This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
Social media has conditioned people to seek attention and validation at all costs, and how people usually choose to express themselves is through the lens of identity. That includes politics and religion.
Rather than having conversations with people face-to-face, we put ourselves out into the void, unsure of who will see or respond. This has popularized people using controversy to drum up attention. Whether it's conspiracies, victimhood, demagoguery, or polemics, we've entered an age where there is no appeal in appealing to the common ground.
People have substituted instant gratification and virtue signaling for empathy and understanding, the things that used to make society function. It's sad, but we have a media landscape that cares more for ratings than for truth, for clicks and engagement over educating and informing, and ultimately more for money and influence than for humanity.
Until our companies work towards putting humanity first, we'll continue careening towards the precipice of collapse
Rather than having conversations with people face-to-face, we put ourselves out into the void, unsure of who will see or respond. This has popularized people using controversy to drum up attention. Whether it's conspiracies, victimhood, demagoguery, or polemics, we've entered an age where there is no appeal in appealing to the common ground.
People have substituted instant gratification and virtue signaling for empathy and understanding, the things that used to make society function. It's sad, but we have a media landscape that cares more for ratings than for truth, for clicks and engagement over educating and informing, and ultimately more for money and influence than for humanity.
Until our companies work towards putting humanity first, we'll continue careening towards the precipice of collapse
TangledUpInBlue · F
@TinyViolins do you think there is a way to move towards more empathy and honest discourse with the way things are, especially on social media?
TinyViolins · 31-35, M
@TangledUpInBlue Social media is a Pandora's Box that there's really no going back from, as much as I wish we could.
There are a couple of ideas, but none of them are silver bullet answers. They'd probably all need to be tried simultaneously to have any real hope of being effective.
One thing is to try to regulate things at the media level. A lot of people's politics and ideology gets spoon fed to them through their personalized news feeds. It's helping radicalize people that otherwise wouldn't be consuming so much of this opinionated content. One way to curb that is to eliminate the algorithms entirely so that people will have to manually search for content they like, or to perhaps use AI to search for articles that articulate an opposing point of view. The end goal is to help people have a more balanced information diet.
But I think what we should also do is try to promote community and honest dialogue rather than what we have now of everything being done through text over the internet. People often get a high when posting ideological content, either by reinforcing pre-existing beliefs or allegiances, or to disparage those they don't agree with. So much of the discourse out there is virtue signaling and self-gratification.
I would like to see that need people have to belong to a certain group translated into something a lot more pro-social. To replace partisanship with community. One idea is to use social media to promote gatherings and social events that welcome all kinds of people based on their hobbies and interests. Interacting with different people of different backgrounds helps a lot to bust the myths and stereotypes people have of each other.
But there are serious questions of accessibility and logistics of getting something like that organized en masse. An easier solution would be to explore something like the Metaverse. Having digital hang-out spots for people to communicate through mics and actually talk to each other in real time. We can get a better sense of tone and be able to see when others are communicating earnestly. It's also likely to help phase out a lot of the foreign bots promoting discord that these websites are infected with.
I think bringing back the Fair Use Doctrine and applying across all media sources would also do a lot of good towards bringing balance and moderation back into a political arena overrun with radicals.
There are solutions at play, but they don't really stand a chance at competing with financial incentives, nor does there seem to be a lot of political will towards holding these corporations accountable
There are a couple of ideas, but none of them are silver bullet answers. They'd probably all need to be tried simultaneously to have any real hope of being effective.
One thing is to try to regulate things at the media level. A lot of people's politics and ideology gets spoon fed to them through their personalized news feeds. It's helping radicalize people that otherwise wouldn't be consuming so much of this opinionated content. One way to curb that is to eliminate the algorithms entirely so that people will have to manually search for content they like, or to perhaps use AI to search for articles that articulate an opposing point of view. The end goal is to help people have a more balanced information diet.
But I think what we should also do is try to promote community and honest dialogue rather than what we have now of everything being done through text over the internet. People often get a high when posting ideological content, either by reinforcing pre-existing beliefs or allegiances, or to disparage those they don't agree with. So much of the discourse out there is virtue signaling and self-gratification.
I would like to see that need people have to belong to a certain group translated into something a lot more pro-social. To replace partisanship with community. One idea is to use social media to promote gatherings and social events that welcome all kinds of people based on their hobbies and interests. Interacting with different people of different backgrounds helps a lot to bust the myths and stereotypes people have of each other.
But there are serious questions of accessibility and logistics of getting something like that organized en masse. An easier solution would be to explore something like the Metaverse. Having digital hang-out spots for people to communicate through mics and actually talk to each other in real time. We can get a better sense of tone and be able to see when others are communicating earnestly. It's also likely to help phase out a lot of the foreign bots promoting discord that these websites are infected with.
I think bringing back the Fair Use Doctrine and applying across all media sources would also do a lot of good towards bringing balance and moderation back into a political arena overrun with radicals.
There are solutions at play, but they don't really stand a chance at competing with financial incentives, nor does there seem to be a lot of political will towards holding these corporations accountable
TangledUpInBlue · F
@TinyViolins Thank you for this answer