Social Media - a force for good or evil (not a thread about Jeremy Corbyn)

[Pogue Mahone]

So. Spinning off from the Jezza thread, I'd like a discussion/debate about how the advent of social media will be perceived through the prism of history. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that it will be looked back on as a Pandora's box, that caused far more harm than good.

Here's why...

The reason I'm referencing Corbyn in the title is because of two articles, in the Guardian and New Statesman, which delve into the idea of populist politics and the potential negative consequences of an electorate that rejects the mainstream media and increasingly relies on user-generated rhetoric to find out "the truth" of any issue.

The “Facebookification” of politics is not all negative. An engaged local MP can create a page for his or her constituency that can bring together thousands of citizens who care passionately about the area. Using online media also helps parties to connect with voters once considered hard to reach, such as young people and those living outside cities. Yet there are downsides, which are scarier because they are largely invisible. The ethnic targeting of adverts that we saw in the London mayoral campaign is easier online, where social networks know almost everything about you. For example, it would be possible to target an anti-immigration message at those in majority-white areas.

Then there is what the behavioural economist Cass Sunstein calls “group polarisation theory”. In closed communities, the louder, more extreme voices dominate; moderates leave; those who remain fall into step with the prevailing direction.

These two pieces were about Corbyn but an even more extreme example of the power of social media seems to be going on in America, right now. I'm fuzzy about the relative importance of online vs face to face dialogue in Trump's ascendancy but don't think we can ignore the role of social media in the rise of the "alt-right" and the way that the left seems to adopting a paradoxical radical conservatism when it comes to free speech. Surely these are both examples of the "group polarisation theory" referred to above? And surely this polarisation to political extremes won't end well?

Mainstream politics aside, we're seeing a generation of disenfranchised and vulnerable young Muslim men being targetting with jihadist propaganda, at least some of which is hitting home and triggering a series of atrocities. Obviously, that's not to claim that the ant-West sentiment which is the basis of this propaganda hasn't been triggered by genuine grievances but, without social media, would we really see so many lone wolf attacks and second or third generation immigrants upping sticks and heading off to training camps in Syria?

Something else I find really problematic is the way social media has changed bullying. A quote from a parent of a young kid who killed themself after sustained online bullying really hit home. "It used to be that the bullying stopped when he came home but now it follows him everywhere he goes" We're seeing an huge uptick in the number of suicides among young people and I don't think we can reasonably ignore the role social media plays in these terrible statistics. This potential for being the target of a coordinated campaign of bullying persists well past leaving school too (a new phenomenon?) which is something Jon Ronson covered in his excellent book on public shaming.

Speaking of mental health, the way that social media is used as a form of propaganda also has to be problematic. Public displays by social media users about how great their life is, how gorgeous they look and how popular they are will surely alienate and depress a proportion of their audience. Although, ironically, the alienated and depressed are probably waging similar campaigns of their own.

So what are we left with? Not very funny memes, baby pictures and the cocking Lad Bible.

I rest my case.

Discuss.

 

[Raoul]

Its simply the new norm for communications - much like radio and TV become over the past 100 years.

 

[GloryHunter07]

How technology disrupted the truth:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth

A good long read.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Its simply the new norm for communications - much like radio and TV become over the past 100 years.

Kind of. But it's different to TV/radio in one really important way (personalised interactivity). Its this difference that can have a profound (and, in my opinion, negative) impact on society.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

How technology disrupted the truth:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth

A good long read.

Read it a while ago. It's a very good read and probably in the back of my mind when I started this thread.

 

[Striker10]

You can say it's evil. The difference between tv/radio etc is that your views/opinion etc are collected on a more personal level (allowing profiles to be built). We all know it's data collection disguised as 'news' source. That's just how it is. Information accumulated and get passed on. It is different to Radio/tv thought Smart TVs can be as invasive. Now I put that down as evil...but only because of how the information would get used.

With tv/ratio you do get interaction but it's not as potentially damaging as on social media which has a far greater reach because more and more people will use the Internet to air their thoughts since voice couldn't be recorded

 

[Varun]

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts

Absolutely incredible read. One of the most fascinating bits is that it's the competition that is probably what's keeping us balanced.

Will blow your mind.

 

[NinjaFletch]

Most of these articles, especially the Guardian one, read like a whinge about a new media that is replacing theirs. I'm not really sure at all that the problem is social media, or that people are more likely to be living in an echo chamber now than they were 10 years ago or that 'facts' are less tangible now than they were then. Mainstream media has long done the things its now criticising Twitter of doing.

Case in point, the EU referendum where the people least likely to get their facts from new media were just as likely to vote en masse to leave as kids were to stay.

But that aeon article is really interesting.

 

[Insanity]

Not social media, but on the 24 hour news-cycle:

Why News Junkies Are So Glum About Politics, Economics, and Everything Else
Stock-market crashes, terrorist attacks, and the dark side of “newsworthy” stories

Man bites dog. It is one of the oldest cliches in journalism, an acknowledgement of the idea that ordinary events are not newsworthy, whereas oddities, like a puppy-nibbling adult, deserve disproportionate coverage.

The rule is straightforward, but its implications are subtle. If journalists are encouraged to report extreme events, they guide both elite and public attitudes, leading many people, including experts, to feel like extreme events are more common than they actually are. By reporting on only the radically novel, the press can feed a popular illusion that the world is more terrible than it actually is.

Take finance, for example. Professional investors are fretting about the possibility of a massive stock-market crash, on par with 1987’s Black Monday. The statistical odds that such an event will occur within the next six months are about 1-in-60, according to historical data from 1929 to 1988. But when surveys between 1989 and 2015 asked investors to estimate the odds of such a crash in the coming months, the typical response was 1-in-10.

Perhaps professional investors are effectively paid by their clients to be doomsday fanatics. But the more straightforward explanation is that most of them massively overrate the odds of a financial cataclysm—by a factor of six.

A new paper by the economists William N. Goetzmann, Dasol Kim, and Robert J. Schiller blames this pessimism on the minds of news audiences. They point out that the press is more likely to report steep market plunges than moderate gains and losses. Media coverage of negative events—and frequent predictions that they will recur—leads many observers to think that crashes are often right around the corner, when in fact, they are almost always far away. These investors’ fear isn’t rational. It is warped by what researchers call the "availability bias," which gives more weight to information that is top-of-mind, which often begins with cable-news reports that are top-of-the-hour.

The implications of this man-bites-dog bias extend to Americans’ feelings of safety as well. Since September 11, 2001, fewer than 100 people have died in jihadist attacks in the United States, according to the New America Foundation, a think tank. That's about the same number of deaths from motor-vehicle accidents every day. But terrorism feels menacing and personal in a way that even a six-car-pileup does not, and so it receives disproportionate coverage. In December 2015, Americans named terrorism the country's most important problem.

This effect is more complicated when the press begins to report on dramatic events that it previously ignored. For example, media coverage of gun violence has increased in the last few years, particularly when it comes to police shootings of black men. This has created an impression that race relations and gun violence have never been worse. Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention harped on the escalating violence against police officers and ordinary Americans. The broader truth is that, under Reagan, police fatalities per year were about 60 percent higher than they are today, and homicide rates have been falling for two decades. White Americans are uniquely despondent about race; 32 percent of white Americans think Obama has made race relations worse, while just 5 percent of black Americans think so. One plausible explanation for this gap is that, because of social media and redoubled attention from mainstream news outlets, white Americans are finally seeing the institutional racism that black Americans have known their whole life.

As the futurist Ray Kurzweil put it, it's not that violence is getting so much more common in the U.S., but rather that the information about it is more accurate. It is altogether too easy to conflate primetime attention to violent episodes in America with the overall frequency of American violence.

The media’s emphasis on tragedy and calamity has no obvious solution. After an airplane crash or terrorist attack, should CNN be obligated to scroll, along its chyron, quotidian human activities that are statistically more dangerous than the threat of terrorism or planes? That’s hard to imagine. Should NPR’s Morning Edition begin every hour by reading the names of Americans who died in car accidents the previous day? Probably not.

This week, New York Magazine has a cover story on everything that's wrong with the media, according to members of the media. It's an exhaustive and thoughtful document of insidery self-loathing. But one overlooked detail is that the modern definition of news inherently prejudices journalists such that they focus their limited resources on uncommon stories. There is a strong public interest in reminding readers, viewers, and listeners of the dog-bites-man realities of daily life, as assumed and invisible as air. Sometimes, perhaps, the news ought to feel more like the olds.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...olitics-economics-and-everything-else/492989/

 

[Jippy]

 

[Adebesi]

How will social media be viewed through the prism of history? I think it will be so ubiquitous, our lives will be so dominated by the online / virtual in the future that history will struggle to have a fair perspective on it. I dont think it will be seen as a good or bad thing per se, so much as an inevitable thing, a stepping stone towards whatever the future looks like. Much like... I dont know... the industrial revolution and urbanisation. Is that a good analogy, I dont know, it was the first one that popped into my head. Urbanisation caused huge problems with pollution, diseases like the black death, the break up of the extended family, increased individualism and all the rest of it. Not necessarily good things. But do we look back at urbanisation with regret? Of course not, because it is impossible to conceive of life without it.

The technological revolution is as profoundly important as the industrial revolution was, and social media is an important part of this trend, in terms of how we adjust our everyday lives to account for new technology. It is going to continue down this path. The future may not look like this but itll look more like this than itll look like the past. All the horrible shit outlined above, things like bullying etc, will need solutions, just like we needed to solve the damage that big cities did to the environment and family structures. I imagine those problems will be resolved, or at least mitigated, over time, and new problems will arise to take their place, and the evolution of mankind will continue.

I think its clear from all this that Im pretty agnostic about social media in terms of describing it as a force for good or evil. I think its neither and both. It is what it is. The genie is out the bottle and it cant be put back in. There will definitely be people who find the whole thing regrettable, at least while there are people around to remember what it was like before. People will regret that actual, real social interactions are undermined. It will probably make people more physically isolated. And the problems will take a long time to solve. So like people living through early industrialisation, dealing with choking smog and appalling sewage systems, it will be ugly. But it will also be transformational in more positive ways. I believe eventually social media will infiltrate politics and make it more representative. It should bring people closer together, virtually at least, even if it makes people more isolated literally. While it is polarising politics at the moment, I do believe that is a phase: I dont believe social media is fundamentally incompatible with consensual, centrist politics.

We will get there in the end, its just going to be a long and difficult journey. So yeah, if pushed on the force for good or evil, Id say probably, in the end, twisting my arm - GOOD. But that is after a long, difficult and bumpy ride.

 

[Adebesi]

Not social media, but on the 24 hour news-cycle:

Yes, the 24 hour news cycle has really profound implications.

I remember watching Channel 4 News, last week I think? Was it last week when another cadet was killed while training with the army on the Brecon Beacons? I remember thinking: Sparta would never have survived with the 24 hour news cycle.

 

[Smores]

Will blow your mind.

Good article. I like reading these type of studies. It is however nothing new, the argument they make about facebook and google being so prevalent that they have supreme power is true but i wouldn't say its much more so than The Sun or even the BBC.

People laugh off such items if it doesnt fit their argument but consciously and unconsciously most media forms have an inherent bias. Usually corporatism given the nature of our news.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

How will social media be viewed through the prism of history? I think it will be so ubiquitous, our lives will be so dominated by the online / virtual in the future that history will struggle to have a fair perspective on it. I dont think it will be seen as a good or bad thing per se, so much as an inevitable thing, a stepping stone towards whatever the future looks like. Much like... I dont know... the industrial revolution and urbanisation. Is that a good analogy, I dont know, it was the first one that popped into my head. Urbanisation caused huge problems with pollution, diseases like the black death, the break up of the extended family, increased individualism and all the rest of it. Not necessarily good things. But do we look back at urbanisation with regret? Of course not, because it is impossible to conceive of life without it.

The technological revolution is as profoundly important as the industrial revolution was, and social media is an important part of this trend, in terms of how we adjust our everyday lives to account for new technology. It is going to continue down this path. The future may not look like this but itll look more like this than itll look like the past. All the horrible shit outlined above, things like bullying etc, will need solutions, just like we needed to solve the damage that big cities did to the environment and family structures. I imagine those problems will be resolved, or at least mitigated, over time, and new problems will arise to take their place, and the evolution of mankind will continue.

I think its clear from all this that Im pretty agnostic about social media in terms of describing it as a force for good or evil. I think its neither and both. It is what it is. The genie is out the bottle and it cant be put back in. There will definitely be people who find the whole thing regrettable, at least while there are people around to remember what it was like before. People will regret that actual, real social interactions are undermined. It will probably make people more physically isolated. And the problems will take a long time to solve. So like people living through early industrialisation, dealing with choking smog and appalling sewage systems, it will be ugly. But it will also be transformational in more positive ways. I believe eventually social media will infiltrate politics and make it more representative. It should bring people closer together, virtually at least, even if it makes people more isolated literally. While it is polarising politics at the moment, I do believe that is a phase: I dont believe social media is fundamentally incompatible with consensual, centrist politics.

We will get there in the end, its just going to be a long and difficult journey. So yeah, if pushed on the force for good or evil, Id say probably, in the end, twisting my arm - GOOD. But that is after a long, difficult and bumpy ride.

Good post and re the bit in bold, I heard someone recently (might have been Adam Buxton?) talk about the way that society use social media is like a toddler learning how to interact with other people. We're still at that stage where we're more likely to have tantrums than any kind of rational discourse but hopefully, in time, we'll get to a point where we an use it in a more mature and sensible manner.

 

[Adebesi]

Good article. I like reading these type of studies. It is however nothing new, the argument they make about facebook and google being so prevalent that they have supreme power is true but i wouldn't say its much more so than The Sun or even the BBC.

People laugh off such items if it doesnt fit their argument but consciously and unconsciously most media forms have an inherent bias. Usually corporatism given the nature of our news.

I essentially agree. I think there is a difference, because social media is more engaged, because people participate in it, rather than simply consuming it. But the effect is similar. The Sun had massive influence in the past ("It was the Sun wot won it!") and now Twitter has emerged and gained influence at its expense. The direction that influence might take will be subtly different because it is driven by masses - to use buzzwords, it is "bottom up" rather than "top down".

But I agree we are not looking at an entirely new phenomenon.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Good article. I like reading these type of studies. It is however nothing new, the argument they make about facebook and google being so prevalent that they have supreme power is true but i wouldn't say its much more so than The Sun or even the BBC.

People laugh off such items if it doesnt fit their argument but consciously and unconsciously most media forms have an inherent bias. Usually corporatism given the nature of our news.

Isn't that widely accepted as fact at this point? Surely nobody reads any form of media and assumed it comes to them entirely without bias?

 

[Adebesi]

Good post and re the bit in bold, I heard someone recently (might have been Adam Buxton?) talk about the way that society use social media is like a toddler learning how to interact with other people. We're still at that stage where we're more likely to have tantrums than any kind of rational discourse but hopefully, in time, we'll get to a point where we an use it in a more mature and sensible manner.

Yes, good analogy.

 

[PedroMendez]

Most of these articles, especially the Guardian one, read like a whinge about a new media that is replacing theirs. I'm not really sure at all that the problem is social media, or that people are more likely to be leaving in an echo chamber now than they were 10 years ago or that 'facts' are less tangible now than they were then. Mainstream media has long done the things its now criticising Twitter of doing.

Case in point, the EU referendum where the people least likely to get their facts from new media were just as likely to vote en masse to leave as kids were to stay.

But that aeon article is really interesting.

# totally agree + even 100 or 1000 years ago people were living in echo chambers. That has nothing to do with social media. There are also various persons that are able to distribute their blogs/reports/opinion due to the rise of social media and some of them produce amazing content. Quality commentary or reporting, that most papers can only dream of.

So of course it is a good thing. The ability to communicate and connect with people globally is just amazing. I rarely post anything in social media, but it still has a profound impact on my life. I couldn´t stay in contact with people all over the world and that is a great feature.

It is a first and necessary step towards a global society that is rooted in individualism.

 

[Adebesi]

Does RedCafe count as a form of social media?

 

[facund]

Much like all technologies, social media is benign (medical usage).

It is however providing a fantastic platform for some of the less savoury aspects of modern culture and human nature and we are beginning to adapt to it's established patterns of usage. Of course it will have an impact on opinions and of course it provides a 'safe-space' for the more zealous to air/cultivate their views but that is a bigger reflection of the shitty job we are doing of raising, educating and nurturing one another away from the computer than anything else. It draws the existing ignorance/division/evil out rather than creating it.

 

[Smores]

Isn't that widely accepted as fact at this point? Surely nobody reads any form of media and assumed it comes to them entirely without bias?

It certainly should be but i think that fact becomes lost in arguments where they perhaps agree with the bias and its effect. In the Bernie vs Clinton arguments any such unfair bias towards Clinton would have been laughed off as conspiracy.

Mucu harder to see bias in the media you already agree with.

 

[Smores]

Does RedCafe count as a form of social media?

Definetely and this place is a gold mine for such effects. The same name calling propaganda is used against players and largely there's a belief that this places opinions are of higher validity and of course the media are bias against us (which they are )

 

[Varun]

Good article. I like reading these type of studies. It is however nothing new, the argument they make about facebook and google being so prevalent that they have supreme power is true but i wouldn't say its much more so than The Sun or even the BBC.

People laugh off such items if it doesnt fit their argument but consciously and unconsciously most media forms have an inherent bias. Usually corporatism given the nature of our news.

The reach Facebook, Twitter, Google etc have is simply incomparable to the sun or BBC and given the amount of personal data they have and use, makes their targeting far more precise than these 2.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

It certainly should be but i think that fact becomes lost in arguments where they perhaps agree with the bias and its effect. In the Bernie vs Clinton arguments any such unfair bias towards Clinton would have been laughed off as conspiracy.

Mucu harder to see bias in the media you already agree with.

Indeed. This is what some people might describe as an echo chamber

 

[Pogue Mahone]

# totally agree + even 100 or 1000 years ago people were living in echo chambers. That has nothing to do with social media. There are also various persons that are able to distribute their blogs/reports/opinion due to the rise of social media and some of them produce amazing content. Quality commentary or reporting, that most papers can only dream of.

So of course it is a good thing. The ability to communicate and connect with people globally is just amazing. I rarely post anything in social media, but it still has a profound impact on my life. I couldn´t stay in contact with people all over the world and that is a great feature.

It is a first and necessary step towards a global society that is rooted in individualism.

See that's what I'm interested in. What are the upsides to a technology that seems (to me, anyway) to be at the root of a lot of divisiveness and upset? Do they outweigh the downsides?

I kind of get this idea that feeling more connected due to immersion in social media is somehow a good thing. Feck knows, I waste enough time on this place! Are all these new online interactions a net positive, though? Would people not have previously achieved that same degree of connectedness, albeit by engaging in their local community instead? And isn't that real life, face to face, engagement more healthy for everyone?

 

[Adebesi]

The reach Facebook, Twitter, Google etc have is simply incomparable to the sun or BBC and given the amount of personal data they have and use, makes their targeting far more precise than these 2.

I remember watching a docu that said the CIA now no longer bother to keep files on a lot of people who 10 or 20 years ago they would definitely have kept files on. This spook said all it needed to do was hack people's Facebook accounts and they had access to more detailed information, freely given, than they could ever hope to compile themselves.

A bit of a tangent but I thought that was very interesting. Social media is redefining our relationship with "privacy" in a way that us liberals are going to have to learn to incorporate into our political beliefs.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I remember watching a docu that said the CIA now no longer bother to keep files on a lot of people who 10 or 20 years ago they would definitely have kept files on. This spook said all it needed to do was hack people's Facebook accounts and they had access to more detailed information, freely given, than they could ever hope to compile themselves.

A bit of a tangent but I thought that was very interesting. Social media is redefining our relationship with "privacy" in a way that us liberals are going to have to learn to incorporate into our political beliefs.

Damn straight. The way that so much personal data is being extracted from us and sold to the highest bidder is yet another downside that I didn't mention in the OP.

 

[Adebesi]

See that's what I'm interested in. What are the upsides to a technology that seems (to me, anyway) to be at the root of a lot of divisiveness and upset? Do they outweigh the downsides?

I kind of get this idea that feeling more connected due to immersion in social media is somehow a good thing. Feck knows, I waste enough time on this place! Are all these new online interactions a net positive, though? Would people not have previously achieved that same degree of connectedness, albeit by engaging in their local community instead? And isn't that real life, face to face, engagement more healthy for everyone?

If we only had the option of real life, face to face, this conversation wouldnt be happening. Not this one, not the ones about Rooney in the United forum or the LVG Out ones. In a nutshell, face to face is too limiting.

And anyway, its not either or. We still do have real life relationships. Those need to be protected. But bigger networks means more cross pollination of ideas, more, better new ideas, more understanding of how the world works... So yes, its good.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

Bless him, he didn't know how things worked in 1990.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

I remember watching a docu that said the CIA now no longer bother to keep files on a lot of people who 10 or 20 years ago they would definitely have kept files on. This spook said all it needed to do was hack people's Facebook accounts and they had access to more detailed information, freely given, than they could ever hope to compile themselves.

A bit of a tangent but I thought that was very interesting. Social media is redefining our relationship with "privacy" in a way that us liberals are going to have to learn to incorporate into our political beliefs.

So glad I'm not on Facebook...and that the general is private these days.

 

[SteveJ]

Yet there are downsides, which are scarier because they are largely invisible. The ethnic targeting of adverts that we saw in the London mayoral campaign is easier online, where social networks know almost everything about you. For example, it would be possible to target an anti-immigration message at those in majority-white areas.

Then there is what the behavioural economist Cass Sunstein calls “group polarisation theory”. In closed communities, the louder, more extreme voices dominate; moderates leave; those who remain fall into step with the prevailing direction.

There's nothing new about that except for the particular, contemporary medium of communication. Might as well decry books and printed pamphlets for getting unvetted messages across to the public; oh wait...that's exactly what the authorities and their cronies did centuries ago...social media is just the latest whipping boy.

 

[Adebesi]

So glad I'm not on Facebook...and that the general is private these days.

What do you mean the general is private these days?

 

[Classical Mechanic]

There's nothing new about that except for the particular, contemporary medium of communication. Might as well decry books and printed pamphlets for getting unvetted messages across to the public; oh wait...that's exactly what the authorities and their cronies did centuries ago...social media is just the latest whipping boy.

The new medium offers a far greater advantage in profiling though which makes those targeting methods far more accurate. I think that makes the potential misuse of those methods more concerning.

 

[PedroMendez]

See that's what I'm interested in. What are the upsides to a technology that seems (to me, anyway) to be at the root of a lot of divisiveness and upset? Do they outweigh the downsides?

I kind of get this idea that feeling more connected due to immersion in social media is somehow a good thing. Feck knows, I waste enough time on this place! Are all these new online interactions a net positive, though? Would people not have previously achieved that same degree of connectedness, albeit by engaging in their local community instead? And isn't that real life, face to face, engagement more healthy for everyone?

We are seeing a trend of individualization in the western world. Classic institutions/constructs that were vital for society are declining. Marriage, family, church, local community, unions, parties. There are certainly also downsides to that, but we shouldn´t romanticize these things. You could hardly pick and choose and there was a lot of pressure to conform to specific social norms.

Social media is one step in the direction where community will be form around shared values voluntary interactions.

The world was never more united than today. Even for the creation of the most basic goods, hundreds or thousands of people interact and cooperate with each other. That is often completely overlooked. A friend of mine has his own (~10 employees) metal worker business in Germany. He does everything from fixing the garage door of his neighbor to constructing parts of machines or whole factories. Now he is able to participate in global supply-chains, where he customizes machinery (parts) for factories in the USA or Canada. These are processes where people from multiple countries from all continents contribute. 100 years ago that would be completely unthinkable.

Social media is one step to advance similar change on the social level. We are still at the very beginning of this process and change always creates friction and problems. I am not trying to diminish these draw-backs, but people will figure it out. We should embrace technology for all its potential.

There is a certain pushback against globalization, because change always creates backlash. Still all these doom and gloom merchants ignore that humanity was never better off. Let’s not go down the Trump rabbit-hole. There is no reason to be scared.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

There's nothing new about that except for the particular, contemporary medium of communication. Might as well decry books and printed pamphlets for getting unvetted messages across to the public; oh wait...that's exactly what the authorities and their cronies did centuries ago...social media is just the latest whipping boy.

There are two issues in that bit you quoted, neither of which have anything to do with concerns about unvetted messages getting across to the public. One of which is the use of social media data-mining and profiling to create targetted political propaganda. The other is the peer pressure and group think you get in online communities that is (allegedly) more influential than the equivalent in "IRL" communities. Which makes sense. You can't "block" people who might speak up to offer an alternative opinion if politics is being discussed down the pub.

 

[Jippy]

Bless him, he didn't know how things worked in 1990.

I'm pretty sure we had three of those four even before the internet!

 

[SteveJ]

CM, Pogue:

Yes, but this 'improved' technology is merely that: a swifter and more comprehensive method of targeting one's audience than was previously possible. In this context, social media is not an especial evil; just another advance.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

CM, Pogue:

Yes, but this 'improved' technology is merely that: a swifter and more comprehensive method of targeting one's audience than was previously possible. In this context, social media is not an especial evil; just another advance.

The "evil" in the title is just me being provocative, to stir things up a bit. You're absolutely right. A technology can't be evil. I just feel uneasy about the way the interaction of communities online are qualitatively and quantitatively different to the way these communities might have interacted before. Which (arguably) creates a culture in which extremism find it that bit easier to thrive.

 

[Edgar Allan Pillow]

The problem with social media is that it lacks any kind of rules or regulations.

Finding a mainstream publisher for a hate mongering book would be difficult, so will be getting TV/Radio times...but not in Internet. Anyone can use a popular blog or opinion site to post their stuff.

The delinking between online and real life personalities is another contributor. In other forms of media, it is very difficult to hide your real life personality and so people give a thought about what they offer. A isolated virtual world, hidden behind online handles...it's free for all for everyone to express their dark/hidden views without any form of social or legal repercussions. A double edged sword, I should say.... It is a form to be free from oppression...but in reality the misuse far overwhelms the positives.

We need better online laws to regulate the flow of information.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

What do you mean the general is private these days?

Non-members can't view it.

I'm pretty sure we had three of those four even before the internet!

True, except that being radicalized in the early 90s usually involved a skateboard and a backwards baseball cap.