Humans have clearly evolved to act cooperatively, and that’s not inconsistent with self-interest.

Yes, but only in small groups. We create in-groups and out-groups in our heads. In evolutionary terms this would be our tribe vs the next tribe, but now our out-groups can contain people from other countries, other religions, other towns etc etc. I think the key issue with social media is that almost everyone falls into an out-group. So this pre-disposes us to be uncharitable in our assessment of what people write. That’s what makes it so toxic.

Facebook (and social media in general) can be great, there are some really good stories about how good things spread and it urges people to step in and contribute. Sir Tom Moore for example.

I’ve often wondered if that’s true – that facebook has enabled good things to happen that wouldn’t have otherwise. I’m not totally convinced – folk ran cycling clubs, ran successful campaigns, did amazing charitable acts and kept in touch with friends well before facebook. I would definitely say it’s lowered the bar for the effort involved in doing any of the above but not convinced it’s enabled us to do anything new.

The % of people giving regularly to charity in the UK appears to be on a decreasing trend, whereas cynicism in what charities do is on the up. If facebook is encouraging us to support worthy causes it’s doing a shit job.

In evolutionary terms this would be our tribe vs the next tribe,

This has nothing to do with evolution. But let’s presuppose you’re talking social evolution…It is still a very “judeo-western” view of how complex societies evolve and organise themselves, and has very little to do with actual evidence. You’ve essentially taken a “modern” western understanding and bias and transposed it onto all historical and pre-historical civilisations without any evidence that that’s the case. In short; you cannot know whether tribe A viewed tribe B as “other” or indeed whether the concept of “other” even existed in their heads.

In lots of ways you exhibit the same arrogance (not pejoratively)  that FB does. It transposes it’s world view on other societies without stopping to look at the damage that causes, or take sufficient care to learn. FB for instance has currently about 100 or so local moderators for Africa…a continent, none of them employed full time by FB at all, they’re all 3rd party employees. In Ethiopia, it’s standards aren’t even published in the 2 local languages and yet expects users to sign up to them.

Yes, but only in small groups. We create in-groups and out-groups in our heads. In evolutionary terms this would be our tribe vs the next tribe, but now our out-groups can contain people from other countries, other religions, other towns etc etc. I think the key issue with social media is that almost everyone falls into an out-group. So this pre-disposes us to be uncharitable in our assessment of what people write. That’s what makes it so toxic.

Those out-groups are not new nor people making money from fear and hatred is new … but the way social media makes money from encouraging argument, fear and hatred is.

In the same way, it’s not new that “the media” may support political agendas.
Now the majority of printed media is a shadow of the digital… they aren’t selling readers to advertisers but clicks and interactions. Getting people to argue and publishing topics designed to make people argue is what sells clicks and interactions.

The very algorithms are designed to pick up and promote hatred and intolerance because it generates more clicks and interactions.

folk ran cycling clubs, ran successful campaigns, did amazing charitable acts and kept in touch with friends well before facebook

You really think Tom moore would have got to £32 odd million without it being shared on social media?

That’s just one example, there are a fair few good news stories even on our small local village facebook group.

Yup @stevextc – IIRC Jon Ronson worked out that one particular social media storm that lead to someone losing their job and getting harassed on twitter had made in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars through advertising clicks/views etc for companies like Google and FB.

@hooli if overall charitable giving is down then all these good news stories do is distract from that and let us kid ourselves that everything is great. Seems like lots of people on here are still drinking the kool-aid.

You really think Tom moore would have got to £32 odd million without it being shared on social media?
That’s just one example, there are a fair few good news stories even on our small local village facebook group.

There we have it settled. Facebook is good because Tom Moore.

Good things and amazing charities have always happened. People use the tools at hand, which today is Facebook. It doesn’t make Facebook great and gloss over the weird and dangerous stuff they do.

There we have it settled. Facebook is good because Tom Moore

Or your option. There we have it settled. Facebook is bad because a chav pushed somebody off a bike.

You really think Tom moore would have got to £32 odd million without it being shared on social media?

Planned spending for the Department of Health and Social Care in England is £140.4 billion in 2019/20. We are still woefully underfunded but Government manipulation of social media over £32M / £140,400M and clapping for the NHS managed to hide that.

Or your option. There we have it settled. Facebook is bad because a chav pushed somebody off a bike.

No it’s bad because things like a chav committing a criminal act are gold dust content for facebook.

I appreciate you can create a bubble on facebook but most users don’t. Content which is inflammatory or divisive gets more engagement and money for facebook. If we all carefully craft bubbles and look at retrobike groups, airfix model groups and fluffy kitten videos they don’t have a business. It is set up to breed the batshit mental.

The second issue is it is now a monopoly. There is no other effective way to advertise pretty much anything anymore. They suck all the ad spending and will continue to do so until it is the only show left. If it wasn’t a monopoly perhaps other players would solve some of the issues with the model and make it work better.

Facebook is bad because a chav pushed somebody off a bike.

Alternatively FB is bad because it has uncontrolled political influence on it’s pages that are leading to genocide, and it does little/nothing to stop it.

FB ignores political manipulation

Planned spending for the Department of Health and Social Care in England is £140.4 billion in 2019/20. We are still woefully underfunded but Government manipulation of social media over £32M / £140,400M and clapping for the NHS managed to hide that.

What’s that got to do with Facebook and social media? Thanks to Tom and sharing via social media, there is £32 million less they need to find.

My comment way up there was just that I don’t think Facebook and social media is toxic, it is a reflection of society and for every bad news story, it can bring a lot of good too.

I used to like facebook but its getting more and more annoying so I started to use Instagram more but thats getting ridiculous too.

Seriously tempted to drop both but they are useful for keeping in touch with some far away friends and groups I’m part of. Just a shame that there seems to be next to no control given to users to filter out the crap that gets suggested to you etc.

I loathe Facebook in general and have deleted the app several times as it robs time.
But, I do a lot of business on there. I do security systems and most domestic clients locally get me through Facebook.
So begrudgingly I have to keep it.

every bad news story, it can bring a lot of good too.

Well that’s provably untrue, but believe want you want to I guess.

What’s that got to do with Facebook and social media? Thanks to Tom and sharing via social media, there is £32 million less they need to find.

My comment way up there was just that I don’t think Facebook and social media is toxic, it is a reflection of society and for every bad news story, it can bring a lot of good too.

Thanks to Tom and social media the public perception is that the £32 million must see the NHS right for years… when essentially he dropped a single grain of sand onto a huge beach where millions are being eroded everyday and along comes Boris and co. with one of Boris’s bulldozers and starts shoving the lot into the sea.

Or £32M lasts almost exactly 2hrs out of 8760 hrs

My comment way up there was just that I don’t think Facebook and social media is toxic, it is a reflection of society and for every bad news story, it can bring a lot of good too.

No, it is changing society, not just reflecting it. And everyone denying that are in head in the sand mode… because it looks to them to be just a useful tool for keeping up with friends and finding out about events, or getting the attention of customers, or reading a nice story about a dog that befriended a traveller… or whatever… but that’s why you use it (and in some cases have to use it)… that does not mean it is benign… it is not.

Or £32M lasts almost exactly 2hrs out of 8760 hrs

The money raised by Tom Moore is for NHS charities, and is mostly being spent on staff welfare projects not core NHS spending.

They let a man blow his head off with a shotgun during a livestream

Its worth having a think about who ‘they’ are, where they are and what they are doing all day. In the context of some lads knocking a guy of his bike – the ‘they’ who you are reporting to spend their day being subjected to reported child sex abuse and ISIS beheadings. They have to watch them, have seconds to make a decision and act, then watch another one. Day in day out, year in year out until they can look at a photo of a severed head and know how sharp the knife was and how much effort it took to cut it off.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003f2f

Milgram’s electrocution experiment; they never “made” the general public give the chap in the chair what they thought was a deadly amount of volts, but almost all of them did it.

People are easily lead.

You probably know less about that experiment and its conclusions than you think you do

You really think Tom moore would have got to £32 odd million without it being shared on social media?

Or Bob Geldoff could have raised $125million without Ceefax?

The money raised by Tom Moore is for NHS charities, and is mostly being spent on staff welfare projects not core NHS spending.

Unless you can get that message across to 40 million people plus then you’re telling the wrong person as Cummings has already got a great deal convinced “the NHS is rolling in it after that veteran bloke raised millions”.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more of Captain Colonel Sir Tom on BBC breakfast and TV news/magazine shows than anywhere else.

Although SM did play a part, the whole thing was very much an organised campaign, not the free form ‘people coming together’ that a lot would have you believe.