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Social media sites have become a phenomenal means of communication for hate groups, conspiracy theorists and deranged individuals and groups. Do you agree with this statement?
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TaiwanIsNotChina
The conspiracy groups are the most troublesome because they can entice otherwise normal people into believing nonsense.
Matt
Would Trump and his ilk have risen so high if not for Twitter? I think not.
Aly Rustom
yes, but not only them. Other news narratives are now being shown thanks to social media.
It's a double-edged sword.
virusrex
Traditional media are not so far behind either, at least those that let users attack others and promote conspiracies and false information based on a completely invalid understanding of freedom of speech. Social Media sites are just the very convenient scapegoat to evade taking responsibility of their own flaws by pointing out to something that can be even worse.
Jimizo
The sales pitch is very familiar.
One of the attractions of going down conspiracy theory rabbit hole is vanity. They give the believers the sense they are cleverer and more perceptive than others.
Nobody said this to them this before.
GBR48
Social media sites have become a phenomenal means of communication for everyone.
You don't ban something just because crazy people use it. Just use the filters and you won't see this stuff.
virusrex
The argument is not about banning the service but doing something about people that can have a negative effect on others because of an abuse of their freedom to express themselves.
If for example a site is used frequently to scam vulnerable people, would you think the problem is solved if you personally use the filters and no longer see the people being scammed?
Sven Asai
No, I would guess, instead the wide normal masses communicate on average much more on all those SNS sites. I've never seen such theorists as influencer channel producers or hate groups dancing their hate per videos on TikTok. No, in most cases they have already their developed and fixed points of views or mindset and don't need to convince others or expose themselves to the opposite opinion part of the world.
Bad Haircut
Yes, they're full to the brim with far-left hate groups trying to silence and/or dox people who disagree with them, calling for authorities to censor their opponents, while attempting to signal their own virtue by propping up hyperbolic nonsense like the so-called climate catastrophe and the conspiracy theories revolving around white people hating and trying to oppress the fashionable minority of the week.
rainyday
I would push back a bit on this idea.
Social media WAS a phenomenal means of communication for everyone in the late 00s/early 10s when it was still mainly designed with that purpose in mind. Over the past decade or so though the business model has changed from "helping you connect with people" to "using algorithms to keep your eyes glued to the screen".
15 years ago when I signed up for Facebook, and for the first few years thereafter, it was a really great and useful platform. I was able to use it to get back in touch with long lost friends, stay connected with relatives living far away, and also communicate casually with current friends in my day to day life. It was actually a "social" activity back then.
Its pretty much useless for doing most of that stuff now. My feed is full of ads and promoted content that Facebook thinks I want to see, but none of that is what I used Facebook for in the first place so I hardly ever even bother looking at it. The people I used to communicate and share stuff with are mostly the same, almost nobody ever posts anything on it anymore so its just a desolate place now. I would have shut down the account years ago except there are a few people I am only in contact with via it so I keep it up for that, but nothing else.
I think a lot of other social media has evolved similarily over the years - start out being really useful, get loads of people to sign up, then change everything around to make it more monetizable at the expense of the utility it used to have.
Raw Beer
The narrative expressed on the MSM is very much controlled and, IMHO usually wrong. So social media sites are indeed great sites for people who are fed up with the MSM to learn what is going on and communicate with each other. The powers that be don't like this so they tend to label these people as hate groups, conspiracy theorists and deranged individuals and groups.
Raw Beer
Very true. If it wasn't for social media and alternative news sites, I would have believed the main stream narrative that on Oct 7 Hamas actually killed 1,200 (initially 1,400) israeli civilians. Thanks to alternative sources, I realize that about 350 were IDF, and that most of the civilian deaths were caused by the IDF, not Hamas.
virusrex
Disagreeing is not the problem, promoting ideas that can be demonstrated false with objective arguments and scientific evidence is, and since endlessly repeating falsehoods has no value there is also no damage in not letting people doing that participate in the discussions. If you can't defend what you claim using these valid arguments and evidence that means you are on the wrong side of the problem.
It is the same as putting your own personal opinion (or profit) as the sole argument to judge the validity of what others say, if you are going to consider "wrong" what the rest of the world say just because you want to think differently that is the problem. And if you have to reduce yourself to use sources repeatedly debunked and that just repeat falsehoods to support your claims that is still the same. Social media simply makes easier to reinforce that bias.
Bad Haircut
Disagreeing is a problem when the social media companies hire people who aggressively censor posts that offend their political sensibilities even when the information is accurate and verifiable. But because it's your side doing the censorship for the most part, you don't care what the truth is, and instead hide behind debunked and laughable appeals to authority.
We saw what happened when Musk took Twitter and fired people whose sole reason for existence had been scrubbing tweets they didn't like, and banning people they hated, while allowing extremist garbage from various leftist/collectivist/Islamic fundamentalist types to stay up. This turned Twitter into an echo chamber in regard to certain topics. The screeching from the censors who stood to lose their jobs - thoroughly deserved in my opinion - could've awoken the dead...not to mention all those lefties who swore to leave Twitter and never did. Like the ones who vowed to leave the US when Trump was elected and stayed put.
Thankfully Musk has made some progress in cleaning out the sewer (the censors, that is) that was Twitter, but he hasn't been perfect; inevitably whatever reforms he makes are bound to upset someone. What's more, free speech is inherently messy, but should not be controlled outside of extreme cases such as specific threats to physically harm or kill others, regardless of who makes those threats. People who consider themselves arbiters of what's true and false, and exercise what power they have to silence critics through censorship, are some of the worst people around and deserved the utmost contempt.
virusrex
When is that situation happening? the examples you keep bringing have been very easy to debunk with antiscientific sources being repeatedly proved to use false information that you do not have any problem repeating even after they were proved valse.
Not debunked, not laughable, you have been able to bring respected institutions that support your claims a grand total of zero times. That proves the scientific community in general is against what you want to push, and since that is a perfectly valid appeal to authority that still means it can be used without problems.
That is the opposite, the people controlled hate/racist/discrimination speech that obviously became much more common and dominant once they left, not liking invalid forms of expression is secondary to those forms being undesirable in proper discussion. At the end the one demonstrating to be more in favor of invalid censorship was Musk by throwing lawsuits to silence those that proved hate speech is rampant in his platform.
He himself is working as hard as possible to silence people whose only fault is to say (and prove with evidence) things he don't want to anybody to hear.
Eastmann
option c
social media became a great censorship,spying and scamming tool.say Meta and thri product Facebook.full of crap.
Moonraker
The technical term seems to be "enshittification". There is a wikipedia entry for it.
Peter Neil
Social media displays just how wide a swath of people there are who are Looney Tunes, gullible, easily manipulated and just plain stupid. Elon Musk should send them all to mars, and maybe go with them.
Bad Haircut
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. There have been huge numbers of posts taken down and people banned from social media for posting verifiably factual information that didn't conform to the narrative that the social media companies' executives and their advertisers - or their censors - wanted to push. These people have included experts in the fields related to their posts. And when they tried to get explanations for the bans, etc., they were either stonewalled or given ambiguous reasons. Musk has gone some way to restoring their accounts and cleaning out the politically motivated censors, and justifiably using the legal system to do it if necessary. Why on earth would he want to keep censors who hate him and have polar-opposite views?
Some people here have little respect for free speech, and seem quite happy for censors to suppress speech about things they don't like. But that's not how a healthy society works because censorship just forces both bad and good ideas underground. They don't disappear, and can often re-emerge later in a form that is much harder to control. They should think about that next time they blithely dismiss views and evidence they don't like and ask the moderators to delete posts.
virusrex
Which is not an excuse to keep doing it, but yet you persist still no evidence no argument just claiming you are right and the rest of the world must be wrong.
Yet again claims that you can't prove, specially the part where the post deleted and people banned for going against the rules of the sites they were posting. You yourself have made perfectly clear you think breaking the rules you agreed in order to comment here is justified as long as you can push anything you believe, which obviously is not the case.
"Experts" that are unable to publish scientific articles that are not destroyed by peer review, making that exactly the example of invalid appeal to authority. In the era of preprints there is no valid excuse for this.
That would apply mostly to people that do not understand the concept of free speech and like to pretend it is freedom from consequences of that speech, which is again not the case.
Like flat-earthers and antivaxxers? those ideas are still invalid no matter how many times they re-emerge, and sooner or later people grow up from the scientific illiteracy necessary to believe them, which is why they become less and less popular with each generation, thus the value of discarding these disproved ideas from the discussion is proved.
yamada1043
The former Insurrectionist-in-Chief and his so-called Truth Social is the current disinformation and misinformation source.
Jimizo
There is a spectrum. Flat-earthers are on the extreme.
The more garden variety types are stolen election, scamdemic, climate change a hoax, EVs a scam, proxy war in Ukraine etc. They often like to talk about ‘soy boys/cucks’ and other teenage crap.
They are most predictable and uninteresting people you’ll ever meet. They were in lockstep yet again the other day about the news from China regarding a ‘flu-like illness’ being timed for the US election.
I prefer flat-earthers - much funnier.
What a superb word. Thanks for sharing that.
Jimizo
I have a bit of time for flat-earthers. In some ways they can be useful in making people think how they know the world is roughly spherical. If you grant them their belief that images of the planet from various agencies are all in on the scam, how can you prove it?
A good question for kids in science classes.
Notice how the ‘all in on the scam’ is often a ‘foundation’ for the free-thinkers/modern day Galileos.
Raw Beer
Hmmm, except that they very often do publish peer-reviewed scientific articles. I've often provided references to them, but that is generally countered with comment saying that it has been "debunked" by factcheck.org or some other industry sponsored "fact checker".
There are also many examples of research papers passing the rigourous peer-review process, and in some cases actually getting a letter of acceptance, just to have it then rejected with no explanation.
virusrex
Fact checkers do not debunk scientific articles, they debunk misleading claims made from those articles, which still remain a valid criticism as long as you can't refute that. Obviously if somebody claims the opposite of what the authors of a report do (without any actual argument to prove this) then the reference is not supporting the claim for which they are being used.
Yet you have not brought any of those examples, the ones being rejected or even retracted have perfectly valid reasons for this, from making up imaginary patients to having flawed methodologies identified during peer review, this is not only fine, it is actually desirable because it means the reports would only pollute the literature if they are left unchallenged.
Bad Haircut
You know who those so-called factchecker sites are funded by, right? It's not hard to trace them. And more often than not they're staffed by people without any expert knowledge in the fields they're supposed to be checking. As a self-appointed fact checker here, what's your field of expertise? If you claim medical science, why not go head to head with any of the leading COVID dissident doctors, epidemiologists, vaccinologists and the like? Surely it'd be a walk in the park.
virusrex
Who cares, as long as the reasons they give to debunk a false characterization of a study hold that is enough argument to consider the mischaracterization invalid.
It does not matter if the one saying "the authors of the article concluded the opposite of what you are saying the study proves", it could be an elementary school child or the CEO of an involved company, it would still be the same argument and it would still prove the reference invalid.
Again making up imaginary things about other commenters? can you bring a quote where I appointed myself as anything? or are you going to again accept this is a false accusation.
When the argument is that experts are the ones saying something is false it does not matter at all who is repeating the argument, the value comes from the experts that can prove the falsehood of the reference. They are the ones that go head to head with the terribly bad references you tend to bring and easily demonstrate they are wrong. So easily that you have not been able to refute the debunking, neither your references.
Bad Haircut
I care, and any curious person should. Are you seriously arguing that it doesn't matter who funds these organisations? They tend to employ people who share their leanings so put out statements that reflect those biases. Sometimes they get it right, but they're hit and miss.
What does this sentence even mean?
Oh, come on. You scour JT for controversial topics, hoping to find a comment to "debunk". The most cursory glance of articles on this site makes that obvious.
And it matters because so-called factcheckers need to be well versed in the field they're fact-checking about. Otherwise how can they be sure they're correctly interpreting the claim they're checking? You're also assuming that the original material or data a purported fact was based on is indeed itself true and accurate. There's loads of junk science out there that passes peer review by the authors' friends - it's particularly prevalent in the humanities but not absent from other fields by any means. Then, as I mentioned in a deleted post, peer review has been weaponised to keep out dissenting evidence, corrupting the peer review system.
Look, if you keep claiming the leading dissenting scientists are charlatans, show us how. Show us the evidence that their claims are faulty, rather than links to factchecking sites staffed by journalists with limited knowledge on the topic at hand. They've been on the frontlines actually dealing with real patients. What empirical evidence have you gathered to counter their claims? Moreover, they're intellectually honest enough to change their hypotheses and treatments etc as new evidence comes to hand, as scientists in any field should. Science is not fixed - it evolves through research and mistakes, with a dash of humility a key trait of a good scientist. As opposed to quacks who claim to be the single source of truth.
Moderator
Bad Haircut and virusrex, please stop bickering. You've both made your point. No need for further comments.
Raw Beer
When experts publish clear data and provide an interpretation that passes an unbiased peer-review process, they are not debunked/invalid/proven false/irrational just because industry-linked fact-checkers or forum commenters say they are. Just because you agree with the "fact checkers" does not make their conclusion correct, au contraire...
John-San
I voted yes. Because of "only friend platform". I assume this medium has and is destroying young immature girls who never received good parenting. The money these girls make is unbelievable but are damaging their future security of partnership or marriage. They will remain single parent because as they get older and start hitting the wall they will became less willing to tell the date or sex partner to wear protection. Girl need to know the dangers before entering the only fan business. These platform should really think about how people abuse their platform but don't because of the revenue it create for their company. It won't be long before one of these platform get sued big before their realise it not worth the sort term gain.
garypen
Thanks for that absolutely perfect example of what the poll was referring to.
SquidJapan
Media is the worst saying COVID came from bats. Yes, some truth to this but yet we learned they extracted it from bats and attached it to the influenza virus. Media is the propagandist now...
William Round
@SquidJapan
From where did this nonsense came up? your comments is just the example of the kind of disinformation plaguing the media. The previous comment (that no longer is there...) gets it right, when you find a site or service full of disinformation just check with the people paying for ads there, maybe they are not aware their money is being used to spread racism, conspiracies, discrimination, etc.
rainman1
Raw BeerNov. 27 12:29 pm JST
Very true. If it wasn't for social media and alternative news sites, I would have believed the main stream narrative that on Oct 7 Hamas actually killed 1,200 (initially 1,400) israeli civilians. Thanks to alternative sources, I realize that about 350 were IDF, and that most of the civilian deaths were caused by the IDF, not Hamas.
Correction @Raw Beer, YOU chose to believe the alternative news due to your raging paranoia about the 'MSM'.
purple_depressed_bacon
People become shockingly bold when they hide behind their keyboards and screens. One of the many drawbacks of the internet is the easy ability to spread misinformation, hatred, and nonsense. It's also getting harder to discern what's "news" anymore.
kohakuebisu
rainyday's description of Facebook is perfect. It's awful now, just lots of ads and "suggested to you" promoted content that you cannot turn off however much you try.
I think you can replace "social media" with "mainstream media" and that still makes sense.
The Japanese mainstream media is more than happy to parrot government annoucements with no scrutiny. You have to be Looney Tunes, gullible, easily manipulated and just plain stupid to believe them.
blue in green
No.
nero
Define "hate groups".
FizzBit
I voted yes
hate groups = BLM and Antifa
conspiracy theorists = multiculturalism is good
deranged individuals and groups = LBQwhatever and globalists
Ronin Tsukebin
Do you really believe JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald?
Do you really believe 19 Muslims pulled off Sept. 11?
Do you really believe Israeli Intelligence would not have known about the upcoming HAMAS attack?
So-called conspiracies have rational, logical and often clear scientific support, especially the first two listed above. The official government explanation is always lame and just plain nonsense.
AgeOfAsparagas
Yes, but that includes conspiracy theories such as "people who respect the Constitution of the United States are right-wing insurrectionists." And the hate-groups that target whites. There are deranged individuals in all camps.
TaiwanIsNotChina
I believe some sources are in order that these are an actual problem in this universe we live in.
stormcrow
Absolutely. Look at the way Trump used social media for pennies to promote himself compared to the vast amount of money Hillary Clinton spent.
Anybody can be famous these days. It's right in your fingertips!
AgeOfAsparagas
Totally agree with Bad Haircut, Raw Beer, rainman1, FizzBit, Robin. Most of the conspiracy theories and hate are coming from the Lamestream Media, the Left, the "Woke Mob," the Democrats, etc in order to silence dissent and debate, push an agenda, spread propaganda, divide and conquer, and make profits.
Skeptical
I am passingly familiar with studies and surveys done in this area, but I cannot easily remember some of the statistics. At least in regard to the three types mentioned here (hate groups, conspiracy theorists and the deranged).
But I do recall that influence upon the reading public is highly dependent on the subject matter, content, context, and whether the content is angled towards a particular reader demographic. I do not easily recall how sticky the influence was; that is, whether it formed counter opinions or views that lasted to the voting booth, my quarterly financial planning, or (for that matter) even survived recall into the next day. I do recall that, for awhile at least, there was a loose movement by some (I do not recall who) that urged people not to read comments in outlets such a JT. But it seems to have gradually faded off the radar, as reader comments were (perhaps) recognized (perhaps grudgingly, since moderating comments must be a labor-intentive task; but also perhaps for click-count value in the marketplace) as a useful and valuable resource to springboard ideas in the direction of a particular target demographic, and to tailor future content in in context to comments received and discussions resulting. Would you care for a quick example? I am pleased and honored to say that I have been on a team that authored several published articles (not in this particular area) in the past. And I took time to track comments made in journals that were printed following release. They proved helpful, overall, as I prepared myself to discuss the work before colleagues and engage the public. Perhaps I was fortunate not to have run into many, as you say, the hate groups, conspiracy theorists and deranged. To that, I am grateful.Quo Primum
Some "conspiracy theories," especially with regard to COVID, actually turned out to be facts.
owzer
You get these on both sides of the aisle. Some are just weird, others are just demanding.
Concerned Citizen
The elites are not pleased that ideas not sanctioned by them are being communicated.
virusrex
No they have not, things like the disease being benign, measures inneffective of it being originated in a lab have been debunked completely.
That is irrelevant, the problem are ideas that can be demonstrated as false being pushed in order to mislead people in to making worse decisions.
Antiquesaving
I don't use social media much if at all.
I have a business FB and IG and "hate groups" conspiracy theorist " etc..are a very rare thing unless you go looking for them.
But all the crying, complaining, whining, special interest groups are far more present, far more annoying, far more active and will threaten, attack, harass you and anyone they don't agree with!
Quo Primum
Big Tech:
"It's our responsibility to stop the spread of misinformation ...
"Now don't forget to download our new pregnant-man emoji."
Wick's pencil
Yes, and people died because these facts were censored.
virusrex
Still false (easy to see as how you could not argue against the counter argument) people died because they listened to irrational conspiracies that convinced them covid was not dangerous, vaccines not safe, etc.
Skeptical
It may be useful to consider individual susceptibility in this discussion. I would point to a reasoned study in 2020 that talked about susceptibility to social influence as a key metric in understand the degree of influence that social platforms have in the real world. Two Swiss researchers found that susceptibility to normative influence, in particular, predicts how users of platforms will conform their behaviors to that seen on the platform, particularly regarding buying, voting, or visiting what other users post. The authors, appropriately enough, urge education and awareness of potential susceptibility of individuals in different situations and scenarios, and to provide some strategies to resist the allure of what is acknowledged to be sophisticated psychological targeting in a marketplace of ideas and concepts. I see little difference between being a smart and savvy shopper in the market, and being a smart and savvy consumer over all things the Internet. In short, I feel that what I read and give any weight to, is (and always has been) up to me. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229337 . Overall, a good read for the weekend.
tom toto
It's a matter of time world social structure will be destroyed by social media&AI. Just watch...
Destin Skye
One thing I would like comment sections to stop doing, because it feeds into exactly what this poll is about, is to stop displaying how many likes and dislikes a comment has. Sure, allow people to continue liking/disliking, just don't show the total. That simply encourages people to jump on bandwagons and try to upvote the narrative they want to be valid, whether it's true or not, whether it's right or wrong, whether it's harmful or innocuous.
An example of this kind of groupthink is something I've experienced many times. It starts off as a debate/argument between two people. One person, almost always it is the person who is wrong, will then tag 3, 5, or 10+ "friends" to then come jump into the conversation to back them up. It then turns into a bully pulpit where 10+ people are ganging up against a lone individual. 10+ people are still wrong, but they're trying to win through intimidation by sheer numbers.
I see comment sections like this, and public comments on social media, as being the same thing where gangs of people will rush in and like/dislike comments, news opinions, etc., all so that they can then hope to "win" through sheer numbers and intimidation. And that's what it boils down to. It's never about right vs wrong, it's about who "wins". It needs to stop.
Anonymous
Anymore? Where’ve you been the last 10 or more years?
TaiwanIsNotChina
Counterpoint: if we aren't going to have AI fact checking, I want a downvote button so there can be some attempt to take advantage of the Wisdom of the Crowds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds