Well worth a watch. Scroll down for quotes if you don't have a spare 20 minutes.
Google Plus is my only[1] experience of social media[2] and I have to say I've found it to be overwhelmingly positive. What I've found is that while there's practically no-one I agree with completely, there's equally few people I disagree with completely - even those with whom I have profound moral disagreements with on certain issues. If people say something I think is really stupid, I default to just ignoring them[3], because they usually have something intelligent to say on other matters. My blocklist stands at a grand total of 25, which considering I've been here almost since the start, moderate an extremely large community, and aren't shy about posting my political inclinations, isn't all that large (a good fraction of those are spam accounts as well). My policy is to block only in really extreme cases of moral disagreements (e.g. racists), personal insults (towards me - I will disable comments if a flamewar between others starts, but I'll treat the participants as grown-ups who can settle the dispute between themselves elsewhere).
This is not to say it's a utopia, because no large collection of people is going to be utterly wonderful - and I'm not sure that's even possible or desirable. It's good to have experiences of profound disagreement for a variety of reasons : each side might be wrong and learn something from the other; it's at least worth knowing what crazy arguments the other side are coming up with; it's useful to be prepared to deal with "robust conversations" in general. So there are a few people I keep around solely to hear what the other side are thinking, even if I know full well I will never, ever agree with them. But these are rare. Most people having something intelligent to say on something, at least. Generally speaking, if we're able to have a protracted civil conversation about something on which we disagree, then even if I come away still convinced I'm right (but even more especially if I come away realising I was wrong) then I generally follow people as a matter of course.
That said, I'm not going out of my way to latch on to opposing viewpoints for the sake of diversity. I think the best way to do that is to let it happen naturally, finding people with some common interests and by default following them rather than their individual Collections (though these are still very useful for un following purposes, if someone posts a lot of stuff I just don't care about, e.g. pictures of food, or know there's no chance of anything but an argument resulting if we discuss it). I don't feel as if I'm in a filter bubble or echo chamber, or at least, certainly no more strongly than prior to Google Plus. The kind of discussions we have here are the kind I have in the real world, more or less, albeit the Google variety are usually more erudite. What's the point in perpetually preaching to the choir ? None. I expect to convince some people and be convinced by others in turn. That's what conversations are for. Finally, I don't follow any news outlets directly, but only individual people.
[1] Let's not even pretend Google Buzz was a thing, because it wasn't.
[2] OK, and random internet forums and the like, back in the day. I really don't bother much with them any more unless I need to consult specialists. They're not really "social" in the sense that they tend to be highly focused.
[3] There are plenty of other reasons : I might just not have the time or inclination to respond or whatever, so If I ignore you, treat this as an absence of evidence, not evidence that I think you're an idiot.
Anyway, all that rant is by way of preamble. This video is excellent, but the above thoughts were running through my head until near the end. See, it's important to note that it isn't "social media" per se that Lanier is criticising here, it's the particular industry-standard model of social media : basically Facebook. I've never used it, but it sounds like nothing more than a glorified, for-profit combined news and advertising service. Which sounds dreadful.
The reason I never joined Facebook was because all my friends were doing it and they seemed to be doing nothing but constantly checking what everyone else was doing, as though you couldn't just ask them. That didn't appeal to me because I had no spare time to get addicted to anything else (Blender and Medieval II Total War are harsh mistresses). I have absolutely no clue if that's how it still is or if it's really the manipulation engine often described.
Without further ado, some quotes from the transcript, lightly edited for punctuation and whatnot :
Google and Facebook are not doing the manipulating : they're doing the addicting. But the manipulating, which rides on the back of the addicting, is the paying customer of such a company so and and many of those customers are not at all bad influences - they might simply be trying to promote their cars or their perfumes or whatever...
Is it different to just television advertising or billboard advertising or anything else ?
The difference is the constant feedback loop. So when you watch the television the television isn't watching you, when you see the billboard the billboard isn't seeing you, and vast numbers of people see the same thing on television and see the same billboard. When you use these new designs... you're being observed constantly and algorithms are taking that information and changing what you see next, and they're searching and searching and searching and they're just blind robots. There's no evil genius here until they find those patterns, those those little tricks that get you and make you change your behaviour.
Facebook's fundamental design is one that is... it's the business model is to addict you and then offer a channel to you to third parties to take advantage of that to change you in some way without you realising it's happening. That's that's what it does. So I don't think any amount of tweaking can fully heal it. I think it needs a different business plan.
I have never known Trump, but I have met him a few times over a fairly long period - over thirty years actually - through different circumstances, and I will say that while I never would have voted for him as president, and I always thought he was, um, somewhat untrustworthy and a bit of a showman and a bit of a scammer, he never lost himself and became so strangely insecure and so weirdly... irritable until he had his own addiction - in this case to Twitter. And it's it's really damaged him. I mean I I view Trump, in a way, as a victim.
His character has been really damaged by his Twitter addiction because of the reaction he gets from each tweet. What happens in addiction is the addict becomes hooked not just on the good part of the addiction experience, but on the whole cycle. So a gambler is not just addicted to winning but to this whole process, where they mostly lose. And in the same way the Twitter addict or the social media addict becomes addicted to this engagement which is often unpleasant where they're engaged in these really abusive exchanges with other human beings.
Do you think it's possible to create a do-gooding social network ?
Yes I'm absolutely positive. And the way to do it is to have a different business model... so right now we've created this bizarre society that's unprecedented, where if any two people wish to communicate over the Internet the only way that can happen ,the only way it's financed, is through a you're a third party who believes that those two can be manipulated in a sneaky way. It's it's a it's an insane way to structure civilisation.
We can keep all the good stuff - and there is good stuff on social media of course - we can keep all that and just throw away the manipulation business model, and substitute in a different business model. And and there are many alternatives that would be better, they just have to be honest. It could be a paid service like a Netflix, where you're paying for it, you're the genuine customer, it has to keep your interest... it could be like a public library, it could become a public thing that is that isn't commercial at all. That's an option.
But what we did in Silicon Valley is we wanted it both ways. We wanted everything open and free but we wanted hero entrepreneurs and hackers. And so the only way to get that was this advertising thing that that gradually turned into the manipulation engine as the computers got faster. And this this weird business plan... once you can see that there are alternatives you realise how strange it is, and how unsustainable it is, this is the thing we must get rid
of.
We don't have to get rid of the smartphone. We don't have to get rid of the idea of social media. We just have to get rid of the manipulation machine that's in the background.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_Jq42Og7Q
Yeah, I left Fecesbook (sic) in 2009 and never looked back. I do have a stub account because I use a couple of apps that require one. I consider FB the equivalent of graffiti and tabloid news. G+ is much better. It has its faults. For instance, it's a shame that you can know longer share circles. That was very helpful for people who were new to G+ or wanted to expand the number of people they follow. Also, spam has become a big issue in large communities that do not moderate membership as well as for individuals who post frequently (say, 12+ posts per day). I chose to moderate membership for my two communities from the beginning. Thus, filtering out 99% of spammers. This makes it easy for me to ban the one or two who make it through my filter once in a while.
ReplyDeleteI too am not in the habit of blocking people. I will generally only block spammers or people who insist on ad hominem attacks. It's OK to disagree, but do it respectfully.