As I suspect many posters on the forum are aware of, one of the big challenges of modern media is the social media bubble. Computer-driven algorithms analyze a users interests and then creates a bubble around him that weigh his interests higher than other content.

A positive aspect is of course that a users experience is more seamless and tailored. If you are interested in medieval history, you'll be suggested a lot more content about medieval history. When there are billions of pages / videos / articles with content, it could be difficult or frustrating to constantly having to look it up yourself.

A negative aspect is that you get more insulated from other types of content, potentially losing out on things you would actually have been interested in. It can also reward content creators who "play the algorithm" as much as they create quality content. Meaning they make content in regards what the algorithm will amplify over quality of the content itself. A classic example would be "click-bait" articles or videos, but there is more to it than that.

Then we come to politics, where the genuine dangers of these bubbles lie. They create echo-chambers around the user. Instead of ideologies being shaped where they intersect with other views, we get echo-chambers where amplification is the name of the game. In the most extreme examples the bubbles amplify extremist ideology and block out dissenting voices. The strongest example of this is the Rohingya genocide, where Facebook's news algorithms amplified justifications for political and violent persecution of an ethnic group. The computer algorithm was unable to properly cope with moderation requests, and the understaffed human moderation team didn't have anyone who understood the local language so it was left unchecked. To put this into perspective it is a digital equivalent of the world's most read newspaper openly publishing opinion pieces that support genocide, with no editorial moderation of the content or room for dissenting voices.

Anyways, a small project has tried to make an example that shows this media bubble in practice. The their.tube projects makes user profiles which engage in watching videos with various interests and profiles (at the moment "prepper", "fruitarian", "liberal", "conservative", "conspiracy theorist" and "climate change denier"). It then allows you to click on these profiles to show you what their start page looks like. While not very advanced at the moment, it is an interesting view into what the social media bubble of other people can look like.

Link to the project: https://www.their.tube/

I'm not sure if this has actually been peer reviewed and published, but I read it a while back and it was interesting: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211

Though perhaps this is a little different from the claims about bubbles, i.e. some stronger claims about algorithmic radicalization might be overstated, and yet it's still true that which outlets you get is pretty conditioned by your viewing habits.

Someone do a deep psychoanalysis of my suggested vids please.

standard Dude; faint whiff of Euro, problematically radicalized by Jordan Peterson all-beef diet

You're a Bubba Watson fan? Ewww...

I am not, you take that back!

Conspiracy section doesn't look at all like anything I'd watch.

I don't think Youtube is generally held as some big source of radicalization, from the mainstream sites I think Facebook generally holds that dubious throne.

Youtube is generally a good catalyst for science-denial and similar things.

on its face, I ain't buyin' what they're selling

the people in my life, strangers I meet everyday are more powerful than the commonality of a suggestive parade of videos

lol Goat

deep dive viewing pleasures commencing!

This is fun:

Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable

It's hard to become informed when you're mostly served what you want to hear or discussions are automatically sorted by "controversial".

But it's also dangerous to believe that it is possible to "live outside" the social media bubble. It's pretty much there almost regardless of what you do.

I probably get most of my "news" (like, current events) from social media, actually. But then I also do feel pretty badly informed most of the time, so story checks out.

Sounds like you've passed the Duenning-Krueger hurdle.

Jokes aside, in these times of blistering quick news it is hard to keep up if one doesn't use social media. Still I guess that is a problem in itself. There isn't much point to news if a story's spot in our perception / cognition is replaced by a completely different story 1 minute later.

There is also an exhaustion that come with that I suspect. The sense that it is necessary to keep up. It probably isn't. The world as a whole has been moving to fast for a single human to keep up for far longer than we have lived, so we should probably just take a breath.

And that's not even getting into the issue that social media now creates the news. Look at what person x said on platform y. It is self-perpetuating.

good post

It definitely isn't necessary. and worse, it's unhealthy

Mainstream media outlets distribute content on social media. I don't think this say what you think it says. I think it's an indictment on the media not providing informative journalism, but rather providing sensationalism. There is rarely a story I find from anywhere where that I don't have to do additional research due to obvious neglect most journalists/editors employ, in the interest of the narrative they are selling.

No doubt. The easiest way to test that(imo) is to just call a friend And then bring up whatever story/stories are making the rounds or have recently--usually a real solid chance they'll know something about it. Stuff just permeates society so quickly these days.

On the yt algo/bubble thing I really don't understand how conservatives can claim
they're being silenced on social media. I have to make a concerted effort to get a 'left' video to show up on my recommended and it'll still be only very limited whereas if I watch some 'right' leaning stuff it's a frigging deluge. I'm talking about outside any msm news channels. Overall I don't really watch that much of it because I'm usually off in guitar/art/whatever other silly **** I'm into at the moment etc but it's more just something I've noticed.

I don't doubt there is some conservatives talking about conservatives being silenced, but that's not issues most conservatives have. The issue is, people are silenced for criticizing anti-racist/wokness/SJW narratives. This just does not affect conservatives. However, when that criticism is made, someone quickly morphs that to mean "conservatives think they are being silenced". Couple of issues with that, it groups anyone who speaks against the aforementioned populist mindset as a conservative and that they are trying to defend conservatives.

See Titania McGrath as an example of this, whose account has been banned multiple times.



Doyle is not right-wing.

What???????



"News website or app" encompasses things like the digital versions of CNN, NYT - the same "mainstream media outlets" who also "distribute content on social media". Shocker, people who read those are the most informed. The opposite of what you said is true, like usual.

Well, there are also tons of conservatives that talk about rightwing talking heads being banned etc--as being silenced. It's definitely a thing consistently across the r media spectrum from what I've seen. I watched a moylneaux interview(on yt yesterday) and he goes into alexjones&him etc being banned as examples of it.

He also likes to do cruddy stuff like slide in that 'hitler was a commie/socialist' which is just simply false. No matter how you slice it ww2 was not hitler/mussolini/Japan as 'team left' lol You simply cannot be arguing honestly from that point of view imo.

I also see some conservatives act like 'sjw' is some new phenomenon of the cnn era. Also false imo. Prior to that(cnn etc ever being a part of the bigger picture) essentially the same kind of people were being called bleeding hearts/do-gooders etc by the same people using the sjw tag.

they forgot to include people who get their news from tabloids and newspaper clippings used to cover cardboard boxes that homeless people live in.

please oh please... someone at pew get on this asap!

I wanna be analyzed, too!

Sir, your sausage is leaking.

...you mean oozing goodness!