There a lot of money in social media, literally hundreds of billions of dollars. I expect the case against it will continue to grow, like the case against cigarettes did.

I will say this, and this is anecdotal, but other events this week have been an excellent case study in how fast misinformation (charitably) and lies (uncharitably) spread across social media, and how much social media does to amp up the anger and tone of people. When I open Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or any of the smaller networks I see people baying for blood. Quite literally. But when I talk to my friends, or look at how people are acting in the street, I don't see that. I don't see the absolute frenzy that I see online.

If social media turns up the anger that much, I don't think it's worth the cost.

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Lerc 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>There a lot of money in social media, literally hundreds of billions of dollars. I expect the case against it will continue to grow, like the case against cigarettes did.

I don't think it follows that something making money must do so by being harmful. I do think strong regulation should exist to prevent businesses from introducing harmful behaviours to maximise profits, but to justify that opinion I have to believe that there is an ability to be profitable and ethical simultaneously.

>events this week have been an excellent case study in how fast misinformation (charitably) and lies (uncharitably) spread across social media

On the other hand The WSJ, Guardian, and other media outlets have published incorrect information on the same events. The primary method that people had to discover that this information was incorrect was social media. It's true that there was incorrect information and misinformation on social media, but it was also immediately challenged. That does create a source of conflict, but I don't think the solution is to accept falsehoods unchallenged.

If anything education is required to teach people to discuss opposing views without rising to anger or personal attacks.

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solid_fuel 2 days ago | parent [-]

> I don't think it follows that something making money must do so by being harmful.

My point isn't that it's automatically harmful, simply that there is a very strong incentive to protect the revenue. That makes it daunting to study these harms.

> On the other hand The WSJ, Guardian, and other media outlets have published incorrect information on the same events. The primary method that people had to discover that this information was incorrect was social media.

I agree with your point here too, and I don't think the solution is to completely stop or get rid of social media. But, the problem I see is there are tons of corners of social media where you can still see the original lies being repeated as if they are fact. In some spaces they get challenged, but in others they are echoed and repeated uncritically. That is what concerns me - long debunked rumors and lies that get repeated because they feel good.

> If anything education is required to teach people to discuss opposing views without rising to anger or personal attacks.

I think many people are actually capable of discussing opposing views without it becoming so inflammatory... in person. But algorithmic amplification online works against that and the strongest, loudest, quickest view tends to win in the attention landscape.

My concern is that social media is lowering people's ability to discuss things calmly, because instead of a discussion amongst acquaintances everything is an argument is against strangers. And that creates a dynamic where people who come to argue are not arguing against just you, but against every position they think you hold. We presort our opponents into categories based on perceived allegiance and then attack the entire image, instead of debating the actual person.

But I don't know if that can fixed behaviorally, because the challenge of social media is that the crowd is effectively infinite. The same arguments get repeated thousands of times, and there's not even a guarantee that the person you are arguing against is a real person and not just a paid employee, or a bot. That frustration builds into a froth because the debate never moves, it just repeats.

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Lerc 2 days ago | parent [-]

>My point isn't that it's automatically harmful, simply that there is a very strong incentive to protect the revenue. That makes it daunting to study these harms.

The problem is that having an incentive to hide harms is being used as evidence for the harm, whether it exists or not.

Surely the same argument could be applied that companies would be incentivised to make a product that was non-harmful over one that was harmful. Harming your users seems counterproductive at least to some extent. I don't think it is a given that a harmful approach is the most profitable.

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solid_fuel 2 days ago | parent [-]

> The problem is that having an incentive to hide harms is being used as evidence for the harm, whether it exists or not.

No, the incentive to hide harm is being given as a reason that studies into harm would be suppressed, not as evidence of harm in and of itself. This is a direct response to your original remark that "Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack."

Potential mechanisms and dynamics that cause harm are in the rest of my comment.

> Harming your users seems counterproductive at least to some extent.

Short term gains always take precedence. Cigarette companies knew about the harm of cigarettes and hid it for literally decades. [0] Fossil fuel companies have known about the danger of climate change for 100 years and hid it. [1]

If you dig through history there are hundreds of examples of companies knowingly harming their users, and continuing to do so until they were forced to stop or went out of business. Look at the Sacklers and the opioid epidemic [2], hell, look at Radithor. [3] It is profitable to harm your users, as long as you get their money before they die.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article-abstract/14/1/79/104820... [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/09/oil-companies... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor

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Lerc 2 days ago | parent [-]

>No, the incentive to hide harm is being given as a reason that studies into harm would be suppressed, not as evidence of harm in and of itself. This is a direct response to your original remark that "Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack."

That seems like a fair argument. I don't think it means that it grants opinions the weight of truth. I think it would make it fair to identify and criticise suppression of research and advocate for a mechanism by which such research can be conducted. An approach that I would support in this area was a tax or levy on companies with large numbers of users that could be ear-marked for funding independent research regarding the welfare of their user base and on society as a whole.

>Short term gains always take precedence.

That seems a far worthier problem to address.

>If you dig through history there are hundreds of examples of companies knowingly harming their users

I don't deny that these things exist, I simply believe that it is not inevitable.

	▲	Eisenstein 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> That seems a far worthier problem to address. If we can't fix the underlying problem immediately, treating the symptoms seems reasonable in the meantime.

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Tade0 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> If social media turns up the anger that much, I don't think it's worth the cost.

It doesn't. It's just that when people can publish whatever with impunity, they do just that.

Faced with the reality of what they're calling for they would largely stop immediately.

I believe the term for that is "keyboard warrior".

	▲	NeutralCrane 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		What you are describing is the mechanism by which social media turns up the anger.