This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Why do people operate under the assumption that the "town square" was anything other than crazy people shouting at each other? In the US in the 1600's we had witch hunts where people were killed over vague claims made by malicious people spreading lies. Why would people today be any better?
now we have community notes!
"Solving the problem once and for all."
You heathen!
Why would people today be any better?
Yep. It is important to understand that conservative have always been people who love to be lied to. The internet just makes it more obvious. Before they said Obama was a Muslim they said Ike was a Communist. Before they said that horse medicine cures covid they said that Laetrile cures cancer.
This War [...]
Unfortunately you'll have to be a bit more specific than that, too many wars going on at the moment...
The purpose of a system is what it does. "There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.” These articles about how social media is broken are constant. It's just not a useful way to think about it. For example:
It relies on badly maintained social-media infrastructure and is presided over by billionaires who have given up on the premise that their platforms should inform users
These platforms are systems. They don't have intent. There's no mens rea or anything. There is no point saying that social media is supposed to inform users when it constantly fails to inform users. In fact, it has never informed users.
Any serious discussion about social media must accept that the system is what it is, not that it's supposed to be some other way, and is currently suffering some anomaly.
I'd say all these articles about social media saying it's broken are just about maintaining the illusion of something better. As long as they can keep it up, people are going to think "it's bad but it shouldn't be!" and just keep coming back hoping it improves. And that can keep social media alive with everything it can do for everybody using it as an income stream.
It has never informed users and a pet peeve of mine is governments using fucking twitter to communicate. And businesses too lazy to create their own webpages (or pay somebody to do it for them) and pay for some hosting (deductible as a business expense, by the way) so they use fecebook instead.
Also, as somebody mentioned in a different comment, it is actually the town square, as it always was (I believe their comment evoked witch trials as an example).
I’d say all these articles about social media saying it’s broken are just about maintaining the illusion of something better.
Every article about how "social media is broken" are just avoiding the obvious painful truth: Humanity is broken.
I mean you're not wrong. But here we are. If you've ever tried to convince anyone of... well anything that conflicts with their views, you're probably well aware that there's no changing peoples' minds.
So I guess my honest question is... what now?
What we've always done. Soldier on fighting the good fight hoping reasonable minds prevail. And knowing that often they won't.
Wish I had a solution.
Imagine believing that a service as important as a "global town square" should be a private company.
The news, as always, is conflating capitalism with freedom and truth. Capitalism promises neither, only money.
Do you think it should be run by the (US) government instead?
I'm pretty lefty and think the government should be large and powerful, but not like that.
Fediverse is the best compromise I've seen, still private but a little bit democratic because of instance hopping if you don't like the policies of the one you started on.
I have whiplash watching the left argue that Twitter was a private company so they could censor anyone they liked, then immediately 180 when Musk bought it and decry private ownership and operation of de facto town squares. For the record, I don’t think town squares should be privately owned, but at least I’m consistent. Apparently on the internet ethical beliefs are a shiny coat to put on when it’s convenient.
My personal opinion is that "Global Town Square" is just nonsense that Musk made up. Twitter is not the first big privately owned social network and won't be the last.
The closest thing to that town square idea that actually exists is undermoderated cesspools like 4chan, which is not a good thing. Good moderation is simply necessary to have reasonable discussions/communities, and I feel like I believe that consistently.
I don't know if you think the (US) government should have that role, I think it would be a bit of a conflict of interest.
And I think what's happening to Twitter is unfortunate, but yeah the owner can do whatever he likes to it. However that still doesn't mean I have to approve of his choices or stay quiet about them either, that's not inconsistency to praise a company or its owner when they do good things and boo them when they do awful things. I'm certainly not going to say that he shouldn't have the right to censor whatever he wants, but it's still reasonable to complain about which things he chooses to exercise that right on.
The only reasonable alternative to these big private social networks I've seen is the fediverse, still private, but a slight bit more democratic in that if you disagree with your instance's moderation or administration, you can just use a different instance and usually still access most of the same communities.
In the aughts we had to hunt down page ten articles from foreign papers to find out the latest on the CIA torture program and the actions of Blackwater PMCs in the kill zone.
In 2014, Twitter had streaming journalists on the streets of Ferguson during the unrest.
In 2020 reddit protest watch subs (some made specifically for the purpose) were showing hourlies, dailies and incident videos from the George Floyd unrest and protests. Like Ferguson it mostly was law enforcement misbehaving and calling it law and order.
In 2022 the Iranian civil unrest went hot when the government doubled down after killing Mahsa Amini. Protestors went from defying hijab and tapping imam hats to throwing Molotov cocktails and burning down state buildings. Far right militants started nerve-gassing girls' schools and the police engaged in mass executions. Then a deal was made. (Today 2023-10-16, a 16 year old teenage girl was put into a coma by the morality police. So stay tuned.)
A single platform is and never can be the global town square, partially because information about hot zones have to get through the fog of war and active measures to impede that content from getting to the public. Much like revolutionaries or resistance, information gets through when there are multiple avenues for traffic, enough that not all can be intercepted.
One billionaire (with some collaborators) spent $44 billion to neutralize one centralized information platform. Reddit and Google have also taken hits, but that isn't all of the internet. If our shadowy plutocratic masters are able to douse all the surface web, I suspect it'll be conspicuous and the public will want information, and access to the dark web may have to be transmitted.by word of mouth, but it will happen.
For all of us who are not conservatives, we've learned we can't trust official sources nor rumors that sound too good (or too awful) to be true.
Global town square? If anything, social media in the modern age is like Time Square: dirty, overcrowded, covered in billboard ads for brands, filled with cartoon characters in costumes and CD hawkers who are only there to take your money, and of course, the people shouting their political agendas at you through megaphones.
Only a media person would be thinking that xshitter used to be the 'town square'. If anything it used to be reddit, but now we lots of better options. Like Lemmy.
This war uncovered the conventional one sided “reporting” by most big media outlets especially here in the US which was in favor of Israel, turning a blind eye to the blight of the Palestinian civilians. People called them out because of social media and media outlets changed their tune to be more “neutral” as a consequence.
Social media sucks and but one thing it’s extremely good at is disseminating information, good and bad, and it should be used with that in mind.
By comparison, that Atlantic “article” is paywalled and can’t even disseminate its point beyond the headline.
Lol.
... I guess the concept of internet cancer is finally breaking into the mainstream.
once musk jumped the gun and started openly making the site shittier without even bothering to justify it with UX positives, everyone else eagerly followed
