
The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media - uptown
https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-deliberate-awfulness-of-social-media
======
sonnyblarney
" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not."

I have no problem.

The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary
enablers of Twitter.

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate
opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man
argument the author wants to make.

I think Twitter will wane but it won't go away as those who make their
business making noise, either celebs or those who report on them, will just
keep going with it.

It may become purely PR providence though - I can see regular people giving up
the notion of actively tweeting entirely.

~~~
eksemplar
The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in
particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter.

I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t
involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any
meaningful manner.

You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply.
Or you’ll follow a few interest points and miss everything they post because
you don’t visit every hour and it’ll drown in the feed if you don’t.

I honestly think all the regular people on twitter are either unemployed or
spending so much work time on social media that they ought to be fired.

I like social media by the way, but I don’t think it has a lot of value when
it’s done primarily with strangers. I mean, my friends use Facebook groups and
events to organize stuff and it’s really, really good at that. We use
discord/WhatsApp chats to keep in touch on day to day chitchat - which would
be better in person but we live in different cities/have children etc. So that
sort of social media is great.

But talking with strangers? I mean, I’m home in bed with the flu right now,
and we’re having this conversation, except I can’t be sure you’ll ever read
what I post or if you’ll find it interesting or reply, and even if we do get
to have a talk, we’ll likely never have another one. So it doesn’t hold a lot
of real value aside from wasting time, and that’s kind of what twitter is all
of the time.

~~~
pjc50
Don't use twitter for _general_ news. Mute the news sources if you have to. If
it's big enough it will bleed over into your feed anyway. Often I can work out
what the news is by reverse-engineering the jokes about it.

It's much more interesting for highly specific news. I've got some accounts I
follow for local news, some for gamedev news, people doing interesting tech,
art, jokes, and a few "commentators" who are excellent enough to be worth
reading on their own. It _can_ be great for kibitzing on live TV events too.

Mind you, these days I post very little original stuff too. The internet is
just too much of a live-fire zone.

~~~
eksemplar
HN is my only form of digital news, so I’m a little old school. In fact the
only news I read regularly is a national paper that only comes out once a
week, that way all the journalists have had time to digest the weeks events
and I get a compiled list of what was actually important.

I tried following HN styled things on twitter but it just never worked out for
me.

~~~
Sharper
What's the name of that weekly paper, if you don't mind sharing?

------
freshwaters
The most alarming part of the article for me was the reference to climate
change and its impending consequences. I

I may say I've been living under quite a rock for I hadn't thought of it as
mentioned here in this paragraph:

" The book’s most fascinating and disturbing chapter is about how the
Internet, the primary vector of information about climate change, is
increasingly a vector of the problem itself. The world’s data centers already
have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry, even
as people continue to speak of “the cloud” as though it were a barely
corporeal entity. As temperatures rise, our information technologies will
function less efficiently—increased heat and humidity will hamper the flow of
wireless transmissions and satellite communications—and a vicious cycle will
commence. (Bridle makes a similar point about cryptocurrency, that supposedly
revolutionary and transformative technology: if its rate of growth continues,
by next year Bitcoin alone will account for the same level of carbon output as
the entire United States.) Even more depressing is the contention that climate
change could actually wind up making us stupider: he cites research showing
that human cognitive ability decreases significantly with higher atmospheric
concentration of carbon. “Carbon dioxide clouds the mind: it directly degrades
our ability to think clearly, and we are walling it into our places of
education and pumping it into the atmosphere,” he writes. “The crisis of
global warming is a crisis of the mind, a crisis of thought, a crisis in our
ability to think another way to be. Soon, we shall not be able to think at
all.”"

I am genuinely in an odd state of distress at this point. While I continue to
function normally in society and keep living as though it is something so far
away in the future, a special place in a deep corner of my mind still seems to
nudge every once in a while when I am alone and drive me to borderline
insanity.

~~~
czechdeveloper
This actually paralyses me a bit.

Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that
very beautiful nature I wanted to visit.

Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service
they don't really need to survive.

Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another
item in vicious cycle or consumption.

But what can I do. I want my enjoyment of those stuff back. I want to be
motivated to create and experience, yet I can't as I see the other side of
that. I want to enjoy good stuff, but I can't.

~~~
Nition
I know what you mean, and you didn't even mention the thing that makes it
extra stressful: The fact that other people keep doing all that stuff anyway.
So you either disadvantage yourself against them while having no real effect
as an individual, or you do the same as them while always feeling bad about
it.

Although some of those things don't necessarily make life better anyway.
Sometimes I'm happier having a break at home vs. trying to plan a vacation,
and new gadgets often just mean more work in your life to maintain them. Not
to mention the extra work you have to do to afford it all, that you could
instead have as free time.

But in the end, I think individual change on a large scale requires government
legislation, and government legislation requires worldwide agreement, because
no-one wants to be disadvantaged against everyone else. Tragedy of the
commons. But we do what we can.

~~~
czechdeveloper
Yes, I can either be social or ecological. As my family lives in different
parts of country, it dictates car travel (public transport is really bad).
Even just volunteering usually requires me to travel by car somewhere.

I try to live simply, it always gave me great pleasure, or at least less
stress to own little. But I moved away from this a bit recently as I have
family and also I feel like I should be less dependent on surrounding (ie.
have good tools, have some backup items etc.).

------
rqs
> The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual
> behavior.

I don't think this is the right target to blame. The much deeper reason is
people ARE stupid, while think they are clever and correct. You, me, all the
others included. And at the same time, the education once applied to us,
failed. Simply put, it's not a technology problem, it's a sociology problem.

Around the year 2002, when I was connected to the Internet for the first time,
I thought it was a magic place where you can discuss with people on a topic
until the truth emerges and learned, then everybody come to a conclusion and
live happily ever after.

That thought was the very first few which been destroyed. Because I instead
found people are more likely to turn discussion into a "clan war" and mob each
other instead. And that was long before Twitter or even Google is a thing.

Here is a book that many people may already read, _The Crowd: A Study of the
Popular Mind_ : [https://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-
Mind/dp/143410055...](https://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-
Mind/dp/1434100553)

~~~
GW150914
I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came
along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other
depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned
more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or
less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the
future and only told us about the extent of the internet in this time, I think
that a lot of people could have extrapolates the shit-show of today from what
we’d experienced back then.

The only semi-surprise was the move to mobile devices opening the internet up
to people who are almost too stupid to live. Not just tribal, not just willing
to fight for their version of reality, but dumb as rocks. There used to at
least be a filter (which steadily widened) of needing to know how to use a
computer and get online. That is just gone now, and we’re in the true agora.

It is not fun, and all of which is to say it is as you say, a sociology
problem. BJT it exists in this form because of powerful and ubiquitous
technology. It’s also true that the underlying sociological problem has been
ruthlessly capitalized on by people who realized we warring primates could be
readily exploited for attention and therefore, revenue. It was always going to
be messy, but instead of people trying to fight against then current, some of
the richest, most powerful and brightest people are actively trying to sweep
people away for money.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
_some of the richest, most powerful and brightest people are actively trying
to sweep people away for money._

This is a big part of the problem IMO. General loss of moral values. I'm not
religious at all, and criticize religions all the time, but one has to admit
that when Christianity was the driving force in the western world, there were
at least some values that were kind of universally accepted. Yes, there was
lots of hypocrisy, and people acted against said values routinely, but at the
very least most would feel bad about it or fear for their public image, and
try to not be needlessly extreme at breaking them.

Now, Christianity has been replaced by ruthless capitalism, and people don't
even have to pretend that they care about anything else than making piles of
money. And if a company is criticized for using manipulative or exploitative
techniques to make more money, regular people will even jump to defend it. I
see it everyday on the Internet (e.g. forums for free games with monetizing
techniques that border on inducing gambling addiction). They have accepted
making money as the supreme value.

These capitalist morals that place money in the center of everything must die
and be replaced by something else, or we are headed for dystopia.

~~~
MrsPeaches
Christianity before the reformation was pretty wild with things like the
purhase of indugences being common[1].

Point being that Christianity is not some bastion of past hope and glory but
is a mutable set of morals that have radically changed in their 2000+ years of
exsistance.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Late_Medieval_Usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Late_Medieval_Usage)

------
randomsearch
“Enragement is engagement.”

Social media is full of hot air and a lot of people producing nothing. Who
cares. Most of the tweets on twitter are written by a tiny minority of people
who like to hate or judge rather than act.

Quit social media and leave that crowd to waste their time whilst you build
something that actually improves the world.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> whilst you build something that actually improves the world

Or, failing that, chat on Hacker News ;-P

Seriously though, I'm thankful that the quality of this forum is so high. When
I see YouTube comment threads, I sometimes forget that Internet forums _can_
be worthwhile, if they're done right and attract the right folks.

~~~
randomsearch
I agree. I learn so much from HN.

I wouldn’t count HN as “social media” per se, anymore than Stack Overflow or a
topical discussion forum.

------
intended
in the 90s, I read about how religious extremists in certain countries were
targeting moderates. This seemed very odd at the time, because the moderate
position just seemed the normal sensible person position.

Over time though, moderate preachers were singled out, and in some cases
killed, because they didn’t take a stand. This created a chilling effect.

Coupled with incendiary and emotional images (“look at these pictures, look at
what they’ve done to our children! You are either with us or with them.”), and
no push back or ability to prevent such polarization, extremism grew stronger.

This is the gist of what I remember, it’s been years and many other crises
since then.

However I am struck, as to how social media is creating those same dynamics -
but now for everything from gender, race, religion, politics, nationality, to
brand loyalty and maybe even gaming.

The best solution I saw for dealing with social media was dropping off it
altogether.

~~~
kwyjibo1230
Forcing you to "drop off" social media seems like the exact chilling effect
you describe (assuming you are a moderate), rather than being a stance.

It's happening!

~~~
gmueckl
How would you act instead? In the eyes of a someone with a sufficiently
incompatible position you are a loonie who gets ignired after the dirst
dissenting statement with a simple mouse click, never to be seen or heard from
again on that platform. This is just so much easier than in the real world.

~~~
intended
theres about 3 options.

1) Exit social media and save yourself. This is the best option

2) With unending patience, choose an individual and just interact with them at
a human level till both sides achieve understanding ( no matter how
distasteful or difficult the process ). This does not scale

3) Begin to invest in PR, think tanks, media firms, groups and so on to craft
a message to sway large groups of people at one go. This scales and what most
people are resorting to, and what is creating the problem in the first place.

~~~
dnate
> this does not scale

If everyone did it, it would "scale" pretty well.

~~~
intended
This is the true of all problems with humanity.

>think before sharing

>recycle

>wear seat belts

>be considerate

>stretch

>drink water regularly

>brush regularly

None of this scales, and none of it _will ever_ scale, because humanity is
designed to not follow that.

Human beings are an aggregate of all sorts of behavior, ranging from
complimentary to those in active pursuit of mutual annihilation.

Any system/solution which expects uniformity in _behavior_ or choice, is dead
on arrival.

Unfortunately that leaves solutions that target biology and neural
processing/heuristics.

Our businesses and science is actively about hacking brains and influencing
choices.

------
moneytide1
Social media does away with the good ole natural moderation that happens if
someone belches out a self centered monologue in a public space and
immediately receives glares and scoffs from strangers within earshot.

~~~
skybrian
Ever been to a large meeting when there's a hot political issue? People can be
nasty in person too, unless there is very good moderation, and sometimes even
then.

~~~
eksemplar
Mostly stupid/unsuccessful people. The elite is very good at disagreeing with
each other on a polite manner.

I work in the public sector, as a manager who is on a board that designs
suggestions for our national digitization strategies. I know how to play the
game now, but the most eye opening thing to me when I was starting out was how
people disagree at those levels of society.

If you want to say that you think something is a bad idea, you sugarcoat it to
hell and back, focusing first on complimenting your counterpart on where you
think they are successful. Then you politely present your view and the facts
that support it.

In public it’s different, here you’ll sometimes get heated for the audience,
but you’ll still be beat friends once the cameras stop rolling.

The reason behind this is that the world evolves around compromise.

These days you’re seeing more and more people who don’t understand how
necessary compromise is, but hopefully we’ll kick them out before we destroy
our democracy.

~~~
watwut
Unfortunately, this is also how elite enables those who abuse power as long as
those mistreated are not part of elite. This how and why bullies and abusers
keep and gain powerful positions. This is how sexual assault becomes sex
scandal and this is why Jerry Sandusky could abuse so many boys.

This is how outright self-serving lies become part of consensus.

This works the way you described because those people have little personal
stake at policies they pursue while people loosing/gaining housing, getting
probation or prison time, being able/unable to pay for layer/healthcare or
otherwise touched by those policies don't participate.

~~~
eksemplar
I think it’s the last bit. That people don’t participate.

I can’t remeber how many hearings we’ve done on changes that got nothing but
crackpot replies because no regular folks want to spend time participating in
the society they live in anymore.

Only in one area do people actually take action, schools. If we close down a
school, for various reasons but typically efficiency (money), parents will
open a new private school in its place. I’m Danish so the laws are a little
complicated, but basically a private school gets as much funding as a public
school and that means we save no money by closing a public school that gets
replaced by a private one.

So our school system is extremely democratic, because you can’t make changes
without the parents. Now, our school system isn’t the only system that works
like this, most of them do really. But almost every other system is run mainly
by professional bureaucrats who make the plans, because they are never opposed
by anyone, because nobody participate.

I mean, crackpots participation has probably gone up over the years, but real
involvement from real people with realist plans are almost nonexistent. I
consider crackpots people too by the way, but you can’t power a city with
special unicorn rays or by having a voulanteer threadmill. Which are the only
two responses we got to a recent hearing on which power plant to build.

Want actual influence or real change? Then get involved.

~~~
DoreenMichele
A few thoughts:

The elites are in the best position to come up with time and energy to
participate in things. They are also the most likely to have the knowledge
needed to participate effectively.

I participated in some online forums while openly homeless. Classism is a
thing and it's quite hard to combat that. When the non-elites try to
participate in such processes and don't know how and won't be given the same
respect they are expected to give to their "betters" etc, it can easily wind
up being a waste of time for them.

Similar to the idea of "never attribute to malice that which is best explained
by stupidity," a lot of people simply don't have solutions. Period. Regardless
of their social class, background, etc. If no one knows a better answer, more
people participating doesn't necessarily improve the outcome.

I'm off the street. I'm tired of being poor. I'm working on improving my life.
While homeless, I kind of had the luxury of being outside the system and
relatively free to piss on it at will and criticize it liberally.

I'm currently wrestling with the question of whether or not my supposed high
morals can actually survive intact if I get connected and get money and power
and influence.

I don't know the answer to that. I have been badly used and mistreated by
needy people while my life was in the toilet because I was apparently the only
hope they had of getting their needs met. I'm quite angry about that.

Maybe the answer is my supposed high morals really just make me a chump and
that's it. Maybe choosing to not be a chump and choosing to line my own damn
pockets at long last means me and my bleeding heart tendencies have to part
company.

Which is some attempt at saying "Maybe participating in The System is what
makes you a bad person." Possibly not a very effective means of voicing what
I'm trying to get at.

~~~
eksemplar
Classism is certainly a thing, and that’s unfortunate, but it’s also really
hard to deal with people who see in black-and-whites without appearing
condescending, because almost everything is extremely complicated.

~~~
eksemplar
Am I though? You seem to outline a very black-and-white choice ahead of you,
to be good/evil.

~~~
DoreenMichele
For someone stating that _everything is very complicated,_ that's an
incredibly reductionist take on my rather long comment.

~~~
eksemplar
Well, you also saw society as something you’re either in/out of. You view us
as elitarian/non-elitarian. If someone aren’t respected or have a hard time
getting heard, it’s a complete waste for them. You either have high morals or
not. You think you know the motivation behind the people who mistreated you,
and define them as evil. You think that everyone participating in the system
are evil.

I mean, I’m sure you didn’t mean these things exactly like I interpret them
now, and I am taking what you said extremely literal.

I’m sure you had a miserable time, but how do you suggest we change that for
other people, when your own solution seem to be chosing whether or not to be a
good person. I mean, do you really think being a terrible person gives you
advantages in life?

Maybe in some areas it does, and maybe for some periods of time, but it
usually catches up to you.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I never used the word _evil._ You have used it three times now.

You are being incredibly dismissive and going out of your way to turn my
comment into something black and white when it isn't. You aren't taking what I
said extremely literally. You are wildly twisting what I said.

This is not good faith engagement and I don't see any point in trying to
clarify anything. I will note you are focused overly much on the things I said
about me, which is a common outcome and problematic form of engagement that
actively makes it harder for anyone who is not part of the "in crowd" to
participate. You seem to have completely glossed over and ignored anything I
said about, for example, most people simply not knowing better answers.

------
ckastner
_The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual
behavior. Social-media platforms know what you’re seeing, and they know how
you acted in the immediate aftermath of seeing it, and they can decide what
you will see next in order to further determine how you act—a feedback loop
that gets progressively tighter until it becomes a binding force on an
individual’s free will._

And that's why algorithmic order has won over chronological order in feeds.

------
Analemma_
It's turning out that social media is like nuclear fission: it's not that it's
_inherently_ bad, and a smarter species than us probably could use it safely
with no problems. But our stupid ape brains with their tribalist tendencies
and short reward circuits weren't ready for it.

------
netwanderer2
I think the article hits the nail right on its head, nobody really knows
anything anymore. Not the person running it, or the person sitting at the top
has gotten any clue about the very systems that they have created.

Mark Zuckerberg said in his first public statement when the news of Facebook
privacy issues broke out that it was absolutely impossible and ridiculous for
anyone to think Facebook could ever had any stake at all in the election. Less
than a year later, his tone has changed significantly as he had more time to
learn of what's really going on inside the platform that he created and has
been running it as the CEO himself, with thousands of employees working under
him.

I think this tells the tale of our AI future. As the system reaches a level so
complex that it's very likely no single individual, not even the creator of
the AI network himself, will understand how everything really works. How can
we prevent an engine, that has gotten too big for its own good, to collapse
when we are incapable of even servicing it?

The truth is NOBODY knows anything anymore because we are all drowning in the
sea of information. There is too much of it and it's like a bag of wires all
tangled up. The more we learn the more we realize that we know nothing. Our
path to enlightenment is completely blocked by the same knowledge that we have
accumulated. It's like the modern Alzheimer disease in which the accumulated
beta-amyloid protein has blocked all of our neural pathways. The question is,
is there even a way to unlearn what we have learned?

------
intended
> Sample bummer-based sentence: “Your identity is packified by bummer.” Sample
> marginalia, scrawled by this reviewer with sufficient desperate emphasis to
> literally tear the page: “Please stop saying bummer!”

That was a fun line to read in a serious article.

------
dajohnson89
[https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-
trending-42322746](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42322746) (2017)

>A former Facebook executive has criticised the social network for ripping
society apart during a question and answer session.

------
tim333
Social media is kind of awful but the regular news services are too, in their
own way, always focusing on what's gone wrong. I try to counter it a bit by
following people like Pinker who look at the reality that most things are
getting better. Though I still follow the latest bad stuff going down.

------
DanielBMarkham
_"...Like Lanier’s book, though in a very different register, it risks
presenting the Internet as both the manifestation and cause of all of our
deepest problems..."_

A friend of mine sent me a link recently with some stuff that Taleb's
currently working on.

The internet, the collection of data storage and transmission instantaneously
anywhere on the planet, is not a problem. The problem is that humans are hard-
wired for small social groups, not mobs. What we need is some new sense of
morality and common wisdom around what's an appropriate piece of technology to
make and use and what isn't.

It's very, very reminiscent of how hard drugs was first introduced to
transport and commercialization. At first it was open season, with lots of
pain and loss of life as a result. Then there was a ton of over-reaction.
Hopefully the pendulum is swinging back the other way, towards liberalization
and education.

As a libertarian, it's tempting to rant at government for making so many drugs
criminal 100-120 years ago, but it _might_ have been the best of a bunch of
bad choices at the time. Likewise, busting up Big Tech could end up being a
bad idea in the long-term and the best thing we can do right now to return
some sanity to public discourse. I'll leave that to others to decide. But
something needs to be done. Something drastic, I'm afraid.

~~~
spacehome
Unfortunately, it looks like we're wired for mobs, too. Participants in mobs
act very differently and self-report afterwards that the subjective experience
is an altered state. It sounds like echos of an evolutionary history that had
a fair bit of mobbing.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I completely agree.

It's interesting to look at the history of warfare and how it relates to
population density. In general, as farming got more and more advanced, large-
scale warfare really took off.

The difference was that people were limited _geographically_. So tribal chiefs
(and later dictator/kings/lords) were able to geographically isolate and deal
with unrest.

This has fallen apart several times. The French Revolution comes to mind. The
Chinese "People's Courts". In each case you had tens of thousands or more in a
self-reinforcing feedback loop driving one another emotionally. These things
do not end well.

So if it's a choice between strong, totalitarian governments, the emotional
mob-rule we're currently developing, and some controls on tech? Count me as a
vote for some controls on tech. From here it looks like all three are
happening simultaneously anyway. Better to choose your poison than get all
three.

------
cuboidGoat
Am amused that the repeat posting of "extremely normal website" on twitter
has, from here at least, made twitter the current top google result for
"extremely normal website".

[https://www.google.com/search?q=extremely+normal+website](https://www.google.com/search?q=extremely+normal+website)

------
netwanderer2
I added Twitter to my firewall blocked list so now anytime I click on a
Twitter link it just doesn't work at all. Won't waste my time in the cesspool
if I can't even go there.

------
vlehto
What bothers me more than anything in that article is superficially smart
people pouring all of their concentration onto stupidity of obviously stupid
people.

With my university educated 25 - 35-year-old social circle, I can easily
generate boring conversation about Trump, climate change denialism, right wing
activism, situation in Palestine or how facebook is cancer to regular people.

15 years ago my 15-year-old social circle would discuss climate change, US
election system, nature of capitalism, future of internet and how to approach
war in philosophic sense. Notice the difference? Those discussions were not
too intelligent, but at least the subject matter was actually challenging.

This piece seems symptomatic of the disease. The writer appears potentially
capable brain user. But fails on several occasions to actually use that brain.
And it seems like the culprit is again over concentration on the stupidity of
the stupid people. Feels like wasted effort and the left leaning boogie mans
he does offer as culprit don't seem to be at all believable.

Where are the people looking to engage the smartest person they know of? (HN
is quite solid, but also very coding specific.) Has there ever been a time
when that was an actual thing? How could I do that?

~~~
antpls
Stupidness and smartness are two subjective concepts.

In some parts of the world, all individuals have an opinion, a right to
express their opinions, and a right to disagree with others' opinions.

What we see on online social networks is a mirror of the inequalities in
rights and wealth amongst people.

~~~
vlehto
I'm clearly somehow not communicating my stuff well enough. I'm not into
dividing people into categories by IQ. I'm frustrated how people use their
limited resource of attention.

