Tag: social media

Categories
Business Society The Internet

Pairing: business values

Substack CEO Chris Best Doesn’t Realize He’s Just Become The Nazi Bar (TechDirt) by Mike Masnick

If you’re not going to moderate, and you don’t care that the biggest draws on your platform are pure nonsense peddlers preying on the most gullible people to get their subscriptions, fucking own it, Chris.

Say it. Say that you’re the Nazi bar and you’re proud of it.

Say “we believe that writers on our platform can publish anything they want, no matter how ridiculous, or hateful, or wrong.” Don’t hide from the question. You claim you’re enabling free speech, so own it. Don’t hide behind some lofty goals about “freedom of the press” when you’re really enabling “freedom of the grifters.”

You have every right to allow that on your platform. But the whole point of everyone eventually coming to terms with the content moderation learning curve, and the fact that private businesses are private and not the government, is that what you allow on your platform is what sticks to you. It’s your reputation at play.

This is also where Twitter is going. I think Musk would be fine with either outcome: driving Twitter to bankruptcy or driving out all the liberals and turning it into 4chan with a veneer of carryover trustworthiness.

(See also: Controlling the information platforms, controlling the information)

I don’t get it. Are there that many Nazis that these businesses think that’s a better long-term business audience than… everyone else? Because no one wants to hang out at the Nazi bar besides Nazis. Or are they worried their VC funding will dry up if they don’t allow Nazis? Because Substack’s already dried up…

I’d bet Substack thinks they can somehow pull off the rewards of social media without accepting the responsibility. They looked at their shrinking budget and said, you know what? It doesn’t matter if we enable genocide, because we can’t afford quality moderation, but without this shiny new sell the company will fold. And what are the odds we’ll actually support a genocide?

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We should all be embarrassed that companies in the entertainment industry are taking leadership positions on pushing back against fascism, while companies involved in journalism, education, and publishing, are taking the collaborator stance.

The parts of society that everyone promised would save us from fascism, are failing. The parts of society that the Very Serious People ™ saw as frivolous pastimes, are providing more truth and safety.

This is the Teen Vogue’ification of the world.

— Mekka Okereke @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
Apr 15, 2023, 09:44

The example he highlights of Scholastic preemptively censoring material is exactly as Tim Snyder calls out in On Tyranny: compliance in advance. There are no actual restrictions on explaining that Japanese internment was the result of racism, but Scholastic is vaguely concerned it could be “bad for business” because the topic of racism has become controversial to conservatives who don’t want to talk about bad things white people did to people of color in the past (especially in ways that highlight those continuing practices)… basically showing Scholastic doesn’t actually care about their purported value of inclusion, and is more scared of conservative book bans than public outcry from liberals over their censorship (which is exactly what they’ve gotten — and tbh now the book has gotten so much attention it will certainly be included in book bans and boycotts). Essentially, in censoring this book they’ve gotten the worst of all outcomes: they’ve tarnished their brand among liberals and drawn a lot of attention to this particular book so it’ll be on the conservative’s radar for book bans. If they don’t publish it now liberals cry censorship, and if they do conservatives push against it.

You can’t appease both fascists and their victims at the same time. You have to choose.

— Mekka Okereke @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
Apr 15, 2023, 09:39

Categories
Society The Internet

Controlling the information platforms, controlling the information

Liked The Corruption of Clarence Thomas & A Note on Censorship by Jared Yates Sexton (Dispatches From A Collapsing State | Jared Yates Sexton)

Musk’s control over Twitter, and now his attack on Substack, are examples of how this landscape is not only dangerous, but devastating. Control over Twitter and other social media hubs is just a proliferation of the same control over information and discourse methods that have existed all along, only now they are at the whims of individuals who can decide, on a moment’s notice, to effectively silence any critics or honest brokers standing in their way.

At every step the tech barons have shown both an eager willingness to work with authoritarians and a ceaseless desire to forward their own agendas through control of information. They censor and aid dictators and dictatorial regimes. They look the other way as dangerous actors spread disinformation designed to undermine elections, public health, and generally inform people. And now, Elon Musk’s roughshodding of Twitter has revealed what has lain at the heart of all of this all along: a system not only vulnerable to the whims of the wealthy and their agendas, but a system that designed explicitly to serve those whims.

It’s not just the Substack thing, it’s also marking NPR as government propaganda despite having full editorial freedom.

I am also concerned about LLMs concentrating the power of information in the hands of a few companies (one of which Musk has a stake in), moreso than they already are as referrers.

I’m thinking of (years ago) when Google told me they’d downrank my website because it wasn’t mobile friendly. When you get to decide where to source information, that gives you a lot of power over information and its presentation. Their YouTube algorithms already strongly control how videos are made, what they’re made about, and how they’re positioned as people try to game the algo. Then you have the development of algospeak to avoid saying words believed to be censored.

Categories
The Internet Writing

Blog posts don’t have to be long

Replied to Write Less by Matt Gemmell (Matt Gemmell — Thriller, Horror, and Suspense author)

We took away our own permission to write less, unless it was on someone else’s network.

There’s a pervasive and unwritten convention about this now. On social, content of any length at all is fine — and indeed the maximum allowed length is often very short, which reinforces the association. So, perniciously, our eager-to-simplify brains have decided that the converse is true for blogs: you can write only longer, weightier stuff.

Everywhere I read I see McLuhan these days, maybe I should actually read him 😂

But really, I absolutely feel this:

Those who do blog will often sit on pieces for too long, because they’re waiting until they have more to say — or they shelve pieces entirely, wrongly believing they’re too brief and thus somehow trivial.

I’m trying to think of blogging in terms of the scientific community: every commentator adds a new piece, a new angle, and every little bit further understanding boosts the whole community. Together we rise, whether any one person’s blog post causes a large shift in the community’s thinking or not. It’s like the way geology happens: the landscape changes both a little bit at a time, slowly, and cataclysmically. Our thinking and writing can be accretive to others, it needn’t be explosive to be of value.

Another silly thing I’ve shelved posts for: being too slow to respond, feeling as if I’ve missed the cultural moment of discussion around a piece.

Via Nitin Khanna.

Categories
Featured Technology The Internet

What makes RSS better than social timelines?

screenshot of Feedly showing folders and stream of titles and excerpts
My RSS feed on Feedly, showing folders on the left and the stream of posts in reverse chronological order on the right -- this shows title view but Feedly offers several view options that showcase featured images and longer excerpts as well
Replied to The Fail Whale Cascade by Luke Harris (lkhrs.com)

I’m bored of what I call “the timeline era”. Scanning an unending stream of disconnected posts for topics of interest is no longer fun, I prefer deciding what to read based on titles, or topic-based discussion.

I am a huge fan of RSS and have never stopped using it to follow blogs and webcomics. But lately as I’ve read lots of people talking about timelines, a question has been niggling at me: what does make an RSS feed* feel better to use than “the timeline” of social media? They are both streams of information, but I prefer RSS.

*by RSS feed, I mean the stream composed of multiple individual feeds — it is a little confusing that the singular and plural/collective of feed are the same.

Continuing in the vein of exploring what makes a blog a blog, I’m curious why an RSS feed feels better than social media timelines. Are we conflating our like of blogs with a like of RSS, or is there something about RSS feeds inherently that we really do prefer to other timelines?

I think it’s useful to dig into what elements of the experience make a substantive difference, so we can make better design choices with new tools in the future. I’m interested not in the technical details here (yay RSS is open and not owned by a corporation, boo it’s kind of a pain to explain and set up) — I’m interested in how we use the technology, and how we feel about using it.

Continue reading “What makes RSS better than social timelines?”
Categories
Culture Technology The Internet

Personality shaped by the algorithm

Emphasis mine.

The blandness of TikTok’s biggest stars by Rebecca Jennings (Vox)

[P]op culture is being increasingly determined by algorithms… [W]hat we’re seeing is the lowest common denominator of what human beings want to look at, appealing to our most base impulses and exploiting existing biases toward thinness, whiteness, and wealth.

TikTok fame celebrates a different kind of mediocrity, though, the kind where “relatability” means adhering to the internet’s fluctuating beauty standards and approachable upper-middle-classness and never saying anything that might indicate a personality.

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What Works by Tara McMullin

Creators are basing their livelihoods on the performance of an identity through the expression of their knowledge, experiences, or talents.

As our actions are influenced by what Richard Seymour dubs the twittering machine, our identities are revealed to us by the algorithm. Not only does the machine tell us who we are and who we will become, it turns around and sells us the symbols of the identity. My identity is commodified in an instant. Who I Am and What I Do On the Internet can feel like an act of self-expression, but they are more likely artifacts of conformity.

Categories
Activism Culture Featured Future Building The Internet

Defending against abuse, violence, and viewpoints of hatred

(I’m still working through this. There are good arguments on both sides.)

Tools and social norms shape the conversations and interactions people have online and on different platforms. But those inclined towards abusive behavior are less likely to either follow the rules of social norms or to allow themselves to be limited by tools; those motivated towards abuse will find ways to do harm. By limiting tools that can be used for good in hopes of quelling harmful behavior, is the damper put on positive uses greater than the reduction of harmful behavior? How much does depriving fascists of tools for virality also impact our ability to fight fascism?

Continue reading “Defending against abuse, violence, and viewpoints of hatred”
Categories
Featured Learning

Algorithmic recommendations create “curiosity ruts”

Replied to What Worked in 2022: 4 Insights From A Rebuilding Year by Tara McMullinTara McMullin (explorewhatworks.com)

One of his strategic priorities for this year was breaking out of what he calls curiosity ruts. Algorithms typically carve out curiosity ruts—that’s what happens when a platform learns your preferences and gives you what you want to see. In the process, we forget to look for information or ideas that aren’t automagically fed to us.

“What are the tools and systems that you can put into place to find information that you wouldn’t have found? The ideas, perspectives, people, etc., that you wouldn’t have found if you had just been left to your own curiosity ruts?” — Sean McMullin

Create information systems of serendipity — follow sources that are likely to introduce you to the unexpected.

Computers don’t have, can’t have, taste. That’s why there will always be a place for curators like Jason Kottke and tastemakers who create playlists of new musicians. An algorithm can be pretty good at recommending more stuff like we already like, but to make a sizable jump in what we’re listening to or reading, we turn to people we trust to have good taste (similar to our own 😉). Interesting people probably read and watch interesting things.

I’ve always treated social media this way, following people who boost others and share interesting things they’ve encountered. I don’t know how the algorithm worked on top of that, but one of the things I appreciated about Twitter was finding someone new to follow or hearing about a new project or learning something random about history or science or a field totally outside my realm of knowledge, every time I logged on. I saw someone talking about Twitter / this aspect of social media as a delivery system of delight: for me, this is the dopamine hit. As much as it sometimes annoyed me to see posts that “people you follow liked” it was probably a decent way to inject some freshness into people’s feeds in addition to RTs and QTs (they just overdid it IMO).

Over the past ~ six+ weeks since Twitter went to shit, I started following a handful of folks who migrated to Mastodon using the Activity Pub connection from Micro.blog — and through them have found some other interesting people to follow. For my interests, authors, artists and academics are my key to discovery.

Categories
The Internet

Twitter and social media commentary

Cleaning out some tabs…

To read:

The Billionaire and the Anarchists (Crimethinc) – 10/28

Elon Musk and the Narcissism/Radicalization Maelstrom (TPM) – 11/25

Genius Elon Musk is not so smart about Twitter (Mike’s List) – 12/6

There is no social media alternative (Ed Bott’s READ.ME) – 11/5

The Whiteness of Mastodon (Tech Policy Press) – 11/23

I don’t want to go back to social media (Lapcat Software) – 11/19

How to gain a gazillion followers online, Taco Bell Quarterly Style (LitHub) – 11/22

We Joined Mastodon. Here’s What We Learned About Privacy and Security (The Markup) – 11/21

OMG, a Right-Wing Jerk Can Buy Twitter! Media Concentration Matters (Counterpunch) – 12/1

There Is No Safe Alternative to Twitter (Yet) (Ginny.Today) – 5/13

How Web Platforms Collapse: The Facebook Case Study (The Honest Broker) – 12/4

It’s ok to feel sad about Twitter (Garbage Day) – 11/18

Social media is just a thing that happens (Garbage Day) – 11/9

Categories
Culture The Internet

Which online bar do you want to hang out at?

Liked A community isn’t a garden, it’s a bar. by Derek Powazek (powazek.com)

It’s almost 2023. The world is different, the online world is very different, and I’m pushing 50. So I think it’s time we all start talking about online gathering places with a more apt metaphor: bars.

Categories
Activism

What happens to activism after Twitter?

Bookmarked

For all its failings, one space where Twitter has excelled is empowering activism: calling out injustice, community organizing, and on-the-ground reporting from dozens of protests at once. Conservatives bitch about their fascist tweets getting deleted and “misinformation” because they can’t tell you about “the ivermectin cure,” but what actually seems to be censored and misrepresented in mainstream press is disruptions to power: protesters are painted as looters, police spray children with tear gas at nonviolent protests, journalists get black-bagged and shot despite their press badges. I watched all this happening from afar in BLM protests around the country – these three particular instances were in Bellevue, Seattle and Portland. And the “terrifying” Capital Hill Autonomous Zone or whatever they called themselves planted a community garden in a public park — oh the atrocity! 😱 I could read and see accounts from multiple people at various protests, photos and videos from multiple angles, and read accounts from journalists at protests, and real community members could dispel fear mongering and scapegoating.

If Twitter collapses, where do we go for that kind of information?

If we didn’t have Twitter, would any of us have heard about George Floyd or Breonna Taylor?

Activism has adapted to make use of online platforms and advocate to a larger audience. I haven’t been going to protests in person, so I don’t know how essential that link is.

If Twitter collapses, what happens to the women of Iran right now?

Can federated / distributed spaces allow the kind of real-time information spread that has made Twitter invaluable for activism?

Mastodon only searches hashtags within your (an?) instance from my understanding. You need to already know who to follow or be in an instance where people are sharing that kind of information.

(☝️ I do not know this to be true first-hand but wouldn’t be surprised given the model)

And the IndieWeb already struggles with discoverability.

I don’t think TikTok can serve the same function — too easy in their algorithmic model to keep anything from spreading, and video is so much slower to produce and consume than text that you can’t follow as many separate accounts to get an understanding of what’s happening.

Facebook gave us genocide in Myanmar. They’re not going to be a help here. Instagram doesn’t seem built in a way that’s easy to follow trending topics. Their ephemeral posts (stories) aren’t easy to find or follow. I haven’t used it lately so I don’t know how Reels work.