Social media isn’t broken. It’s working exactly how it was meant to. We just need to break free of it.
Should just be people can’t be fixed…
No shit. Unless the Internet becomes democratised and publicly funded like other media in other countries like the BBC or France24, social media will always be toxic. They thrive in provocations and there are studies to prove it, and social media moguls know this. Hell, there are people who make a living triggering people to gain attention and maintain engagement, which leads to advertising revenue and promotions.
As long as profit motive exists, the social media as we know it can never truly be fixed.
The article argues that extremist views and echo chambers are inherent in public social networks where everyone is trying to talk to everyone else. That includes Fediverse networks like Lemmy and Mastodon.
They argue for smaller, more intimate networks like group chats among friends. I agree with the notion, but I am not sure how someone can build these sorts of environments without just inviting a group of friends and making an echo chamber.
There’s actually some interesting research behind this - Dunbar’s number suggests humans can only maintain about 150 meaningful relationships, which is why those smaller networks tend to work better psychologicaly than the massive free-for-alls we’ve built.
Its performing as expected
The amount of comments thinking that Lemmy is totally not like a typical social media is absurd.
Guys, we only don’t have major tracking of users here.That’s it! Everything else is the fucking same shit you’d see on facebook. The moment Lemmy gets couple tens of millions of users, we gonna become 2nd facebook.
Lemmy doesn’t have a neural net prediction/recommendation engine. This is a HUGE difference.
And for the same reasons folks got hooked on old reddit, folks get hooked on Lemmy (its me I’m folks please unplug me from the machine I can’t log out)
It’s that there’s no incentive to have 80 million bots manipulate everything. Our user base is too small, and likely too jaded about fake internet points to be a target for scammers, ai slop bots, or advertisers.
Or at least that’s what I thought when I drink a refreshing Pepsi! hiss-crack! glugg glugg Aaaah!! PEPSI! The brown fizz that satisfies! Pepsi!
… If there are people to mislead with misinformation, or people with money to buy things, there will be incentive. I learned about this in this great book called
Lemmy is basically 30 or 40 Linux meme platforms begging for donations, full of people bitching about AI and politics, and recycling old reddit shitposts. I love it. I am home here. I love you all.
But, we aren’t running communities with millions of people trading crypto and stonks. There’s instances that are full on socialists. A pig butchering scam here would founder so badly they would banish anyone foolish enough to try it to redemtuon by spamming the comment sections of cooking blog posts before being summarily executed.
We have herd immunity.
Sorry but you are naive. That’s really all I can say about your view.
Just trying to be funny is all…
Exactly. Once we are a mainstream page to visit, it will go down as fast as any other page like this before.
That’s the real benefit of the Fediverse. Even if one instance becomes known for hosting bots, we can defederate them. Each instance isn’t the population of the whole. Plus, we don’t need to be huge. There’s no benefit from it.
It’s not a typical social media because it’s decentralized, but it’s not immune to all the problems of social media by any means. I’m not sure why you’re using Facebook as an example rather than reddit.
Facebook has lots of miss information and scams too, which here on Lemmy don’t have. Edit: if Lemmy was Facebook, then we would follow friends and share our locations and our photos
yes, and no. what really Facebook lacks (along the top social medias) is strong negative feedback.
I don’t think the village idiot is going that far with the flat earth conspiracy when is publicly downvoted to oblivion
Reddit has downvotes. That hasn’t saved it from misinformation, trolls, and radicalization.
I beg to disagree.
The reason all these delusional posts getting even upvoted to begin with is due to many like-minded people are gathered together in the same sub. As an example, reddit’s r/democrats and r/republicans. One is clearly more sane than another, yet try to say something in a wrong sub - get downvoted to oblivion. But if you spill your delusional shit in a r/republicans - upvotes galore and comments of praise.
Facebook groups are the same shit. And so is Lemmy. One thing in hexbear that is allowed could/will be the reason you got a ban in .world. Up/Downvotes cant fix that.
tl;dr Village idiots can join together to accumulate their own conspiracies in a big ass circlejerk, and social media has no power to stop it.
I haven’t used FB in half a decade, but at least with respect to reddit, there are definitely more good “features” in the threadiverse than just lack of tracking.
Not saying there aren’t any issues or that scaling to 10 M MAUs won’t create new problems, but lack of tracking isn’t the only differentiating factor.
Yeah decentralization and open source software and protocols being big ones. It means that if the “main” culture turns reactionary, that we’re not trapped in the same spaces as the shithead just because we share a platform.
There could absolutely be two main fediverses, with no changes to the technology.
Yeah, op is clearly ignoring some very important differences that have actual, material consequences that are pretty obvious. The argument is that there’s no perfect solution therefore they’re all the same/similar. Which isn’t a great argument.
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Ofcourse not. The issue with social media are the people. Algorithms just bring out the worst in us but it didn’t make us like that, we already were.
From my point of view something that brings out the worst in us sounds like a really big part of the issue.
We’ve always been modified by our situations, so why not create better situations rather than lamenting that we don’t have the grit to break through whatever toxic society we find ourselves graphed onto?
Sorry I know I’m putting a lot on your comment that I know you didn’t mean, but I see this kind of unintentional crypto doomerism a lot. I think it holds people to an unhealthy standard.
It is a big part of the issue, but as Lemmy clearly demonstrates, that issue doesn’t go away even when you remove the algorithm entirely.
I see it a lot like driving cars - no matter how much better and safer we make them, accidents will still happen as long as there’s an ape behind the wheel, and probably even after that. That’s not to say things can’t be improved - they definitely can - but I don’t think it can ever be “fixed,” because the problem isn’t it - it’s us. You can’t fix humans by tweaking the code on social media.
It magnifies the worst in people.
I mean, I feel like just shutting it down would solve at least some problems. Shuttering it all, video sharing platforms included.
Not a situation most anyone would agree on, but it’s an idea.
“Fixing” social media is like “fixing” capitalism. Any manmade system can be changed, destroyed, or rebuilt. It’s not an impossible task but will require a fundamental shift in the way we see/talk to/value each other as people.
The one thing I know for sure is that social media won’t ever improve if we all accept the narrative that it can’t be improved.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
-Ursula K Le Guin
If you read the article, the argument they are making is that you cannot fix social media by simply tweaking the algorithm. We need a new form of social media that is not just everyone screaming into the void for attention, which includes Lemmy, Mastodon, and other Fediverse platforms.
Seriously, read her books. I looooove „The Dispossessed“
The Left Hand of Darkness is excellent too. Sci-fi from the 1960s about a planet whose people have no fixed sex or gender, and a man from Earth who struggles to understand and function in this society. That description makes it sound very worthy, but it’s actually gripping and moving.
LeGuin is a treasure.
Particularly apt given that many of the biggest problems with social media are problems of capitalism. Social media platforms have found it most profitable to monetize conflict and division, the low self-esteem of teenagers, lies and misinformation, envy over the curated simulacrum of a life presented by a parasocial figure.
These things drive engagement. Engagement drives clicks. Clicks drive ad revenue. Revenue pleases shareholders. And all that feeds back into a system that trades negativity in the real world for positivity on a balance sheet.
Yeah, this author is the pop-sci / sci-fi media writer on Ars Technica, not one of the actual science coverage ones that stick to their area of expertise, and you can tell by the overly broad, click bait, headline, that is not actually supported by the research at hand.
The actual research is using limited LLM agents and only explores an incredibly limited number of interventions. This research does not remotely come close to supporting the question of whether or not social media can be fixed, which in itself is a different question from harm reduction.
This is spot on. The issue with any system is that people don’t pay attention to the incentives.
When a surgeon earns more if he does more surgeries with no downside, most surgeons in that system will obviously push for surgeries that aren’t necessary. How to balance incentives should be the main focus on any system that we’re part of.
You can pretty much understand someone else’s behavior by looking at what they’re gaining or what problem they’re avoiding by doing what they’re doing.
Meta and twitter cease to exist tomorrow and 99% of the issues are solved IMO
The fediverse is social media and it doesn’t have anything close to the same kinds of harmful patterns
It’s almost like the problem isn’t social media, but the algorithms that put content in front of your eyeballs to keep your engagement in order to monetize you. Like a casino.
Facebook was pretty boring before they tried to make money. Still ick, but mostly just people posting pictures of activities with family or friends.
Exactly, the one big issue with the modern world is the algorithms pushing for engagement as the only important metric.
Although I love Lemmy, I find it will be hard to recommend a normal young person to hop on Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, Misskey, Iceshrimp, etc. Most people on here talk about tech and politics. If you scroll through the main feed, you won’t get stuff from other communities unless you seek it out.
Not diverse enough, but once it gets diverse, it will probably enshitify and make the community mainstream garbage. Then we’re back to square one with people making clickbait posts and attention seeking people.
It has. Discussions here are mostly, just like elsewhere, people throwing arrogant smartass-looking text at each other and refusing to elaborate or explain or reason. Due to the experience of getting into such, people who’d actually discuss something instead “money-first” post with a set of markers hinting at their opinions and possible arguments, and masquerade discussion as agreement. It’s only a little less exhausting than going into a shit-throwing contest, even if more rewarding.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft would still be there, so the Internet seems to be suffering from a metastatic cancer at this point. Cutting off two revolting lumps helps, but the prognosis doesn’t look that great.
None of those have had much success in creating social networks that suck people in quite like the others
Not to say they don’t have their own problems, but the bulk of problems with social media come squarely from meta & twitter.
That’s true as far as the social media landscape is concerned. I was talking about the internet as a whole.
There will be a big curtaining of Apple, Microsoft, Google and Adobe if Facebook, TikTok and Twitter (and YouTube) have their algorithmic feeds outlawed.
It would probably cause the AI bubble to burst too so our OSs, Applications and Search Engines (and Government) would become usable again.
who will pay our representatives to push this through?
Of course -corporate- social media can’t be fixed … it already works exactly they way they want it to…
I think just going back to internet forums circa early 2000s is probably a better way to engage honestly. They’re still around, just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.
I’m talking stuff like SomethingAwful, GaiaOnline, Fark, Newgrounds forum, GlockTalk, Slashdot, vBulletin etc.
These types of forums allowed you to discuss timely issues and news if you wanted. You could go a thousand miles deep on some bizarre subculture or stick to general discussion. They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.
Anything that is topic focussed rather than following individuals is a big difference, and then take away the engagement algorithm and it’s much better.
That’s what I’ve been hoping for with Reddit and now Lemmy. I don’t care about individuals, I care about topic based discussion.
My problem with forums is they are more like a club, where you get loss of off-topic discussion by people who happen to share an interest. I don’t care what tech nerds think about medicine on a tech nerd forum, and joining dozens of forums to get the right discussion is a huge pain.
Forums are cool, and I use a few, but I really want a place that connects different subjects.
just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.
Boowahahahahaha, I’ve used those with PSP default web browser. With Nintendo Wii web browser. With Java phone web browser (admittedly that was only to read, and very slowly).
Anyway, have clumsy sweaty big fingers (unfortunately due to my behavior girls don’t extrapolate that feature anywhere anymore), strongly prefer anything with physical keys.
They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.
Images, links, enormous smilies’ sets, colored text.
Getting banned from Facebook. After a decade of clapping back against racists. Has been the best thing in my life. So glad to be out of there. Just wish I could have saved my pics first.
