[Nextgrid]

> we are under daily attack from Russian accounts

We would go a long way if our communication platforms weren't intentionally amplifying the most controversial voices for the sake of maximizing ad revenue.

Back in the day the Russians needed to spend money to buy influence. Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free.

[throw__away7391]

This is the entire problem. This is possibly the single problem in the modern world. When social media first appeared, "feeds" were based on explicit subscription by the users and ordered chronologically. Later "likes" were added, but this was still based on deliberate user behavior and simple deterministic sorting while the ability to "repost" greatly expanded the reach of individual posts, later algorithms were introduced then the number of signals expanded beyond explicit user input to implicit engagement measures. Each step along this path has taken agency away from individuals.

I read articles and comments about people who were fired or suffered other consequences for something they said online, and the responses are righteous indignation--they ought to have known better than to post these things online! How did we get into this fucked up state of affairs? Social media started off as a way to talk to your friends, and over time your friends have been replaced with strangers, what they can say and who gets to say what controlled by centralized authorities, while individuals have been taught to self-censor.

It is not only the US companies or Russian bots, every government in the world is itching to get their thumb on the scale here to have a say in what the people are allowed to see, to hear, and to say.

[xilaraux]

> Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free.

Important to distinguish here that all of these companies are not just Western but American.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I'm sure there's examples of non-US media companies pushing ragebait and similar. e.g. from the UK, there's BBC, Telegraph, Daily Mail, local news sites etc.

It's a perverse incentive that in chasing engagement, the ragebait is selected for.

[RuslanL]

Do we have comparable European companies though?

[woooooo]

Isn't that just "culture"? Let the best content win? It used to be that the USA was comfortable competing and winning along these lines.

[furyofantares]

If you tautologically define "best" as "that which wins", sure.

There's many ways for something to be better than another thing, though, and a lot of stuff is winning because it's best at "engagement" even if it's really bad in many other ways.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If you tautologically define "best" as "that which wins", sure

Spot on. By OP’s metric, we should shift all agricultural and pharmaceutical production to heroin.

[woooooo]

I've seen some straw-men in my day but "OP wants to shift all agricultural production to heroin" might be an all-timer.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Yes (sort of), but the definition of best has changed so drastically built on completely different benchmarks (engagement)

As an example, watch a really good documentary on something, I would consider it best

But it might have less views than some AI slop video perhaps even generated in a minute

Another aspect relevant to the propaganda discussion is that I think modern algorithms have decided that ragebait is the best form of engagement and this is why propaganda might spread fast and how social media might actually actively help the foreign nation

I would argue that this is one of the reasons social media actively harms but its that profit over all for social media seems genuinely harmful. We need more focus on bluesky and mastodon and other alternatives as well to establish a network effect there but also that I would argue that prosecuting social media / large tech companies should have such a case where something can be prosecuted criminally for a class law suit case so that these social medias can stay better in shape than being deranged

But the issue to me feels like I am already protesting Italian even fining because in this case to me it feels like abusing the vagueness of the law and other factors so I am sure that if we give govts more power they might have the ability to abuse it as well for some lobbying powers (in this case it seems to be football)

Everything boils down to what the genuine incentives of the govts are I guess. I mean some are trying to do somethings but I guess all of this is just really tricky and the answer is in a series of changes and not a single one. There is nuance to this like every other discussion

[woooooo]

Ok, but are we losers who cannot compete culturally? Where's the faith and confidence? We can't compete with AI slop?

[saubeidl]

Can broccoli compete with heroin? Why don't we offer people both and see what they like better? Let them compete! Give people choice!

[CWuestefeld]

Who gets to decide where to draw the line?

[s1mplicissimus]

Well when I grew up in the early days of the internet, the plan was to have it decided by a democratically elected government that acts in good faith.

Since that didn't seem to work I'm kinda out of ideas as well

[woooooo]

Setting aside the bad analogy, real people are much more likely to eat broccoli than to do heroin.

[saubeidl]

Once they've had a taste of both?