The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What?

@Hirom@beehaw.org · edit-2 7 months ago

The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What?

4dpuzzle · 7 months ago

I’m starting to think that Kurzgesagt is either paid media and/or propaganda. I really liked their well researched approach. But this one is straight out in your face. They outright deny the filter bubble that each one of us have experienced firsthand on corporate social media - and then blame you for the ill effects. Also, if you look at the imagery - the emoticons and especially the thumbs up symbol, they are trying to invoke memories of specific social media. It feels very much like they’re trying to garner sympathy for those antisocial-media.

BTW, this isn’t the first time their motives have been called into question. They have in the past, taken money from bigphrama to paint them as benevolent superheroes.

@rwhitisissle@beehaw.org · 7 months ago

I don’t know why you would think they’re paid media or propaganda. It’s not like they’ve been paid over half a million dollars in 2015 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Or like they received almost 3 million euros in 2022 by a “philanthropic” organization called Open Philanthropy that operates on the philosophical basis of “effective altruism,” an ideology which functionally equates to “let’s try to convince billionaires to throw some money at the poors instead of addressing systemic inequality,” and which totally cool people like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk have latched onto as belief systems. It’s also not like they’ve been given money by the conservative religious John Templeton Foundation, which was one of the largest financial contributors to the early climate change denial movement from 2003 to 2010.

Nope. Nothing to see here. Not in bed with big money or ideologically dubious organizations at all. /s

@onlinepersona@programming.dev · 7 months ago

Have you read the sources? They are below the video. If you have, does the video misrepresent what’s in the sources?

4dpuzzle · 7 months ago

You can find sources to justify any POV - there is no need to misrepresent anything. Something doesn’t automatically become right just because there’s a research paper on it. In fact, that is one of the tricks big companies use to mislead people and scuttle reforms. Look at the history of the tobacco industry, climate change, lead in gasoline, city planning and zoning, etc. There are countless examples.

@onlinepersona@programming.dev · 7 months ago

What you say is true, but the internet bubble was also a paper. So if OP thinks that’s right and the papers saying it doesn’t exist are wrong, then I’d like to know why.

Simply having a “feeling” is as scientific as “god said so”.

@anothermember@beehaw.org · 7 months ago

They’ve always been pretty transparent about that kind of thing though haven’t they?

I don’t think they’re denying the filter bubble exists, just giving a different theory on why things have turned bad.

@huginn@feddit.it · 7 months ago

The video pretty concisely summarizes the latest scientific findings which say that the filter bubble does less to radicalize people than being confronted with opposing beliefs.

They squarely blame algorithms pushing anger for their role in that extremism though.

4dpuzzle · 7 months ago

They haven’t been completely honest about their funding and biases. Second, they are trying to say that it’s human nature and not the filter bubble that’s responsible for things going bad. But those are not independent things. The algorithms created the filter bubble because they are designed to exploit human nature in order to trap human attention. That filter bubble in turn affects human nature in a negative way to cause polarization.

@anothermember@beehaw.org · 7 months ago

They’re not making an argument for the filter bubble though.

@Umbrias@beehaw.org · 7 months ago

They are correct in the current interpretation of the effects of social media. Recent research has absolutely been pointing away from filter bubbles being a thing.

@smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 months ago

I also cannot believe how people looking like doing deep research for the topics cannot find out about different approaches than big corporate apps and old school way of forums/IRC.

As someone who got into Fediverse and FOSS social media months ago I have seen more great things already implemented and working than articles/vidoes like that are just making ideas about.