It's inevitable that social media will split up into separate and distinct networks of people who can no longer stand or even undertand the other sociopolitical tribes.
All of us sharing a singular global network was an exceptional and ephemeral circumstance.
In fact I believe that the present day situation boils down to one thing only: the prioritization of engagement at the cost of all else.
That’s what set us down this road. It incentivizes inflammatory posting that eschews nuance and context and twists and exaggerates the subject matter in order to provoke emotional responses — whether they be angry replies, “dunk” quote-posts, reposts, or even spending a couple extra seconds with the post on screen. Anything to steal away more of your attention and mindshare. Over time, this has polarized people to ever further extremes and normalized disrespect and bickering (as opposed to discussion).
It would be an interesting experiment to see the effects of effectively the polar opposite of twitter, where ragebait and other attention-seeking behaviors are actively punished, with the content that’s most readily surfaced instead being that which is thoughtful, candid, and not emotionally charged.
Added to that is user choice over moderation and algorithms.
That’s what’s truly interesting about BlueSky. It allows for side A and B to both exist, with people who want to be more isolated in a safe space (so to speak) to do so. That’s a really great property. If I want to engage with content I severely disagree with, I can put it in a feed I check infrequently so that it doesn’t impact my life.
Humans aren’t good at coping with a constant barrage of disagreeable (for one’s personal definition of disagreeable) or inflammatory content.
> It would be an interesting experiment to see the effects of effectively the polar opposite of twitter, where ragebait and other attention-seeking behaviors are actively punished, with the content that’s most readily surfaced instead being that which is thoughtful, candid, and not emotionally charged.
Who would read it? The same people who already avoid twitter - not journalists, and therefore not celebs/politicians.
Their advertising model certainly is a problem. But it isn't the only one, there are more and more users that demand other users be removed because of their opinion. When social networks started to listen to a few of them, they made themselves hostages to more demands. Platforms like Twitter or reddit certainly suffered from this.
It shouldn't be any surprise: it's not like the internet's userbase of 1990 represented a broad cross-section of American society, let alone western or global societies. It was mainly a bunch of academics and college students and government users. It's just gotten more and more fragmented as more people have been added.
I disagree somewhat. Social media apps are powered by feed algorithms that fall into two camps:
The first camp biases toward sprinkling provocative, highly engaged content in your feed even if it falls outside your network of follows or areas of interest. A sort of “forced discovery”. Elon’s Twitter and YouTube during the 2010s follow this model.
The second camp does the same thing but requires recommended content to track closer to its perception of your interests. TikTok does this exceptionally well, to the point where people often say they feel like their feed is “reading their mind”. Bluesky seems to follow this pattern as well.
The latter is more scalable than the former, but to your point it is an open question how big it scales, and maybe there’s just too many people for either approach to work.
I don't know, the entire point of the "algorithmic bubble" was to keep the tribes separate but happy, no? And the value of the network still increases with more people on it. Maybe some future social media will figure out how to keep everyone happy at the same time. For example, I think everyone but a couple of hardcore FOSS advocates and the far-right are still using Youtube.
I think that if you look at real-life Friend-to-Friend groups, this is what you find: clusters of people with similar values. So it it makes sense that the same applies to F2F groups over the internet. But most social media is not F2F groups.
Most (advertiser-driven) social media (including this site) is based on the idea of what I call "implicit ranking": The idea that a user can influence what another user sees (through "likes", "votes", "reports", "bumps", etc.) without having an explicit consensual relationship with them (such as a "subscription", "following", or "sharing" or "direct message channel").
This "implicit ranking" model is pretty successful because it is better at finding engaging content is and probably the dominant form of social media. In contrast to F2F, implicit ranking networks tend to promote controversial content from outgroups because angry users are engaged. We all love to flamewar sometimes, I'll admit it.
It does seem natural to happen. But there are loads of "neutral" accounts: gov agencies, businesses, etc that use social media for announcements and simple broadcast communication. Most are on Twitter now. I think I big question is will they add bluesky, or move (probably not, because of inertia), or something else.
See the Fediverse for example, which prides itself on not having algorithms, and is yet the most echo-chambery and radical place I know of. People automatically filter themselves into different servers, and defederate with each other with frequency.
(Whether or not this is good or bad depends on your moral views. But I think it is obvious that "algorithms" are not really to blame.)
The press coverage is a bit misleading. Everyone is leaving Twitter. Liberals are just leaving faster.
Keep in mind that a lot of Twitter users never wanted political content. They were there for sports, art, science discussions, etc. Some of those communities are clearly migrating.
I think I’ve even noticed a huge decrease in hate bots lately in my feed, certainly doesn’t seem to up date as often (aka takes longer for my usual “followees”to go off the firehouse, as they have some precedence in the feed make up
The issue is that social media sites produce feeds and content matching, forcing alternative views in your face.
Its like, they have decided to push metcalfes law as far as possible, to see when the breaking point is. Like a giant social experiment.
But if everyone is in one place thats still the most desirable network to be on. Just dont push Joe Blo's dumbest political opinions in my face as sponsored content.
Poe's law strikes again: I'm genuinely unsure if you're intentionally being ironic in perfectly illustrating OP's point, or if you legitimately think that "the Right" is single-handedly responsible for creating the sociopolitical tribes that can't stand or even understand one another.
If you're being ironic there's not much to add, so on the assumption that you meant what you said: Trump's ascendancy is evidence of what OP is saying, not the cause. The coastal elite has been completely incapable of understanding Trump's voters for decades, long before they were Trump voters. Trump hijacked the Republican party and won the presidency (twice now!) because he managed to make these long-neglected voters finally feel understood. We're not going to solve the problem of Trumpism by doubling down on treating these voters like idiots, because that's what got us here in the first place.
Yes and yes. The right and the left don't even speak the same language. I'm not a native English speaker and half the time I don't even understand what the left are even saying. Examples:
> regress into an id-dominated state of hyper-reality
> what can be, unburdened by what has been
What does that even mean? People keep calling the right stupid, but at least everybody can understand what they're talking about.
cosmic_cheese|1 year ago
In fact I believe that the present day situation boils down to one thing only: the prioritization of engagement at the cost of all else.
That’s what set us down this road. It incentivizes inflammatory posting that eschews nuance and context and twists and exaggerates the subject matter in order to provoke emotional responses — whether they be angry replies, “dunk” quote-posts, reposts, or even spending a couple extra seconds with the post on screen. Anything to steal away more of your attention and mindshare. Over time, this has polarized people to ever further extremes and normalized disrespect and bickering (as opposed to discussion).
It would be an interesting experiment to see the effects of effectively the polar opposite of twitter, where ragebait and other attention-seeking behaviors are actively punished, with the content that’s most readily surfaced instead being that which is thoughtful, candid, and not emotionally charged.
anon7000|1 year ago
That’s what’s truly interesting about BlueSky. It allows for side A and B to both exist, with people who want to be more isolated in a safe space (so to speak) to do so. That’s a really great property. If I want to engage with content I severely disagree with, I can put it in a feed I check infrequently so that it doesn’t impact my life.
Humans aren’t good at coping with a constant barrage of disagreeable (for one’s personal definition of disagreeable) or inflammatory content.
lmm|1 year ago
Who would read it? The same people who already avoid twitter - not journalists, and therefore not celebs/politicians.
raxxorraxor|1 year ago
bfrog|1 year ago
shiroiushi|1 year ago
user3939382|1 year ago
ipaddr|1 year ago
spamizbad|1 year ago
The first camp biases toward sprinkling provocative, highly engaged content in your feed even if it falls outside your network of follows or areas of interest. A sort of “forced discovery”. Elon’s Twitter and YouTube during the 2010s follow this model.
The second camp does the same thing but requires recommended content to track closer to its perception of your interests. TikTok does this exceptionally well, to the point where people often say they feel like their feed is “reading their mind”. Bluesky seems to follow this pattern as well.
The latter is more scalable than the former, but to your point it is an open question how big it scales, and maybe there’s just too many people for either approach to work.
rescbr|1 year ago
Onavo|1 year ago
jowea|1 year ago
beeflet|1 year ago
I think that if you look at real-life Friend-to-Friend groups, this is what you find: clusters of people with similar values. So it it makes sense that the same applies to F2F groups over the internet. But most social media is not F2F groups.
Most (advertiser-driven) social media (including this site) is based on the idea of what I call "implicit ranking": The idea that a user can influence what another user sees (through "likes", "votes", "reports", "bumps", etc.) without having an explicit consensual relationship with them (such as a "subscription", "following", or "sharing" or "direct message channel").
This "implicit ranking" model is pretty successful because it is better at finding engaging content is and probably the dominant form of social media. In contrast to F2F, implicit ranking networks tend to promote controversial content from outgroups because angry users are engaged. We all love to flamewar sometimes, I'll admit it.
ks2048|1 year ago
PittleyDunkin|1 year ago
Did this happen at all? Social networks have always been balkanized by culture.
dehrmann|1 year ago
CaptainFever|1 year ago
(Whether or not this is good or bad depends on your moral views. But I think it is obvious that "algorithms" are not really to blame.)
nitwit005|1 year ago
Keep in mind that a lot of Twitter users never wanted political content. They were there for sports, art, science discussions, etc. Some of those communities are clearly migrating.
EasyMark|1 year ago
fooker|1 year ago
EasyMark|1 year ago
prisenco|1 year ago
protocolture|1 year ago
The issue is that social media sites produce feeds and content matching, forcing alternative views in your face.
Its like, they have decided to push metcalfes law as far as possible, to see when the breaking point is. Like a giant social experiment.
But if everyone is in one place thats still the most desirable network to be on. Just dont push Joe Blo's dumbest political opinions in my face as sponsored content.
alsetmusic|1 year ago
[deleted]
lolinder|1 year ago
If you're being ironic there's not much to add, so on the assumption that you meant what you said: Trump's ascendancy is evidence of what OP is saying, not the cause. The coastal elite has been completely incapable of understanding Trump's voters for decades, long before they were Trump voters. Trump hijacked the Republican party and won the presidency (twice now!) because he managed to make these long-neglected voters finally feel understood. We're not going to solve the problem of Trumpism by doubling down on treating these voters like idiots, because that's what got us here in the first place.
dandellion|1 year ago
> Yes and no.
Yes and yes. The right and the left don't even speak the same language. I'm not a native English speaker and half the time I don't even understand what the left are even saying. Examples:
> regress into an id-dominated state of hyper-reality
> what can be, unburdened by what has been
What does that even mean? People keep calling the right stupid, but at least everybody can understand what they're talking about.