
Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts - tylerhou
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/07/the-instagram-forums-where-teens-go-to-debate-big-issues/566153/?single_page=true
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Rjevski
Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty
Instagram pictures.

It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional
"news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it
more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network.

> “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just
> depending on one source giving us information,” Dann said. “The fact that
> we’re all posting about these things means we all have to do research and
> it’s a lot of people completing these things together, not just one person,
> which makes us trust it more.”

Are they sure? I bet it's just one big echo chamber of people copy/pasting
each other, just like every trend on social media (memes, etc).

~~~
Alex3917
> It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than
> conventional "news"

I mean they probably are. It’s unlikely these kids are running their Instagram
channels as loss leaders with the real goal of selling billion dollar military
technology.

~~~
jonhendry18
How do you know they're actually kids and not working for RT?

~~~
freeflight
Why does it have to be RT and not any other interest group? Tbh it's kinda
pissing me off how these days everybody on the web pretends Russian people and
organizations are the only ones using socket-puppets to spread
"misinformation", just like Russia is supposedly the only actor that
constantly hacks everything and everybody.

It's just reinforcing the current, rather hysteric, narrative that Russia is
to blame for everything from Trump getting elected, to Brexit, and even the
generally rising "right wing" sentiments.

As somebody outside the Anglo-Saxon sphere, looking at places like Reddit, it
feels like people are being riled up for a war, and it seems to be working
extremely well.

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thewizardofaus
I think this has always happened among teens. When Facebook was popular among
adolescent groups, FB pages existed that were identical to the messages shared
on these "flop accounts".

~~~
wrinkl3
And before that it was 4chan. Meme pages that touch on social and political
issues are fairly integral to our net culture.

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baza89
Just a few years ago these guys had the main mediums of information covered,
sure there was internet, but up until now it wasn't in palms of everyones
hands.

And this new medium tends to be decentrilised, cheap for everyone to access
and anyone can be the creator of content.

And on the issue of quality of information, sure it can be shit. Memes, number
of character restrictions etc, forum moderators being biased, thumbs ups and
downs do seem like we are going back to coloseum times, boos and hoorays,
instead of stating our arguments in words. It kind of does seem like we are
going backwards.

However big media is full of shit too, is censored in one way or the other,
and is highly susceptible to corruption.

Truth (the whole truth and nothing the truth) cannot be presented in 2000-3000
words. Those people at CERN take petabytes of information to be sure what is
truth, on the stuff that is real and measurable. And even when they come up
with an answer they say "We are 5 000 000 to 1 sure that this particle
exists".

And what we are mostly talking here about are abstract philosophical concepts
and social sciences like economy, law, ethics, psychology etc. Unmeasurable
things (at least pretty far from accurately and completely).

These philosphical, wordsy, matters are thus super easy to manipulate with.

Fake news, flops, deepfakes, resonating echo chambers.....All I see is big
media being scared of loosing their power.

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ObsoleteNerd
I don't see it as any different to any forum, IRC channel, social network
group page, or group chat in an IM. 4chan, SA, Fark, car forums, etc etc.

It's literally just teenagers making a group chat to shoot the shit. How is
that anything new or controversial in any way? We did it on BBSes and IRC,
then teens did it on MySpace and Facebook, now it's Instagram and Snapchat.

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dawhizkid
This might be the first tech trend (at least, that I'm aware of) that I was
completely unaware of and do not understand at all because of my age (late
twenties).

~~~
esrauch
I think you are giving too much credit to the uniqueness of this.

It seems not any different than subreddits or similar: they just making
inflammatory meme posts based on hot topics and then people are discussing
them in in the moderated comments.

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CPLX
So, Tumblr, basically?

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ddtaylor
Sharing transgender memes apparently is "debate" ?

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sverige
TL;DR The dinosaurs at The Atlantic take another stab at guessing what
teenagers are doing instead of reading their publication.

~~~
stefan_
All the accounts quoted have <20k followers, some much less. Someone was
looking for material.

~~~
panarky
Small accounts can be more influential than accounts that broadcast to
millions of followers.

Witness the power of small Whatsapp groups for example.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/wh...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/whatsapp-
india-killings.html)

~~~
cheez
You should submit this to HN.

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nicky0
ITT: Confused old people

