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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> we've solved over and over again the problem of what it takes to have a peaceful and progressive society

... have we? Much of the 20th century was spent at war, with a death total somewhere in the region of a hundred million. As were most of the previous centuries. There have been isolated pockets where one might have a lifetime of stability over a wide area, but few of those were also "free".

> The problem we have is that social media should not exist

The challenge is to thread the needle between freedom degenerating into chaos and murder (Rohingya, etc) and total clampdown that also escalates into disappearances and murder.

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Actually, if we could snap our fingers and wish social media out of existence tomorrow nothing really bad would happen, besides some influencers becoming poorer.

The opposite of social media today (election manipulation, divided societies, ethnic cleansing) is the state of affairs before social media, which wasn't bad at all. I'm struggling to think of large-scale benefits social media has brought us, because the individual ones like talking more to grandma and getting more dates are clear enough. But come on, people should just pick up that phone and go out more.

It is interesting that people were horrible or selfish or manipulative before the Internet, before the Web, and are horrible or selfish or manipulative AFTER widespread adoption of the Web and these "platforms". It's almost like arguing about the platforms is a side-point to the root cause of the problem - people's personalities and selfishness, and some people's gullibility without investigating "facts" presented to them.

It's obvious that the Internet and social media wouldn't solve these issues with people, or hide these flaws in humanity. I am baffled why people think it would. It's just another form of something governments or institutions cannot handle/control, which has been occurring since written history began. The only difference is the sheer quantity and ease of having a voice these days.

(For reference regarding my use of these "platforms": I use YouTube periodically to mainly watch the C++ conference videos to further highlight how out of touch I am with the modern iterations of the language, but have nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter since I found it to be a stream of people talking about themselves; by definition that is not a conversation, so is not social and should be renamed "Selfish Media" IMHO).

Your analysis seems on point to me even from someone who doesn't really use the services. YouTube definitely doesn't promote conversation of any kind. It's a platform for consumption with essentially no standards applied to what's on it (contrasted with TV which has at least some bar). I can't speak on Facebook, but Twitter is also lacking in conversationality. Replies are limited in length and the way they're displayed means that you have to go out of your way to see replies to replies. So, that's why both YouTube and Twitter are closer to "selfish media"

Obliterating email and whatsapp would probably put a lot of people out of business permanently, far more so than the pandemic.

"But I didn't mean those!"

OK, fine, now we need to define social media. Clearly everybody wants to count Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But some of the major incidents come from memetic circulation of fake news and racial hatred propaganda etc on Whatsapp. The Christchurch shooter (and others) were radicalised by 4/8chan. Both he and Anders Breivik also cited racial hatred material produced by "traditional", "legitimate" sources such as major newspapers.

(I wonder if anyone's ever done an "impact factor of evil" analysis on the citation graphs of mass shooter manifestoes? Going all the way back to Kaczynski, T and beyond)

> people should just pick up that phone and go out more

You've missed all the "millenials NEVER answer the phone" memes, then?

> The opposite of social media today (election manipulation, divided societies, ethnic cleansing) is the state of affairs before social media, which wasn't bad at all

My point is that none of those are new, it's just that people struggle to recognise the warning patterns. Countries that were badly hit by SARS-COV were more attuned to the risks of SARS-COV-2. Countries that were badly hit by 20th century fascism are more attuned to the risks of 21st century fascism. Hence all the endless (somewhat fruitless) discussion about who counts as a Nazi and when it might be OK to punch them.

It's not just the medium, we have to look at the messages. Can we ban certain messages without throwing out the medium?

You raise a good point. Is the problem "social media", or is it simply democratized publishing? Would a "fediverse" of distributed blogs really be more resistant to misinformation, or would it just be harder to censor? Is this simply a problem inherent to the internet?

The fediverse would be better because it wouldn't have an algorithm choosing things to show you based on what keeps you engaged.

Why not? In the era of the attention economy, an algorithm generating engagement keeps people more engaged.

I think it's naive to assume that a fediverse wouldn't eventually include somebody developing such an algorithm that becomes popular among the average user base.

It is even more naive because everything already optimized for engagement by selective pressure without algorithms. Headlines were the original clickbait.

Blaming algorithims is the "big lie" essentially of repeating something enough that people eventually believe it is true. I noticed it before and dismissed it as the bullshit it was but even computer literate people are falling for the hysteria.

In the old days, the number of available channels for mass-distribution of opinions was low, and people were in general restricted to face-to-face communication with a crowd, or possibly calling a radio show or sending a letter to a newspaper. This made it easy to control the spread when someone voiced opinions or information that were disruptive to society. Today, many people around the Globe have considerably stronger protections of their free speech compared to 50 or 100 years ago, and this combined with the fact that channels for mass-distribution of opinions is now a commodity, freely available to billions of people.

Seen in that perspective, social media could be considered a part of the problem simply for being a way for people to voice their opinions, but as you wrote, a "fediverse" would not be more resistant to disruptive opinions. It will be a problem as long a people have a variety of ways to communicate with lots of people.

> OK, fine, now we need to define social media.

Here's my definition of the elements of "toxic social media":

1) the automated surfacing of messages from random people because they are "popular" (i.e. highly engaged) mixed in with personal messages. This is the amplifying effect that makes things hot.

2) the immediacy - a message can be spread insanely rapidly, faster than any individual humans can understand or respond to it. This is the fuel.

It's the fact that it happens at an inhuman scale that I think is the biggest part. Email at a human-to-human level is like letter writing. Information can travel through it, but it can't amplify by bypassing the human connections in the way that Twitter trending topics can. Likewise 1:1 or limited-sized groups on Whatsapp.

I'd even put Facebook groups into that bucket, so long as they're full of humans who know each other. It's once you get to groups with millions of people who don't know each other directly that things get out of hand.

No, I shouldn't just pick up the phone more. I dislike talking on the phone. I'm happy we have instant text communication. It doensn't require me (in general) to stop what I'm doing and talk to someone and I can have a private conversation - well, at least private to anyone sitting around me. I'm truly don't want to give it up.

And go out.. where, exactly?

> Actually, if we could snap our fingers and wish social media out of existence tomorrow nothing really bad would happen, besides some influencers becoming poorer.

I disagree. I would lose the ability to contact many good friends.

Why are you dependent on Facebook for these things? If you suddenly lost your account, you would lose those friends or would you find another way to communicate?

believe me, I would really prefer not to rely on social media for this kind of thing. unfortunately a simple list of names and numbers tends to decay over time. plus, some people in my life just prefer to be contacted over facebook messenger.

a surprising number of people don't realize that a) carriers are obligated to port their number and b) it is possible to transfer contacts when they buy a new phone. instead of fixing the original problem, they post "hey new number (xxx)-xxx-xxxx, add me!" or "new phone, send your numbers!" to facebook or instagram. I can't explain how this is supposed to work to every single person I want to stay in contact with, and I don't check social media much so I tend to miss these posts.

if I lost my facebook account, it wouldn't be a huge issue. I'd be able to track everyone down on other platforms. if all social media were shut down, there are at least a couple people I'd never be able to contact again.

> ... have we? Much of the 20th century was spent at war, with a death total somewhere in the region of a hundred million. As were most of the previous centuries.

In fact, casualties of war, as a percentage of population, have been more or less constant for hundreds of years.

https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-yea...

Perhaps the rules have changed now, due to mutually assured destruction.

You suggest that not removing wrong Youtube comments "degenerates" to the situation in Myanmar. This depiction was presented by publishers that want to get a handle on Youtube because of changing business models and is not substantiated by facts. Even Putin would do better, although that story was a lie and an election strategy.

Are you honestly claiming that banning paid lies on YouTube leads to Rohingya-style genocide?

It's increasingly difficult to have rational conversations with Americans these days, and this idea is certainly a big part of it.

It just astonishes me that Americans see little difference between a private company forbidding liars from using their free service, and people being rounded up at gunpoint and being killed.

That is a sweeping generalization if I’ve ever heard one. Do you really think most Americans are like that?

I think you’re inflating the views of the few outspoken fools too be that of the majority.

I am not claiming that. In fact, it's probably necessary to prevent that kind of disaster, and I wish YouTube would ban a bit more aggressively - but also with more thought and better review.

(I seem to have been misunderstood quite badly, a sibling comment to yours makes exactly the opposite allegation! Also, I'm a Brit)

The risk of any ban system is that true-but-inconvenient stuff ends up getting banned as well. The very real risk that video evidence of murders by police might be banned for "promoting violence", for example. There's already the controversy over removing evidence of war crimes in Syria - kind of understandable, given that those must be pretty traumatic videos.

Nah if you wanted to prevent the genocide you need to kill the perperators until they stop. Blaming the channel for genocide is as facile as blaming encryption for crime since in both cases they could talk to the same people to plan crimes. Genocide occured when humans were hunter-gatherers stop blaming the tech for it.

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