I am grateful to know that you out there thinking so creatively and writing so engagingly. And thank you (and Google's algorithm) for the Bo Burnham "Welcome to the Internet." I've listened to it three times so far. More to come. Keep up the good work.
I listened to Coleman Hughes talk to Jesse Morton (guy who was an American radicalized to Islamic jihad—sorry, your site is probably now monitored by the CIA) and near the end they discussed this issue. Morton was like, censorship doesn’t work. But that conversation did not have the great graphics that this article does.
I can relate to so much of this. A lot of it comes down to the inability ability to master one’s own mind. (Tristan Harris calls this “Neanderthal brains with godlike technology.) Meditation has slowly been helping me with this but I do wonder if some kind of transparency around the algorithm and allowing users to select and optimize for what they want (or what they think they should want) would help at the margins and potentially lessen the addictive/outage effects.
Instead of censoring speech, I like the approach of tacking on correct information. Like when someone posts antivaxxer propaganda and the site adds a link to the CDC page on vaccines. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but at least it gives people a chance to encounter better information.
Asking facebook to solve humanity is tough. We've had centuries to debate culture and norms of free idea sharing in our society and still get it wrong continuously, which is what the entire media and jurisprudence exists to solve. Meanwhile facebook is somehow supposed to both curate the right content to the right people and ensure salacious/ malicious content is removed, but without being intrusive or deplatforming anyone. All the while running a for-profit business ...
My take is one of being Against Against Facebook (https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/against-against-facebook) that what they're doing is kind of half-assed and incoherent, but that's kind of the only way to muddle forward. And if us as a society wants to help them along we need to also decide what we want. Your idea of a zero-moderation is one though I personally wouldn't want that, but its a decision, not a moral fait accompli.
(Her initial link is broken, but she includes a working one at the end.)
I think people have a hard time accepting that a lot of Americans do genuinely want to read and share Ben Shapiro articles and that the only way to prevent that is going to be an institution making extremely heavy handed editorial decisions that all go our way. Blaming it all on 'the algorithms' makes it Mark Zuckerberg's fault and takes agency away from your old crazy Aunt who shares all those articles, which is convenient cause you don't actually have to spend Thanksgiving with Mark Zuckerberg. But acting like there's an easy technical solution here that Zuckerberg has ignored is just not thinking very deeply about this subject.
I'm a marginal user of FB. I'm in it for family news, recipes, and cat and dog videos. Whenever friends post those stupid political memes, I put them on a 30 day snooze.
And the thought that Mark Zuckerberg gets to decide for me what I can and can't see on FB gives me the creeps. Seriously, whenever I see his face, my first impulse is to punch it. (And I'm a Canadian by birth, much more inclined to politeness than violence)
So so spot on. Thank you!
I am grateful to know that you out there thinking so creatively and writing so engagingly. And thank you (and Google's algorithm) for the Bo Burnham "Welcome to the Internet." I've listened to it three times so far. More to come. Keep up the good work.
I listened to Coleman Hughes talk to Jesse Morton (guy who was an American radicalized to Islamic jihad—sorry, your site is probably now monitored by the CIA) and near the end they discussed this issue. Morton was like, censorship doesn’t work. But that conversation did not have the great graphics that this article does.
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us/
To see oursels as others see us!/
It would frae many a blunder free us/
An’ foolish notion…
I can relate to so much of this. A lot of it comes down to the inability ability to master one’s own mind. (Tristan Harris calls this “Neanderthal brains with godlike technology.) Meditation has slowly been helping me with this but I do wonder if some kind of transparency around the algorithm and allowing users to select and optimize for what they want (or what they think they should want) would help at the margins and potentially lessen the addictive/outage effects.
Instead of censoring speech, I like the approach of tacking on correct information. Like when someone posts antivaxxer propaganda and the site adds a link to the CDC page on vaccines. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but at least it gives people a chance to encounter better information.
Asking facebook to solve humanity is tough. We've had centuries to debate culture and norms of free idea sharing in our society and still get it wrong continuously, which is what the entire media and jurisprudence exists to solve. Meanwhile facebook is somehow supposed to both curate the right content to the right people and ensure salacious/ malicious content is removed, but without being intrusive or deplatforming anyone. All the while running a for-profit business ...
My take is one of being Against Against Facebook (https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/against-against-facebook) that what they're doing is kind of half-assed and incoherent, but that's kind of the only way to muddle forward. And if us as a society wants to help them along we need to also decide what we want. Your idea of a zero-moderation is one though I personally wouldn't want that, but its a decision, not a moral fait accompli.
I found this thread really interesting earlier this year, and it changed my perspective a bit:
https://twitter.com/daphnehk/status/1377665960622977027?s=20
(Her initial link is broken, but she includes a working one at the end.)
I think people have a hard time accepting that a lot of Americans do genuinely want to read and share Ben Shapiro articles and that the only way to prevent that is going to be an institution making extremely heavy handed editorial decisions that all go our way. Blaming it all on 'the algorithms' makes it Mark Zuckerberg's fault and takes agency away from your old crazy Aunt who shares all those articles, which is convenient cause you don't actually have to spend Thanksgiving with Mark Zuckerberg. But acting like there's an easy technical solution here that Zuckerberg has ignored is just not thinking very deeply about this subject.
Love the graphics in this one!
I'm a marginal user of FB. I'm in it for family news, recipes, and cat and dog videos. Whenever friends post those stupid political memes, I put them on a 30 day snooze.
And the thought that Mark Zuckerberg gets to decide for me what I can and can't see on FB gives me the creeps. Seriously, whenever I see his face, my first impulse is to punch it. (And I'm a Canadian by birth, much more inclined to politeness than violence)
So true. And as long as we have our head in the oven, how about the thought that Trump and Trumpism also satisfy human needs that can't be suppressed?