Are a Few People Ruining the Internet For the Rest of Us? 140
A small fraction of hyperactive social media users generates the vast majority of toxic online content, according to research by New York University psychology professor Jay Van Bavel and colleagues Claire Robertson and Kareena del Rosario. The study found that 10% of users produce roughly 97% of political tweets, while just 0.1% of users share 80% of fake news.
Twelve accounts known as the "disinformation dozen" created most vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the pandemic, the research found. In experiments, researchers paid participants to unfollow divisive political accounts on X. After one month, participants reported 23% less animosity toward other political groups. Nearly half declined to refollow hostile accounts after the study ended, and those maintaining healthier newsfeeds reported reduced animosity 11 months later. The research describes social media as a "funhouse mirror" that amplifies extreme voices while muting moderate perspectives.
Twelve accounts known as the "disinformation dozen" created most vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the pandemic, the research found. In experiments, researchers paid participants to unfollow divisive political accounts on X. After one month, participants reported 23% less animosity toward other political groups. Nearly half declined to refollow hostile accounts after the study ended, and those maintaining healthier newsfeeds reported reduced animosity 11 months later. The research describes social media as a "funhouse mirror" that amplifies extreme voices while muting moderate perspectives.
Busy (Score:4)
Delusions of solutions (in 3D!) (Score:2)
I bet I don't get the Funny and the FP was too empty, so I'm sure it will be moderated deeply insightful.
Actually my joke is that three is far too few dimensions. Does anyone know of a website with deep moderation? Many dimensions and reactions to comments will reflect back to the poster along the corresponding dimensions. Imagine a virtual circle of good behavior?
Then look at the Web and despair.
There's a perverse advantage in collapsing things to a single dimension. Whatever the decision, it can be made b
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There are a lot of sites without toxic blather, where you're not the product. They behave well. Sometimes they're cranky, more often, useful and amazingly useful.
Consider the many sites surrounding the groups.io platform for starters. They're not the only ones. Some are moderated into numbness, and others are loosely moderated yet fun and useful.
Social media only devolves into the abyss when you're the product.
Re: Delusions of solutions (in 3D!) (Score:2)
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Thats kind of the core of the issue (and where your CNC community has straddled it well). You get one or two angry political people who turn up in some friendly little craft community, or fandom, or whatever and suddenly everyones ripping each others teeth out and it all goes to hell.
It reminds me of an old anecdotal story about punk pubs. A nazi skinhead walks into a punk pub where sign s
Re: Delusions of solutions (in 3D!) [ye olde MEPR] (Score:2)
You left out their motivations for breaking the pleasant environment, but I admit that I can't understand crazy people, so maybe their motivations cannot be explained in a way that I can understand...
In my imaginary solution approach, the troublemaker would essentially disappear from my vision because his earned reputation would save me the trouble of noticing his activity. The key to protecting public discourse would be the visibility defaults, because most people just accept the defaults. Still don't have
Re:Delusions of solutions (in 3D!) (Score:4, Insightful)
What the fuck is wrong with Americans? The moment anyone says something as benign as "let's all agree to be nice to each other" you lead poisoned fucks start screaming some shit about communism. No wonder your country is descending into a socio political shithole.
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As to why 'be nice to people' falls into that category? The kinds of people who scream 'communism kills god and money!' are also heavily invested in the 'natural order'... there are people below them that need to be nice to them, and people abo
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Well, that is how communism was framed. communism was the great evil, the killer of capitalism and religion
Which was pretty silly. Communism should have been framed more simply and accurately as the killer of massive numbers of people, mostly through starvation, but also through ideological purges. Fascism can't hold a candle to Communism in terms of death toll. Neither can religion, at least in absolute numbers. In the more distant past religion did some serious large-volume murdering on on a percentage basis, but the total numbers were smaller then.
Re: Delusions of solutions (in 3D!) (Score:2)
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And of course the American Idiots (I'm an American, but not ignorant) immediately define "communism" as Stalinism.
Which is amusing, just now, since the MAGA deity wants, well, pretty much that.
It's like Space Lasers talking about "communist socialist Dems", as if there were such a thing.
This isn't really a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's also about 95% certain that most or all of those source accounts are information / social warfare efforts run by nation state actors.
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I think its equally likely that its privately funded by wealthy elites that do it to keep the masses fighting with each other. This seems to be an issue that transcends national interests and specific borders
Re: This isn't really a surprise (Score:2)
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Said the state-sponsored anonymous poster.
And who runs the state? It isn't us plebes; the moneyed interests have that wrapped up nicely for themselves. Money talks.
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I think its equally likely that its privately funded by wealthy elites that do it to keep the masses fighting with each other.
That's the same thing, though.
This seems to be an issue that transcends national interests and specific borders
Yes, absolutely, that's how Trump can be working with foreign dictators with whom he has nothing else in common but money* and power.
* Yeah, it looks a lot like Trump was worse than broke (in a shitload of debt, that is) before he became president again and leveraged that to collect bribes. But he still had enough money in his little hands, even if it wasn't actually his, for that to still make sense.
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History (Score:2)
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...aaaand predictably modded down again for telling the truth as usual by the same.
Re: This isn't really a surprise (Score:2)
Welcome to slashdot, you must not be new here.
The moderation system was designed to be managed by humans and they aren't doing that. They're too busy clickbaiting us.
Old news (Score:3)
Yes, thank you we already knew this. It also implies that there are at least as few, very likely fewer, actual people perpetrating all of the toxicity and divisiveness.
Now, dealing with the problem brings to mind a quote from the TV series Person of Interest:
Kill 100 people at random, nothing much changes. But kill the right 100 people...
Re: Old news (Score:2)
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Kill 100 people at random, nothing much changes. But kill the right 100 people...
We really only need to kill a certain 13% to bring back a thriving high trust society.
The first people against the wall should be all the people who think you can kill your way to a thriving high trust society.
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The first people against the wall should be all the people who think you can kill your way to a thriving high trust society.
Noble and all that, but sometimes violence is necessary for change to something better. I suppose during WWII the Allies could have stood on the beaches and just yelled at the Axis powers that they should stop acting so badly, but I doubt that would have changed things much.
"Killing me softly with his post..." (Score:2)
The first people against the wall should be all the people who think you can kill your way to a thriving high trust society.
Oh the irony!
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The first people against the wall should be all the people who think you can kill your way to a thriving high trust society.
Oh the irony!
What irony?
Where did I say my goal was to establish a thriving high-trust society?
My problem with the bloody-handed revolutionaries isn't that they are murderous, per se, because every single form of life we know of gets its life from exploiting, consuming, killing, smothering, depriving, or in some way getting to zero-sum resources faster than another creature which therefore must starve, or die from the elements, or be killed by another predator, etc.
My problem with the blood-drenched revolutionaries is t
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
And these sociopathic assholes have names: Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Shou Zi Chew (CEO of TikTok), Steve Huffman, etc...
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The problem is that a social network is a natural evolution of hyperconnected personal devices that are everywhere across the planet. It's something that is going to occur at some point. You can't unsqueeze that toothpaste.
The more pressing issue is that kind of network is the perfect weapon for a closed society to use against an open society, and we have a couple of toxic, authoritarian closed societies whose existence we've tolerated for way too long. They're the source of this problem on those networks.
T
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In the meantime, there's Mastodon. https://mastodon.social/ [mastodon.social]
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You sound as bad as the leaders of those nations. Maybe you should enlist.
Re: Yes (Score:2)
You only pick those countries because you live in the one that is and has been the worst of the lot.
Re: Yes (Score:2)
I think you need to add Sundar Pichai to the list. Youtube algorithms are also out of control.
Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution: don't use that shit!
I don't use that shit.
What gets posted there doesn't matter a fuck all to me.
Re:Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't use that shit either, but it matters to me. That's what empathy is, ask your mom.
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I have empathy. I feel sorry for people that use that shit.
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What gets posted there doesn't matter a fuck all to me.
It should. I don't "use that shit" either, but the shit that gets posted there has killed people that I care about. It's also at least partially responsible for the rapidly developing police state and the newly constructed concentration camps, like "Alligator Auschwitz".
Solution: don't use that shit!
Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. We need real solutions. What those look like, I can't say, but I'm confident that algorithms designed to drive engagement will probably need to go, as will systems controlled by a single entity
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Whatever problem there may be isn't my problem to fix. Nor do I have any power to fix it anyway.
Here's the rub. (Score:5, Insightful)
The research describes social media as a "funhouse mirror" that amplifies extreme voices while muting moderate perspectives.
Yes, the algorithms favor toxicity, and amplify it because it tends to drive further engagement. This is the problem that emerges when the only metric you care about is further engagement, more eyeballs, and more controversy. The algorithms have been put in charge of society, because our "news" such as it is, tends to grab the most viral social media posts, which tend to be the most controversial and the most engaging, which are almost always the most toxic.
And people tend to stick with this toxicity once embroiled in it.
Re:Here's the rub. (Score:5, Informative)
"Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know the boys in the newsroom
got a running bet.
Get the weirdo on the set.
Give us dirty laundry."
(from "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley)
However, I believe it works best on viewers that are not actually suffering.
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It's been going on before social media, too. Toxicity and sensationalism drive eyeballs to the news.
"If it bleeds, it leads!"
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I would expect that it would work even better on viewers who are in fact, suffering.
Just remember, Fauci was granted a pardon by President Biden. What crimes did he have to commit in order to deserve that pardon?
Re: Here's the rub. (Score:2, Informative)
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"What crimes did he have to commit in order to deserve that pardon?"
None. If fact, committing crimes never results in deserving a pardon. No one deserves a pardon more than an innocent man.
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The difference between the 1990s and the Social Cancer era however, is the existence of gatekeeping.
When one needed a printing press or a television studio in order to access 1-to-many media, someone - generally speaking, someone with at least some iota of human decency and sanity - had to make the decision to hand you the megaphone. Nobody at a television studio was going to hand a microphone to a fucking Nazi. With th
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Yes, the algorithms favor toxicity, and amplify it because it tends to drive further engagement.
This is the standard explanation, but I am somewhat skeptical that this is the real one, at least for Xitter. Its utilization has been dropping and its owner does not care because the content the likes had taken over, by design (he is not trying to hide it). The "favor toxicity" because "engagement" is neutral as to the type of toxicity, but clearly the result is driving in one direction only. Xitter is toxic because its owner wants it to be, engagement be damned.
The Zuckerbot is more subtle but favors the
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Facebook just wants to get paid, Twitter wants power for its owner.
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Yes, the algorithms favor toxicity, and amplify it because it tends to drive further engagement.
This is the standard explanation, but I am somewhat skeptical that this is the real one, at least for Xitter. Its utilization has been dropping and its owner does not care because the content the likes had taken over, by design (he is not trying to hide it). The "favor toxicity" because "engagement" is neutral as to the type of toxicity, but clearly the result is driving in one direction only. Xitter is toxic because its owner wants it to be, engagement be damned.
The Zuckerbot is more subtle but favors the same general politics.
The other explanation is that only the most toxic of people can win in the race where toxicity automatically gets promoted. The less you care, the higher you rank. Which seems to be the opposite of where we should be headed.
ruined long before social media (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'll remember than the next time Cloudflare has an oopsie and 15% of the Internet just disappears.
Yeah, I know you're talking about the hardware, but the Internet that people actually use has been increasingly moving towards centralization, especially since only a very small number of companies issue all those security certificates.
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Who decides what is fake? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Free speech is a contract between rational people of a common society who have agreed to resolve their debates peacefully.
Right now we have Russian, Chicom, and Iranian botnets spewing deliberate lies and disinfo ops into our discourse with the sole and specific aim of creating strife and chaos, to harm our society. Their ultimate goal is quite literally to crash our nation so that we are no longer in the way of their goals - goals which we work to stop them from accomplishing because those goals are vile t
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The problem is due to statements like this folks like yourself either don't know the difference or purposely conflate the difference between the two of those.
The conspiracy theorists think all of academia and and all of government are activists who can't be trusted, leaving you with either
a> actual corporate activists pretending to be academia with crazy perverse incentives
b> alternative media who have even worse perverse incentives to perpetuate this idea
So we are left in a world where nobody can be
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Is it still a conspiracy theory when it's proven to be real and true?
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Well then it's more than likely actually a conspiracy, closer to the actual crime of conspiracy but it's no longer a theory.
That said a lot of folks today are running around acting like some of these made the turn when the opposite is in fact true, there is a great lack of evidence for them.
Examples include:
- Stolen 2020 election
- Covid lableak
- Potentially the entire "Epstein list", potentially
- Euromaidan being a CIA plot
- Anything to do with vaccine skepticism
- "The Great Reset"
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The people against the covid vaccine were suppressed.
There was a metric fuckton of anti-vax shit. There were plenty of people here advocating chowing down of horse pills, presumably in the hope that a dose designed for a half ton herbivore wouldn't blow some part of their anatomy.
The rejection of debate
Dissenting views are not the same as a debate. Some people just want to be contrarian.
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chowing down of horse pills
Like most things, there was a kernel of truth about it. There was a biochemical pathway that the drug could have affected in the replication of the virus. This led to some actual scientific articles that called for further investigation. There were people that were against spending resources at that time into further work on it, as resources were limited and this was not be best line to suppress the virus.
As it turned out, the horse pills didn't help, as that biochemical pathway was not a major method of vi
Re:Who decides what is fake? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was around during the pandemic too, and I remember encountering an overwhelming amount of anti-vaccine arguments. Not just here on slashdot, but in popular media too. What I saw didn't look like suppression at all, it looked like a desperate attempt at presenting facts in a way that ordinary people (non-scientists, non-staticians) could understand it, to counter all the lies that were being spread by malicious actors (and the innocently mislead).
I remember some of the utter nonsense that was proffered as science. One claim was that Covid was created by 5g towers. I saw another that everyone who got the vaccine would die in two years, no way to save them. Another said that the vaccine had tiny microchips in it to track or control people. These were utter nonsense but were effective in frightening people right out of rational behavior.
So, yes, there was a large and loud push to counter this misinformation, and there needed to be. And in some communities, it failed.
Re:Who decides what is fake? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is the supreme arbiter of what is fact and not?
A statement of fact (rather than of opinion) is true if the statement aligns with reality and false if it does not. It is merely the state of the universe that determines what is fact and what is fiction. So who can be trusted to verify the state of the universe on any particular statement of fact? Typically, that should be selected based on the fact in question. No one person could possibly verify everything. That's why as a society we have experts. While any one expert can be fallible, it is typically considered good critical thinking to prefer the statements of a body of experts on a subject of their expertise than it is to prefer the statements of Joe Blow, Keyboard Warrior.
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and that's why Trump wages a war on experts. He must be accepted as the arbiter of all facts. The crime Fauci committed was having expertise.
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it is typically considered good critical thinking to prefer the statements of a body of experts on a subject of their expertise than it is to prefer the statements of Joe Blow, Keyboard Warrior.
And even that can be destroyed by a conspiracy amongst the professionals as we have seen numerous times. Especially when someone powerful, say the petrol industries, is wanting a different result.
Which results in people only trusting themselves. The fools don't realize that they even trick themselves, but the Universe does not have to stay a permanent mystery if people are truly dedicated to finding out what state the Universe is actually in. After all, it is how we have seen a human walking on a gravitatio
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And that's fine. No one is saying the experts are right about everything. In fact, most would say they are wrong about somethings or even most things at least to some degree/metric. However, they are the best we currently have, and they are making progress to getting closer to the "truth". Much better than some random twat on Facebook or Slashdot. If you really think they are wrong in some significant way, then publish the
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And OF COURSE this post is immediately modded Troll because slashdot refuses to do a damn thing about the "0.1%" of the jerks who have ruined the moderation system by downvoting content they disagree with.
And utterly without any sense of irony.
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"Then all there was, was pro-vaccine arguments. The people against the covid vaccine were suppressed."
No they weren't. They were scared shitless.
"Informed decisions were not possible..."
A total lie.
"I was staunchly pro vaccine until the pandemic."
That is either a lie or something tragic happened to you. I'd go with the first answer.
"Anything that could be construed as leading to vaccine hesitancy was labeled as misinformation."
This also a lie.
COVID anti-vaxxers were all Trumpers punishing discredited trea
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Moderators, who value civility over truth. Who tolerate trolls and punish those who call them trolls because name calling is "uncivil." Who, as MLK said, are "more devoted to 'order' than to justice."
They try to claim they aren't the arbiters of what is fact and what is not but their moderation powers prove otherwise. They try to claim neutrality, but that's a delusion:
"Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he tak
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Bear in mind that during the Covid pandemic the vaccines etc. were presented as emergency measures, necessary for our survival. There was no time to research them (in hindsight) sufficiently, the dangers were so great, that our public health industry presented them as life or death necessities.
Alas, we should now know to not let the public health industry directly set public policy. They are neither equipped nor concerned with the consequences, reject the arguments of whether this 'should' or 'should not' b
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Withholding both sides of an argument has morality issues
Oh, the irony! Watch as the troll buck-yar, downvotes the other side of the argument.
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His bullshit is not new. He assumes no one pays attention or remembers anything he previously posted.
Not just social media (Score:5, Interesting)
My dad knew someone who was on a few medications and regularly watched the Fox tabloid. The guy seemed always upset/concerned/whatever. My dad told him to stop watching the tabloid.
A few months later the two were talking and the guy had stopped taking most of his meds (except the one or two he needed) and he felt much more relax. Less stressed.
When your goal is to "engage" people, whatever it takes is the rule. Stir the pot. Get people riled up.
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My elderly mother is one of those someones. She lost her ability to watch Fox News and quickly stopped raging about the imminent destruction of the country by Democrats.
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Articles like this are important (Score:2)
Social media is relatively new, and many people haven't develop[ed immunity
As the extent of lying and manipulation becomes more and more obvious, hopefully people will develop a bit more skepticism
Limit their screen time. (Score:2)
I tire of people thinking they should be listened to or they are of more worth because they have 15,000 followers on X.
Like wow go tell your mom.
In fact what's happening is very normal. Some hyperactive semi-sane social media addicts just keep having beef with everyone and everything and the rest of us just so something else.
If you spend hours on social media every day doom scrolling then your brain may have fallen for algorithms feeding you crap nonstop.
Time to go for
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they aren't.
First, it's not ruined. There's lots of cesspools, but there's lots of good out there too. Also, while we all get a bunch of shit presented to us, you also attract what you put out, and what you go looking for. The algorithms make sure of that. You get more of what you interact with.
Second, it's not a few people. It's the majority of people ruining the internet. Eternal September proves this. The masses of dumbshits have a multiplying effect on scum content. They interact with it, making sure everyone sees more of it. They even repost it in the name of mocking it, likewise.
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Oh thank god. Here I was thinking you may not post on this story and Slashdot may not mod you up fellow 10%er ;-)
It's piloted (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:2)
One man's meat is another man's poison ...
Yes, I totally trust our respectable betters to determine what is "toxic" and forbid it, lol.
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I learned long ago that posts from you are toxic.
Yep! (Score:2)
Since 1991.
News for nerds, stuff that matters.
Yes, mods here (Score:2, Informative)
These people should be identified and banned.
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Be careful. I got modded -1 troll for posting the same thing. The trolls don't like being told they shouldn't troll.
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It would probably be better to actually spend all those unused mod points as you have them to mod posts up, even if it is just for moderately good posts.
Letting them expire just increases the impact of each individual troll mod point.
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100% agree.
I believe that in Slashdot's current moderation system (with scores capped to five, and the content of comments being outright unavailable on mobile if the scores fall too low) moderators' identities (that is, their made-up slashdot ones, not their actual identities) should be public. You should be able to see who is responsible for which mods.
This is not as good as a proper web-of-trust system where e.g. your chosen Slashdot poster relationships would affect how moderation was applied to comment
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So really, you're arguing for the end of the moderation system.
That's a typically false, typically anon coward take.
I used to post non-AC, then I saw too many people getting stalked by obsessives
You mean you got held accountable for your bullshit? waaaaah
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Nobody gets "banned" on Slashdot. (Well, maybe in directly criminal acts...) That is probably the only reason it still exists.
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In a related headline (Score:2)
A few people ruin _everything_ for the rest of us (Score:2)
The Internet is just one place where this is easy to observe. But look at the super-rich, the war-mongers and those that cannot get enough power or control over others. If the right 5% of the population did drop dead today and then people of that type of person were prevented from getting born again, this planet would be paradise. Well, maybe 10%. Most people are essentially decent, but have no clue how things works and can hence be easily manipulated into doing the most abysmal crap.
That's the way it works (Score:3)
If it wasn't this particular set of twelve accounts, the "disinformation dozen" would have been some other set of 12. People were sharing what they wanted to share, and that is what made those accounts popular. It was content people wanted to hear and wanted to share. Once any of those accounts reached some critical mass the viral snowball affect kicked in and they got more and more exposure, so that particular group was the ones churning out the content. That's the way social media works, due to a combination of algorithms and basic human nature.
What's wrong with these people? (Score:2)
How come those 90% aren't making political posts?
Statistics are hard (Score:2)
(small number)% of users produce (large number)% of content related to (niche topic). News at 11.
99% (Score:3)
99% of Facebook users ruin it for the rest.
I never knew the actual number (Score:3)
It doesn't take a genius to "take care" of them:
1. Disallow VPN (streaming services do this to stop password sharing)
2. Identify their identities and the amount of dis/mis info they spread
3. Put together an estimate of damage they cause, work with authorities and get a warrant to search their place
4. Identify their true identities and work the legal angle from there
5. If those entities are government related, ban them for life!
Am I missing anything guys?
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4. Identify their true identities and work the legal angle from there
What legal angle? Unless they're inciting violence, conspiring to commit crimes, or similar, these assholes have the same right to free speech as anyone else.
social media users...well that leaves me out.... (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Betteridge's law.
Also if it were only a few people who are toxic, you could just block them and you're fine.
Social media as whole is a failed experiment, both from the inhabitants it attracts and from the incentives site owners have for designing how the interactions on their site work.