When George W Bush won the election it was all the fault of Fox News and right wing radio.
Now that HRC lost the fault now lies allegedly with social media and evil foreigners.
It's like people blaming comic books, TV, rock music and video games for what they see as the failings of youth.
Acknowledging that the Democrats chose poor candidates in Gore and Clinton and that winning three Presidential terms in a row is hard is apparently harder than blaming people for voting the 'wrong' way on some new media development.
Clinton spent 1.2Bn and had loads of young people working on media. They probably weren't just telling truths about Trump. But apparently a few hackers around the place were vastly better than them.
I get that you don't seem to like Democrats - that's fine, I don't much care for them myself (although Republicans probably even less). However, the problem we are facing today is different than just spin. People are fundamentally trying to alter the public's perception of truth, not just spin or political opinion, and they have found that they can do this by saying a lie loud enough and often enough.
And in case you think this is just opinion/spin itself, check this out:
There are foreign powers coughRUSSIAcough actively trying to disrupt/damage/destroy our democratic institutions. Considering the ongoing investigations by Mueller we still do not know if POTUS is a puppet, through threat of blackmail or evidence of dirty laundry, to Russian agents.
> Clinton spent 1.2Bn and had load of young people working on media.
And she just flat out cheated, in a way that was so easily discerned (even before this week's statements from Donna Brazille) that it almost definitely cost her tons of votes. As an individual she is by far the most responsible for Trump, especially considering that her campaign even sought to prop up Trump early in the race! And worst of all, she opted out of a landslide win by picking Tim Kaine instead of Sanders as VP.
I have no particular problem with investigating connections between Trump and Russia, but even if the worst of the allegations are true they 1) are about on par with Clinton's behavior in the election and 2) would barely make my top 20 list of appalling revelations regarding American politics. Americans need to step back and get some perspective -- as if the US doesn't do exactly the same or worse in almost every other country on earth.
> Clinton spent 1.2Bn and had loads of young people working on media.
clinton was also under fbi investigation, had wikileaks slow-dripping internal documents, and had a divided party (which clintonites didn't seem all that concerned about at the time).
If you are correct, then it's interesting that so much effort is/was put into organized trolling by hostile state actors, if it has no pay-off. Why would that be?
You are underestimating things. Comic books were scapegoats but like none of your examples really have an explanation on how they do damage. Like one that isn't based on misconceptions. With social media, the pathway is a lot more obvious.
> But apparently a few hackers around the place were vastly better than them.
Yes, yes, this is entirely possible. Do you know how? People working during the campaign still do things very much by hand in ways they don't scale. They walk around canvasing etc. A hacker spins up 20 new AWS instances and have a semi-direct access to your brain.
Obama was lauded for using "Big Data" and "Data Science" to rally voters. It's not hard to guess where his team got the data from.
Now the same thing worked against, for better or worse, people are going out of the way to chastise social media.
Where was this concern when the same companies try and collect as much information as they can - user preferences, tastes, political bends - all in the name of "enhancing" experience. There were tons of articles written on praising the same companies on how clever they actually were.
Lastly, it is funny that economist etc are acting holier than thou when they themselves would be collecting some form of data from their readers to enhance ad revenues etc.
IMHO, its not social media rather letting the collection of personal information get out of hand which is at fault.
It seems like it's so easy to manufacture majority opinions that don't actually exist. And people tend to vote based on how they think their group will vote. Take somewhere like reddit or even here, and look at the disparity between political opinions on ordinary threads in random places, and the top comments/voting patterns on explicitly political ones.
So yeah, I'll sign on to "gaming social media kills the democracy." The question is, what are we going to do about it? As an individual you don't have to participate in social media, sure, but that counts about as much as your vote does.
If it’s so easy to manufacture majority opinions, why didn’t the candidate with the biggest budget win? ($1.4B)
Social media over-amplifies outrage and pushes the most reactive stories to the top of the feed. That’s a big problem, with or without foreign government involvement. At the same time, news controlled through a handful of TV networks wasn’t a good state of affairs either.
It will be interesting to see how the media evolves.
I think it brings about about as much change in democracy as TV did. I mean, gradually people will adjust to that new level of openness of information, 'opinions' on social media will simply mean less to people.
How is it possible to educate people so that they are likely to form their own opinion rather than to put blind trust into the opinion of their peers?
It would be a big win if this debate would move at least some people into a direction of looking at the information that is served to us in a more critical manner
Anyone who wants to pin this on social media hasn't been paying attention to the history of the past 25 years. They've ignored the downfall of the newspaper business which used to take on the role of educating the American public. They've ignored the trend towards 24/7 TV "news" stations that focus more on inciting panic and fear than they do on educating the public. They've ignored the rollback of regulations that have allowed media conglomerates to homogenize what people are exposed to.
The reality is that if there were still journalists doing investigative journalism on par with Woodward and Bernstein and if Americans were getting their news from someone with the gravitas and ethical backbone of Edward R Murrow or Walter Cronkite, these "fake news" stories would be laughed at. But because our schools fail to teach critical thinking and our news either fails to inform people or cannot even interest people enough to watch, social media is the only way we have left for people to consume content and become educated. But since it's an open channel that anyone can participate in, is it any wonder that people would seek to co-opt it for their own purposes? It's little more than a modern day soap box and people have been bloviating their self-serving narratives that way for generations. What's changed isn't social media, it's the lack of adults with professional ethics supplying a baseline reality from which opinions must derive.
This is our generation's "yellow journalism" and it's a reminder of what happens when there's no one who takes on and is recognized for playing the role of establishing that baseline of accepted fact. Social media's reach is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
> They've ignored the downfall of the newspaper business which used to take on the role of educating the American public.
Which American news paper can you point out that's unbiased and isn't pushing some narrative. The truth is that printed press has been the megaphone of the ruling class since the beginning.
I think you’re dead on. When you don’t have a functioning shepherd of public discourse, the various outlets and commentators, and by extension the lies they tell, start to become indistinguishable. I actually understand why many people have a hard time seeing the difference between CNN and Fox News. One embodies a set of ideas I find more tolerable and decent, but they both rely on glitzy dramatizations and questionable punditry to sell a mostly cheap, trashy product. I’m not sure how to make good, rational journalism both economically viable and socially popular, but it definitely seems like now
more than ever there’s a need for it.
Seems like the current narrative spread by all the mainstream media is "censorship is good for you because... Russia". Ironic, especially considering the commentary in the very same media outlets a couple years back when Russia was trying to censor the Internet.
> When putting these media ecosystems to political purposes, various tools are useful. Humour is one. It spreads well; it also differentiates the in-group from the out-group; how you feel about the humour, especially if it is in questionable taste, binds you to one or the other. The best tool, though, is outrage. This is because it feeds on itself; the outrage of others with whom one feels fellowship encourages one’s own. This shared outrage reinforces the fellow feeling; a lack of appropriate outrage marks you out as not belonging. The reverse is also true. Going into the enemy camp and posting or tweeting things that cause them outrage—trolling, in other words—is a great way of getting attention.
When you use social media to influence elections in a neighbor of a geopolitical rival, don't be surprised when the same geopolitical rival learns how to use social media against you.
As much as I think the Russian interference in the US election was a catastrophe for American democracy, the blame lies at least as much with western intelligence services that continued to poke the Russian bear well after it started showing its teeth, with no real plan for what to do when it started biting.
That 2014 article really doesn’t age well, and it’s ahistorical to claim that there wasn’t and isn’t broad support for a more liberal regime in Ukraine.
Regardless of how decimated the Ukrainian population was while under Russian control, and how effective russification was in creating a divided polity, there is still a substantial part of the country who wants independence from Russian dominance. To believe that this is a just result of western encouragement or interference is to be either narcissistic, pessimistic, or duped.
Didn't read the article, but i believe the threat to democracy is largely because Facebook is a centralized platform. They have an enormous amount of power because they can directly influence the type of information their users consume. They essentially have control of a 1b+ herd....
While that's true, I don't think it's the core of it.
As people, we like to be right. So we're drawn towards people who tell us we are right. Social media lets that take over our lives entirely - we can now live happily without ever hearing an opinion we disagree with. My neighbour and I might live one door from each other yet occupy totally different echo chambers.
I think you see this in the way people view Trump, Brexit and the like. No one's preconceptions are challenged any more.
In regards to social media and fake news, I am thinking more and more about a talk that Professor Peter Kruse gave three years ago about the tendency of such systems for hysteresis effects.
I haven’t seen any proof that FB actually has power.
Instead, I’m seeing that they have inflated the number of users and ad impressions. Also, I’m seeing an argument that FB is somehow so powerful, that under $100k of FB ads swung the election (even though the campaigns bought 10s of millions of FB ads too).
Social media is not the root cause. It's merely one of many tools to achieve the main goal which is society's root problem:
The root problem is this: America has slipped for a long time now. It has at its core been corrupted systemically by a destructive value system. Its culture is now based on the idea that to dominate those around oneself is the right thing to do (on a personal, social, national, international and worldwide level).
And those who feel the need to play this game will dominate. They will reinforce and perpetuate this vicious circle - until society collapses. So you might want start counteracting now.
There's many things I see wrong with this argument/sentiment in general and I don't really know how to even address most of it.
Apart from what are mostly just biased judgements used to drive forward the narrative, there are 2 basic misconceptions that the article is trying to pedal as fact.
1: That democracy is supposed to inherently solve these issues; there's a clear reason why America was not founded as a democratic country. The founders of the US saw democracy in the same way they viewed autocracy. They called for a careful balance of different political systems in order to minimize the harm of each of these. Democracy was specifically avoided because pure democracy quickly devolves (and is synonymous) to "mobocracy." The article tries to place the blame for this on everything other than the system itself. However, the reason why these issues exist even in a system that is partially democratic (and obviously much more democratic than it was when the United States (or any other country mentioned) was founded) is because they have not taken over. Mob rule is slow to come to power, and this should be a warning to people that we're nearing the edge of the cliff (rather than that some have cheated the system into submission). It's also worth noting that democracy should never imply a system in which everyone independently forms views, as that is quite clearly impossible. Leading to the second point:
2: "Outside influences" are supposedly ruining political discourse. This idea just makes no sense to me. The blame placed on Russia for influencing the 2016 election is effectively for generating discussion. It is not for changing votes, because as far as we know that was never done. It's also not for lying to people; to argue that Russia was in the wrong for lying to people is 100% disingenuous because the authors of this article are just as happy lying to people in order to drive forth their own narrative. It seemingly blames the increased political division on right-wing politics by arguing how everything from Gamergate to Wikipedia has caused people to become more right-leaning. Ignoring the fact that they mischaracterize the entire movement of Gamergate (equating it to alt-right politics by linking it to 4chan, when in fact Gamergate was almost exclusively originating from 8chan, saying that it is trolling rather than a legitimate opinion to hold, etc.) and lie about Wikipedia's political agenda (it's quite easy to see that the major editors on Wikipedia are heavily left-leaning based on the frequent bans given to right-leaning editors), it's immediately clear from the graph showing party division that Democrats have "radicalized" far more than their Republican counterparts. In this scenario, they are using blatant lies and scare tactics to get across their opinion. How is this different at all from what they blame Russia/right-wing media/4chan for? Sure Russia might be using fake accounts to manipulate the public, but if the only solutions you can propose are limiting freedom of speech, you are doing much more to ruin democracy.
Is this butthurt never going to end? Trump won, HRC lost. The reason? Maybe people do not want to elect a person under FBI investigation. Maybe people do not want to elect a person who does not know the meaning of "confidential". Maybe people felt like their voice was not being heard by politicians and media, and Trump would listen as an outsider.
Ah, who am I kidding. Let's blame Zuckerberg and the Russians!
I think one of the most fundamental problems is the highlighting of things based on likes/dislikes/voting. It inherently drives people to polarization and is a very soft target for gaming. If you look at boards that use old chronologically ordered systems that are not threaded, there tends to be much more diversity of thought. A comment is just a comment - just like real life. People say smart things, people say stupid things. And the same people often do plenty of both. When you read a thread some comments you might love, some you might hate - but instead of focusing on one or the other you get a flow of ideas and views of all sorts. Instead in ordered/threaded systems we obsess over singular comments and the comments themselves become centers of discussion.
One of the first effects is that the only thing that gets visibility when there are 'opposed' groups (in other words groups that do not upvote one another -- this effect is even more exagerrated when we introduce downvotes) is the largest plurality. One view has 51% of the support, the other has 49%. The 49%, even though it represents practically half of all views, would be buried anytime it's mentioned. You'd expect there to be about a 49% chance of any comment you read of being a 49% view. Instead you'll read each and every single 51% comment until you get down to the bottom sorted 49% views. Consequently we see groups begin to splinter off into their own little spaces where they can discuss things separate from the 51%. And just like that you have fermenting radicalism.
An analogy I quite like is to imagine we're trying to solve a math problem. The correct answer to this problem is 0. However, one side believes the answer is absolutely at least 50. And the other side believes the answer must be no more than -50. When these two groups remain within contact, they counter balance each other. But now let's isolate these groups. In the past when the -50 side chose to go -60 there would be some push back against that and it would help create a more of a central equilibrium. But in isolation without opposition, -60 sounds awesome. Why not -70, or even lower? And on the other side an equal but opposite push for 60, 70 and more is simultaneously happening.
The more segregated we are, the more out of touch with reality we become.
> If you look at boards that use old chronologically ordered systems that are not threaded, there tends to be much more diversity of thought. A comment is just a comment - just like real life. People say smart things, people say stupid things. And the same people often do plenty of both. When you read a thread some comments you might love, some you might hate - but instead of focusing on one or the other you get a flow of ideas and views of all sorts. Instead in ordered/threaded systems we obsess over singular comments and the comments themselves become centers of discussion.
My experience is like this: flat, chronological comment systems have more "diversity of thought", because they make it harder for people to actually engage with each other - so you get more shallow comments. Tree commenting encourages depth of discussion.
Interfaces are a problem, too. You can't have a meaningful discussion under a popular post on Facebook, because UX discourages it. You can't easily browse through hundreds of comments - you need to click a lot to show more comments, and each such click degrades performance of the site itself. On top of that, misclick somewhere, and your state is gone.
Upvotes are a solvable problem. In fact, both HN and Reddit solved it, by not doing strict score sorting. Also, with proper UX, you can skim all comments quickly.
Ultimately, the problem with on-line discussion is the same as with lots of real-world issues - there is just too many people, and each one has an opinion.
That's not "stirring the pot", that's breaking the site guidelines, which ask HN users not to post insinuations of astroturfing or shillage without evidence.
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
That is a very narrow and lazy reading of a pretty important issue--that the attention economy of social media is easily manipulated. It can go any direction and in any country...as mentioned in the article.
I have been pondering what the reaction by commentors leaving comments like yours would be to this kind of reporting if it had been Bernie or Hillary who had massive coordinated online efforts to influence the election in their favor executed by hostile foreign powers... It's an interesting thought experiment.
[+] [-] sien|8 years ago|reply
Now that HRC lost the fault now lies allegedly with social media and evil foreigners.
It's like people blaming comic books, TV, rock music and video games for what they see as the failings of youth.
Acknowledging that the Democrats chose poor candidates in Gore and Clinton and that winning three Presidential terms in a row is hard is apparently harder than blaming people for voting the 'wrong' way on some new media development.
Clinton spent 1.2Bn and had loads of young people working on media. They probably weren't just telling truths about Trump. But apparently a few hackers around the place were vastly better than them.
[+] [-] patientplatypus|8 years ago|reply
And in case you think this is just opinion/spin itself, check this out:
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-pag...
There are foreign powers coughRUSSIAcough actively trying to disrupt/damage/destroy our democratic institutions. Considering the ongoing investigations by Mueller we still do not know if POTUS is a puppet, through threat of blackmail or evidence of dirty laundry, to Russian agents.
This a real thing. This is important.
[+] [-] 3131s|8 years ago|reply
And she just flat out cheated, in a way that was so easily discerned (even before this week's statements from Donna Brazille) that it almost definitely cost her tons of votes. As an individual she is by far the most responsible for Trump, especially considering that her campaign even sought to prop up Trump early in the race! And worst of all, she opted out of a landslide win by picking Tim Kaine instead of Sanders as VP.
I have no particular problem with investigating connections between Trump and Russia, but even if the worst of the allegations are true they 1) are about on par with Clinton's behavior in the election and 2) would barely make my top 20 list of appalling revelations regarding American politics. Americans need to step back and get some perspective -- as if the US doesn't do exactly the same or worse in almost every other country on earth.
[+] [-] abiox|8 years ago|reply
clinton was also under fbi investigation, had wikileaks slow-dripping internal documents, and had a divided party (which clintonites didn't seem all that concerned about at the time).
[+] [-] ern|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamnemecek|8 years ago|reply
> But apparently a few hackers around the place were vastly better than them.
Yes, yes, this is entirely possible. Do you know how? People working during the campaign still do things very much by hand in ways they don't scale. They walk around canvasing etc. A hacker spins up 20 new AWS instances and have a semi-direct access to your brain.
[+] [-] clinton-uggh|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thisisit|8 years ago|reply
Obama was lauded for using "Big Data" and "Data Science" to rally voters. It's not hard to guess where his team got the data from.
Now the same thing worked against, for better or worse, people are going out of the way to chastise social media.
Where was this concern when the same companies try and collect as much information as they can - user preferences, tastes, political bends - all in the name of "enhancing" experience. There were tons of articles written on praising the same companies on how clever they actually were.
Lastly, it is funny that economist etc are acting holier than thou when they themselves would be collecting some form of data from their readers to enhance ad revenues etc.
IMHO, its not social media rather letting the collection of personal information get out of hand which is at fault.
[+] [-] leggomylibro|8 years ago|reply
So yeah, I'll sign on to "gaming social media kills the democracy." The question is, what are we going to do about it? As an individual you don't have to participate in social media, sure, but that counts about as much as your vote does.
[+] [-] paulsutter|8 years ago|reply
Social media over-amplifies outrage and pushes the most reactive stories to the top of the feed. That’s a big problem, with or without foreign government involvement. At the same time, news controlled through a handful of TV networks wasn’t a good state of affairs either.
It will be interesting to see how the media evolves.
[+] [-] eecc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anovikov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|8 years ago|reply
It would be a big win if this debate would move at least some people into a direction of looking at the information that is served to us in a more critical manner
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] curun1r|8 years ago|reply
The reality is that if there were still journalists doing investigative journalism on par with Woodward and Bernstein and if Americans were getting their news from someone with the gravitas and ethical backbone of Edward R Murrow or Walter Cronkite, these "fake news" stories would be laughed at. But because our schools fail to teach critical thinking and our news either fails to inform people or cannot even interest people enough to watch, social media is the only way we have left for people to consume content and become educated. But since it's an open channel that anyone can participate in, is it any wonder that people would seek to co-opt it for their own purposes? It's little more than a modern day soap box and people have been bloviating their self-serving narratives that way for generations. What's changed isn't social media, it's the lack of adults with professional ethics supplying a baseline reality from which opinions must derive.
This is our generation's "yellow journalism" and it's a reminder of what happens when there's no one who takes on and is recognized for playing the role of establishing that baseline of accepted fact. Social media's reach is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
[+] [-] adamnemecek|8 years ago|reply
Which American news paper can you point out that's unbiased and isn't pushing some narrative. The truth is that printed press has been the megaphone of the ruling class since the beginning.
[+] [-] ellius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nzmsv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrRadar|8 years ago|reply
This reminds me of this CGP Grey video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|8 years ago|reply
When you use social media to influence elections in a neighbor of a geopolitical rival, don't be surprised when the same geopolitical rival learns how to use social media against you.
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helloasdfasdf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krrrh|8 years ago|reply
Regardless of how decimated the Ukrainian population was while under Russian control, and how effective russification was in creating a divided polity, there is still a substantial part of the country who wants independence from Russian dominance. To believe that this is a just result of western encouragement or interference is to be either narcissistic, pessimistic, or duped.
[+] [-] deevolution|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|8 years ago|reply
As people, we like to be right. So we're drawn towards people who tell us we are right. Social media lets that take over our lives entirely - we can now live happily without ever hearing an opinion we disagree with. My neighbour and I might live one door from each other yet occupy totally different echo chambers.
I think you see this in the way people view Trump, Brexit and the like. No one's preconceptions are challenged any more.
[+] [-] jk2323|8 years ago|reply
If you understand German you can watch it here (6 min). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSEEDB7ViyQ
("Und bist Du nicht willig, so brauch ich ....Geduld".. :-)
[+] [-] dogruck|8 years ago|reply
Instead, I’m seeing that they have inflated the number of users and ad impressions. Also, I’m seeing an argument that FB is somehow so powerful, that under $100k of FB ads swung the election (even though the campaigns bought 10s of millions of FB ads too).
[+] [-] benevol|8 years ago|reply
The root problem is this: America has slipped for a long time now. It has at its core been corrupted systemically by a destructive value system. Its culture is now based on the idea that to dominate those around oneself is the right thing to do (on a personal, social, national, international and worldwide level).
And those who feel the need to play this game will dominate. They will reinforce and perpetuate this vicious circle - until society collapses. So you might want start counteracting now.
[+] [-] dest|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nv-vn|8 years ago|reply
Apart from what are mostly just biased judgements used to drive forward the narrative, there are 2 basic misconceptions that the article is trying to pedal as fact.
1: That democracy is supposed to inherently solve these issues; there's a clear reason why America was not founded as a democratic country. The founders of the US saw democracy in the same way they viewed autocracy. They called for a careful balance of different political systems in order to minimize the harm of each of these. Democracy was specifically avoided because pure democracy quickly devolves (and is synonymous) to "mobocracy." The article tries to place the blame for this on everything other than the system itself. However, the reason why these issues exist even in a system that is partially democratic (and obviously much more democratic than it was when the United States (or any other country mentioned) was founded) is because they have not taken over. Mob rule is slow to come to power, and this should be a warning to people that we're nearing the edge of the cliff (rather than that some have cheated the system into submission). It's also worth noting that democracy should never imply a system in which everyone independently forms views, as that is quite clearly impossible. Leading to the second point:
2: "Outside influences" are supposedly ruining political discourse. This idea just makes no sense to me. The blame placed on Russia for influencing the 2016 election is effectively for generating discussion. It is not for changing votes, because as far as we know that was never done. It's also not for lying to people; to argue that Russia was in the wrong for lying to people is 100% disingenuous because the authors of this article are just as happy lying to people in order to drive forth their own narrative. It seemingly blames the increased political division on right-wing politics by arguing how everything from Gamergate to Wikipedia has caused people to become more right-leaning. Ignoring the fact that they mischaracterize the entire movement of Gamergate (equating it to alt-right politics by linking it to 4chan, when in fact Gamergate was almost exclusively originating from 8chan, saying that it is trolling rather than a legitimate opinion to hold, etc.) and lie about Wikipedia's political agenda (it's quite easy to see that the major editors on Wikipedia are heavily left-leaning based on the frequent bans given to right-leaning editors), it's immediately clear from the graph showing party division that Democrats have "radicalized" far more than their Republican counterparts. In this scenario, they are using blatant lies and scare tactics to get across their opinion. How is this different at all from what they blame Russia/right-wing media/4chan for? Sure Russia might be using fake accounts to manipulate the public, but if the only solutions you can propose are limiting freedom of speech, you are doing much more to ruin democracy.
[+] [-] dingo_bat|8 years ago|reply
Ah, who am I kidding. Let's blame Zuckerberg and the Russians!
[+] [-] thebokehwokeh2|8 years ago|reply
But Trump and his associates are also under investigation... And every single one of Trump's people are currently using private servers as well...
> Ah, who am I kidding. Let's blame Zuckerberg and the Russians!
Ah who am I kidding. You're already too far gone if this is how you think.
[+] [-] indubitable|8 years ago|reply
One of the first effects is that the only thing that gets visibility when there are 'opposed' groups (in other words groups that do not upvote one another -- this effect is even more exagerrated when we introduce downvotes) is the largest plurality. One view has 51% of the support, the other has 49%. The 49%, even though it represents practically half of all views, would be buried anytime it's mentioned. You'd expect there to be about a 49% chance of any comment you read of being a 49% view. Instead you'll read each and every single 51% comment until you get down to the bottom sorted 49% views. Consequently we see groups begin to splinter off into their own little spaces where they can discuss things separate from the 51%. And just like that you have fermenting radicalism.
An analogy I quite like is to imagine we're trying to solve a math problem. The correct answer to this problem is 0. However, one side believes the answer is absolutely at least 50. And the other side believes the answer must be no more than -50. When these two groups remain within contact, they counter balance each other. But now let's isolate these groups. In the past when the -50 side chose to go -60 there would be some push back against that and it would help create a more of a central equilibrium. But in isolation without opposition, -60 sounds awesome. Why not -70, or even lower? And on the other side an equal but opposite push for 60, 70 and more is simultaneously happening.
The more segregated we are, the more out of touch with reality we become.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
My experience is like this: flat, chronological comment systems have more "diversity of thought", because they make it harder for people to actually engage with each other - so you get more shallow comments. Tree commenting encourages depth of discussion.
Interfaces are a problem, too. You can't have a meaningful discussion under a popular post on Facebook, because UX discourages it. You can't easily browse through hundreds of comments - you need to click a lot to show more comments, and each such click degrades performance of the site itself. On top of that, misclick somewhere, and your state is gone.
Upvotes are a solvable problem. In fact, both HN and Reddit solved it, by not doing strict score sorting. Also, with proper UX, you can skim all comments quickly.
Ultimately, the problem with on-line discussion is the same as with lots of real-world issues - there is just too many people, and each one has an opinion.
[+] [-] observation|8 years ago|reply
Suppose that the center opinion on Y was correct.
Then there would be no need for 'search'. Leftist and Rightist would not exist. Liberals in the center would always be the winners.
It's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
[+] [-] patientplatypus|8 years ago|reply
Anyone here want to take a guess at which of these posts are paid propaganda? :P
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] hossbeast|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crispinb|8 years ago|reply
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gIiqmat...
Also note from the HN FAQ:
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
[+] [-] MrRadar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zorpner|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EddieSpeaks|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] narrator|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjjensen90|8 years ago|reply
I have been pondering what the reaction by commentors leaving comments like yours would be to this kind of reporting if it had been Bernie or Hillary who had massive coordinated online efforts to influence the election in their favor executed by hostile foreign powers... It's an interesting thought experiment.