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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (of Technology) (om.co) 47

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
If our social platforms are going to be gatekeepers, then they need to acknowledge their role in the information ecosystems. It is knowing what to boost and what to ignore that makes a good platform, writes veteran technology journalist and now a venture capitalist Om Malik. From his essay: The battle of good email versus spam email has taken a long time, but it has been worth fighting. The struggle between real information and fake information is no different. Unfortunately, what we have is ambivalent algorithms on our social platforms that blindly amplify both hope and hate. This gets complicated pretty quickly. Without access to the same platforms currently being used to gaslight our country, we won't see the awful videos of police in conflict with the people they should protect. Without the same platforms, it would be harder to tell that the media just glorifies the titillating stuff, whether it is the opinion page of the old Gray Lady or the fake looting of a non-existent Rolex store.

I am the first to admit that this is one hard and messy problem. The challenge we face today is that technology's supreme commanders fail to fight the real monkey on their back -- how the modern internet works. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or Google, the core principle of these companies is engagement and growth. More engagement means more growth, and that means more attention and thus more money. If Facebook removed news from your feed and just restricted it to social items, like baby pictures, ravings of a crazy uncle, and event announcements, there is a good chance that engagement on the platform would decrease. Twitter would be a lot less engaging if it reverted back to its original premise of showing the latest, not the loudest. And what if Google stopped rewarding frequent visits as one of the measurements for showing the results on its search engine? I think you know.
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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (of Technology) More

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (of Technology)

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  • Comment Deleted (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward



  • A lot of words to say nothing (Score:3)

    by NaCh0 ( 6124 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @03:11PM (#60160884) Homepage

    I'm so happy to see another post decrying wrongthink with no real answers.

    Thanks for keeping me informed Slashdot!

    • There is only e-mail you can safely ignore, and there is e-mail you cannot.

    • [So if you [NaCh0] had nothing to say, why didn't you say nothing? I certainly can't detect any trace of constructive thought there.]

      Longer subject: "Professional and highly motivated liars continue to crush and humiliate the passionless and honest scientists relying on their silly research." I wanted to work the journalists into it somewhere, but given the current state of journalism, I gave up.

      I find it rather hilarious that the story comes from a venture capitalist. Their drive for profit uber alles is c

    • I wonder if people are overcomplicating the situation. In a way its the nature of the businesses that run the platforms, combined with people misumderstanding what they really were until they became dependant on them.

      As a choice, I no longer use social platforms, save those that have what I would call social features, like youtube or even slashdot. As a consequence I miss out on the primary way my friends and family primarily communicate.

      When I look back on everything, I'm starting to wonder why we truste

  • Its all about control. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by itiswhatitiwijgalt ( 6848512 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @03:21PM (#60160926)
    How can you trust those put in charge to decide what gets "filtered" in an unbiased manner? We have seen that you can't. Let the consumer have all the information needed to make an informed decision on their own accord. Without that, you are attempting to control peoples thoughts by giving them only part of the information needed. Censorship is evil at its core.

    • ... decide what gets "filtered" in an unbiased manner?

      Adding a fact-check, is not censorship: You're sympathies for right-wing misinformation means you are attempting to control people's thoughts. To date, Facebook has censored only blatant criminal posts. But many people are claiming the minor crimes (eg. inciting violence) aren't so minor in the current political climate.

      Let the consumer have all the information needed to re-post non-factual click-bait on their own accord.

      Fixed that for you.

      ... giving them only part of the information needed.

      Obviously, you have no idea how Facebook/Twitter works. Tha

      • "Signalling" is pervasive in any competitive organism. Driving a Porsche, carrying a Gucci handbag is wealth-signalling. Nobody who whines about virtue-signalling complains about that though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This has been true forever, right back from when you got your news from the Town Crier. Newspapers have always filtered, radio and TV news has always filtered, it would be weird if websites were any different.

      Also there is no practical way to have an uncensored news feed, it will instantly become a torrent of spam and trolling. It's been tried, it doesn't work.

      What the internet allows you to do is check different sources. The problem is people don't, they stay in their little bubble. That's the problem you

  • Everything falls into the BAD category.

  • California Guitar Trio - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • How Would They Make Money (Score:4)

    by Baby Duck ( 176251 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @03:27PM (#60160950) Homepage
    People aren't willing to pay for subscriptions to social media. To operate, they need ad revenue. Ad generation prompts bad behavior, since there is no cap or ramifications.

    • Yeah in line with another comment I made. As I see it there is a conflict of interest, and we as users almost put tyem in a place where there arent any viable alternatives except complete anstenence of use of these platforms.
      It comes at a consequense many wont be willing to take on, that being most of the people they want to keep in touch with use these platforms.

    • If people aren't willing to pay for social media, why should there be any? It's no different than public health, public education, etc. /sarcasm It's all about clickbait and who can shout the loudest. That drives the ad revenue.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by edis ( 266347 )

      To operate, they need ad revenue.

      If only to operate. Profits know no limits.

      • Yes, that's my point! There needs to be a cap or exponential taxation that inches closer and closer to 100%, but never quite getting there, so the incentive to further increase view count becomes less and less salient. But not so prohibitive they can't afford to operate, moderate, compete, evolve, and rake in a modest profit.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @03:29PM (#60160956)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ...how to build a distributed, decentralized social network that isn't based around a retarded "like" button and successfully creates an emergent genuine web of trust. I'm pretty convinced it would be necessary to require people to perform moderation and meta-moderation to earn points which they can spend on posting content.

    Plainly, judging by all the nonsense knee jerking posts above, Slashdot is not a good forum to discuss this topic.

    • I think the only way you could build a genuine web of trust would have to involve true curation of content by actual experts in various fields, and have those experts set up to check each other and keep each other in balance. The problem being, experts have real jobs to do and won't have time to try and curate content from thousands or even millions of users. And anything less than experts with actual knowledge will just lead to a group-think circle jerk much like we see across the current web.

      Maybe the r

      • And then you run in to the problem of you cannot become an expert unless the existing experts all agree with your opinion. Group think keeps moving the 'experts' further and further to one direction and dissent from that group think is not allowed. And anyone who presents statistics to the contrary of accepted opinion is told their analysis doesn't agree with that of the 'experts' and since it isn't their area of expertise, facts be damned, they're wrong.
        • Strawman. The "experts" on Christianity don't agree with the "experts" on Judaism or the "experts" on Islam. People like myself think they're ALL wrong, but there aren't many of us.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skids ( 119237 )

        Experts certainly would play a role, but most often they are publishing in their profession anyway, so their reputation would build off their published work in addition to anything they did on-network. I think the places we are lackin now are:

        A) a lack of a moderate barrier to establishing an identity so it is not as easy as firing up a bot to create thousands of sock puppets, but not enough of a barrier to prevent humans of meager means from participating. To some extent the centralized systems have trie

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rho ( 6063 )

      Remember blogs? People would list their favorite blogs on a sidebar, and blogs would often interlink with each other. With the advent of Google PageRank, this got out of hand as blogs would link-trade for sidebar placement, and in the political realm blogs would often descend into circle-jerks. But the idea is sound--you like this blog, this blog likes that blog, and from there you could discover new things, curated by the wisdom of crowds.

      If you let the Internet work as it was supposed to it works pretty w

  • Social networks rely on the Network Effect [wikipedia.org], which is more or less "winner take all".

    This means there will probably monopolies and oligopolies, and thus they will need some regulation.

    However, we should lean toward avoiding direct censorship. If a video is fake, then somehow label it as fake, along with the evidence, but don't outright ban it.

    If warnings and monitoring focus on certain politicians or submitters more than others, have clear rules for who gets more focus on why. Obviously the vetters should fo

    • It's probably needed, but enormously difficult to put together a team to actually implement it. Nobody is free from cognitive bias - nobody. And there is almost nobody who can put forth a strong effort against it. You'd need to assemble a large roster of them, many times the size of current moderation teams. You'd need some kind of internal review/feedback/meta-moderation system, and you'd need to identify and categorize the employees according to their biases. Imagine how uncomfortable that would be in a j

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Stop before you start (Score:3)

    by BringsApples ( 3418089 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @04:39PM (#60161262)

    If our social platforms are going to be gatekeepers...

    They're not. End of discussion. The strawman is built into the very beginning of this stupid (wanna-be) conversation.

  • If false, then don't-care-condition. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If our social platforms are going to be gatekeepers, then they need to acknowledge their role in the information ecosystems.

    Premise rejected. Didn't bother reading the rest of the submission, as it was based on something so incredibly unlikely.

  • Seriously, F*CK OFF content editors (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @04:43PM (#60161274) Journal

    I really don't want my social media platforms moderating my content, any more than I want Gmail reaching into my email and editing naughty words in my messages.

  • most of us not built like sport stars and not as rich as Bezos, the best we can do, without almost guaranteed regrets later on, is about 7 right? neither great, nor bad. Just good, you know? Like your mom

  • A large dominant company negotiated to do exactly this, in return for a guaranteed rate of return and well understood regulation... A government granted monopoly.

    This situation held until a small aggressive company came along and didn't like the fact that the term of that deal locked them out of the market and they lobbied and sued until they got what they wanted.

    Can you say Carter phone decision, MCI and the Bell break up? I knew ya could.

    Now, as a result of all of that, carriers and service providers of

  • We don't want gatekeepers. Fuck of to your safe space and cry if you can't handle different points of view.

  • It took ages to get to decent spam filters. Ad Blocks are close to advertising content. Next step are News fake filters.
  • Anything that is addictive is a lucrative product for the makers. Addictive content, true news or fake news, is lucrative, same way alcohol, tobacco, weed and other drugs are.

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