Social media is what happens if you give everyone a microphone.
The mob mentality, fake news, conspiracy theories, and so forth were all big problems in the past. Until sometime in the 20th century, lots of newspapers published that kind of stuff too. It’s an unavoidable part of human nature.
People who want regulation of social media need to realize that they really desire a return to elite control of public discourse and want the microphone taken away from many of the people it has been given to. Maybe that is the correct position — but people making that argument should realize and admit that is the case.
> Social media is what happens if you give everyone a microphone.
Bullshit. Anyone can post, but how much their post actually gets shown to others is dependent on the algorithm. Everyone gets a microphone but the microphone manufacturer gets to decide how loud every microphone is.
Next you'll tell me the Letters to the Editor page in newspapers is a democratic space everyone has a microphone for because anyone can write in.
The real innovation here is being able to make people feel like they're in a "democratic" communication space when it's still a top down media space where what gets heard is controlled centrally.
Usenet, forums, etc were more real democratic spaces since anyone could just post, and it was up to individual readers to decide who to ignore. That said in practice, most successful communities usually had to have moderation to avoid being overrun in spam-- but this is a much more honest, gentle, and transparent sort of control than an algorithm that operates subtly, with the readers not even really realizing what other choices were ignored.
> Bullshit. Anyone can post, but how much their post actually gets shown to others is dependent on the algorithm. Everyone gets a microphone but the microphone manufacturer gets to decide how loud every microphone is.
Yes, and people like it, and we know that because they continue to engage with the content. If they didn't like the results of the algorithm they would not engage.
The algorithm does not shape people's preferences -- quite the opposite! It is an attempt to discover their preferences and cater to them in order to sell more advertisements. If the algorithm did not give people what they want, it wouldn't work, and social media companies would have to change it in order to chase the advertising dollars.
If there were two equivalent social networks, and one of them had algorithmically curated content and one of them just presented a straightforward chronological feed of posts, the vast majority of people would flock to the one that had the algorithm. The social network that did not have an algorithm would need to invent one in order to stay in business.
> The algorithm does not shape people's preferences -- quite the opposite! It is an attempt to discover their preferences
Which preferences though? There might be a hundred different types of content that I hypothetically would find very engaging, but the system happens to pick one particular one of those somehow. Yes, it's subject to some constraint but there is still a lot of degree of freedom left over.
> but people making that argument should realize and admit that is the case
I personally do and I always find it a little bit funny that this is framed as so scandalous. How to elevate capable elites so they can govern responsibly and create some sense of regularity and order is one of the oldest and maybe the primary questions we've always dealt with. 'Let the inmates run the asylum' and don't dare question if they're qualified to do so is a fairly new experiment, with so far questionable results
The mob mentality, fake news, conspiracy theories, and so forth were all big problems in the past. Until sometime in the 20th century, lots of newspapers published that kind of stuff too. It’s an unavoidable part of human nature.
People who want regulation of social media need to realize that they really desire a return to elite control of public discourse and want the microphone taken away from many of the people it has been given to. Maybe that is the correct position — but people making that argument should realize and admit that is the case.