Could you point me in a direction that I can research for this? It seems interesting.
I don't trust social media companies to self-regulate this kind of stuff at all.
233 karma · joined March 26, 2018
I don't trust social media companies to self-regulate this kind of stuff at all.
A direct comparison to toxins is hard indeed, but how about gambling? It obviously has enough addiction potential to induce certain people into compulsive and destructive behaviour warranting regulation. The same research that's been done in the gambling industry is being used in social media and especially mobile gaming today.
A global solution != a European solution/framework.
> No amount of regulation outside of an outright ban is going to make this go away.
How about regulation mandating voluntary parental controls mechanisms on social media platforms or devices?
Or how about regulation mandating that companies share certain aggregate usage data to get insight into the scope of the issue so that ultimately parents and society can be better informed of the damage being caused?
Or regulations about phones at school so that teachers and schools have effective tools (e.g. parentally consented confiscations).
Sure, these regulations may not make this go away but it's high time that we take a closer look at the consequences of social media and smartphone use that has exploded the last ~15 years. Not to mention this is the EU. I think you'd find broad support in the populace here for at least taking a stab at the issue.
"Here's 3 CTEs. Finish the model by joining them and grouping by X, Y, Z".
I'm also sadly not working with anyone more experienced then me so it's a good discussion partner for discussing tradeoffs or alternative ways of doing things. For instance, I created a model which did a self join to get create a new column with the previous years value. I asked it if I could do it differently and it suggested the LAG function - however, it doesn't deal with leap years so it wasn't viable in my case.
It's pretty good at error messages and finding faults in code, so it's usually a good place to start if I'm confused.
It's also been pretty good for discussing architectural decisions and tradeoffs. It's given me great answers to how to create and manage environments, deal with config files and more.
Honestly, it's been amazing for learning DBT and has greatly helped me write code. Probably increased my productivity by 30-50%. But I think I'm in the sweet spot of GPT. I know enough SQL and data engineering to see through the bullshit, but getting the bit more than basics surfaced and getting some direction has been great.
Otherwise, it's pretty good for writing emails and such, but it isn't as good in norwegian as english and I'm pretty comfortable with my writing style so I use it less for that.
Sadly, it's not great at Dagster (my orchestrator) as there's not a lot of code out there and a lot has changed since the knowledge cutoff in 2021. I'm hoping some LLMs will be able to help with this in the future. Let me know if anyone has any tips here.
Yes, I believe the local conditions where I am (Northern Europe and by extension the major powers in the EU) will stay stable enough for the foreseeable future that this will not turn into a 1984 scenario. I also understand why people of the United States may have a different view on this considering the unstable political situation you guys are in. I also want to make it clear that this instability is another argument on why relying on American tech platforms to moderate speech in the EU isn't a great option either.
> Do you guys who advocate for this really believe that the risk of, for example, a Christian revival is precisely zero? That control of this apparatus would literally never shift, and the speech of your LGBTQ friends would never be brutally repressed by it?
Yes, I do believe that it is exceedingly unlikely in Norway and the EU generally for the foreseeable future. Far less likely than the US at least.
I think a major point that you need to understand to empathize with this perspective is that capitalism and technological advance is viewed with considerably less optimism and trust in the EU.
Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Google (Search). All of these companies have a massive impact on the European public sphere. And none of these companies give a shit about the content they are promoting. How many Norwegian speaking moderators does Facebook have? How many Swiss? How many Lithuanian? How many Romanian? I bet way too few, and I bet their policies are more hands-off than hands-on. The more hands-on the more unpopular a platform becomes. I also bet that most moderation decisions are made by algorithms and not humans, which definitively affects speech.
While these companies make billions unleashing software that stokes racial and ethnic tensions, polarises, legitimately makes people less informed. Algorithms that structurally amplify the simple, and deprioritise the complex. All in the name of engagement, retention and monetization.
The effect these platforms have on Europe is massive, and I have more faith in democratic governments taking some of the reigns on this than the current state of American tech billionaires and board meetings behind closed doors. Americans have essentially accepted that corporations can use the populace as cattle to monetise. The EU has a different view on this.
The current state of affairs is worse than the chances of misuse in the future is essentially the argument for moving power to the government or enforcing more controls on the platforms in this case.
> Germany have criminalized basically any positive display/speech about their past tyrannical government.
Germany went through the worst case scenario of hate speech. Hate speech is strictly regulated there because they know the dangers it poses and how it can make normal people into monsters. While many factors went into the rise of Hitler, hate speech was a fundamental part of how precisely Hitler got to power. Hate speech enables populists power through simple emotional messaging. Any idiot can do it, and many do. And lots of people fall for it. I don’t want emotional messaging controlling our politics (precisely like what’s happening with the culture wars in the US) I want boring, research backed, evidence-based policy made and championed by bureaucrats and domain-experts with decades of experience.
There’s a reason hate speech is being researched and platforms are being forced to deal with the unmoderated hate speech of the 2010s. It has vast political power in the wrong hands. And it inevitably leads to shit policy.
I 100% support discussion about immigration or if identity politics has gone too far. I 100% support the deplatforming of voices that stigmatise, discriminate, silence and incite violence towards these minorities on major platforms.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”
I'll just dip out of this conversation right here. We have a fundamentally different view of how society is built up, functions and should work.
> Your views may not be uncommon, but they're certainly not universal, and even if they were, that wouldn't make them correct, or even well thought out.
Touche.
Yes, and I'm arguing for stricter enforcement of current laws around these topics. I'm not saying that people can't discuss immigration policy. I'm saying that people shouldn't discuss immigration policy through inciting to violence and racism. And I'm saying that Elon Musk is absolutely the last person I'd want to be the arbiter of what speech is legal or not.
Yes, the Norwegian government has some not so great history of discriminating against the native population hundreds of years ago, the Roma people last century, LGB people ~30 years ago and most recently drug users. But thinking that "Because there's always a slim chance my government can go rogue we should minimise its power" is a strange and uniquely American way of thinking by the way. My views are not uncommon in Europe. But they are at odds with the US/Libertarian slant you find here.
I don't believe that my government will turn to tyranny suddenly when it's generally had a pretty good history of not going off the rails. I don't buy the slippery slope argument/fallacy.
>They say the people get the government they deserve though.
Touche. I'd be more concerned about this in the US with your highly polarized yo-yo politics.
Keep in mind I'm European, and not American. I think we have a different view on this. Especially e.g. countries with a coloured history of hate speech like Germany.
1. Ideas need to be open so they can be challenged: These platforms don't create discussions, they create echo chambers. Nobody of their right mind engages with the crazies online as it's obviously a waste of time. Try to go to Facebook and debate with any of their "Flat earth" groups. It's absolutely futile. These "debates" are better for recruiting new people into hateful ideology than building understanding.
2. "Free speech" something or another: There is no such thing as "free speech" because there are already limits to speech. We've already drawn an arbitrary line on what's legal and harassment, death threats, racism, discrimination, defamation and multitudes of other types of speech are already controlled. If something is illegal to say to someones face, why should it be legal to say online? Not to mention that discussions about free speech spans borders and laws are different across them.
3. Who defines what's hate speech? I'm not an American, but I am at the mercy of your platforms. I for one would much rather that at EU-based body, or my government (I know this sounds crazy for an American, but we have more trust in our institutions) decides what's OK to say rather than tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Sundar Pichai. These people are already making moderation decisions, which is inevitable with large-scale social media. Make these policy decisions openly. Make them democratically.
Large scale social media platforms are cesspools already. Unmoderated social platforms turn into cesspools by default. Moderation of these platforms must be moved out of private companies and into the public sphere so we as a society can agree on what is right, and what is wrong.
If you read about "woke leftists cancelling [my tradition/Christmas]" day in and day out you start believing this stuff, even if it just started out as hanging out on certain subreddits for fun.
I don't believe everyone is as susceptible to this "convincing emotional content built on fear and rage" but it absolutely seems like a decent amount of people are. Especially considering these are usually the loudest voices in any debate.
That's the worst part about the American internet being so prolific in Europe. I don't think Americans understand how much their internet impacts Europe. I can only really speak for Northern Europe. But the impact is massive there, most content we consume after we learn english in our teens is American/English content.
For instance, "Woke" has been a huge topic here in Norway the past ~3 months which is funny as it's close to completely irrelevant for the day to day life of 99.9% of Norwegians.
I blame the shifting media incentives and hope that some new platforms pop up, or that the mainstream audience just gets tired of it and stops using it (but due to the addictive nature of these platforms I doubt that honestly..)
Do you have a source for this?
Also, I'm no biologist, but is comparing the base rate of evolutionary changes still relevant if SARSCoV2 wasn't of natural origins? E.g. through creating chimeras or 'serial passaging' as described in this article? Wouldn't that create an environment where 50 years could pass in a way shorter timeframe?
Ok, I'll spell it out clearly for you then.
Research is being done on both girls and boys, adults and children. There are rational explanations for why you mostly hear about the girls (the numbers there are insane, and more likely to bubble up into your feed).
But the comment thread here seems to take the stance that men are being profiled and biased by this research through a political and an ideological stance. There is no/little research being done on men or boys - and the research that is being done is attributed to ideological and political reasons and to suppress boys and men through stamping them as "extremists, incels and such".
Women don't care about men. #killallmen. This is absolutely absurd and doesn't mirror real life in the slightest. It's an extreme position you've been fed through the information you consume online. It's a position based on vicitimisation and outrage. Your talking points lack nuance.
The reason you haven't heard about research is not because it doesn't exist - but because the information sources you consume online doesn't filter it up to you. There are rational explanations for why boys and men are underreported in this research, you just aren't picking it up, and you're attributing it to malice and conspiracies.
This is what the internet does. It polarizes people.
But it seems like this thread was removed from HN. I won't be returning.
The focus only being on teen girls is objectively false. We literally have no idea what this technology is doing to us, and the research communities are scrambling to figure out the effects of social media and technology on all of us. But these are extremely time consuming and hard things to do conclusive studies on.
I do concede that girls were the first group to be broadly reported though. Probably because that age and gender group is especially vulnerable to the damages caused by social media and signs clearly starting showing up in 2012-2017 in a greater degree than boys of the same age group. Also it doesn't surprise me that a group who is constantly monitored by authority (parents and schools) are the first to be reported on. Males aged 20-60 are more likely to isolate themselves and not reach out creating far greater "dark cases".
My original point is that the internet exaggerates and selectively filters for engagement. If your knowledge on this topic is primarily from online sources optimised for engagement you have an incomplete view on the area. I'm not trying to change your mind on this topic in particular. I'm just saying that the internet inherently exaggerates and removes nuance (and I've felt a bit of that lack of nuance in your comments) and that this affects everyone and every single topic online today. Including me.
Jumping into these "reactionary" mens rights positions as a counter to feminist issues is the wrong way to do it and understandably makes people a bit angry. Just as in if real life someone is telling you about an issue - countering with a "buuut, group Y has it bad too..." would probably make someone double take a bit. It's unproductive, but normal on social media because it's engaging and creates a hot comment section.
In my opinion some major male problems are related to:
* Mental health, suicide and the lack of services and support for men.
* How the education system works better for females than males.
* How platonic relationships with males have been systemetically decreasing.
* How in rural societies women are more likely to move to the cities and get an education leading to men having way less romantic options.
If you bring these topics up with women they'll probably sympathise and maybe also agree that these are issues that our society should be assisting with solving. How it should be "solved" may be up for debate. But framing it as a counter position to the feminist movement isn't the right way to do it. But very normalised online, which feeds into my point of the internet exaggerating issues as most debates you see online is controversial by design of the algorithms and content creators trying to get engagement.
Disclaimer: I'm from Norway, which gives some context. But I think these issues are pretty common across the westernized world.
I think social media amplifies the extreme minorities voices that state that they don't care about male problems, that men are incels and far-right terrorists and other unsavory takes. I don't think most people label males as such. But I do think social media is extremely good at bringing up these takes - because they create a lot of engagement (particularly from the opposing side).
I think social media affects 30 year old males in the exact same way as teenage girls get body image problems from looking at "perfect" lives on Instagram. Men get served toxic and outrage based content that shows the extreme outliers - multiple times a week, for multiple years in a row.
I think most people are reasonable. I think most people care about male problems. I think a minority label men as incels or terrorists. I think the internet exaggerates this position greatly, and it's at least partly overblown.
While I don't blame anyone solely, there's lots of blame to go around - solely blaming the parents doesn't hold up. Kids are ostracized if they don't have a smartphone, don't have TikTok, and don't have YouTube. It's easy to blame the parents, but it's unreasonable to expect them to know how to deal with new technology and how to enforce it with kids.
Probably an unpopular take here, but I think within a decade or so social media and technology will have it's "smoking moment" and be regulated harder. Probably some sort of age limits, protections for minors and enforced parental controls (like whitelisted channels, screentime, and such). As today it's pretty much impossible for a parent to see what kids are doing on these applications, and pretty much impossible for them to enforce it if they aren't in the same room.
I know it's a controversial topic but the argument that age verification and auth services must remove privacy and inevitably leads to mass surveillance is a false narrative which I find kind of funny as if anybody should know these technical realities it's users on hn.
It's got a generous free tier, but costs a bit if you go over 500k events a month.
It's built on clickhouse, while matomo is built on MySQL which in my opinion is pretty much a nail in the coffin for Matomo's future proofing. Matomo is fine for simple analytics needs but it sucks for tracking sites with custom events with custom dimensions.
On a personal level i don't care much if it's true to the source material, I haven't read it. Nor do I care that there are PoC in it. I do care that it's just at best a 6/10 (maybe a charitable 7?), which hurts based on the potential it had.
But the issue is that this article doesn't differentiate between branded and non-branded search terms. Did he run campaigns on non-branded searches like "Registration checker UK" to get build awareness of his service for new customers doing broad searches? Did he compare his organic non-branded search engine presence with his results when running paid ads?
Also, his service doesn't seem like a great match for the advertising channel either. It's hard to turn a profit when your service costs £8. The product - channel fit [0] doesn't seem right. So all in all, not such a great experiment.
https://brianbalfour.com/essays/product-channel-fit-for-grow...
The product seems interesting, but I'm not a sharer on social media.
I don't really understand the hypocrisy argument. Would it be preferable if Norway continued to produce oil while not doing any work towards climate change? The current oil situation in Norway is a huge political topic and several of the more left wing parties are for stopping oil production - but the population and political system as a whole isn't ready for it. It seems that the current compromise is investing in green energy while making the transition towards non-fossil fuel based economy in the future. The Norwegian population and political system isn't a monolith and the hypocrisy argument just doesn't make sense to me considering different factions promote the different actions.
A bit OT but I've had some discussions with people who seem to care more about perceived hypocrisy and double standards than they care about the actual outcomes of actions. It's morally just if a business ruins the environment or lives of people if they believe that they are in the right about doing it. On the other hand they are morally unjust if they see the issues they are causing and take steps to minimize the externalities. I've chalked this up to a more deontological instead of consequentialist moral stance but I still find it a bit confusing.