I probably mostly agree with Keeed here.
What about the story is fake? Sincerely asking.
The emails are very likely fake
Thread title should be, “is it bad for social media sites to exist?”
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Really? I read the response from the Biden team and they didn’t say they were fake. Unless they updated it since then.
I don’t think the story is going to hurt Joe regardless. Trumps kids do the same thing.
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Obviously it depends on the rule.
Isn’t the issue the amount of power a single company can have?
This is probably better discussed without bringing up a specific story. The story itself is irrelevant to the principle in question.
I argue that the immense power is broadcasting a story to billions of people, not not broadcasting a story. The town square example is inapt, as town squares at most reach thousands.
Being able to decide what to broadcast to billions and what not to broadcast to billions is immense power.
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But the far greater power is to broadcast to billions. Far, far more stories are not broadcast at all than those those to billions, or millions, or even thousands.
So isn’t the issue the amount of power a single company can have?
The issue is, “can a company do what they think is right for their shareholders?”
The answer is, “in united state, yes.”
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Free market absolutists ITT, who knew
Some of the smartest people I follow on twitter - like Yashar Ali who’s hyper-liberal but also extremely dedicated to the truth - think the NY Post policing went too far.
That said, I don’t think he has a problem with policing blatant misinformation in general.
I stand with Yashar because he’s way more embedded in this stuff than me and I trust his judgement.
Misinformation on social media is such a massive societal problem that if I were dictator of the country I’d pull the plug on every social media site in the country and make everyone start over from scratch with only non-free non-ad supported business models allowed. Far right and Islamic fundamentalist content will both be banned, and that’s as it should be.
Look the internet as currently designed is really really bad for humans. It’s an insanely addictive dopamine drip attached to a surveillance operation the likes of which the world has never seen. If the internet were a child this, for sure, is it’s angry adolescent phase where it gets expelled from school for fighting.
Misinformation isn’t the only problem with social media. Having a companies business model be to conquer as much mind share as humanly possible… so that it can serve ads. Yeah that’s a fucking terrible idea. As a subscription service the same apps goal is to provide the user with as much value as possible so that the user wants to keep the subscription. As an advertiser you just want to keep people engaged with you so that you can sell them shit.
Social media is how humans are going to organize their social lives from now on. It’s going to be a big part of how we all interact with our communities. This is one of those central/core things in people’s lives that needs to exist to serve those people. Attaching social affirmation to ads… the whole idea is so fucked up it makes me a little nauseous.
EDIT: The best thing about this site, for me, is that I don’t get served ads on it. I’m more than happy to kick my social media platform of choice ten bucks a month.
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This is also kind of the problem with cable news and the media in general too. Except they are not pointing a super computer at your brain. They are just covering the extremes and using headlines that scare people.
Yeah the Fox News was just the first cable news channel to break up the viewing public along political lines and target just one side. Turns out telling people what they want to hear is good for a ‘news’ programs ratings.
I absolutely do not buy that any of the TV news organizations are any better behind the scenes either. They just targeted groups that aren’t conservatives. As a result I think their content is a really dangerous place to get information from.
What happens when you’re competing for mindshare to serve ads is that you’re incentivized to offer junk food. You’re not trying to offer substantive content that offers a good value for the users time/money, you’re trying to get them to look at it as many times a day as possible. It is really really important to really think about the repercussions on the product decisions that flow from that revenue structure. In the case of 24/7 news channels it’s to make a mountain out of every even a little bit exciting molehill (usually this means it’s fun and agrees with the core audience’s world view) and to mention the boring mountain range behind you 2-3 times a day to maintain the illusion of journalism.
The way you build a conspiracy theory is you take a bunch of random facts and you make up connections between them that form a distantly plausible explanation. It’s like looking at clouds or stars and finding shapes in them. The feed you get from 24/7 news channels is barely one level better than that.
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I thought I muted this yesterday. Or is this another keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed derail?
They’re different topics. If you don’t want to see anything I post seems like there’s a simple solution to that.
I find myself 100% in agreement with Keed here. We’ve spent years talking about how bad twitter and Facebook suck. But we also want them to decide which news stories to allow their users to share?
Obviously they’re allowed to do so, and in this instance it’s a shitty story that is likely fake. But I don’t like the idea of Jack being the content moderator for where most of the internet gets their news.
I’m not 100% sure how I square that with the idea that obviously fake TRUMPNEWSDAILY.net stories should be banned. Maybe they shouldn’t. Idk.
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You’re mostly fine but I selectively mute these derail threads. Just ignoring you wouldn’t help anyway.