Comment by kill-procrustes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kill-procrustes | Hacker News Reader

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kill-procrustes

I'm not suggesting "blaming" ourselves, per se. Sitting around and wallowing in our own guilt won't accomplish anything. But I do think we should accept that our own nature is part of what has led to this and be honest about the problem. I couldn't have put it better than you did: we should think about how to support humans as they are.

I'm not sure what I said is a straw man. I was being a little flip, but I think it's a normal human impulse to blame "that thing" or "those people" and to feel that a problem can be fixed by just eliminating whatever that is. Maybe nobody is explicitly saying "if we eliminate Facebook the problem will go away," but I do think some people implicitly feel that way.

The deeper problem, in my view, is that network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it).

I agree with almost everything you say here.

What I’m not sure about is how we are not being honest about the problem?

I agree with this: “network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it)”

Except that it seems over-general. I think this is feature of some social network designs, but I don’t see how we can say it applies to all ‘network technogies’.

To me that just leads back to there being a problem with how Facebook is designed.

It is designed to maximize engagement so they can sell ads - I.e. they profit from this disinhibition.

I think we largely agree on what’s happening, but what I don’t yet understand is how you conclude that Facebook is a scapegoat.

I consider them a scapegoat in the sense that they're sort of a catchall target for negative feelings about these problems. I also think they're not a scapegoat insofar as they're responsible for their actual bad practices. It's not really either-or for me: they're blamed for things they really are responsible for, but I also think they catch a lot of flak in general for things that are largely beyond their control. I'd like them to be accountable for the bad things they actually do while keeping our eye on the broader problem, which I'm not as convinced as you are that everyone is doing already.

Hmm,

Honestly that doesn’t really clarify it for me.

If the broader problem is:

“network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition”

Then Facebook is by far the most significant manifestation of that, followed by YouTube and Twitter who are also criticized a great deal.

What would it look like to address this broader problem without actually focussing on where it is manifest?

I think I might be able to see more easily what you are getting at if you could give an example of something you see as beyond Facebook’s control, but for which they are catching flak?

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