| ▲ | _Algernon_ 4 days ago | |
The issue with social media isn't the free flow of information but the amplification of certain information — the information that tends to make you angry. The amplification is the cause of echo chambers, spreading of misinformation and disinformation, etc. It makes possible what in essence is a distributed denial of service attack on the human brain. Sure, chain emails existed before, but they had a pretty low ceiling of how many it would reach. It didn't scale well. In other words, you should regulate the amplification mechanism ("algorithm"), not what information is allowed to be said. I think forcing platforms to go back to subscribe+reverse chronological feeds would be a pretty good start. | ||
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 4 days ago | parent [-] | |
Genuinely astounding how few commenters here understand that the outrage is deliberate and curated because outrage improves messaging persuasiveness. All of the corporate-owned social media platforms have censorship, curation, and selection policies which impose an editorial slant on what's boosted and what isn't. All of them. No exceptions. None of them offer anything resembling a free, open, flow of information. (Mastodon does, or at least tries to, but it has very little reach compared to others.) And all of them are poisoned by the output of huge well-funded bot farm networks posting harmful content. Whether it's anti-vax nonsense, climate change denial, inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric, divisive political rage bait of all kinds, or covert propaganda designed to look reasonable and pull people into a rabbit hole of fake activism and misinformation, all of these networks are acting as a public brainwashing service for political ends. There is no "marketplace of ideas." Nothing that happens on social media is truly organic and bottom-up. And this is not an accident. These are primarily influence, behaviour modification, and persuasion networks, tailored using personal profiling, but disguised as entertainment and social connection, and allowing just enough dissent from the official party lines to create a superficial veneer of free speech. This process is essentially unregulated. There used to be some FTC oversight, but there isn't any more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana... | ||