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  • Showing only topics in ~misc with the tag "social media". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. PSA: Disinformation and the over-representation of false flag events on social media.

      I've noticed lately that on certain social media websites, particularly Reddit and Facebook, there has been an uptick in articles about fake hate crimes and false rape reports. The comments on...

      I've noticed lately that on certain social media websites, particularly Reddit and Facebook, there has been an uptick in articles about fake hate crimes and false rape reports. The comments on these articles especially fan the flames on the subjects of homophobia, racism, and sexism. While the articles themselves are still noteworthy and deserving of attention, the amount of attention that they've been receiving has been disproportionately high (especially when considering how fairly unknown the individuals involved are) and the discourse on those articles particularly divisive.

      On top of that, there are clear disinformation campaigns going on to attack current Democratic presidential candidates in the U.S. It seems pretty clear that we're having a repeat of the last presidential election, with outside parties stoking the flames of discrimination and disinformation on social media in order to further ideological divisions, and the consumers of that media readily falling for it.

      I would caution readers to be mindful of the shifting representation of historically controversial or contentious topics moving forward. Even if the articles themselves are solidly factual, take note of how frequently you're seeing these articles, whether or not they're known to be contentious topics, and how they're affecting online discourse.

      In short: make sure that you can still smell bullshit even when it's dressed up in pretty little facts.

      30 votes
    2. What are your thoughts on Reddit's r/movies subreddit ?

      Personally, I strongly dislike it. Every aspect of every film is way overblown there. If there's a funny scene in a movie, they LITERALLY die laughing and wake their whole neighbourhood up. If...

      Personally, I strongly dislike it. Every aspect of every film is way overblown there.

      If there's a funny scene in a movie, they LITERALLY die laughing and wake their whole neighbourhood up.

      If there's a scene that is in the slightest bit sad, they're going to cry their eyes out for months.

      If there's a movie that's decently good, then it's an absolute masterpiece and the best movie of the decade.

      And so on... Everything is always really exaggerated.

      On top of that, there's always the circlejerk hivemind aspect. Threads are closed after 6 months, so the whole discussion about the film is divided between many threads, but because every thread is small and new, you often get the same fluff comments.

      For more popular flims, it is the absolute worst. With half the thread being just funny quotes from the movie with no additional commentary or anything valuable, yet having thousands upon thousands of upvotes. It's kind of sad.

      I used to go to IMDb boards, –which, admittedly, had their own issues– but they were still pretty useful for discussion. And shutting people up wasn't as easy as it is on Reddit, so the opinions there were much more varied. However, since they shut them down, Reddit is the closest thing I've found. Moviechat.org is supposed to be a replacement to the IMDb boards, but it's pretty inactive.

      So, even though I kind of despise r/movies, I'm sort of forced to use them. But reading it makes me somewhat bitter.

      What about you?

      13 votes
    3. What do you think of Medium’s “clapping” system?

      I’m not recommending this for Tildes or anything, I just wanted to know your thoughts on it. For those who are unfamiliar with it, on Medium, you can “applaud” articles and comments. To do this,...

      I’m not recommending this for Tildes or anything, I just wanted to know your thoughts on it.

      For those who are unfamiliar with it, on Medium, you can “applaud” articles and comments. To do this, you hold down the clap button, and depending on how long you hold it down, the more applause you give (up to a limit of 50). The best example would probably be if you go on any Medium article and try it yourself.

      I’ve never really seen any discussion on it, so I was interested in hearing your thoughts.

      I think the idea of essentially having to convert time holding down a button to a number of likes is interesting.

      The problems that come to mind are that you could easily automate it, and that it could suffer the “5 star” rating system problem, where the majority of people will either dislike something enough to rate it 1 star, love it enough to rate it 5 stars, or not care enough to rate it at all (or in this case, give it 50 claps or nothing).

      18 votes
    4. The phenomenon of spammy Asian accounts on Facebook support forum

      That's a mouthful but I'm really curious what drives the situation when you go on the Facebook support forum, on popular threads there's tons of people posting absolutely nonsense comments that...

      That's a mouthful but I'm really curious what drives the situation when you go on the Facebook support forum, on popular threads there's tons of people posting absolutely nonsense comments that have nothing to do with the topic, and a lot of them are accounts from Asia... has anyone else noticed this? Are they just spamming to get account visibility?

      3 votes