Social media is navigating its sectarian phase(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
Social media is navigating its sectarian phase
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/social-media-is-navigating-its-sectarian-phase
79 comments
Freelance journalists, adjunct professors, and anonymous posters are not a unique threat. They are one of many threats. Nearly every person on Earth has their own tailored infinite black mirror. The mechanisms of the medium encourage it. The idea that social media was ever not sectarian is silly.
When I hear "freelance journalists, adjunct professors, and anonymous posters" the first word I think of is "democracy", not "threat".
The idea that anybody gets to say whatever they want is how you have a free society. Treat those people like threats and you have authoritarianism. Whether the end result is left tyranny or right tyranny, I don't want it.
The idea that anybody gets to say whatever they want is how you have a free society. Treat those people like threats and you have authoritarianism. Whether the end result is left tyranny or right tyranny, I don't want it.
I like journalists and professors personally, much more than the avg HN poster. I'm being provocative: we edit our own feeds, and so our collection of follows threatens our sense of the world.
I used to think that when the internet wasn't what it is today. Now I hear 'unearned appeals to authority and randos whose opinion/thoughts I wouldn't care about in real life'.
Twitter's original idea and format (short attention-grabbing posts) is antithetical to quality and nuance. I prefer Reddit's format: posts are links to blogs on other sites, and the comments are a common area for discussion.
Sure, link-curation sites can also be low-quality, toxic echo chambers. Reddit is roughly a link-curation analogue of BlueSky, and even HN has some low-effort content, toxicity and groupthink (though it's not nearly as bad). And there are high-quality posters on Twitter, and high-quality invite-only Mastodon instances (at least in theory, I'd love to find some).
But high-quality posts are hindered by Twitter's format. High-quality posts don't fit in 150 words, hence the "thread 1/N", "thread 2/N" workaround. High-quality discussion is hard with a handful of random reply-chains as opposed to a comment tree. Specifically on Twitter, high-quality posts get limited reach because it's non-public with a (mostly) non-customizable algorithm, to the extent I mainly find said posts via links on link-curation sites.
Meanwhile, link-curation sites encourage high-quality content by encouraging (if not requiring) posts to be links. Instead of posting a "hot take", you link to an article, paper, or at least self-hosted blog*. Or when possible, you link to the primary source, and maybe post your opinion in the comments, where it's presented almost exactly like opposite opinions (just with the "OP" indicator). Comments are also better, because every reply to every reply is shown and you can collapse reply trees to view others; and because there's no word limit, so even comments can be substantive (although there's no encouraging mechanism to comment with a link to your blog post or related/contrasting primary source, which in theory could lead to especially high-quality discussions and insight, but I suspect in practice would almost never be used).
* Self-hosted blogs tend to be higher-quality due to an expected minimum length and the effort required to set it up and get attention. Although unfortunately, I've seen some links to no-name blog articles that were especially short and low quality. As mentioned, link-curation doesn't guarantee high quality like Twitter-style doesn't guarantee low quality, they facilitate high/low quality respectively.
Sure, link-curation sites can also be low-quality, toxic echo chambers. Reddit is roughly a link-curation analogue of BlueSky, and even HN has some low-effort content, toxicity and groupthink (though it's not nearly as bad). And there are high-quality posters on Twitter, and high-quality invite-only Mastodon instances (at least in theory, I'd love to find some).
But high-quality posts are hindered by Twitter's format. High-quality posts don't fit in 150 words, hence the "thread 1/N", "thread 2/N" workaround. High-quality discussion is hard with a handful of random reply-chains as opposed to a comment tree. Specifically on Twitter, high-quality posts get limited reach because it's non-public with a (mostly) non-customizable algorithm, to the extent I mainly find said posts via links on link-curation sites.
Meanwhile, link-curation sites encourage high-quality content by encouraging (if not requiring) posts to be links. Instead of posting a "hot take", you link to an article, paper, or at least self-hosted blog*. Or when possible, you link to the primary source, and maybe post your opinion in the comments, where it's presented almost exactly like opposite opinions (just with the "OP" indicator). Comments are also better, because every reply to every reply is shown and you can collapse reply trees to view others; and because there's no word limit, so even comments can be substantive (although there's no encouraging mechanism to comment with a link to your blog post or related/contrasting primary source, which in theory could lead to especially high-quality discussions and insight, but I suspect in practice would almost never be used).
* Self-hosted blogs tend to be higher-quality due to an expected minimum length and the effort required to set it up and get attention. Although unfortunately, I've seen some links to no-name blog articles that were especially short and low quality. As mentioned, link-curation doesn't guarantee high quality like Twitter-style doesn't guarantee low quality, they facilitate high/low quality respectively.
Bluesky is just Twitter 1.0 - it's a good metaphor for american politics; both sides are virtually identical, one is openly racist and hateful, one likes to pretend it's above such things but inhabits virtually the same platform and eyes enviously the attention they get for being dumb and heinous in public.
Meanwhile actual platform change is considered "unrealistic" but is actually a ton of fun and perfectly fine if you like connecting with other people more than stroking your ego with numbers obtained by sucking up to the system/algorithm and/or consumerism
Meanwhile actual platform change is considered "unrealistic" but is actually a ton of fun and perfectly fine if you like connecting with other people more than stroking your ego with numbers obtained by sucking up to the system/algorithm and/or consumerism
Social Media as we know it is non-viable in a world of troll armies, AI slop and spam, and professional propaganda. I give it less than 10 years to live.
The future is private enclaves like Discord, Slack, private networks, private forums, and chat apps. The open Internet is a dark forest.
The future is private enclaves like Discord, Slack, private networks, private forums, and chat apps. The open Internet is a dark forest.
The future for the people able to break free, sure, but I believe that'll always be a minority of the population.
However, even the private enclaves become corrupted over time, especially if they ever grow in popularity. I mean, look at HN as an example. What was once a niche place for tech people and STEM related topics, now any given day the front page is 30% pure sociopolitical content, 50-75% mainstream media content; comment threads full of partisan rage baiting and emotion-driven debate.
Also, once a niche place becomes in any way important/popular, the propagandists will swoop in and work their tricks to start controlling the messaging on it.
At this point I'm feeling that niche places can only exist long-term as long as they have some sort of dictatorial control by a truly moral admin, who forcefully keeps the community in check by viciously moderating content. Of course, such a person is eventually corruptible, and finding a successor later for such a person is its own issue.
However, even the private enclaves become corrupted over time, especially if they ever grow in popularity. I mean, look at HN as an example. What was once a niche place for tech people and STEM related topics, now any given day the front page is 30% pure sociopolitical content, 50-75% mainstream media content; comment threads full of partisan rage baiting and emotion-driven debate.
Also, once a niche place becomes in any way important/popular, the propagandists will swoop in and work their tricks to start controlling the messaging on it.
At this point I'm feeling that niche places can only exist long-term as long as they have some sort of dictatorial control by a truly moral admin, who forcefully keeps the community in check by viciously moderating content. Of course, such a person is eventually corruptible, and finding a successor later for such a person is its own issue.
Remembering from where we came, a decade ago, and where we are now with social media it makes me sooo sad
But I think it is true, private or moderated groups might be the only safe place.
If social media is really a representative view on our society, i feel quite disappointed
But I think it is true, private or moderated groups might be the only safe place.
If social media is really a representative view on our society, i feel quite disappointed
> The open Internet is a dark forest.
Could you expand on this a bit? That sounds like potentially interesting idea. Especially since I read “The Dark Forest”.
Could you expand on this a bit? That sounds like potentially interesting idea. Especially since I read “The Dark Forest”.
BlueSky seems like it is the viable exit from the dark forest, by virtue of the network being open data.
It's not clear right now what tools we'll build to analyze users & subnetworks, to try to get a pulse for what is authentic versus propoganda. But I am 100% here in large part because it's the only network where the data will be available! Where there is a strong commitment & the protocol is designed to making the firehose/backfill readily available. And with that I think humanity stands some kind of chance of engineering defense against the Dark Forest, can reach up towards some exaltant connection.
The Fediverse is much more focused on small communities (which personally I think it mostly fails to do usefully) and has an ethos that strongly rejects search / findability / data-gathering / network monitoring. There's little hope for me if that's the outlook: limited networking. For it means no defense, no higher views. Big Social is of course now totally inaccessible, as dark as it comes, with academic research having been buried by massively expensive API access costs, brutally short retention limits, and utterly opaque ranking/moderation systems.
It's not clear right now what tools we'll build to analyze users & subnetworks, to try to get a pulse for what is authentic versus propoganda. But I am 100% here in large part because it's the only network where the data will be available! Where there is a strong commitment & the protocol is designed to making the firehose/backfill readily available. And with that I think humanity stands some kind of chance of engineering defense against the Dark Forest, can reach up towards some exaltant connection.
The Fediverse is much more focused on small communities (which personally I think it mostly fails to do usefully) and has an ethos that strongly rejects search / findability / data-gathering / network monitoring. There's little hope for me if that's the outlook: limited networking. For it means no defense, no higher views. Big Social is of course now totally inaccessible, as dark as it comes, with academic research having been buried by massively expensive API access costs, brutally short retention limits, and utterly opaque ranking/moderation systems.
This is not surprising. In my circles, the people that most enthusiastically migrated away from X to Bluesky did so specifically because of their distaste for Elon Musk. They are largely centered about the West Coast of the US. And because X is so much bigger, it's capable of being more diverse.
Furthermore, I already had a lot of mute words and blocks set up on X to keep it palatable. I don't see any politics over there and it's entirely focused on creative work. If I did this on Bluesky I imagine I'd significantly cull my feed down to it seeming dead.
Furthermore, I already had a lot of mute words and blocks set up on X to keep it palatable. I don't see any politics over there and it's entirely focused on creative work. If I did this on Bluesky I imagine I'd significantly cull my feed down to it seeming dead.
This reminds me of a similar rift that happened in the Seattle area subreddits. Many years ago ago there was a mod who was using their position to sell something (I don’t exactly remember it). So a bunch of people left r/Seattle for r/SeattleWA. Ad you might expect that was mostly techies and the terminally online.
Fast forward 10 years later and now r/seattleWA has become the right-wing subreddit. r/Seattle is more lighthearted and full of pictures of the space needle. This wasn’t the original intent, but once a community splits in two both sides are going to further differentiate to fill more user niches.
Fast forward 10 years later and now r/seattleWA has become the right-wing subreddit. r/Seattle is more lighthearted and full of pictures of the space needle. This wasn’t the original intent, but once a community splits in two both sides are going to further differentiate to fill more user niches.
Yeah thats an interesting example!
This feels like a natural process, for better or worse. Also thats the founding principle of America. If you have had enough, move and set up a new country/state/religion/homeschool group.
This feels like a natural process, for better or worse. Also thats the founding principle of America. If you have had enough, move and set up a new country/state/religion/homeschool group.
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Couple sectarian social media, with higher levels of social isolation, and ready access to guns, you get what we had yesterday. Partisans whip themselves into a frenzy in the comments section of hand wringing post amplifying another hand wringing post.
Honestly X has the biggest mix of partisan viewpoints. Many subreddits, bluesky, have become mentally unhealthy places to spend your time if you’re left leaning.
There are plenty of people that seem to celebrate what happened yesterday on these places. It’s the worse I’ve seen and it disgusts me.
Honestly X has the biggest mix of partisan viewpoints. Many subreddits, bluesky, have become mentally unhealthy places to spend your time if you’re left leaning.
There are plenty of people that seem to celebrate what happened yesterday on these places. It’s the worse I’ve seen and it disgusts me.
Maybe I live in a bubble but these are not problems I’ve ever heard expressed until now. Bluesky seems perfectly fine for those who use it?
Everyone I actually enjoyed following is on there. Someone once posted that the best part of Bluesky is that you scroll until you reach the end of the new posts from users you follow, then once you reach the end of new content you stop and go do something else for a while. Bluesky not attempting to be a infinite dopamine is a feature in the best interest of the users
Exactly. The best replacement for Twitter/Reddit/etc. isn't any single option, it's your favorite of the new options plus a mindset of being less online, not needing a replacement for how important those used to be.
I’ve been using RSS feed for nearly 20 years now. Why we ever strayed to some endless algorithm is beyond me.
I have a list of chronologically sorted articles from sources I trust. That’s it and that’s all.
I read them until they are read. Then I close the app and do other stuff until tomorrow.
Is it any wonder Google killed off Reader around the same time it tried to launch Google+? Managing our own feeds was never going to peak capitalism.
I have a list of chronologically sorted articles from sources I trust. That’s it and that’s all.
I read them until they are read. Then I close the app and do other stuff until tomorrow.
Is it any wonder Google killed off Reader around the same time it tried to launch Google+? Managing our own feeds was never going to peak capitalism.
Maybe it’s fine if you treat Bluesky as a way to follow just a few trusted people. But that could also be an echo chamber. I was surprised, however, by how many vile comments I saw regarding Charlie Kirk’s death. To me as an outsider to its culture, it looks just like Reddit. So “sectarian” feels right.
I use blue sky exclusively over Twitter and in my experience the condolences about kirks death out numbered the vile posts at least 10 to 1. In general the worst I saw were posts lamenting his death by violence while also noting his bigotry and love for guns.
I didn't care much for it as it seemed that anything other than a left-leaning anti-american view was complexly absent and unwelcome. I kind of miss the google circles thing... it was much easier to separate technical or career vs personal vs political.
I had a very different experience - I saw very few gloating comments, and those were vastly outweighed by comments saying we don't know, nobody deserves this, violence isn't the answer, political violence spirals.
About the worst I saw were, in essence, saying this is bad, but those who live by the sword, die by the sword, which is a biblical thing.
Why is Bluesky an echo chamber but X, Rumble, Gab, Gettr are not? I bet there's huge vile "damn leftists" commentary there, even though we don't know who shot Kirk or why. Why isn't that an echo chamber?
About the worst I saw were, in essence, saying this is bad, but those who live by the sword, die by the sword, which is a biblical thing.
Why is Bluesky an echo chamber but X, Rumble, Gab, Gettr are not? I bet there's huge vile "damn leftists" commentary there, even though we don't know who shot Kirk or why. Why isn't that an echo chamber?
> Why is Bluesky an echo chamber but X, Rumble, Gab, Gettr are not? I bet there's huge vile "damn leftists" commentary there, even though we don't know who shot Kirk or why. Why isn't that an echo chamber?
I have not even heard of some of those. So I am not saying that they aren’t echo chambers either. But given the reputation for civil discourse that blue sky has, I was surprised to see a lot of comments that were saying disgusting things in thinly coded ways.
I have not even heard of some of those. So I am not saying that they aren’t echo chambers either. But given the reputation for civil discourse that blue sky has, I was surprised to see a lot of comments that were saying disgusting things in thinly coded ways.
Why is your experience better than mine? I didn't see those things.
I didn’t say it was?
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It seems logical that people who like it keep using it, while people who don't like it stop. I've seen several people right here on HN say they stopped using it for various reasons, so I don't suppose he's making it up.
You're in a bubble. Popularity is trending down.
https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
Interesting that there roughly 700K daily posters but only 390K followers. I have no idea what other social media numbers are but having ~2x the posters as followers doesn't seem like a sign of health to me.
You are misinterpreting the statistics.
Having more people talk than follow is good thing and probably consistent across social media.
That's just saying the average person posts for 2 days and follows for 1. Which seems very typical if not heavy on the following.
Pointing at more people speaking than sheeping and calling that an ominous statistic seems off, don't you think?
Having more people talk than follow is good thing and probably consistent across social media.
That's just saying the average person posts for 2 days and follows for 1. Which seems very typical if not heavy on the following.
Pointing at more people speaking than sheeping and calling that an ominous statistic seems off, don't you think?
It's over twice as popular as it was a year ago.
No, it's down posts year over year, which I wouldn't have believed was possible if it hadn't happened. It's got half as much post traffic as its peak(s), which were on exactly the days that Trump was elected and inaugurated.
It's basically what Truth Social would be if it didn't even have Trump.
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edit: it's not the fault of the technology, it's the fault of the awful company. They represent people strongly aligned with the Democratic Party, but with no power in the Democratic Party, and their philosophy has been stated over and over again: if you don't agree with whatever we believe today, we don't even want your support, or want you here, or want you to be employed. A lot of conservatives would add "they also don't want us to be alive."
The worst part is that they're all upper-middle class, and when as the Gini coefficient goes up with the right-wingers they're locking into power by being so repulsive, they'll just get wealthier and wealthier and more self-righteous.
I've been suspecting for years that there's a lot of botted support for the dumbest most out of touch liberals that is paid for by conservatives. I don't meet people like this in real life, and I am very left-wing. The liberals I meet are generally humble and thoughtful (if in love with their television sets.)
It's basically what Truth Social would be if it didn't even have Trump.
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edit: it's not the fault of the technology, it's the fault of the awful company. They represent people strongly aligned with the Democratic Party, but with no power in the Democratic Party, and their philosophy has been stated over and over again: if you don't agree with whatever we believe today, we don't even want your support, or want you here, or want you to be employed. A lot of conservatives would add "they also don't want us to be alive."
The worst part is that they're all upper-middle class, and when as the Gini coefficient goes up with the right-wingers they're locking into power by being so repulsive, they'll just get wealthier and wealthier and more self-righteous.
I've been suspecting for years that there's a lot of botted support for the dumbest most out of touch liberals that is paid for by conservatives. I don't meet people like this in real life, and I am very left-wing. The liberals I meet are generally humble and thoughtful (if in love with their television sets.)
I think bsky is a good platform in part because people like you just bounce off lol
There was an election combined with it being new - now it's trending to be the next Clubhouse. Remember Clubhouse?
I see a slight decline of around 15% after the initial surge followed by relatively stable activity. It must be easy to manipulate someone who sees stats through such warped glasses. They are playing you like a fiddle. Or maybe you're just trying to bias other folks.
Bluesky looks to go up then fall back to about half of it's peak. It has the look of a consistently used platform that slowly rolls off users but maintains a solid base.
Clubhouse went to the moon then died over a 6 month period. Bluesky would need to drop another 2/3 of it's active users 6 months ago if you wanted your statement to match your data. Bluesky isn't growing exponentially, and is not falling catastrophically. Not a good comparison.
giraffe_lady(1)
dfxm12(1)
It’s impossible to generalize about the entire population of the site—many of Bluesky’s users do not post in English and do not engage with American politics—yet it has developed an identity as a haven for liberals in the aftermath of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and Donald Trump’s reëlection as President.
How many popular conservatives can you name on BlueSky, at the top of your head?
None?
Congratulations, it's de-facto a bubble. It's just math, half the electorate isn't on the table.
None?
Congratulations, it's de-facto a bubble. It's just math, half the electorate isn't on the table.
I know things are heavily politicized right now but the world isn’t just politics yeah?
I don’t need to load up any social media app to hear the latest word from popular conservatives. Their voices are mainstream.
Does that mean I need to avoid Bluesky? Or Twitter? Is bluesky bad somehow because of that?
Does that mean I need to avoid Bluesky? Or Twitter? Is bluesky bad somehow because of that?
gdulli(1)
At this point is Nate silver just a professional rage baiter?
The "village vs river" metaphor he used in his recent book helped me better understand why he acts like this. I think he sees himself as a person that embraces risk, or as a "rage baiter" to use your framing.
You could make the argument that he always has been. Just that now he has FU-money, so he’ll go for ever-increasing levels of “outrage” to keep those plates spinning
He absolutely always has been. Nassim Nicholas Taleb hates him for a very good and simple reason. Lack of skin-in-the-game. It's just arguably immoral to make predictions for a living in such a way that "being wrong" doesn't harm you.
This is a weird criticism. Are meteorologists immoral? They are wrong a lot, with (occasionally) deadly consequences. It doesn't really hurt them - because their predictions are still pretty useful.
I don’t get this criticism.
The models he - and others like him - make are probabilistic. 70% probability Hillary would win was actually accurate. 30% probability events happen all them time.
The ones with “skin in the game” in 2016 said there was a 99% chance that Hillary would win. And that they’d eat their shoe, etc, if Trump won. They were in so much disbelief that Trump could win they built models just for confirmation bias.
The models he - and others like him - make are probabilistic. 70% probability Hillary would win was actually accurate. 30% probability events happen all them time.
The ones with “skin in the game” in 2016 said there was a 99% chance that Hillary would win. And that they’d eat their shoe, etc, if Trump won. They were in so much disbelief that Trump could win they built models just for confirmation bias.
> 70% probability Hillary would win was actually accurate.
Based on what?
Based on what?
That's circular reasoning.
My model says there's a 70% chance of Foo, and that is actually accurate. How do you know it's accurate? Because my model said so.
It might have been accurate! 30% probability events happen 3 times out of 10. We just have no way to know if it truly was accurate.
My model says there's a 70% chance of Foo, and that is actually accurate. How do you know it's accurate? Because my model said so.
It might have been accurate! 30% probability events happen 3 times out of 10. We just have no way to know if it truly was accurate.
You can “know” because we have decades of polling and election outcomes.
It’s not black and white “know”, 70% is the mean of a probability distribution.
It’s more accurate to say, this model predicts “Foo” because historically polls like this favor Foo 70% of the time. But these are probabilities and have wide errors. It’s on the reader to have a level of statistical knowledge.
These are more handicaps than “predictions”. The same way we predict whether it might rain tomorrow, who might wins tomorrows game, without a Time Machine.
It’s not black and white “know”, 70% is the mean of a probability distribution.
It’s more accurate to say, this model predicts “Foo” because historically polls like this favor Foo 70% of the time. But these are probabilities and have wide errors. It’s on the reader to have a level of statistical knowledge.
These are more handicaps than “predictions”. The same way we predict whether it might rain tomorrow, who might wins tomorrows game, without a Time Machine.
To say that polls are accurate in general is fine!
To say that a specific probability given by a poll was accurate is meaningless, there is no way to know.
To say that a specific probability given by a poll was accurate is meaningless, there is no way to know.
You can test your model on past elections
IE X% of the time my model predicted the right result in this particular election.
You can test weather forecasts on the weather in the past.
You can test your model on a sports game on past games.
We do this all the time in many fields. With different degrees of certainty (error bars are small or large).
The entire basis of machine learning and predictions people use in everyday life is based on this assumption
IE X% of the time my model predicted the right result in this particular election.
You can test weather forecasts on the weather in the past.
You can test your model on a sports game on past games.
We do this all the time in many fields. With different degrees of certainty (error bars are small or large).
The entire basis of machine learning and predictions people use in everyday life is based on this assumption
That shows that your predictions are well calibrated in the aggregate. There is no way to know whether any one particular prediction was accurate.
Based on historically common polling errors and how state polling errors correlate. 70% is far more likely than 99%.
Probably hadn’t expected https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...
Alex-C137(1)
I don't think any of us can predict how this will play out, but it certainly is interesting to watch the user growth/receding and watch the waves.