Joe Biden's Inauguration

[skillzdadirecta]

15 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

No, we did not "all know" before social media or metoo and BLM wouldn't have affected the world as much as they have. That's due to social media. I still have issues with social media but your take is extremely reductive. You're just focusing on the negative. I agree with all the negatives you bring up, but social media has also had a positive worldwide impact too. 

 

 

Oh dear... ok. The BLM movement is THIS generation's Selma. Or THIS generation's Rodney King Moment. Two previous events that occured to shift global consciousness about racism and in the case of the Selma bridge moment, led to ACTUAL LAWS BEING changed. You know what those two moments have in common? SOCIAL MEDIA DID NOT EXIST THEN. Sure social media is good for getting information out faster, I'll give you guys that. But my point is that that's not always a good thing especially when that information isn't vetted or being regulated by the platforms themselves. YES I'm focusing on the negative because we are all actually living with tthe consequences of social media. When I have to constantly correct my teenaged nieces and nephews about some incorrect fact that they read or saw online and then turn around and do the exact same thing with my PARENTS, That is a PROBLEM. 

 

The good that you guys are pointing to with social media could have just as easily occured without it and has. People point to the images of black folks getting hosed and chased down by dogs on the evening news to being what finally woke people up to the race problem in this country. There was no Twitter in the 60's... no Facebook... and yet folks still managed to get off their asses and become activists and march and protest (more effectively back then in my opinion) So yeah... I stand by my humble opinion that Twitter specifically and social media in general to this point, has been a net negative to society. Can that change? Sure. I hope it does. But I don't see that changing as long as they are allowed to police themselves.

 

And anyone who "didn't know" there was a problem of systemic racism in this country until the George Floyd incident didn't WANT to know.

[skillzdadirecta]

 

"Fake news spreads SIX TIMES faster than real news..."

 

"If you want to control the population of a country, their has never been a tool as effective as Facebook"

 

These quotes are from this doc from the people who helped CREATE these platforms 

[Fizzzzle]

Without social media, we would not have been as outraged at the murders of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, etc. I feel like that's an important point to make. Sure, the Rodney King riots happened without social media, but now we know that Rodney King happens every fucking day because of social media.

[Greatoneshere]

8 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

Without social media, we would not have been as outraged at the murders of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, etc. I feel like that's an important point to make. Sure, the Rodney King riots happened without social media, but now we know that Rodney King happens every fucking day because of social media.

 

This. Exactly. That skillz can't see this means he has a resentful bias against social media. I'm simply being objective - I agree there's a lot of bad, but good has also happened. I think it's convenient he skips over #metoo completely. But that's how he always argues, reductively and selectively. To suggest that things also changed before the onset of social media is a lot of verbal diarrhea saying nothing. We're talking about the impact social media has had, not that change occured before that.

 

I've seen The Social Dilemma. It makes sense. Doesn't mean social media hasn't transformed the world in positive ways. It would appear, given people are liking my original post, that far more agree with me here than skillz. Womens' marches the world over would not have happened if not for social media. The womens' movement in Chile would not have been able to be organized without social media. BLM affecting the views of black people in Africa would not have happened without social media.

 

How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight the Power | WIRED

WWW.WIRED.COM

---

Technology has revolutionized how the civil rights movement can respond to racism and police brutality.

 

23% of users in U.S. say social media led them to change views on an issue; some cite Black Lives Matter

WWW.PEWRESEARCH.ORG

---

The share of social media users who say they have changed their views on an issue has increased since we last asked this question in 2018.

 

 

 

19 million tweets later: A look at #MeToo a year after the hashtag went viral

WWW.USATODAY.COM

---

Amid ongoing discussions about sexual harassment in the workplace and beyond, a Pew Research study found how many times the #MeToo hashtag was used.

 

[marioandsonic]

The fact of the matter is, humans have been developing newer and more intimate ways to connect and communicate with each other from long distance (the telegraph, telephone, etc), and the Internet and social media is just a neutral extension of that.

[Fizzzzle]

I'm not fully willing to take a stance on whether social media is good or bad as a whole. I think the fact that everyone has a camera and access to the internet and an audience in their pocket is generally good. It led to the Arab Spring (results may vary), people filming police brutality, etc. The bad thing is that it tends to lead people down their own echo chamber rabbit holes. There's always someone else out there that says what you want to hear, and it's easy to ignore everyone else. And the social media platforms want those people to find each other. That is incredibly dangerous.

[skillzdadirecta]

26 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

This. Exactly. That skillz can't see this means he has a resentful bias against social media. I'm simply being objective - I agree there's a lot of bad, but good has also happened. I think it's convenient he skips over #metoo completely. But that's how he always argues, reductively and selectively. To suggest that things also changed before the onset of social media is a lot of verbal diarrhea saying nothing. We're talking about the impact social media has had, not that change occured before that.

 

I've seen The Social Dilemma. It makes sense. Doesn't mean social media hasn't transformed the world in positive ways. It would appear, given people are liking my original post, that far more agree with me here than skillzThe share of social media users who say they have changed their views on an issue has increased since we last asked this question in 201

 

Resentful bias? What part of "I think the negatives far outweigh the positives" are you not understanding? It's really that simple for me... and bro, If you think the amount of likes one of my posts gets on this baord has any bearing on me or my opinions you really haven't been paying attention.

[Brick]

 

 

[Kal-El814]

20 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

Without social media, we would not have been as outraged at the murders of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, etc. I feel like that's an important point to make. Sure, the Rodney King riots happened without social media, but now we know that Rodney King happens every fucking day because of social media.

 

I don’t think that anyone calling for regulation of social media would argue that there are NO positives. But stuff like this is the exception that proves the rule.

 

For one thing it’s not ONLY righteous rage about those incidents that spread, it’s also all the fake news bullshit about them that was propagated as well. My guess is that for most of the folks on this board, they saw much more of the “good” side of this than the “bad,” but I’d wager that engagement across the board was more equitably split than the eventual public opinion would lead one to conclude.

 

This is also macro level stuff as well and says nothing about the constant stream of harassment and shit that women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, etc., deal with on social media platforms EVERY DAY that goes completely unpunished. Buddy of mine’s daughter made the “mistake” of changing their twitter avatar to something that suggested that she was female, dicks in the DMs within MINUTES. I don’t have a single black friend whose profile suggests that they’re black who doesn’t get harassed unless they make block list management a part time job and restrict some of the most useful tools on the platform. The list goes on and on and on and on.

 

I don’t think “social media” whole cloth is bad, but I honestly don’t see how anyone can look at unregulated social media and not conclude that it’s bad without themselves saying that from a position of privilege or some degree of willful ignorance.

 

15 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

I'm not fully willing to take a stance on whether social media is good or bad as a whole. I think the fact that everyone has a camera and access to the internet and an audience in their pocket is generally good. It led to the Arab Spring (results may vary), people filming police brutality, etc. The bad thing is that it tends to lead people down their own echo chamber rabbit holes. There's always someone else out there that says what you want to hear, and it's easy to ignore everyone else. And the social media platforms want those people to find each other. That is incredibly dangerous.

 

To wit: gamergaters are still at it, Anita Sarkeesian still gets death threats, it’s just that the public has moved on so unless we go out of our way to look into it, we don’t see it... hence my comment about willful ignorance. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of the Arab Spring, nor the role social media played in the initial outrage around Floyd or Taylor. But these tools are far more often used to harass than they are to drive positive change. I’m not saying the tools should be destroyed, but they should be moderated.

 

And again, they CAN BE, because in some places THEY ARE. I’m way more willing to roll the dice on a chilling effect for discourse on these platforms when the dice are so heavily weighted to distribute false information and to drive consequence free harassment.

[skillzdadirecta]

A lot of this is CLEARLY generational... I'm old enough to remember a time without social media but for some, they just can't seem to envision a world where Twitter doesn't exist but people STILL get accurate information. IT HAPPENED. With a lot less bullshit too.

[SaysWho?]

I remember before social media and search engines. I remember when search engines didn't find anything useful.

 

It was harder to find info as simple as, "Hey, I used to watch a show at 8 but a different show's on. What happened and where'd it go?" Never mind information on issues of actual consequence.

 

I think it's a bit nostalgic to think that everyone received accurate information more often and with less hassle/bullshit. 

[Jason]

10 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

A lot of this is CLEARLY generational... I'm old enough to remember a time without social media but for some, they just can't seem to envision a world where Twitter doesn't exist but people STILL get accurate information. IT HAPPENED. With a lot less bullshit too.

 

ok boomer

[marioandsonic]

11 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

A lot of this is CLEARLY generational... I'm old enough to remember a time without social media but for some, they just can't seem to envision a world where Twitter doesn't exist but people STILL get accurate information. IT HAPPENED. With a lot less bullshit too.

 

Aren't the majority of users on Facebook nowadays older people?  My grandmother never touch a computer in her life a decade or so ago, and now she's the one sending me links about masks are bad.

[skillzdadirecta]

12 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

 

Aren't the majority of users on Facebook nowadays older people?  My grandmother never touch a computer in her life a decade or so ago, and now she's the one sending me links about masks are bad.

I was talking about the disagreement on this board in THIS particular topic. I acknowledged myself earlier that I have to correct my parents about stuff they've read on Facebook.

 

15 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

ok boomer

That's "Xoomer" to you sonny...

[skillzdadirecta]

18 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I remember before social media and search engines. I remember when search engines didn't find anything useful.

 

It was harder to find info as simple as, "Hey, I used to watch a show at 8 but a different show's on. What happened and where'd it go?" Never mind information on issues of actual consequence.

 

I think it's a bit nostalgic to think that everyone received accurate information more often and with less hassle/bullshit. 

Oh damn... we had no way of getting accurate information in the days before social media, let alone before the internet. No idea how I survived my childhood back in the olden days of the 80's 

[Joe]

5 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Oh damn... we had no way of getting accurate information in the days before social media, let alone before the internet. No idea how I survived my childhood back in the olden days of the 80's 

That’s not at all what he was saying.

[Kal-El814]

16 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I think it's a bit nostalgic to think that everyone received accurate information more often and with less hassle/bullshit. 

 

I’m not going to quibble about the frequency and convenience side of this equation, as I don’t think anyone can honestly claim that unlocking your phone is a higher barrier to entry than the nightly news or reading a paper.

 

But accuracy... yeah I’m going to argue that one. 15 seconds of scrolling through my Facebook feed just now and I’m seeing shit about fad diets, friends from back in the day sharing fake news about the insurrection, the election results, Hunter Biden, etc. And I’ve eliminated the most frequent offenders on those topics from my friend list but whatever algorithm Facebook uses STILL promotes that stuff.

 

I know we all like to shit on the NYT, WaPo, etc., for their equivocating and their whiffs, which happen more often than they should. But I’d wager that minutes a day on social media puts more falsehoods in front of your average user than a week of reading a paper or watching the national nightly news, maybe a several weeks or a months worth. And consumption of that, time with your eyes in front of that content, even if you’re reading it for chuckles or because you know it’s wrong, feeds the beast and you’ll see that shit more often within hours. Traditional media just isn’t like that at all, there’s no equivalence to be drawn there.

 

1 minute ago, Joe said:

That’s not at all what he was saying.

 

No but we’re also ignoring the reality of how most people consume social media if we’re saying that accuracy of information you encounter while using it is good. Maybe you, me, the posters here, who are invested in current events bother to curate who we follow and how we engage. This is not normal behavior for the majority of users. Again, think of what @sblfilms has said about how 50%+ of people go to the movies... they just SHOW UP without knowing what they’ll see or when. This is fucking crazytown banana pants behavior that is so beyond my wildest dreams that it wouldn’t occur to me that ANYONE would do it, let alone HALF the people in the joint.

 

Or remember the before times when you walked around an office and saw every inch of someone’s desktop absolutely riddled with icons across three monitors. This is how “normals” use work computers and I worked on the software side of my industry for 14 years.

 

If you’re scrolling through your feed and you’re seeing mostly true things, and if you’re interacting with people and you’re generally not being harassed... congratulations, you’re the outlier.

[Bloodporne]

3 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

Okay this is officially one of the best and most asinine memes I've seen in a while. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

3 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Or remember the before times when you walked around an office and saw every inch of someone’s desktop absolutely riddled with icons across three monitors. 

 

 

I'm vicariously annoyed at everybody you work with. Because my wife does the same thing. Drives me up the wall.

[Kal-El814]

1 minute ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

 

I'm vicariously annoyed at everybody you work with. Because my wife does the same thing. Drives me up the wall.

 

I’ve often wondered about how much time has been wasted lo these many years with the insistence of sticking with the folder paradigm as the number of computer users increased. It’s clear that it doesn’t work for an absolute shitload of people. Anyway.

[Guest]

The internet was a mistake and if you haven’t caught on to this fact, you may be a lost cause.

 

But it is here to stay, so let’s try and make it a better place.

[CitizenVectron]

 

4 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

The internet was a mistake and if you haven’t caught on to this fact, you may be a lost cause.

 

But it is here to stay, so let’s try and make it a better place.

 

I would clarify that the world wide web was a mistake, but that interconnected networks are still a good thing. I would even agree that the www was okay if it was just hosted, non-interactive websites.

[dualhunter]

Some people keep putting stuff on the desktop even after using up the visible space such that you have to use the file explorer just to see any new files or folders let alone find anything.

[Ghost_MH]

Social media isn't bad. Ideally, social media companies could just come together like the videogame and movie industries did and self-regulate by setting up some common nonprofit. In this case, they'd manage ethics and the advise a user may potentially face when visiting these sites. Then you just need to get Google and Apple on board to just not allow any sites that don't self-regulate advising to industry-approved standards. Does that mean somewhere like Reddit might get screwed? Yeah, but Reddit also contributed to this mess so fuck them.

 

That'll never happen, though, because these companies are run by silicon valley dipshits that think they're gods on Earth defeating the titans of legacy media. I just don't know if Zuck is self aware enough to be of the fact that his inability to compromise with anyone can lead to greater government-led regulations.

 

Either way, social media has just amplified everything good and bad about communications to 11. They should, in theory, be neutral but humans are pretty shitty and the shittiest humans are very loud. I'm their car, I think we just need to ramp up laws against targeted harassment online. Did that mean we can no longer get away with sending folks to the wall? Maybe, but I'll take that if it also means people like Gamergaters on Twitter get hit with cyberstalking and cyberbullying charges.

[Kal-El814]

9 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

The internet was a mistake and if you haven’t caught on to this fact, you may be a lost cause.

 

But it is here to stay, so let’s try and make it a better place.

 

I mean it’s not lost on me that the “I use social media responsibly” takes are the internet equivalent of “I stopped a robbery with my gun.”  As in that case, I’m not particularly worried about the responsible users and those kinds of users undeniably existing doesn’t mean that we should be wary of regulating the joint.

[Joe]

27 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I’m not going to quibble about the frequency and convenience side of this equation, as I don’t think anyone can honestly claim that unlocking your phone is a higher barrier to entry than the nightly news or reading a paper.

 

But accuracy... yeah I’m going to argue that one. 15 seconds of scrolling through my Facebook feed just now and I’m seeing shit about fad diets, friends from back in the day sharing fake news about the insurrection, the election results, Hunter Biden, etc. And I’ve eliminated the most frequent offenders on those topics from my friend list but whatever algorithm Facebook uses STILL promotes that stuff.

 

I know we all like to shit on the NYT, WaPo, etc., for their equivocating and their whiffs, which happen more often than they should. But I’d wager that minutes a day on social media puts more falsehoods in front of your average user than a week of reading a paper or watching the national nightly news, maybe a several weeks or a months worth. And consumption of that, time with your eyes in front of that content, even if you’re reading it for chuckles or because you know it’s wrong, feeds the beast and you’ll see that shit more often within hours. Traditional media just isn’t like that at all, there’s no equivalence to be drawn there.

 

 

No but we’re also ignoring the reality of how most people consume social media if we’re saying that accuracy of information you encounter while using it is good. Maybe you, me, the posters here, who are invested in current events bother to curate who we follow and how we engage. This is not normal behavior for the majority of users. Again, think of what @sblfilms has said about how 50%+ of people go to the movies... they just SHOW UP without knowing what they’ll see or when. This is fucking crazytown banana pants behavior that is so beyond my wildest dreams that it wouldn’t occur to me that ANYONE would do it, let alone HALF the people in the joint.

 

Or remember the before times when you walked around an office and saw every inch of someone’s desktop absolutely riddled with icons across three monitors. This is how “normals” use work computers and I worked on the software side of my industry for 14 years.

 

If you’re scrolling through your feed and you’re seeing mostly true things, and if you’re interacting with people and you’re generally not being harassed... congratulations, you’re the outlier.

 

This discussion went from Twitter being the best social media platform (which doesn't mean it's perfect like no shit obviously) to the internet is evil. I stand by my original statement alone lol.

[stepee]

10 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

 

I would clarify that the world wide web was a mistake, but that interconnected networks are still a good thing. I would even agree that the www was okay if it was just hosted, non-interactive websites.

 

I would clarify that people were a mistake.

[Kal-El814]

2 minutes ago, Joe said:

This discussion went from Twitter being the best social media platform (which doesn't mean it's perfect like no shit obviously) to the internet is evil. I stand by my original statement alone lol.

 

 

[Joe]

3 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

I would clarify that people were a mistake.

 

I would argue that existence was a mistake!

[SaysWho?]

36 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I’m not going to quibble about the frequency and convenience side of this equation, as I don’t think anyone can honestly claim that unlocking your phone is a higher barrier to entry than the nightly news or reading a paper.

 

But accuracy... yeah I’m going to argue that one. 15 seconds of scrolling through my Facebook feed just now and I’m seeing shit about fad diets, friends from back in the day sharing fake news about the insurrection, the election results, Hunter Biden, etc. And I’ve eliminated the most frequent offenders on those topics from my friend list but whatever algorithm Facebook uses STILL promotes that stuff.

 

I know we all like to shit on the NYT, WaPo, etc., for their equivocating and their whiffs, which happen more often than they should. But I’d wager that minutes a day on social media puts more falsehoods in front of your average user than a week of reading a paper or watching the national nightly news, maybe a several weeks or a months worth. And consumption of that, time with your eyes in front of that content, even if you’re reading it for chuckles or because you know it’s wrong, feeds the beast and you’ll see that shit more often within hours. Traditional media just isn’t like that at all, there’s no equivalence to be drawn there.

 

And I also see an abundance of good information.

 

The only reason you can say much of any of what you said ITT is due to your being able to do so through social media, improved search engines, and the advantages of the internet in general. The only reason you think you have a well-reasoned overall ideology is because of the ease of getting good information through all of this tech.

 

"The internet introduces bad things" is kind of a no shit? 

 

39 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Again, think of what @sblfilms has said about how 50%+ of people go to the movies... they just SHOW UP without knowing what they’ll see or when. This is fucking crazytown banana pants behavior that is so beyond my wildest dreams that it wouldn’t occur to me that ANYONE would do it, let alone HALF the people in the joint.

 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think he said that at all. He said that back in the day, the box office would be where people made decisions, but now the box office equivalent is looking at the lineup of movies on the site the day of, which is much different than just showing up and a totally reasonable thing to do if you want to go to the movies that day and want to see what's playing. @sblfilms I thought that's what you meant?

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Resentful bias? What part of "I think the negatives far outweigh the positives" are you not understanding? It's really that simple for me... and bro, If you think the amount of likes one of my posts gets on this baord has any bearing on me or my opinions you really haven't been paying attention.

 

Yeah, I know you're a stubborn ass who almost never changes his opinion and uses anecdotal understandings of history to push his points. No one ever said the negatives don't outweigh the positives - I said it in my first post. I think we all agree social media has plenty of bad - herr derr, no shit Sherlock. As usual, you make obvious points. No surprise, you still haven't addressed #metoo or any of my links, like you usually do - ignore what you want.

 

All I said was that social media also does a lot of good. You disagreed with that. Are you agreeing now? Or changing goal posts as usual?

 

Probably not, because you're a stubborn ass, and always have been. I've never seen you change your opinion before (I've pointed this out multiple times over the years) and your infantile points are basic and rudimentary. I'm 34 years old, it's not generational, you're just a stubborn ass. I'm not getting into another futile debate with you - I've already spent enough energy in the past trying to explain or convince you of something and you just hold your ground. I leave others to do it now (which they are doing to you in this very thread).

 

I'm sure none of them will change your mind either. We're all pointless to you unless we agree with you or we are exchanging basic facts that can't be disagreed with. Anathema was the same way for a very long time.

[johnny]

[Guest]

One thing I like about Twitterrific is I still have a chronological timeline for tweets. No algo trying to decide exactly which bit of content I should see. I also use it primarily for movie, sports, tech news. Because of that I pretty much only see terrible Twitter content because of @Jasonlinking them here.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

59 minutes ago, Joe said:

 

I would argue that existence was a mistake!

 

Might I introduce you to the philosophical concept of antinatalism?

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I’ve often wondered about how much time has been wasted lo these many years with the insistence of sticking with the folder paradigm as the number of computer users increased. It’s clear that it doesn’t work for an absolute shitload of people. Anyway.

Ctrl+f you goon