Study: Social media probably can't be fixed

I work in survey research and I'm rather appalled at how many people would rather survey a sample of AIs than a sample of people and claim they can come to some valid conclusion as a result.

There are many ways AIs differ from real people and any conclusions you can draw from them are limited at best -- we've had enough bad experiments done with real people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Int...

A lot of talk goes into how Facebook or other social media use algorithms to encourage engagement, that often includes outrage type content, fake news, rabbit holes and so on.

But here's the thing ... people CHOOSE to engage with that, and users even produce that content for social media platforms for free.

It's hard to escape that part.

I remember trying Bluesky and while I liked it better than Twitter, for me it was disappointing that it was just Twitter, but different. Outlandish short posts, same lame jokes / pithy appeals to our emotions, and so on. People on there want to behave the same way they wanted to on Twitter.

> They then tested six different intervention strategies...

None of these approaches offer what I want, and what I think a lot of people want, which is a social network primarily of people you know and give at least one shit about. But in reality, most of us don't have extended social networks that can provide enough content to consistently entertain us. So, even if we don't want 'outside' content (as if that was an option), we'll gravitate to it out of boredom and our feeds will gradually morph back into some version of the clusrterfucks we all deal with today.

> Only some interventions showed modest improvements. None were able to fully disrupt the fundamental mechanisms producing the dysfunctional effects.

I think this is expected. Think back to newsgroups, email lists, web forums. They were pretty much all chronological or maybe had a simple scoring or upvoting mechanism. You still had outrage, flamewars, and the guy who always had to have the last word. Social media engagement algorithms probably do amplify that but the dysfunction was always part of it.

The only thing I've seen that works to reduce this is active moderation.

Social media isn't the problem, people are the problem, and we still working on how to fix them.

Social media can be fixed, its just the incentives are not aligned.

To make money, social media companies need people to stay on as long as possible. That means showing people sex, violence, rage and huge amounts of copyright infringements.

There is little advantage in creating real-world consequences for bad actors. Why? because it hurts growth.

There was a reason why the old TV networks didn't let any old twat with a camera broadcast stuff on their network, why? because they would get huge fines if they broke decency "laws" (yes america had/has censorship, hence why the simpsons say "whoopee" and "snuggle")

There are few things that can cause company ending fines for social media companies. Which means we get almost no moderation.

Until that changes, social media will be "broken"

I'm reading Tim Urban's book titled "What's Our Problem".

It definitely explains the different types of thinking that I'm making up our current society, including social media. I haven't got to the part yet where he suggests what to do about it, but it's fascinating insight into our human behavior in this day and age.

The main reason that it can't be fixed is that it has political or corporate operators and propaganda bots have taken over. There is always an agenda running through threads of social media even for mundane topics that seeking supremacy.

I'd like to see more software that amplifies local social interactions.

There are apps like Meetup, but a lot of people just find it too awkward. Introverts especially do not want to meet just for the sake of meeting people, so they fallback on social media.

Maybe this situation is fundamentally not helped by software. All of my best friendships organically formed in real-world settings like school, work, neighborhood, etc.

Social media is the new smoking...

Widespread adoption before understanding risks - embraced globally before fully grasping the mental health, social, and political consequences, especially for young people.

Delayed but significant harm - can lead to gradual impacts like reduced attention span, increased anxiety, depression, loneliness, and polarization

Corporate incentives misaligned with public health - media companies design platforms for maximum engagement, leveraging psychological triggers while downplaying or disputing the extent of harm

Social media in a profit-seeking system can't be fixed. Profit-seeking provides the evolutionary pressure to turn it into something truly destructive to users. The only way it can work is via ownership by a benevolent non-profit. However, that would likely eventually give in to corruption if given enough time. Outlawing it completely, as well as regulating the algorithmic shaping of the online experience, is probably the inevitable future. Unfortunately, it won't come until the current system causes a complete societal facture and collapse.

Do all of these points apply to the traditional media funhouse mirror that we love to hate, too?

> "The [structural] mechanism producing these problematic outcomes is really robust and hard to resolve."

I see illegal war, killing without due process, and kleptocracy. It's partly the media's fault. It's partly the peoples' fault for depending on advertising to subsidize free services, for gawking, for sharing without consideration, for voting in ignorance.

Social media reflects the people; who can't be "fixed" either.

If you're annoyed with all of these people on here who are lesser than and more annoying than you, then stop spending so much time at the bar.

Can the bar be fixed?