Writer Neal Stephenson Thinks We've Gotten Dystopia All Wrong
wsj.com
wsj.com
"I see people make blunders that I wish people had stopped making 10 years ago: that tendency to see something that strikes an emotional chord and immediately share it, like it, pass it on without thinking about it, without considering whether it came from a human being, or a bot, or a troll, or a political actor."
To me there's a lot of truth in this statement, so much of being online seems to be driven by how to emotionally manipulate you, and to pull traffic by being the 1st one out of the gate with a story by being the one passed around. It doesn't feel like a very productive model for making any concrete progress. If you try to be more engaged you end up exhausted due to the energy required to cross check information for veracity.
This came up in a similar vein in the PG tweet thread yesterday. There is an assumption when commenting that everyone has the same knowledge base and it simply isnt true a large majority of the time.
I wonder if some kind of social media has tried only "sourced" comments. So your comments can be more easily interpreted when you make a leading statement. I presume then you just get into the weeds about what is and isnt a source though..