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Post by WildStyle on Sept 23, 2020 10:02:50 GMT
Has anybody seen this? It features interviews from former high level employees at all the big social media companies. Talks about the way social media is polarising us and making it harder for us determine real from fake news and the devastating effect it is having on democracy.
I'd go as far as to call it the most important documentary of our lifetimes. Highly recommend everybody watch it.
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respect77
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Post by respect77 on Sept 23, 2020 10:58:49 GMT
I did watch it, but I have some issues with it, namely the suggestion that fake news is somehow connected to and generated by social media. That's such a false narrative IMO. As MJ fans we have first hand experience of traditional, corporate media generating and cementing fake news for decades. It's not a social media phenomenon IMO. Social media is just corporate media losing its monopoly in creating fake news or dictating the narrative. I guess decades long fake news re MJ in the mainstream media just made me cynical of any attempt at trying to blame fake news on social media.
I do think society is in a crisis, but I'm not sure it's all on social media. Traditional media also contributed a LOT to both people's loss of trust in news and the division. You watch CNN, MSNBC, FOX and they are all extremely partisan and divisive information bubbles. There's no truly independent media left or one that is at least trying to be fair. They are all extremely partisan. More activists than journalists. More propaganda machines than independent observers. Which adds to the divide just like social media.
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Post by elusivemoonwalker on Sept 23, 2020 12:26:07 GMT
Yeap always annoys me how fake news is pushed as a social media thing and the M.S.M tabloids never did such a thing in the past. Fake news has been around since the media existed. They just dont like how social media has taken some of their power away
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Post by WildStyle on Sept 23, 2020 12:43:40 GMT
I did watch it, but I have some issues with it, namely the suggestion that fake news is somehow connected to and generated by social media. That's such a false narrative IMO. As MJ fans we have first hand experience of traditional, corporate media generating and cementing fake news for decades. It's not a social media phenomenon IMO. Social media is just corporate media losing its monopoly in creating fake news or dictating the narrative. I guess decades long fake news re MJ in the mainstream media just made me cynical of any attempt at trying to blame fake news on social media. I do think society is in a crisis, but I'm not sure it's all on social media. Traditional media also contributed a LOT to both people's loss of trust in news and the division. You watch CNN, MSNBC, FOX and they are all extremely partisan and divisive information bubbles. There's no truly independent media left or one that is at least trying to be fair. They are all extremely partisan. More activists than journalists. More propaganda machines than independent observers. Which adds to the divide just like social media. They do touch very briefly on traditional media pre-social media in the doc but I think they make it pretty clear how social media has taken things to a very scary new level. Yes we know how poorly covered MJ has been by the media (not all media though) and social media was helpful for us during Leaving Neverland, but I'm taking my MJ fan hat off for this one. Social media has greatly increased the spread of fake news, propaganda and conspiracy theories and increased the radicalisation of people. It's undeniable. I see it first hand with my sister who has fallen prey to the new age satanic panic known as QAnon. There are literally QAnon rallies happening all over the world disguised as "freedom" rallies and "save the children" rallies. I've never seen such an obvious batshit crazy conspiracy spread so widely and so quickly in my life. It doesn't help that the US President stokes the fires and thrives on division.
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Post by pg13 on Sept 23, 2020 12:54:05 GMT
Certainly agree that social media has taken things to an extreme that traditional media couldn't do.
Especially as traditional media was largely a business whereas social media is free at the point of use.
Traditional media is more like bacteria whereas social media is more akin to a virus.
No question that things spread much faster on social media which then impacts on things on the ground.
Consider how video clips from America going viral actually inhibits police action and this causes and actual increase in crime.
Wildstyle is spot on about the INCREASED polarisation of people via social media.
It's especially useful for terrorists. Speaking of that, Tik Tok users largely from the United States of America are romanticising the Provisional IRA. That's also been influenced by BLM and the "All cops are bastards" rhetoric.
No doubt about it - social media HAS to be regulated globally sooner or later. It's scope for destabilisation is greater than traditional media's ever was.
I can honestly say thank fuck there was no such thing as social media during the Troubles. Rates of death would have been astronomically higher than it was during the traditional media & satellite TV era.
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Post by pg13 on Sept 23, 2020 12:54:47 GMT
Has anybody seen this? It features interviews from former high level employees at all the big social media companies. Talks about the way social media is polarising us and making it harder for us determine real from fake news and the devastating effect it is having on democracy.Β I'd go as far as to call it the most important documentary of our lifetimes. Highly recommend everybody watch it.Β Right up my street! Will watch it soon.
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Post by SmoothGangsta on Sept 23, 2020 23:34:30 GMT
I don't really think you can say social media has made fake news worse. It was always there and was just spread by the only way people got their news before social media, traditional media. If anything it's easier to debunk fake news now than it was before. The same type of people that believed and didn't scrutinise fake news before social media will continue to do so with it.
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Post by WildStyle on Sept 24, 2020 3:39:11 GMT
I don't really think you can say social media has made fake news worse. It was always there and was just spread by the only way people got their news before social media, traditional media. If anything it's easier to debunk fake news now than it was before. The same type of people that believed and didn't scrutinise fake news before social media will continue to do so with it. I think the real world effects that we are seeing all around the world are pretty evident. It's also not just fake news. The rate of self harm and suicide in young people have spiked dramatically directly correlating to the rise of social media. I think you're looking at this through the lens of an MJ fan. I implore you to watch the documentary if you haven't.
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respect77
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Post by respect77 on Sept 24, 2020 4:00:32 GMT
I don't think there's anything wrong to bring MJ into this discussion. His example is very much a legit example and we mention him because in his case we know enough to recognize the lies and fake news in the mainstream media. There are probably many other issues (in politics, economy etc as well) that we are not experts of, so we don't recognize how traditional media lied to us. I am pretty sure MJ isn't the only thing they lie about. When you mentioned Qanon and how this is a direct result of social media fake news, I first told to myself "that's right and we don't have an equivalent of that in traditional media" but then I thought about it and realized that there are examples like that from the era of traditional media as well. Take the Satanic Ritual Abuse moral panic of the 80s. Fully fuelled by traditional media. With real life consequences such as people going to jail based on false allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse! So we can't even say we don't have an equivalent of Qanon in traditional media. That SRA stuff was fully supported by traditional, mainstream media - it was on Oprah, Geraldo etc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuseen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembersen.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trialI would seperate the film into several sections and issues: one is the fake news issue, the other is the addictive nature of social media and what effect it has especially young people's mental health (for example, that they value themselves based on the "likes" they get on social media etc.). Those are more legit criticisms, although even there I do remember when it was television or video games that were demonized the same way as social media is now. Granted, social media is worse because people are on there smart phones all the time, it is almost unescapable at all times of the day, whereas television at least had a limited reach. So I will say SM is worse there, but I think that's where personal and parental responsibility comes in. I'm not dismissive of all of the film's claims, but I feel that blaming the current social crisis solely on social media is like blaming kids misbehaving on television or school shootings on video games in the past. I think there's a bigger context of why society is breaking down like it is breaking down now.
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Post by pg13 on Sept 25, 2020 11:47:05 GMT
Watched it the other night, but will add actual thoughts on it later at some point.
But I must say that MJ fans are not a monolith whatsoever and they're really no better or worse at detecting fake news than any other group in society.
That includes MJ related things and issues. MJ Cast, for example, have willfully distorted things that I pulled them up for on Archives. With their platform and followers behind them, they attempted to claim that a white boy didn't appear in the Pepsi 1992 commercial.
Until I took them to task with the necessary evidence to which one of them simply blocked me and the other never responded again.
This kind of thing is quite common.
Another example is how Thomson distorted what Judge Jones said by leaving out a key part of her quote which changes the meaning as a whole. Again, crickets after that one.
Even Vogel does it and a shedload of fans really couldn't tell it was nonsense without evidentiary foundation. This one will eventually be published.
As I said, MJ fans aren't a monolith and no better or worse than others at detecting fake news. This even extends to non-MJ topics and issues, especially politics.
What social media has been able to encourage on a larger scale than before is a bigger echo chamber. Block and carry on, really.
A while ago, Taj got something pretty wrong which some fans pointed out. Others encouraged him to block those individuals.
I don't like that attitude.
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Post by pg13 on Sept 28, 2020 9:50:38 GMT
I don't really think you can say social media has made fake news worse. It was always there and was just spread by the only way people got their news before social media, traditional media. If anything it's easier to debunk fake news now than it was before. The same type of people that believed and didn't scrutinise fake news before social media will continue to do so with it. That's not what they're saying in the documentary at all in that they acknowledge that manipulation of people on a macro scale is NOT a new thing. On the contrary, the argument is that it now done on a bigger, faster scale than ever before. At the Chicago Anti-Trust Conference featured in the documentary, one of the contributors, Tristan makes the point that Photoshop didn't have massive teams of people behind it trying to figure out how best to manipulate their users. But social media platforms absolutely do. Here's his point: The next guy's contribution follows on from this: This is better described not as evolution, but as escalation. The spread and dissemination of information now grows at an exponential rate. Traditional media in the medium of print, newspapers and satellite TV really cannot match the speed of social media platforms. Especially since these platforms rely on creating addictions within people who use them. The individual is, in effect, a monetised product for social media platforms to exploit. And so, fake news spreads much, much faster online than it ever has before. Indeed, such is the power of social media and the Internet that the next dominant phrase of warfare is not likely to be nuclear, conventional, irregular aka terrorist warfare. It's going to be cyber warfare. This includes social media which would be extremely important in terms of the morale of your own populace, not just your army. It's for this reason that the UK has recently developed a weapon that can destroy entire infrastructure relating to the Internet. They're clear on the purpose - it won't win a conflict on its own, but will increase the odds of winning one. Back to the addictive side of social media, the human brain hasn't evolved at all to deal with the constant demands of social media in a world of approximately 7 billion people. It's harder and harder to spot fake news. When you think you have spotted fake news, you will soon find escalation.....fake news becomes harder to discern as it becomes much more subtle in order to escape detection to achieve its goal of creating the influence it seeks to make. And it results in real world incidents on a faster scale than at any time in human history. Here's an article discussing how fake news spreads online can worsen the current coronavirus pandemic: www.bbc.com/news/stories-52731624Pizzagate is another example of fake news spread online resulting in real world incidents. These examples and others is certainly why I'm glad there was no social media around between 1969 and 1998. I see Taj Jackson is currently spreading fake news on Twitter after watching a fan made video. Twitter is second to Facebook in terms of social media platform spreading the most fake news. If he puts that in any future documentary, he and it will be ripped to shreds with plenty of evidence against it. Expect his efforts to be underwhelming since he cannot discern fake news from true information as well as he thinks......
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respect77
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Post by respect77 on Sept 28, 2020 10:05:05 GMT
Traditional media in the medium of print, newspapers and satellite TV really cannot match the speed of social media platforms They might not have the speed but they had monopoly to information before the Internet and social media, and if they used that monopoly to spread falsehoods then those falsehoods got easily cemented, without anyone challenging it. MJ is again a good example of this. In 1993 there was no way of checking it out whether what the media wrote about the case was true or false and very often it was false or at the very least one-sided, as we know now when, thanks to the Internet we have more access to information (eg. a simple fan can post court documents on social media for everyone to see etc). Or see how horribly one-sided and superficial the mainstream media has been when it came to LN. The only channel fans had to fight against that wave is social media. Mainstream media still has a lot of power, because people actually do trust it more still what they read in, say, Vanity Fair in those horrible Maureen Orth articles, than what they read on social media. But this is actually a good example of how just because something is in mainstream media it doesn't mean it's more trustworthy than what is on social media. And while we have less power than establishment mainstream media, at the very least social media gives us e channel to call out the BS in the mainstream media, which has been a lot more difficult before the Internet and social media.
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Post by pg13 on Sept 28, 2020 10:24:02 GMT
Traditional media in the medium of print, newspapers and satellite TV really cannot match the speed of social media platforms The other side of the coin is that traditional media had monopoly to information before the Internet and social media, and if they used that monopoly to spread falsehoods then those falsehoods got easily cemented, without anyone challenging it. MJ is again a good example of this. In 1993 there was no way of checking it out whether what the media wrote about the case was true or false and very often it was false or at the very least one-sided, as we know now when, thanks to the Internet we have more access to information (eg. a simple fan can post court documents on social media for everyone to see etc). Or see how horribly one-sided and superficial the mainstream media has been when it came to LN. The only channel fans had to fight against that wave is social media. Mainstream media still has a lot of power, because people actually do trust it more still what they read in, say, Vanity Fair in those horrible Maureen Orth articles, than what they read on social media. But this is actually a good example of how just because something is in mainstream media it doesn't mean it's more trustworthy than what is on social media. And while we have less power than establishment mainstream media, at the very least social media gives us e channel to call out the BS in the mainstream media, which has been a lot more difficult before the Internet and social media. Even then, traditional media simply did NOT have the reach of today's social media platforms. At the time, very significant numbers of people didn't consume newspapers or television on a daily basis. Much less on a near 24/7 basis! With today's reach of social media, even MORE people now have access to information than was ever possible in the pre-Internet days. Indeed, it was harder to create an addiction to newspapers, TV and radio than it is with social media platforms. What we have is escalation of the speed of dissemination which engages MORE people than ever before. The reach of traditional media has been surpassed and then some by social media. Facebook alone has over 2.7 billion active users as of second quarter 2020 and was the first to surpass 1 billion users in 2012. Two things: 1) this eclipses the reach of the most successful traditional media outlet. 2) the speed is really exponential in terms of Facebook's growth which, again, eclipses that of traditional media. Indeed, research shows that those who distrust traditional media more than social media are more susceptible to believing, and spreading, fake news. Indeed, social media greatly influences distrust of traditional media: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191104112814.htmAnd Michael Jackson fans do spread falsehoods information online as well! They are not a monolith or quite as good at detecting falose information as they like to think of themselves as being. That's the reality.
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Post by pg13 on Sept 28, 2020 10:34:44 GMT
In the context of The Social Dilemma documentary, MJ isn't really a major issue at all.
The documentary in the later stages concerns itself with the potential for social media to pose a threat to democracy.
It just so happens that politics is the number one area of false news being spread around the world.
Not those involving celebrities.
If people increasingly find it difficult to discern false information from real, it can create problems in the real world.
Including spreading resources to deal with terrorism, emergencies, law enforcement, elections and so on.
Arguably, the fabric of society. That is where the real problem lies and where the real fight is also.
Hence, cyber warfare WILL become the predominant area of combat in the 21st century. Something we discussed in my Terrorism, Security and Counter-Terrorism course.
Wildstyle is right here about taking the MJ fan hat off for this one.
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respect77
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Post by respect77 on Sept 28, 2020 10:48:19 GMT
In the context of The Social Dilemma documentary, MJ isn't really a major issue at all. The documentary in the later stages concerns itself with the potential for social media to pose a threat to democracy. It just so happens that politics is the number one area of false news being spread around the world. Not those involving celebrities. If people increasingly find it difficult to discern false information from real, it can create problems in the real world. Including spreading resources to deal with terrorism, emergencies, law enforcement, elections and so on. Arguably, the fabric of society. That is where the real problem lies and where the real fight is also. Hence, cyber warfare WILL become the predominant area of combat in the 21st century. Something we discussed in my Terrorism, Security and Counter-Terrorism course. Wildstyle is right here about taking the MJ fan hat off for this one. MJ is simply a case study that we are all familiar with here, that's why I'm bringing him up. What makes you think though, that although traditional media often lied about MJ, they were generally trustworthy about politics, economy, social issues etc? As far as I see the traditional media is in a crisis of people not trusting them and that crisis is largely their own making. When you watch CNN or MSNBC, or Fox News on the other side they aren't doing journalism. They are doing political activism and propaganda for their preferred side. I remember when CNN covered a wide variety of news, but these days it's just 24/7 "Trump is Hitler" political propaganda. I stopped watching them for news because it's just Trump, Trump, Trump now, as if nothing else exists in this world. They are clearly not a news channel any more. And this same thing is true of newspapers etc. I think it's a convenient excuse to blame social media for the crisis that traditional media is in, without them having to accept accountability for their failure. My issue is not with criticism of social media. Surely it has its many issues and downside. But in a world where you see mainstream media pundits (be it Don Lemon or Tucker Carlson) use inflammatory, divisive and aggressive language against the other side of the political spectrum, I don't think it's fair to just go on about social media as the culprit in why society is breaking down, while ignoring the role of traditional media in it.
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