Donald Trump to launch social media platform called Truth Social
theguardian.comHow big is the danger of polarization of society and further misinformation?
I'm sure there will be some truths spoken on Truth Social that don't get much airtime on other platforms, but it'll be thin on the ground and covered with a nice thick blanket of conspiracies, misinformation and hatred. The big question is: will this platform provide a decent mechanism for dealing with the inevitable disagreements? Will "outsiders" have the freedom to join the platform and disagree with the typical Trumpian view of the world? How will the platform handle such disagreement? Just like every other platform that uses moderation (banning/censorship)?
My problem with social media is that is all about centering the user and letting them feel important and socially connected. You end up with a billion fools, with their carefully chosen avatars and third-person personas, shouting into the void, desperate for acknowledgement and esteem. And like any addictive system, the social platform provides just enough constant feedback to keep them there. It will entice them to agree with and regurgitate any opinion that their social bubble approves of. And along with the fools who clap, other fools will boo. And we all love a good old scrap when we've got our own gang backing us up!
Most social media platforms are toxic. They all want to be addictive, so they all have these same "flaws". They don't allow for progress. At one point I was an avid Redditor, but I was once part of a subreddit that for canned very unfairly, and with zero opportunity for appeal. It simply found itself with a percentage of its followers not believing a certain prevailing dogma. Systems like this don't allow for human progress. You just get billions of people shouting the same handful of ideas all the time. People from different sides no longer have to bother with tedious definitions, logic or proofs. Opinions are getting more polarised, and people are less tolerant to those outside their bubble. We're now in a situation where college graduates in first-world countries don't believe that the earth is round, that vaccines work, or that biological sex is actually a thing.
Honestly, I'd prefer to see a purpose-built debating platform taken to new heights. Unfortunately it wouldn't be a success because it wouldn't be designed to addict the masses. It wouldn't give everybody their 10 minutes of self importance on the soap box, and drip-fed feelgoods, and righteous anger at the enemy. Instead, people would be interacting with a system that has advanced text analysis, detecting bad definitions, spellings, grammar, logic and attitude. Progress in a given debate would be slow and tedious and definitely not for everyone's taste. But imagine any debate you like, conducted in this manner! One week in you would have a two-way conversation that could be followed by any layperson, catching them up with term definitions and the key points of disagreement. Add to that some type of overlay that allows users to weigh up the relative values of each argument using a variety of philosophical lenses.
Your last two paragraphs especially hint at a lack of philosophical education. I'm poorly educated myself in that regard, but the more I learn, the more I'm convinced that it seems to be extremely important nowadays.
social media is just a poor mans jouralism.
what you want is what we have, except its missing some proper funding mechanism.
We don't have it. The system I describe should be less about interacting with others and convincing them that they are wrong, and more about allowing me to explore my own ideas and find the core principles that underlie them. I'd be fascinated to have a system prompt me with questions about my position, point out where my thinking isn't joined up, tell me what my sacred cows are. Some positions I'll be able to back up with a reference to a statistic, others will boil down to "I just think it, but I don't know why". A system that points out where I use a word in two different ways, a kind-of unintended bait-and-switch inside my own head. Because so many heated debates end without resolution because both parties are talking past each other with different definitions of words and phrases. We're so hung up on specific words that we'll flip a table when someone says the wrong thing, even if there's no intended malice, because it wins the argument or gets someone blocked/banned. Important discussions descend to the level of "well if that's what I am what are you", "you can't triple stamp a double stamp, Lloyd", "LA LA LA LA LA LA".
Where do we have this system that simply lacks funding?