressions, tone of voice, only so many people able to talk at once) removed. You're not going to fix that with technology, because the thing that needs "fixing" is fundamental to what they are.

The problem with social networks, is that they're social.

halfmatthalfcat6• 5 years ago

I disagree. You can create mechanics around the network that reduce the amount of toxicity.

Ephemerality being a big one. If there's no history, there's less of this cached aggression potential by raging over words said in the past. Ephemeral constructs focuses the conversation to the now since whatever current context you're in is fleeting.

Internal fragmentation (siloing) within a larger network being another. Silo might be a dirty word right now but I think combining ephemeral spaces with more siloing can help reduce the "bad things".

narag• 5 years ago

I agree with both generality and technical means. But I would add a third reason: there's people that want social networks to be that way. They want a place where they can make concerted attacks against other people that thinks different so they can express their ideas and make others shut up. And somehow this people has got their way.

totetsu• 5 years ago

Mark Hurst and WFMU station manager Ken have an interesting discussion about how Ephemerality is used in the stations chat to achieve a healthy online community, and their past problems with the status quo. https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/101042

amelius8• 5 years ago

I don't think you can make that assertion that easily. For example, would it be true if there was 1 capable moderator per user on the network?

lmm3• 5 years ago

If it was a human problem then we'd expect all social networks to show the same behaviour. But they don't; the "online abuse, bullying and harassment" he talks about is overwhelmingly a Twitter phenomenon, and the roots of it can be found in Twitter design decisions. Bullying does happen on e.g. Facebook, but that's actually a very different interaction pattern (it's people in the same social group attacking other members of the same social group - whereas Twitter harassment is overwhelmingly happening between strangers).

anigbrowl• 5 years ago

overwhelmingly a Twitter phenomenon

Are you sure about that, or do you just think so because more social science is done on Twitter due to their relatively open API, and conveniently short post format? If you're sure, I think you should shore up your claim with evidence.

mistermann3• 5 years ago

Have you ever waded into the comments section of posts on the front page of /r/all? Not only will you find plenty of bullying, you'll also find plenty of misinformation, but not the kind that's had the conspiracy theory label attached so it evades our awareness. This is one thing that I never see mentioned in articles like this: the degree to which social media shapes non-conspiracy-theorist's perception of reality. It is right there in front of our noses, but so hard to see.

aeturnum• 5 years ago

I agree with you that the "networking" aspect of social networks is functioning, but I happen to think it is functioning to make the "social" aspect less pleasant.

This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting

You are right that this will always happen, but I do not think it will be the dominant interaction. One of the reasons this interaction comes up so much is that platforms optimize for it - bickering and shouting is engaging. It gets clicks and eyeballs and shares. Jerry Springer was a popular tv show (and good for that team) but it's wrong to say that we can only make TV like Jerry Springer.

There's a great deal of research in the UX / Social Science world on "affordances" - UI features basically. They're the nouns and verbs that we have in digital spaces. Often the research is very basic but it is out there. I think social media companies could do a lot better with the affordances they give to people. They could be more playful. They could be more free form. They could slow down conversations where people are rapidly tagging each other and sentiment analysis suggests they are fighting. Etc, etc.

The human brain is a very complex thing and one of its primary purposes, as far as we can tell, is to be social - the thing you say isn't a task. I don't believe being social isn't a task. I just think we're very bad at helping our brains be social (a thing they evolved to do for millions of years) in a medium we just invented maybe fifty years ago. We can get better, but only if we try.

stuaxo• 5 years ago

It's not that.

It's as simple as: use of recommendation algorithms + forums at scale.

When you do this, people are automatically shown things that piss them off (outrage has higher engagement).

The bigger the scale, the worse it is.

Once you get past a certain scale you could get the same effect without the algorithm, but the algorithm makes it much worse.

fellellor• 5 years ago

The motivation behind using algorithms that optimise for engagement is to build massive networks with billions of users. So, ultimately it does come down to what is the business objective for the network in the first place because that forces you to make these choices.

imtringued• 5 years ago

I will concede one thing, GME was an outrage driven investment. Because there was a story about "evil" short sellers doing "evil" things everyone was collectively mad at them and social media networks spread this all over the place, even Youtube.

twoWhlsGud• 5 years ago

Let's see. I log into Facebook. I type "vaccine" into the search page. The first autocomplete entry is "vaccine injury stories" - that looks interesting, let's see what that finds. Okay, so the first entry is "Looking for vaccine info" (Boring!), the second is a "Vaccines save lives" group (not what I searched for), and the third is "see all groups for "vaccine injury stories""

That seems more like it. What does that find? Ah, here we go, "COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects" - a group with 66k members. And lots of juicy, fascinating stories of bad things happening after someone got vaccinated.

And 10 minutes later, even I, who knows that in a country that has delivered almost 100M shots, shots that don't protect against stroke or heart attack (or eczema or whatever), there are going to be a lot of folks who get the vaccine and then have something bad happen to them can't help but feel at least a little more worried about the prospect of getting one of those shots. (I don't have to imagine the effect of these stories on folks with a weaker stats background - I just have to talk to my relatives...)

And that's something that's not necessary, but is extremely lucrative for FB. And that's a problem for anyone who likes living in a functioning democracy.

bryan_w3• 5 years ago

Your problem is that people are allowed to find people and talk about things that you think they shouldn't talk about?

Even in your example, you had to go digging pretty far for that group -- you didn't accidentally happen upon it. If you people are motivated to find bad information, they will. That's the nature of the internet. If you don't want people to be able to gather and share information, then unplug your Ethernet cables because that's what the internet is all about; FB or no FB.

marakv2• 5 years ago

I disagree, it's because of post weighting and weighted newsfeeds.

Provide the feed based on post time, allow you to agree or disagree to view hidden posts due to friends votes (down and up).

That's it. I useto enjoy FB(like 10 years ago), until I lost the ability to scroll through a time based list of posts.

nirui• 5 years ago

The problem with social networks isn't the software, it's that they aren't for a particular purpose ... The problem with social networks, is that they're social

Let's take look how Hacker News is designed: A discussion platform that utilize tree structure to keep discussions structured, easy to track and on point.

There are many different kind of designs, the flat-list one for example, which causes less structured and often ineffective discussions.

The problem of social networks is not just due to social factors, software design plays a key role.

You know, most physical real-world bars/clubs, which are also social places, couldn't generate that level of toxicity. Even the toxicity on Reddit is no match for the top social networks. Those systems are what I called "moderated-islands", on each island, there are people who wants to keep things in check.

On the social networks however, the people who checks things are the same people who post the content, and moderation is done directly under the content they've posted, there is no "the third eye". Then, you introduce the feature that prevents your users to from structured discussions, and then give them a "How popular U R" counter ...

It's more complicated than "It's just social".

powerapple• 5 years ago

our first thought is not really our thought. However, on Twitter we hit reply immediately after we read something. In real life, many people aren't capable to think deeply when having a face to face conversation, that's why we keep the topic casual and maybe mostly wasteful words. And we are expected to discuss politics, real issues on twitter in real time. There is no going back, but I really liked the BBS time where I have to download all messages and only reply to them once or twice a day.

In real life you won't go social with others debating on a heated topic, maybe we shouldn't do it on social network, slow down a little bit, we don't have to change the world in one day.

naravara2• 5 years ago

I have no "purpose" when I go to a party besides drinking, eating, and socializing. Yet they rarely devolve into tribal bickering and infighting. Human beings have plenty of natural regulating mechanisms to keep social interactions from becoming sour of hostile. We've even replicated or adapted many of them to work in pseudonymous/anonymous spaces like bulletin boards, IRC, Usenet, etc.

ekianjo• 5 years ago

as if to underline that the human race may now have its priorities slightly wrong, at 345,000, his Twitter followers number less than 5% of Piers Morgan’s.

Are we supposed to celebrate whoever created the plumbing or the interface? After all, Tim is not responsible for the user adoption and for all the user content created out there. If it were not for WWW it would have been someone/something else and nobody would know Tim right now.

jclulow• 5 years ago

I would follow my plumber on Twitter before I would follow Piers Morgan.

kumarvvr• 5 years ago

If the social network is a reflection of society as a whole, then it's not possible to ensure bad things happen less.

What is required is to shift focus from social networks to the society. Removing hate, bigotry, evil and social factors that induce crime ought to be the focus.

A society cannot be reformed if it is corrupt at its core, no matter how many controls you put on public communication systems.

The problem has to be addressed from within, not from outside controls.

b20000• 5 years ago

did you know that the internet was invented by this guy and not Tim Berners-Lee? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cailliau

dyllon• 5 years ago

Yes, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, and is the Director of the W3C.

ppf• 5 years ago

We need to get off the internet, and re-discover how to connect with real humans and form lasting social bonds.

I can't imagine how different (and more socially vibrant) life was 40 years ago.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

It wasn't that more socially vibrant really. The same issues existed back then. We just moved all of them online with us :)

mro_name2• 5 years ago

Foster the Indieweb where participating takes owning a domain.

That decelerates the trolls and doesn't harm the others. Entry must be possible for laypeople, however, and can be, if a few tools (like my https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo) exist and improve.

And self-host. Very few people burn their own garden.

All it takes is an adult approach where candy isn't free.

Tim Berners-Lee: We need social networks where bad things happen less

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