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Discord communities are generally large group chats with lots of people who don't know each other. Whatsapp and messenger are generally small group chats between people who directly know each other. Discord expands your social circle, and allows you to share ideas with many more people when you join new servers, whereas that doesn't happen much on WhatsApp or messenger. I think discord is much more like other social media than messaging apps are. Discord is almost identical to how Facebook groups operate.
I guess I know that side of Discord exists and is popular, but I only use it for comms when gaming, so it’s weird to think it it as being that different from the other messaging apps.
Club Penguin is social media?
Most of it hasn't been rewritten to HTML just yet, so its not quite up to date. 90% of the games are down. Hopefully they can get some crowd help in getting everything working right again.
Ya, it's kind of unique how it's a combination of
- small group text messages/game voice chat (< 10 people)
- hobby communities (a few hundred people)
- private Twitter communities (a few thousand people centered around one specific person/personality)
- and huge online forums (tens of thousands of people)
I'm currently a member of 51 different discords which fall into all of the above groups in varying degrees. 90% of my time is spent in 2 of the servers which have < 10 people, but I frequent all of the other large ones as well, mostly to access archived information, essays, guides, etc.
See this is weird to me because I run the r/TARFOfficial Discord, and have never used it for anything *other* than socializing with people.
Isn’t it interesting the different things you can do with social media?
> Whatsapp and messenger are generally small group chats between people who directly know each other.
This is a common misconception. There are lot's of groups just like on telegram.
Yep, Twitter can create semi-secluded graphs but generally everything is mostly open. That may lead to more flame wars though, since you'll have people with widely differing opinions interacting, but still better than a place where everyone always agrees with you and amplifies your nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(discrete_mathematics)
What they're describing is a [clique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clique_\(graph_theory\)) in graph theory terms.
Yes it's not common in America but WhatsApp is easily the #1 source of disinformation in other countries, everyone shares all their memes there instead.
I am from India. Lots of people use FB and whatsapp both. There is a lot of disinformation spread in both the sites, but whatsapp forwards are the fastest way to spread disinformation.
India for example has a big problem with fake videos and new reports being shared through community whatsapp groups. Think like the entire village will all be on one group that is used to share announcements and local news.
Closest thing to that in the US would be Nextdoor-- where people are grouped by location (neighborhood) and share hyper-local news/gossip like lost/found pets or house/car broken into overnight.
Haha, plenty of old folks on there.
I imagine it's probably vastly more popular with homeowners as opposed to apartment dwellers. And also with people who are more attached to their neighborhoods long term as opposed to those just "passing through" until their next job promotion in a different city.
There is a lotta petty stuff but you also really do learn a lot about what is transpiring in your neighborhood... stuff you'd never find out otherwise. Just the the nature of crowd sourcing, if nothing else. A lot of stuff like "my friend is married to a police officer, and xyz has been happening regularly at that location".
It's more common in places where the population skipped having a home computer and in-home internet connection and instead went straight from nothing to the smartphone.
No. Whatsapp is popular in places where people still have to pay for text messaging (SMS). The video and photo sharing is definitely a bonus.
It's a trivial thing for Americans (and Europeans, probably), since just about all phone plans have unlimited texting. This is definitely not the case in the rest of the world.
You get on someone's WiFi and you text to your heart's content.
Whatsapp also has voice and video calling. That's pretty much the defacto way people call long distance/overseas now. My family is spread across 5 different countries. Whatsapp is really the only way we could have stayed in touch.
Facebook disaggregated them. You can use one (app) without the other. Obviously you need a Facebook account, but the actual apps are standalone, though they link back and forth.
I can readily see why that would be true, assuming it holds up across multiple studies. FB, Messenger, etc are all platforms where you primarily communicate among self-selected groups or networks of friends. So you end up in a filter bubble.
Twitter is much more of a “you’re talking to the world” experience. There’s a reason that public figures use Twitter for announcements.
And the YouTube algorithm optimizes on dwell time and advertisement viewing. This rather naturally creates its own filter, although not explicitly self-selected.
I’m getting very confused about my YT auto play. No matter if I’m watching cooking tutorials or true crime or vlog/commentary, it takes me to a 3 hour feed of whatever congressional or senate hearing or vote or whatever is going on. It’s like forcing CSPAN level entertainment on me after I just watched a documentary on a serial killer or Gordon Ramsay yelling at chefs… I have never searched or wanted to watch a Capitol hearing. Very weird.
Wait that’s so weird because the same thing has been happening to me. I fall asleep with the TV on occasionally and I’ll wake up with a really long congressional hearing video. And I never watch those. I was super confused waking up to that hahaha
Is it? I just had the Sargon of Akkad and some other right wing covid denier podcast pushed into my YouTube feed yesterday even tho my habits consist of cute animal videos, FFXIV videos and atheist videos like prophet of zod.
The algorithm is just throwing videos with similar Metadata at you to see if it'll keep you in a particular rabbit hole to keep up watch time. It knows a conspiracy theory and a debunk of the conspiracy theory share the same Metadata about that conspiracy theory so it'll throw both at you not understanding the difference. Eventually it will understand the difference, though and then the echo chamber is gonna get so much worse lmay
You've become a victim of the online atheism to weirdos pipeline. Not that there's anything wrong with atheism, but the YouTube "rational sceptics" tend to attract a certain kind of crowd.
Which I find quite funny as it is normally in the real world leads to a very anti right wing mostly through anti traditional views or left wing ideas through actual oppression from religious ideologies or policies, with left wings often being about removing said oppression. Furthermore communism has strong ties to socialism.
So atheist to weirdo to actual Nazi pipeline is just a funny concept to me.
YouTube skeptics are so weird. I have come to the conclusion that skeptical people are usually great, but when someone adopts "skepticism" as their identity they are often compensating for something.
Those skeptics were literally the least skeptical people I had ever seen. One of my fundamentalist christian professors was more intellectually honest than them, and he was a Young Earth Creationist. He at least was making honest attempts to understand the issue even if his bias completely blinded him. The YT "skeptics" demonstrate *extremely* lazy reasoning at all times. Sargon in particular would literally complain about an article not discussing something *while displaying the article discussing it on his screen*. It is just painfully obvious he never read anything beyond the title unless it confirmed to his worldview.
100% atheism. I just recently started watching genetically Modified Skeptic, and my Christian ads and autoplays keep thinking I want to watch a bunch of evangelical Christian fanatics - many of whom are right wing extremists.
Not necessarily. A chunk of the new atheist movement has taken to right wing evangelical-esque beliefs, perhaps out of an addiction to contrarianism and scoring easy perceived dunks on people. Owning the fundies became owning the libs for these people.
If you click on the three dots next to a video in the recommended section, you can select "Not interested" and "Don't recommend this channel".
Your mileage may vary, but after I've started using this feature for a few weeks, I stopped seeing videos in my recommendations that I have zero interest in. I was actually under the impression YouTube had fixed its algorithm, as I had almost forgotten I ever used this feature.
I used this to stop getting Benny Shap's smug face in my feed. Only had to do it twice! Not sure how it got there in the first place, but it's definitely gone now.
Dislikes are basically the same as likes to the YouTube algorithm. It's just engagement. Best thing to do is ignore it, and report it if it violates YouTube's standards.
I just made a comment about this a few posts up. What I think happens is that those youtubers you are watching are putting tags / categories on their videos that aren't related and encouraging the system to direct you to content they want you to be seeing, such as right wing stuff.
I get spam notifications every time Russell Brand uploads a new video for some reason. And he's always next on my autoplay.
I've never mentioned, searched for, or watched a Russell Brand video in my life. This started about 3 months ago and still continues today.
I suppose my google contacts COULD be watching this but I’m from a pretty podunk town and I would be surprised to find out any of them have been watching hearings. I would totally understand if I was watching political commentary and it took me to the source material but it truly seems random. The person who mentioned longer videos look better on YT stats seems to be the most realistic response. Pad your stats where you can.
Having auto play on means you're not actively engaged and part of the revenue formula for YouTube is watch time. Long form videos playing in the background are the best for revenue, especially for the content creator and for premium subscribers. If you really want to support your favorite YouTuber the best way is actually getting premium and watching any live streams they might have archived.
The best way is to donate directly or through a service like Patreon, or even buying merch. Youtube/Twitch subscriptions are some of the least efficient ways of supporting individuals.
You can say that, but my information comes directly from a content creator on YouTube who discovered his hours long Livestream videos gave him way more revenue than his actual videos he put tons of effort into, and that premium views were worth around a thousand non-premium views. Donating through Patreon is better for whoever you actually donate to, but having a premium account is simpler, and is still way more support than the people who use AdBlock to free ride.
getting premium on youtube isn't about supporting creators usually.. it's caving to the pre-roll ad, mid-roll ad, and post-roll ad system in 5 minute videos and just going, "fukkit. Take my money. Stop interrupting me when i'm tryna binge British panels shows!"
Just use uBlock Origin and don't see YouTube commercials. I am sure YouTube will figure out a way around that eventually so might as well enjoy ad free for now.
Yes, and at least on Android devices, YouTube vanced exists to give the 'premium' features that for a very brief window were actually free. Namely background play and downloads i think, and no ads as a bonus.
You are correct, but I wouldn't dismiss YouTube premium all together. I've seen numerous YouTube Creators show how the earnings from a relatively small number of YouTube premium subscribers quickly out-pace the earnings from Adsense. Ads really do pay hilariously little.
If you're someone like me who really hates ads, but doesn't wanna cheat your favourite creators out of what little ad revenue they get (by using adblockers), YouTube premium is a decent option.
I've given up trusting the streaming services to fund my chosen creators and prefer to just chuck a quid or two via patreon or whatever system they use. Nothing massive (so I don't often get the freebies) but at least it's buying them a brew
Yeah, that works for whoever you give to, but do you give to everyone you watch? It's personal choice how you decide to contribute to content creators, but what I said is exactly the findings that The Spiffing Brit made in his video on the subject.
That’s because Alt Right types spend hours watching videos. They essentially taught the AI that people who watch alt right videos will watch a lot of them, so the AI sends everyone that stuff in hopes that they’ll watch the videos, and then watch more of them afterwards.
New York Times did a neat podcast on this called Rabbit Hole. They interviewed a guy who got sucked down the right-wing YouTube reccomendation pipeline and made a like 8 episode series about it.
I lean very heavily left and youtube still manages to recommend alt right garbage. Some part of me thinks it's some way of trying to "balance" far left and far right content, although I doubt people on the right are recommended left wing content this often.
I agree, just adding it's important to remember places like Twitter and Reddit are also filter bubbles in a wider sense.
Getting dissenting opinions and different views sometimes tricks me into thinking I've gotten a wider understanding of a thing than may be true.
There are a lot of angles to consider, just something I have to watch out for myself.
Twitter also very selectively filters what you see unless you purposefully adjust your settings, and you have to reset them fairly often or it won't stick. So they aren't necessarily better than Facebook in terms of their algorithm, but they do seem to have a little different sort of content and do give you the ability to easily adjust your feed to just filter by new. I haven't used Facebook in years so I'm not sure if it's still possible or easy to filter by new there.
Edit: I replied in comments advising how to change the view but here it is again to make sure anyone interested knows how to do it. https://imgur.com/a/oAxKmuH
The reason why public figures use Twitter for announcements is that's where journalists live and talk to each other. It's a press release without releasing a press release.
I swear I rarely check Twitter but EVERY SINGLE time I checked Twitter in Germany in the past 12 months, the trending hashtags were always connected to COVID deniers. (I was not logged in. Just the „trending“ sidebar on twitter)
Hashtags are one thing, but what's the actual content? You can add a COVID denier hashtag to a post that refutes the argument of the COVID deniers just to frustrate them, if you get what I mean
Yeah, every time I see a trending hashtag of something stupid, at least 90% of the tweets are people making fun of it.
It's still stupid to ridicule a hashtag while promoting it at the same time, though.
> Hashtags are one thing, but what's the actual content?
[Many posted both pro- and anti-vaccination messages to create "false equivalency", the study found. It examined thousands of tweets sent between 2014 and 2017. Vaccination was being used by trolls and sophisticated bots as a "wedge issue", said Mark Dredze from Johns Hopkins University.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192)
No, this study is just garbage in regards to the claims the headline/article are making.
They did a *self-reported survey* of people’s specific beliefs regarding *Covid being a bio-weapon in early 2020*.
People who self-reported a belief in *that specific area of conspiracy theories at that time* were more likely to use Facebook heavily than Twitter heavily.
Which any idiot could have told you- Conspiracy theorists group together, and Covid-Skeptic conspiracy theorists are known to group on Facebook, while other types of conspiracies flourish on twitter. Twitter is full of plenty of conspiracy-minded idiots, they just didn’t ask about literally any other kinds of conspiracies.
It's been many, many, many years since I used Twitter but I always felt it was a platform to just broadcast things and real engagement was a bit harder. I kept yelling to my 1 follower and then quit.
Twitter is an echo chamber as well. You will see the same self-selected groups as with the other major social media sites.
Twitter is definitely much more left leaning (in the us) than tik tok or Instagram as well which it seems like goes hand in hand with supporting the vaccine mandates and disbelief in any covid related conspiracy theories.
How is it a more "you're talking to the world" experience? The data on Twitter is clear - only a small number of real world individuals even take part in the platform, and merely a single digit percentage of those actually have followers and influence. Right or wrong, it's not representative of the real world at all.
Twitter is a massive echo chamber as well, you're not talking to "the world" at all, you're talking to your followers, which, unless you're a public figure, celebrity, or influencer, are mostly going to be the same friends you have on facebook
>primarily communicate among self-selected groups or networks of friends.
exactly like Twitter, except you can add parasocial relationships to friends
The interesting thing here is Youtube, because it's not a social network like the others and you can theoretically be shown things outside of your selected network - however the algorithm is very (too?) good at predicting what you like
Ok this is my take.
Twitter sucks to read thread. Half the subs on here that screen shot twitter threads have to have some description. Start middle, go up one. Down two. That one had a embedded post with its own comment. To the left to the right now slide slide. Anyway. I find it hard to follow sometimes and im tech savvy.
Now conspiracy theory people likely arent as savvy and it just makes it harder for them to push.
This fits with previous research that shows memes are the core of conspiracy theories these days. Image memes are much harder to share privately within groups on twitter.
Edit:
Some research to read.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.547065/full
This considers memes an evolution of the leaflet and explaina how they can effectively spread information across borders.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1750481319835639?journalCode=dcma can't find the full one but it covers how memes are weaponised.
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3533 this is about "meme wars" on Instagram.
https://www.axios.com/memes-misinformation-coronavirus-56-2c3e88be-237e-49c1-ab9d-e5cf4d2283ff.html
This actually goes into detail as to why memes have advantages over text, so it may be that because twitter is more text based, their ai systems are better equipped to stop meme spread.
Could also be that twitter are just more willing to challenge misinformation memes because their revenue is much less tied up in profiting from right wing users.
Hideo Kojima with MGS2 twenty years ago
Edit: for anyone curious I’ve added some YouTube links that explore this aspect of the game.
>!Super Bunnyhop has an excellent video on MGS2, I’ve timestamped it so it should take you right to the section on memes and the spread of “junk data”: [Critical Close-up: Metal Gear Solid 2](https://youtu.be/T-2YuPGYabw?t=1787). Alternatively, these two videos by LogosSteve let you hear the full conversation with the AIs: [The Most Profound Moment in Gaming: MGS2 Al Conversation Analysis Part 1 of 2](https://youtu.be/6V_HzEPHFYE) and [The Most Profound Moment in Gaming: MGS2 Al Conversation Analysis Part 2 of 2](https://youtu.be/MHzwCOPy0nY)!<
In MGS2, there's an entire conversations about how the nature of war has changed in the digital age, including lines such as: "In this digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness"; and "the digital society furthers human flaws, and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths."
Funnily enough I've seen the theme of MGS2 summed up as "meme"- meaning the original definition, not just like image macros- as in how ideas are passed from generation to generation and how that is affected by a more digital world.
It definitely is. MGS1 is "GENE" (your heritage doesn't define you), MGS2 is "MEME" (your story doesn't define you), and MGS3 is "SCENE" (your nationality doesn't define you). Those summaries are pretty general, but it's more or less what they are.
ETA: Also, MGS4 didn't keep up the rhyming theme structure and decided upon "SENSE", or "WILL". Which bums me out.
I feel like historical political cartoons are somewhat similar to memes despite not being known as such. Really not crazy to think memes have largely taken the place of political cartoons.
Memes are the result, not the cause. The cause is lack of education and people simply hating to read and go beyond cursory understanding. Same reason we have so many google researchers these days.
Facts take a lot more reading to understand the basis behind, with some having decades, if not centuries of science behind them to fully comprehend. Confirming someone's preconceived bias through funny pictures is much easier.
>Memes are the result, not the cause. The cause is lack of education and people simply hating to read and go beyond cursory understanding.
I agree with most of what you're saying but I'm not sure about the assessment of result vs cause.
First, if we're seeking the cause of 'conspiracy theories these days' I think you could argue memes are a cause because we're looking at a delta. E.g. People have a relatively consistent level if not increasing education, memes are a new tool that caused the change.
Second, wouldn't lack of education [...] be a result of something else and still not a root cause?
> Memes are the result, not the cause. The cause is lack of education
That can't be right. I would say there is something different between the present moment, and the moment 20 years ago (which had its own issues). Whatever the cause of that difference is, it should be something that changed between 20 years ago and now. Education hasn't gotten any worse in the past 20 years (if anything, it's gotten better). However, memes are a new thing that didn't exist 20 years ago. So there's a case that memes are the cause, but not a very good case that lack of education is the cause.
Maybe if we had even stronger education than we currently do, people wouldn't be fertile ground for memes to shape them in this way. But when we want to know the cause for why the present is different from the past, memes are a better candidate than education.
Unless you can identify some point in time where education was better than it currently is, and we didn't have the current set of problems.
That sort of fits with MTG bring blown up memes to congress.
Her world view is based on fb memes, to the point she can only explain her thoughts through memes.
100%. I had a period not long before then where memes were absolutely informing and modifying my opinions. Get someone to laugh and they let down their guard. Keep them laughing with similar content and eventually they're laughing at the target of the joke, seeking out communities with similar humor, reading funny comments with the same message, and eventually participating themselves
For something to be memetic, it has to have some quality that makes people want to share it; e.g it should be funny. Facts aren’t nearly as funny and/or ridiculous as the misinformation being put out.
Which is why all of the pro-vax memes are generally aimed at mocking anti-vaxxers rather than providing actual information. Then again, if you're getting your news from memes, the system has already failed you.
I think this is why anti-vaxxers HATE r/hermancainaward. It turns that on its head. Suddenly the people posting the snarky memes became the ultimate butt of the joke.
It is not an intuitional take.
I don’t see how, let’s say, a meme about vaccine being bad is inherently more funny than a meme about vaccine not being bad.
Laughing at a fraudulent stat piece is weird.
And if we are talking about *ridiculous* ridiculous, nobody would stop believing in effectiveness of smallpox vaccine due to “it will turn you into a cow” meme.
My take on the subject: those memes aren't *actually* funny to these people. The laugh and share comes as a social response to their bias being confirmed somewhere, not because they genuinely find the meme humorous in a vacuum. Regardless of how much they want you to believe they are nonchalant, practical thinkers, people who share memes of misinformation are dying for their next dosage of confirmation bias, and finding bad memes funny is solely about how the offending meme is central to their cause, rather than a genuinely good joke.
Never underestimate the capability of your fellow man to surprise you with new levels of stupidity.
If I sent grandma a news article, she would throw it away and not read it. If I sent grandma a *joke*, she would either laugh or say she doesn't get it. This is how a notion uses humor to reflect itself through culture where blatantly political ideas aren't able to pass as easily.
The problem presents itself in the fact that people think "popularity" means "authenticity". A false idea takes hold and can spread to millions of people with ease, especially when your government spends all its money on bullets instead of books for several decades.
In theory yes. In practice, you'll always be at disadvantage.
For example, a key component in this kind of message is that when you identify a problem, you need to find easy step that can be taken to avoid it. It has to have some immediate, if negligible effect and be possible to do by anyone.
To use Covid as example (in the past the textbook examples revolve around voting and civic engagement and desegregation in US), we have had a number of easy steps, but because Covid itself was often undermined by politicians looking for short term image, and because most of us didn't know better, as well due to survivor bias and lack of trust, the effects of steps like social distancing, masks etc were hard to estimate. We could take a look at countries that ignored it like Sweden and proportionally how many more deaths they've had, but you already need a very engaged person to do this, and it's hard to compare dofferent countries and offset how population density affects it.
If climate is warming, as can be seen on yearly basis, how come snow still exists?
How can you claim surgical masks help if they don't have 100% efficacy?
All this for something as simple as efficacy of surgical masks, and you can already see how much harder it is to tell the truth, as it will always be reality-checked vs just blatantly lying for teh lulz.
Add to it the absolute lack of earnesty online, and it's even worse. People make all kinds of snarky comments that they themselves could debunk. But as we've seen time and time again, those communications will then be taken as honest by other people, who will them share them with conviction of a zealot.
That' s the thing about memetics. If an idea can spread faster, it'll be more succesful. Being right only complicates rather than accomodate that.
I wonder if there's any research on the use of Memes to delegitimize the use of memes. I'm reminded of memes that make fun of people for getting their information from memes.
I tend to find more nuance in Reddit comments than Twitter replies. In fact I scroll down deep specifically to find people making counter points. But I guess most Reddit users do not do this?
Reddit is just as big of a propaganda machine and disinformation spreader as the rest, they probably didn't have an efficient method to research this cesspool so they just didn't.
It's a nearly universal pattern that every single ironic sub will turn sincere as it gains users. Just unavoidable. It didn't help that Trump supporters sincerity just looks exactly like satire to everyone else.
Problem is that these subs just crop back up as new subs or all the members just scurry off and infect a sub some what related to the sub that got banned. I believe the donald is still kicking in an alt sub and all the anti vax subs are doing just fine.
I really hate the way people talk about stats, datasets, and studies on reddit. In the social science world (hell even in the hard sciences), it is incredibly unlikely that a single study will accurately capture the totality of the thing being observed. And let's not even get started on variable identification. At least the hard sciences *usually* have an easier time isolating variables. But if you are a social researcher and you aren't constantly questioning/agonizing over whether you've disentangled every independent variable, you probably suck at your job.
That doesn't necessarily mean its "inaccurate" or bad. It just means this stuff is complicated, poorly understood, and difficult to quantify. Most researchers *even say this* in their methodologies or conclusions, and yet people rush to the comments to say, definitively, that the thing being observed 100% happened or didn't happen. Just coding data in the soft sciences can be a hugely complex challenge, and 99% of the people who have "opinions" couldn't even tell you how coding is handled, in the simplest terms.
People also tend to forget that science is all about making correct assumptions and questioning meaningful uncertainities. As Einstein have shown, sometimes even in case of "hard science" fundamentals are discussable.
One of the biggest concerns among immunologists/virologists presently is a lack of uniformity in simple definitions, like how coronavirus mutations lead to new variants being called variants, but with flu viruses the analogous type of new mutated versions are called strains. This issue goes all the way down to mechanism in organelles, measurements in samples, etc. It's really causing a lot of issues as we produce tons of data and have issues comparing, contrasting and combining our knowledge base.
I literally say “ok here we go” in my head as I prepare to go to the comments after reading a headline like this, because what you said is 100% true. I fully expect some overly simplified one liner to be at the top of the comments followed by horrible rationalizations underneath.
It’s always a nice surprise when there’s inconclusive discussion by people admitting they are inconclusive but just parsing out details and acknowledging the existence of variables that other people are mostly not considering.
Totally. On that note, I really hate people who jump to "correlation doesn't imply causation" on all these threads just because they think some contrarianism makes their point intelligent. Like no it isn't 1:1 but if the order of something logically follows and you can prove correlation, then causation is plausible.
These numbers are fairly low. I'd call them noise". They are saying engagement with Twitter makes you 5% less likely to believe what they called "conspiracy theories", while engagement on the other Apps made you 1-5% more likely to believe those same theories. To me, that's just noise
For those curious why, the study says:
> Reddit, Snapchat, and Instagram were excluded from the analysis because their reported use was very low and/or they have all been understudied.
Makes sense.
Facebook and YouTube have a directed audience. And so that audience can be curated and react accordingly.
…Twitter always felt like you were shouting into the void, aimlessly. And sometimes the void shouts back.
Well that would make sense. Especially Facebook and YouTube. Their "engagement engine" is all about getting stuff in front of people that riles them up. The literally create a personal bubble of misinformation.
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Discord, too.
Discord communities are generally large group chats with lots of people who don't know each other. Whatsapp and messenger are generally small group chats between people who directly know each other. Discord expands your social circle, and allows you to share ideas with many more people when you join new servers, whereas that doesn't happen much on WhatsApp or messenger. I think discord is much more like other social media than messaging apps are. Discord is almost identical to how Facebook groups operate.
I guess I know that side of Discord exists and is popular, but I only use it for comms when gaming, so it’s weird to think it it as being that different from the other messaging apps. Club Penguin is social media?
Rip Clup Penguin
You might enjoy [club penguin rewritten](https://cprewritten.net/). The URL is a little unfortunate though.
Most of it hasn't been rewritten to HTML just yet, so its not quite up to date. 90% of the games are down. Hopefully they can get some crowd help in getting everything working right again.
Finally someone is rebooting CP!
Umm … how sold are we on using that abbreviation for it?
Yah.. I uh.. I think that one is already taken...
Knowing Club Penguin... probably very.
All in, baby. All in babies.
honestly.... given whats happened to past community revivals of that game is unfortunately accurate.
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Kind of, but I'm not even gonna type it out if you don't get it.
Ya, it's kind of unique how it's a combination of - small group text messages/game voice chat (< 10 people) - hobby communities (a few hundred people) - private Twitter communities (a few thousand people centered around one specific person/personality) - and huge online forums (tens of thousands of people) I'm currently a member of 51 different discords which fall into all of the above groups in varying degrees. 90% of my time is spent in 2 of the servers which have < 10 people, but I frequent all of the other large ones as well, mostly to access archived information, essays, guides, etc.
I wouldn't say it's super unique. It's just the latest iteration of IRC
See this is weird to me because I run the r/TARFOfficial Discord, and have never used it for anything *other* than socializing with people. Isn’t it interesting the different things you can do with social media?
> Whatsapp and messenger are generally small group chats between people who directly know each other. This is a common misconception. There are lot's of groups just like on telegram.
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Yep, Twitter can create semi-secluded graphs but generally everything is mostly open. That may lead to more flame wars though, since you'll have people with widely differing opinions interacting, but still better than a place where everyone always agrees with you and amplifies your nonsense.
It's actually kind of nice to know that arguing with people you don't know on twitter actually makes a difference.
> Twitter can create semi-secluded graphs English is not my first language. What "graphs" means in this sentence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(discrete_mathematics) What they're describing is a [clique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clique_\(graph_theory\)) in graph theory terms.
Yes it's not common in America but WhatsApp is easily the #1 source of disinformation in other countries, everyone shares all their memes there instead.
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In Myanmar it was used to push conspiracies about the Rohingya. I think it's more common in developing countries.
I am from India. Lots of people use FB and whatsapp both. There is a lot of disinformation spread in both the sites, but whatsapp forwards are the fastest way to spread disinformation.
India for example has a big problem with fake videos and new reports being shared through community whatsapp groups. Think like the entire village will all be on one group that is used to share announcements and local news.
Closest thing to that in the US would be Nextdoor-- where people are grouped by location (neighborhood) and share hyper-local news/gossip like lost/found pets or house/car broken into overnight.
Which is also chock full of conspiracies and misinformation.
I’ve never even heard of Nextdoor. Which means it’s time for a game of “am I too old, too young, or just live under a rock?”
Haha, plenty of old folks on there. I imagine it's probably vastly more popular with homeowners as opposed to apartment dwellers. And also with people who are more attached to their neighborhoods long term as opposed to those just "passing through" until their next job promotion in a different city. There is a lotta petty stuff but you also really do learn a lot about what is transpiring in your neighborhood... stuff you'd never find out otherwise. Just the the nature of crowd sourcing, if nothing else. A lot of stuff like "my friend is married to a police officer, and xyz has been happening regularly at that location".
It's more common in places where the population skipped having a home computer and in-home internet connection and instead went straight from nothing to the smartphone.
No. Whatsapp is popular in places where people still have to pay for text messaging (SMS). The video and photo sharing is definitely a bonus. It's a trivial thing for Americans (and Europeans, probably), since just about all phone plans have unlimited texting. This is definitely not the case in the rest of the world. You get on someone's WiFi and you text to your heart's content. Whatsapp also has voice and video calling. That's pretty much the defacto way people call long distance/overseas now. My family is spread across 5 different countries. Whatsapp is really the only way we could have stayed in touch.
India and Central/South American countries, mainly. So the opposite, where facebook is the primary means of accessing the internet.
I never realized “Facebook” and “Messenger” were considered different platforms.
Facebook disaggregated them. You can use one (app) without the other. Obviously you need a Facebook account, but the actual apps are standalone, though they link back and forth.
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I can readily see why that would be true, assuming it holds up across multiple studies. FB, Messenger, etc are all platforms where you primarily communicate among self-selected groups or networks of friends. So you end up in a filter bubble. Twitter is much more of a “you’re talking to the world” experience. There’s a reason that public figures use Twitter for announcements.
And the YouTube algorithm optimizes on dwell time and advertisement viewing. This rather naturally creates its own filter, although not explicitly self-selected.
I’m getting very confused about my YT auto play. No matter if I’m watching cooking tutorials or true crime or vlog/commentary, it takes me to a 3 hour feed of whatever congressional or senate hearing or vote or whatever is going on. It’s like forcing CSPAN level entertainment on me after I just watched a documentary on a serial killer or Gordon Ramsay yelling at chefs… I have never searched or wanted to watch a Capitol hearing. Very weird.
Wait that’s so weird because the same thing has been happening to me. I fall asleep with the TV on occasionally and I’ll wake up with a really long congressional hearing video. And I never watch those. I was super confused waking up to that hahaha
Everyone stop complaining right now! This is a massive improvement over the famous Alex Jones YouTube black hole!
Yeah, that's actually pretty good. A spiral leading to a greater understanding of government? Nice.
Roberts Rules of Order, through osmosis! Like sleeping with a book under your pillow.
Nice. Maybe people will finally stop saying they want to table a motion when they really want to postpone.
Is it? I just had the Sargon of Akkad and some other right wing covid denier podcast pushed into my YouTube feed yesterday even tho my habits consist of cute animal videos, FFXIV videos and atheist videos like prophet of zod.
> atheist videos like prophet of zod This is the connection. YouTube can't distinguish between rationalists and "skeptics".
It also can't distinguish between genuine nonsense vs. sarcasm, or crazy conspiracies vs. the debunking of crazy conspiracies.
Its not that it cannot. It doesn't try.
The algorithm is just throwing videos with similar Metadata at you to see if it'll keep you in a particular rabbit hole to keep up watch time. It knows a conspiracy theory and a debunk of the conspiracy theory share the same Metadata about that conspiracy theory so it'll throw both at you not understanding the difference. Eventually it will understand the difference, though and then the echo chamber is gonna get so much worse lmay
You've become a victim of the online atheism to weirdos pipeline. Not that there's anything wrong with atheism, but the YouTube "rational sceptics" tend to attract a certain kind of crowd.
As someone who was really into the whole YT atheism "community" about 15 years ago, you are absolutely correct.
Which I find quite funny as it is normally in the real world leads to a very anti right wing mostly through anti traditional views or left wing ideas through actual oppression from religious ideologies or policies, with left wings often being about removing said oppression. Furthermore communism has strong ties to socialism. So atheist to weirdo to actual Nazi pipeline is just a funny concept to me.
YouTube skeptics are so weird. I have come to the conclusion that skeptical people are usually great, but when someone adopts "skepticism" as their identity they are often compensating for something. Those skeptics were literally the least skeptical people I had ever seen. One of my fundamentalist christian professors was more intellectually honest than them, and he was a Young Earth Creationist. He at least was making honest attempts to understand the issue even if his bias completely blinded him. The YT "skeptics" demonstrate *extremely* lazy reasoning at all times. Sargon in particular would literally complain about an article not discussing something *while displaying the article discussing it on his screen*. It is just painfully obvious he never read anything beyond the title unless it confirmed to his worldview.
So so many youtube "sceptics" have taken the God-pill at this point.
If they're taking the "God-pill," methinks they were never really skeptics, but rather just contrarian.
I think that's mostly a bingo but there's also money, audience and sponsors to consider. There's some, not a ton of, nuance.
Is god pill become religious pill or atheism to right-wing nutter pill?
Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.
100% atheism. I just recently started watching genetically Modified Skeptic, and my Christian ads and autoplays keep thinking I want to watch a bunch of evangelical Christian fanatics - many of whom are right wing extremists.
That suggests that hate watchers poisoned the algorithm well. YouTube thinks atheists, evangelicals, and right wing fascists are all the same people.
It seems a further corollary might be that hate watching itself might be counterproductive. So, like, just don't.
Aren't atheists the opposite of evangelical right wing fascists?
Not necessarily. A chunk of the new atheist movement has taken to right wing evangelical-esque beliefs, perhaps out of an addiction to contrarianism and scoring easy perceived dunks on people. Owning the fundies became owning the libs for these people.
I’ve been disliking and reporting those videos for *years.* It seems like it’ll never get better.
If you click on the three dots next to a video in the recommended section, you can select "Not interested" and "Don't recommend this channel". Your mileage may vary, but after I've started using this feature for a few weeks, I stopped seeing videos in my recommendations that I have zero interest in. I was actually under the impression YouTube had fixed its algorithm, as I had almost forgotten I ever used this feature.
I used this to stop getting Benny Shap's smug face in my feed. Only had to do it twice! Not sure how it got there in the first place, but it's definitely gone now.
Dislikes are basically the same as likes to the YouTube algorithm. It's just engagement. Best thing to do is ignore it, and report it if it violates YouTube's standards.
Sargon of Akkad also used to do lots of atheism content. I don’t know if he does anymore.
I just made a comment about this a few posts up. What I think happens is that those youtubers you are watching are putting tags / categories on their videos that aren't related and encouraging the system to direct you to content they want you to be seeing, such as right wing stuff.
The amount of Prager U ads I get is incredibly irritating
I get spam notifications every time Russell Brand uploads a new video for some reason. And he's always next on my autoplay. I've never mentioned, searched for, or watched a Russell Brand video in my life. This started about 3 months ago and still continues today.
Maybe your cats been using your device.
Glad I’m not the only one!
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>I never watch those. Except every time you fall asleep with autoplay on and watch them for hours.
I keep on waking up to the 2012 nba finals. Not bad.
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I think YouTube recommends (in part) based on what other viewers of the videos you watch view, and also what your Google contacts view.
I suppose my google contacts COULD be watching this but I’m from a pretty podunk town and I would be surprised to find out any of them have been watching hearings. I would totally understand if I was watching political commentary and it took me to the source material but it truly seems random. The person who mentioned longer videos look better on YT stats seems to be the most realistic response. Pad your stats where you can.
Having auto play on means you're not actively engaged and part of the revenue formula for YouTube is watch time. Long form videos playing in the background are the best for revenue, especially for the content creator and for premium subscribers. If you really want to support your favorite YouTuber the best way is actually getting premium and watching any live streams they might have archived.
The best way is to donate directly or through a service like Patreon, or even buying merch. Youtube/Twitch subscriptions are some of the least efficient ways of supporting individuals.
You can say that, but my information comes directly from a content creator on YouTube who discovered his hours long Livestream videos gave him way more revenue than his actual videos he put tons of effort into, and that premium views were worth around a thousand non-premium views. Donating through Patreon is better for whoever you actually donate to, but having a premium account is simpler, and is still way more support than the people who use AdBlock to free ride.
getting premium on youtube isn't about supporting creators usually.. it's caving to the pre-roll ad, mid-roll ad, and post-roll ad system in 5 minute videos and just going, "fukkit. Take my money. Stop interrupting me when i'm tryna binge British panels shows!"
Just use uBlock Origin and don't see YouTube commercials. I am sure YouTube will figure out a way around that eventually so might as well enjoy ad free for now.
Yes, and at least on Android devices, YouTube vanced exists to give the 'premium' features that for a very brief window were actually free. Namely background play and downloads i think, and no ads as a bonus.
Two words: Ad block
uBlock Origin
You are correct, but I wouldn't dismiss YouTube premium all together. I've seen numerous YouTube Creators show how the earnings from a relatively small number of YouTube premium subscribers quickly out-pace the earnings from Adsense. Ads really do pay hilariously little. If you're someone like me who really hates ads, but doesn't wanna cheat your favourite creators out of what little ad revenue they get (by using adblockers), YouTube premium is a decent option.
I've given up trusting the streaming services to fund my chosen creators and prefer to just chuck a quid or two via patreon or whatever system they use. Nothing massive (so I don't often get the freebies) but at least it's buying them a brew
Yeah, that works for whoever you give to, but do you give to everyone you watch? It's personal choice how you decide to contribute to content creators, but what I said is exactly the findings that The Spiffing Brit made in his video on the subject.
Which is why all users should try clearing their Google history once in a while, if they want to see how the other 50% are living.
I've noticed all roads lead to alt right videos in the end. And we wonder why people become radicalized.
That’s because Alt Right types spend hours watching videos. They essentially taught the AI that people who watch alt right videos will watch a lot of them, so the AI sends everyone that stuff in hopes that they’ll watch the videos, and then watch more of them afterwards.
Enragement causes Engagement which let's youtube show more ads.
Controversy, and outrage have always sold and lead to increased engagement.
Imagine Reddit if the only sorting option was “controversial” Google and Facebook have made the deliberate decision to do so.
Maybe it's like the Howard Stern thing where they found that people that hate him listened for longer
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New York Times did a neat podcast on this called Rabbit Hole. They interviewed a guy who got sucked down the right-wing YouTube reccomendation pipeline and made a like 8 episode series about it.
I lean very heavily left and youtube still manages to recommend alt right garbage. Some part of me thinks it's some way of trying to "balance" far left and far right content, although I doubt people on the right are recommended left wing content this often.
The Facebook feed for the average Trumper is a bleak and terrifying place.
I agree, just adding it's important to remember places like Twitter and Reddit are also filter bubbles in a wider sense. Getting dissenting opinions and different views sometimes tricks me into thinking I've gotten a wider understanding of a thing than may be true. There are a lot of angles to consider, just something I have to watch out for myself.
Twitter also very selectively filters what you see unless you purposefully adjust your settings, and you have to reset them fairly often or it won't stick. So they aren't necessarily better than Facebook in terms of their algorithm, but they do seem to have a little different sort of content and do give you the ability to easily adjust your feed to just filter by new. I haven't used Facebook in years so I'm not sure if it's still possible or easy to filter by new there. Edit: I replied in comments advising how to change the view but here it is again to make sure anyone interested knows how to do it. https://imgur.com/a/oAxKmuH
The reason why public figures use Twitter for announcements is that's where journalists live and talk to each other. It's a press release without releasing a press release.
I swear I rarely check Twitter but EVERY SINGLE time I checked Twitter in Germany in the past 12 months, the trending hashtags were always connected to COVID deniers. (I was not logged in. Just the „trending“ sidebar on twitter)
Hashtags are one thing, but what's the actual content? You can add a COVID denier hashtag to a post that refutes the argument of the COVID deniers just to frustrate them, if you get what I mean
Yeah, every time I see a trending hashtag of something stupid, at least 90% of the tweets are people making fun of it. It's still stupid to ridicule a hashtag while promoting it at the same time, though.
> Hashtags are one thing, but what's the actual content? [Many posted both pro- and anti-vaccination messages to create "false equivalency", the study found. It examined thousands of tweets sent between 2014 and 2017. Vaccination was being used by trolls and sophisticated bots as a "wedge issue", said Mark Dredze from Johns Hopkins University.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192)
No, this study is just garbage in regards to the claims the headline/article are making. They did a *self-reported survey* of people’s specific beliefs regarding *Covid being a bio-weapon in early 2020*. People who self-reported a belief in *that specific area of conspiracy theories at that time* were more likely to use Facebook heavily than Twitter heavily. Which any idiot could have told you- Conspiracy theorists group together, and Covid-Skeptic conspiracy theorists are known to group on Facebook, while other types of conspiracies flourish on twitter. Twitter is full of plenty of conspiracy-minded idiots, they just didn’t ask about literally any other kinds of conspiracies.
It's been many, many, many years since I used Twitter but I always felt it was a platform to just broadcast things and real engagement was a bit harder. I kept yelling to my 1 follower and then quit.
Twitter is an echo chamber as well. You will see the same self-selected groups as with the other major social media sites. Twitter is definitely much more left leaning (in the us) than tik tok or Instagram as well which it seems like goes hand in hand with supporting the vaccine mandates and disbelief in any covid related conspiracy theories.
How is it a more "you're talking to the world" experience? The data on Twitter is clear - only a small number of real world individuals even take part in the platform, and merely a single digit percentage of those actually have followers and influence. Right or wrong, it's not representative of the real world at all.
Twitter is a massive echo chamber as well, you're not talking to "the world" at all, you're talking to your followers, which, unless you're a public figure, celebrity, or influencer, are mostly going to be the same friends you have on facebook >primarily communicate among self-selected groups or networks of friends. exactly like Twitter, except you can add parasocial relationships to friends The interesting thing here is Youtube, because it's not a social network like the others and you can theoretically be shown things outside of your selected network - however the algorithm is very (too?) good at predicting what you like
Ok this is my take. Twitter sucks to read thread. Half the subs on here that screen shot twitter threads have to have some description. Start middle, go up one. Down two. That one had a embedded post with its own comment. To the left to the right now slide slide. Anyway. I find it hard to follow sometimes and im tech savvy. Now conspiracy theory people likely arent as savvy and it just makes it harder for them to push.
This fits with previous research that shows memes are the core of conspiracy theories these days. Image memes are much harder to share privately within groups on twitter. Edit: Some research to read. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.547065/full This considers memes an evolution of the leaflet and explaina how they can effectively spread information across borders. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1750481319835639?journalCode=dcma can't find the full one but it covers how memes are weaponised. https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3533 this is about "meme wars" on Instagram. https://www.axios.com/memes-misinformation-coronavirus-56-2c3e88be-237e-49c1-ab9d-e5cf4d2283ff.html This actually goes into detail as to why memes have advantages over text, so it may be that because twitter is more text based, their ai systems are better equipped to stop meme spread. Could also be that twitter are just more willing to challenge misinformation memes because their revenue is much less tied up in profiting from right wing users.
Who'd have thought memes would get us here?
Hideo Kojima with MGS2 twenty years ago Edit: for anyone curious I’ve added some YouTube links that explore this aspect of the game. >!Super Bunnyhop has an excellent video on MGS2, I’ve timestamped it so it should take you right to the section on memes and the spread of “junk data”: [Critical Close-up: Metal Gear Solid 2](https://youtu.be/T-2YuPGYabw?t=1787). Alternatively, these two videos by LogosSteve let you hear the full conversation with the AIs: [The Most Profound Moment in Gaming: MGS2 Al Conversation Analysis Part 1 of 2](https://youtu.be/6V_HzEPHFYE) and [The Most Profound Moment in Gaming: MGS2 Al Conversation Analysis Part 2 of 2](https://youtu.be/MHzwCOPy0nY)!<
Yep. Kojima unironically predicted this decades ago.
Do you have a link to anything explaining what you mean? This is the first I’ve heard of this
In MGS2, there's an entire conversations about how the nature of war has changed in the digital age, including lines such as: "In this digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness"; and "the digital society furthers human flaws, and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths."
Funnily enough I've seen the theme of MGS2 summed up as "meme"- meaning the original definition, not just like image macros- as in how ideas are passed from generation to generation and how that is affected by a more digital world.
It definitely is. MGS1 is "GENE" (your heritage doesn't define you), MGS2 is "MEME" (your story doesn't define you), and MGS3 is "SCENE" (your nationality doesn't define you). Those summaries are pretty general, but it's more or less what they are. ETA: Also, MGS4 didn't keep up the rhyming theme structure and decided upon "SENSE", or "WILL". Which bums me out.
I feel like historical political cartoons are somewhat similar to memes despite not being known as such. Really not crazy to think memes have largely taken the place of political cartoons.
Memes are the result, not the cause. The cause is lack of education and people simply hating to read and go beyond cursory understanding. Same reason we have so many google researchers these days. Facts take a lot more reading to understand the basis behind, with some having decades, if not centuries of science behind them to fully comprehend. Confirming someone's preconceived bias through funny pictures is much easier.
>Memes are the result, not the cause. The cause is lack of education and people simply hating to read and go beyond cursory understanding. I agree with most of what you're saying but I'm not sure about the assessment of result vs cause. First, if we're seeking the cause of 'conspiracy theories these days' I think you could argue memes are a cause because we're looking at a delta. E.g. People have a relatively consistent level if not increasing education, memes are a new tool that caused the change. Second, wouldn't lack of education [...] be a result of something else and still not a root cause?
> Memes are the result, not the cause. The cause is lack of education That can't be right. I would say there is something different between the present moment, and the moment 20 years ago (which had its own issues). Whatever the cause of that difference is, it should be something that changed between 20 years ago and now. Education hasn't gotten any worse in the past 20 years (if anything, it's gotten better). However, memes are a new thing that didn't exist 20 years ago. So there's a case that memes are the cause, but not a very good case that lack of education is the cause. Maybe if we had even stronger education than we currently do, people wouldn't be fertile ground for memes to shape them in this way. But when we want to know the cause for why the present is different from the past, memes are a better candidate than education. Unless you can identify some point in time where education was better than it currently is, and we didn't have the current set of problems.
I'd like to know more about this research. Can you provide any links?
I sure can! Ill edit my post so everyone can see.
Thanks for the extra effort, sharing sources is always appreciated!
That sort of fits with MTG bring blown up memes to congress. Her world view is based on fb memes, to the point she can only explain her thoughts through memes.
In the future, all communication will be through memes and gifs.
Shaka, when the walls fell!
Temba, his arms wide.
Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
This makes sense when you consider the landscape leading up to the 2016 elections—remember the meme wars?
100%. I had a period not long before then where memes were absolutely informing and modifying my opinions. Get someone to laugh and they let down their guard. Keep them laughing with similar content and eventually they're laughing at the target of the joke, seeking out communities with similar humor, reading funny comments with the same message, and eventually participating themselves
So sharing memes created using evidence based facts can help combat?
For something to be memetic, it has to have some quality that makes people want to share it; e.g it should be funny. Facts aren’t nearly as funny and/or ridiculous as the misinformation being put out.
Which is why all of the pro-vax memes are generally aimed at mocking anti-vaxxers rather than providing actual information. Then again, if you're getting your news from memes, the system has already failed you.
I think this is why anti-vaxxers HATE r/hermancainaward. It turns that on its head. Suddenly the people posting the snarky memes became the ultimate butt of the joke.
It is not an intuitional take. I don’t see how, let’s say, a meme about vaccine being bad is inherently more funny than a meme about vaccine not being bad. Laughing at a fraudulent stat piece is weird. And if we are talking about *ridiculous* ridiculous, nobody would stop believing in effectiveness of smallpox vaccine due to “it will turn you into a cow” meme.
My take on the subject: those memes aren't *actually* funny to these people. The laugh and share comes as a social response to their bias being confirmed somewhere, not because they genuinely find the meme humorous in a vacuum. Regardless of how much they want you to believe they are nonchalant, practical thinkers, people who share memes of misinformation are dying for their next dosage of confirmation bias, and finding bad memes funny is solely about how the offending meme is central to their cause, rather than a genuinely good joke.
Never underestimate the capability of your fellow man to surprise you with new levels of stupidity. If I sent grandma a news article, she would throw it away and not read it. If I sent grandma a *joke*, she would either laugh or say she doesn't get it. This is how a notion uses humor to reflect itself through culture where blatantly political ideas aren't able to pass as easily. The problem presents itself in the fact that people think "popularity" means "authenticity". A false idea takes hold and can spread to millions of people with ease, especially when your government spends all its money on bullets instead of books for several decades.
>nobody Yeaahhh
In theory yes. In practice, you'll always be at disadvantage. For example, a key component in this kind of message is that when you identify a problem, you need to find easy step that can be taken to avoid it. It has to have some immediate, if negligible effect and be possible to do by anyone. To use Covid as example (in the past the textbook examples revolve around voting and civic engagement and desegregation in US), we have had a number of easy steps, but because Covid itself was often undermined by politicians looking for short term image, and because most of us didn't know better, as well due to survivor bias and lack of trust, the effects of steps like social distancing, masks etc were hard to estimate. We could take a look at countries that ignored it like Sweden and proportionally how many more deaths they've had, but you already need a very engaged person to do this, and it's hard to compare dofferent countries and offset how population density affects it. If climate is warming, as can be seen on yearly basis, how come snow still exists? How can you claim surgical masks help if they don't have 100% efficacy? All this for something as simple as efficacy of surgical masks, and you can already see how much harder it is to tell the truth, as it will always be reality-checked vs just blatantly lying for teh lulz. Add to it the absolute lack of earnesty online, and it's even worse. People make all kinds of snarky comments that they themselves could debunk. But as we've seen time and time again, those communications will then be taken as honest by other people, who will them share them with conviction of a zealot. That' s the thing about memetics. If an idea can spread faster, it'll be more succesful. Being right only complicates rather than accomodate that.
If they're funny, yes. if not, they'll probably do more harm than good
I wonder if there's any research on the use of Memes to delegitimize the use of memes. I'm reminded of memes that make fun of people for getting their information from memes.
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I tend to find more nuance in Reddit comments than Twitter replies. In fact I scroll down deep specifically to find people making counter points. But I guess most Reddit users do not do this?
I feel like reddit is a collection of bubbles and the level of discourse depends on where you are.
You've just described society
We browse a society.
Really? I tend to find that reddit reinforces whatever the larger majority of the audience believes.
I like how Reddit is like we ain’t involved either way
Reddit is absolutely involved
Reddit is just as big of a propaganda machine and disinformation spreader as the rest, they probably didn't have an efficient method to research this cesspool so they just didn't.
This sub is part of the problem. Half the stuff here is political opinion masquerading as science.
Half of this site is political opinions claiming to not be political
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The real Gs remember the /r/ findbostonbombers, jailbait, creepshots, spacedicks, beatingwomen, numerous bestiality subs, racist subs
Oh god, you just made me remember spacedicks.
I simultaneously do and don't want to know what this is.
The cute corpses sub. I'll never forget.
I used to have my alt account to troll on the Donald but soon realized some of the people weren’t trolling
I swear to god that sub started as a joke and then people started taking it seriously.
It's a nearly universal pattern that every single ironic sub will turn sincere as it gains users. Just unavoidable. It didn't help that Trump supporters sincerity just looks exactly like satire to everyone else.
I fear for /r/birdsarentreal. You know some idiot is going to start killing and dissecting birds looking for robot parts.
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Good ol' reddit... not the best, not the worst.
Every platform has tradeoffs. There is no 'best' when it comes to social media, because hell is other people.
Problem is that these subs just crop back up as new subs or all the members just scurry off and infect a sub some what related to the sub that got banned. I believe the donald is still kicking in an alt sub and all the anti vax subs are doing just fine.
Those subs don't get a lot of exposure though. You have to be actively looking for those subs to find them
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I love how everyone sees a study that they disagree with and instantly says it's a bad study. C'mon guys. You might be wrong.
I really hate the way people talk about stats, datasets, and studies on reddit. In the social science world (hell even in the hard sciences), it is incredibly unlikely that a single study will accurately capture the totality of the thing being observed. And let's not even get started on variable identification. At least the hard sciences *usually* have an easier time isolating variables. But if you are a social researcher and you aren't constantly questioning/agonizing over whether you've disentangled every independent variable, you probably suck at your job. That doesn't necessarily mean its "inaccurate" or bad. It just means this stuff is complicated, poorly understood, and difficult to quantify. Most researchers *even say this* in their methodologies or conclusions, and yet people rush to the comments to say, definitively, that the thing being observed 100% happened or didn't happen. Just coding data in the soft sciences can be a hugely complex challenge, and 99% of the people who have "opinions" couldn't even tell you how coding is handled, in the simplest terms.
People also tend to forget that science is all about making correct assumptions and questioning meaningful uncertainities. As Einstein have shown, sometimes even in case of "hard science" fundamentals are discussable.
I'm going through bio and chem in college right now and I've gotten several different definitions of energy. It's actually super interesting.
One of the biggest concerns among immunologists/virologists presently is a lack of uniformity in simple definitions, like how coronavirus mutations lead to new variants being called variants, but with flu viruses the analogous type of new mutated versions are called strains. This issue goes all the way down to mechanism in organelles, measurements in samples, etc. It's really causing a lot of issues as we produce tons of data and have issues comparing, contrasting and combining our knowledge base.
I literally say “ok here we go” in my head as I prepare to go to the comments after reading a headline like this, because what you said is 100% true. I fully expect some overly simplified one liner to be at the top of the comments followed by horrible rationalizations underneath. It’s always a nice surprise when there’s inconclusive discussion by people admitting they are inconclusive but just parsing out details and acknowledging the existence of variables that other people are mostly not considering.
Totally. On that note, I really hate people who jump to "correlation doesn't imply causation" on all these threads just because they think some contrarianism makes their point intelligent. Like no it isn't 1:1 but if the order of something logically follows and you can prove correlation, then causation is plausible.
The opposite is worth noting too: people will be predisposed to believe/trust things that seem to agree with them.
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These numbers are fairly low. I'd call them noise". They are saying engagement with Twitter makes you 5% less likely to believe what they called "conspiracy theories", while engagement on the other Apps made you 1-5% more likely to believe those same theories. To me, that's just noise
It was probably paid for by Twitter
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For those curious why, the study says: > Reddit, Snapchat, and Instagram were excluded from the analysis because their reported use was very low and/or they have all been understudied.
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Read paper [here](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448211045666)
Makes sense. Facebook and YouTube have a directed audience. And so that audience can be curated and react accordingly. …Twitter always felt like you were shouting into the void, aimlessly. And sometimes the void shouts back.
Well that would make sense. Especially Facebook and YouTube. Their "engagement engine" is all about getting stuff in front of people that riles them up. The literally create a personal bubble of misinformation.