Social Media has largely exposed the levels of narcissism embedded in a large number of human's psychological makeup , Selfies, clout chasing and virtue signalling are ever increasing forms of narcissism that really has destroyed the internet IMO
I don't think this is entirely fair to humanity. I think social media encourages and incentivizes this behavior. Was it there before? Sure. But social media hasn't just exposed it, it has also optimized for it.
neither were "defective" products, just because they caused harm does not make them defective, both lawn darts, and social media are working exactly as the manufacturer intended, calling them "defective" is stretching the definition of the term
if you want to make the case of regulation one does not need to nor should the term defect be perverted to be used to get around legal productions (like free speech). Cocaine is banned not because it is defective but because it is harmful, though I also disagree with the banning of cocaine generally because I do not believe it is role of government to protect someone from self harm
Without that they'd be subject to the same constraints as your average newspaper or TV station. Which is to say not a lot of constraints. But there would in fact be a means to address the consequences of their editorial decisions.
The fact that we've tolerated this for so long is appalling.
As soon as you start deciding to show some content and not other content based on the content of the communications you're making editorial decisions. Algorithms or not, it's a judgement call.
https://www.techdirt.com/2021/10/29/everything-you-know-abou...
Websites and TV stations have the same first amendment protection. The main difference is that users do not contribute content to TV stations. That's what 230 protects.
Public access was very limited in bandwidth: one simply didn't have thousands of people posting content. As a result, public access was heavily curated and subject to the same broadcast restrictions as traditional television.
Even allowing that, public access isn't much of a thing anymore. In modern mainstream television stations, there is absolutely no user-generated content.
Then would it possibly be a better distinction to define them instead as poorly designed products with large negative externalities? If I build a product that meets it's stated goal but poisons the environment around it, it's not "defective" in the myopic view, but poorly designed in the global view. Even taking the libertarian line, doesn't the government have a role in regulating negative externalities?
Some would say a negative exernality like CO2 emissions would raise to the level for government regulations (violating NAP) , other libertarian philosophies would not, viewing it a totalitarian control as human breath expeals CO2 so if the government can regulate it then there are no limits on government at all.
I dont know if I have a good answer
"If the gubmit can tell multinational corps not to pull oil out of the ground, they can make me hold my breath! It produces the same molecule!" Libertarian philosophy in a nutshell.
Your average common-on-the-Internet right-libertarian usually hand-waves away how they're somehow fine and part of the "natural" (I cannot roll my eyes hard enough, in case you couldn't tell) free market. Some of the softer right-libertarians (bleeding over into folks who'd likely style themselves "classical liberals" rather than libertarians) aren't as hard-line and rigid, so don't really have the dilemma to begin with, but they're much less vocal on the Internet, probably in part because they disagree with the average person a lot less than the former sort does, so it just doesn't come up as much.
Speaking for myself, as a left-wing libertarian, I think that corporations, being an artificial creation of society, can come with whatever strings society deems suitable to attach to that privilege - provided that they're the same for everyone.
It’s a philosophy for 12 year olds.
I can come up with any old bullshit by extending arguments to a level of ludicrousness like that. Doesn’t mean you should entertain my bullshit.
humans are social creatures and have alway, always, always lived in a societal hierarchy. Our only genuine political decision we can make is what kind of government we want and how much freedom to give up.
The idea that we can live without giving up any freedoms to a society just means that the strongest, most ruthless person ‘wins’ and is king.
This is just a fact. There is no opinion involved. And the only reason this flavor of internet libertarianism exists is because those espousing it have grown up in relative comfort with no fear of warlords.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
well the person I was responding to who specifically talked about libertarian positions.
>>It’s a philosophy for 12 year olds.
Only for those with a 5th grade understanding of philosophy. The rest of your comment highlights your extreme ignorance of libertarian philosophy nicely, because no where in the philosophy do we deny social hierarchy or human nature, infact the primary goal of the different philosophies is to curb the natural tendencies of human nature to seek power over others, the "most ruthless person" wins has been found through out history in all manner of non-libertarian government, and the US Constitution is the closest formation of a libertarian government and has been pretty successful at resisting those natural tendencies, to the extent we have seen revision from that it is directly due to removal libertarian ideas from the US Governmental system and replacing them with majoritarian / collectivist ideals and policies
I can see it now, "Show HN: Introducing InstaGavage, force-feed all the bullshit from your socials to this neural network and let it throw out the trash."
Edit: y'all are kind of proving my first point.
Broadly speaking, I think there is nothing wrong with, say, videoing yourself serving food at a soup kitchen. It's when you use that video to boost your own profile rather than the virtuous act that it becomes problematic. There are plenty of people that do that. However there are also plenty of people who interpret any public record of virtue as being inherently narcissistic and I think that's just as bad.
The way to go about this is to do the thing without anyone knowing and without displaying it. To do it without expecting any personal gain at all. If a friend tells their friend "afavour brought me soup when I was sick, it was so sweet of them" or if someone asks you what you do in your spare time and you say "sometimes I serve at a soup kitchen." then that's fine because that kind of display, which was prompted by other people, can't really be seen as you seeking to cash out the value of the virtuous act.
Surely that’s in the eye of the beholder? It is possible to interpret it that way, certainly. But applying the observers value judgement (i.e. how it comes off) onto the original actor seems unfair to me.
Sometimes I feel like (and I don’t mean anything personal by this) we’re all cynical bastards these days so when we see someone do something genuinely altruistic we simply cannot process it as such and immediately seek a way to dismiss it as self-serving.
The nuance here is that there's a difference being observed doing a kind act versus purposefully making it a public spectacle. I don't view people I observe doing something altruistic as self-seeking unless they try to "cash in" on it.
I would see someone helping a person in need and think "how kind of them!" But then later, if I see an Instagram post from that person saying "There was this person in need of help and I went over there and did something about it", then it can be seen as self-seeking.
> it can be seen
I still maintain that it’s unfair to project the value judgement of the observer onto the observed, as if the observer is impartial in all of this. It can be seen that way, yes, but it doesn’t have to be. That is the observer’s choice.
The question to ask is where this cynicism came from.
I would argue that it is the performative variety of virtue that has made us mistrust such acts.
We wouldn’t have a reason to doubt one’s intentions if those intentions are indistinguishable on the surface from a popular meme, which is what many of these recorded acts of kindness seem to be.
Only the person carrying out the act knows the truth of what is in their heart, but I would argue that the very act of recording, bolstered by the act of publishing that recording reveals there are other motives involved.
After all, why does one post such a video? To participate in the incentive structure afforded by the social media platform of choice.
Those incentive structures are inherently about self promotion, which feels incompatible with virtue.
Now you could argue that I’m just being cynical about why people post on social media. Maybe that person has a genuine desire to brighten someone else’s day through their own act of kindness. Maybe the guy with the flowers was similarly genuine.
I think the video that is the focal point of this thread provides a good counterpoint to this. It made me uncomfortable when I first saw it (before this article emerged), and now I have a confirmation as to why. Even if the guy had every right intention, the incentive structure of social media overrode his better judgement and blinded him to the impact he was actually having.
I don’t think it is impossible to highlight one’s good work in an appropriate way, and I do think there’s an opportunity to inspire people to do good things, but I’m not convinced that this trend of social media posts has anything to do with that.
Genuinely, why? As in, why is it better to do nothing then to do virtuous action that you also get some benefit from?
1. The recipient doesn't have to cop to/explain their situation that prompted the generosity,
2. The recipient doesn't feel the need to publicly acknowledge the help (which in turn implies publicly explaining that you needed help),
3. The recipient doesn't become a revenue-generator without giving their permission, as happens in this case and others like it
When done in public, these acts cease to be altruism - they're now a business exchange ("content creator" gives you something of value (flowers) in exchange for something else of value (clicks/views/clout)). Except you didn't know you were making this business deal, which is beyond slimy.
IIRC most religious texts teach to do altruism privately, for reasons such as this. Attention-seeking didn't just come about in the internet age, it just got easier.
I think demonstration of virtue would be a better term without this connotation. EG being a role model.
The large amount of virtue signaling has poisoned the Well for people that simply want to promote good deeds and behavior.
Good point. This is a clear example of where "virtue signalling" (leading by example in this case) can be considered a good. rather than an ostentatious, pretentious, or pridefull showing-off of empty virtue.
Bragging about how your food is cruelty free when you don't really care about the food, you care about being able to say that it's cruelty free doesn't make you against animal cruelty except by some absurdly expansive definition of "against".
And there's also 800lb gorilla that is political discourse where people routinely say one thing and then not only do nothing to advance that, they live their lives by something that's close to the opposite.
Rewarding virtue signaling absolves people of much of the requirement to put their money where their mouth is and relaxing that requirement is a bad thing.
All in all, it rewards primary doing and saying nothing. Everyone else can be accused of virtue signaling.
And all terms are made up, and the political leanings of the person who supposedly coined the phrase is irrelevant to its applicability.
Luckily, now that Rust exists, our collective psychological makeup is proven to be much safer.
But of course on a deeper physical level, hertzbleed shows that all of us are one Javascript away from becoming Manchurian candidates.
Lately, I find myself wondering whether I'd be able to tell the difference.
In this particular case, I'm not at all sure how this string of words came to be.