Pixelfed, a decentralized alternative.
412 karma · joined October 28, 2018
We are at https://community.humanetech.com and https://humanetech.com
https://community.humanetech.com/t/humane-advertising-ethica...
There are hopeful trends, but it is a David against Goliath fight, going back and forth and really slowly.
Am I reading correctly that when you have a forum (e.g. Discourse) which is non-commercial i.e. for an open community, that any users uploading stuff or quoting article sections are exempt from this regulation (even though the forum is hosted on Discourse servers on a paid plan)?
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/loca...
I saw the Dutch documentary #followme [0] the other day, about the incredible fakeness of Instagram, where for a couple of dollars you can buy 1,000's of Likes / Followers. And everyone - up to the kids in high school - is doing just that, to buy popularity (the metrics have actually become the determining factor for real-life popularity for many people).
Apparently one of the big shots in this shady industry is a Dutch guy (multi-millionaire now), who manages tens of popularity-boosting websites directly or indirectly (and not only for Instagram). He caters to celebrities as well, who sometimes buy millions of followers. For these high-profile actions they arrange special events, according to the docu, like publishing 'fakish' news articles to established news sites (Forbes was mentioned) to coincide with the artificial boost in popularity.
This can be considered fraud too, as 'popular' users benefit from influencer marketing deals (free clothing, travel, tickets, money, etc.) and there is a continuous cat and mouse game between illegit popularity boosters and marketeers. Professional investigative companies jumping on this train to filter out the bad apples, etc.
This is an argument heard all around the world with regards to similar issues. I wonder to what extent it actually applies, and it is not your latter statement - that lobbying and commercial interests are at play - that is prevailing (so they are 'willing fools').
Hard to know, of course, but I'd say these lawmakers need not have to know the intricacies of the technology themselves, but can rely on accurate reports detailing their implications in layman's terms. They can have expert advisory groups do the hard work for them.
At the time Mark Zuckerberg didn't want to testify in the UK, he testified to the UK House of Commons commission to inform them about Fake News [1]
In the corporate world the strategy is to 'Engage employees', make them aware of the harms of technology and philosophy of Humane Tech. I found it enlightening to see him address the opening keynote at Dreamforce 2018 "How to Stop Technology from Destabilizing the World" [2] to a hall full of SalesForce customers.
The CHT now focuses primarily on fake news, disinformation, political influencing problems that arise from tech - i.e. the topics where the risk for civic breakdown is highest, but they have also played a role in bringing the concept of 'Time Well Spent' - focussed on healthy tech use - across at e.g. Google and Apple (but much to be done still in this area).
PS. I represent the Humane Tech Community, which is affiliated yet operates independently of the CHT, as a grassroots movement [3].
[1] https://community.humanetech.com/t/witness-account-of-trista...
[2] https://community.humanetech.com/t/must-see-video-explaining...
[3] https://community.humanetech.com/t/who-we-are-what-we-do-and...
That is a short-term view. Look how growth will stall and turn into decline if we continue on our present path.
> Which is why the question. Are people really incentivized to bell the cat - to actually price in externalities ?
Probably not by themselves, because most people put their own self-interest first, and our economic systems stimulate them that this is the best way.
It needs the concerted effort of many to apply sufficient pressure to take the long-term view and affect real change.
And I guess this is particularly hard, as our current (broken?) systems also promote wealth inequality, and the rich and powerful - those who can help the most - are less inclined to do so, because they'll be among the last to really suffer the consequences of inaction.
In social media it may not be the writing of the negative articles that is the problem, but more the reinforcement of the negative messages by algorithms designed to keep us on the platform for the longest time, and found out that feeding us disturbing, shocking stuff, conspiracy theories, etc. works best to keep us engaged.
The concept is well described in Max Stossel's Medium article "How Everyone Lost Their Mind… Except you" [0]
> "Have you noticed that everything seems like it’s falling apart? Have you noticed that the world is crumbling in exactly the way you thought it would? Have you felt recently like you’re the only one who gets it, and everyone else just doesn’t understand… like the world has been going crazy and everyone else is getting sucked in to their conspiracy theories, or fooled by mainstream media [..] Doesn’t it feel like everyone except for you, and maybe your tribe has lost their freaking minds?!"
[0] https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their-mind-...
The gist is to use our existing social media channels, that generally - through their algorithms - reinforce negative sentiments and divisiveness (because that keeps us engaged best, as Max Stossel explains very well in his recent Medium article [2]) to create a network of people that do the opposite: Post, share, like and comment on positive news.
This would work best if it were supported by an app that faciliates this. Our community is thinking about such app, a decentralized one, which we'll use for our crowdsourced Humane Tech Awareness program.
[0] https://community.humanetech.com
[1] https://community.humanetech.com/t/idea-turning-the-weapon-a...
[2] https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their-mind-...
We are still a relatively small community, having just repositioned ourselves as a separate subsidiary of The Center for Humane Technology [1]. We will start a number of crowdsourced community-driven projects - all in the public domain - to help Re-align Technology To Humanity's Best Interests Again.
Just created our first Awareness Campaigns project and will soon launch our community website. Our forum has lotsa information about tech harms and their solutions. But we are just at the start, and need as much help as we can get.