I’m seeing one too many people blaming social media for this and social media for that because it’s just simply - social media. I think about this because I believe that you shouldn’t blame the tool because it is a tool, but blame the person who uses the tool for their intent.
Which means I’m on the side of the camp that actually knows lots of people abuse social media and has it demonized. It’s absolutely silly to just blame a concept or an idea for just being as is. So everyone else is going around blaming and blaming social media for their problems. Not too much the individuals that have contaminated it with their empty-brained existences.
And we all know that some of the more popular social media platforms are controlled by devoid-of-reality sychophants in Zuck, Spez, Musk that sways and stirs the volume of people on their platform with their equally as devoid ideas in how to manage.
Social Media, whether you like it or not, has a use. It’s a useful tool to engage with eachother as close as possible. Might be a bit saturated with many platforms to choose from.
But I just think social media being blamed for just being as is, is such a backwards way of thinking.
In my opinion it ties into Dunbar’s number or the monkey sphere, where humans simply cannot be that well connected without it ultimately becoming a disaster.
The human mind just isn’t as evolved as everyone thinks it is and is built on a design that was about survival of you and your tribe.
I usually start from this point and then add in the billionaires and corporations that have learnt how to manipulate these instincts for their own gain.
Yeah I’m starting to agree. Even if some of us here are more than evolved enough for this, it doesn’t mean the average joe is.
Social media is not just a tool; every single major social network has an algorithm with an agenda
Tools for connecting people cannot make editorial decisions. Tools for connecting people don’t try to manipulate those people into thinking certain ways.
If social networks were purely tools for connecting people who want to communicate, then we’d be having a different conversation.
If you ask me, we should recategorize Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc from “Social Networks” to “Content Distributors” because that’s what they are. They take content from the users and advertisers and prioritize what they want to promote in front of the users.
Signal, Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc don’t have algorithms with agendas so their purpose is purely social networking. They are the actual social networks.
Social Media can be a valuable tool. I find that certain platforms attract different groups of people. I stay away from twitter because, well, we know how to find the nazis. Facebook is for people who like to argue and scam people. And instagram is for the utterly shallow and vapid people who think they are famous. Big ego central. There are nice people on any platform, but you do have to put up with a ton of shit depending on the platform. Watching TV does not rot your brain. Playing video games does not make you violent. Smoking pot does not make you a junkie. Kissing does not lead to sex & pregnancy.
Any activity/tool can do harm, but it’s the individual who is responsible for the action.
I like your sentiment but I have to admit I’m wary of perpetuating the narrative of personal responsibility, since it’s been used so often to excuse discrimination against people for perceived ‘deviant choices’. I would argue that the manifestations of individual behavioral dysfunction are a function of the corrosion of traditional social bonds combined with the unrealized societal effects of new communication technologies. Like a feedback loop of compromised people consuming media that validates their harmful or extreme worldviews.
Yes, social media is the problem. But there are two social media spheres. The one where we are, with Lemmy and Mastodon, is not the problem. The problem is the social media that exists in the capitalist world. What happened with the internet is that we invented a lot of services that should be a human right but they are controlled by corporations. Everyone should have access to a zero knowledge email, everyone should have access to a social media platform that is not controlled by anyone (it’s a public space).
Everyone should have access
They have, and choose not to.
This. Don’t rob the public of agency, they actively choose algorithms that will dictate them what to say, think, do and feel.
I don’t disagree with that but what about the people that are not connected to information like we are? What about the average Joe that is asked for an Instagram account so that he can get the contact of a person promising a job? (Just a random example).
I have a Facebook account too actually for far more vapid reasons of needing a “meta” account to use Oculus Quest, and I have an Instagram from the before-times - for when I was a content creator. I just don’t use them because the stuff on there fundamentally doesn’t appeal to me.
“Source of all problems?” If you exaggerate it right in your question and then ask if it’s exaggerated, of course the answer will be yes.
“It’s just a tool” yes and when people say “social media” they mean the whole combination of the tools and how they are getting used. The whole “it’s just a tool” argument isn’t worth much. Yes, it is, and now that it’s been let loose in the world, we see how it is being used.
A match is “just a tool” but in a forest that’s dripping with gasoline, you can see how that tool will do exactly one job.
It’s not social media, it’s the algorithms that drives engagement for … profit. “Number must go up.” “The more users the more we can sell ourselves to VCs for.”
That’s why Fediverse is so important. We keep the social, but leave the negative effects behind. Feel free to click on a ragebait title here without your whole feed suddenly being steered in that direction.
It’s just a catalyst. Or rather a mirror
As someone who became an adult before social media was a thing, it has absolutely been a detriment to society.
There’s great aspects to it and I utilize them. But as a whole, it has FUUUUCKED us up in a very significant way.
There is a direct correlation between the rise of social media and the absolute nosedive our political discourse has taken. Misinformation is SO much more prevalent now. And that rise in misinformation is definitely having real world effects.
Social media, like most things in life, has its good and bad sides. Places like twitter and Facebook have definitely been moved to the “bad” side of things through the use of an algorithm to curate the user’s experience and steer them towards socially harmful content. It’s much more difficult to do this on federated SM because anti social messaging doesn’t get amplified.
It’s not a panacea, and there will be attempts to corrupt it, but federated SM does give me hope that we can escape the rabbit hole of billionaire bro psychopaths.
It’s equally easy to do on federated social media, it’s just that no one found the incentive (yet?).
Why is it fairly easy?
It’s just an algorithm, all it takes is someone deciding they want to do it.
Huh? What algorithm? Where?
Lemmy has no algorithm in the way that you mean it.
Which is to say: there are a number of sort options like “top”, “hot” or “scaled” which work purely on the basis of upvotes or downvotes and don’t involve the actual content within the posts whatsoever.
It also has no “suggested” or “for you” and no personalization or data harvesting, the sort being based purely on upvotes or downvotes also doesn’t artificially skew the content politically in any which way.
It’s also completely open source so if that changed, not only would people find out immediately, but they’d be able to fork it and undo the change and maintain their own version.
Any instance then using an unfair sort feature would be defederated from.
So I don’t understand what you mean at all to be honest.
If you had moderate political views, social media algorithms will try to feed you more and more extremist views based on what you are actually reading or have an interest on. This is just capitalism at work because the more time you spend on those websites, the more ad renevue for the platform. As a result those radicalization algorithms will probably push your moderate views to extremist views… So yes… Social networking are one of the main problems.
No, I don’t think it’s exaggerated.
Have you ever unplugged? If not, you simply have no possible frame of reference; you really want to find your answer, that’s how.
I’ve unplugged and absolutely nothing changed. People are absolutely full of bloodlust with or without social media and have always been. I don’t even use any corpo social media whatsoever still, I have no need or time for it.
Are social media the root of all problems? No. Do they have a significant influence? Yes.
You mentioned spineless billionaires who eff around. There are instances of real harm. There is bullying (everywhere), there are schemes to make groups depressed (teenage girls on Insta), there is a lack of moderators that lead to genocide (Myanmar). These things deserve to be looked at by legislators when the sycophants don’t do it by themselves.
Social media addiction is a thing as well. Addictions in young people are bad. Parents should be on the front line of this. But that does not absolve social media companies from taking measures to curb certain excesses. Tobacco companies are not allowed to advertize to toddlers either.
So saying they’re just a tool, like, say, a hammer is insincere. You can use a hammer to cause real harm. You can deploy social media to cause real harm.
One of the greatest issues of social media is scale. People on the fringes of society who would be largely outcast in their communities can group and organize with much more ease. In the past, this was limited to the pub in three sheets to the wind discussions. Now you get sh!t like Q Anon, flatearthers, vax nuts, etc. - stuff that common sense in smaller communities would have moderated or stamped out now gets mass appeal. They seem much bigger as an online presence than they often are. But they get dedicated believers to start shooting.
The introduction of the internet has been compared to the introduction of the printing press in Europe. Both events caused a quantum leap in the dissemination of information with profound influences on society. After the printing press we got a century and a half of conflicts and wars. We’ll be well off if all we get here is a century of people typing in caps lock at each other.
We limit things in society. The availability of nicotine products, alcohol, the ability to drive, the availability of weaponry, antitrust laws, environmental protections, etc. I think we will not get past regulating social media somehow. By which I mean I don’t know how either.
One thing that is certain will benefit society is investing in education, teaching media savvy-ness to young children and all adults if possible, giving them the tools to sort the relevant from the distorted. We are largely unprepared for this and I include myself here having grown up with papers and landlines. But education is the saddest item in any budget, as the costs are high and the results take a generation to bear fruit.
Trump wants to dismantle the DOE…
Social media as a concept is not evil or whatever, but a platform with millions and millions of users under corporate control puts a lot of power and influence in the hands of a very small elite. This is the problem. Not the technology itself. With regulation or decentralisation the problem can be fixed. Imo.
You’ll find this in many places that people would rather blame the world en lieu of looking inward. It’s a sad thing, as the latter is where one has most effect.
The internet is a firehose pumped from the septic tank of the human psyche.
If it is a general feature of enough human minds, it ends up there.
So, be better, I guess?
