I just talked to my superior about the most urgent thing EU countries are facing currently.
I should add that he is 100% disabled but studied in CS and reads everything which is interesting to him and his world view.
When I said that social media dictates the discussions and the media, we agreed on the thought after a short period.
And if we could solve this issue we mostlikely would get awarded a noble price.
What I am trying to say:
Social media is run by - at least - flawed people. And used by the evil ones to their maximum, putting the honest Ones into a position to explain.
We are loosing our discourse, we are mixing our cultures - or we split at our ethics.
Social media is a cancer with no current treatment. Civilians will be in favor of social media since it also benefits society directly.
But we are diminishing other things with it.
Maybe there will be one more brilliant mind educated who may aid us in these times.
The Algorithm needs to be regulated. (Meaning: Recommendation algorithms should be monitored to make sure that they’re not ‘discovering’ that they can manipulate people with fear, anger and other base negative emotions.)
We already know that the most motivating things for humans is fear and anger/outrage. We also know that these are not healthy emotions for the individual or for society and yet we allow social media algorithms to to maximize engagement using fear and anger.
In addition, it is very hard to craft a message that is both appealing and true. It is much easier to craft a message that is appealing if you can get rid of the Truth constraint.
These are probably the two core issues that are causing us the most strife. Unthinking recommendation algorithms have identified content that stokes base emotions like fear and anger as being the ones that generate the most ‘engagement’; and people, seeking to exploit these algorithms for personal gain (advertisers, political actors, etc), craft messages to maximize their engagement (anger/outrage, fear) while ignoring reality/truth/facts because reality is too hard of a constraint.
The flip side of this is that you see people, who practically live on social media, start to unconsciously adopt the same messaging style because it works even better as people become attuned to the fear and outrage.
So, now you have a feedback loop of people being conditioned by algorithms to be maximally outrageous and those masses of people spontaneously generating memes and social connections that reinforce outrage and fear.
This poison is now spreading into our social institutions and governments. Facts matter less than saying things that are outrageous and valuing the truth is obviously a silly proposition. After all, it’s plainly obvious that it is much harder to get upvotes if you care about the truth…
Try it, go to a community that matches your political leanings and try to correct misinformation. If you’re not banned you will be buried in downvotes because people don’t value the truth as much as they value an entertaining lie.
For a long time, it was us against the bots and the companies. But we no longer know what’s being given to us because it matches versus what’s being given to us because they’re paying for it to be seen.
The danger is the algorithm gives us a steady stream of what we appear to want. It’s serotonin. Then it’s weaponized. There’s no appreciable difference between the ads, the propaganda, the creators honest content and the creators paid content. We’re getting echo chambers of what we want and paid advertisements to sure that up.
People see it on Facebook and TikTok and just take it as read that what’s being presented is truth. Even the ones that are savvy to bias end up getting swept along with the tide.
The only way to stop this is to demand disinformation and fact-checking. But instead of that, everyone seems to be hell-bent on knocking out private conversation where we might be able to communicate and are being forced to rely solely on whatever the algorithm allows us.
I just talked to my superior about the most urgent thing EU countries are facing currently. I should add that he is 100% disabled but studied in CS and reads everything which is interesting to him and his world view.
When I said that social media dictates the discussions and the media, we agreed on the thought after a short period.
And if we could solve this issue we mostlikely would get awarded a noble price.
What I am trying to say: Social media is run by - at least - flawed people. And used by the evil ones to their maximum, putting the honest Ones into a position to explain.
We are loosing our discourse, we are mixing our cultures - or we split at our ethics.
Social media is a cancer with no current treatment. Civilians will be in favor of social media since it also benefits society directly. But we are diminishing other things with it.
Maybe there will be one more brilliant mind educated who may aid us in these times.
The Algorithm needs to be regulated. (Meaning: Recommendation algorithms should be monitored to make sure that they’re not ‘discovering’ that they can manipulate people with fear, anger and other base negative emotions.)
We already know that the most motivating things for humans is fear and anger/outrage. We also know that these are not healthy emotions for the individual or for society and yet we allow social media algorithms to to maximize engagement using fear and anger.
In addition, it is very hard to craft a message that is both appealing and true. It is much easier to craft a message that is appealing if you can get rid of the Truth constraint.
These are probably the two core issues that are causing us the most strife. Unthinking recommendation algorithms have identified content that stokes base emotions like fear and anger as being the ones that generate the most ‘engagement’; and people, seeking to exploit these algorithms for personal gain (advertisers, political actors, etc), craft messages to maximize their engagement (anger/outrage, fear) while ignoring reality/truth/facts because reality is too hard of a constraint.
The flip side of this is that you see people, who practically live on social media, start to unconsciously adopt the same messaging style because it works even better as people become attuned to the fear and outrage.
So, now you have a feedback loop of people being conditioned by algorithms to be maximally outrageous and those masses of people spontaneously generating memes and social connections that reinforce outrage and fear.
This poison is now spreading into our social institutions and governments. Facts matter less than saying things that are outrageous and valuing the truth is obviously a silly proposition. After all, it’s plainly obvious that it is much harder to get upvotes if you care about the truth…
Try it, go to a community that matches your political leanings and try to correct misinformation. If you’re not banned you will be buried in downvotes because people don’t value the truth as much as they value an entertaining lie.
IMHO, It’s the algorithm that’s the real devil.
For a long time, it was us against the bots and the companies. But we no longer know what’s being given to us because it matches versus what’s being given to us because they’re paying for it to be seen.
The danger is the algorithm gives us a steady stream of what we appear to want. It’s serotonin. Then it’s weaponized. There’s no appreciable difference between the ads, the propaganda, the creators honest content and the creators paid content. We’re getting echo chambers of what we want and paid advertisements to sure that up.
People see it on Facebook and TikTok and just take it as read that what’s being presented is truth. Even the ones that are savvy to bias end up getting swept along with the tide.
The only way to stop this is to demand disinformation and fact-checking. But instead of that, everyone seems to be hell-bent on knocking out private conversation where we might be able to communicate and are being forced to rely solely on whatever the algorithm allows us.
Well said.
e: oops, double comment