“Why The Past 10 Years of American Life have been uniquely Stupid.”

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Totally.  I'm just skeptical that any efforts to curb this on social media are going to be effective.  There are tons of examples out there of hateful speech cruising happily along while condemnation of it gets filtered out.  (And again, not limited to social media--See the entire CRT shit).  

And I see that too.  My difficulty is that throwing our hands up and saying… “nothing to do”… seems like a poor choice.

[Larry of the Lawn]

24 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

And I see that too.  My difficulty is that throwing our hands up and saying… “nothing to do”… seems like a poor choice.

 

24 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

And I see that too.  My difficulty is that throwing our hands up and saying… “nothing to do”… seems like a poor choice.

Well the internal policing stuff seems to be pretty bad, result wise.  Beyond enforcing existing laws I don't know where we go.  Would you be comfortable with a Trump or DeSantis government cracking down on misinformation or hate speech online?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

 

Well the internal policing stuff seems to be pretty bad, result wise.  Beyond enforcing existing laws I don't know where we go.  Would you be comfortable with a Trump or DeSantis government cracking down on misinformation or hate speech online?

No.  A thousand times… no.  That said given your point above are you discomforted by the Biden administration creating a bureau to deal with disinformation?  How poorly would that be administered by the losing one term former President who lives in Florida and loves the Russian dictator or Ron “Watch me stomp on my own dick to show how strong and smart I am” DeSantis?

[DMC]

29 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

My difficulty is that throwing our hands up and saying… “nothing to do”… seems like a poor choice.

While I of course agree social media amplifies and emboldens violent extremism and dangerous disinformation, I tend to agree with larry that just the nature of the internet makes it a bit of a "can't put the toothpaste back in the tube" problem.  Been thinking for quite  a while now about the nature of (American) political media over time and how this relates...

To borrow a phrase, the US really only had a "well regulated political media" during the post-war period, say 1940s to 1980s with the advent of cable television/news (e.g. Prior 2007).  That was the only time where political media was dominated by reputable broadcast news and newspapers striving for objectivity and transparency.  Not coincidentally, it is also the period in which we experienced the lowest levels of polarization, or at least partisan polarization, basically in US history.  Of course, it's also the period in which political journalism helped convince Americans to end segregation, stop an unjust war, and force a corrupt president to resign.

I think it's time to recognize that that era was actually the blip or outlier, and the current situation is much closer to the regular state of things.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

While I of course agree social media amplifies and emboldens violent extremism and dangerous disinformation, I tend to agree with larry that just the nature of the internet makes it a bit of a "can't put the toothpaste back in the tube" problem.  Been thinking for quite  a while now about the nature of (American) political media over time and how this relates...

To borrow a phrase, the US really only had a "well regulated political media" during the post-war period, say 1940s to 1980s with the advent of cable television/news (e.g. Prior 2007).  That was the only time where political media was dominated by reputable broadcast news and newspapers striving for objectivity and transparency.  Not coincidentally, it is also the period in which we experienced the lowest levels of polarization, or at least partisan polarization, basically in US history.  Of course, it's also the period in which political journalism helped convince Americans to end segregation, stop an unjust war, and force a corrupt president to resign.

I think it's time to recognize that that era was actually the blip or outlier, and the current situation is much closer to the regular state of things.

And people at the time complained about the lack of real choice because the two major parties were so close to one another.  I don’t think what we have now is better.

[DMC]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

And people at the time complained about the lack of real choice because the two major parties were so close to one another.  I don’t think what we have no is better.

Yeah.  I recall the complaints reaching a crescendo with the 2000 election where lots of people complained there was no difference between Gore and Bush.  Famous last words.

[DireWolfSpirit]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

That was the only time where political media was dominated by reputable broadcast news and newspapers striving for objectivity and transparency. 

Anybody see the latest story where FOX's Maria Barfaroma has been caught through leaked texts/emails spoonfeeding interview questions to Trump's Chief of Staff in advance of her TV interview?

Presumably it's just the questions in advance, however one leak is of her coaching Meadows on how the orange toddler should reply (what the real FOX Americans wanna hear).

Sorry state of media, or rather sorry state media I guess.

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No.  A thousand times… no.  That said given your point above are you discomforted by the Biden administration creating a bureau to deal with disinformation?  How poorly would that be administered by the losing one term former President who lives in Florida and loves the Russian dictator or Ron “Watch me stomp on my own dick to show how strong and smart I am” DeSantis?

Exactly.  I am very skeptical of any US government effort being able to effectively moderate social media content.  Same goes for the companies moderating themselves.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Exactly.  I am very skeptical of any US government effort being able to effectively moderate social media content.  Same goes for the companies moderating themselves.

But if the issue isn’t content moderation but slowing the spread of content generally… isn’t the latter within the power of social media companies to facilitate?  

[Martell Spy]

Opinion: Fear is destroying the GOP from inside out
Opinion by Charlie Dent

cnn.com/2022/05/01/opinions/2013-government-shutdown-problem-with-gop-dent/index.html

Quote

 

Instead, Boehner, who had also called four other House GOP colleagues into the meeting, began the conversation almost apologetically, trying to explain his thinking and rationale to pursue tactics and seek concessions that everyone knew would be rejected by the Democrat-controlled Senate. Understandably, Boehner said he wanted to break the members who tormented him by insisting upon a government shutdown to defund Obamacare. The problem with this strategy, of course, was the collateral damage to swing district members who were being blamed and pounded relentlessly by their constituents over the ongoing shutdown.

Boehner further explained that of the roughly 234 members of the House GOP Conference in 2013, he could count on only 85, including the five of us in the meeting, to vote responsibly on matters of basic governance. He stated that there were nearly 40 other members who wanted to undermine him at every opportunity. This was the group — many of whom would later become known as the Freedom Caucus — pushing the government shutdown.

Yet Boehner said it was the remaining 109 or so that he was most concerned about. He said these members represented relatively safe GOP seats who were vulnerable to primary challengers. Depending on the issue, this group could be pulled in either direction — and on the government shutdown, many of them had reluctantly followed the fringe. While Boehner didn't want the shutdown himself, he was sympathetic to this third group, explaining that they were particularly vulnerable to attacks and primary challenges from the right.

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But if the issue isn’t content moderation but slowing the spread of content generally… isn’t the latter within the power of social media companies to facilitate?  

 

Yeah they can get rid of the share button I guess but I don't think that's really going to slow down... What is it that needs to be slowed down, exactly?  "Extreme" or "polarized" ideas?  Deepfakes?  

To use an analogy from the article, I don't think that slowing down the printing press would have say, prevented the 30 years war 200 years later.  

I think the article is also attributing way more power and influence to social media.  It acknowledges that new technology becomes a vector for bad behavior but then tries to say it's different and more concerning this time with social media.

 

 

[Kalbear]

The simplest and most effective thing to tone things down is regulate or prohibit using algorithms to choose who you see and in what order. Allow only views in chronological order.

And do not promote engagement of threads of friends of friends. 

This will absolutely hurt engagement #s but will make the platform absurdly better. And it's really easy to regulate. 

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, Kalibuster said:

The simplest and most effective thing to tone things down is regulate or prohibit using algorithms to choose who you see and in what order. Allow only views in chronological order.

I'm certainly on board with this as a start. These media platforms started with the idea of we choose what we see, then realize there's more profit in choosing what we see for us and it not only causes this problem but degrades the thing we started using the platform for in the first place.

I made it a bit further in the piece than DMC and got up to the start of the discussion of chasing "viral" and was struck at that point that he's at least in part mistaking symptoms for the disease. A larger piece of the puzzle when you're looking at that is what I'm going to call increasing commodification of our lives, although I don't think that's capturing all the aspects of it either - just the best I'm thinking of right now. People try to get a viral tweet so they can drop a link to their fund raising platform, find a way to turn your hobby into a profit making enterprise, maybe even start a YouTube channel about it so you can slowly trade everything you loved about it in favor of whatever the current algorithm demands to not destroy what has become your livelihood. At the more extreme end embrace hustle culture, maybe combine it all and go viral with dumb shit about taking a dinner with JayZ over $500k in hand.

Or how about some NFT pyramid schemes where you can start harassing games developers to make the loot you get in the game into pointless NFT shit because you somehow think that you'll flip that and become a self made billionaire and you'll happily burn the planet with wasted electricity to get there.

As I said, I can't even pin down the true scope of that problem, and I sure as fuck wish I had the solutions but I don't. I can just see that there's a deep sickness in this part of society that's getting worse and it's not as simple as being caused by social media. It's also a separate issue to the death cult mentality of the far right, even if there are points of connectivity between the two.