7d ago

Do you think Social Media is just exaggerated as being placed of being the source of all problems?

I'm seeing one too many people blaming social media for this and social media for that because it's just simply - social media. I think about this because I believe that you shouldn't blame the tool because it is a tool, but blame the person who uses the tool for their intent.

Which means I'm on the side of the camp that actually knows lots of people abuse social media and has it demonized. It's absolutely silly to just blame a concept or an idea for just being as is. So everyone else is going around blaming and blaming social media for their problems. Not too much the individuals that have contaminated it with their empty-brained existences.

And we all know that some of the more popular social media platforms are controlled by devoid-of-reality sychophants in Zuck, Spez, Musk that sways and stirs the volume of people on their platform with their equally as devoid ideas in how to manage.

Social Media, whether you like it or not, has a use. It's a useful tool to engage with eachother as close as possible. Might be a bit saturated with many platforms to choose from.

But I just think social media being blamed for just being as is, is such a backwards way of thinking.

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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.
- Political motive too. If society was less divided, and had less authoritarian inclinations, the hate would be less prevalent. It would just be addictive to see nice things on the net
  
  The actions of capitalist are always inherently political when they affect the working class but I know what you mean

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.
- The problem with social media is that it makes very small communities and issues seem very large and important. So when you actually go outside to do something about it, you find out that the world doesn't care and isn't impacted by the issue nearly as much as you thought. It sends you right back to your cozy and comfortable online communities where everyone agrees on the important issues.
- You are wasting your time because you're correct, the way to make the world a better place to get up and do something.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I read a book once - i know, crazy right? - looking at Facebook's policies, strategies, and actions and reactions in relation to driving engagement and its algorithms. They know well what they are doing in regards to hate groups and driving opinions that veer into human rights abuses. If the profit motive is removed, as is the need for 'hours on platform' and engagement and feeding people the worst aspects of themselves back to themselves, then much of the malignancy is dampened if not removed. Even so, if we had nothing but benign platforms, I think that a) being always in contact with people is not necessarily a good thing as is claimed, and b) being in contact is not (necessarily) being connected, and fudging or confusing that is a problem in itself.

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.

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.
- It's equally easy to do on federated social media, it's just that no one found the incentive (yet?).
  
  Why is it fairly easy?

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.
- Yeah I'm starting to agree. Even if some of us here are more than evolved enough for this, it doesn't mean the average joe is.

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.

“Source of all problems?” If you exaggerate it right in your question and then ask if it’s exaggerated, of course the answer will be yes.
“It’s just a tool” yes and when people say “social media” they mean the whole combination of the tools and how they are getting used. The whole “it’s just a tool” argument isn’t worth much. Yes, it is, and now that it’s been let loose in the world, we see how it is being used.
A match is “just a tool” but in a forest that’s dripping with gasoline, you can see how that tool will do exactly one job.

Social media is not just a tool; every single major social network has an algorithm with an agenda
Tools for connecting people cannot make editorial decisions. Tools for connecting people don’t try to manipulate those people into thinking certain ways.
If social networks were purely tools for connecting people who want to communicate, then we’d be having a different conversation.
If you ask me, we should recategorize Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc from “Social Networks” to “Content Distributors” because that’s what they are. They take content from the users and advertisers and prioritize what they want to promote in front of the users.
Signal, Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc don’t have algorithms with agendas so their purpose is purely social networking. They are the actual social networks.

the ones who own the social media are the source of so many problems.

Well, that you think about it easily places you in a different group then the average joes. Most people don't think about anything that's not relevant to their survival.
We haven't really evolved that much in the last few millennia where our civilization started, millennia is a really small scale for evolution.
And for people like that (the majority), social media are a bane, because they abuse what we know about human mind to be es engageable as possible, even if it's not beneficial to the human.
Social media as a concept is not the problem, the execution is.
Most people simply don't care about abstract issues like social media and similar.
- Agreed. Many people have issues thinking in the abstract in general, even when they do speak on it they don't understand what they're saying, they're just mimicking what reasoning sounds like, no different than predictive text typing, it's why so many can hold completely contradictory views.

Social Media can be a valuable tool. I find that certain platforms attract different groups of people. I stay away from twitter because, well, we know how to find the nazis. Facebook is for people who like to argue and scam people. And instagram is for the utterly shallow and vapid people who think they are famous. Big ego central. There are nice people on any platform, but you do have to put up with a ton of shit depending on the platform. Watching TV does not rot your brain. Playing video games does not make you violent. Smoking pot does not make you a junkie. Kissing does not lead to sex & pregnancy.
Any activity/tool can do harm, but it's the individual who is responsible for the action.
- I like your sentiment but I have to admit I'm wary of perpetuating the narrative of personal responsibility, since it's been used so often to excuse discrimination against people for perceived 'deviant choices'. I would argue that the manifestations of individual behavioral dysfunction are a function of the corrosion of traditional social bonds combined with the unrealized societal effects of new communication technologies. Like a feedback loop of compromised people consuming media that validates their harmful or extreme worldviews.

Social media simply allows people to post things publicly. The fact that one feels more anonymous when doing so is a side effect of the human condition, not the fault of the platforms. What this has led to is a rise in the visibility of extremist thinking, allowing those that would normally hide those views to see that others share them. As such people will congregate to places online where they feel welcome for the views they hold. Again, this is just human nature.
Now, could social media platforms do more to curb extremist viewpoints? Sure, but you run into privacy issues and... well, we're already dealing with that, so if they're going to track everything people say anyway they might as well try to make their platforms less vitriolic. But they don't, because they'd lose users, and users are the only metric by which their platforms make any kind of income.

Yes. Social media is literally just a fairly accurate reflection of us as a species and our civilization. If people wanted, things would be very different. People simply do not want equality or progress, they want to hate thy neighbour.
- Social media is literally just a fairly accurate reflection of us as a species and our civilization.
  Strong disagree. Capitalists sell it to us as a mirror, but it's a distorted mirror that shows us exactly what they want us to see for whatever reason.
  If they want to sell us diet pills, they will turn it into one of those amusement park mirrors that makes you look fat. If they want to overthrow democracy, they'll turn it into a mirror where everyone standing around you suddenly look suspicious and cruel. And if the Russians want to pay them to get control of what people will see in the mirror, hell - that's just freedom of expression.
  Add on top that pretty much everyone on earth is staring mindlessly into the mirror for hours every day, and you got yourself what I would consider to be a problem.
  
  Algorithms will show you something you already to some degree want to see see or nobody would visit social media. People like capitalism. They like authoritarian dictators. People like Trump, Musk etc. they do not act alone. Leftists and other assorted humanists and progressives are wildly unpopular because most of the public simply can't imagine not having the sheer bloodlust they have for thy neighbor.
  If people didn't like any of this, they'd be here, not on Xitter. They know and they will make any reason up not to be here from the somewhat reasonable to the truly bizarre like pretending not to comprehend instances/servers while using discord, and that's only if they even bother to virtue signal that lack of corporate control is something they want to appear to want, like how average joe will say in a survey he isn't racist because he knows that's socially desirable, even when he of course is and similarly in reality the public love every inch of the boot.
  There's no educating them, there's no misinformation that can be debunked, it's all excuses and these people reason backwards from what they want to believe and because of this and the bloodlust - the natural state of humanity is a fascist one and that's why getting someone to agree you shouldn't throw babies in the woodchipper is like pulling teeth and whenever a guy comes around saying he'll double the baby crushing machine capacity nationwide at the expense of healthcare for everyone, endless unwashed hordes of barbarians come out of the woodwork voting for him.

Yes, social media is the problem. But there are two social media spheres. The one where we are, with Lemmy and Mastodon, is not the problem. The problem is the social media that exists in the capitalist world. What happened with the internet is that we invented a lot of services that should be a human right but they are controlled by corporations. Everyone should have access to a zero knowledge email, everyone should have access to a social media platform that is not controlled by anyone (it's a public space).
- Everyone should have access
  They have, and choose not to.
  
  This. Don't rob the public of agency, they actively choose algorithms that will dictate them what to say, think, do and feel.

No, I don't think it's exaggerated.
Have you ever unplugged? If not, you simply have no possible frame of reference; you really want to find your answer, that's how.
- I've unplugged and absolutely nothing changed. People are absolutely full of bloodlust with or without social media and have always been. I don't even use any corpo social media whatsoever still, I have no need or time for it.

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