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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211231/17431248208/can-you-solve-miserable-being-miserable-online-regulating-tech.shtml>
"Over the last few months, I've been asking a general question which I don't
know the answer to, but which I think needs a lot more research. It gets back
to the issue of how much of the "bad" that many people seem to insist is caused
by social media (and Facebook in particular) is caused by social media, and how
much of it is just shining a light on what was always there. I've suggested
that it would be useful to have a more nuanced account of this, because it's
become all too common for people to insist that anything bad they see talked
about on social media was magically caused by social media (oddly, traditional
media, including cable news, rarely gets this kind of treatment). The reality,
of course, is likely that there are a mix of things happening, and they're not
easily teased apart, unfortunately. So, what I'd
like to see is some more
nuanced accounting of how much of the "bad stuff" we see online is (1) just
social media reflecting back things bad things that have always been there, but
which we were less aware of as opposed to (2) enabled by social media
connecting and amplifying people spreading the bad stuff. On top of that, I
think we should similarly be comparing how social media also has connected tons
of people
for good purposes as well — and see how much of that happens as
compared to the bad.
I'm not holding my breath for anyone to actually produce this research, but I
did find a recent Charlie Warzel piece very interesting, and worth reading, in
which he suggests (with some interesting citations), that social media
disproportionately encourages the miserable to connect with each other and egg
each other on. It's a very nuanced piece that does a good job highlighting the
very competing incentives happening, and notes that part of the reason there's
so much garbage online is that there's tremendous demand for it"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
