Why Conspiracy Theories?

[Clinamenic]

This is partly why this stuff with Facebook rings so hollow. You've got career politicians feigning outrage at this company for manipulating and damaging the public as though they themselves haven't spent decades doing exactly the same.

There are all these newspapers and government figures and so on lamenting the uncertainty, the loss of trust and authority and the state of public discourse when it's a direct consequence of their own actions. They can't pin it all on Trump or Facebook or whoever else. This has been decades in the making.

I’m sure some of them have benefited from targeting marketing practices, but this seems too severe. I don’t think most public officials would be on board with the proliferation of mental illness and bodily dysmorphia, etc.

If for no other reason than: where is the profit in compromising the mental health of young people? To turn them into more vulnerable subjects for the totalitarian surveillance state? I don’t think so, personally.

 

[Clinamenic]

I think such a practice may be pursued by unfettered, single-bottom like agendas, like that of Facebook according to Hoagen here, but I don’t think a body of elected officials would have so easy a time doing that.

 

[version]

I'm talking about misinformation, not the mental health stuff. That being said, there are doubtless plenty of people in DC responsible for policies which have damaged, and which continue to damage, people's mental health.

 

[version]

This is just shockingly blatant re: my point about the supposedly trustworthy mainstream press,

 

[version]

I can't believe @suspended isn't getting involved in this vibrant thread.

 

[Clinamenic]

Personally I’d like to know more about lobbying, I really know little about it.

 

[version]

maybe theres more fun things to do than sitting on your bed pretending to be a lobbyist?

 

[Clinamenic]

Actually I find even this sort of exercise to be fun. I love concepts, systems, parameterization of incentives, realizing extropic consciousness on societal scales, etc.

 

[Clinamenic]

I would like to build a panoramic intuition of the affairs of organized matter on this planet.

 

[version]

I would like to build a panoramic intuition of the affairs of organized matter on this planet.

You've reversed the game. You're now mercilessly taunting us to pull up C3PO.

 

[sus]

I can't believe @suspended isn't getting involved in this vibrant thread.

Sure, I'll take a stab.

First, we should be clear that any effects Facebook has had on mental health is a byproduct of trying to maximize engagement.

Second, we should ask whether this is a facebook thing or a technology thing. If Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, etc etc have similar effects, then it isn't something we should pin on Facebook as an entity. It's something that's a byproduct of a kind of technology. And given that Zoomers—the "youth" Clin cites as having their mental health damaged—literally don't use Facebook, it seems a bit unfair that they shoulder the blame.

Third, we should ask: is this effect real? Is social media actually harming mental health?

One reasonable proxy for this would be the teen suicide rate. You've probably seen alarming-looking graphs like this:



But look at the Y axis for a second. Here's a non-truncated graph:



And here's suicidal ideation:



Long story short, numbers are pretty stable and inconclusive IMO. Yeah, there's a bit of an uptick the last decade, but big picture...

So what's another proxy indicator we can look at? Open to suggestions.

 

[version]

First, we should be clear that any effects Facebook has had on mental health is a byproduct of trying to maximize engagement.

Second, we should ask whether this is a facebook thing or a technology thing. If Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, etc etc have similar effects, then it isn't something we should pin on Facebook as an entity. It's something that's a byproduct of a kind of technology.

Yeah, it seems clear to me it's the overall model of engagement and not the one platform. I think I heard about algorithms favouring negative responses on YouTube before I heard about it on Facebook.

 

[sus]

I'd say we could look at mental illness diagnoses over time, but that could get very misleading. A huge factor there is that we've become more sensitive to non-typical cognitive profiles. At the same time, we're dealing with a lot more environmental exposure to chemicals that can mess with brain development, hormones, etc. E.g. Facebook clearly has nothing to do with this trend:

 

[version]

You have to account for the people pointing to Facebook potentially being dishonest and using the argument for ends other than dealing with mental health too.

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah i think poor mental health is a by-product of maximizing engagement, and that seems to be what Hoagen asserts in that hearing. But her point want that these problems are necessarily exclusive to Facebook, just that Facebook seems in over their head in terms of how to correct some of these trends they themselves detect in their own research, according to Hoagens testimony.

 

[sus]

"Ban targeted ads to children." Right, like every advertisement on every children's show ever.

This guy's embarrassing himself just talking. "Do you agree with these?" reads off the page, says something about black people and white people

And "algorithmic bias" is such a complex concept, don't get me started—this geezer sounds like he can't define an algorithm.

 

[sus]

Version's such a diplomat, you always think you've got him on your side.

 

[version]

Second, we should ask whether this is a facebook thing or a technology thing. If Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, etc etc have similar effects, then it isn't something we should pin on Facebook as an entity. It's something that's a byproduct of a kind of technology.

The medium really does feel like the message. The way we interact with something like the news on social media feels much more important than whatever the news itself actually is. The way it prompts you to respond to and share information, the speed with which it reaches you, the brevity of most reporting, the increasing impact of headlines as a result of the above.

Virilio's “synchronisation of emotions,”.

 

[Clinamenic]

I don’t use Facebook, and it doesn’t seem popular with people my age or younger, but she was also using Instagram as an example of intense, self-image mutilating social phenomena that was amplified, not engendered, by certain recommendation algorithms.

 

[Clinamenic]

But yes I think these things are best understood as by-products of maximizing engagement, as the spandrels spawned by the single bottom line, etc.