It.. feels accurate. I don't frequent FB or other mainstream social spots, but even on HN, the pattern is relatively clear. Vocal minorities tend to drive the conversations to their respective corners, while the middle quietly moves to, at most, watch at a safe distance.
Part of me is happy about it. The sooner we get out of the social media landscape, the better the society as a whole will be.. in my opinion anyway. Still, we have already lost so much of the original internet. That loss makes me sad.
[1]https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/t/o/p.tornberg/k.p.tornberg.ht...
You can have beliefs, but you also must have heart and a brain to open your world view to other perspectives. This is what being an adult is all about. Not this crap that we see today.
One thing is true: actual, active socializing is happening in chat apps (and Discord), not FB, X, or IG.
While I share the hope, it's probably not going to happen: most folks have moved from FB to use AI chats. Now it's the tool to manipulate opinions and habits. And it's working very well and nuanced. With AI, the society will be more divided, more polarised, and less happy than before.
And there's no way back already! Even if the web search works well one day, the folks desire (and habit!) to outsource thinking is too strong, especially among younger.
The 'younger' only because they're forming habits in the time of AI. Most all humans tend towards minimising cognitive load; the making hard decisions and consideration of complex topics and situations. It's all about the tools that were available to you at the time you started to need those tools. The core is the same. Low-level, essentially sub-conscious, human behaviour change doesn't happen on a noticeable time frame^.
^ my opinion, not based on research. ie. feel free to critique.
What has changed is the awareness of the hacks that work on the human lizard brain, and therefore pandering to all that makes us weak and powerless in exchange for money and convenience. That's the part that makes it feel, for me, more likely that there's no way back. Those hacks will only get more refined and more streamlined into exploitation.
While I agree for less happy, I am not seeing AI chatbot been more divisive and polirised than social media in general. Am I missing something?
I don't care to have the conversation or change anyone's mind but your post is the perfect example why people in the middle disengaged from the loud minority that takes over online spaces.
The Overton window is not involved in defining the middle, and the middle definitively do not need to agree 50% with any specific decision done by the left or right.
This is factually not true. Levels of violence by the state against citizens in the United States is at near historic lows. The state killed dozens of children in Waco in the 90s, bombed domestic buildings in Philadelphia in the 80s, shot protestors Kent State University in the 70s, going back to the early years of the USA where protests and rebellions were put down with private militias and bounties. The shooting by one officer of one protester in a scuffle with officers wouldn't have reached the history books in any other time.
People wield "the middle" as if it is some magic incantation that makes them correct or immune to criticism. In fact, it is generally the "middle" or, as I prefer to call them, the "inert" that tend to be wrong since they are always behind the curve rather than ahead of it.
In Milgram's experiment, only the most "partisan" refused to deliver the shocks. The "middle" dutifully continued right to the end and delivered the highest voltages even as their own distress mounted.
You may avoid politics, but politics may not avoid you.
Someone very famous who predates social media had words for you:
"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
>You may avoid politics, but politics may not avoid you.
This is the correct view, in the sense that if you don't belong to some kind of tribe, you'll get ripped off by someone who does. The inert group are not wrong, but by participating less than the others in the battle for their collective self interest, they will end up being the ones taken advantage of.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington...
There sure were a lot of people in that crowd chanting "Hang Mike Pence" but I guess if your point is just that not all of them were doing it then I suppose you're right.
Be serious.
Sure seemed like it. All those people chanting to kill the VP? Sure seems like it.
> How come no one's been charged for assassination attempt?
Corruption? Doesn't change the facts. They were trying to kill the VP.
Pretend what you want, there were 1500+ that day that certain people said were just tourists.
"1,500 people were trying to kill the VP" - mentally ill person
Is this irony? You literally just posted about arguments from vocal minorities on HN and other social media driving people away.
I am not making fun of you. I treat words very seriously. I also treat them seriously enough to not direct every conversation to my pet cause ( whatever it may be ).
Sure. You can guess the "camp", but so what? Must we all use value-neutral language when discussing an issue? I take issue with centrism for centrism's sake. If your goal is to take two points of view and treat them as equals then that grants a systemic advantage to whoever has the more insane view. By not calling something what it is you legitimize atrocities. Fuck centrism. Believe in something, you coward.
:D I appreciate it. I truly do. I am somewhat aghast that someone would suggest that centrism, as a whole, is a not, in itself, a belief system. If anything, centrists seem to believe in actual principles ( and thus sides with whoever seems to embody those best at any given time ). On the other hand, it really are those pesky zealot believers that are causing all that ruckus..
<< By not calling something what it is you legitimize atrocities.
Oh man. Please, share with me the unsaid truth that must not be spoken. I am not joking. Speak whatever is in your heart and I will personally carry it far and wide in the cities near me.
What principles could a person have that would put them in the center of US politics right now?
> Please, share with me the unsaid truth that must not be spoken. I am not joking. Speak whatever is in your heart and I will personally carry it far and wide in the cities near me.
Sure. My principles are that those with power must be held to higher, not lower, standards of conduct and accountability. When you act like maybe there's something to the obvious and boldfaced lie that the two recent killings by ICE* were done in self-defense then you are shifting the scope of acceptable conduct towards lawlessness. Playing both sides makes you an enemy of civil society.
The "liberal" media has their version of events, largely blaming "insufficient training." The killers had 10+ years of experience in their roles. When interviewing administration officials reporters refuse to call them liars or question their motivations, instead suggesting that they are simply mistaken.
And of course the official right-wing line is that the murdered civilians were extremist terrorists who attacked law enforcement officers and deserved what they got. Full-throated endorsement of street executions. Where is your centrism? What is the center between these two positions? I align myself more with the former because it's at least not totally deranged. I'm not a partisan because I don't think the Democrats or media agree with my values, but I'm also not going to equivocate between them and Republicans and act like I'm stranded in the middle of two positions. The solution isn't in the middle of two wrong answers, it's something else entirely.
*: (or was it CBP? They all blend together all of a sudden)
<< What principles could a person have that would put them in the center of US politics right now?
Any? All? None? Everything in between? The question itself is rather faulty, which prompted me to respond the way I did. There is a reason for it too beyond pure rhetoric: centrists overlap with US independents so their goals are not as easily labeled ( I suppose ).
Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way.
What do you think each side of US American politics are defined by what principle now?
<< Playing both sides makes you an enemy of civil society.
See.. it is almost as if you did not read my opening paragraph. Statement like that by itself is not exactly conducive to dialogue. I normally would not care, but I note it as we are attempting to have a conversation. Statement like that undermines it for a simple person like me.
<< Where is your centrism?
Oh boy.
<< What is the center between these two positions?
In the middle?
<< When you act like maybe there's something to the obvious and boldfaced lie that the two recent killings by ICE* were done in self-defense then you are shifting the scope of acceptable conduct towards lawlessness.
I can give you Pretti. Despite some previous engagements suggesting he was not just 'some rando, who was at the wrong time at the wrong place', his death was less defensible in the context than Good's ( she actually did swipe that officer.. ). We can argue all day over intentions and whatnot, but that is basically where middle ground lies: in taking each thing as its own case. But we will not do any of that, will we.
<< The solution isn't in the middle of two wrong answers, it's something else entirely.
Color me intrigued. What is the answer?
Social media will stop becoming relevant when we stop treating each person as a mini corporation that needs to provide value, trying to optimize every aspect of your life in a life-long marketing campaign.
I know social media had some real use cases. CL and FB marketplace are probably one good example of that. But the rest of it.. best I can say, my overall happiness jumped up after first month of going on a media diet.
It used to feel like the internet was a place you went to explore and learn. It was harder to use and navigate, so most ordinary people did not spend much time there. Back then, a lot of people believed it would make the world better because everyone could access information and educate themselves.
That optimism did not survive contact with reality. Today you can carry essentially all human knowledge in your pocket, yet much of the internet is funneled through a handful of corporations whose business model is advertising and attention. Instead of helping people discover things, the dominant platforms optimize for keeping you scrolling with outrage, dopamine hits, and low value content. Worst thing is of course politics which moved in here.
The joy of exploring is done, but honestly I think that it atleast partly that the og users got older. Hackernews somehow reminding me the "old Internet", somehow alike people with desire to explore and have honest discussion on genuinely interesting topic.
Hyper-monetization killed it all
FB and Twitter seem to drive heavy political ideological content at the slightest hint of engagement.
I think a problem with loud poles and a quiet middle is the political class takes its queue from the internet discourse. The algorithms drive content, but in a reverse fashion they also poll the electorate, providing signal the political scientists use to calibrate messaging.
Vocal minorities vary but tend just to excite the others, not to affirm any point.
As a Canadian, I feel that people on opposite ends of the spectrum, although they might literally call for the deaths of those on the other end, have a huge amount in common with each other. Canada has problems, but its still a pretty great country. If people would step outside of the hyper-partisan identities they've been constructing for themselves online and try to see the concerns of the other side, they'd probably find they're not as horrible or misguided as they might think while reading facebook or reddit. If the reasonable centre that dominates public policy can continue to ween itself off of American social media, there's hope for a strong, unified country that's capable of having adult political discourse between people who disagree on finer points. We clearly have some challenges to face (e.g. separatism) in getting there though.
If you're in the U.S. though, things appear very different. While both political parties seem to have been co-opted by billionaire interests, one party has fallen into what can be described as, if we're being charitable, a cult of personality. Unfortunately, that personality has been doing things that are impossible to dismiss as the online hysteria of the other side. Threatening allies with military invasion. High seas piracy. Kidnapping of a foreign leader (admittedly a not very nice one) from his nation. Betraying allies to cozy up to dictators like Putin. Torching global markets with constantly changing tariffs. The list goes on. Then there's what's going on within U.S. borders. If you're in the U.S., the polarization isn't just online. It's something very real. I feel that somebody opposing what ICE is doing in Minnesota and a die-hard Trump supporter really don't have a lot in common and I don't think removing them from online social media will result in civil discourse between the two. There are very real differences there that are coming to a head.
I think it's because social media, as a whole, stopped providing any value to its users. In the early days it did bring a novel way to connect, coordinate, stay in touch, discover, and learn. Today, not so much.
It seems we are between worlds now, with the wells of the "old order" drying up, and the springs of the "new order" not found / tapped just yet.
I think these fragmented Discords are the return to the idea of specific, uncrowded, neatly maintained places, with a relatively high barrier to entry for a random person. Subreddits are a bit similar, but less insular.
I don't know much about Discord (my only experience being some years ago when I joined for an open source project and left soon after I noticed how incredibly use hostile it is) but I do know that if you create a single account it is trivial to join any "server" (which, despite the marketing is just a chatroom hosted on their servers).
I miss the old social media. I'd love to have it back. Having moved several times to various corners of the world, I have dear family and friends who are scattered across multiple continents. It's difficult to maintain ongoing 1:1 connections across such distances, but I used to be able to keep up with them and their families -- and them with mine -- via social media. It felt genuinely communal.
And then the posts from them became increasingly interspersed with -- and eventually outright replaced by -- advertisements, rage bait from random people(?) I didn't know, and then eventually AI slop. All with the obvious goal of manipulating my attention and getting me to consume more advertising.
It felt absolutely gross. Not something I wanted my personal life to be associated with. I stopped posting. So did my friends. The end.
But I still miss the old social media, and would use it if it actually existed (not just as a technology or a business model, mind you, but as an actual network with the adoption needed to create those kind of connections).
The treatment of chat applications, online forums, etc. as social media has always felt strange to me for that reason. While the companies that offer those services may control the platform, control of interactions is limited to moderation and the content of those interactions is rarely created by a commercial interest.
I think musk don't fight against bot because it makes the ads sells more (just like in the first days of SEM, where fake traffic and fake clicks was a source of revenue for second tier ad networks). But ultimately he's going to have to do something against it.
Musk: "Why, at this rate, I'll have to shut this place down in... let's see... 684,000 years."
The political balance of social media has shifted just as noticeably. The once-clear Democratic lean of major platforms has declined. Twitter/X, in particular, has seen a radical flip: a space dominated by Democrats in 2020 is now more Republican-aligned, especially among its most active users and posters. Reddit’s remains a Democraic stronghold, but its liberal edge has softened.
Across platforms, overall political posting has declined, yet its link with affective polarization persists. Those expressing the strongest partisan animus continue to post most frequently, meaning that visible political discourse remains dominated by the most polarized voices. This leads to a distorted representation of politics, that itself can function as a driver of societal polarization [17, 12].
Overall, the data depict a social media ecosystem in slow contraction and segmentation. As casual users disengage while polarized partisans remain highly active, the tone of online political life may grow more conflictual even as participation declines. The digital public sphere is becoming smaller, sharper, and louder: fewer participants, but stronger opinions. What remains online is a politics that feels more divided – not because more people are fighting, but because the fighters are the ones left talking."
Yup, nothing unexpected here.
(1) Meta and Google have seen their growth slow (not shrink) because they reach virtually the entirety of the online population, especially in the US. Meanwhile their time spent metrics continue to rise.
(2) Reddit is called out as a modest grower but its usage has more than doubled in the US since 2021 from 90M to 170M (according to emarketer).
Doenst mean the conclusions are wrong (i agree with it on polarization) but the growth measures seem to not reflect reality.
1. "social media" is toxic
They may consume video on YouTube etc but the thought is, even amongst smart kids, that there is no net positive to interacting with people you don't know on social media.
This is somewhat disheartening given how many wonderful people I've met by just "being myself" on Twitter.
2. There is no central social media network anymore
I coached college club sports from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s. It's hard to overstate how EVERYONE in college was on Facebook. We used to have a dedicated forum for one of the teams and the president convinced me to go to Facebook groups b/c:
"Everyone is already on it and it has a notification system that people check b/c it's how they find out about college parties"
A current club president didn't even know what would be the best way to reach students other than flyers and setting up a table at the student center.
(I suggested Reddit and he acknowledged that would probably be one place where you at least knew students from the school might be there and were interested.)
I have 14 and 16 year old sons and they, and their friends, have the same feeling about social media. Their preferred way to communicate with friends is an iMessage group.
That "if I just browse around, I'll find the nexus of what I'm into" seems to not be a thing for teenagers these days.
I think it's the root cause of all our issues (in democratic society).
1. Quality brings success
2. Success brings popularity
3. Popularity brings idiots
4. Idiots destroy quality
Social media just reflects the state of its users.
Cable news was ramping up sensationalism -- including polarization -- before the internet was a household thing.
Social media gave the businesses real-time feedback of how to drive up engagement. So they amplify what keeps people engaged, which means leaning heavily on anger and divisiveness.
Or, is that what was missed? Better silos, with some sort of semi non-community enforcement for the quality of interaction/comment?
Once upon a time, people saw computers (then the Internet) as a way of lifting people up rather than pushing people down. They saw it as a way of equalizing people's access to knowledge, rather than subjecting them to a fire hose of information. They believed that it would encourage discourse to bring people together, rather than dividing people along ideological lines.
Yeah, we were naive.
I keep saying to my internet friends that the vast majority of people do not share political opinions online and you have to apply skepticism about what people actually think about political topics when scrolling through social media “takes”. Seems my intuition was not that far off.
"Overall [social media] platform use slipped ... especially the youngest ... who no longer use social media at all" is the kind of wild claim that requires a much more significant investigation than this author undertook.
I can only assume the coding and analysis was also conducted entirely by ChatGPT, which might explain why it appears superficially convincing but falls apart upon interrogation.
Will be interesting to see if any journal actually touches this. If so, they're going on my list of predatory journals.
Edit: I checked the associated GitHub, the Python notebook is - as expected - conspicuously vibe coded.
Looking for recommendations for discussion forums that aren't filled with these slop posts, anyone have any suggestions?
Seems false to me. Explosive growth in 2020 during Covid was widely recorded and seeming engagement. Flips of X were associated with massive drops in population and bots.
This seems entirely wrong to me
In short, the problem is ragebait. I might open up some app because I want to see cat videos, but when I'm presented with "Polly McPoliticianface LIES about FLOWERS" I'm likely to click in anger about Polly's nefarious actions. Do this enough and you end up with something that just tries to make you angry all the time.
Network effects be damned, we should all be a little more willing to pay to be part of platforms hosting digital communities or at least contribute in some way to the infrastructure.
Today, it's a dumpster fire, I can't see what anyone is doing, it's just AI videos and engagement bait.
Discord is the replacement for my friends at least.
and
https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
Change your Facebook bookmark to one of these.