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A lot of the “Facebook made my parents racist” or “Facebook made my family vote for Trump” noise of the past few years is from people who are reluctant to face the fact that maybe their family members are racist or Trump supporters.
The idea that the adults in your life can be convinced to become racist or choose a presidential candidate over social media memes actually denies them of agency. It’s an arrogant world view that treats people like children.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/technology/facebook-instagram-algorithms.html
@carnage4life If social media content doesn’t meaningfully influence on people, I feel like the tech industry should be consistent and stop selling ads. They can’t have it both ways.
@PeoriaBummer @carnage4life advertising of any kind requires a high amount of magical thinking. There’s an old joke that says “Half of the money I spend on advertising is a complete waste but no one can tell me which half.”
Good book on the topic: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538651/subprimeattentioncrisis
@carnage4life > The idea that the adults in your life can be convinced to become racist over social media memes actually denies them of agency.
Not at all, and those aren't mutually exclusive by any stretch.
@carnage4life on the contrary: they were enabling and profiting off of massive psychological campaigns to exacerbate people's biases, fears, and prejudices, including those sponsored by adversarial nation-states. they were consciously making business and algorithmic decisions to keep fanning the flames of outrage and spreading massive amounts of misinformation. you are so wrong here!
@carnage4life absolutely. There is however an especially insidious influence when your “Facebook friends all think that way”. It frees these folks to express what they used to suppress.
@carnage4life Many, many people have already outsourced their epistemology to their followers and their agency went with it. It doesn't help that algorithmic feeds make it real easy to slide down the radicalism gradient, either.
@carnage4life your honour, I did not light the fire, I only threw gasoline on it and sold tickets to the show.
@carnage4life for my mother, it was deep seated rage issues based on her life experiences, only addressed through therapy. If you're angry at the world, Trump's your guy.
@carnage4life eh, we are children. Always a work in progress. Agency? We are captive agents, variously struggling for our freedom.
@carnage4life It took Trump to show me who my family members were. They kept their natures pretty well in check until Trump let everything out of the box. I was betrayed and cut them all off after they in essence attacked me, my daughter, my granddaughters by going all in for an evil misogynist, racist, Russian useful idiot, and lifelong criminal. Voting for him was a personal attack on me. They knew his character & they loved it and they literally laughed at my concerns.
Something that I hope is being studied is the role of social centrifugal separator that FB performs, in terms of distilling and concentrating crazy people so as to winnow rare "social isotopes" to produce a bomb like Jan. 6.
These papers touch on groups and pages but the two need further study in terms of their ability to organize inchoate social energy that can thus be directed. It seems a novel feature impossible without the emergence of upscaled systems such as FB.
@carnage4life are you just going to not mention the fact that you work (ed??) at Meta for years?
@carnage4life This NY Times article is all over the yard.
Four studies conclude algorithms may not change human behavior. But there's no control nor understanding of the algorithm itself. I laughed out loud at data suggesting your use of a share button has little impact on your opinions. Oh my God. Same level of understanding as the House Judiciary Committee.
More thickheadedness. Sure. Social media might reinforce, rather than change our beliefs. But Goddamn if this isn't a fine line!
@carnage4life Isn’t that entire ad business premised on the idea the people *can* be influenced by the media they see? I take the point that a completely non-racist person isn’t going to be turned racist via social media, but imo feelings can get activated or validated in a way that has a real effect.