Hacker News Reader

Comment by SpikeDad | Hacker News Reader

It's not necessarily social media it's people's belief in what they see in social media. Our ability to analyze from a skeptical point of view has not kept up with our ability to distribute information.

Sadly MSM did not help us in that matter as they adopted the "get it out first" and "clicks are the only thing that matters" point of view.

Finally I put a lot of blame on the Murdoch/Fox propaganda machinery which was very good at getting out media which was specifically designed to confirm the hateful opinions of their audience. It made it possible for people to embrace "double-think" - distrust of media while at the same time trust in their media.

View on HN

I feel like this is a, "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument.

If you create a product that is both an echo chamber for reinforcing your beliefs, while also tricking you into believing fake news, and a huge percent of the population is negatively effected by that - can you really keep blaming the people instead of the product?

> can you really keep blaming the people instead of the product?

Yes. Freedom of the press/media is an agreement that as adults we individuals are responsible for our own consumption.

Anything less is an extremely slippery slope usually leading to some form of official 'Ministry of Truth' which, in the current political regime, would be Fox.

What does that have to do with assignment of blame? I can say a book is crap, and makes it's readers dumb, without saying that I'm going to ban it.

I can say a social media site is bad and it's creators should feel bad, and that's just another kind of critique. The critique might shape the behaviours of those who read the critique, and are able to reflect on whether the social media site is worthy of their time.

> Freedom of the press/media is an agreement that as adults we individuals are responsible for our own consumption.

I think that's a fair agreement for traditional media. Commercial social media, though, uses psychological research to optimize engagement and promote addiction. That is to say, that they are actively working around individual responsibility. Are adults as individuals responsible for their own cigarette consumption? Somewhat, but not entirely.

I don't think the solution is anywhere near requiring the commercial social networks to regulate content. I think that would produce the worst possible outcome. I think a better approach would be along the lines of banning optimization for engagement, requiring chronological timelines, or user-controlled, transparent timeline algorithms.

And ultimately, the goal needs to be to replace commercial social media with decentralized social media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com