Maybe it would be worth repeating the 'myths' he lists in the tweets:
Myth 1: A lot of misinfo on social media
No, research suggests there is little, shared by few & having small effects. Those sharing misinfo are not dumb. But they have intense political animus, which motivates to share what fits their worldview, true or false.
Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful
No, research suggests that online hate reflects offline frustrations that make them hateful both online & offline. The hateful are few in numbers but they are attracted to politics and, hence, are much more visible.
Myth 3: Social media are echo chambers
No, research shows that, for most, social media breaks the bubble. We are more connected to "the others" on social media than in our offline lives. That is why it feels unpleasant - because it is the most hateful "others" we meet.
I would love to read the research he's referring to, but I couldn't find any links or citations. I intuitively believe that there's truth to all of these so called myths, but I'd love to be proven wrong. Anyone know where I can read more about this?
I would, too, because I've seen research that says otherwise. I've talked with this researcher[1] about it in the past, not sure if their page has the study they were conducting online yet, but the page has papers that are relevant/adjacent to this topic.
My initial concern, based on reading the abstract, is that since this study only looks at Twitter and not Facebook, it isn’t enough evidence to make any conclusions about echo chambers in a general way as so many people get their news from Facebook.
Facebook tends towards people you know in real life, so it’d be closer to the echo chamber that is your immediate social circle, but possibly a bit more open because it doesn’t concentrate your attention as much as you probably do offline, i. e. 50 % with spouse and only seeing your high school buddy every two years.
I guess a lot depends on your job: if you work in healthcare or retail, you‘lo have pretty diverse interactions. Software developer in their home office? Not so much.
Reddit popular is a total echo chamber. Almost every sub, outside of focused hobby subs, turn into echo chambers eventually.
The dynamics of reddit, with downvotes totally squelching dissenting opinions and upvotes promoting popular ones, is naturally going to turn into a total echo chamber.
If you haven't touched Reddit in a while - especially if you've been involved in real conversations/work on the same topics in the meantime - it's a bizarre experience to visit various subreddits and see the particular subcultures which have developed. It tends to be very narrow, uninteresting, and annoying. I think most any monolithic community is going to be more or less like this.
It definitely includes hobby subs too. Like, you may find everyone reciting "never do X", even though it's actually correct to do X sometimes, and that's just an oversimplified rule for beginners.
It's why I keep coming back to Twitter, because it only gives me exactly the people I choose to follow, even if I sometimes have to fight the app to keep that default chronological view with no garbage added.
> I intuitively believe that there's truth to all of these so called myths, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
His opinions are based on claimed research while yours are based on intuition. I’d sooner trust his opionions compared to yours because he at least could be exposed as a liar if it turns out that the research doesn’t back up his opinions. You on the other hand would at worst be called naive.
I think the myth is the misinterpretation of scale. People tend to believe social media is primarily hate and misinformation, that most users are simply addicted to it like dope fiends, and that it's nothing but echo chambers, etc. All of these things are true, but likely to a lesser degree than assumed.
Agree, the negative part is disproportionately impactful.
As an analogy, my g/f and I recently went grocery shopping. As we got out she was fuming at how old people completely ignore COVID rules, whilst society is largely making sacrifices for them.
I was part of the whole experience, and two people ignored the rules. One did not have a mask, another did have one but ignored social distancing.
There were probably some 200 people in the store. So actual reality is that almost everybody complied. But it takes just one or two that don't, to make a sweeping conclusion like that.
Exactly my thoughts. OP needs to read _Thinking, Fast and Slow_ and/or _The Scout Mindset_. Actually COVID as a whole has been yet another revealing of the amazing ability of the irrationality of humans and our failure to understand statistics, numbers, and growth rates, large and small.
No, research suggests that online hate reflects offline frustrations that make them hateful both online & offline
That conclusion seems completely wrong to me. Sure, there are previous frustrations, but when you feel attacked online, you become hateful as a defense mechanism… and of course, there is always some YouTube channel ready to reinforce that anger.
And this happens with almost every social media since freenode
When I feel attacked online I stop going to the places where I don’t feel welcome. As you say, some people react by engaging and escalating, but I don’t think most people stick around long in those situations. What this guy is saying seems to be that the people who escalate are likely people who already behave that way offline.
My experience is that people are more socially refined when offline and that anti-social behavior is there but gets corrected and contained. Offline experiences can escalate much more but at tge same time there seems to be more conflict resolution. Everything is more intense.
But it’s refreshing to read about a different view on the topic.
My opinion is that it's rooted in the anonymity people feel on the 'Net. There are no, if little consequences to being a jerk online---not nearly like in "real life".
The other problem I see is that a person says what they feel in the moment---and then they move on. But the (emotionally charged) comment from that moment lives on, potentially for years. The "energy" doesn't dissipate with time like it does in "real life".
It’s not anonymity but the distance that matters. Plenty of people on Facebook with their real names, locations (through photos and events) don’t seem to care about saying things that they may not say face to face.
I think there are consequences, and I think the problem is jerks favor the punch in the gut over lukewarm ignorance they receive in return for little honest contributions. It's probably a natural tendency of a "superflat" social environment that hateful low-effort remarks pays off better.
A very recent extreme example from Ireland: Just last week, there was a horrific murder of a woman out running. Ashling Murphy, a teacher.
The next morning, print and radio media ran the leaked news that a Romanian national with many priors had been picked up by local Irish Gardai (cops).
For a day or two, racism and xenophobia ran rampant - then sure enough, he was found not suspicious and released. The man's life is ruined now.
IMMEDIATELY afterward, print and radio media blamed social media for jumping to conclusions, doxxing the man and ruining his life (social media were actually very good at removing his name). Old media are now calling for regulation of social media and blaming them for the whole thing, projecting and deflecting with impunity.
...
There are countless other examples - Joan Burton in Jobstown, Irish Water protests, Maurice McCabe - every time the government or Gardai or media are caught in a major lie thanks to social media, there are a couple weeks of stories about online bullying and the need to regulate social media.
It's so charmingly obvious, and the lie is blatant, but it works on enough people that they get away with it. The cost to society is extreme, from enabling corruption to slowing progress to dulling and poisoning the minds of the gullible.
Among other reasons, just consider that media suffered as much, financially, from monster.com and eBay, which devastated classifieds. For many local papers, that was the single largest change in the last two decades.
And I don’t remember any campaigns against those companies.
The individual journalist and editor actually writing and deciding on a story also doesn’t hold the grudges you assign to all of “media”. They don’t have the power to affect any change that could ever make the sort of difference needed to come back to them in any meaningful way. And they are unlikely to experience the strong emotions “media’ might have, because they haven’t experienced much of the loss that the industry has: they still have a job, for example. And by now, they are likely too young to know better times pre-internet.
>The individual journalist and editor actually writing and deciding on a story also doesn’t hold the grudges you assign to all of “media”.
That assertion doesn't hold up when you read the personal Twitter feeds of many journalists and editors of the publications pushing the anti-tech narrative.
2. FB promotes content with the fastest growth of attention: upvotes, downvotes, comments. It's the opposite of HN, basically. The most engaging content doesnt have to be divisive, but since the majority are emotional beings, and have little interest in abstract thoughts, they react better to emotions. Maybe in a few centuries, the majority will be more concerned with thoughts, and less with emotions, and the equivalent of a flame war will be snarky scientists exchanging with obscure arguments about correctness of some irrelevant theorem, e.g. NP-deniers would reject the NP=P equality, NP-protagonists would support it, and the moderate minority would advocate for a middle ground - that neither statement is provable. Those moderates will be dismissed as Goedel-ists.
3. FB is like a big open club that admits anyone and everyone, and all events take place in the only hall room. Predictably, it turns into a shouting match and FB has to ban some members, and by banning some and not others ideas, the club necesserarily turns into an echo chamber.
The echo chamber isn't due to bans. It has to do with Facebooks algorithms featuring you news stories you think you will relate to.
Besides, I have yet to see anyone banned from any social media site whose absence makes the site worse. In fact, I blame the various social sites for not banning them sooner.
> Myth 2: Social media makes people hateful
> No, research suggests that online hate reflects offline frustrations that make them hateful both online & offline.
That's just a sleight of hand. Sure, people may have been hateful before, but social media amplifies that hate exponentially.
Social media thrives on outrage, being addictive, and uses algorithmic ranking to feed it as much as possible.
> The hateful are few in numbers but they are attracted to politics and, hence, are much more visible.
Few in numbers? Have you seen what goes on during election years?
Who hasn't been talking about the January 6th events?
I'm not sure what there is to 'intellectually debate' about it, but I saw a decent amount of relatively sober discussion at the time. Did you not?
People who still talk about it this far after the 24 hr new cycle has moved on probably have strong emotions around it, so it makes sense that recent conversation is more emotionally charged.
I posted this because of this interview Michael Bang Petersen did last October (there's a transcript but you have to click to see it, then scroll down to where Petersen appears):
http://web.archive.org/web/20230601132401/https://www.nytime...