Critical thinking? Is it really critical thinking to understand that people have been dishonest to make money since... oh I don't know... the past few millennia? I know it's a fairly recent concept, but I think it's happened enough to have merit.
I need someone with some expert critical thinking skills to explain to me why people are so surprised by these "revelations" of overblown, sensational claims...
At some point, people need to take some responsibility in themselves of being ridiculously gullible and reward blatant cons (Theranos anyone?). There's a weird culture of "It's not my fault I was fooled". Yes, it is. This is literally why we're all taught "history". See the past faults, mistakes, success, good, bad, failures, cons, promises, etc. and understand that it can all happen again. Thus, you can protect yourself. Yet, people keep trying to over complicate that concept.
What if the "people" is a Russian based content farm injecting political bits into their kid friendly fun hack clickbaity videos? What if that content farm is THE biggest Youtube content creator, beating even pewdiepie? Let me introduce you to TheSoul Publishing. Just one of their channels, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-Minute_Crafts, is 5th most subscribed on the platform, and they run hundreds of them.
Yea... but they dont exist in a vacuum. What can we do about people who are easily fooled by stupid crap? That's a serious question. People keep believing in the dumbest things and defend that to the death. When I was growing up, there were common jokes about the fact politicians will say anything to get a vote. Thus, dont believe any. Suddenly everyone is praising politicians like they're the second coming of Jesus. This is both sides of the aisle. "That politician has my best interests in mind". That's just as stupid as the person who goes, "Hey, you know what, after seeing that sign on the side of the road, I'm going to vote for them."
We are in the age of people so desperate to be apart of a "special group", they're willing to destroy everything around them. Both metaphorically and literally. What's worse, it's "okay" to do so. Folks bought into the life hacks, saving the planet staged videos because they want to so they can feel special doing their upvote. How do you stop it?
Yea, that's well known. Not just from federal law enforcement with proof of it, but twitter, youtube and facebook know it and admit to it too. Smarter Everyday interviewed all 3 and their folks talk about this directly.
The actual social media platforms saying it's happening.
At the same time though, it's not all their fault. It takes two to tango and if you're gullible enough to wreck your own life on the words of someone you've never, and will never meet... that's a special kind of stupid.
Here's my hope. All of this gets out of our systems. After whoever wins this election, folks are going to go, "Hold on, we're all acting like crazy people. Let's be sensible and stop going to the extremes and work together." This is the fantasy that fills my dreams. Not flying, being rich or anything like that. That, society being sensible and taking some personal responsibility. That's my crazy, wild fantasy...
Social media created the problem, makes enormous profits, harms all of society, and is not only powerless to mitigate it, has no responsibility to do so. Because Freedom Speeches™, or reasons.
You attribute most of the blame on stupid users. And yet. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey retweeted a bot. https://youtu.be/V-1RhQ1uuQ4?t=1159 So then what hope does the average person have of doing better? (Rhetorical question.)
A la Merchants of Doubt, I've always wandered how skeptics, shills, and apologists sleep at night. Surely Sandberg, Zuck, Dorsey, et al somehow manage. But what about the drones? So I'll be watching the career arcs of the people interviewed (Del Harvey, Yoel Roth, Renee DiResta, others) to see where they land.
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Back to my own quarter baked idea, the "mitigations" explained via Smarter Every Day operate at the medium layer. And they have a conflict of interest. I'm wondering if there's something to protect individuals, a way for noobs to up armor ourselves. My first notion is something akin to iOS Screen Time, like a uBlock for The Outrage Machine, where your device can help you ward off manipulation (inauthentic nudges).
> This is the fantasy that fills my dreams. Not flying, being rich or anything like that.
Is it bad that I have a easier time believing that I would spontaneously develop the combined superpowers of both Superman and Batman than that society would develop the ability to make sensible and responsible decisions about topics that sociopaths and memetic diseases are attempting to subvert?
I need someone with some expert critical thinking skills to explain to me why people are so surprised by these "revelations" of overblown, sensational claims...
At some point, people need to take some responsibility in themselves of being ridiculously gullible and reward blatant cons (Theranos anyone?). There's a weird culture of "It's not my fault I was fooled". Yes, it is. This is literally why we're all taught "history". See the past faults, mistakes, success, good, bad, failures, cons, promises, etc. and understand that it can all happen again. Thus, you can protect yourself. Yet, people keep trying to over complicate that concept.