I feel like this is general knowledge for the past 5 or so years, but the real question is "What do we do about it?". Personally, I put real effort into not spending time being outraged online, but this is a societal ill that's bigger then I am...
Shut down the behavior with regulations or shut down the companies. Meta and TikTok have no natural right to exist if they are a net negative to society.
Wouldn’t we need to shut down all news outlets, all the twitters and all the newspapers then? They might not be on the toxic spectrum as meta/tiktok, but are very close
Specifically, I believe Section 230 protections shouldn't apply to algorithmicly promoted content. TikTok hosting my video isn't inherently an endorsement of what I'm saying, but proactively pushing that video to people is functionally equivalent even if you want to quible over dictionary definitions. These algorithms take these platforms from dumb content-agnostic pipes that deserve protections to editorial enterprises that should bear responsibility for what they promote.
There is a decent legal argument to be made that §230 doesn't immunize platforms for the speech of their algorithm, to the extent that said speech is different from the speech of the underlying content. (A simple, if absurd, example of this would be if I ran a web forum and then created a highlight page of all of the defamatory comments people posted, then I'm probably liable for defamation.)
The problem of course is that it's difficult to disentangle the speech of algorithmic moderation from the speech of the content being moderated. And the minor issue that the vast majority of things people complain about is just plain First Amendment-protected speech, so it's not like the §230 protections actually matter as the content isn't illegal in the first place.
Really nice to see someone else bringing this up. Algorithmic editorial decisions are still editorial decisions. I think ultimately search and other forms of selective content surfacing should not have ever been exempt. They were never carriers. I appreciate that this would make the web as we know it unusable. I think failing to tackle this problem has will also make the web unusable, and in a worse way.
Listing content alphabetically or chronologically is technically an "algorithm" too. What I'm specifically challenging here is the personalized algorithm designed to keep individual users on the platform based off a user profile influenced by countless active and passive choices the user has made over time. The type of HN algorithm that serves the same content to every user based off global behavior is fine in my book because it is both less exploitative of the user base and a reflection of that user base's proactive decisions in upvoting/downvoting content.
So if HN added anything personalized, like allowing you to show fewer stories on topics you dislike, it would lose protection? I can't get on board with that.
I also think it would be extremely unpopular. People like their recommendation engines. They want Netflix to show them more similar shows. They want Reddit to help them find more similar subreddits. I know there are HN users who don't want any of these recommendation engines, but on the whole people actually want them.
>They want Netflix to show them more similar shows.
Perhaps that example was a little too revealing on your end. Netflix doesn't have/need Section 230 protections and they're doing fine.
I'm not suggesting these algorithms should be illegal, just that Section 230 protections were defined too broadly because they predated the feasibility of these type of algorithms. These platforms would be free to continue algorithmic promotion, but I believe these algorithms would be less harmful if the platforms had to worry about potential legal liability.
Think YouTube and copyright for comparison. The DMCA is far from perfect, but we have YouTube as an example of a platform that survived and even thrived in the transition from a world that didn't care about copyrighted internet video to one in which they that needed to moderate with copyright in mind.
> Perhaps that example was a little too revealing on your end. Netflix doesn't have/need Section 230 protections and they're doing fine.
Perhaps it was a little too revealing on your end that you conveniently ignored my other example of Reddit.
If you need to cherry pick to make your point it doesn’t look very strong.
I still don’t see consistency in your argument that Section 230 should still apply to Hacker News but not, for example, Reddit, simply because one of them allows users to personalize the content they see.
I'm paying for Netflix to do that as a feature. Instagram uses that to drive engagement to sell ads. Disabling personalized content on Netflix is a revenue-neutral choice. On Instagram, that would mean their ad revenue takes a huge dive. Apples aren't oranges.
That is not comparable because of the little you have over the algorithm for the other cases. On bandcamp, you can select the genre and a sorting criteria and have very good control over the list. But on Spotify, it’s very obscure, with things you’ve never asked for being in front even before your own library.
But algorithmic feeds can actually be useful for discovery of related material - I want Youtube to show me more Japanese jazz and video essays about true crime based on my watch history, I wanted Twitter to show me more accounts from writers and game developers because I follow them (before the platform went full Nazi) and I like that Facebook shows me people and information from my local area. Forcing all platforms to use only alphabetical or chronological feeds because of the exploitative way some platforms use algorithms seems awfully close to the "banning math" argument people used to use about cryptography and DRM, and it would remove a lot of legitimate use from the internet.
>> Meta and TikTok have no natural right to exist if they are a net negative to society.
Exactly. And when we are done with them we will shut down Molson and Anheuser-Busch. Then we can go after the people who make selfy sticks. Then the company that owns that truck that cut me off last week. Basically, organization who i dislike should not be allowed to exist.
Regulating content that makes people enraged seems like a slippery slide towards regulating any kind of "unwanted" speech. I get regulating CSAM, calls for violence or really obvious bullying (serious ones like "kill yourself" to a kid), but regulating algorithms that show rage bait leaves a lot of judgement to the regulators. Obviously I don't trust TikTok or Meta at all, but I don't trust the current or the future governments with this much power.
For example, some teen got radicalized with racist and sexist content. That's bad in my opinion, as I'm not a racist or a sexist. But should racist or sexist speech be censored or regulated? On what grounds? How do we know other unpopular (now or in the future) speech won't be censored or regulated in the future? Again, as much as I'm not a racist or sexist, I don't think the government should have a say in whether a company should be able to promote speech like "whites/blacks are X" or "men/women are Y". What's next? Should we regulate speech about religion (Christians/Muslims/atheists are Z) or ethics (anti-war people or vegans are Q) or politics or drugs or sex?
The current situation is shitty, but giving too much power to regulators will likely make it way shittier. If not now, in the future, since passed regulations are rarely removed.
At least in the US the government can't regulate speech (for the most part). But what we could do is regulate recommendation algorithms or other aspects of the overall design in a way that's generalized enough to be neutral in regards to any particular speech. And such regulations don't need to apply to any entity below some MAU or other metric.
Even just mandating interoperability would likely do since that would open up the floor to competitors. Many users are well aware of the issues but don't feel they have a viable alternative that satisfies their goals.
> I get regulating CSAM, calls for violence or really obvious bullying (serious ones like "kill yourself" to a kid)
I’ve reported videos that look like sexual exploitation, videos that call for violence and videos that promote hate (xyz people are cockroaches) and all I’ve gotten is that “it does not go against community guidelines” with a link to block the person who created them. So any concerns of “where do we draw the line” are in my opinion pointless because the bare minimum isn’t even being done.
I agree with your CSAM and explicit calls for violence examples - they probably should be regulated. But a few comments ago in another thread someone didn't like me calling people in the workplace who annoy me with their mindless chit chat "corporate drones". My post could be construed as promoting hate. Where do we draw the line from "cockroaches" to "drones"? Do I have to call a certain "protected class" drones for it to qualify as hate speech?
What if I didn't say anything bad about a race or a sex, but said:
> I have coworkers that pester with me with their small talk about the weather every time I see them. I hate those fucking cockroaches.
That's in bad taste, sure, but should it be regulated? You may know I obviously don't hate-hate them (they're just annoying, but most of them are good people) or actually consider them cockroach-like in any meaningful aspect (they're obviously people, but with annoying tendencies). But would a regulator know the difference? What about a malicious regulator who gets paid by (ok, this is a silly example, but bear with me) the weather-talking coworker lobby to censor me? In many not-so-silly examples a regulator could silence anyone for anything (politics, sex, drugs, ethics), as long as it uses a bad word or says anything negative about anyone. I don't want to live in such a society. That much power would be abused sooner or later.
I'm sorry but are you saying it's hard to figure out what to do so let's do nothing? Banning racist and sexist content is not a slippery slope. It's just banning racist and sexist content, slope is only slippery because the salivating mouths of these social platforms grease them.
Also, I don't think people are advocating censorship, they are advocating not promoting assholes. You can have your little blog and be racist on it all you want, but let's not give these people equivalent of nukes for communication.
> are you saying it's hard to figure out what to do so let's do nothing?
I'm fine with doing something, but the current "something" seems slippery.
> Banning racist and sexist content is not a slippery slope. It's just banning racist and sexist content, slope is only slippery because the salivating mouths of these social platforms grease them.
But what is "racist", exactly? See why I think it's a slippery slope and why it's ill-defined:
1. We could agree that "Let's go out and kill/enslave all the $race/$gender" is racist, but that's bad if we switch $race to any group, as it's speech that incites violence.
2. What about "$race is genetically inferior in a way (less intelligent, less athletic, more prone to $bad_behavior)"? I honestly think most differences in race/ethnicity is due to environmental factors, but what if there actually are difference in intelligence or anything like that? Should we ban speech that discusses that? Black people win running races and are great at basketball. They're prone to certain diseases, as are Caucasians or Asians. So would you ban discussing that? Or would you ban blindly asserting that $race is $Y without some sort of proof?
3. What about statements like "There are way more male bus drivers because X"? Or "men are better at Y, but women are better at Z"?
What do you think the definition of racism and sexism in this context should be? I think the line is where we incite violence towards a group, but not about discussing differences that may or may not be true.
> Also, I don't think people are advocating censorship, they are advocating not promoting assholes. You can have your little blog and be racist on it all you want, but let's not give these people equivalent of nukes for communication.
I think restricting a platform (or anyone or anything) from promoting someone IS censorship. If it's not censored, why shouldn't I be able to promote it? This honestly feels disingenuous - like "we pretend that the racist isn't censored and can have his little blog, but it's illegal to promote his little blog".
> I'm sorry but are you saying it's hard to figure out what to do so let's do nothing?
That seems more reasonable than the alternative, which is to make modifications to a complex system which you aren't sure what the outcome will be. You're more likely to cause bigger problems.
oddly enough the TikTok referred to here was to be shut down in the US. But then the executive branch ignored the law while it could organize handing the company over to Larry Ellison instead. But these allegations date to when the company was fully under the control of ByteDance, and not US-regulated entities at all.
> oddly enough the TikTok referred to here was to be shut down in the US. But then the executive branch ignored the law while it could organize handing the company over to Larry Ellison instead
Which should make people think twice when they call for government regulation on speech as a solution to content they don't want other people to see.
The more you give the government power to control speech, the more they'll use those laws to further their own interests.
All the more reason for regulation. If people catch on to the fact that they are being manipulated and abused by the platforms to "drive engagement" they might abandon them or spend less time on them. If the government regulates these platforms so that they are safer or at least less harmful people will feel better about using them giving the government a larger platform to use to control the masses.
> If people catch on to the fact that they are being manipulated and abused by the platforms
I am not trying to be funny or anything but this sounds like "if only fat kid realized that eating 10 apple pies before bedtime might be the reason s/he is fat" We already know what social media platforms are doing, not to just young people but to all people.
> If the government regulates these platforms
This is like saying "congressman care about our debt so they will vote to reduce their own salaries by 90%" - the government is not going to regulate tools they are using to control the narrative/masses etc...
Technology, culture, legalization of pot, adtech, covid, there are a metric ton of factors that all had significant impact on both decreasing socialization and reduction in drinking. And lowering the birth rates, and the number of healthy relationships, healthy friendships, etc.
I'm for legalizing all drugs, regulating the sale, ensuring quality and purity, and educating the public. Cognitive liberty is sacred - but the dip in drinking has a whole lot of causes.
A healthier society would be more social and get out and drink more, I think.
I'd wager how expensive it has gotten plus a year or two of lockdowns which lead to a whole generation of people not going out to get wasted as soon as they're legally allowed to had way more effect.
I also noticed a trend that happened at my old college and a number of others that I've never seen anyone write about: the great buyout of the old college area slumlords.
All the dive bars where you could black out off $10-20 I drunk at in college are gone. They all faced the wrecking ball, and were replaced in the past 10-15 years with apartments over targets and cvs and family friendly restaurants. A huge concerted effort to buy up these properties in piecemeal then destroy entire blocks at a time. I have no clue where kids at my college go to drink now. I have little interest in going back either as an alumnus as they destroyed all the places of my memories.
previous generations of neurotics objected to many current (at the time) things we don't bat an eye about. when was the last time you saw anyone campaign against satanic music, violent video games, or hardcore pornography?
I posted above that social media related issues are a problem, and then a bunch of posts accused me of wanting to make it illegal. I never suggested that and I actually don't support censorship, I just wish some people I know didn't spend so much of their time bummed out about social media.
Consuming social media doesn't have an inescapable negative impact on other people, unlike burning leaded fuel. In the same way that eating junk food doesn't. Should we ban junk food? What else do you want to ban from others just because it has a risk profile you personally don't feel comfortable with?
>You in the 90s: "Leaded fuel isn't illegal guys, stop your campaigning, let's keep huffing it"
people who raised alarm about such things could easily be branded as conspiracy theorists. even now, at this very website, so full of well-educated folx, people who speak out against xenoestrogens, for example, are being downvoted to hell.
I'm not suggesting that it should be illegal, I'm just seeing this monetization of bad vibes and wondering how we can have less bad vibes. Pump the brakes a little.
Laws appear to have fallen out of fashion. And a disturbing proportion of the loudest people like it. Then you have those who ought to know better but are attention-seeking, selfish assholes who somehow find it «interesting» or think they adhere to «principles».
The latter category know who you are. You downvoted this comment.
I recently provided guidance to state legislators, with that guidance making its way into law in regards of balcony solar. If you don’t think that making law works, I would encourage you to get involved somewhere that means something to you.
It turns out that if you present as an honest, non-interested party, people will call you and ask you for your advice. I do admit that the ease of this is going to be a function of the people you are up against and the subject being regulated. My point of this comment is: default to action. “You can just do things.”
The people who were voted to power (across the globe, not just the US) to do something about it are stuck getting their dopamine kicks posting garbage on the same platforms.
It’s truly a terrible timeline we are in.
It’s like asking how do you get people to stop drinking alcohol
As long as there are people who don’t acknowledge or care about the health effects it will exist. If that’s a plurality of your population then you have a fundamental population problem IF you are in the group who thinks it’s bad.
Aka every minority-majority split on every issue ever.
So the answer is: live in a society governed by science. Unfortunately none exist
> So the answer is: live in a society governed by science. Unfortunately none exist
Science is a lagging indicator of reality. It is by definition conservative (in that it requires rigorous, repeatable data before it can label something as true). Because of that, there's usually a pretty substantial gap between human discovery and scientific consensus.
Mindfulness was discovered, as an example, to be beneficial as far back as 500 BCE. It wasn't "proven" with science until 1979.
Sometimes we just need to rely on lived experience to make important decisions, especially regulation. We can't always wait for science.
I drink, but I acknowledge and care about the health effects. I care more about how it makes me feel. Don't assume everyone who smokes or drinks alcohol or takes another type of drug just doesn't care. Why don't we ban dangerous sports like rock climbing or BASE jumping or MMA while we're at it?
We handled smoking pretty well by making it cost more and banning it in public places. If tiktok was banned from official app stores it would essentially go away.
I don't think deeper is the right word. Nicotine has a physical addiction element that social media does not. You cut off social media, you at worse face some boredom and FOMO.
And PM's earnings are mostly from developing countries at this point. In the US alone, the adult smoking rate has fallen nearly 73% from 1965 to now, so clearly the regulations are working.
We need to do the same for social media. People didn't quit smoking because they suddenly got more disciplined. We just made it inconvenient. The biggest start would be get rid of algorithmic feeds and "recommendations" keep it purely chronological, only from people you explicitly follow.
Nitpicking maybe, but nicotine isn't the main thing that makes cigarettes addictive and it's not that bad by itself. Gwern has a long article on nicotine that's worth a read [0].
More importantly, why do you think society should make smoking inconvenient - more costly, more illegal or anything like that? If I'm not blowing smoke in your face, why interfere with my desire to smoke? If it's about medical bills, just let me sign a waiver that I won't get cancer treatments or whatever, and let me buy a pack of smokes for what it should cost - a few cents per pack, not a few dollars/euro.
If I can smell it, I don't really care if you're blowing it directly at me or not, it's still a pain. If you want to smoke in private in your own home and then wash your clothes after so no one can tell you're doing it, I guess that's fine, but I don't see why it also has to be cheap?
I admit I sometimes smoke near people, even if I try to move to the side. At bus stops I try to be 5-10 meters away from people, but often I don't do it and it inconveniences people. Sorry, truly. I will try to be more mindful. When I switched to e-cigs for a while a couple of years ago, I started noticing the smell of tobacco smoke. After I switched back to cigs, I stopped noticing it. Smokers don't notice it that much as they're around it often. It's not always smokers being inconsiderate, it's not realizing how it smells to others. If you let me smell the clothes of a smoker and a non-smoker, I wouldn't be able to tell the different if my life depended on it. Although I only smoke outdoors and wash my clothes regularly, so I hope my base smell isn't that offensive to non-smokers.
So yeah, this comment really reminded me to not light up whenever and "try my best" to walk a few meters away, but to really think if I'd inconvenience people.
On the other hand, if I'm alone on a street and you're walking towards me so I just pass you for a second, I can't imagine that the smell would be that bad from just a casual walk-by. When I'm passing people, I hold in my smoke till I pass them.
Even if I agree that smoking outdoors is inconsiderate and annoying to others, I could still do it at home or in dedicated areas (smoking sections in bars with good ventilation, ofr example).
> I don't see why it also has to be cheap?
If we agree on the previous points, then why not let it be cheap? Tobacco is cheap to produce. Most of the price of cigarettes is artificial, to cover medical costs and whatnot. Let's say I sign a waiver that if I get sick, I either pay through the nose or don't receive treatment at all. Would you be OK with letting me buy tobacco at it's original cost (no subsidies, no artificial fees)?
Or, as a thought experiment - let's say tobacco didn't have any smell and there were 0 negative effects of second-hand smoke. Like, you wouldn't know it if I smoked near you unless you saw me. Then what would be the justification in making smoking artificially expensive for me?
I think it's also partially due to smoking being more and more considered disgusting, not just inconvenient. The peer pressure of "don't do this very stinky disgusting thing around me" must have at least a little to do with declining smoking rates. Back in the 80s, most people didn't have the guts to say "Hey, don't smoke around me, it's gross!" but plenty of people do today.
We need to culturally consider Social Media use to be disgusting or at least something to be ashamed of.
> You cut off social media, you at worse face some boredom and FOMO.
I wish this was true but I know tens of people that quit smoking and (besides myself) know 1/2 of another person that quit social media. drunk at NYE two years I offered $10k to a group of 25 people to delete all social media apps from their phones for 60 days - still have that $10k in my account. I think quitting social media is around the same as getting off hard drug addiction (like hard, hard, hard one - opioid, heroin etc...) and maybe even tougher that that - for most people.
> People didn't quit smoking because they suddenly got more disciplined. We just made it inconvenient.
I want to believe this! I just haven't personally experienced this at all (I am in my 6 decade on Earth so plenty of time around). I don't know single person that stopped smoking because they could not burn one inside restaurants/clubs/... or because it costs $18/pack or any of that. 18 year old person has very little "regulation" when it comes to smoking. Little inconveniences to move 25 feet away from the building isn't much of a deterrent IMO.
I am subjective on the matter of social media, I know that. But I am educated in its evil and would for instance never let my kid be on any social media as long as she is under my roof. This has already cause significant challenges for her (and my wife and I) but also it is an amazing learning experience to overcome silly social obstacles...
It's like how do you get people to stop letting their kids drink alcohol.
Everyone knows what the dangers of alcohol are now. We need to get reliable data one can base policy on and then let the public health system do their thing. Maybe not every health authority but enough of them to protect the species at large. Then we'll get social media out of schools, away from young people, vulnerable folks, etc.
Did we forget Gresham's Law applies to content and has done so since humans could communicate?
Bad or wrong ideas are the ones that get talked about. Do we discuss the 10 issues politicians get correct, or the 1 they screw up?
Platform is irrelevant here; the exact same phenomena occurs/ed on radio and TV decades before it did on social media platforms, and in news papers centuries prior.
Is this unavoidable? I mean it does generate clicks and views and user engagement so if one platform is doing it, doesn't that automatically mean that the other has to do it? Otherwise they will continuously lose market share.
I think the burden to curate your feed so that you do not have such content is now resting with the user and they cannot rely on the platform to do it for them.
If the user even wants to do that. Why would they? They're looking for a sugar rush, they're not looking to eat their intellectual vegetables. How do you get children to eat vegetables?
> I mean it does generate clicks and views and user engagement so if one platform is doing it, doesn't that automatically mean that the other has to do it? Otherwise they will continuously lose market share.
Why? User engagement isn't the same thing as market share.
If McDonald's trained its cashiers to insult you while taking your order, engagement would go up, and market share would go down.
I look at people who use fb or tiktok, or x, the same way I look at smokers or alcoholics. With sadness and pity. The fact that we let children use this is hard to accept. The fact that fellow hackers and engineers, some of the brightest minds, have contributed to this is extremely disappointing. Shame on you.
the bucket of crabs truly pervades in its metaphorical accuracy. regardless as to intelligence, humans are liable to drag down their fellow men. insane to consider that children are effectively drugged from infancy. for this i do not blame an uneducated society strained to its zenith; i blame the sociopathic and the craven who have enabled the proferring of digital drugs, and consequently accelerated societal addiction. the shame falls entirely on them. may reincarnation be real such that sadistic six figure salaried software engineers and their malicious managers are forced to reap the rewards of such "engineering".
Throw away your 'smartphone' and stop using anti-social media. It is killing society, and only making the Billionaires more powerful. They are evil and will do anything to stay in power.
Given how TikTok "trends" seem to consist mostly of "get teenagers to do stuff that causes huge expenses for US society":
* "eat tide pods"
* "stick a fork in electrical sockets in your school"
* "destroy your school's shit" aka "Devious Licks" - bathrooms, chromebooks (jamming stuff into the charging ports to start fires...)
* "drink a shitload of Benadryl to see what happens"
* "steal a kia/hyundai and drive 80mph, run from the cops, etc"
...convince me that this is not a purposeful attack on US society by the CCP?
Given that the 'tide pod challenge' was before TikTok's time and took place on wholly US-owned platforms like YouTube, we can safely assume it's all in your head. Most of the other stuff you're sharing sounds like a reflection of what you find out in the streets of any major US city. Perhaps you should question if your government is the one that is attacking you.
What can you do about it? That is the rub. You can't. It is no coincidence that pretty much all avenues of information consumption you face are susceptible to this issue. It is by design that these technologies are able to reach you in these ways. It is by design that propagandists have so much success. Everyone in power today is in power because of propaganda. Why would they ever let go of their reigns of power? It is the sole forcing factor keeping them in power after all. They'd be no different than you and I otherwise, which scares them more than anything.
Legislate! We need laws! I get we aren’t used to that anymore in the US but truly “marketing” and social media in the US has become so hostile and harmful I just don’t understand how we can in good conscience not start to put heavier restrictions on them. Enough is enough. We can’t continue to sacrifice our society on the altar of the Almighty dollar.
Shut down the behavior with regulations or shut down the companies. Meta and TikTok have no natural right to exist if they are a net negative to society.
The problem of course is that it's difficult to disentangle the speech of algorithmic moderation from the speech of the content being moderated. And the minor issue that the vast majority of things people complain about is just plain First Amendment-protected speech, so it's not like the §230 protections actually matter as the content isn't illegal in the first place.
I also think it would be extremely unpopular. People like their recommendation engines. They want Netflix to show them more similar shows. They want Reddit to help them find more similar subreddits. I know there are HN users who don't want any of these recommendation engines, but on the whole people actually want them.
People liked cigarettes too.
>They want Netflix to show them more similar shows.
Perhaps that example was a little too revealing on your end. Netflix doesn't have/need Section 230 protections and they're doing fine.
I'm not suggesting these algorithms should be illegal, just that Section 230 protections were defined too broadly because they predated the feasibility of these type of algorithms. These platforms would be free to continue algorithmic promotion, but I believe these algorithms would be less harmful if the platforms had to worry about potential legal liability.
Think YouTube and copyright for comparison. The DMCA is far from perfect, but we have YouTube as an example of a platform that survived and even thrived in the transition from a world that didn't care about copyrighted internet video to one in which they that needed to moderate with copyright in mind.
Cigarettes weren’t made illegal.
> Perhaps that example was a little too revealing on your end. Netflix doesn't have/need Section 230 protections and they're doing fine.
Perhaps it was a little too revealing on your end that you conveniently ignored my other example of Reddit.
If you need to cherry pick to make your point it doesn’t look very strong.
I still don’t see consistency in your argument that Section 230 should still apply to Hacker News but not, for example, Reddit, simply because one of them allows users to personalize the content they see.
Exactly. And when we are done with them we will shut down Molson and Anheuser-Busch. Then we can go after the people who make selfy sticks. Then the company that owns that truck that cut me off last week. Basically, organization who i dislike should not be allowed to exist.
For example, some teen got radicalized with racist and sexist content. That's bad in my opinion, as I'm not a racist or a sexist. But should racist or sexist speech be censored or regulated? On what grounds? How do we know other unpopular (now or in the future) speech won't be censored or regulated in the future? Again, as much as I'm not a racist or sexist, I don't think the government should have a say in whether a company should be able to promote speech like "whites/blacks are X" or "men/women are Y". What's next? Should we regulate speech about religion (Christians/Muslims/atheists are Z) or ethics (anti-war people or vegans are Q) or politics or drugs or sex?
The current situation is shitty, but giving too much power to regulators will likely make it way shittier. If not now, in the future, since passed regulations are rarely removed.
Even just mandating interoperability would likely do since that would open up the floor to competitors. Many users are well aware of the issues but don't feel they have a viable alternative that satisfies their goals.
I’ve reported videos that look like sexual exploitation, videos that call for violence and videos that promote hate (xyz people are cockroaches) and all I’ve gotten is that “it does not go against community guidelines” with a link to block the person who created them. So any concerns of “where do we draw the line” are in my opinion pointless because the bare minimum isn’t even being done.
What if I didn't say anything bad about a race or a sex, but said:
> I have coworkers that pester with me with their small talk about the weather every time I see them. I hate those fucking cockroaches.
That's in bad taste, sure, but should it be regulated? You may know I obviously don't hate-hate them (they're just annoying, but most of them are good people) or actually consider them cockroach-like in any meaningful aspect (they're obviously people, but with annoying tendencies). But would a regulator know the difference? What about a malicious regulator who gets paid by (ok, this is a silly example, but bear with me) the weather-talking coworker lobby to censor me? In many not-so-silly examples a regulator could silence anyone for anything (politics, sex, drugs, ethics), as long as it uses a bad word or says anything negative about anyone. I don't want to live in such a society. That much power would be abused sooner or later.
Also, I don't think people are advocating censorship, they are advocating not promoting assholes. You can have your little blog and be racist on it all you want, but let's not give these people equivalent of nukes for communication.
I'm fine with doing something, but the current "something" seems slippery.
> Banning racist and sexist content is not a slippery slope. It's just banning racist and sexist content, slope is only slippery because the salivating mouths of these social platforms grease them.
But what is "racist", exactly? See why I think it's a slippery slope and why it's ill-defined:
1. We could agree that "Let's go out and kill/enslave all the $race/$gender" is racist, but that's bad if we switch $race to any group, as it's speech that incites violence.
2. What about "$race is genetically inferior in a way (less intelligent, less athletic, more prone to $bad_behavior)"? I honestly think most differences in race/ethnicity is due to environmental factors, but what if there actually are difference in intelligence or anything like that? Should we ban speech that discusses that? Black people win running races and are great at basketball. They're prone to certain diseases, as are Caucasians or Asians. So would you ban discussing that? Or would you ban blindly asserting that $race is $Y without some sort of proof?
3. What about statements like "There are way more male bus drivers because X"? Or "men are better at Y, but women are better at Z"?
What do you think the definition of racism and sexism in this context should be? I think the line is where we incite violence towards a group, but not about discussing differences that may or may not be true.
> Also, I don't think people are advocating censorship, they are advocating not promoting assholes. You can have your little blog and be racist on it all you want, but let's not give these people equivalent of nukes for communication.
I think restricting a platform (or anyone or anything) from promoting someone IS censorship. If it's not censored, why shouldn't I be able to promote it? This honestly feels disingenuous - like "we pretend that the racist isn't censored and can have his little blog, but it's illegal to promote his little blog".
That seems more reasonable than the alternative, which is to make modifications to a complex system which you aren't sure what the outcome will be. You're more likely to cause bigger problems.
Which should make people think twice when they call for government regulation on speech as a solution to content they don't want other people to see.
The more you give the government power to control speech, the more they'll use those laws to further their own interests.
I am not trying to be funny or anything but this sounds like "if only fat kid realized that eating 10 apple pies before bedtime might be the reason s/he is fat" We already know what social media platforms are doing, not to just young people but to all people.
> If the government regulates these platforms
This is like saying "congressman care about our debt so they will vote to reduce their own salaries by 90%" - the government is not going to regulate tools they are using to control the narrative/masses etc...
What caused Gen Z to drink less than millenials? Maybe Gen Z has the answer.
I'm for legalizing all drugs, regulating the sale, ensuring quality and purity, and educating the public. Cognitive liberty is sacred - but the dip in drinking has a whole lot of causes.
A healthier society would be more social and get out and drink more, I think.
Also seems like the science on whether science communication actual changes behavior doesn't point towards it being much of a cause here.
Oh, and weed being increasingly legal to consume.
All the dive bars where you could black out off $10-20 I drunk at in college are gone. They all faced the wrecking ball, and were replaced in the past 10-15 years with apartments over targets and cvs and family friendly restaurants. A huge concerted effort to buy up these properties in piecemeal then destroy entire blocks at a time. I have no clue where kids at my college go to drink now. I have little interest in going back either as an alumnus as they destroyed all the places of my memories.
But like, when a pint is $12 and mixed drinks are $15+ sobriety starts looking more appealing.
Source: Am gen Z.
Everyone pearl clutching over the evils of the internet is going to be for one hell of a time for what is coming down the road.
nothing. if it isn't illegal, it isn't illegal.
previous generations of neurotics objected to many current (at the time) things we don't bat an eye about. when was the last time you saw anyone campaign against satanic music, violent video games, or hardcore pornography?
How about coming up with an actual defense of social media rather than an ad hominem about "neurotics"?
The OG hackers thought of censorship as network damage that needed to be routed around.
People who support censorship always think of themselves as smarter than the rest. Dunning-Krueger however would suggest something different.
people who raised alarm about such things could easily be branded as conspiracy theorists. even now, at this very website, so full of well-educated folx, people who speak out against xenoestrogens, for example, are being downvoted to hell.
> nothing. if it isn't illegal, it isn't illegal.
Are you suggesting that because something isn't illegal, it shouldn't be illegal?
Are you perhaps a representative of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory?
Many things were not illegal before they became illegal.
The latter category know who you are. You downvoted this comment.
Laws are very much fashionable, but only for us. “Rules for thee but not for me” is what's in season right now.
It turns out that if you present as an honest, non-interested party, people will call you and ask you for your advice. I do admit that the ease of this is going to be a function of the people you are up against and the subject being regulated. My point of this comment is: default to action. “You can just do things.”
As long as there are people who don’t acknowledge or care about the health effects it will exist. If that’s a plurality of your population then you have a fundamental population problem IF you are in the group who thinks it’s bad.
Aka every minority-majority split on every issue ever.
So the answer is: live in a society governed by science. Unfortunately none exist
Science is a lagging indicator of reality. It is by definition conservative (in that it requires rigorous, repeatable data before it can label something as true). Because of that, there's usually a pretty substantial gap between human discovery and scientific consensus.
Mindfulness was discovered, as an example, to be beneficial as far back as 500 BCE. It wasn't "proven" with science until 1979.
Sometimes we just need to rely on lived experience to make important decisions, especially regulation. We can't always wait for science.
And PM's earnings are mostly from developing countries at this point. In the US alone, the adult smoking rate has fallen nearly 73% from 1965 to now, so clearly the regulations are working.
We need to do the same for social media. People didn't quit smoking because they suddenly got more disciplined. We just made it inconvenient. The biggest start would be get rid of algorithmic feeds and "recommendations" keep it purely chronological, only from people you explicitly follow.
More importantly, why do you think society should make smoking inconvenient - more costly, more illegal or anything like that? If I'm not blowing smoke in your face, why interfere with my desire to smoke? If it's about medical bills, just let me sign a waiver that I won't get cancer treatments or whatever, and let me buy a pack of smokes for what it should cost - a few cents per pack, not a few dollars/euro.
[0] https://gwern.net/nicotine
So yeah, this comment really reminded me to not light up whenever and "try my best" to walk a few meters away, but to really think if I'd inconvenience people.
On the other hand, if I'm alone on a street and you're walking towards me so I just pass you for a second, I can't imagine that the smell would be that bad from just a casual walk-by. When I'm passing people, I hold in my smoke till I pass them.
Even if I agree that smoking outdoors is inconsiderate and annoying to others, I could still do it at home or in dedicated areas (smoking sections in bars with good ventilation, ofr example).
> I don't see why it also has to be cheap?
If we agree on the previous points, then why not let it be cheap? Tobacco is cheap to produce. Most of the price of cigarettes is artificial, to cover medical costs and whatnot. Let's say I sign a waiver that if I get sick, I either pay through the nose or don't receive treatment at all. Would you be OK with letting me buy tobacco at it's original cost (no subsidies, no artificial fees)?
Or, as a thought experiment - let's say tobacco didn't have any smell and there were 0 negative effects of second-hand smoke. Like, you wouldn't know it if I smoked near you unless you saw me. Then what would be the justification in making smoking artificially expensive for me?
We need to culturally consider Social Media use to be disgusting or at least something to be ashamed of.
I wish this was true but I know tens of people that quit smoking and (besides myself) know 1/2 of another person that quit social media. drunk at NYE two years I offered $10k to a group of 25 people to delete all social media apps from their phones for 60 days - still have that $10k in my account. I think quitting social media is around the same as getting off hard drug addiction (like hard, hard, hard one - opioid, heroin etc...) and maybe even tougher that that - for most people.
> People didn't quit smoking because they suddenly got more disciplined. We just made it inconvenient.
I want to believe this! I just haven't personally experienced this at all (I am in my 6 decade on Earth so plenty of time around). I don't know single person that stopped smoking because they could not burn one inside restaurants/clubs/... or because it costs $18/pack or any of that. 18 year old person has very little "regulation" when it comes to smoking. Little inconveniences to move 25 feet away from the building isn't much of a deterrent IMO.
I am subjective on the matter of social media, I know that. But I am educated in its evil and would for instance never let my kid be on any social media as long as she is under my roof. This has already cause significant challenges for her (and my wife and I) but also it is an amazing learning experience to overcome silly social obstacles...
Everyone knows what the dangers of alcohol are now. We need to get reliable data one can base policy on and then let the public health system do their thing. Maybe not every health authority but enough of them to protect the species at large. Then we'll get social media out of schools, away from young people, vulnerable folks, etc.
Did we forget Gresham's Law applies to content and has done so since humans could communicate?
Bad or wrong ideas are the ones that get talked about. Do we discuss the 10 issues politicians get correct, or the 1 they screw up?
Platform is irrelevant here; the exact same phenomena occurs/ed on radio and TV decades before it did on social media platforms, and in news papers centuries prior.
Why? User engagement isn't the same thing as market share.
If McDonald's trained its cashiers to insult you while taking your order, engagement would go up, and market share would go down.
* "eat tide pods" * "stick a fork in electrical sockets in your school" * "destroy your school's shit" aka "Devious Licks" - bathrooms, chromebooks (jamming stuff into the charging ports to start fires...) * "drink a shitload of Benadryl to see what happens" * "steal a kia/hyundai and drive 80mph, run from the cops, etc"
...convince me that this is not a purposeful attack on US society by the CCP?
Not saying “well duh” I just think at this point I have to ask “are we going to do anything about it?”
We’ve known about the financial incentives to promote anger and outrage online for at least a decade now. So what are we going to do about it?