[titzer]

> Google etc... can obviously not keep up filtering out that bullshit. We drown in bullshit.

It's worse than that. They are shoveling bullshit. They turned on the bullshit magnet and lit up the bullshit bat signal. They created a bullshit attention economy and sold bullshit tickets to bullshit artists. Literally everthing about Google and Facebook is creating one opportunity after another to jab you in the eyeballs with ads and/or trap you in a never-ending cycle of "engagement" that has few paths out. It's a trap to monetize every aspect of your interactions with the digital world, to monetize your very attention span. Once you are in, you are at the mercy of a metric assload of computation designed to trap your little rat ass so your eyeballs can be strapped open and ads sold to the highest bidder piped right into your brain. And there are basically zero financial incentives for them to stop or slow down.

[pixl97]

The bullshit asymmetry therom predicted this. Filtering bullshit is so hard it's easier making money selling it yourself.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

But this also means there is a need to filter bs that can be addressed.

[pixl97]

Hence the problem. Spam for example has ruined email to the point that only a few large providers control the majority of email flows, if you make them mad, you cant send email. Same thing happening with content.

[imiric]

Sheesh, and I thought I was jaded :)

You're right, it's just not that apocalyptic. I think we should be worried, yes, but this can be mitigated with stricter regulation and better public education. And of course engineers choosing to work for respectable companies instead of following the digits on their paychecks.

[j_wtf_all_taken]

Yeah, bullshitting was always the easiest way to get people's attention. Specifically if the bullshitters believe their own bullshit, I mean, they're sooooo confident in what they're saying, the gotta be right, right?

Just seems like a human weakness, always believe the person that appears the most confident, no matter what they say. And a bullshitter will say anything that people like because they need positive feedback because they're so convinced that what they have to say is pure greatness, and they don't even realize that they just always say whatever gets the most applause. And man, these people are good in that specific respect (and literally nothing else). They perfected their bullshit to a degree that its really really hard to see through it, at least it will take time. And then the next bullshitter comes along and one's fooled again because fuck they're good.

And yeah now we got a system called social media putting those people on steroids. Its not like that didn't happen every time we invented a new way of communicating. But every fucking time we believe this time it's different and people are better now and all that shit won't happen.

And of course then you get in a competition between those bullshitters, so they have to turn the heat up more and more to beat their fellow bullshitters. And what gets the most heat? Well, hate and fear and division and polarization of course. And now we are where we are and have to deal with fucking QAnon bullshit.

[BruceEel]

well put...