[Closed] Anyone else hoping that social media is regulated to within an inch of its life❓

Regulated? I don’t know. However there have been talks of having social media obey similar standards to publishers. In the US they were allowed a lot of manuevering room since when the rules were set, social media companies weren’t this big or intertwined with our lives.

All in all, imho, being very active in social media seems to be the easiest way to screw with your mental health.

I'd ban this place for a start especially that "countryside" thread.

The practicality of regulating it must be eye watering for the IT people! We shouldn't forget good things can be done with it but many aspects have become cess pits of nastiness, misinformation and the danger of giving someone with a lack of knowledge or facts a global platform to talk utter cobblers is painfully apparent if you have a modicum of intelligence/knowledge especially once the amateur and state trolls set to work.

It's a shame because on here you can kind of see a well diluted form of what social media does. Things that we ought to be able to discuss courteously escalate from behind keyboards but then you get the wonderful support that has been offered to gnusmas and others going through hell balancing that. Where does it tip I honestly don't know.

garage-dweller
Full Member
I’d ban this place for a start especially that “countryside” thread.

Ban here? Good Lord no. For all the squabbling it's nirvana compared to fb/ Twitter.

^^^^ Sorry I was just kidding it's late (early) and it needed a smiley.

I post way more on here than anywhere else and I generally find it's fairly civilised if you stay off certain kinds of thread.

Given up reading / posting on twitter altogether. Facebook I'm super selective with but even so you see some utter crass stupidity/nastiness on there.

We've done this to death already. The problem with "social media" isn't "media" but "social." What you need to fix here is people and that's hard.

I'd rather see traditional media held to account TBH. Preventing newspapers from publishing lies, and holding allegedly "balanced" TV outlets to account to challenge what they broadcast would go a long way.

Let me rephrase your question in STW forum terms. At what point does moderation become censorship?

You need to define what you're asking for when you talk of "regulation," that's a very vague term. What regulation are you looking for?

Implementation of Rule #1 would do to begin with

Cougar
Full Member
Let me rephrase your question in STW forum terms. At what point does moderation become censorship?

Absolutely and I know you understand that high wire a lot more most, including myself.

In all honesty I was deliberately vague with the use of the term "regulation" as I don't have the answer. It does seem that allowing SM to largely be self policing just isn't working though. Ultimately people themselves are the issue as you point out but I think SM could be part of the solution rather than amplifying the problem.

How we turn SM and yes, traditional media, into something more reflective of reality and lack of bias? It's going to be tough. I think a lot more minds will be focusing on this after the events of recent years. Trump, Brexit, Covid disinformation. I hope this focus is at least the impetuous to acknowledge there has to be change.

SM will eventually herald draconian measures against personal freedoms.

Brought it on themselves, but they seem incapable of learning.

We’ve done this to death already. The problem with “social media” isn’t “media” but “social.” What you need to fix here is people and that’s hard.

In your head you have settled it. Social media changes how people receive information. It changes how people interact with others. It exposes some of our worst cognitive biases. It is not a benign tool which is somehow only allowing us to truly realise ourselves. It has big upsides but also fairly apparent downsides.

You'd be the guy back in the day telling us the problem is not Gutenberg's printing press / the postal service/ the telephone / the radio / the TV but the idiots abusing them and if we only made everyone nicer regulation is unnecessary.

Social media doesn't have to look like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They are all based on an ad and datafarming revenue model which sets bizarre incentives which are not aligned with our interests.

I'd rather the politicians were regulated and held to account for lying. Neither traditional media nor social media provoked the events in congres. It was a president who has lied with impunity throughout his term and never been held to account.

In fact the media, including social media have done a pretty good job of calling him out which is why Biden will be the next president and some semblance of sanity will return.

Cougar makes an excellent point.

Social media is just a platform. It's people posting and sharing lies and bollocks - intentionally or through ignorance - that is the problem. That's a combination of lack of education, feeling disenfranchised for whatever reason, and dickheadedness.

And with democratic freedom comes a requirement to accept freedom of speech. But with that freedom comes responsibility.

As with a lot of ills, social media is the symptom, not the cause. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Trump has used SM to incite last night's events - that's on Trump and his minions, not Twitter.

Better education and fairer opportunities for all are probably the solution. Do we have two generations time to fix it though?

You’d be the guy back in the day telling us the problem is not Gutenberg’s printing press / the postal service/ the telephone / the radio / the TV but the idiots abusing them and if we only made everyone nicer regulation is unnecessary.

You're grouping media together here which probably shouldn't be. One-way and bidirectional, one-to-one and one-to-many, these things are different beasts.

Also, your conclusion is disconnected from your hypothesis, I'd agree with you up until 'and'. If I ring you up and call you names, is that the phone's fault? Presumably then "you’d be the guy back in the day" burning books.

I'm not saying regulation is unnecessary. Rather 'social media' is today's scapegoat for the world's ills.

Meanwhile, in highly regulated and thus completely perfect traditional media this week:

Just sitting here watching a decent action movie/ thriller

Imagine how much weight Gerard Butler will have to put on when it actually does become a movie.

The issue isn't the platform the internet provides.
It's the society and people who use it.

Education and culture change its what's needed, not censorship.

Rather ‘social media’ is today’s scapegoat for the world’s ills.

But it is a hell of a scapegoat isn't it. Whereas people may have previously read newspaper BS or chatted some made up BS down the pub it is now millions of people being influenced within minutes.

Rather than a scapegoat I see it as a way of seeing what people actually think, how selfish people are, how gullible people are etc,. that was previously unseen unless you directly mixed with those people.

Good luck with keeping social media as it is and also completely changing 50%+ of a population to be more open minded, not spread BS, not be horrible people.

Whilst I agree it's the people using social media that are the real issue the platform itself does facilitate it far more than previous forms of media & communication have. The genie's out of the bottle though, apart from enforcing social media platforms to moderate more the really vile stuff, there's not a whole lot you can do (short of killing of the platform entirely by making them liable but that will remove the benefits social media can bring as well).

It doesn't matter how much it's regulated if the regulations can't be enforced (see use of mobile phones while driving, for example)

I do think Twitter and Facebook got worked when they moved from a chronological algorithm to a “top posts” one.
This meant they fed you the stuff that was in your area of interest so you’re in an echo chamber more.

OP - if you don't like social media, don't go looking at donald.win then....

Also, your conclusion is disconnected from your hypothesis, I’d agree with you up until ‘and’. If I ring you up and call you names, is that the phone’s fault? Presumably then “you’d be the guy back in the day” burning books.

You can't call someone up to abuse them without a phone. It's not that it causes the poor behaviour but creates new possibilities to behave badly. If I'm likely to have been burning books you'd be the guy rolling out the Volksempfänger.

The printing press is an interesting one. It's pretty clear that a lot of good came from being to share knowledge, but it also let fannies like Heinrich Kramer publish and widely share books like Malleus Maleficarum which were absolutely foundational to 150 years of rampant witch burning.

You can't say that it's the printing presses' fault that witches were burned but it's hard to see how it would have happened as it did without it. The technology shapes and changes human behaviour.

I’d rather see traditional media held to account TBH

The traditional media definitely wouldn't be straight on to FB and Twitter to whip up support in their favour, as they certainly haven't seen how effective that can be.

Social media in its current form is definitely broken, and corrosive.

The root problem is money.

It has to make money to exist. It makes money by increasing the time people spend on it, in order to spam more adverts and all that stuff.

Turns out, that is made easier by showing them stuff that makes them angry and stokes divisions. Not so much so with pictures of baby robins and fluffy kittens.

Nobody is interested in fixing that, until the place the money comes from changes.

There's no money involved with chatting sh*t with your mates down the pub.

What you need to fix here is people and that’s hard.

You don't fix people, they're hardwired for stupidity. History proves that.

Social media doesn’t have to look like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They are all based on an ad and datafarming revenue model which sets bizarre incentives which are not aligned with our interests.

tomd has it I my opinion. People’s apathy to facebook scares the life out of me. It’s not a benign tool, Zuckerberg knew full well what he was up to. Regulated to within an inch of its life? Absolutely, as an absolute minimum.

The best enforcement of Rule #1 is peer pressure, but as @lunge says, Facebook and the like create bubbles of like minded people. That, in turn, is driven by their commercial motives. I would much prefer to see an internet with less advertising, which means paying for the services. That's one reason why I have a paid account here, change doesn't happen unless you vote with your feet.

The Polish have the right idea about regulating social media.

If a media platform removes anything that doesn't break Polish law then they get a 2.2M euro fine.

If you want to control/ban social media consider some of the places that have done that and with what objectives: China, Hong Kong, Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Syria, Sudan, Belarus... .

Still want regulate social media to within an inch of its life?

I'd rather the abuses that break existing laws were prosecuted.

Regulated to within an inch of its life? Absolutely, as an absolute minimum.

Surely you just end up with another platform popping up in its place? Like when Twitter banned a whole load of people, they just went over to Parler and you end up with an even more extreme echo chamber.

The supposed "regulation" that was coming into the media following the Leveson Inquiry went largely under the radar, filtered out and watered down, mentions of "voluntary codes of conduct" and that was for the vastly easier medium of print media.

As usual, technology has moved on far faster than the laws that govern it and it'll always be that way.

I think that these platforms should permit people to say what they want within the boundaries of the law, but that users of the platform should be held accountable for their views - I think the platforms are not the problem, but the anonymisation of users is.

When people see 'counterfactual' claims on places like facebook they seem to be coming from authoritative sources; however, if they could see it was just Gavin from Cheadle in his garage, perhaps they'd think twice; and if Gavin from Cheadle made death threats against people, he could be held to account for those threats.

You're looking in the wrong place

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/06/new-bbc-chairman-richard-sharp-donated-more-than-400000-to-conservative-party/

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/nigel-farage-on-question-time-46458

I feel there it's a real appetite in the US to reign in the tech giants. What happens there is what is really important.

Within reason Biden can now enact what he wants with Dems controlling both houses. On to of that there is a large amount of Republicans that would not oppose Biden if he went after the tech companies.

We'll see, I hope he does to be honest. He has more pressing matters at the moment though...

Social media is just a platform.

see, this is the bit I don’t agree with. It’s designed controlled and engineered to be the roiling cess-pit of hate because that’s good for business. And that’s what makes the “it’s not the platform, it’s the people” argument fundamentally misguided.

SM acts in a way that’s totally different from other types of publications, and is outside of how legislation has been developed to obstruct dangerous speech. Until it is controlled (like we do with other dangerous substances and actions, drugs and traffic laws for example) then it will continue to be leading us down an untested path.

SM is like the drunk armed man telling you “it’s OK, I like you”...

People who think Facebook needs regulating should watch that documentary about the Philippinos who they hire to do their moderating.

Not convinced that the 'social' component is more harmful than the 'media' component in SM. A loonball shouting conspiracy theories at himself in his basement is largely harmless. He has no audience and no mechanism to spread his hate. The ubiquitous and unregulated nature of SM enables that loonball to reach any number of like minded loons. The algorithms and commercial pressures within SM positively encourage the kind of baseless conspiratorial feeding frenzies currently seen, devoid of fact checking, personal responsibility or consequence. Surely the medium is, by far, the greater component?

I entirely agree with @tomd's take on all of this.

Clearly, it's people who feed social media. However, there is no way of discerning whether an individual's contribution results from deep-rooted, long-held beliefs, or just a fleeting musing. Theres no way of telling whether someone's opinion is based on genuine expert knowledge, or just some half-baked theory they've dreamt up with a sparse understanding of the underlying concepts (whatever they may be). This is problematic, as there seems to be a perception amongst the more gullible in society that whatever is written down on the internet, or 'sold' to them in a way that appeals to them is fact. Gullible doesn't neccessarily equate to stupid, so once someone has bought into a belief, they will continue to justify it to themselves.

Also, there is a huge difference between social media and real life interactions: consequence. The pub analogy is a good one. In a pub (can you remember them?), you'd maybe pause for a moment or two before launching into a tirade about something that crossed your mind. There would likely be a cross section of different beliefs and attitudes within the bar, and you'd be aware that someone is likely to call you out if you start spouting complete BS.

On facebook et al however, I reckon a lot of people just post whatever happens to be flitting through their brain at the time, without that kind of mental filtering or sanity checking going on first. This also applies of course to deliberately provocative and incendiary behaviour. The motivation to filter just doesnt exist in the same way with social media as it does in a room full of real people. You can quite happily light the blue touch paper then withdraw and watch the carnage unfold before you - with no risk of any tangible impact on yourself.

In summary: technology and social media in particular allows and (and perhaps even encourages) behaviours that would not otherwise be exhibited. Society inevitably changes as technologies develop. It's important that society is mindful of this and that we collectively take time to reflect on whether the changes are positive.

I'd like to see it regulated into oblivion. It's just not necessary.

I feel there it’s a real appetite in the US to reign in the tech giants. What happens there is what is really important.

Did you see the video of Congress questioning Zuckerberg? The senators had absolutely no idea about any of what they were asking him, he basically ended up explaining "the internet" to Congress. And these are the people charged with passing laws.

Continuing the analogy to pubs, though, they tend to become something of an echo chamber. I dare say that what's acceptably said in an Islington craft beer popup is considerably different to what's said in a flat-roofed working class pub (making sweeping generalisations here). It's just a lot easier to find a group who agrees with you and encourage you further online. It's also a lot easier to get a look into the "other side" with a few clicks on Facebook rather than having to walk into "that pub".

I'm not sure how to fix it, but ill-thought out censorship scares me, I shudder to think what our government would like to see banned.

But when bare-faced lies are coming out of our politicians and printed in the newspapers, the BBC insists on UKIP appearing on every episode of Question Time and so forth, they seem to be part of a wider problem, not the problem in themselves.

Simple answer, make the platform responsible for everything on it.

If FB we faced with absolutely massive fines every time some one individual posted inciteful garbage, a way would be found to limit it pretty quickly.

Not sure how workable that all is but its my starter for ten.

I think the regulations do need to make clearer what 'moderation' should involve - moderation by definition means avoiding the extremes - so at the extreme end of the scale of various viewpoints (i.e. provable lies) - these should be removed, but very soon after that (see cougar's examples) someone somewhere (e.g. someone working for facebook etc) has to take a view and it's not an easy task - I don't envy any moderators job. To me the rules around moderation on a global scale are just not where they need to be (or perhaps in trump's case having just been shut down on twitter) they are not enforced. Either way it's human nature to push boundaries (a blessing and a curse) and social media is not a benign network whether we like it or not so ultimately more rules will likely need to be applied.

Facebook, twitteet Al have a commercial interest in people being on it to earn advertising revenue.

They keep people there by the use of the algorithm and the way it's designed/programmed.

This I what makes he echo Chambers and stops people seeing other sides of then coin.

I think this is where the focus of attention needs to be.

If FB we faced with absolutely massive fines every time some one individual posted inciteful garbage, a way would be found to limit it pretty quickly

Again, the moderators documentary will make you rethink this.
Il'l see if I can find a link.

I think privacy laws could be the tool to improve social media. Currently whatever you enter on these platforms becomes the property of the platform, to analyze and use as they seem fit. This is how they target (political) marketing to nudge and twist users views. If they were not allowed to do that, and only randomized marketing was allowed, that brainwashing becomes far weaker.

I also saw recently, whatsapp was going to start sharing and analyzing data with the wider facebook group. That is a game changer for me to stop using the app, but I don't know if there are any more private alternatives.

Before you start to regulate SM just remember the law of unintended consequences. If we regulate Twitter, FB, Parler, etc, then all internet forums would need to be regulated, since they are form of SM. Do you want to make Chips et al responsible for our moronic postings? People already complain when things are taken down, to make it workable, STW would need to approve every posting before it was published. STW would close.