Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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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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.
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Should just be people can't be fixed....
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What is not social media? Were the forums from before Friendster, MySpace, Facebook social media too? I don't know anyone here. Is a mall a house?
Social media is defined by users being the main source of content. Not by friendship or acquaintance. Fox News is not social media, because you can’t just upload content to Fox News.
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... 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.
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Social media isn’t broken. It’s working exactly how it was meant to. We just need to break free of it.
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I'm not surprised. I am surprised that the researchers were surprised, though.
Bridging algorithms seem promising.
The results were far from encouraging. Only some interventions showed modest improvements. None were able to fully disrupt the fundamental mechanisms producing the dysfunctional effects. In fact, some interventions actually made the problems worse. For example, chronological ordering had the strongest effect on reducing attention inequality, but there was a tradeoff: It also intensified the amplification of extreme content. Bridging algorithms significantly weakened the link between partisanship and engagement and modestly improved viewpoint diversity, but it also increased attention inequality. Boosting viewpoint diversity had no significant impact at all.
Veerry interesting, yes...
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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.
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Sorry but you are naive. That's really all I can say about your view.
Just trying to be funny is all...
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Social media isn’t broken. It’s working exactly how it was meant to. We just need to break free of it.
first of all, it's a broad overgeneralization to assume that all social media is created with the intention to manipulate people. there was honest people running social media, but it's long past. (in the corporate domain)
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social media can be useful if it presents non-emotional, non-brigading content. rational discourse is one of the valuable options possible. throwing away the whole internet because Xitter sucks is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
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but yes, social media is the new Volksempfänger and manipulates people (social engineering)
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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.
if we're immune to the problems, it would be because people here use critical thinking skills instead of swallowing large amounts of contents. that's the sole reason, it has nothing to do with the network's size.
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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.
The reason why it brings out the worst in people is because it has open borders. You can shit into the network and move on. If you were forced to stay and live with your shit, you'd shit less into the public domain. That means small networks, harder to move to other/new networks, ...
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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
lemmy does have problems though. Lots of emotional, judgemental and brigading content still. But it's less here than elsewhere, probably.
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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.
This is a good point. It's like asking the question: "What is more important in politics? People, or ideas?"
People respond very differently to that. To some it's people, and to some it's ideas. That is why you have Xitter-like microblogging which is focused around people, and reddit-like communities which are focused around topics/ideas.