Submitted 7 months ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/study-social-media-probably-cant-be-fixed/
I also noticed something in my friend group. No one makes anything. Its all share share share. Im the only one taking original photos or videos or making jokes. Its kind of sad. And is not like their lives are boring either. They’d just rather consume others stuff.
Are most people like that?
Yes.
Whatchu gonna do about it?
(not asking specifically you, bridge, just didn’t want to leave the thread at a circle jerk)
I’ve started asking people what they have created lately… They seem to take it as an insult when it isn’t meant to be.
The reality is consuming is easier than producing. You can see it with the usage of phones and tablets vs laptops. It’s hard to create on a touch screen but it’s easy to consume.
Does making horrible horrible things in CK2 count as creation? If not I am simply creating a mess of my life.
Yeah its sad computing is dying because of ipads. Lot of people.dont even have a computer.
But what we find is that it’s not just that this content spreads; it also shapes the network structures that are formed. So there’s feedback between the effective emotional action of choosing to retweet something and the network structure that emerges. And then in turn, you have a network structure that feeds back what content you see, resulting in a toxic network. The definition of an online social network is that you have this kind of posting, reposting, and following dynamics. It’s quite fundamental to it. That alone seems to be enough to drive these negative outcomes.
Trying to grasp it in my own words;
Because social networks are about interactions and networks (follows, communities, topics, instances), they inherently human nature establish toxic networks.
Even when not showing content through engagement-based hot or active metrics, interactions will push towards networking effects of central players/influencers and filter and trigger bubbles.
If there were no voting, no followable accounts or communities, it would not be a social network anymore (by their definition).
They work perfectly as intended and do what the US regime wants since they control all the important ones.
Social media is media. Too important to leave unchecked.
I mean lemmy is pretty fucking neat, i love it here, no need to fic anything.
BULLSHIT
It’s got its issues (for me the main one are the tankie scum devs), but it seems to be the best platform there is.
The good thing about it is you can move to clients like Piefed and still access all the content / communities.
(for me the main one are the tankie scum devs)
This right here is the crux of the problem and why the problem goes back so much further. We teach kids to focus on individual achievement, to celebrate the self, and we don’t teach empathy, something that needs to be taught young but the west increasingly considers weakness and a dirty word.
When fail to teach citizens of a society collectivism, because being a member of a society means you are part of a collective whether you decide to be a good collective that functions or one that operates against itself (herp derp competition!) that does not, you get communication like this.
“I hate these people fuck them they should me more like MEEEE” “their opinions suck because they aren’t more like MIIIINE” and we act as a bunch of petulant infants that resent each other’s very existence in OUR world.
If we were taught that it is our responsibility to lift one another up, if we rewarded people in society on the basis of who and how many others they’ve helped and not how much they hoarded for THEMSELVES, this wouldnt be as much of a problem.
The problem is, how do you start such a virtuous cycle when everyone from the owners down are only concerned with “ME ME ME?”
Then again you hate tankies, so go ahead and cuss me out for calling out the reality that capitalism, especially when it has effectively conquered the culture, turns people into selfish little gremlins more likely to rage at a stranger than help them.
Cetainly not the Mc Carthy fascists calling people scum
As long as the devs have an instance-agnostic ‘live and let live’ attitude and just ignore any instances they don’t politically like and advise others to do the same, it’s not really a problem.
If they ever try to enforce their ideology via their code: actual issue.
Exciting casual games, high rewards, and a variety of gaming experiences. So, what are you waiting for? betway-pk.com/…/index.html
Lmaooo betway. Gtfoh with this predatory ass bookie
Social media isn’t broken. It’s working exactly how it was meant to. We just need to break free of it.
first of all, it’s a broad overgeneralization to assume that all social media is created with the intention to manipulate people. there was honest people running social media, but it’s long past. (in the corporate domain)
social media can be useful if it presents non-emotional, non-brigading content. rational discourse is one of the valuable options possible. throwing away the whole internet because Xitter sucks is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
but yes, social media is the new Volksempfänger and manipulates people (social engineering)
When it reaches a large enough audience, the regime takes control.
They don’t even hide it.
Lemmy for now is not important enough.
No social media was created to manipulate people. (Most) social media is a business, optimised to make money. You make money by showing people ads. You can show more ads to people if they stay on the platform longer. You can make people stay longer by engaging them emotionally. End of conspiracy…
But it’s not possible to get unbiased content on the internet. Everything exists with an agenda behind it, for the sole reason that putting anything on it is going to constantly cost money.
This wasn’t a huge deal when individuals were paying to host and share content to a small audience, it was a small amount of money and you could see their motives clearly (a forum for a hobby, a passion project, an online store, etc…).
Social media is different because it presents itself as a public forum where anything can be shared and hosted (for free) to as many people as you want. But they’re still footing a very large bill and the wide net of content makes their motives completely opaque. Nobody cares that much about the headaches of maintaining a free and open public forum, and any profit motive is just another way to sell manipulation.
rational discourse is one of the valuable options possible.
Yeah, can’t say that I’ve seen a lot of that on social media.
You don’t need social media to do rational discourse, anyway. All you need is two-way communication, a problem that the Internet solved long before any Facebooks or Twitters popped up. You can have rational discourse on IRC, an email list, or even through instant messaging.
throwing away the whole internet because Xitter sucks is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
I know you’re being hyperbolic here, but unfortunately there are a lot of people now who really do see social media as “the whole Internet”. And they have thrown a lot away as a result.
Should just be people can’t be fixed…
As long as you know you’re in an echo chamber there’s nothing wrong with it. Everything is an echo chamber of varying sizes.
Or do everything within your reach to make everything an echo chamber, cough cough fandom gatekeepers being toxic to people they don’t like and think are responsible to changes to their beloved media.
No shit. Unless the Internet becomes democratised and publicly funded like other media in other countries like the BBC or France24, social media will always be toxic. They thrive in provocations and there are studies to prove it, and social media moguls know this. Hell, there are people who make a living triggering people to gain attention and maintain engagement, which leads to advertising revenue and promotions.
As long as profit motive exists, the social media as we know it can never truly be fixed.
Yes and yes. What is crazy to me is that the owners of social media want more than profits. They also have a political agenda and are willing to tip the scales against any politician who opposes their interests or the interests of their major shareholders. Facebook promoted right wing disinformation campaigns against leaders who they disliked such as mark Carney. Their shareholders should be sued into oblivion and their c levels thrown into prison. Yet our legal system forbids this.
The article argues that extremist views and echo chambers are inherent in public social networks where everyone is trying to talk to everyone else. That includes Fediverse networks like Lemmy and Mastodon.
They argue for smaller, more intimate networks like group chats among friends. I agree with the notion, but I am not sure how someone can build these sorts of environments without just inviting a group of friends and making an echo chamber.
I had couple of fairly diverse group chats and the more sensitive people left real quick. In my experience you can discuss politics or economy among friends with different views but when you touch social issues it gets toxic real fast. Pretty much like on social networks.
They left entirely? Not just tuned out the group until the topic of conversation moved on?
There’s actually some interesting research behind this - Dunbar’s number suggests humans can only maintain about 150 meaningful relationships, which is why those smaller networks tend to work better psychologicaly than the massive free-for-alls we’ve built.
Its performing as expected
I mean, I feel like just shutting it down would solve at least some problems. Shuttering it all, video sharing platforms included.
Not a situation most anyone would agree on, but it’s an idea.
The amount of comments thinking that Lemmy is totally not like a typical social media is absurd.
Guys, we only don’t have major tracking of users here.That’s it! Everything else is the fucking same shit you’d see on facebook. The moment Lemmy gets couple tens of millions of users, we gonna become 2nd facebook.
if we’re immune to the problems, it would be because people here use critical thinking skills instead of swallowing large amounts of contents. that’s the sole reason, it has nothing to do with the network’s size.
Lemmy doesn’t have a neural net prediction/recommendation engine. This is a HUGE difference.
And for the same reasons folks got hooked on old reddit, folls get hooked on Lemmy (its me I’m folks please unplug me from the machine I can’t log out)
It’s not a typical social media because it’s decentralized, but it’s not immune to all the problems of social media by any means. Being relatively small is its biggest asset - if it ever got reddit big, it would end up the same way.
It’s that there’s no incentive to have 80 million bots manipulate everything. Our user base is too small, and likely too jaded about fake internet points to be a target for scammers, ai slop bots, or advertisers.
Or at least that’s what I thought when I drink a refreshing Pepsi! hiss-crack! glugg glugg Aaaah!! PEPSI! The brown fizz that satisfies! Pepsi!
… If there are people to mislead with misinformation, or people with money to buy things, there will be incentive. I learned about this in this great book called
Exactly. Once we are a mainstream page to visit, it will go down as fast as any other page like this before.
Facebook has lots of miss information and scams too, which here on Lemmy don’t have.
yes, and no. what really Facebook lacks (along the top social medias) is strong negative feedback.
I don’t think the village idiot is going that far with the flat earth conspiracy when is publicly downvoted to oblivion
Reddit has downvotes. That hasn’t saved it from misinformation, trolls, and radicalization.
I beg to disagree.
The reason all these delusional posts getting even upvoted to begin with is due to many like-minded people are gathered together in the same sub. As an example, reddit’s r/democrats and r/republicans. One is clearly more sane than another, yet try to say something in a wrong sub - get downvoted to oblivion. But if you spill your delusional shit in a r/republicans - upvotes galore and comments of praise.
Facebook groups are the same shit. And so is Lemmy. One thing in hexbear that is allowed could/will be the reason you got a ban in .world. Up/Downvotes cant fix that.
tl;dr Village idiots can join together to accumulate their own conspiracies in a big ass circlejerk, and social media has no power to stop it.
I haven’t used FB in half a decade, but at least with respect to reddit, there are definitely more good “features” in the threadiverse than just lack of tracking.
Not saying there aren’t any issues or that scaling to 10 M MAUs won’t create new problems, but lack of tracking isn’t the only differentiating factor.
Yeah decentralization and open source software and protocols being big ones. It means that if the “main” culture turns reactionary, that we’re not trapped in the same spaces as the shithead just because we share a platform.
There could absolutely be two main fediverses, with no changes to the technology.
As long as people worship themselves (but also, paradoxically, require everyone’s attention and approval all the time just to make it to the next day), it will continue being that way. For those who see it for what it is and are disgusted by it, we have Lemmy/discussion boards.
Getting banned from Facebook. After a decade of clapping back against racists. Has been the best thing in my life. So glad to be out of there. Just wish I could have saved my pics first.
Ofcourse not. The issue with social media are the people. Algorithms just bring out the worst in us but it didn’t make us like that, we already were.
The reason why it brings out the worst in people is because it has open borders. You can shit into the network and move on. If you were forced to stay and live with your shit, you’d shit less into the public domain.
From my point of view something that brings out the worst in us sounds like a really big part of the issue.
We’ve always been modified by our situations, so why not create better situations rather than lamenting that we don’t have the grit to break through whatever toxic society we find ourselves graphed onto?
Sorry I know I’m putting a lot on your comment that I know you didn’t mean, but I see this kind of unintentional crypto doomerism a lot. I think it holds people to an unhealthy standard.
It is a big part of the issue, but as Lemmy clearly demonstrates, that issue doesn’t go away even when you remove the algorithm entirely.
I see it a lot like driving cars - no matter how much better and safer we make them, accidents will still happen as long as there’s an ape behind the wheel, and probably even after that. That’s not to say things can’t be improved - they definitely can - but I don’t think it can ever be “fixed,” because the problem isn’t it - it’s us. You can’t fix humans by tweaking the code on social media.
It magnifies the worst in people.
Sounds like it’s time to delete it, then.
Neat.
Release the epstein files then burn it all down.
social media is what it’s made to be. social media as we use it is flawed.
all of the platforms just do different colors of the same damn thing.
Because how to use it is baked into what it is. Like many big tech products, it’s not just a tool but also a philosophy. To use it is also to see the world through its (digital) eyes.
I think just going back to internet forums circa early 2000s is probably a better way to engage honestly. They’re still around, just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.
I’m talking stuff like SomethingAwful, GaiaOnline, Fark, Newgrounds forum, GlockTalk, Slashdot, vBulletin etc.
These types of forums allowed you to discuss timely issues and news if you wanted. You could go a thousand miles deep on some bizarre subculture or stick to general discussion. They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.
just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.
Boowahahahahaha, I’ve used those with PSP default web browser. With Nintendo Wii web browser. With Java phone web browser (admittedly that was only to read, and very slowly).
Anyway, have clumsy sweaty big fingers (unfortunately due to my behavior girls don’t extrapolate that feature anywhere anymore), strongly prefer anything with physical keys.
They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.
Images, links, enormous smilies’ sets, colored text.
That’s what I’ve been hoping for with Reddit and now Lemmy. I don’t care about individuals, I care about topic based discussion.
My problem with forums is they are more like a club, where you get loss of off-topic discussion by people who happen to share an interest. I don’t care what tech nerds think about medicine on a tech nerd forum, and joining dozens of forums to get the right discussion is a huge pain.
Forums are cool, and I use a few, but I really want a place that connects different subjects.
Anything that is topic focussed rather than following individuals is a big difference, and then take away the engagement algorithm and it’s much better.
This is a good point. It’s like asking the question: “What is more important in politics? People, or ideas?”
People respond very differently to that. To some it’s people, and to some it’s ideas. That is why you have Xitter-like microblogging which is focused around people, and reddit-like communities which are focused around topics/ideas.
Of course -corporate- social media can’t be fixed … it already works exactly they way they want it to…
Social media will be fixed by - wait for it…
Now.
Done. Fixed it, you may thank me later.
Yours,
B-TR3E - the man who fixed social media
Hi it’s still broken on my machine. I’ve tried turning it off and on again
The study is based on having LLMs decide to amplify one of the top ten posts on their timeline or share a news headline. LLMs aren’t people, and the authors have not convinced me that they will behave like people in this context.
The behavioral options are restricted to posting news headlines, reposting news headlines, or being passive. There’s no option to create original content, and no interventions centered on discouraging reposting. Facebook has experimented with limits to reposting and found such limits discouraged the spread of divisive content and misinformation.
I mostly use social media to share pictures of birds. This contributes to some of the problems the source article discusses. It causes fragmentation; people who don’t like bird photos won’t follow me. It leads to disparity of influence; I think I have more followers than the average Mastodon account. I sometimes even amplify conflict.
Can’t?
I’m on Lemmy, am I not?
It CAN be fixed, the question if the will is there. We need to inform and teach more people
the problem is algorithms. during the whole bluesky promo all over lemmy while everyone was shitting on mastodon. the only thing that’s broken is algorithms, and once you throw them out social media is immediately fixed - but of course the primary argument of mastodon vs bluesky was that mastodon requires you to curate your content (like joining a sub on reddit to see it on your front page stream, before algorithms fucked that site, and the thing is people LOVED old reddit so i fail to see how this is bad and doesn’t work, but hey, all of lemmy said so, so who am i to blame) whereas bluesky being a relaunch of twitter and literally curating content for you no matter if you actually want to see it or not but for most people reactionary content is the only content they happily interact with anyway so algorithms makes a lot of sense for them because they feel they are engaging more with the site despite the pointless empty engagement they are doing instead of interacting with real users and real content on pages where you have to actively curate your content instead of being fed the lowest hanging fruit.
/ rant off
Most people don’t know about this experience, probably aren’t looking for this experience, or would not know how to interact with it. I know it sounds crazy, but Reddit still confuses many people. Lemmy’s a different ball of similar wax.
They want the saccharine-coated dopamine-filled no-effort mass-produced low-effort meme cesspool that IG, TikTok, etc. all provide. They don’t know they want more until they decide they’re done with it and start to look. Until then, it’s like showing hieroglyphs to an iguana.
I’m on Lemmy, am I not?
It CAN be fixed, the question if the will is there.
While and improvement Lemmy is far from perfect. The upvote-downvote sytem of reddit alone encourages group think and self censorship. It doesn’t really help that much that we can go circlejerk in some other instance if we get hated on or banned by mods. We are still encouraged to keep in line to keep the bubble intact.
After 20 years of living with it, I’ve decided I don’t like the downvote. The upvote is fine.
Reddit’s founders, early on tried to encourage people to treat the downvote as moderation. It was meant to mean that a thing doesn’t belong on reddit and people shouldn’t see it. Of course that quickly became mere dislike or disagreement.
I’d prefer an approach that requires some input about what’s wrong with a post in order to reduce its prominence; a restricted list of options as in Slashdot’s moderation would be sufficient, I think. I’m not sure whether this should necessarily require also making a report to a more powerful admin/moderator, but I lean toward making that optional in most communities.
Right. We fix ourselves first, we are already here and we do not attempt to control others. We make and go our own way every moment.
The dream was that social media would help revitalize the public sphere and support the kind of constructive political dialogue that your paper deems “vital to democratic life.” That largely hasn’t happened.
Their idea is basically that people need to be told the same things to what to believe in so that democracy can work as it’s supposed to and social media is disrupting that with all the conspiracy shit, flame wars and polarization of opinions. The issue is that this common idea is fermented by the boomer generation. They grew up in really quite anomalous post war world when there was first time in human history basically monolithic mass media that people watched it AND had high trust in AND the system provided more for the masses more than it does now. Those then lead to to high societal inclusion and high social cohesion that again fed into the prosperity. Now we have fragmented information sphere and things are shit are shit, political center is hated by most and radicalism is once again rising.
However so called democracy or collective decision making in general itself does not rely on people not believing in crazy shit, not being fed the best possible validated information, or god forbid having unorthodox ideas of their own or developing factionalism or totally different reading on reality. It helps make it smoother and avoids violence, but that “smoothness of process” that boomers have come to expect is also why society in wider terms is politically stagnant and rotting. People seem to live in different realities, because in a sense we are, because our economic realities can be so different and decoupled form the mainstream narrative. It never didn’t have to get this bad, but social media only a venting mechanism not the reason for the growing divides. The division in society and the general anguish is real IRL, it just takes forms of all kinds of irrational and counterproductive forms online. The problem isn’t really that people are factional and can’t agree with each other, it’s that nobody can no longer agree with the monolithic unpopular political center that is holding on to power for dear life.
Good thing is, you don’t need to use it. Bad thing is, it affects reality.
Pre print journalism fucking bugs me because the journalists themselves can’t actually judge if anything is worth actually discussing so they just look for click bait shit.
This methodology to discover what interventions do in human environments seems particularly deranged to me though:
We address this question using a novel method – generative social simulation – that embeds Large Language Models within Agent-Based Models to create socially rich synthetic platforms.
LLM agents trained on social media dysfunction recreate it unfailingly. No shit.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Social spaces aren’t something that needs fixing.
We blame the problems caused by wealth inequality on technology as a way to not even discuss making the rich contribute to society
nullpotential@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
they could still do with some fixing
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What’s the issue that you think social media is causing?
I’m willing to bet that wealth redistribution would fix almost any of the issues people blame on social media.