Social media worsens people’s perceptions of the world can actively influences what they share and consider their own opinion.
The same point applies to family, for example, and whether I need better family or not they’re all I’ve got. And Facebook has pushed them really far down whatever fringe they had a slight inclination to. Before Facebook any extreme views could be tempered a bit in family conversations, but now everyone thinks they have the weight and authority of the whole world, or at least their tribe, behind every argument.
This bait and switch is not something we agreed to as a society. We joined for the pics of partners, kids and puppies, and to stalk and ‘poke’ people we had real life crushes on. We stayed because we found a million welcoming tribes all defined by hatred and anger.
To be fair this is true of most online platforms. It's easy to go down the slippery slope of always doubling down on defending your argument and never admitting to be wrong. People who get caught up in this cycle can end up in psych wards, no joke
On a different note, I joined FB as part of my college's freshmen induction class. It was "part of the course". I imagine Mark really pulled some favors from his frat bros to get that going
I still don't get how this is unique to Facebook or even at all avoidable in the future. Internet facilitates communication. Unless you censor every word, it _will_ be used for pushing conspiracy theories, too, how can you avoid that? If, let's say, the government shuts down Facebook, they will go to Telegram. If the government shuts down Telegram, they will go to a bar and hang out with their tribe. Or find another new service that's not censored. It seems to be a function of communication, especially enhanced by technology, not Facebook in particular.
For me, data point of 1, I don't see a problem in my feed. I use FB to stay in touch with my friends and family all around the world, whom I would very rarely hear from otherwise, I get 0 political posts, if somebody posts something that upsets me, I mute them, yes, including family members. Even if this is your family, you are still not obligated to sign up to every one of their posts, just like you are not obligated to listen to everything they have to say in person.
Passive vs Active exposure is more the problem. If I walk past a graffiti wall that has conspiracy theories on it along with everyone in my city, the effect on my is very different from the post office choosing to deliver only pamphlets from conspiracy theorists to my mailbox instead of the mainstream newspaper.
Actively targeting fringe ideas to people to the exclusion of other mainstream ideas is different from the general availability of ideas and lack of censorship.
London has Speaker's Corner at Hyde park, for instance, where anyone is free to come and loudly discuss whatever crackpot ideas they have without censorship. Think it's been active for hundreds of years — but it does not overwhelm society because it allows the ideas to compete fairly on merit and evidence. Same for the salons of Paris, the tea shops of Calcutta and any other forums. The internet also had this mechanic during its beginning — anyone could say whatever they wanted on their geocities, myspace or livejournal, and all these ideas competed on fair terms with everything else.
Social media is a different beast altogether. Actively pushing whatever ideas are algorithmically calculated to achieve engagement is not a fair fight.
> I still don't get how this is unique to Facebook or even at all avoidable in the future. Internet facilitates communication. Unless you censor every word, it _will_ be used for pushing conspiracy theories, too, how can you avoid that?
Imagine you had control if your feed algorithm, or that engaging wasn't automatically translating into endorsing and recommending.
But either way, is FB really to blame for your family’s lack of discernment?
I’ve set plenty of family members to “unfollow” so I don’t have to deal with their craziness. I’m also not above to distancing myself from crazy family members in real life.
Yeah, I really don't get this all or nothing approach. Either I'm on Facebook reading every single piece of crap whoever throws my way, or I'm quitting the evil social media cold turkey. Why?
The same point applies to family, for example, and whether I need better family or not they’re all I’ve got. And Facebook has pushed them really far down whatever fringe they had a slight inclination to. Before Facebook any extreme views could be tempered a bit in family conversations, but now everyone thinks they have the weight and authority of the whole world, or at least their tribe, behind every argument.
This bait and switch is not something we agreed to as a society. We joined for the pics of partners, kids and puppies, and to stalk and ‘poke’ people we had real life crushes on. We stayed because we found a million welcoming tribes all defined by hatred and anger.