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The internet is neutral.
Corporate social media is definitely toxic.
Can be, but is not inherently.
The algorithms are toxic. Negativity gets more engagement so the algorithms push that content more.
This is too simple, groups of people radicalizing themselves is a very well known phenomenom, it has existed since humans started forming groups.
A good example are the terrorist groups during the cold war, Baader-Meinhof, Japanese Red Army and similar.
The groups may start as a group to work towards a new political system through peaceful means, then someone starts an informal competition about who is the “best” and more “pure” member, starting to subtly put other member’s down for not doing as much as they are.
Then it becomes a feedback loop, and soon you have a group that condems their own initial goals as counter revolutionary, and constantly moving the goalposts.
The algorithm itself doesn’t introduce this behaviour, but turbo chargers it by making people self radicalize mich faster by showing them an endless stream of people telling them how to be even “better” and even more “pure”.
I don’t. They’re just tools.
Toxic people are toxic, and they’ll still be toxic in different settings where they are interacting with other people.
Yes, but social media promotes things toxic people say because it generates revenue. They are part of the problem.
Lemmy and Mastodon are social media as well, and they are not profit driven. Non-social media like newspapers and cable TV also spread toxic content.
In the end, you got the causality reversed. Media (both social and non-social) gravitates towards what drives the most engagement. Negative/toxic content drives the most engagement because that content elicits a strong emotional response in the consumer.
Media amplifies the problem, but ultimately the problem is people. Toxic content is going to stick around until people stop giving it attention, and unfortunately in all of the history of humanity we have yet to figure out how.
I feel like that’s the same as saying people are toxic or socialisation is toxic. Yes, toxicity can exist online, it can also exist in the supermarket, at school, in a field miles away from anywhere. It’s just a facet of being with other humans.
The internet is fine, it’s social media and the people using it that are toxic (aided by algorithms pushing people to give their own worst for all sorts of reasons)
There is one feature of the internet that inherently encourages toxicity, and that’s the barrier anonymity grants between online actions and real life consequences.
In real life if you walk up to someone and start talking shit, you can experience consequences from that. Online, you can do something very similar and seldom suffer anything. This allows the internet to be used to vent bottled-up emotions that are otherwise difficult or problematic to express. It also gives young’uns a chance to fuck around without really getting in trouble for it, which can be somewhat intoxicating at that age.
These two factors contribute to an enhanced toxicity that would not be commonly seen just walking around some town somewhere. Most towns anyway. That said, it similarly depends on where you are online. Communities, both online and irl, are unique in their environments and cultures, so one should not expect standardized behavior beyond the very basics when going from place to place.
There are plenty of real life scenarios that both equate and predate your example, and which don’t rely on anonymity. Lynch mobs in the US, rape gangs in southeast Asian countries, Hitler rallies, heck even bully groups among children. The size of the group does not have to be big to allow toxic behavior, as long as you have a catalyst (such as someone getting away with something) that engenders a feeling of safety from consequences and in- and outgroups. The Internet is just another medium for this behavior, anonymous or not. What is different is that the internet is the first medium that actively records it.
Correct. I was not arguing that anonymity is required for bad things to happen. Only that it can encourage certain behaviors. Think of it in terms of percentage.
You get out of algorithms what you put into them.
My Facebook feed is full of web comics and memes. My twatter feed is full of information security because that is what I follow.
If someone is posting crap you don’t like unfollow/unfriend them. Nothing says you have to have them on your feed.
Not me. I think popular implementations of social media are, but they don’t need to be.
Also the internet is definitely not toxic because it’s basically a set of protocols that can be used for innumerable things that aren’t social at all. For example: the experience of using ftp to transfer a file has never been toxic.
The internet by itself is not toxic.
The people that use the internet are toxic.
The people that use the internet have made the internet toxic.
The internet got a reputation for being toxic.
Your average person doesn’t even wanna bother anymore.
And I’m a person who always stands out from the crowd. Because I hate toxic.
Amen.
If you thought it was, you need to ask yourself why you are here because Lemmy and Reddit are both forms of social media.
I’m on Lemmy because I wanted to switch from Reddit after being scorned by the people there.
Before that, I posted regularly just fine even though people were rude and disrespectful.
Properly moderated it doesn’t have to be.
It depends on the place, but sometimes a relaxing video helps.
Yes, grass is green and the sky is blue too.
So are people.
DarkHexad intent { Narcissism / Machiavellianism / Sociopathy-Psychopathy / Nihilism / Sadism / Systemic-Dishonesty } is significant a fraction in human-nature, itself,
and the internet does represent that,
as does the last few millenia of human history, tbh.
The only way to have a clean space, is to force break DarkHexad grip on that space.
It’s exactly the same with your body’s health:
IF you want to break the pathogens from sharing your body’s life,
THEN you have to BREAK them from owning any territory in your body’s life.
Pretending & “making nice” on them won’t break their grasp/control of all they own/control.
Exactly as Western Medicine holds that whole-health isn’t a valid condition, but illness, injury, & death are,
therefore one treats illness, injury, & death with drugs or procedures,
there simply isn’t ANY method for producing whole-health in a paradigm which axiomatically prohibits that that could be valid.
You want whole-health?
Become a true yogi.
Harness/yoke ( “yoga” means “to yoke”, or “to harness” ) your entire life to whole-health, & discover what drugs & procedures cannot make.
The same is true of clean spaces, online ( I mean places where machaivellian evil gets auto-broken from them, there’s no requirement that “clean” mean “all spaces are child-friendly” ).
IF you want clean social-site,
THEN you need combined arms ( all dimensions of force, convergion to enforce victory ) making that, against the machiavellians & corrupt-values people.
That requires easy server-setup.
That requires easy administration.
That requires easy moderation.
That requires easy community-management.
That requires easy onboarding for good people,
AND easy step-by-step breaking of the malevolent ones, with proper powerlaw escalations.
That requires accountability ( machiavellians consistently disappear any evidence that would threaten them with accountability, while trying to drown others ) that is both automatic & unbreakable.
etc.
Without a cat’s skeleton, no matter what musculature you put on your non-cat skeleton, you can’t make it be a cat, in how it moves.
You want a cat’s liquidity-of-motion?
You require, then, skeleton, musculature, AND nervous-system of cat, for your animal…
You want clean/healthy portion-of-internet?
ALL dimensions, technological, legislative, admin, moderation, users, processes, EVERYthing needs to be “combined arms” breaking the pathogen-intents from possessing it.
And because of the neverending arms-race between corruption/malevolence vs good, that needs to keep continually adapting, agilely.
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