
Obama warns against irresponsible social media use - gerbilly
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42491638
======
ashleyn
>"The question has to do with how do we harness this technology in a way that
allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn't lead
to a Balkanisation of society and allows ways of finding common ground," he
said.

From a libertarian point of view: given his background and beliefs, I think
Obama is missing a crucial element that allows and enables the reconciliation
of those with different beliefs: liberty. The way you have a "multiplicity of
voices" and a "diversity of views" is through tolerance: the tacit
acknowledgement that while you may find what someone is doing odious and
reprehensible, if all parties are consenting and voluntary, they ultimately
have the legal right to engage in what they are doing free of interference.

The sticking point is that "tolerance" also means tolerating the liberty of
those commonly perceived as religiously conservative. This comes even to my
own reluctant consternation as a transgender individual. The example that
comes to mind immediately is the gay wedding cake cases. I think it's heinous
to deny service to someone simply because they are gay. But is taking
government's hands off private business a lesser evil than fighting over the
apparatus used to do so every four years? One government administration
violates the rights of Christians in order to protect gays, then the inverse
occurs under the next administration, gays losing fundamental liberties and
the right to self-determination. All while nobody ever seems to ask why either
should be forced to live a certain way in the first place, why the government
is involving itself in private matters ranging from business to who you choose
to marry.

Social media has little to do with this; it's merely a purifier for the
underlying contention. Instead of keeping to ourselves and those who agree to
associate with us, we've become preoccupied with adjusting an oversized
commons to fit the whims of a winning team every four to eight years,
hammering in all those who don't fit under the new order. Part and parcel of
living in a plural society, is that not everyone will agree to the level where
you can ever have such a commons.

The "common ground" that Obama is seeking, effectively, is a consistent
application of "leave me alone".

------
gallerdude
Social media is really paradoxical and interesting. I can tell the entire
internet something, with just the click of a button. On the other hand, echo
chambers are being created, and there's no easy solution to it.

~~~
adrianratnapala
What is the current state of empirical evidence about echo chambers and filter
bubbles?

The last time I read about it, the 3rd hand reports I was getting said that
they were less of a problem than you might imagine, because political junkie
types actually _did_ read stuff from the other side. Perhaps becaue, they were
_so_ into politics that they did some kind of "opposition research".

~~~
gt_
I think that’s an extreme minority, and the benefit would be limited.

The notion of _sides_ in political media deteriorates the conversation into an
argument, which at some point undermines an audience’s fundamental awareness
and understanding of issues.

------
Clubber
The problem with blaming bubbles is that it's not new to social media. I would
image it goes as far back as tribal evolution, but I digress.

Currently, if someone like conservative politics, they read conservative
newspapers and magazines, watch conservative news, listen to conservative
radio and go to conservative websites, because they like it. There are liberal
versions of these and also middle-of-the-road versions. Social media is just
another way of consuming information that you like.

Another dimension is wether said information is accurate or not. This has also
been a historical problem in this country and the world, probably since we, as
a species, have been writing stuff down and even before in oral histories.

Information in social media is consumed from friends and acquaintances. People
tend to give more authority to the validity of information from friends and
acquaintances, again throughout history.

Social media isn't inherently bad for society, I think politics is bad for
society and social media is just another way of sharing ideas, good and bad.
Again, most of this is nothing new, including the content.

Look up Andrew Jackson's 1828 campaign against his wife:

 _According to Ann Toplovich, executive director of the Tennessee Historical
Society, John Quincy Adams ' presidential campaigns targeted Jackson's
"passion and lack of self-control" in both 1824 and 1828, "making it central
to the argument that he would devastate the integrity of the Republic and its
institutions."[6] One newspaper ran an article asking, “‘Ought a convicted
adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of
this free and Christian land?’”_

~~~
slumberlust
Is your quote in support of bubbles being around for a while, or simply that
politics are bad?

~~~
Clubber
It's more an observation of society and politics in the US throughout it's
history.

------
nugi
If anyone has truly warned us against irresponsible social media use, it was
not this particular president.

------
divbit
I hesitate to post a slight disagreement here because I think, for the most
part, Obama is right on the money.

However, I would hesitate to just put the problem on 'just' social media
itself - if person A posts a message that says in a supposedly limited setting
and person B uses a datacenter of big data AI / neural net / blockchain / VR
or whatever fancy technology you want to put this in a much larger setting
than the original statement, it is just a slightly clever (one could
alternatively say unscrupulous) way for a person B to say what person A is
saying, many many times over, and try to hide being behind it.

The same thing happens in real-life (maybe I should say 3-d) discussions, in
albeit, a much more nuanced manner, but still with just as great potential
effect.

------
notadoc
I remain thoroughly convinced that social media is bad for society, and for
the self. It is optimized to bring out the worst in people, and rarely offers
anything of value.

------
unethical_ban
A post on an ex-leader of the United States regarding technology should not be
flagged.

~~~
gnicholas
Yeah not sure what's going on today. There have been a couple top posts that
have been flagged. Does anyone know the procedure for posts becoming un-
flagged?

It seems like there is an easy way to flag things, but the only recourse to
un-flag is for mods to get involved. I'm curious to know if this impression is
correct, and if so what the thinking is behind this set of procedures.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think that you use "vouch" to say that the post shouldn't have been flagged.
I suspect (but I am not certain) that a post will be automatically killed
after a certain number of flags (and I suspect that the number is more than
one). I suspect that it takes manual intervention by a mod to undo the flag
kill, and that vouch is the way you bring it to the mods' attention.

~~~
gnicholas
I see how to vouch for a flagged comment, but not a flagged post.

~~~
grzm
For submissions, "vouch" appears for submissions that are marked "[dead]", not
"[flagged]". Same for comments, AIUI. Some confusion is understandable due to
the fact they're usually correlated and the looseness with which "flag" is
often used to mean either.

~~~
gnicholas
Good explanation. I guess the problem is that when posts are flagged, they
seem to drop precipitously in the ranking, and there’s apparently nothing that
can be done to vouch until the post is marked dead. But if flagging is
tantamount to killing in terms of visibility, then the cure comes too late.

------
coolso
Wondering if he'd feel the same way had the opposition candidate not used the
internet and social media to help overcome the biases of the establishment
mainstream media and defeat the candidate Obama endorsed and campaigned for?

Suddenly now, probably not coincidentally because of that result, the trend
seems to be "social media is really bad guys" among people in the
establishment - both government and the media. It's kind of ironic.

I find his statements somewhat hypocritical given that the media, and
government, has had the monopoly on irresponsibility, bias, putting forth
alternative realities, and the Balkanisation of society, until just recently
now that people are able to combat it and freely spread information among tens
of millions of people instantly and so easily, instead of only getting their
information from approved sources without citizens being able to freely
discuss, disprove, etc. - e.g., directly from the White House, and a couple of
privileged mainstream media organizations that are very in-bed with the
government.

~~~
mozumder
The media is the responsible party here. The public are the irresponsible
ones. The public's voice should always be silenced in favor of professional
media's voice.

Remember, the public doesn't have social media editorial guidelines.
Professional media does. Professional media reporters confirm facts with
multiple sources, which is why they are more trustworthy. The public is simply
allowed to lie on social media.

This is why you should trust professional media over the public, since the
public is irresponsible.

Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a
professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources?

~~~
lbotos
> Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a
> professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources?

Because they are "local" or because they confirm their biases. The other day
on FB a friend shared a photoshopped Nancy Pelosi tweet (For international
folks, she's a US Congress Person). Their comment on the shared photo "Did she
really say that?".

We live in the age of primary sources, we can easily go to their twitter to
confirm. (Wasn't there)

We also have great tools that help keep our American Politicians accountable:
[https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/](https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/)
(Wasn't deleted either)

In the time it took me to confirm that (~15 minutes) 3 people commented
agreeing that she was insane for saying it.

~~~
xamuel
>we can easily go to their twitter to confirm

Unless the tweet has been deleted (which it often will have been if it's
damning)

~~~
lbotos
right, but in this case, we do have a resource that tracks deleted tweets.

Beyond that, the point still stands, I believe we should always try and
corroborate multiple sources (unless you have a primary source), we, the
people aren't doing that and just confirming our biases.

------
neeleshs
I'm reminded of a Black Mirror episode!

~~~
russh
Hey, lets leave race out of it.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? They're not what
this site is for, and we eventually ban accounts that do it.

