Contrary to popular thought, the "liberal" media utterly failed minorities. The abuse of minorities in the US spans generations and has consistently been relegated to the margins of mainstream news. It has been typical in the US -- for decades -- for the NY Times to grant a single death in Israel front page coverage while a death of an African American at the hands of police in NYC would barely get coverage. My point is not that either is acceptable -- but rather that both are bad. Perhaps non-coverage of an incident in NY is worse because a NY paper might want to consider the atrocities happening right down the street.
The BLM movement finally came to the forefront not because of the "liberal" media but in spite of it. The BLM movement was enabled by Social Media. If Twitter did not exist, there is no reason to assume we would have made any progress.
The media overall and the liberal media have lost part of their control over the narrative (and the power that selective coverage conveys) and trying to blame things on social media. But believe this -- what we have seen in 2020 is progress. As messy and as ugly as it is, we've actually moved forward with minority rights.
Consider also how hypocritical the coverage has been. Liberal media tells us that "Silicon Valley lacks diversity". TBH it does, but you know the real problem is not SV, it is a national media controlled by four families with zero minorities on their boards and executive staff -- telling an industry with huge numbers of minorities (including many brown people in senior/CxO ranks) they lack diversity.
SV does need to get better, but saying SV is the start and end of all problems is absolutely false.
NYT has a "brown" person and an African-American on the current board of directors:
https://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Rogers_Jr.
Editorial Board has an African-American (Brent Staples: Education, Criminal Justice, Economics) with 30year tenure .
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/opinion/editorialbo...
One can hope. Let's tally up by 2025.
Cue the 1960s and 70s long before any social media and the amazing amount of not just protests but bombings, assassinations and so on that make the current culture war seem like a mere shouting match.
Before the media started using social media as “facts” for their reporting, these arguments would just be another online “flame war.” Remember when we used those terms? Remember when online arguments remained as just that?
Now, when 1000 people on Twitter try to cancel someone the media reports it as if it’s an actual popular opinion, thus amplifying the problem for better or worse.
I find it tough to blame the news for this — the social media companies were making deliberate design choices and the news companies were reacting in an attempt to stay in business in a rapidly changing market.
On top of that there's also two other groups that further complicate the picture: end users and advertisers.
It's not clear to me that we need to go through the motions of trying to persecute one of these groups in particular, since the situation is already evolving. End users are starting to become wise to the ways in which they are manipulated by all three of the other groups, and not necessarily always in a conscious way -- I personally had a turning point where I was just tired of the cycle, it got boring, and I didn't even have to try to consciously cut out these things, they just kind of fell away while I spent my time elsewhere.
It's hardly persecution to insist that American businesses stop doing gross harm to the American people. Your personal anecdote is largely irrelevant compared to Facebook's earnings report - lots of people still use these platforms and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It's unlikely that these companies will pivot their business model in the absence of oversight. I've stopped using it too, but we absolutely should create market rules to deal with the obvious abuses that have occurred so they don't crop up again.
I think this is hugely presumptuous. Is there an alternative model they could have used? Are there companies using such alternative models?
It's hardly persecution to insist that American businesses stop doing gross harm to the American people.
Agreed, but it's very much not clear what the harm is. To say that it's algorithm-based advertising is not at all convincing to me, but maybe there's a good argument for that being the case that I haven't seen? What convinced you?
lots of people still use these platforms and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future
Yes, but I think you underestimate end users. The shift away from supernormal stimuli of all kinds will be slow and arduous, but for whatever reason I have faith that we will do it. We're successfully doing it with smoking, and making good progress on the sugar + sedentary lifestyle front as well with all sorts of niche diets and fitness regimines popping up.
Although it's still super early, I see the beginnings of a move away from this particular brand of virality based social media as well. Examples would be: the popularity of long form lecture series on youtube + online classes (masterclass is fluffy, but also points in this direction), the evolution of shared blocklists on twitter and other similar methods of "bubbling" (including the rise and rise of reddit, as well as discord), the trend of non-toxic, long-lived anonymous accounts on twitter, etc. etc.
Also, and maybe I'm just being unimaginative, but what kinds of market rules would make sense here?
It probably is the most efficient model for a social media company (as you said, that's why they all do it). I don't think that type of monopoly is healthy in a market economy, and by regulating it, you allow other, more benign models a chance to grow.
> We're successfully doing it with smoking, and making good progress on the sugar + sedentary lifestyle front as well with all sorts of niche diets and fitness regimines popping up.
Are you just shitposting or are you not aware of the substantial history of prosecuting and regulating those industries, which have been instrumental in driving those changes? I don't underestimate end users - I think if you provide proper leadership and make the right thing the easy thing, then end users will do the right thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/new-food-warning-labels-beg...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Move!
If you spend most of your time around people who have a certain type of education and economic means, who do their own research, and have the liberty to control their lives to some extent then a libertarian outlook seems obvious. Outside that bubble, it becomes real clear that a lot of these problems are systemic and too big for most individuals to comprehend, let alone solve. It sounds dramatic to apply that to Facebook, but given the impact it seems to have on society, a little flair is appropriate.
> Also, and maybe I'm just being unimaginative, but what kinds of market rules would make sense here?
Apply the CCPA nationally and give users full control of their data and how it is used for starters. If you make it easy for customers to opt their data out of targeted advertising most will - if not immediately, then eventually (as you described, fatigue). If Facebook doesn't have the data, then their ad engine isn't really much better than anyone else and other business models become more attractive.
There are a bunch of different ideas about how to go about it, but taking away the data monopolies would seem to be the easiest, most self-executing solution.
Plus, the experience of eating a cookie has an inherent, positive psychological value, even if the intention is still to separate your from your money. Art vs. Science, God vs. the Devil, etc.
For an analogy imagine a town that with an arsonist setting lots of homes on fire. It is obviously true that "storing gas in your hose contributes to houses burning down", but "getting rid of gasoline in house will not fix the fires".
For clarity I consider "the algorithm" the sophisticated ordering of your follower's posts, and the recommendation of new followers. This means getting rid of "the algorithm" mostly means going back to the 00's when post where sorted by date, likes, or simple formula that combined the two. Content still went viral, and people still sorted themselves into information silos. This meant people spend more time searching for content, but I don't see any real fundamental difference that is going to result in less polarization.
The underlying problem is people communicating with other people. I argue if we got rid of the internet it would not get rid of this polarization and spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. In fact you saw many similar problems prior to the Civl War, when the fastest method of communication was a telegram. People still distributed pamphlets, formed clubs with like minded individuals, gossiped, and spread rumors and falsehoods.
I think people grab on to idea "the algorithm is causes polarization", because it puts single thing, presents a specific solution (change/get rid of the algorithm), and has an specific, abstract group of people to blame the owners and employees of the big tech companies. People don't like it what the problems affecting their lives are caused by dozens of interacting forces and there is no clear simple solution, but rather a lot of work in a lot of areas.
As an aside drop in disappearing manufacturing jobs and illegal immigrants. See what you get.
It's obviously much more complicated than than that though.
But with modern social networks, a single mouse click can send it into dozens of feeds; hundreds, for some people. And then you get this effect magnified manyfold:
What damage? The stuff people wrote on it? That's the people.
That's what I love about people who think everyone should vote. But just look at Twitter. Most people are poorly informed idiots who are hyper-emotional and inclined to mob-think.
I'm all for more direct democracy but that doesn't mean I want anyone and everyone to vote. We need informed voters.
Which is why I despise the drives to get random people out to vote for whoever they heard spoken the loudest about in relation to their issues.
There is no incentive for people to become more informed. Public choice theory explains this, voters are rationally ignorant.
That’s like putting an alligator pit in a mall and blaming people for getting eaten.
Many, many people in my area regard social media as a credible source of truth. I know that people don't think much of the people where I live, and that comes from the lack of good educational opportunities afforded them out here in flyover country. But these people get to vote too. They get to participate in society as well. I guess I mean that they count. You can't say there is no one who claims social media is credible, when it is obvious there are millions who are swayed by social media precisely because it is credible in their view.
In fact, if a story is only on social media, it's proof of the story's validity in their eyes. If the mainstream media won't run a story they found on social media, then it must be part of a conspiracy to keep the "truth" from getting out. I hear this narrative everyday in my area of the midwest.
Certainly they aren't part of the legacy media, but they all seem to carry water for the same narratives and ideologies.
The non-mainstream media is publications that people in polite urban mostly-coastal American culture sneer at: Breitbart, The Post Millenial, Reason, Parler, Gab, specific independent journalists on some of the mainstream platforms, etc.
But certainly Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are media and they are mainstream. And they have demonstrated their willingness to censor stories with more or less the same bias (in the same ideological direction) as the mainstream legacy media. They're just the mainstream new media.
I'm not generally one to speak out against capitalism, but having come from a country that has 'strong, communitarian and cultural ideals' - I believe that hyper-individualism and capitalism have created an ugly, 'perfect storm of self flagellation' here with MSM, Social Media, Politics, Entertainment.
'Communitarian ideals' mean that there are unspoken rules of legitimacy, fraternity, civility, professionalism etc. that exist in many fields like the media, even in politics where all the 'grey areas' of civility count for so much, a lot of US Senate functions like this historically.
These soft ideals however leave the door way open for radicals and money-seekers to 'disrupt' and take over, justifying their cause through either 'moral legitimacy of social justice' or 'responsibility towards shareholders' - or, like in the case of Nike for example - both.
Any institution that can be instrumentalist and submitted will be.
Though I don't blame FB PM's specifically - it's right there in the ethos: 'disrupt' and 'move fast / break things / do it ask for permission later'. Without any regard at all for social and cultural ideals, they just get completely uprooted in the search for whatever it is the objective is, in the case of FB, money.
They both built a virality engine, and then acted dumbfounded (at first) when news sites used this to tune their content to go viral. It's an intentionally incredibly addictive, and borderline malicious, product that capitalizes on the worst human instincts. The entire thing exists as a feedback loop that grants you legitimacy by counting the number of eyeballs (real or not) that see it.
I understand your argument but I also in no way want to distract from the culpability owned by social media companies, their product designers and managers, and the people who wrote the code to implement their desires.
They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on our societies. Traditional media companies may have exacerbated the issue with their participation, but they didn't create it.
>Unfortunately, I don't think we can roll back on the constant need for more 'breaking news'
We can't, but just like smoking cigarettes or shooting up opioids we can recognize it as a source of damage and addiction and start changing things to combat it.