By Stephen Fontenot | While social media algorithms have become excellent at matching a user’s viewing habits with targeted, personalized content, psychologists at The University of Texas at Dallas have determined that these algorithms may have a negative influence on a user’s mental health. Dr. Alva Tang, assistant professor of psychology in the School of Behavioral […]
Y’all, this is one of those articles worth reading right quick. The title is… well, bad. They were looking more at the “quality” rather than quantity of social media usage. The findings were more about the reinforcement of the user’s state rather than social media itself being bad. Sure, the algorithm will push things, but your algorithm is primarily gonna push what it needs to keep you engaged with itself, and what you engage with will be influenced by your state of mind/mood. If you’re already depressed, you’re probably gonna reinforce that via the algorithm. Same deal with positive outlooks. Neuroplasticity and all that.
The researchers also bring up a good point about calling into question the recommendation to limit the amount of time on social media with the idea of mitigating the negative effects. Much like [alcohol] prohibition in the US, a ban on social media usage does nothing to teach us a more wise and healthy approach, nor is it something realistic for the general population.
In fact, if we practice abstention in such a way, those that would use it for malignant purposes would make it worse. I think a good example of that is cryptocurrency. Crypto isn’t inherently bad, but boy did it get super maligned by any left-leaning space. There are plenty of useful things we could do with crypto, especially now with the hostile behavior of many currency-issuing states, but since crypto was mostly abandoned by leftist spaces, scams, commodification, speculation, and other hyper-capitalist bullshit abounds in the crypto space.
Do we really want to cede the further development of social media to malignant dickheads via unwitting abstention? Or will we take the time to actually learn how to wisely approach the tools we have right in front of us?
All social media algorithms that direct content flow to users are required to be open source, in perpetuity, at least for viewing, so that actual unbiased folks can audit them. Maybe make a new liscense class for this, if need be, so companies can still own the code, but it just has to be publically reviewable.
Would you install blackbox code on your pc?
Well, would you let a blackbox determine what information is fed into your own brain?
That’s what Pirate parties advocate for, actually. They do seem to gain back in popularity with the chat control proposal.
Problem of the mainstream left parties is that they heavily underrate importance of free software. Underrate to the level of buying iphones, macbooks, subscriptions and so forth.
Pirate parties are actually nice step to secure privacy of left-activists in the neoliberal future.
I did not know that, but that entirely makes sense.
I’m American; if we had a ‘pirate party’ type party, it would be considered a terrorist organization by our pedophile president and his cult of closeted christian racist theocrat morons.
But uh yeah… world economy and society broadly is hugely run by tech and tech companies, you’d think a more nuanced and informed discussion about tech law and policy would accompany that… but nope!
Y’all, this is one of those articles worth reading right quick. The title is… well, bad. They were looking more at the “quality” rather than quantity of social media usage. The findings were more about the reinforcement of the user’s state rather than social media itself being bad. Sure, the algorithm will push things, but your algorithm is primarily gonna push what it needs to keep you engaged with itself, and what you engage with will be influenced by your state of mind/mood. If you’re already depressed, you’re probably gonna reinforce that via the algorithm. Same deal with positive outlooks. Neuroplasticity and all that.
The researchers also bring up a good point about calling into question the recommendation to limit the amount of time on social media with the idea of mitigating the negative effects. Much like [alcohol] prohibition in the US, a ban on social media usage does nothing to teach us a more wise and healthy approach, nor is it something realistic for the general population.
In fact, if we practice abstention in such a way, those that would use it for malignant purposes would make it worse. I think a good example of that is cryptocurrency. Crypto isn’t inherently bad, but boy did it get super maligned by any left-leaning space. There are plenty of useful things we could do with crypto, especially now with the hostile behavior of many currency-issuing states, but since crypto was mostly abandoned by leftist spaces, scams, commodification, speculation, and other hyper-capitalist bullshit abounds in the crypto space.
Do we really want to cede the further development of social media to malignant dickheads via unwitting abstention? Or will we take the time to actually learn how to wisely approach the tools we have right in front of us?
Howabout this:
All social media algorithms that direct content flow to users are required to be open source, in perpetuity, at least for viewing, so that actual unbiased folks can audit them. Maybe make a new liscense class for this, if need be, so companies can still own the code, but it just has to be publically reviewable.
Would you install blackbox code on your pc?
Well, would you let a blackbox determine what information is fed into your own brain?
Mandate systemic transparency.
That’s what Pirate parties advocate for, actually. They do seem to gain back in popularity with the chat control proposal. Problem of the mainstream left parties is that they heavily underrate importance of free software. Underrate to the level of buying iphones, macbooks, subscriptions and so forth. Pirate parties are actually nice step to secure privacy of left-activists in the neoliberal future.
I did not know that, but that entirely makes sense.
I’m American; if we had a ‘pirate party’ type party, it would be considered a terrorist organization by our pedophile president and his cult of closeted christian racist theocrat morons.
But uh yeah… world economy and society broadly is hugely run by tech and tech companies, you’d think a more nuanced and informed discussion about tech law and policy would accompany that… but nope!