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by wtallis
1989 days ago
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> There is no manipulation going on by “Big Tech”. Your fear mongering is unfounded. Pushing this sort of rhetoric is what created the insurrectionist events a few days ago. There's definitely manipulation going on by "big tech". Social media has radically distorted political discourse and amplified some trends far beyond what Fox News style media alone could have accomplished. What's debatable (and perhaps straying into crackpot conspiracy theory territory) is the idea that "Big Tech" has done this deliberately, collectively, and with goals of steering society at large in any particular direction. This hypothesis is a lot more far-fetched than the default assumption that big tech has smaller, more localized concerns about maximizing profit, and cares little for the broader consequences of the interaction between their algorithms and society. (Analogously, it is absurd to suggest that US food companies have a goal of making everyone obese and giving them diabetes and heart disease. They simply want to make more money, and have found ways to optimize their product until it becomes addictive, and they don't care about the long-term or large-scale impact on the public because it's not their job to care.) |
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We do it to ourselves. I made this site [1] to review moderation on reddit. It works for accounts, subreddits, threads, and there is also a "top posts/comments" section [2]. When a userbase can review the moderation it becomes harder for manipulation to occur.
[1] https://www.reveddit.com
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/reveddit/comments/kfdaj7/top_remove...