Social Media: The God That Failed

[BurtReynolds]

There is an opt-in subscription model now, is there not?

oh yeah. I wonder if anyone pays for it.

[washing machine]

Substack/Medium/Patreon are probably an indicator of... something having to do with this, yeah? I don't know enough about that media to really explore the idea further. I just notice that people are willing to pay for content.

As long as we're talking about content that might be worth paying for, I think I fell into the trap of arguing that Twitter should go the way of 4chan yesterday when defending moderation anarchy. I admit that's not feasible and I sort of threw out the baby with the bath water there. I understand this grand vision of a new Twitter to be more about cracking open the algorithms and exposing the gatekeepers than about getting to say whatever you want. Surely there will be some fine print with regards to violent and/or illegal content, and there should be, but there's something broken about the progressive bent of social media companies that I do hope is fixed.

[washing machine]

I sense that Wikipedia is a flawed example, but this conversation is still pretty good with regards to what moderation on social media can and should look like.

https://reason.com/video/2022/04/28/wik ... -problems/

[Mickey]

Substack/Medium/Patreon are probably an indicator of... something having to do with this, yeah? I don't know enough about that media to really explore the idea further. I just notice that people are willing to pay for content.

I think the crucial difference here is one of medium. Would I pay $5 a month to read George Saunders newsletter about contemporary fiction? Sure. Would I pay $5 a month to read and/or retweet the dashed-off opinions of the dumbest people on the planet? Absolutely not. I don't think Twitter has the capacity as a medium of generating content worth paying for.

[McParadigm]

arguing that Twitter should go the way of 4chan yesterday when defending moderation anarchy. I admit that's not feasible and I sort of threw out the baby with the bath water there.

This is why I asked the question in the first place…because I assumed that what you wrote right here was how you felt, but some of what you wrote there left me needing clarification.

I understand this grand vision of a new Twitter to be more about cracking open the algorithms and exposing the gatekeepers than about getting to say whatever you want.

This feels a bit more like a “what I’d like to see happen“ sentence than a “what the person in question has described as their ambition” kind of thing.

but there's something broken about the progressive bent of social media companies that I do hope is fixed.

Social media platforms definitely all exhibit some form of built-in bias. I have a problem broadly calling social media’s problem a “progressive bent“ when more than 70% of social media traffic in the United States is through Facebook, though.

Facebook, whose most-viewed news articles list yesterday was just like every day:

1. Ben Shapiro
2. Franklin Graham
3. allkpop
4. Breitbart
5. Koreaboo
6. Ben Shapiro

Facebook, whose owner personally intervened to prevent Alex Jones from being banned when he repeatedly broke the company’s terms for targeted hate speech. Facebook, which routinely hires exclusively Republican firms for its campaigns against rival companies and I guess George Soros.

Facebook, who seem to generate an endless number of stories full of paragraphs like this:

The lobbying and government relations shop, overseen by former Republican operative Joel Kaplan, regularly weighs in on speech-related issues, such as how to deal with prominent right-wing figures, misinformation, ads from former President Donald Trump and the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, according to internal reports, posts from Facebook’s staff and interviews with former employees. The dynamic is so prevalent that employees argued internally that Facebook regularly ignored its own written policies to keep political figures happy, even overriding concerns about public safety.

Now, I’m not arguing (nor would I care to argue) whether Facebook has a conservative bias.

I think it has an outrage bias. I think its eternally unfulfillable “interactions” addiction leads it to elevate content that feeds outrage. And I think the largest social media platform having an outrage bias is 100 times the problem of anything that a Twitter or a TikTok could even dream of creating.

But there are these demonstrable examples of specific components of Facebook, like the news feed’s targeted elevation of conservative content or having a lobbying shop chief who uses that position to selectively protect policy-breaking political messaging, that are biased.

In all honesty, if the news articles with the most reach on Facebook EVERY DAY were from Rachel Maddow and…I dunno….op-eds by Greta Thunberg….wouldn’t you see that as evidence that something, somewhere, was imbalancing the system?

I’ll say again: Facebook generates SEVENTY-ONE PERCENT of all social media traffic in the United States. Twitter generates less than 10.

[E.H. Ruddock]

allkpop

[Bi_3]

In completely expected news:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/em ... nce-access

[BurtReynolds]

remember when Trump banned Tiktok and nothing happened?

[Bammer]

My sister (big Trump fan, possibly Qanon) just posted the following on one of her many social media accounts:

“We have created a society that values Fame and Fortune over Integrity. So much so, that anyone who holds that position is revered and we should listen or follow what they say based solely on the fact that they have money or fame not because they have integrity. I suppose part of the problem is we’ve veered so far off we don’t really know what integrity is anymore.”

Oh, the irony. What a dumbass.

[BurtReynolds]

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

[BurtReynolds]

regime change

[JuanHamm]

This should be entertaining.

[elliseamos]

I ask bc I don't know:

Are their DMs on Twitter?

If so, Elon's got plenty of new blackmail material for his expanding world domination. Congrats, Elon. Glad things are finally starting to break your way.

[Simple Torture]

I ask bc I don't know:

Are their DMs on Twitter?

If so, Elon's got plenty of new blackmail material for his expanding world domination. Congrats, Elon. Glad things are finally starting to break your way.

Whose DMs?

[elliseamos]

I ask bc I don't know:

Are their DMs on Twitter?

If so, Elon's got plenty of new blackmail material for his expanding world domination. Congrats, Elon. Glad things are finally starting to break your way.

Whose DMs?

Everyones.

[Bi_3]

I ask bc I don't know:

Are their DMs on Twitter?

If so, Elon's got plenty of new blackmail material for his expanding world domination. Congrats, Elon. Glad things are finally starting to break your way.

Whose DMs?

Everyones.

Is there a reason to think that wasn't already happening?

[elliseamos]

I ask bc I don't know:

Are their DMs on Twitter?

If so, Elon's got plenty of new blackmail material for his expanding world domination. Congrats, Elon. Glad things are finally starting to break your way.

Whose DMs?

Everyones.

Is there a reason to think that wasn't already happening?

I just mean Elon himself will have more influence on other influential people. Like the Twitter CEO before him did.

[simple schoolboy]

So maybe Elon really did fire those executives for cause, as incredibly unlikely as that seems.

[BurtReynolds]

[simple schoolboy]

That Qanon is a thing that exists suggests that they have largely been wasting their efforts. Wasteful expense with dubious legality is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.