'You Are Not An Embassy' (substack.com) 108
Jamie Bartlett, a technology columnist, argues that social media platforms constantly pressure users to share opinions on events they may not fully understand, contributing to an atmosphere of performative outrage and conformity rather than thoughtful discussion. However, he also acknowledges the counterpoint that silence in the face of injustice can enable harm. From the column: One of the trickier aspects of digital life is the constant pressure to opine. To have a strong opinion on a subject, and to share it with the world. It's literally baked into the design of the most popular platforms. [...] If I am honest, I know very little about most bad things going on in the world. Certainly not enough that sharing my view will inform or educate or enlighten. Yet whenever I see a news report, an urgent need rises up: what shall I say about this? I have a feeling about it -- which must be shared! (And ideally in emotionally charged language, since that will receive more interactions).
What's wrong with calling out the bad stuff going on? Nothing per se. And certainly not on an individual level. The problem is when people feel a soft and gentle pressure to denounce, to praise, to comment on things they don't feel they fully understand. Things they don't feel comfortable speaking about. Things that are contentious and difficult to discuss on heartless, unforgiving platforms where the wrong phrase or tone might land you in hot water. What social media has done is to make silence an active -- rather than the default -- choice. To speak publicly is now so easy that not doing it kind-of-implies you don't know or don't care about what's going on in the world. Who wants to look ignorant or indifferent? And besides, who doesn't want to appear kind or wise, or morally upstanding in front of others?
But the result is an undirected anger from all sides: frenetic, purposeless, habitual and above all moralising. There's nothing wrong with occasionally saying what you think and sometimes it's very important.
What's wrong with calling out the bad stuff going on? Nothing per se. And certainly not on an individual level. The problem is when people feel a soft and gentle pressure to denounce, to praise, to comment on things they don't feel they fully understand. Things they don't feel comfortable speaking about. Things that are contentious and difficult to discuss on heartless, unforgiving platforms where the wrong phrase or tone might land you in hot water. What social media has done is to make silence an active -- rather than the default -- choice. To speak publicly is now so easy that not doing it kind-of-implies you don't know or don't care about what's going on in the world. Who wants to look ignorant or indifferent? And besides, who doesn't want to appear kind or wise, or morally upstanding in front of others?
But the result is an undirected anger from all sides: frenetic, purposeless, habitual and above all moralising. There's nothing wrong with occasionally saying what you think and sometimes it's very important.
can't wait (Score:1)
for everyone's opinions on this story about people having too many opinions
Re: can't wait (Score:3, Funny)
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Aw, man, you beat me to the punch!
Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem goes much deeper in my opinion (see what I did there?).
Modern news reporting is mostly opinion and very little fact. In addition, those reports are also highly controversial and designed to manufacture outrage. Which of course, riles people up to make a comment and share it, even though 90% of what is stated is probably not even factual.
Re:Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:5, Informative)
Modern news reporting is mostly opinion and very little fact.
And to demonstrate, you are expressing an opinion with very little fact.
There's still fact-based news around, although if all you ever look at is social media, you might not think so.
In addition, those reports are also highly controversial and designed to manufacture outrage. Which of course, riles people up to make a comment and share it,
Yeah, that part is true. Outrage stimulates engagement.
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I would disagree a little about how much news is opinion vs fact. If you look at the front pages of major 'news' outlets, they promote their opinion pieces at the same level as normal news, and I'm sure this has been an increasing trend over time (I remember when the opinion pieces are always at the back or relegated to their own section.) I don't have metrics of course, but as a casual observer that's been around since the beginning of the internet, the trends have been clear to me.
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I have noticed this too. I think opinion pieces are cheap and generate clicks off social media.
They used to be written by an editor or some subject matter expert but more and more they seem to all be one offs by some underemployed ivy league 20 something that has a portfolio of 3 opinion pieces a year.
I’ve started getting very deliberate about avoiding this stuff so I don’t know if its still popular but at the time I stopped reading there was a disturbing trend of covering obscure alt-right per
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The problem with news bias, isn't necessarily the "facts" that are being reported, it is the emphasis of which facts matter to the writer and reader respectfully. In addition there are tons of "news" stories where some facts are just not reported at all.
I know that most of us are geeks, and as geeks we get a lot of our news from a variety of sources. What stories can you recall where critical facts were de-emphasized or left out?
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The reporting on Trump election fraud claims comes to mind. 2/3rds of Republicans still think the 2020 election was rigged despite not even a shred of actionable evidence being found after all.
As a singular example of this off the top of my head the story about the polling station in Michigan that boarded up it's windows due to Trump supporters yelling at poll workers. This was hailed as "proof" in conservative media that they were committing fraud in there. The problem with that that conservative media oft
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It was widely reported that there was NO Election problems during 2020. The MSM all told me so.
Did you (in Oct 2020) Believe the 51 Intelligence Experts who said the Biden Laptop was Russian Disinformation? Still think that was NOT Election interference? Just a singular Example off the top of my head.
Which is worse, Trump complaining or Intelligence Officials Lying with MSM and Big Tech parroting that lie?
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I think Trump calling into doubt our entire election proces (our country's very foundation) and a significant part of American media just going along with the lies instead of doing actual reporting is infinitely more worrisome.
Faith in our democratic process is essential to our way of life and not only is Trump chipping away at that but he is being helped by major media companies because it's good for ratings.
As for what you brought up, what's with the whataboutism? You asked a general question about news m
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Democrats complain too. See Bush v Gore for example. I'm not excusing Trump, just saying those arguments are hypocritical (both parties complain)
It isn't whataboutism it is hypocrisy. The whole 2016 Election was called Illegitimate by tons of Democrats. They have only themselves to blame when Trump does what they themselves did.
https://www.cato.org/commentar... [cato.org]
That was the whole "Russian Collusion" promoted by the MSM. Remember, it was a "Russian Bot Farm" that controlled voter opinions to get Trump Elected
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This is all still nonsense that I'm have no interest in addressing (although you arent accurate depicting anything you're talking about). You asked for an example of news being reshaped by the omission of small facts and I gave you an example. You're not even refuting my example, you're just upset that someone dared answer your question in the context of it happening with conservative news. Maybe in the future add an addendum to such a request along the lines of "...that doesnt offend my personal political
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Hunter Biden's Laptop is a "small fact". And by Omitting you mean actively suppressing..
Got it.
I have NO problem with Trump Complaining because I have NO problem with Democrats doing it either. The problem are the Hypocrites who ignore reality because they are a team player. I have no team. Haven't for decades.
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What the fuck does Hunter Bidens laptop have to do with my example of that you publicly asked for? Nothing, it's a completely different news story. There's no hypocrisy here because you asked for an example and I gave you an example.
Get a grip man.
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Hypocrisy is that you think Politicians whining about losing an election is strictly Trump problem, when both sides have been doing it for years, and ignoring that the whole 2016 Russia Trump Collusion hoax was the Democrats (and MSM) whining about 2016. A point I made earlier.
Just go back to watching The View
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Hypocrisy is that you think Politicians whining about losing an election is strictly Trump problem
What is wrong with you? Where did I ever make a claim that this was ever just a right wing problem? I even specifically state at the end of my initial reply to you "I'm certain this happens on both sides of the political spectrum btw, this just stands out in my head in regards to what you asked for." https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] . You asked for an example of something and I gave you one example of something.
Your prior claims in this thread that you dont care about this stuff are laughable by the way. Y
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It was widely reported that there was NO Election problems during 2020. The MSM all told me so.
And the Trump administration officials in charge of looking for election fraud also told you so.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/e... [cbsnews.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25... [cnn.com]
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While I don't believe the election was stolen,when my mother passed in 2019 we had an absolutely awful time getting her removed from the ballot rolls. In my state, it's all mail in ballots, so she kept receiving ballots for elections up until 2022. Whenever I mentioned that factual occurrence and the possibility for voter fraud, I was generally called a liar, a fraudster, or someone who was making it up. Which feels really good when it's your mother's death you're supposedly lying about.
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Should I ask for my food to remade in a restaurant because there's the potential for a hair to be in my food or should I wait until I actually find one?
In regards to your departed mother's ballot https://apnews.com/article/202... [apnews.com] . Audits were run in states were these objections were brought up and no evidence of wide spread problems were found.
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Re:Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:4, Interesting)
I would disagree a little about how much news is opinion vs fact. If you look at the front pages of major 'news' outlets, they promote their opinion pieces at the same level as normal news,
OK. Here are the front pages of major news outlets:
Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/ [reuters.com]
Associated Press: https://apnews.com/ [apnews.com]
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/ [usatoday.com]
NY times: https://www.nytimes.com/ [nytimes.com]
Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/ [wsj.com]
Which of these are the ones you say "promote their opinion pieces at the same level as normal news" (much less the ones that are "mostly opinion and very little fact," which is what the post I'm responding to claimed.
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And you are doing just the same, like me, where are your facts?
Also another thing may news places do and you just did is state something likely to be trivially true, like "There's still fact-based news around" since 1 piece of fact based news would make that statement true, but that is not what I think most people mean when they talk about that, they mean in general there is not much fact based news around. One of my pet hates in the news is the word some, also many (just what size is many) placed in front
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The problem is, a lot of people only look at social media - they fail to notice there are other places to get news.
As a result, a lot of news organizations have decided that they need to be more like social media because honestly, fact-based news doesn't bring in the clicks and views and thus, the money.
Opinion based news, and baiting news bring in the "engagement" and thus, ad money. And they do i
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If I smoke what you're smoking, can I too live in a world where journalists get more primetime slots than pundits?
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Modern news reporting is mostly opinion and very little fact.
And to demonstrate, you are expressing an opinion with very little fact.
There's still fact-based news around, although if all you ever look at is social media, you might not think so.
The poster was making a post about the percentage of content from news sources that is opinion based. I'd probably say that it depends on the type of news media. TV, video, text. You also have the problem that a lot of people have difficultly telling what's opinion from fact. https://www.pewresearch.org/jo... [pewresearch.org]
I welcome you to prove the poster to be wrong with an actual study and not your gut feeling.
No, you prove it [Re:Modern "news" is nothing...] (Score:2)
The poster was making a post about the percentage of content from news sources that is opinion based. I'd probably say that it depends on the type of news media. TV, video, text.
Fair point. I has assumed he referred to actual newspaper type journalism, but you're right, he may have meant youtube videos. Nevertheless, regardless of what he thinks of as news, he complained about "mostly opinion and very little fact" by making a post with mostly opinion and very little fact.
You also have the problem that a lot of people have difficultly telling what's opinion from fact. https://www.pewresearch.org/jo... [pewresearch.org]
Interesting link, thanks.
I welcome you to prove the poster to be wrong with an actual study and not your gut feeling.
It was his assertion. It is his burden of proof.
This is the way most people shouting conspiracy theories do it: they make statements with no support and then say "no, it's not up to me to s
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Modern news reporting is mostly opinion and very little fact.
And to demonstrate, you are expressing an opinion with very little fact.
There's still fact-based news around, although if all you ever look at is social media, you might not think so.
In addition, those reports are also highly controversial and designed to manufacture outrage. Which of course, riles people up to make a comment and share it,
Yeah, that part is true. Outrage stimulates engagement.
It's pretty clear what he means is "Most popular American news sources contain little in the way of fact and attempt to conflate opinion as fact, some up to the point of presenting misinformation as fact". Sure there are plenty of places to get factual news written in a way as to avoid bias, but you've got to go looking for that and for someone bought up on, force fed on a diet of Fox News, they'll find reading it uncomfortable as they'll have to digest the facts and come up with their own opinions based on
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Just say NO...
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Modern news: "here is a poll of what people think!"
Then never attempts to figure out if the people have a point or not
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Modern news: "here is a poll of what people think!"
More like, "Here is a bunch of people's X reactions [newsweek.com]."
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True enough, most news articles I see are peppered with Twitter posts. I could easily get the impression nothing much happens in the real world anymore, the only place anything of significance happens is on Twitter.
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Modern news reporting is mostly opinion and very little fact.
But to flip that around, "just the facts" does not exist. Without context, facts lose their meaning. But multiple contexts can surround facts. We end up with something like Kirosawa's Rashomon, with multiple overlapping but also mutually exclusive versions of events. Opinion is context for news.
The problem I have with reporting is that a given reporter seems to try to show us just one view of the events. I feel that is akin to lying.
Even proclaiming their own bias before report delivery would get us closer
Re:Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:5, Interesting)
By far the worst offender in this respect is the "conservative" mainstream media realized in pioneers like Limbaugh and the cast of Fox "News" who convinced people that opinions supersede facts and reality.
The other fact not mentioned in the piece is that the "opinions" are not elicited by the algorithms for the sake of discussion. They are elicited by the algorithms for the sake of exploiting and controlling users to display more ads before them. The hostility is collateral damage. The algorithm doesn't care if social interactions are destroyed as long as it display more ads to the users. This is all detailed by Lanier in Ten Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
Re:Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:4, Insightful)
While all 24/7 news sources are bad, I agree that conservative media is worse since they tend to argue in bad faith. Historically this goes back to Roger Ailes famous memo to Nixon about creating a propaganda network for conservatives. He was too late for Nixon, but its worked well in recent times. Perhaps too well...
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If one knows the facts, then the decision is clear and independent of "opinion".
Not really. No source can tell you every fact. The conservative station will tell you all the facts about Hunter Biden's troubles, the liberal station will tell you facts about Trump's legal issues, nobody tells you what Biden ate for Breakfast. Somebody gatekeeps the information.
I've also heard that recently, the price of a cappuccino in Italy went up quite a bit. Italians thought they were in the midst of a widespread infl
Re: Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:2)
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Fully disagree. Both sides engage in this nonsense. We saw it with Obamacare "if you want your doctor, you can keep your doctor". We saw it with the China COVID lab leak theory. We saw it with Hunter Biden's laptop. We saw it with the Trump Russia investigation. If the left have an axe to grind, the
Re: Modern "news" is nothing but opinion pieces. (Score:2)
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Someone here used to have the sig "the human brain casts to boolean."
Facts are too messy. The typical online article is not only opinion, but Boolean opinion, and we like it because of that: there are two sides and the other one is wrong.
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I've started trying out Ground News to help with this.
Take an article from any popular news site, punch it in, and it'll show you a full spectrum of news articles on the story.
Its bias distribution show me who an article is trying to influence, or relevant to: is the story on neutral news sites, is it on "sane" partisan sites of equal proportion, is it mainly on extremist sites, etc.
It fact checks articles and tells me if they are written by private interests versus an actual reporter. And for when I feel i
Social media thrives on controversy and anger. (Score:5, Informative)
Social media thrives on controversy and anger.
Social media feeds on interaction. if the news isn't about controversy and anger, it doesn't get interaction.
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Normalization of performative feeling (Score:3)
Social media is 100% performative. It's almost never a reply to the previous post or issue, it's a soliloquy to the invisible choir to gain...what, credibility? Moral suasion? Karma?
The uptempo'ing of this declamatory performance from BBS-style, to shared boards (like /.), to facebook, to finally instant-messages like Twitter has only made it worse.
Hell, even posting here is performative, even *when* posting a direct answer to a simple question.
The rest of the OP is more of a cri de cÅ"ur to "only actually comment on the things you understand" well....good luck with that.
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What communication is not performative?
Mic drop . . . Just kidding!
I don't understand the accusations of performativity without that.
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Performative to the invisible crowd watching. In my ...30ish years on everything from bbs's to x, the number of times a post is directly responding to someone (like I'm responding directly to you) is very much the minority.
And that's sort of my point....until the internet era, I'd say most communication was to the person present or to whom you wrote that letter, etc. The very little 'group talk' was reserved for politicians or their analogue (like an Icelandic Thing). We've basically inverted that which
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Interesting. I think I understand your point.
Wouldn't that make the printing press the a mechanism "performative writing?"
I think I'd claim that humans are social animals, tend to congregate, and most vocal communications were probably group communications. Or at least understood to be overhear-able.
I'd also claim that privacy as we understand it is a really recent invention. Or at least only something that plebes like me could use in recent generations. Private letters, written and read by literate individ
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Performative to the invisible crowd watching. In my ...30ish years on everything from bbs's to x, the number of times a post is directly responding to someone (like I'm responding directly to you) is very much the minority.
And that's sort of my point....until the internet era, I'd say most communication was to the person present or to whom you wrote that letter, etc. The very little 'group talk' was reserved for politicians or their analogue (like an Icelandic Thing). We've basically inverted that which is weird.
Surely you know of 1984 and its 'view screens'? Can you imagine how performative people would be knowing that anyone could be watching them? It would be like being on a reality TV show.
All of life would become a performance for an audience, ratings, views, likes and subscribes.
Re: Normalization of performative feeling (Score:2)
Re:Normalization of performative feeling (Score:4, Insightful)
Social media is 100% performative.
No it isn't this is just stupid reductionism.
I'm on a social media group, for example, which consists of only people who live on the same road as me. It's mostly people posting things like "does anyone have any spare recycling bin space today", "anyone know who's car XXXXXX is, can any chance you can move it", "can I borrow a thing", "I've got a spare X, anyone want it", "the road is flooded at the big junction this morning, don't go that way" (this was one of today's post), "the council has a new consultation on the area here", "there's a dodgy looking bloke going up the road at 4am looking in cars", "foxy has started breaking the food waste bins open".
That kind of thing. How the hell is that "100% performative"? It's almost entirely utilitarian.
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OK 98% then.
Does that meaningfully change the point of my post?
Feels like quibbling to me but sure, I'll concede a couple of percent for these sorts of contexts.
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OK 98% then
Well no. That was one example.I'm on a variety of different friend groups. One of the most common messages posted are when/where to meet up. Also a bit of cope about our former (and in some cases still current) employer.
So that's another few.
Now either, I'm some sort of superior, extra evolved human, unlike almost all others or your assumptions are incorrect.
Definitely some of it is performative. 100, or 98% is way way way over though.
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You mean "stop inventing numbers that you like the sound of".
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Social media is 100% performative.
No it isn't this is just stupid reductionism.
Ok so here it is as intelligent reductionism:
Social media often involves performative behavior, driven by a desire for recognition, credibility, or moral influence. While it may appear self-centered, this behavior is influenced by the evolving nature of online communication platforms, such as the shift from BBS-style forums to instant messaging like Twitter. However, acknowledging the performative nature of social media doesn't negate the potential for genuine interactions or meaningful discussions. Furthermore, recognizing the performative aspects of online communication allows individuals to engage more thoughtfully and understand the dynamics at play.
Hows that?
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Ok so here it is as intelligent reductionism:[...]Hows that?
Very good about social media, but "I think you'll find/well akshually" it's very poor reductionism, what with not being reductionist :)
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Ok so here it is as intelligent reductionism:[...]Hows that?
Very good about social media, but "I think you'll find/well akshually" it's very poor reductionism, what with not being reductionist :)
I don't think ChatGPT did too badly though. I fed it the OP's comment and asked it to make it intelligent reductionism instead of dumb reductionism.
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Social media is 100% performative. It's almost never a reply to the previous post or issue, it's a soliloquy to the invisible choir to gain...what, credibility? Moral suasion? Karma?
Status. It pretty much always comes back around to status. Proving your status as a member in good standing of whatever tribe through virtue signaling, or jockeying for a better status within said tribe. Humans have never escaped from tribalism, it just opened up along more blurred lines as methods of communication improved and new ideological borders were found or created.
The last thing I need! (Score:2, Flamebait)
Ever see the bumper sticker (Score:2)
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention"
It predates social media and the internet by decades.
The message is that apathy and deliberately ignoring the goings on in the world IS the greatest "sin"
The internet and social media has simply amplified that ideal
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no I don't waste my time reading other peoples dumbass stickers
There were always kooks. (Score:1)
Victims' and haters' silly exchanges are nowadays piped directly into the news, instead of being ignored and lazy journalists being forced to find and report real, factual news.
Someone calling someone names - online or not - is human behaviour, not bias, not a sign of something, not a trend, not news and definitely not a reason to make laws and further discriminate against some group.
Grow t
This is nothing new (Score:3)
"constantly pressure users to share opinions on events they may not fully understand"
Swap "users" for "listeners" and its just like most radio phone-ins for the last 50 years then.
Factoring arguments (Score:3)
One thing I liked about the c2.com* wiki is that repeated arguments were put into their own wiki topic so one could just reference them rather than reinvent the wheel. It saved a lot of text and time. A typical social network discussion wastes a lot of time reinventing argument wheels.
Debates in C2 started looking something like the following fake example:
Person A: Flux Capacitors are bad because they don't work well in cold weather. #FluxCapProblems.
Person B: But the alternatives also have problems in the cold. See #ZammoProblems and #FlibboProblems.
Person A: Both those heavily quote #DoctorVimm, who is a known quack. See #DoctorVimm^Scandals.
(The "^" indicates a sub-page anchor tag. C2.com didn't use these syntax conventions; I just selected some that borrow from familiar sites. C2 didn't really do sub-page anchors well, but we can learn from its warts. There are a lot of lessons learned from C2 that could be used to make an even better forum engine.)
* C2 is mostly read-only these days. They also reformatted it to be mobile-friendly, which screwed up the thread nesting and code samples; a mistake. They got suckered by the evil "mobile-first" fad.
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Speaking of wasting text, I used "a lot of" too often. In fact I didn't need it at all. Modnays. I'll give Slashdot $50 if they add re-editing. It's not much, but if we all do it, maybe they'll budge. AND maybe fix the Unicode oddities.
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Gotta disagree the only people who are posting ascii are guys who have all day to fiddle around with 20 year old GNAA tools seeing what can get around the lameness filter so they can post another round of swastikas. As a distinguished troll I’d very much like to see more ASCII goatses and penisbirds and yet I haven’t seen one in ages :(
Even though it might be a little too web 2.0 for slashdot I think I’d get some good laughs if slashdot let us post some emojis.
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> Being able to edit your comments on a threaded forum is suboptimal, even if it's possible to view the changes.
Sub-optimal for what? I prefer it, and the customer is always right, Jesus said so! Well, okay, his sister said it, but she's still semi-Holy.
> And Unicode on Slashdot is a terrible idea.
A compromise is to convert common variations into their simpler form. For example, replace those darn MS "smart quotes" with simple quotes. If there is no available substitution, then flag the error. I've c
This is why (Score:3)
A number of years ago I was really interested in how people make decisions and read Jonah Leher's book, How We Decide. He cited a couple of articles in the book that piqued my interest, so I emailed him via the email address published in the back of the book (it was an AOL address, haha), and within 24 hours he wrote back with more information about the two articles he cited (the citation in the book was pretty vague). I read the two articles and they had nothing to do at all with what he claimed they showed. Nothing at all. So I basically threw out his book. Years later he was found to be engaged in plagiarism and numerous other issues with his writing and had most of his books pulled and was fired by Wired (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer).
And he was an author published in significant national magazines and with a prominent publishing house. And his work was such BS and nonsense...
Social media is 100's of times worse because the misrepresentation is sometimes six or seven layers deep (reporting on what someone said on what someone said on what someone said on what an article claimed someone said which they didn't say).
Developing a consistent habit of mind of engaging in critical thinking is THE top ability / skill we need in the world. That, and staying off most social media (because even good critical thinkers can be fooled).
Under Pressure (Score:3)
It's utter horseshit.
Example (Score:3)
I think Bartlett is on to something here. A case in point: I was horrified and outraged by the attack by Hamas on Israel. I was also horrified and outraged by Israel's response. And I do feel an obligation to condemn one side or the other, which I haven't done publicly. I do have a personal opinion, but I'm not confident enough in my facts or understanding to loudly proclaim judgement, or to tell others what they should think.
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it is perfectly acceptable to keep your opinions to yourself, in fact, that used to be the norm.
opinions are like... something something... daaarkside.
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it is perfectly acceptable to keep your opinions to yourself, in fact, that used to be the norm.
Of course, but the point of the article is that social media works against that.
Re:Example (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Bartlett is on to something here. A case in point: I was horrified and outraged by the attack by Hamas on Israel. I was also horrified and outraged by Israel's response. And I do feel an obligation to condemn one side or the other, which I haven't done publicly. I do have a personal opinion, but I'm not confident enough in my facts or understanding to loudly proclaim judgement, or to tell others what they should think.
I think its perfectly acceptable to condemn both sides. The Israeli might make the "Theres no moral equivalence!!!" argument, but thats like arguing about 'cultural relativism' and just a waste of time.
If one were, say, 'on the side of humanity, on the side of peoples right not to be murdered, brutalised, have their lives and homes destroyed', one may well be horrified and outraged by the acts of both Hamas and the Israeli government. And theres nothing wrong with that, one can make that statement and condemn both sides simultaneously.
Sometimes its ok to proclaim judgement; you are both a bunch of dickwads, and should both stop destroying peoples lives.
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Both have been war-mongering for as long as they have existed. There is no moral superiority here, there is no winning side here.
If people want to declare a loser, I guess that's human behaviour but in accordance with human behaviour, that won't fix history or immoral human behaviour.
"The only winning move is not to play."
-- Wargames, 1983.
Re: (Score:2)
There's probably something deeply wired into our brains - a legacy of our time in small bands of primates when we didn't have as many neurons to figure things out. Where we had to simplify everyone to being either with us, or against us.
But the simple case is that there's usually more than two groups. Take the example you gave - the Hamas attack on Israel, and the Israeli government's attack on Gaza. There's far more people involved, even unwilli
Re: (Score:2)
To this day I don't get the outrage. If Canada was publicly stating their ultimate goal is to exterminate every American, and they went and fired thousands of missiles into your neighborhood, I highly doubt you would find the collateral loss of innocents caused by a response invasion "horrific" or worthy of outrage. I think Americans are woefully naive in their comforta
"Social" media isn't even actually social. (Score:5, Insightful)
You've been herded into what is basically a Human Farm, and convinced that the loaded terms and Orwellian language fed to you by a tiny group of scheming billionaires and stock swindlers are "society". But it isn't. The internet is not reality. It's a Potemkin Village controlled by vanishingly few people. Algorithms are not intelligent, and for damn sure not sentient. They are nothing more than the barbed wire fencing around these Human Farms, guiding you to the trough (the pestilential propaganda we're force-fed by media monopolies), the milking shed (consumerism, where we're regularly fleeced of both work and the profits of work), or the slaughterhouse (slaver prisons, or literally the grave).
The solutions are mind-bogglingly simple: Humility, compassion, and responsibility. The truth doesn't need to be shouted: Those who can hear it, will. Those who can't, aren't listening anyway.
What about /.? (Score:2)
Are the slashdot editors calling into question the whole reason for this site’s existence? The vast majority of posts here are people spouting off with little, or at least insufficient expertise to render an opinion (I’m as guilty as anyone.)
It does raise the question: who is the arbiter of the necessary expertise to offer an opinion?
There’s no good answer to that, so, let the circus continue.
UI fostering posts (Score:2)
Prescient read on the state of social media — apps in particular
Ripe is the moment innovation, architecture and engineering could bring gravitas to late-stage chaos(Twitter, FB, IG, X, et al). Close is the moment social eclipses MSM, such as WSJ admission that they’ve lost control of the narrative online. Social momentum is overwhelming mainstream
Shudder the outcome if it follows what's become of machine voting where Americans are begging for return to paper ballot
Social is approaching inflexio
I love Jamie Bartlett, but.... (Score:3)
Learning and Nuance (Score:3)
I've spent a lot of time discussing things online since the dial up BBS days. The biggest change I have observed as the unwashed masses have gotten involved in the discussion is the unwillingness to learn anything new or see nuance within issues. The foundation of social media is the little dopamine hit people get from being right, or performing outrage, and that's really all most people are after.
There is no question I can be wordy, but I had someone tell me I "wrote a book" after I posted three short sentences in response to an article.
I've seen people post charts that demonstrate something is happening as evidence that it isn't happening.
If reputable sites and cross checking won't give them the answer they are looking for, a single reference from a *.wordpress.com site will do even if it is demonstrably incorrect.
None of the big issues we face today are simple. They require nuanced solutions that take in to account many complex factors and borrow from multiple political ideologies. That doesn't give people the dopamine hit they want, though, and it doesn't serve the interests of the political class.
Socmed is a practice platform for discourse (Score:3)
All in all, no matter how meager your knowledge, interaction on social media is still better than no interaction at all. IMO it raises awareness of the opinions of others, based or baseless, and is an opportunity to discover tidbits of information of which we were previously unaware, and to debate them in any way we like.
Re: (Score:2)
Social media is a place to practice discourse with few real-world ramifications for "wrong-think."
Are you kidding? People lose their jobs through discourse on social media. Peoples lives are destroyed through things they post on social media, even things which can be bafflingly neutral or plain.
Like 'all lives matter'. I mean... on the simple bald face of it, how can such a statement possibly be wrong? The concept that 'Only some lives matter' is so obviously abhorrent.
Yet saying 'all lives matter' can have terrible consequences.
Re: (Score:2)
Citizen Journalists (Score:3)
I suspect journalists are hating on social media because it is genuinely outcompeting them. Half the “journalism” I see is some verbiage posted around what a journalist dug up on Twitter anyway. Not a lot of professional muckrakers tramping around when they can just wait for a random person on Twitter to do it for them. I’m sure someone will respond with Grave Concerns about misinformation, but honestly there is quality Actual Information from thoughtful, well traveled people who just happen to not be employed by a legacy media institution.
Overstated issue (Score:2)
To speak publicly is now so easy that not doing it kind-of-implies you don't know or don't care about what's going on in the world.
If someone thinks this, it's pretty much all in their heads.
The vast majority of people do not notice, let alone care about folks unstated opinions. There's *plenty* of opinion to go around without hunting for more.
To the extent this is a real thing, it's a thing for a tiny population of celebreties, and even among them it's hardly a given that people will even notice their silence. Many celebreties never bother speaking to the issues of the day, and no one spends much thought on that either. If they ten
Jesus hates virtue signalling (Score:2)
The problem is not having and sharing your opinion; that is great to do. The problem is that it is very easy to have very public, very cheap, very meaningless gestures, and declare, "No need to act, I have already supported/denounced/wished."
Jesus was complaining about virtue signalling 2000 years ago, usually calling it hypocrisy: praying in public, saying "I tithe even 1/10th of this little dill weed", playing a literal trumpet when giving to the poor -- but at least they actually did it. Thanks to the in
Exactly (Score:2)
IE Don't 'produce an opinion.. (Score:2)
As Jean Baudrillard noted in 'Simulacra and Simulation', it is no longer necessary to be able to produce an opinion, just to be able to reproduce 'public opinion'...
And thats what 'social media' amounts to, the mass reproduction of opinions, lacking originality and thought. LLM's are just going to make this worse, especially as they start feeding on their own outputs...
I understand, and... (Score:3)
I have no opinion on this topic. Just thought the entire world needed to know that.
Pick someone else to decide. Repeat... (Score:2)
What if people were honest about whose opinions they're repeating? Then we'd have a much shorter list of possible "information".
This is one place AI might help. Summarize stuff, and take the opinion out of communication (at least for a moment during transmission).
Appearing wise (Score:1)
My 2 cents (Score:2)
At the start of a big-publicity criminal trial, there are people outside the court shouting "He's guilty" or "She's innocent". To me, people seem very comfortable picking sides when possessing zero facts and a minimum of third-party opinions.
Moralizing indeed (Score:2)
But the result is an undirected anger from all sides: frenetic, purposeless, habitual and above all moralising.
Yep. Social media is part of a modern religion. Everybody has a religion, the only question is which one.
Mine may have an "invisible sky God", but yours has an invisible sky hook - you know, the hook that all your beliefs hang off of, since they supposedly don't come from anything at all except your own evolved brain's epiphenomena ...