Facebook and Twitter largely 'culpable for all the harm': former Obama adviser | Hacker News Reader

Facebook and Twitter largely 'culpable for all the harm': former Obama adviser

finance.yahoo.com

22 pointsgarraeth7 comments

This is such a stupid take. Social media isn’t the problem: people are.

The internet was supposed to bring us all together as one global community based on our shared interests. Instead it’s created ghettoes and echo chambers where people of all political stripes work together to reinforce their existing prejudices.

We as a society are going to have to figure out how we want to deal with this because it’s not going away. The idea of government policing what people say on the internet is anathema to most people here, and with good reason. But the alternative is private corporations doing it based on their shareholders’ whims, and only when the situation gets bad enough to cause them potential legal exposure.

We already have a simple and effective method for dealing with this and it's easy but unpopular with the key demographics of the party coming into power in a few weeks. What if instead of inventing reasons to censor one side and not the other we just go back to actually expecting police departments to be effective and for district attorneys to do their jobs and press charges against violent actors in instances of ideologically motivated violence? It's like Americans think the only thing holding their society together is the freedom to be a violent asshole.

Pressing charges only happens after the fact. We need to find some way to avoid huge numbers of people becoming radicalised in the first place.

That radicalized mobs have been manifesting isn't the problem, mobs shrink following convictions and there is no shortage of expertise or tools for dealing with large active crowds. The problem is that until recently violent actors have been able to run amok largely unabated because adequately arming police and prosecuting violent criminals has become controversial and weirdly partisan depending on whose people were involved. There's nothing complicated about no place for no peace.

> This is such a stupid take

> We as a society are going to have to figure out

What do you believe we are all suddenly going to figure out together? Society isn't some star trek utopia of perfect behavior. It's a complex beast that works or fails based on the regulations and modes of interaction available.

Sure enlightenment is a part of it - but to think thats the only part of the puzzle is incredibly naive.

Well designed social networking apps exploit our flaws, in a predatory manner. So in my opinion you are right and wrong.

Yes those practices definitely accelerate the process but they are not the root cause.

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