https://www.theguardian.com/politics...on-got-to-hide

Good morning! At the moment it is back to 2 bloody Fox Fake channels and 1 bloody CNN Fake channel.

I agree that the threat of social media should not be underestimated. It is probably the one thing which does the most to shape how we as a society think and communicate, and those things have a massive influence on shaping public opinion.

Here's an interesting TED talk about the danger of "bubbles", especially in regard to political polarization, especially through social media.

https://youtu.be/OM5awmxJh-s

Yeah, the video is good. I watched it twice already. One time in 2018 and one time when it was first posted in this thread. This time with a different mindset because I thought it would affect toddlers mostly back then.

Yeah, the video is good. I watched it twice already. One time in 2018 and again after you posted it. This time with a different mindset because I thought it would affect toddlers mostly back then.

Very good video as well. The term bubbleocracy is exactly on point for where we are heading imo.

Morning!

If the idea is to name things that are very bad then then we're probably going to agree a lot. It's beside the point though.

Media magnification of supposed dangers of social media is a factor, huh? What the critical mass of propagated anxiety about purported dangers of social required to take a little bit of control? A bit more.

And when, why, and how does the danger end? Did you know that social media is just the tip of the iceberg? There is a whole internet. A thing call the dark web. Oh the dangers that lurk after you buy-in to social media dangers. But it’s what comes after that which may really surprise you.

I know the internet from when it became mainstream and was some sort of underground thing, before that I was on CompuServe, many others were probably at AOL at that time. I like TOR for privacy though; the darknet is it's very own type of thread as well, but one doesn't have to go there. Social media like YT, Twitter and Facebook are omnipresent these days.

The two search queries (Fox News vs. CNN) are certainly just the tip of the iceberg, there are many other such icebergs getting meddled with unfortunately.

Social media matters more in the grand scheme of things than secluded and ultimately small groups of people who get radicalized on different kinds of political or other forums.

Social media permeates everything in society and plays a massive role in public opinion and mainstream, dark web/radicalized webforums does not. You can say dark web radicalized individuals, while social media radicalizes public opinion and the entire social structure of society.


Here's another video about information, attention, fake news and how the internet does not democratize knowledge, but instead promotes polarization and emotional responses (predominantly negative) rather than critical or rational thought.

https://youtu.be/jDaPmlQGeJU

Another very informative video!

Kind of like what one might infer misinformation about social media might look like. A link to a video on social media.

Who all is really threatened by social media? I don’t know, maybe authoritarians? They are like the prime suspects among who might target impressionable people on social media.

Serious question. Did you watch any of the 3 videos referred to in this thread up to the end? Maybe you are the "I don't click on random links" type?

I found the last one to be quite relevant to fake news, misinformation and so on. And it's a very scientific approach. Not just some rahrah.

Again 4:1 ratio for Fox and CNN, 4 fake Fox (bloody or not) and 1 fake CNN channel.

Fox:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...JAAQ%253D%253D

CNN:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...JAAQ%253D%253D

Like that. Go watch the video is not a congruent response with what was written Social media as a vehicle for persuasive guidance. Whether or not anyone views the video, it’s apparently convincing. The dangers of being convinced on social media, huh?

You sound like your have a fried brain. Maybe the first one is better, the toddler one. You are trying to lead this whole discussion ad-absurdum. I have to admit I cannot follow you there.

You suddenly resorted to banal derision. A danger on social media?!

Here is a hypothesis-
The supposed dangers of social media ( influences) are dangerous while anyone exposed to social media is unaware of them and susceptible them.

Maybe. Awareness is certainly a good starting point to be less susceptible.The last two videos (the non toddler ones ) cover a lot more, because they were made by an expert on this specific topic. He is director of the center for information and bubble studies at the university of Copenhagen. Not only social media bubbles, but also the well-known tulip bubble for example, a (funny) economic bubble. What are your credentials? But the hypothesis sounds plausible anyways and from my subjective point of view it is true, even though I did not see me as susceptible to it. I do now understand the mechanisms better. I mostly stopped Twitter and Facebook years ago because it did not feel right for some reason, without knowing why specifically. Then came the Cambridge Analytica scandal and I was completely out. Like when you start learning about poker and read a poker book and you find an explanation for why something you are doing is correct.

Here is a funny video about the Cambridge Analytica scandal (skip to around the 4 minute mark if you don't want to waste time):

CNN: Facebook and YouTube say they are removing content mentioning potential whistleblower's name

After Twitter did something (banning political ads) it's now Facebook and YouTube's turn to do something responsible.

It’s an old pic and addy, but here are some credentials....
[spoiler]


[/spoiler]

Messed up spoiler.....therefore invalid.

I thought about your hypothesis and I have come to the conclusion that it is universally valid. We shall call it spanktehbadwookie's law from now on.

2+2 is more addictive than FB.

There is this feature called self-banning. Seems like the other social media platforms have not yet "invented" that.

And even though it can be addictive, the focus is on content. I cannot find big data abuse, infinite scroll wheels and targeted content here. Neither are there obvious fake streams for political parties.

Currently there is 3 fake Fox news channels and 1 fake CNN channel. So 3:1.

Fox:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...ASBBABQAE%253D

CNN:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...JAAQ%253D%253D

They are pretty dangerous even if you are aware of them.

Targeted news, social media bubbles, content algorithms and even direct underhanded practice aimed at steering your perception and attitudes is the reality of 2019.

There is also the question of how aware you can be. No-one outside the innermost circle in these companies know exactly what they are doing, which information they are storing, how they are handling it or how they are treating their product (aka. us). Regulation of tech giants is laughably weak and even when you a) know you have a case b) manage to win through in courts, the jurisdictional reach is absolutely pathetic.

Throw into the mix a legal apparatus well equipped to crush citizen efforts, an aging politician demographic that often fails to understand even the basics of the issue and a powerful lobbying effort to keep the gravy-train going - and the net result isn't something that looks very bright.

Information has always been “dangerous”. It may be the second most dangerous thing in the universe next to behavior.


https://youtu.be/f3sUfxbFvW0

If a government entity spoon-fed its citizen news and public messages in something built on the principles of a giant Skinner box, with the sole purpose of keeping them hooked, content and moderately angry about the right issues, we'd be screaming "Brave new world" from the rooftops. Meanwhile, big data and a small cluster of social media companies have more users combined than any state in history.

It's a nice video. But somewhat ironically by viewing it, both of us are entered and cataloged into a giant data-base, we're compared to other users and YouTube's algorithms will try to see if viewing this video is part of a larger pattern. It might try to drip in similar videos to see if we bite, and if we do it might flag us in its data-sets, and maybe at some point our feed will be dominated by videos about how we are trapped by language, the difficulty of ideas and how important it is to be an individual and think for yourself.

If you click on the YouTube icon in the editor and then enter the video ID in between the YouTube start and end tag, you will end up with an embedded video.

For example:
{YOUTUBE}f3sUfxbFvW0{/YOUTUBE}

You would have to replace the curly brackets with the normal ones [] to get it working.

Regarding the video, in 93 when this was recorded originally, the internet was about to take off. Computers and databases were not yet as powerful as they are today. Most computers were not yet connected, hard drives were much much smaller and desktop computers were still laughed about. Seems this guy was way ahead of the curve.