The issue is not necessarily social media as a concept its how social media interacts with the profit motive to encourage addiction and hate. It is silly to blame the tool which why I blame the capitalists who have nearly monopolized ownership of the tool and use it to divide us.

Social media is probably the most powerful propaganda tool of all times.

In the 1960s you would say the same thing about TV, and you’d be right. Before that it was the cinema. It’s not because the mediums as such are inherently evil, but they carry an inherent power that can be used for evil.

Currently, social media is very much being used for evil.

There is, however, another element to it, and one that is completely new for social media. That’s the illusion that we can actually contribute in a meaningful way by participating.

Nobody believes they are actively fighting fascism by watching TV all day. Yet, on social media, well-meaning people are wasting their time shouting at clouds rather than going out in the real world and and actually achieve anything. They collectively tread in water as democracy dies, all the while they feel like they are “doing their part”. In other words, social media is pacifying as fuck.

I participate in the Fediverse because I have hope that we are building something different here; something that can derail the platforms that are currently used for evil, and something where the organization of actual opposition can be possible. I think it might be. But I am also afraid I am just wasting my time.

Social media as a concept is not evil or whatever, but a platform with millions and millions of users under corporate control puts a lot of power and influence in the hands of a very small elite. This is the problem. Not the technology itself. With regulation or decentralisation the problem can be fixed. Imo.

In the context of engineering and technology: it’s a broader issue. It’s a matter of engineers either refusing to accept responsibility and accountability around the systems they build and the societal effects they have, or failing that, the companies that said engineers work for preventing them from doing so because profitability.

I say this as an engineer who has come to care a whole fucking lot about engineering ethics.

I don’t think social media is inherently evil, but profit motive creeps into people’s private lives and fundamentally corrupts the natural premise of social connection.

Social media is huge money, all through advertising. Advertising will use anything it can to manipulate an audience’s behavior, that’s what it exists for in terms of research and how organizations decide what ads to run and where: net engagement and sales figures. Whether to sell you a product or a political idea, it is most effective when you don’t realize you’re being advertised to. This encourages ad firms and political campaigns to manipulate user psychology to get the most meaningful results they can. I think the depth of insight all the data collection tech companies do opens a window to manipulate people in ways we haven’t really come to terms with as a society.

And while the fediverse is probably more resistant to advertising than a centrally controlled system, there is nothing stopping well crafted astroturfing in this space. Political astroturfing in particular doesn’t generally look like what someone expects an ad to look like because of its ubiquitous nature and its natural network effects.

It’s not social media, it’s the algorithms that drives engagement for … profit. “Number must go up.” “The more users the more we can sell ourselves to VCs for.”

That’s why Fediverse is so important. We keep the social, but leave the negative effects behind. Feel free to click on a ragebait title here without your whole feed suddenly being steered in that direction.

Are social media the root of all problems? No. Do they have a significant influence? Yes.

You mentioned spineless billionaires who eff around. There are instances of real harm. There is bullying (everywhere), there are schemes to make groups depressed (teenage girls on Insta), there is a lack of moderators that lead to genocide (Myanmar). These things deserve to be looked at by legislators when the sycophants don’t do it by themselves.

Social media addiction is a thing as well. Addictions in young people are bad. Parents should be on the front line of this. But that does not absolve social media companies from taking measures to curb certain excesses. Tobacco companies are not allowed to advertize to toddlers either.

So saying they’re just a tool, like, say, a hammer is insincere. You can use a hammer to cause real harm. You can deploy social media to cause real harm.

One of the greatest issues of social media is scale. People on the fringes of society who would be largely outcast in their communities can group and organize with much more ease. In the past, this was limited to the pub in three sheets to the wind discussions. Now you get sh!t like Q Anon, flatearthers, vax nuts, etc. - stuff that common sense in smaller communities would have moderated or stamped out now gets mass appeal. They seem much bigger as an online presence than they often are. But they get dedicated believers to start shooting.

The introduction of the internet has been compared to the introduction of the printing press in Europe. Both events caused a quantum leap in the dissemination of information with profound influences on society. After the printing press we got a century and a half of conflicts and wars. We’ll be well off if all we get here is a century of people typing in caps lock at each other.

We limit things in society. The availability of nicotine products, alcohol, the ability to drive, the availability of weaponry, antitrust laws, environmental protections, etc. I think we will not get past regulating social media somehow. By which I mean I don’t know how either.

One thing that is certain will benefit society is investing in education, teaching media savvy-ness to young children and all adults if possible, giving them the tools to sort the relevant from the distorted. We are largely unprepared for this and I include myself here having grown up with papers and landlines. But education is the saddest item in any budget, as the costs are high and the results take a generation to bear fruit.

Trump wants to dismantle the DOE…

As someone who became an adult before social media was a thing, it has absolutely been a detriment to society.

There’s great aspects to it and I utilize them. But as a whole, it has FUUUUCKED us up in a very significant way.

There is a direct correlation between the rise of social media and the absolute nosedive our political discourse has taken. Misinformation is SO much more prevalent now. And that rise in misinformation is definitely having real world effects.

It’s just a catalyst. Or rather a mirror

If you had moderate political views, social media algorithms will try to feed you more and more extremist views based on what you are actually reading or have an interest on. This is just capitalism at work because the more time you spend on those websites, the more ad renevue for the platform. As a result those radicalization algorithms will probably push your moderate views to extremist views… So yes… Social networking are one of the main problems.

You’ll find this in many places that people would rather blame the world en lieu of looking inward. It’s a sad thing, as the latter is where one has most effect.

Social media, like most things in life, has its good and bad sides. Places like twitter and Facebook have definitely been moved to the “bad” side of things through the use of an algorithm to curate the user’s experience and steer them towards socially harmful content. It’s much more difficult to do this on federated SM because anti social messaging doesn’t get amplified.

It’s not a panacea, and there will be attempts to corrupt it, but federated SM does give me hope that we can escape the rabbit hole of billionaire bro psychopaths.

Just finished reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. No, social media isn’t the problem. We as people have had social media is some form of another for a long time.

The problem is the people running the social media. It’s always the people in charge taking advantage for money.

The internet is a firehose pumped from the septic tank of the human psyche.

If it is a general feature of enough human minds, it ends up there.

So, be better, I guess?

In my opinion it ties into Dunbar’s number or the monkey sphere, where humans simply cannot be that well connected without it ultimately becoming a disaster.

The human mind just isn’t as evolved as everyone thinks it is and is built on a design that was about survival of you and your tribe.

I usually start from this point and then add in the billionaires and corporations that have learnt how to manipulate these instincts for their own gain.