Comment by josu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josu | Hacker News Reader

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Twitter and Facebook have changed the world; I don't have a doubt about it. And not only in a micro scale, also in a macro level.

I have gone from writing letters to my distant friends, to writing them emails, to writing them facebook messages. And believe it's much easier to keep in touch with friends now that there is facebook. If I travel to LA I can go to FB and check out who moved to LA in the last few years and actually meet them. Had I been in the email era, I wouldn't have had any idea of who was in LA. This is just a minor example for how facebook has changed the world on a personal level.

When it comes to the big picture, look at the Arab uprising, it used the social networks heavily. We don't know what would have happened without Facebook or Twitter, but my guess is that not much. But you don't have to go to developing countries to see the effects of the social networks on politics and society in general. [1] This is a graph of the Spanish bipartisanship going down the drain after May 15th, 2011(15M/Spanish revolution)[2]. The movement started on Twitter, and slowly moved to Facebook.

So these "toys" are changing the world, both on a micro and macro level, and denying that is like denying that TV changed how people view wars.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuWphzlCUAAdwqX.png:large

[2] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimiento_15-M

You've mentioned a few examples of how social media is having a positive impact on the world. And after thinking about it some, I think I underestimated how big an impact they have. I still think the proportion of the usage that is meaningful is low, but given the huge amount of usage, it has lead to a pretty decent amount of meaningful interaction.

But what about the downsides? I don't have too strong an opinion and can't argue it well, but I do suspect that social media has its downsides, and that has to play into the equation. Something along the lines of "kids in the neighborhood used to all play outside together and now they're inside gossiping on social media".

Erosion of privacy, ease of government surveillance, and monetization of personal identity could all be viewed as either upsides or downsides. It depends on who you ask.

Technology doesn't have to have a net positive impact to have an impact. The moral/ethical debates on atomic fission, cars, and industrialized agriculture are all still very much open.

I bet there are downsides. But there were also downsides when every home got a telephone. And when everyone started carrying cellphones.

My point is that new technology which changes the way humans communicate with each other is a phenomenon that has played out many times in the past few centuries.

>And when everyone started carrying cellphones.

in 1984 George Orwell talks about TeleScreens,

Here's a little excerpt from wikipedia:

>"Telescreens are fictional devices which operate as both televisions and security cameras....telescreens are used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania. All members of the Inner Party (upper-class) and Outer Party (middle-class) have telescreens in their homes, but the proles (lower-class) are not typically monitored as they are unimportant to the Party."

now consider recent NSA revelations (dragnet surveillance) including: http://www.wired.com/2014/07/nsa-targets-users-of-privacy-se...

Cellphones are Telescreens... they are a source of entertainment for most (like TV) and function as security cameras -- with your location and data connectivity being constantly logged, complete with backdoors which allow full remote access.

The middle class is being destroyed (http://time.com/money/2917709/wealth-inequality-doubled-over...) and anyone who opposes the party will be subject to indefinite detention (NDAA) or wiped out.

Apps are primarily a distraction mechanism and social networks are services which profile every aspect of an individuals life, data which can and will be mined and used against you if you commit a thought-crime.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/technology/15twitter.html

http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/7/5878069/why-facebook-is-bea...

Try and stop them: www.cnbc.com/id/101669271

> anyone who opposes the party will be subject to indefinite detention (NDAA) or wiped out.

Then why are you and countless other people like you allowed to post your alarmist b.s all over every day? Try moving to north korea and posting against the government, if you want to know what being in a totalitarian state is really like.

>I have gone from writing letters to my distant friends, to writing them emails, to writing them facebook messages.

After using email those are all diminishing returns. Nothing earth shattering.

>When it comes to the big picture, look at the Arab uprising, it used the social networks heavily.

No, it really didn't. Western media just liked to advertise it as such, because it made for a nice story. Plus social media using arabs are easier to approach, and are more likely to be more affluent and west-friendly, so they make for nice material to inflate their role.

>We don't know what would have happened without Facebook or Twitter, but my guess is that not much.

Well, from people actually following middle eastern and arab history in all the 20th century, tons of movements have happened without any social media. The Iranian revolution in the late seventies, for example, was much touted in the west, and they didn't even have phones for the most part.

>The movement started on Twitter, and slowly moved to Facebook.

There's a huge grassroots, on the roads, picketing and protesting movement in Spain. And there have been similar in the sixties in the US and Britain, in the seventies in Italy, Germany, etc. Twitter and Facebook are just convenient modern methods of organizing such things. If anything, current movements are much more tamer and less populated than the ones at times without social media.

In order to be world-changing, Facebook and Twitter don't have to fundamentally change the way humans communicate and organize into movements. Because they don't -- as you pointed out, humans have followed these patterns time and time again, all throughout history, and nothing about social networks has fundamentally changed this. But that doesn't mean they're not world-changing. Simply amplifying our capacity to communicate and organize around ideas is a huge leap forward. What used to take months or years to reach a critical mass could, on today's technology, take days or even hours.

I think you're really onto something when you say that "current movements are much more tamer and less populated" than seen historically. I'd theorize that current movements are happening sooner and in smaller spurts largely because social networks lower the required breaking point. It's easier than ever to organize around a perceived injustice, so what once would have grown and festered until it reached a huge breaking point now only requires a single viral video to draw crowds.

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