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Comment by colllectorof | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty obvious that the tech crowd right now is so intoxicated by its own groupthink that these attempts to come up with "solutions" are going to have awful results. You don't even know what the problem really is.

"I fear that many decentralised web projects are designed for censorship resistance not so much because they deliberately want to become hubs for neo-nazis, but rather out of a kind of naive utopian belief that more speech is always better. But I think we have learnt in the last decade that this is not the case."

What you should have learned in the last decade is that social networks designed around virality, engagement and "influencing" are awful for the society in the long run. But somehow now the conversation has turned away from that and towards "better moderation".

Engage your brain. Read Marshall McLuhan. The design of a medium is far more important than how it is moderated.

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"What you should have learned in the last decade is that social networks designed around virality, engagement and "influencing" are awful for the society in the long run."

Yes, and don't forget the 24 hour news cycle with its focus on getting outrage and attention through fear. I did not know who Marshall McLuhan was until now- thanks for the tip!

> Yes, and don't forget the 24 hour news cycle with its focus on getting outrage and attention through fear.

Yeah, social media is just one in a series of possibly misguided techno-social "innovations," and it probably won't be the last.

My understanding is that groups like the Amish don't reject technology outright, but adopt it selectively based on its effects on their society (and will even roll back things they've adopted if they're not working out). Wider society probably would benefit from a dose of that kind of wisdom right now, after decades of decades of "because we can"-driven "innovation."

They also force all 17-year-olds to go live with and as ‘the English’ for two years and then decide whether they want to go back, and what things should be brought back with them.

> My understanding is that groups like the Amish don't reject technology outright, but adopt it selectively based on its effects on their society

I can see how this would work for new things invented outside the Amish community. How does this work for new Amish inventions? How do they judge an effect a thing will have on society while they are still building that thing?

Edited to add a concrete example: here [1] is a pneumatic ceiling fan. Before the first one was built, what strategy did they use to determine it's okay?

[1] https://amishamerica.com/amish-ceiling-fan/

> I can see how this would work for new things invented outside the Amish community. How does this work for new Amish inventions? How do they judge an effect a thing will have on society while they are still building that thing?

I'm no expert, but I believe they have walked back decisions to allow certain technologies, or allow things for trial periods before making a final decision.

Also, it's not like the non-Amish haven't rejected technologies because they came to dislike their effects on society, stuff like lead paint, asbestos, and chemical weapons come to mind as examples.

Also, their decisions aren't arbitrary, but respect certain principles and customs, so I would assume an Amish inventor would take those into account.

You make a great point; I hadn't thought about lead paint or asbestos. Rollbacks are hard, but they are possible.

> The design of a medium is far more important than how it is moderated

IMO this is a great point. Social medias as they exist today are broken because they have been engineered on the assumption to make money on ads. Making money on ads works by engineering around virality, engagement and influencing.

Another thing that McLuhan teaches though is that actually the (social) media is the message. And ultimately this lead to a Viking dude standing in the US capitol.

Now, that whole situation was awful. But it was also hilarious. In social media, this was barely a meme that lived on for a few hours. Whereas within the ancient system of democracy, an intrusion into the parlament is breaking some sacret rules. And there, surely the incident will cast long winding consequences.

To cut to the chase: Social media outcomes have to be viewed wearing a social media hat. Same for real-life. In this case, gladly. Another great case were this was true was Kony 2012, where essentially all the Slacktivism lead to nothing.

Solidly agree on all points, just wanted to plug a podcast favorite of mine, Philosophize This!, for a less daunting introduction to McLuhan's ideas [1] than "go read a couple hundred pages of fairly dense media theory books."*

1. https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/episode-149-on-medi...

* Of course, I enjoyed the podcast episode so much that I did end up going on to read The Gutenberg Galaxy and The Medium Is the Massage [sic], and wholeheartedly recommend both.

Philosophize this is great. If you were a fan of McLuhan, you should read L.M. Sarcasas. His blog (https://thefrailestthing.com/) was how I was introduced to McLuhan, Postman, and other philosophers of media and technology. He has unfortunately shuttered that blog, but he has a substack newsletter thing that talks about similar things: https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/people/1810437-l-m-...

It can be both. It seems obvious that a thing like Twitter ought to exist. The social system details, I'd agree, are full of unforced errors that lead to terrible outcomes. But the centralization is a real problem too. We can try to fix both.

It’s not obvious to me. I have a fantasy that people will return to thoughtful, long-form blogging and stop trying to impale each other on witty 280 character tweets.

The essential element of twitter is asymmetric following + broadcast at global scale and penetration. Beyond that, I think the social system details are wide open.

They are separate problems.

Engagement is still roughly "our" problem, because ad-driven ~media are externalizing the costs of engagement on society. This is where the Upton Sinclair quote fits.

Moderation is still roughly the platform's problem because it comes with liabilities they can't readily externalize. Engagement certainly overlaps with this, but most of these liabilities exist regardless of engagement.

Engagement _is_ moderation! When FB chooses what to show you, it's already moderating things but simply using a different value system. The're a pushback on "censorship" today but censorship has been happening for years.

We may be playing semantics games, here?

Mechanisms that optimize for increased engagement via dynamic suggestions for a user's feed or ~related content are not moderation (unless, perhaps, the algorithmic petting zoo is the only way to use the service).

This is exactly why I'm drawing a distinction.

Many of a platform's legal and civil liabilities for user-submitted content are poorly correlated with how many people see it and whether it is promoted by The Algorithm (though the chance it gets noticed probably correlates). This is ~compliance work.

Their reputational liabilities are a little more correlated with whether or not anyone is actually encountering the content (and more about how the content is affecting people, than its legality). This is ~PR work.

I would add that, broadly speaking, any online system that tries to engage and involve everybody will always become toxic. Forums like those of HN work, in part, because they're not trying to attract everybody, only those who will contribute thoughtfully and meaningfully.

Aside from vitality, which in part is achieved by recommending content that users already like, I think that we are not well equipped to handle our own views being consistently reinforced. I believe this locks us into world views that are closed off from debate and scrutiny, and unless we intentionally try to question our own beliefs we’ll just be fed the content we already like and the opinions we already agree with / have.

I think you make a very interesting point about the impact of vitality over the long term, and I would like to read some of your thoughts about where we are headed, what can be done about it and why. I haven’t heard of Marshall McLuhan before.

Thanks for hitting the nail on the head. The problems we have are manufactured by the structure of the medium (BigCorp social media optimizing engagement at scale) that we cling to.

For those looking for a relatively accessible introduction to McLuhan’s ideas, check out his book “The medium is the message/massage”. It’s fairly short, and with illustrations, quite readable. I think it has more concrete examples than “Understanding media” which is a more abstract & denser read.

And Neil Postman's book, Technopoly

Book Review: Technopoly https://scott.london/reviews/postman.html

Interview with Neil Postman - Technopoly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbAPtGYiRvg

Exactly. Shifting the blame from trending pages to posters is just a way to blame users for opinions instead of platforms that spread them as fact. These websites want to be the problem and the solution.

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