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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

> social media ... undermined the democratic process ... right into people’s ears and hijack their brains ... by swarms of “influencers,” propagandists, and bots

"Hijack their brains" is quite a violent metaphor. It's a frame designed to justify strong countermeasures. But what alternative is there that isn't more dangerous than the status quo, with the potential to become a Ministry of Truth?

It's either a free market of brain hijackers or a list of officially approved brain hijackers, take your pick.

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I think this position is based on thinking that the social media users that have risen to the top of the influencer pile got there by some organic reflection of society. I think that's bullshit, and changing that feedback loop of incentives that exists between social media companies and these users does not necessarily (or even likely) imply a "ministry of truth".

I empathize with the concern. My mindblown moment in fretting over this was a realization inspired by social physics research and complexity science:

Just enforce a shape of the social fabric instead of worrying about specific content within that social fabric. Maintain edge quotas, not information quotas. We have tons of research on what are "healthier" shapes of network topology than what we've built.

Do you have any additional reading on this? I've always been interested in these topics of social network topology or systems theory or what have you but struggle to find good information on it.

Yay! Social physics :) There's a great Authors at Google talk by Sandy Pentland, about his book of the same name. Gives a good overview of the book, but 100% still worth a read after watching, esp if you are someone who works with (or would like to work with) large groups of people -- event organizing, companies, community, group facilitation, etc.

https://youtu.be/HMBl0ttu-Ow

Changing incentives to manipulate social discourse is pretty much the definition of a ministry of truth. If the idea is that commercialism is bad at setting goalposts then surely a simpler solution would be a government run ad-free social media company moderated by constitutional restrictions on speech and nothing else.

Do you consider the presence or absence of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to be "ministry of truth"?

Would you consider regulations about how precisely targeted ads may be to be "ministry of truth"?

There are a lot of ways in which the behavior of this industry could be shaped (and already has been shaped) that are not obviously manipulating social discourse in the way that "ministry of truth" implies.

I suppose if you abstract a problem enough then any action is comparable to another, I can't say I see the usefulness it provides for answering rhetorical questions though.

There's already a list of 'officially approved' brain hijackers. They're just powered either by state agencies, bots or incredibly powerful corporations. There really is no free market at play because the entire thing is dark patterns all the way down designed to maximize engagement.

The whole thing seems to be a narrative designed to deny the sincerity of anyone who disagrees with you.

If someone has a different opinion to you, then clearly they’re a troll. Or maybe a bot, or a shill, or a paid Russian propagandist influencer. And if they’re none of these things then clearly they’re the victim of one of the above, hijacking their mind.

What they’re definitely not is a real individual who sincerely believes their opinions and has arrived at them by the same process as you have.

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