kopo

Cure is simple.

Get rid of the dumb counts (views,clicks,upvotes,likes etc etc) next to every thought/comment/image/video.

These are highly arbitration/inaccurate signals of quality. They influence thought and behavior. And then we waste our time reacting to those thoughts and behaviours.

Algorithms that need these metrics for ranking, advertising etc can still function. They just don't have be carelessly, blindly, robotically displayed to users.

Misguided people are usually surrounded by misguided people. The counts just make things worse.

Probably the same, but why do panderers need a broadcasting platform?

Everybody is currently conditioned to think they have to stand up on a stage and give a TED talk/I Have a Dream speech -> drum up enough support and you are on your way right?

Wrong. Because everyone else is playing the same game. It's an arms race for peoples attention. And mass attention is highly scattered and diffused over all kinds of things in the spectrum of useful to bullshit.

That needs to change first.

Divide whatever your number is by 1.4 billion. Labeling and judging people is always tempting in the face of complexity, but it is also always a choice you make.

And difficult newspapers! And difficult news!

Our journalist class has somehow got into this ELI5 routine, where they feel obligated to turn every complex subject into something a fifth grader can debate about.

People like to keep saying the elite will reach godhood thanks to the increasing pace of biological/technical progress (that they will reap the most). But the opposite might well happen. The more data that pours in the more obvious it may become they are all, like you say, just replaceable cogs.

You asked for suggestions that didn't involve outrage and I gave you some.

These are suggestion that have been around for a long time and even Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Tim Cook from Apple have bought it up recently.

Facebook's creates hundreds of unintended consequences. The suggestions I mentioned just addressed two specific issues - addiction and the spread of ignorance/fakenews/bad info (nuclear chain reactions require control rods same with viral info). Especially dangerous in countries where most of the population is too illeterate to counter it.

Look up Tristan Harris former Googler humanetech website and you will find many more human thought and behaviour effecting dark patterns that social media sites use that need to be addressed.

Ideally we need a bug tracker for social issues being generated in the same way we track software issues.

One example of a big problem without a fix that would be at the top of the list is having 14 year olds exposed to the most viral and extreme problems of 35 year olds day in and day out is leading to higher anxiety/depression in kids. The EU, Canada and UK have data out on this.

The suggestion for these kind of issues is, mandating such a "bug tracker" increases awareness. The regulations are being worked on.

Don't show people their like counts or delay it. Provide noprocast settings like HN. That's all they have to do.

Well this is Facebook. How much political content moves through their platform everyday?

Your comment makes sense if it is McDonalds or Nike or Wallmart. Their CEO's aren't being asked everyday by every govt on the planet what they are doing about disagreeable info.

The consumption data doesn't seem to be clear. Maybe I am mistaken but I would think ISP's should easily be able to provide a trend line of what the consumption rates look like.

Wagner and Dahl don't have as much influence on society as corporations do. So I don't really agree with that comparison.

My issue is mindless ambition/win at all costs/do whatever it takes produces "competence" too.

The more data that pours in, the more we will realizes that stuff needs to be filtered out from our definitions of competence. The costs are too great imho.

I am also sure the study will show Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg run orgs with highly competent managers. But it is not competence in my book.

>> obligated to acknowledge opinion

lol thats a nice way of putting it. It's an interesting point about why we are all so attracted to opinion. It doesn't require much mental energy or something I suppose.

Plus in an info overloaded world where even the experts have doubts about a lot of things it allows us to butt into debates where we would never be allowed to enter in the real world.