When I see Tucker Carlson pushed into my YouTube recommendations I start to worry “what am I watching?”. The algorithms are all about doubling down. You get an exponential effect that leads to more radical views. We need our institutions to show leadership in mixing people of different views and counteracting the polarizing effects of social media. But instead they just pick a side and add to the effect. Someone goes through DEIA training during the day - at their work. It pisses the off. They go home and start watching YouTube videos of why it’s misguided. Those videos just lead them farther and farther down the rabbit hole. Or the opposite happens and they go down the rabbit hole of SJW videos. Either way - It’s not good.
In 2018, Friend A posted a story on Facebook about how the mayor of a city wanted to stop their EMTs from answering calls for people who were overdosing. Apparently people were using in public places because if they ODed then chances were high that someone would call for help whereas if they were alone at home they would most likely not make it. The justification was that there were so many called involving ODs that if someone was having any other medical issue they were finding the EMT response time high. The thinking was the ODs should be further down on the response list.
Friend B posted about how horrible that was and how terrible for this mayor to have no sympathy for these drug addicts.
Fast forward to 2020. Friend B is all over FB talking about how if you’re out of the house and getting Covid you are taking a bed in the hospital from someone who really needs it. Selfish, Trump-supporter, killing people, irresponsible, etc. and so on.
I think much of today’s social unrest is directly attributable to these algorithms that reinforce rather then educate, that inflame rather than inform. The process drives eyeballs, which drives clicks, which drives advertising revenues. It’s central to the business model of firms like Twitter and Facebook. But people like it because it’s “free”. How many of us are willing to pay to subscribe to a social media site that doesn’t do this? Perhaps the old adage is true: you get what you pay for.
Good question. That's above my understanding. Why does the algorithm have to decide? Can't we prompt much like we do with search engines and be responsible for defining our own areas of interest? I think you would need a paid subscription model to make this work, however. Another option might be a checklist of interests, but those seem to get overriden in my experience.
I guess it doesn’t have to make suggestions at all, but to stop it would require a curtailing of the freedoms we currently exercise. I feel perfectly capable of discerning which content has value and which is intentionally inflammatory. I think one of the big problems is that my feelings aren’t unique. Everyone feels the same way about themselves. They are approaching their feeds with clarity and good judgement. It’s all these other sheep who can’t see that they are being manipulated.
I think your suggestions would make social media far less attractive. And maybe thats the only solution. Make social media so user-unfriendly that people spend way less time on it.
A modest proposal, put down the phone, get off your ass, and actually talk to people you otherwise wouldn’t. Sure , you may have to screw up your courage, but it’s all for the best. I believe if you do this, social media is useful, but not primary. As a bonus, you can pick out the race baiters easily!
I’m a white guy who has many black American friends, lived and worked in black communities, etc. etc. and genuinely loves and seeks out connections with people. Since the 1990’s I’ve had this sense that the differences between our cultures was closing. Now, I can’t even get Black members of my community to return a nod or a passing, “good evening.”—things that were common 5 years ago, hell, things I learned from my black friends and mentors. Who am I going to talk to when it’s become clear that no one wants to talk to me?
The real fear I have is that ultimately it will just mean more black isolation and and resentment because everyone else (not just white Americans) simply won’t want to deal with it beyond whatever they can culturally milk for “authentic artistic suffering.” Wokeism a dangerous wave to surf and when the small coterie of self-flagellating whites dries up, what will have changed?
I have had similar experiences, but going back to the 1950s. It seems like since the ‘60s Civil Rights Act, relations between races has deteriorated. Thank you, white liberal guilt, for f**king things up.
I’m a big advocate of actually chatting with people of all different backgrounds either when there is a purpose larger than my own interests or just whenever an opportunity presents itself during some quotidian errand or appointment (especially since I tend toward introversion and even a kind of socially avoidant shyness when there is no larger event or purpose via which to interact). My mom was the same way and her advice: take people as they come, is still good counsel. Living in Brooklyn and actually caring about the whole borough and city, beyond just a half-dozen artisanally-curated neighborhoods in the north and northwest of the borough, gave me yeh opportunity to take both jobs and volunteer assignments all over the city. The only people I harbor a bit of a grudge against are the incredibly smug, actually very privileged denizens of places like Brownstone Brooklyn. Point is, my comfort zone became going outside my comfort zone. But it’s coming up on 7-8-9 years since I’ve done a lot of that work. One generally positive replacement was working for a big NYC agency in which my top manager and approx 2/3 of my coworkers were black or Afro-Caribbean. Having top exam scores was the only way I got interviews, but I wouldn’t be surprised if part of why I eventually got an offer (I’m a white, straight male) was my resume and some of the anecdotes I could reference about my experience clearly showed the (modest, but useful) work I did on voting rights and criminal justice reform.
Now?
I have no idea how I’d be perceived.
Then, I would walk into the lobbies of more NYCHA houses and buildings than I can remember and feel quite comfortable. Of course most residents of tough neighborhoods are good people, now as then. But NYC had not yet begun to descend into lawlessness. Incidences of violent crimes had not yet begun to spike. I heard a lot of residents talking about who got shot, who almost got shot, who was gonna get shot and saw far too many young people limping, possibly from catching a bullet. But if I saw a cluster of young men, I’d just nod to one who looked like a leader and say “what’s up?” And go on my way. Maybe I’d mention the campaign which brought me there, if people were waiting for an elevator or something. I walked all around West Philly and it was striking to see fellow volunteers including middle aged black women look a little uncertain, while I would stride up to the first however imposing person I saw on a block to introduce ourselves.
How would I be perceived now?
Most people are just people and respond with basic politeness if not friendliness when treated with the same. But there’s no doubt the *apparent* atmosphere around race has changed enormously in the past several years. And it’s deeply concerning to read, as in this post, that as institutions of pop culture have elevated and relentlessly promoted a genre that at its worst acts as a sort of an emotionally charged almost slavery porn or Jim Crow porn, social media algorithms are encouraging people to to dwell in polarizing and even radicalizing echo chambers in which supposedly ubiquitous racial injustice is relentlessly shared and consumed. I’m afraid the spike in violent crime and elevation and imposition of neoracist ideology is simultaneously pushing people in very different echo chambers into a generalized lack of empathy and compassion for their black fellow Americans. While any sign of such reaction in the extended online friend and family groups people see on social media feed the idea among white and other progressives that racism and white supremacy truly are blaring societal emergencies which can only be met by an ever-more aggressive and competitively performative “anti-racism” - an “anti-racism” that ipso facto condemns and ostracizes anyone who ever-so-slightly dissents or who haplessly tries to moderate and better ground these sentiments.
I’m afraid what’s online, more broadly and among the establishment on the left, but I’m sure just as intensely on the actual far-right, is becoming something like mass formation, in which, eventually, performative (and actual) cruelty toward the out group is seen and felt as a compelling duty and the highest form of virtue.
“ eventually, performative (and actual) cruelty toward the out group is seen and felt as a compelling duty and the highest form of virtue.”
Let’s hope not! I’d like to think that there were real philosophical changes in humans having gone through the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. “Do unto others…” is still a really compelling philosophy and hopefully we can get back there or go further down that road that some of the other ideas on offer.
The horrors of slavery and Jim Crow have not changed human nature. Many people have a cruel, even sadistic streak and relish others' pain and fear. I have just read a collection of stories by an "anti-racist" Black British author - revenge violence (sometimes clearly sadistic) against whites and "disreputable" Blacks was celebrated and glorified in many of the stories.
Let me be more specific: in the 19th century humanity could no longer justify slavery, particularly racially based slavery. The same can be said of all racist laws (ex. Jim Crow, Apartheid) which simply couldn’t stand up to rationality and basic humanism. Much like the ideas of universal suffrage, it’s unlikely, barring the complete dissolution of civilization, that we’d be able to convince ourselves, as a species, that somehow that was actually ok and the way it “oughtta be.”
Of course there will always be people who can’t see beyond their prejudices, but I don’t think this is (currently) a notable majority in any meaningful sub-culture. It’s very hard to argue against, “they can do what they want as long as they leave me out of it,” which is why there’s so much backlash to the Woke agenda. It can’t pass the smell test for most people and requires a special kind of dupe to fall for it.
I agree with you to some extent, but I feel that you are being too optimistic. Cruelty toward the out group continues to be very widespread. Unfortunately many people now believe that "oppressors" deserve to be hated and humiliated.
There are people who openly demonize whites in a racist way, and there are also people who demonize Jews. I have recently seen a short where a positive character (the audience is expected to empathize with her) talks about a white woman who stole her boyfriend in this way: "a whole pig", she is "made of pork"... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwiod-1FcVk
I have also mentioned in another comment a book I have just read (fortunately the book has not been noticed by the mainstream media and critics). The book is filled with revenge fantasies where whites and Jews are being killed (sometimes on a mass scale), tortured to death etc. One of the stories depicts a future world where the few surviving "pink-skins" are forced to live on an island and are unable to reproduce.
The author of this book describes himself as a "diversity and inclusion consultant". He portrays his book as anti-racist and radical. It is a perfect example of a new type of racism which either goes unnoticed, or is seen as an understandable reaction to centuries of white racism.
Did any of these Black people from your community earlier acknowledge you? When did you notice this change you mention? I find it very strange and sad.
Fortunately it is still possible for white people to interact with Black people online. And I am sure that there are many Black people who are ready to talk to white strangers. After all, there are even lots of Black people ready to date "interracially"!
Thanks for asking because this is a sensitive topic I barely feel comfortable bringing up. I’ll say at the outset one confounding factor is that I’m also old now. I noticed long ago that the black folk in my area of Chicago were more likely to interact with young guys than old guys. It’s possible I simply look like the “typical white villain” now and that could be as much at play as anything more broadly social.
That said…I definitely noticed that my interactions with black people in my neighborhood of Uptown (before that Logans Square and before that Rogers Park) in the past five years or so have deteriorated. Neighborly nods and, “how d’you do’s” replaced with scowls or this weird refusal to make eye contact. It’s obviously not everyone (old black men seem less likely to pretend I’m not standing in front of them) but I’ve seen a noticeable shift, especially with young men and middle aged women.
I’m willing to grant it might be based on real resentment, (though I find it difficult to imagine it’s not being stoked somehow) and people may be suffering more and less willing to play pretend that everything is ok. But the loud and public focus on race just seems so backward to me and I don’t understand why the emphasis isn’t placed on Class which seems to be the real dividing line between us. I have a hunch that it’s almost entirely the police issue with a sprinkling of NPR home-ownership numbers and negative wealth statistics to cap the story of racial inequality.
I recently moved to a small city in Maryland in search of a nice semi-rural plot of land. This was a plan long before Covid, fwiw. I’ve been trying to find a barber. I went into a black owned barber shop and got a decent haircut and liked my barber, however I clearly shocked and upset everyone except the owner who was (like me) ex-air force. All of my other haircuts I’ve been shit, but I just can’t bring myself to go back there knowing everyone is uncomfortable having me there. (I get that black barbershops are a special place and am also taking that into account…I probably just made a mistake and should never go back, still…) I don’t see how it’s possible to “simply go out and talk to people,” without some kind of intermediating force that lets everyone know they’re safe. It’s super frustrating to not be able to have normal relationships with people.
I’d like to finish by saying that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing so many different black folk in so many different contexts that I can’t help but get really upset when people talk as if all black Americans share the same mind. It’s so antithetical to everything I’ve come to believe, all of my experiences, and everyone I’ve known. I think the truth is that black and white Americans are drawn toward each other, that it’s likely always been that way with ‘actual racism’ as this splinter in our hearts we can’t pull out and never seems to heal. A book I love that I think gets close to this idea is Kindred by Octavia Butler. The things pushing us apart are synthetic…people want to be together but you can’t force someone to like you, especially if they’re terrified.
I agree with you, I am not sure if it would be a good idea to go back to this Black-owned barbershop. Interestingly, the short I mentioned in my earlier reply to one of your comments focuses on whites who visit a Black hair salon... I personally think that it is better to avoid situations where one may be seen by some people as an arrogant white intruder.
I don't think that white people should go out of their way to start conversations with Black strangers e.g. in the street. I am sure that it can be perceived as annoying and intrusive despite the good intentions of the white person. In my opinion it is better to remain silent than to face the possibility of a painful rejection.
Obviously it is not true that all black Americans share the same mind and have the same views! But when you say that black and white Americans are drawn toward each other, I feel like adding that mutual fascination does not rule out hostility and prejudice.
You say: "people want to be together but you can’t force someone to like you, especially if they’re terrified." I don't think that it is about fear. I think that it is unfortunately much more about mistrust, resentment and sometimes also contempt. I guess that some Black people simply see no reason to talk to white strangers and unfortunately I don't find it surprising...
Yeah agreed about the barber shop. I can totally respect people need a place that's theirs...of course I do, I'm a late 20th century white American male, this is how I was trained.
I also agree about the starting conversations out of nowhere thing: trying to force people into a relationship is weird. I meant something far more subtle that's hard to put a finger on. It's more like a sense that there is simply no connection between our worlds or that I'm merely a ghost to be ignored. This feels different to me. I'm probably doing a terrible job expressing it an making myself look like a psycho.
Lastly, all of the things you mention, mistrust, resentment, contempt, I view as downstream of fear. This is a big topic but in the past 20 years there have been real upheavals and catastrophes that have revealed how fraught our civilization is (9-11, Katrina, 2008 collapse, pressures of social media, Patriot Act and the rise of the surveillance state, environmental anxiety, overdose epidemics, Covid, etc.). There's no room for error and everyone viscerally feels the razor under their feet. No one can stand to live like this, and now we have an entire generation of young adults raised completely during this time of turmoil.
When every action could lead to destruction the tow common reactions are hedonism ("f@ck it, nothing matters.") or authoritarianism ("tell me what to do to save myself."). Both of these will lead to disappointment--quickly--and from there resentment. I'm not sure I've laid out my case very well, but I see fear as the starting point for all of the other problems we're seeing.
I personally think that you had the right to come to a Black-owned barber shop, but sadly we live in times where it can be perceived in a negative, racialized way... And I do understand what you mean when you say that you feel as if you were a ghost to be ignored - no, you don't sound at all like a psycho!
I have occasionally had similar experiences - e.g. a Black security guy in a supermarket seemed to ignore my greeting and once a Black woman seemed to deliberately ignore my reply to a question she had asked online (no one else has replied to her question). However, I have no idea if they behaved in this way because of my skin colour. Maybe the security guy was surprised by my greeting; maybe the woman lacked good manners... In fact, I have to add that I sometimes felt ignored by white strangers.
I am saying to myself that maybe these people who ignore you (or at least some of them) are simply being rude. Do you ever feel ignored by white strangers?
I agree with you that people have many reasons to be frightened or even terrified, but mistrust, resentment and contempt can be present in the absence of any fear. Despite all the problems and catastrophes you mention America is one of the richest countries in the world and its citizens enjoy a very high living standard compared to earlier historical periods.
I feel that you want to believe that people are inherently good and reasonable and simply very frightened. I have a much less positive image of human beings. Many people love feeling superior to others, dominating and hurting others. At the same time there are people who don't want to do any of these things, even if they have experienced all kinds of traumas etc. I have no idea what makes some people humble and kind and other people self-righteous and cruel, but you are definitely one of the former.
I'm Asian and an immigrant to the US. I walked into a black barber shop a year ago. I sat there waiting for my turn. New customers (all black) came and were called before me. I tried asking when they estimate I could get a quick trim. They said an hour. After an hour I was still waiting and they just ignored me when I tried to get their attention. So I left. I had thought they had a call in to book appointment system and didn't have space for walk-ins. But after reading your story I'm now thinking maybe I had the wrong skin color and should not have walked in there.
If an Asian nail salon refused to serve its black customers, it would be all over the news. This Barber shop thing seems like double standards to me.
Jul 24, 2022·edited Jul 24, 2022Liked by Nikita Petrov
Disclosure: I am a software engineer building online advertising systems.
// How can we gauge the true intensity of the culture war—and find a way to dial it down—when algorithms and other forms of AI generate profit by amplifying it?
You are fed what you engage with. There are millions of people who's only experience of [insert media platform] is makeup tutorials, sports, etc. Most platforms expose tools for you to curate your feed. Youtube/Facebook et.al. have little buttons that say "I'm not interested in this" - those buttons _work_. You can also uninstall or block the apps, and yes it is possible, people do it all the time.
In general, talk of this manner surrenders way too much agency to the platforms. The main driver of the content you engage with is _you_.
// Is online interaction giving us a clear picture of who thinks and feels what?
No. Mostly its you looking into your own reflection.
// does our very participation online leave our thoughts and feelings vulnerable to manipulation?
Yes, but so do most things. If you read the NYT, you are being manipulated. Platforms want to maximize time-on-site, and that is different flavor of manipulation, but its not obvious which is worse. This probably varies case-by-case.
EDIT:
// social media companies need to be more transparent about how their algorithms work. We need to understand how they are curating our content and why they are making the choices they are making.
I make algorithms for a living. With a few narrow exceptions, "how" or "why" are not questions that can be answered in a way that people would find satisfying. We have a few options:
1) I can point you to the formal mathematical specification in any number of textbooks. Read them, and you will know one kind of "how"
2) I can show you the ten billion numbers that constitute it for a second kind of "how"
3) I can say "why" in that X content maximized the probability of you generating money for the platform.
4) Sometimes (but more often not) I can say "why" in that the model considers certain things "important". But in what way its important I (typically) cant say.
Imagine you have a brain in a jar, you ask me why the brain did Y instead of Z. I answer that by showing you a video of all the neurons activating at the time the decision was made. This is a bad example for various reasons, but it illustrates that "why/how" are not applicable questions.
The reason we can't answer questions like this is not a conspiracy of silence on the part of tech companies - its that nobody has an answer humans can comprehend let alone accept.
This is all true. This is not about the ethics of individual programmers as much as companies like Facebook wanting to maximize engagement with their platform instead of healthy civic engagement and not really having the will or capacity to deal with the consequences later.
// maximize engagement ... instead of healthy civic engagement
You make a site that optimizes "healthy civic engagement" and I'll make one that maximizes Kardashians' butts. Lets see who is in business a year later.
We can make it illegal to run competitor to Zuckerburg inc., and then mandate "eat your vegetables" FDA/CDC/FBI propaganda. Pretty sure thats not what people want, but AFAIKT its the only solve that would address the grievances people have.
// not really having the will or capacity to deal with the consequences
What specifically would 'dealing with them' entail that isn't currently being done? Answer that question in an actionable, unproblematic way and you'll be a billionaire.
People talk about tech giants as if they are the simultaneous monocausal source and panacea to all problems. This, when we have an enormous difficulty defining or agreeing on what the problems are, let alone coming up with solutions that aren't even worse.
I was relatively active when it was still possible to talk about the "netroots" as a community until the internecine conflict about Obama just got too toxic for me. (And my mother died and making two minyanim a day was suddenly much more important than whatever some internet personality was yelling.) The political blogosphere, depending on the site, might have provided only caricatures of the other side and the 2008 primary was so awful that I now keep my presidential primary online discourse to a minimum, but it was very effective in getting people to participate and pay attention to small details about the political process that were under the MSM's radar. And most of the bloggers didn't make a living by blogging. You could get healthy civic engagement out of that in the offline world. Social media incentives are very different. To be fair, it is possible to get good information from both political science Twitter and election data Twitter. But an ordinary citizen who doesn't know very much will walk into an environment where people can confine their "activism" exclusively to online; the activism is often of "personal is political" type; users don't have long histories of past statements for many or most of the people they are engaging with just from a history with the site; and many of the rewards are for one-liners at the expense of whatever foolish thing someone on the other side said. This is not a recipe for productive conversations about politics even with one's own family. All this leads me to conclude that you COULD make money with a civic engagement site. But scale and trying to be everything advertiser-friendly to everybody at once might have to be sacrificed. The sites might have to be replacements for local journalism in some way.
Extremely simple things that Facebook and Twitter could both do are
a) let users discover who to follow and what groups to join entirely by themselves
b) not place content in users'feeds for the sole reason of getting an emotional rise out of the users.
Social media companies need to do more to take down obvious hate speech when it is reported to them, but I am not willing to think that the answer is taking down "disinformation" as much as encouraging people to have more media literacy.
They could step us through a few examples, the way a programmer would if he were using a debugger. But my complaint is not about the algorithms working too well, but about the algorithms working poorly -- if the intent is to increase my engagement by catering to my interests.
I'd never heard of Ray Epps until the NYT piece. My impression, after watching the videos, was that it was very suspicious not only that he wasn't locked up, but that the NYT would write a piece defending him. He seemed the poster boy for "insurrectionist," the person most deserving of being thrown underneath the jail by the Democrats. I started reading pieces reflecting my suspicions. However, when I did Google news searches on "Ray Epps," I was flooded, and still am, with articles such as -- and this is a real example -- "The Little Guys Being Taken Down by Trumpworld." Epps was a man urging people, starting the day before and continuing on Jan 6, to go INSIDE the Capitol and now he is being "taken down by Trump world"?
Anyway, people can argue the pros and cons of algorithms feeding my existing preconceptions until the cows come home; that is a conversation worth having. My complaint is about the information pushed on me when the designers of the algorithms clearly have an interest in NOT feeding my preconceptions, but rather in "educating" me.
(On the other hand, YouTube suggestions are amazingly attentive to my short and long term viewing habits. They have my number, so to speak.)
// They could step us through a few examples, the way a programmer would if he were using a debugger.
Machine learning doesn't work like this. A trained model is not a sequence of interpretable instructions. When I make a system that works I dont have any idea of "why" it works in the sense that people would find satisfying.
A person's history has to be stored somewhere. A devoted Sean Hannity fan is somehow distinguishable from a Rachel Maddow devotee. In the end, it's all 1's and 0's. I believe I would find it satisfying.
That said, I'm open to being disabused should a piece of reasonable length exist which makes your case. I'm not trying to be argumentative. It's just that I can't imagine how it would be impossible to trace the exact behavior of the algorithms. It's not magic.
This is Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy in real life. The answer is 42. Are you actually happy with that? (Actually the answer is a vector of 2.3 million numbers between 0 and 1, but the volume doesn't make it easier to comprehend.)
// I can't imagine how it would be impossible
I can't change the boundaries of your imagination. Interestingly, this is part of the problem - people have never encountered anything like it and so they literally cannot conceive of anything this complicated. Until I got into it I would have said the same thing.
The best I can do is the brain in the jar analogy. A complete map of every neuron firing in my head is not regarded as an acceptable explanation for why I ate eggs for breakfast. We are in a field where the limit of the possible is the neuron map.
If you dont want to believe that, the only thing left is point you to a series of math, programming, and machine learning textbooks.
I was trying to be polite, so I used "I can't imagine" and "I believe I would find." Forgive me. Your contention amounts to saying bugs cannot be fixed, nor adjustments made, because the system is too complicated. Manifestly, that is not true. Your combativeness does not strengthen your case.
// Your contention amounts to saying bugs cannot be fixed, nor adjustments made, because the system is too complicated.
No. My contention is that there are no techniques that make these systems sufficiently interpretable _today_. Maybe we will be able to do it 10 years from now, but as of this moment it simply doesn't exist.
// Manifestly, that is not true.
Electrons are both a particle and a waveform. It makes no sense, and yet it is so. Insisting otherwise doesn't change the facts.
// Your combativeness does not strengthen your case.
My apologies, I tend to avoid posting because I gravitate towards edgy analogies and snark. I'm not trying to be combative, but it falls out of me.
It has been a few years since I watched it, but Grant Sanderson (a.k.a. 3Blue1Brown) has a really nice series of four short videos on neural networks if you have the math background to follow it - mainly linear algebra and multivariable calculus. I seem to recall him doing, as he always does, an excellent job explaining why the different "layers" involved in such a network really can't be interpreted in a clear manner - even to those who designed the network.
As a person who has worked with algorithms (albeit for trading not socials) this answer resonates with me. A huge issue with this debate is the fact that people don’t want to admit the solution is giving up something they value…they want every other kind of fix except the one that actually makes a difference.
Second, I recently was musing on what I think is a different issue: most people prefer one social over all others as a primary. These each have very different methods of engagement, cultures, ideologies, technologies, populations, etc. at a higher level than algorithms, are the multitude of platforms driving wedges into the social fabric? I see the social war content as less important (or perhaps the glue uniting the field of social media) than the fact that everyone is simply veering away from the means of communicating universally.
This is a bit half-baked but seems appropriate in this thread. Perhaps it’s a reflection of Jonathan Haidt’s Tower of Babel metaphor.
Sea Sentry, SWJ is social justice warrior. Another old adage is the voter gets what they deserve, good and hard. You will not be able to overturn the profit motive so the algorithms will continue, and the political parties will leverage the anger to motivate their base. But politics ebbs and flows and the movement to the left has engendered the current support of the right politically and push back in areas like education. Remember that the politicians are arguing about symptoms and the answer we need is to address the root cause which is the destruction of the family. Addressing that is the discussion we need.
What's worse, algorithms that reinforce existing biases or algorithms that say WE just can't allow you to read or see stuff because we think it will get you to consider things WE don't think you should consider?
Both filtering modes are obnoxious but filtering out information that some millennial desk jockey thinks shouldn’t be seen because it’s dangerous is worse. In my opinion.
I respect the contributor's perspective. (I respect Glenn's intro more, tho'.)
"especially for people of color"
I have a problem with this. As a people, of course "we" are more likely to click on topics that touch on racial issues. But that's been true all my life. I cannot say that social media algorithms are making things worse per se. And I certainly do not think that "our" issues with this technology are particularly more serious or troubling than other groups. Frankly it depends on what groups we are talking about.
Zeroing in on *racial* groups obscures the picture.
All that said, please don't get me wrong. This topic is both critical and fundamental. But we need to delve much deeper to truly understand this data.
People can have a huge interest in something, click on relevant links all day and still not be imprisoned by any kind of echo chamber. (Trust me. It's not hard to do =))
Yeah, I think it’s important not to confuse human minds with sponges. So many people, in my experience, walk around thinking everyone except, of course them, is a totally gullible moron who believes everything they hear IF they’re even listening. There are plenty of fools in the world but if one is oriented to only see fools, they miss the bright minds that might actually illuminate.
Racial hatred (and the stoking and cultivation thereof) is a massive business and revenue stream in America.
As we all know, the MSM treats the latest possible white-cop-on-black-victim incident like a movie studio treats a summer blockbuster: wall-to-wall coverage, flashing lights and colors, everyone dedicated to the same task of pouring as much gasoline as possible onto a social fire. (And any inconvenient facts or context ignored or buried.)
Of course politicians exist to make their voters addled with so much hatred and fear of the Other over there, with the goal being a malleable gullible populace that gladly gives up its liberty for a spurious safety (but is really just a desire to punch the other team on the nose).
And then more recently, academia has whole enormous bureaucracies dedicated to dividing us all by skin color and attaching moral value based on our official Oppressor/Oppressed points total. (Academia being Patient Zero of our perpetually occurring Race War, the heart of the White Guilt Industrial Complex, constantly pumping out 10,000 theories that all say the same thing: Everything is Oppression, which can only be cured by unlimited Leftist social engineering.)
And lastly, there is an entire cottage industry of websites, blogs, brands, Tweeters, journalists etc that have their customers hooked on the Race War just like a dealer gets his customer hooked on crack: for the Left, they pay to be fed constant tales of the evil bigotry of their blood enemies, the Deplorables, with reminders that they are the Good ones because they know to always "center the marginalized" and never forget to capitalize Black; for the right, they pay to be fed constant tales of black dysfunction and criminality, with reminders that they are the Good ones because they raise patriotic law-abiding children.
We like to believe that Love Conquers All (Love Wins!) but the truth is that no one can really love a stranger (except as an abstraction) but you can easily and happily hate one (or millions). Hate gets the blood flowing and makes us jump out of bed in the morning ready for another day fighting the imaginary enemy—we all love to hate and our corporate hate dealers are more than happy to have us hooked, demanding larger and larger doses.
And hey, in the worst-case scenario, if some kind of race war breaks out, think of how good that will be for business!
Yes, but the hate is a mile wide and an inch deep and is self-correcting. Look at the polling of historical Dem constituencies running to the right. The more important question is what will the right do with their likely electoral victory in '22 and '24? This is also self-correcting btw!
I agree with almost everything you are saying, but there are people who don't love to hate - and I do hope that there are many of them, though they are much less loud and visible than the hateful ones...
Dr. Glenn writes, "...because the United States has a long history of race-based discrimination, which means that people of color are more likely to have mistrust and suspicion towards people who don't share their racial background."
Andrew Sullivan analyzed the same issue. I call attention to
Why Is Wokeness Winning? Andrew Sullivan Oct 16, 2020.
Sullivan observes, " advocates of what Wes Yang has called “the successor ideology” never debate any serious opponents of their position. This is because debate in a liberal society implies equal standing for both sides, and uses reason to determine who’s right or wrong. But there can be no “both sides” within CRT, no equation of “racists” and “antiracists”, and debates are inherently oppressive. Logic, evidence, and reason are...mere products of white supremacy, forms of violence against the oppressed. " [end paste from Sullivan article]
For more than four decades, I have tried a reasoned approach, but against an emotional crowd, there is no contest. Net-net, I think the situation remains hopeless. In substance, I agree with Sullivan. Emotion and tribalism are too difficult to overcome. Still listening to those who disagree with my sad conclusion, but honestly, I see little hope.
Thanks for sharing this insightful letter, Glenn. Some good ideas presented.
My personal strategy emerged from a life-long response to advertising in general. At some point in my early 20s, I decided to ignore as much advertising as possible. Not to watch commercials on TV. Ignore billboards. Ignore where the local McDonalds was because I didn’t like being told I needed a Big Mac. After spending my childhood in the 60s watching a lot of TV, I removed TV from my life for a few decades. I now only watch cable TV when I can forward through commercials. I turn off the car radio when an ad comes on. I find most advertising aesthetically unappealing and ugly, so this “diet” from advertisers was partly about what I enjoy in life. But I also realized at that time that, like all humans, I am not immune to manipulation from people wanting to sell me stuff. We can ALL be conned by a good carney. I wanted to do what I could to safeguard myself from parting with my money for junk that wouldn’t, in fact, make me happier, wealthier, or more beautiful. When the internet emerged, I gave myself the same rules, to ignore everything that was “suggested” to me…now that I had become the product myself. And now that ideas and harmful ideologies are what is being sold to me as much as stuff.
Of course, I cannot help seeing the suggestions in my peripheral vision and sometimes they make me laugh. Occasionally, they get something right about my health that I do find to be useful. But except in those rare instances, I almost NEVER click. So the Algorithm Gods are confused about me! “It seems like she would like Tucker Carlson, but she never clicks on it! It seems like she would like to read the latest tweet from AOC, but she doesn’t click on that either!! But let’s keep trying!” The Algorithm Gods even at times seem to think I’m a man in my interests and try to get me interested in porn. Which is really is flabbergasting and annoying. The Algorithm Gods have plenty of info on me about my interest in women’s rights, but they don’t make helpful suggestions about this genuine interest. Maybe because the Algorithm Gods don’t want anyone to care about women’s rights.
I am not a product. I cannot be neatly categorized, especially since my awakening to the dangers of woke ideologies in the past few years. So I just try to ignore the Algorithm Gods as much as I can.
I totally vibe with the eschewing of Advertising culture. Somewhere in the late 90’s I made the same determination and simply stopped letting that stuff in to the extent I could stop it. I think it’s kept me sane.
I and many like minded friends from high school, ascribe a huge portion of this to a specific teacher and his media studies class. When I look back over my life, I feel like that was possibly the most meaningful and important class I ever had and yet for my (now) 24 year old child it was never an option…a mistake of history or something. I can’t think of a single subject more important (2nd place was 8th grade checking account and credit management) than media criticism for these young minds pelted by materialism from birth.
Facebook is the only social media platform I (reluctantly, occasionally) use, other than YouTube. Other than I guess providing a means for an old friend or classmate to contact me, it’s strictly for volunteering and some activism (basic info about when/where/what). Often I’ll only see a post if FB prompts me via an email: “so and so posted _____!” Even though these emails are annoying, I’ll occasionally see an event in time I wouldn’t otherwise. It’s far better than randomly going on and mindlessly scrolling which, from the beginning, made me feel spiritually half-sick. But even the prompts to see what a friend posted can cause trouble. Because their online personae and obsessions are not the person I know and like. Facebook, and other platforms I’m sure, turn people with certain biases and tendencies and vulnerabilities in real life, characteristics and attitudes which if they emerge in person, are at worst balanced and grounded by all of the other funny and absurd and compelling things people who actually know and like each other focus on when they get together. Online, in these intense echo chambers the very online inhabit, they post like at turns smug or brittle clout-chasing, posturing, pandering, aggressively toxic fanatics who are imbued with such rage-fueled, ignorant shallow faux-certainty they will take your head off and hold it up before their followers if you so much as slightly, mildly disagree. It’s as if you’re interrupting a performance on stage. You can clap and cheer adoringly and praise them for the brave vehemence in pushing even further what is in their online clique already the very most-approved opinions. But even accidentally introducing a bit of cognitive dissonance is treated like standing up in the audience with a loudspeaker hijacking the star performer’s show. I I wish I had never seen some of these friends posting online. I had one turn on me so viciously for daring to suggest cooperating with tech and media oligopolies and the most historically checkered of federal law enforcement and spy agencies to quash the speech and even the ability of political opponents to participate more broadly in civil society was not only illiberal in principle but very risky empirically for actually independent and marginalized and unpopular but important voices they might support. I was algorithmically nudged into a seeing another friend post hysterically and credulously in response to the then supposed racist attack on Jussie Smollett, “no justice, no peace!”. Little of either of their building SJW identities and increasingly unhinged assumptions and conclusions which they posted and reposted and shared on and on (especially how outraged they are that they know their black friends can’t so much as walk outside without a realistic chance of being met by a hail of gunfire from racist fascist cops - and you’re as horrible a person as has ever walked the earth if you quibble or question this even slightly) were things that came out in one and one interactions, especially in person. No doubt Covid lockdowns (which of course they vehemently supported and angrily judged critics of) and even more time at home, online made this worse. In person, when I’m around a group of people whom I know share more typically uniform progressive or even identitarian views, comments are always milder, if they even come up. People seem more attuned to the possibility they might not know everything or others might disagree somewhat, while still being good people.
This is yet another "Facebook is evil and should be dismantled immediately" post :)
The flip side of this is that even if people are not reading or sharing a lot about race, they know who the people are who already agree with them and make sure to amplify those people's content to show what side they are on.
Interesting perspective. I wonder if this is a bit more complicated tho. Do algorithms need to change, probably but people also need to think through what they are clicking and perhaps through own experience sort through if what the are reading makes sense or not.
Computers are never going to be here to protect us from ourselves, not in any good way anyway!
The obvious answer, though it could be tricky to implement, is to abandon/forbid the advertising model that now funds the social media, and replace it with either sunbscriptions or pay-per-transaction, or maybe a blend of the two.
At a stroke, this would eliminate most spam and bots, and greatly reduce the temptation to go after "eyeballs" instead of offering a quality product that people will pay for, and could discourage the worst mob activity on Twitter. The incumbent firms could do just fine under such a regime, but the attraction of "free" means they will not do it voluntarily as that would concede marketing advantage to their competitors.
FB could charge $10/month for unlimited use, or $5/month and a small cost per transaction. Twitter could do the same, perhaps $5/month plus $0.50 per tweet per recipient, and $.05 per retweet, per follower who will see that retweet. Email could cost $0.50 per email sent to each recipient. Google and other search engines could charge per search (say, $0.10) and then per page of search results opened (maybe $0.02 per page). You simply set up an account with a credit card and get billed weekly or monthly, with detail available.
I may have the pricing wrong, but the principle is sound. The main thing is to outlaw or greatly restrict advertising. Some will say that is a free speech issue but I do not think so, as long as there is no content discrimination and all ads are simply banned. We did it for cigarettes on broadcast, for may years professionals such as medical providers, pharma, and lawyers could not advertise. Via the "Do Not Call" list we have tried to ban robo-calls. There should be a way.
Our "elite" universities like Brown are major sources of toxic ideas and dialogue: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-rank-the-top-npc-universities
When I see Tucker Carlson pushed into my YouTube recommendations I start to worry “what am I watching?”. The algorithms are all about doubling down. You get an exponential effect that leads to more radical views. We need our institutions to show leadership in mixing people of different views and counteracting the polarizing effects of social media. But instead they just pick a side and add to the effect. Someone goes through DEIA training during the day - at their work. It pisses the off. They go home and start watching YouTube videos of why it’s misguided. Those videos just lead them farther and farther down the rabbit hole. Or the opposite happens and they go down the rabbit hole of SJW videos. Either way - It’s not good.
Sorry, what’s SJW?
Social justice warriors
Thanks. (man strikes his forehead).
synonyms : 'Karens', ne'er do-wells, ingrates, neurotics 😂
Far easier to understand the radicalization of people to ISIS/ISIL now, too.
In 2018, Friend A posted a story on Facebook about how the mayor of a city wanted to stop their EMTs from answering calls for people who were overdosing. Apparently people were using in public places because if they ODed then chances were high that someone would call for help whereas if they were alone at home they would most likely not make it. The justification was that there were so many called involving ODs that if someone was having any other medical issue they were finding the EMT response time high. The thinking was the ODs should be further down on the response list.
Friend B posted about how horrible that was and how terrible for this mayor to have no sympathy for these drug addicts.
Fast forward to 2020. Friend B is all over FB talking about how if you’re out of the house and getting Covid you are taking a bed in the hospital from someone who really needs it. Selfish, Trump-supporter, killing people, irresponsible, etc. and so on.
That’s what these algorithms are doing.
I think much of today’s social unrest is directly attributable to these algorithms that reinforce rather then educate, that inflame rather than inform. The process drives eyeballs, which drives clicks, which drives advertising revenues. It’s central to the business model of firms like Twitter and Facebook. But people like it because it’s “free”. How many of us are willing to pay to subscribe to a social media site that doesn’t do this? Perhaps the old adage is true: you get what you pay for.
How will the algorithm decide what is educational and informative?
Good question. That's above my understanding. Why does the algorithm have to decide? Can't we prompt much like we do with search engines and be responsible for defining our own areas of interest? I think you would need a paid subscription model to make this work, however. Another option might be a checklist of interests, but those seem to get overriden in my experience.
I guess it doesn’t have to make suggestions at all, but to stop it would require a curtailing of the freedoms we currently exercise. I feel perfectly capable of discerning which content has value and which is intentionally inflammatory. I think one of the big problems is that my feelings aren’t unique. Everyone feels the same way about themselves. They are approaching their feeds with clarity and good judgement. It’s all these other sheep who can’t see that they are being manipulated.
I think your suggestions would make social media far less attractive. And maybe thats the only solution. Make social media so user-unfriendly that people spend way less time on it.
This is a good conversation and might be a good topic for Glenn. How to make social media more responsive and less inflammatory.
A modest proposal, put down the phone, get off your ass, and actually talk to people you otherwise wouldn’t. Sure , you may have to screw up your courage, but it’s all for the best. I believe if you do this, social media is useful, but not primary. As a bonus, you can pick out the race baiters easily!
I’m a white guy who has many black American friends, lived and worked in black communities, etc. etc. and genuinely loves and seeks out connections with people. Since the 1990’s I’ve had this sense that the differences between our cultures was closing. Now, I can’t even get Black members of my community to return a nod or a passing, “good evening.”—things that were common 5 years ago, hell, things I learned from my black friends and mentors. Who am I going to talk to when it’s become clear that no one wants to talk to me?
The real fear I have is that ultimately it will just mean more black isolation and and resentment because everyone else (not just white Americans) simply won’t want to deal with it beyond whatever they can culturally milk for “authentic artistic suffering.” Wokeism a dangerous wave to surf and when the small coterie of self-flagellating whites dries up, what will have changed?
I have had similar experiences, but going back to the 1950s. It seems like since the ‘60s Civil Rights Act, relations between races has deteriorated. Thank you, white liberal guilt, for f**king things up.
I’m a big advocate of actually chatting with people of all different backgrounds either when there is a purpose larger than my own interests or just whenever an opportunity presents itself during some quotidian errand or appointment (especially since I tend toward introversion and even a kind of socially avoidant shyness when there is no larger event or purpose via which to interact). My mom was the same way and her advice: take people as they come, is still good counsel. Living in Brooklyn and actually caring about the whole borough and city, beyond just a half-dozen artisanally-curated neighborhoods in the north and northwest of the borough, gave me yeh opportunity to take both jobs and volunteer assignments all over the city. The only people I harbor a bit of a grudge against are the incredibly smug, actually very privileged denizens of places like Brownstone Brooklyn. Point is, my comfort zone became going outside my comfort zone. But it’s coming up on 7-8-9 years since I’ve done a lot of that work. One generally positive replacement was working for a big NYC agency in which my top manager and approx 2/3 of my coworkers were black or Afro-Caribbean. Having top exam scores was the only way I got interviews, but I wouldn’t be surprised if part of why I eventually got an offer (I’m a white, straight male) was my resume and some of the anecdotes I could reference about my experience clearly showed the (modest, but useful) work I did on voting rights and criminal justice reform.
Now?
I have no idea how I’d be perceived.
Then, I would walk into the lobbies of more NYCHA houses and buildings than I can remember and feel quite comfortable. Of course most residents of tough neighborhoods are good people, now as then. But NYC had not yet begun to descend into lawlessness. Incidences of violent crimes had not yet begun to spike. I heard a lot of residents talking about who got shot, who almost got shot, who was gonna get shot and saw far too many young people limping, possibly from catching a bullet. But if I saw a cluster of young men, I’d just nod to one who looked like a leader and say “what’s up?” And go on my way. Maybe I’d mention the campaign which brought me there, if people were waiting for an elevator or something. I walked all around West Philly and it was striking to see fellow volunteers including middle aged black women look a little uncertain, while I would stride up to the first however imposing person I saw on a block to introduce ourselves.
How would I be perceived now?
Most people are just people and respond with basic politeness if not friendliness when treated with the same. But there’s no doubt the *apparent* atmosphere around race has changed enormously in the past several years. And it’s deeply concerning to read, as in this post, that as institutions of pop culture have elevated and relentlessly promoted a genre that at its worst acts as a sort of an emotionally charged almost slavery porn or Jim Crow porn, social media algorithms are encouraging people to to dwell in polarizing and even radicalizing echo chambers in which supposedly ubiquitous racial injustice is relentlessly shared and consumed. I’m afraid the spike in violent crime and elevation and imposition of neoracist ideology is simultaneously pushing people in very different echo chambers into a generalized lack of empathy and compassion for their black fellow Americans. While any sign of such reaction in the extended online friend and family groups people see on social media feed the idea among white and other progressives that racism and white supremacy truly are blaring societal emergencies which can only be met by an ever-more aggressive and competitively performative “anti-racism” - an “anti-racism” that ipso facto condemns and ostracizes anyone who ever-so-slightly dissents or who haplessly tries to moderate and better ground these sentiments.
I’m afraid what’s online, more broadly and among the establishment on the left, but I’m sure just as intensely on the actual far-right, is becoming something like mass formation, in which, eventually, performative (and actual) cruelty toward the out group is seen and felt as a compelling duty and the highest form of virtue.
“ eventually, performative (and actual) cruelty toward the out group is seen and felt as a compelling duty and the highest form of virtue.”
Let’s hope not! I’d like to think that there were real philosophical changes in humans having gone through the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. “Do unto others…” is still a really compelling philosophy and hopefully we can get back there or go further down that road that some of the other ideas on offer.
The horrors of slavery and Jim Crow have not changed human nature. Many people have a cruel, even sadistic streak and relish others' pain and fear. I have just read a collection of stories by an "anti-racist" Black British author - revenge violence (sometimes clearly sadistic) against whites and "disreputable" Blacks was celebrated and glorified in many of the stories.
Let me be more specific: in the 19th century humanity could no longer justify slavery, particularly racially based slavery. The same can be said of all racist laws (ex. Jim Crow, Apartheid) which simply couldn’t stand up to rationality and basic humanism. Much like the ideas of universal suffrage, it’s unlikely, barring the complete dissolution of civilization, that we’d be able to convince ourselves, as a species, that somehow that was actually ok and the way it “oughtta be.”
Of course there will always be people who can’t see beyond their prejudices, but I don’t think this is (currently) a notable majority in any meaningful sub-culture. It’s very hard to argue against, “they can do what they want as long as they leave me out of it,” which is why there’s so much backlash to the Woke agenda. It can’t pass the smell test for most people and requires a special kind of dupe to fall for it.
I agree with you to some extent, but I feel that you are being too optimistic. Cruelty toward the out group continues to be very widespread. Unfortunately many people now believe that "oppressors" deserve to be hated and humiliated.
There are people who openly demonize whites in a racist way, and there are also people who demonize Jews. I have recently seen a short where a positive character (the audience is expected to empathize with her) talks about a white woman who stole her boyfriend in this way: "a whole pig", she is "made of pork"... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwiod-1FcVk
I have also mentioned in another comment a book I have just read (fortunately the book has not been noticed by the mainstream media and critics). The book is filled with revenge fantasies where whites and Jews are being killed (sometimes on a mass scale), tortured to death etc. One of the stories depicts a future world where the few surviving "pink-skins" are forced to live on an island and are unable to reproduce.
The author of this book describes himself as a "diversity and inclusion consultant". He portrays his book as anti-racist and radical. It is a perfect example of a new type of racism which either goes unnoticed, or is seen as an understandable reaction to centuries of white racism.
Did any of these Black people from your community earlier acknowledge you? When did you notice this change you mention? I find it very strange and sad.
Fortunately it is still possible for white people to interact with Black people online. And I am sure that there are many Black people who are ready to talk to white strangers. After all, there are even lots of Black people ready to date "interracially"!
When K-12 devalued black children’s education and the nuclear family was tossed to the gutter.
It seems to me that the phenomenon is much more recent and linked to online radicalization...
Thanks for asking because this is a sensitive topic I barely feel comfortable bringing up. I’ll say at the outset one confounding factor is that I’m also old now. I noticed long ago that the black folk in my area of Chicago were more likely to interact with young guys than old guys. It’s possible I simply look like the “typical white villain” now and that could be as much at play as anything more broadly social.
That said…I definitely noticed that my interactions with black people in my neighborhood of Uptown (before that Logans Square and before that Rogers Park) in the past five years or so have deteriorated. Neighborly nods and, “how d’you do’s” replaced with scowls or this weird refusal to make eye contact. It’s obviously not everyone (old black men seem less likely to pretend I’m not standing in front of them) but I’ve seen a noticeable shift, especially with young men and middle aged women.
I’m willing to grant it might be based on real resentment, (though I find it difficult to imagine it’s not being stoked somehow) and people may be suffering more and less willing to play pretend that everything is ok. But the loud and public focus on race just seems so backward to me and I don’t understand why the emphasis isn’t placed on Class which seems to be the real dividing line between us. I have a hunch that it’s almost entirely the police issue with a sprinkling of NPR home-ownership numbers and negative wealth statistics to cap the story of racial inequality.
I recently moved to a small city in Maryland in search of a nice semi-rural plot of land. This was a plan long before Covid, fwiw. I’ve been trying to find a barber. I went into a black owned barber shop and got a decent haircut and liked my barber, however I clearly shocked and upset everyone except the owner who was (like me) ex-air force. All of my other haircuts I’ve been shit, but I just can’t bring myself to go back there knowing everyone is uncomfortable having me there. (I get that black barbershops are a special place and am also taking that into account…I probably just made a mistake and should never go back, still…) I don’t see how it’s possible to “simply go out and talk to people,” without some kind of intermediating force that lets everyone know they’re safe. It’s super frustrating to not be able to have normal relationships with people.
I’d like to finish by saying that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing so many different black folk in so many different contexts that I can’t help but get really upset when people talk as if all black Americans share the same mind. It’s so antithetical to everything I’ve come to believe, all of my experiences, and everyone I’ve known. I think the truth is that black and white Americans are drawn toward each other, that it’s likely always been that way with ‘actual racism’ as this splinter in our hearts we can’t pull out and never seems to heal. A book I love that I think gets close to this idea is Kindred by Octavia Butler. The things pushing us apart are synthetic…people want to be together but you can’t force someone to like you, especially if they’re terrified.
Many thanks for your reply to my question and for sharing your experiences and thoughts - I am later going to reply at more length!
I agree with you, I am not sure if it would be a good idea to go back to this Black-owned barbershop. Interestingly, the short I mentioned in my earlier reply to one of your comments focuses on whites who visit a Black hair salon... I personally think that it is better to avoid situations where one may be seen by some people as an arrogant white intruder.
I don't think that white people should go out of their way to start conversations with Black strangers e.g. in the street. I am sure that it can be perceived as annoying and intrusive despite the good intentions of the white person. In my opinion it is better to remain silent than to face the possibility of a painful rejection.
Obviously it is not true that all black Americans share the same mind and have the same views! But when you say that black and white Americans are drawn toward each other, I feel like adding that mutual fascination does not rule out hostility and prejudice.
You say: "people want to be together but you can’t force someone to like you, especially if they’re terrified." I don't think that it is about fear. I think that it is unfortunately much more about mistrust, resentment and sometimes also contempt. I guess that some Black people simply see no reason to talk to white strangers and unfortunately I don't find it surprising...
Yeah agreed about the barber shop. I can totally respect people need a place that's theirs...of course I do, I'm a late 20th century white American male, this is how I was trained.
I also agree about the starting conversations out of nowhere thing: trying to force people into a relationship is weird. I meant something far more subtle that's hard to put a finger on. It's more like a sense that there is simply no connection between our worlds or that I'm merely a ghost to be ignored. This feels different to me. I'm probably doing a terrible job expressing it an making myself look like a psycho.
Lastly, all of the things you mention, mistrust, resentment, contempt, I view as downstream of fear. This is a big topic but in the past 20 years there have been real upheavals and catastrophes that have revealed how fraught our civilization is (9-11, Katrina, 2008 collapse, pressures of social media, Patriot Act and the rise of the surveillance state, environmental anxiety, overdose epidemics, Covid, etc.). There's no room for error and everyone viscerally feels the razor under their feet. No one can stand to live like this, and now we have an entire generation of young adults raised completely during this time of turmoil.
When every action could lead to destruction the tow common reactions are hedonism ("f@ck it, nothing matters.") or authoritarianism ("tell me what to do to save myself."). Both of these will lead to disappointment--quickly--and from there resentment. I'm not sure I've laid out my case very well, but I see fear as the starting point for all of the other problems we're seeing.
I personally think that you had the right to come to a Black-owned barber shop, but sadly we live in times where it can be perceived in a negative, racialized way... And I do understand what you mean when you say that you feel as if you were a ghost to be ignored - no, you don't sound at all like a psycho!
I have occasionally had similar experiences - e.g. a Black security guy in a supermarket seemed to ignore my greeting and once a Black woman seemed to deliberately ignore my reply to a question she had asked online (no one else has replied to her question). However, I have no idea if they behaved in this way because of my skin colour. Maybe the security guy was surprised by my greeting; maybe the woman lacked good manners... In fact, I have to add that I sometimes felt ignored by white strangers.
I am saying to myself that maybe these people who ignore you (or at least some of them) are simply being rude. Do you ever feel ignored by white strangers?
I agree with you that people have many reasons to be frightened or even terrified, but mistrust, resentment and contempt can be present in the absence of any fear. Despite all the problems and catastrophes you mention America is one of the richest countries in the world and its citizens enjoy a very high living standard compared to earlier historical periods.
I feel that you want to believe that people are inherently good and reasonable and simply very frightened. I have a much less positive image of human beings. Many people love feeling superior to others, dominating and hurting others. At the same time there are people who don't want to do any of these things, even if they have experienced all kinds of traumas etc. I have no idea what makes some people humble and kind and other people self-righteous and cruel, but you are definitely one of the former.
I'm Asian and an immigrant to the US. I walked into a black barber shop a year ago. I sat there waiting for my turn. New customers (all black) came and were called before me. I tried asking when they estimate I could get a quick trim. They said an hour. After an hour I was still waiting and they just ignored me when I tried to get their attention. So I left. I had thought they had a call in to book appointment system and didn't have space for walk-ins. But after reading your story I'm now thinking maybe I had the wrong skin color and should not have walked in there.
If an Asian nail salon refused to serve its black customers, it would be all over the news. This Barber shop thing seems like double standards to me.
"Now, I can’t even get Black members of my community to return a nod or a passing"
Wow. This is so the opposite of my experience lol (in reverse, as it were)
I guess it all depends on where we are and when.
I’m perfectly willing to accept my experience may be unique and my read is wrong.
I might also just look like an a-hole. Heh
Follow the money
Disclosure: I am a software engineer building online advertising systems.
// How can we gauge the true intensity of the culture war—and find a way to dial it down—when algorithms and other forms of AI generate profit by amplifying it?
You are fed what you engage with. There are millions of people who's only experience of [insert media platform] is makeup tutorials, sports, etc. Most platforms expose tools for you to curate your feed. Youtube/Facebook et.al. have little buttons that say "I'm not interested in this" - those buttons _work_. You can also uninstall or block the apps, and yes it is possible, people do it all the time.
In general, talk of this manner surrenders way too much agency to the platforms. The main driver of the content you engage with is _you_.
// Is online interaction giving us a clear picture of who thinks and feels what?
No. Mostly its you looking into your own reflection.
// does our very participation online leave our thoughts and feelings vulnerable to manipulation?
Yes, but so do most things. If you read the NYT, you are being manipulated. Platforms want to maximize time-on-site, and that is different flavor of manipulation, but its not obvious which is worse. This probably varies case-by-case.
EDIT:
// social media companies need to be more transparent about how their algorithms work. We need to understand how they are curating our content and why they are making the choices they are making.
I make algorithms for a living. With a few narrow exceptions, "how" or "why" are not questions that can be answered in a way that people would find satisfying. We have a few options:
1) I can point you to the formal mathematical specification in any number of textbooks. Read them, and you will know one kind of "how"
2) I can show you the ten billion numbers that constitute it for a second kind of "how"
3) I can say "why" in that X content maximized the probability of you generating money for the platform.
4) Sometimes (but more often not) I can say "why" in that the model considers certain things "important". But in what way its important I (typically) cant say.
Imagine you have a brain in a jar, you ask me why the brain did Y instead of Z. I answer that by showing you a video of all the neurons activating at the time the decision was made. This is a bad example for various reasons, but it illustrates that "why/how" are not applicable questions.
The reason we can't answer questions like this is not a conspiracy of silence on the part of tech companies - its that nobody has an answer humans can comprehend let alone accept.
This is all true. This is not about the ethics of individual programmers as much as companies like Facebook wanting to maximize engagement with their platform instead of healthy civic engagement and not really having the will or capacity to deal with the consequences later.
// maximize engagement ... instead of healthy civic engagement
You make a site that optimizes "healthy civic engagement" and I'll make one that maximizes Kardashians' butts. Lets see who is in business a year later.
We can make it illegal to run competitor to Zuckerburg inc., and then mandate "eat your vegetables" FDA/CDC/FBI propaganda. Pretty sure thats not what people want, but AFAIKT its the only solve that would address the grievances people have.
// not really having the will or capacity to deal with the consequences
What specifically would 'dealing with them' entail that isn't currently being done? Answer that question in an actionable, unproblematic way and you'll be a billionaire.
People talk about tech giants as if they are the simultaneous monocausal source and panacea to all problems. This, when we have an enormous difficulty defining or agreeing on what the problems are, let alone coming up with solutions that aren't even worse.
I was relatively active when it was still possible to talk about the "netroots" as a community until the internecine conflict about Obama just got too toxic for me. (And my mother died and making two minyanim a day was suddenly much more important than whatever some internet personality was yelling.) The political blogosphere, depending on the site, might have provided only caricatures of the other side and the 2008 primary was so awful that I now keep my presidential primary online discourse to a minimum, but it was very effective in getting people to participate and pay attention to small details about the political process that were under the MSM's radar. And most of the bloggers didn't make a living by blogging. You could get healthy civic engagement out of that in the offline world. Social media incentives are very different. To be fair, it is possible to get good information from both political science Twitter and election data Twitter. But an ordinary citizen who doesn't know very much will walk into an environment where people can confine their "activism" exclusively to online; the activism is often of "personal is political" type; users don't have long histories of past statements for many or most of the people they are engaging with just from a history with the site; and many of the rewards are for one-liners at the expense of whatever foolish thing someone on the other side said. This is not a recipe for productive conversations about politics even with one's own family. All this leads me to conclude that you COULD make money with a civic engagement site. But scale and trying to be everything advertiser-friendly to everybody at once might have to be sacrificed. The sites might have to be replacements for local journalism in some way.
Extremely simple things that Facebook and Twitter could both do are
a) let users discover who to follow and what groups to join entirely by themselves
b) not place content in users'feeds for the sole reason of getting an emotional rise out of the users.
Social media companies need to do more to take down obvious hate speech when it is reported to them, but I am not willing to think that the answer is taking down "disinformation" as much as encouraging people to have more media literacy.
They could step us through a few examples, the way a programmer would if he were using a debugger. But my complaint is not about the algorithms working too well, but about the algorithms working poorly -- if the intent is to increase my engagement by catering to my interests.
I'd never heard of Ray Epps until the NYT piece. My impression, after watching the videos, was that it was very suspicious not only that he wasn't locked up, but that the NYT would write a piece defending him. He seemed the poster boy for "insurrectionist," the person most deserving of being thrown underneath the jail by the Democrats. I started reading pieces reflecting my suspicions. However, when I did Google news searches on "Ray Epps," I was flooded, and still am, with articles such as -- and this is a real example -- "The Little Guys Being Taken Down by Trumpworld." Epps was a man urging people, starting the day before and continuing on Jan 6, to go INSIDE the Capitol and now he is being "taken down by Trump world"?
Anyway, people can argue the pros and cons of algorithms feeding my existing preconceptions until the cows come home; that is a conversation worth having. My complaint is about the information pushed on me when the designers of the algorithms clearly have an interest in NOT feeding my preconceptions, but rather in "educating" me.
(On the other hand, YouTube suggestions are amazingly attentive to my short and long term viewing habits. They have my number, so to speak.)
// They could step us through a few examples, the way a programmer would if he were using a debugger.
Machine learning doesn't work like this. A trained model is not a sequence of interpretable instructions. When I make a system that works I dont have any idea of "why" it works in the sense that people would find satisfying.
A person's history has to be stored somewhere. A devoted Sean Hannity fan is somehow distinguishable from a Rachel Maddow devotee. In the end, it's all 1's and 0's. I believe I would find it satisfying.
That said, I'm open to being disabused should a piece of reasonable length exist which makes your case. I'm not trying to be argumentative. It's just that I can't imagine how it would be impossible to trace the exact behavior of the algorithms. It's not magic.
// I believe I would find it satisfying.
This is Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy in real life. The answer is 42. Are you actually happy with that? (Actually the answer is a vector of 2.3 million numbers between 0 and 1, but the volume doesn't make it easier to comprehend.)
// I can't imagine how it would be impossible
I can't change the boundaries of your imagination. Interestingly, this is part of the problem - people have never encountered anything like it and so they literally cannot conceive of anything this complicated. Until I got into it I would have said the same thing.
The best I can do is the brain in the jar analogy. A complete map of every neuron firing in my head is not regarded as an acceptable explanation for why I ate eggs for breakfast. We are in a field where the limit of the possible is the neuron map.
If you dont want to believe that, the only thing left is point you to a series of math, programming, and machine learning textbooks.
I was trying to be polite, so I used "I can't imagine" and "I believe I would find." Forgive me. Your contention amounts to saying bugs cannot be fixed, nor adjustments made, because the system is too complicated. Manifestly, that is not true. Your combativeness does not strengthen your case.
// Your contention amounts to saying bugs cannot be fixed, nor adjustments made, because the system is too complicated.
No. My contention is that there are no techniques that make these systems sufficiently interpretable _today_. Maybe we will be able to do it 10 years from now, but as of this moment it simply doesn't exist.
// Manifestly, that is not true.
Electrons are both a particle and a waveform. It makes no sense, and yet it is so. Insisting otherwise doesn't change the facts.
// Your combativeness does not strengthen your case.
My apologies, I tend to avoid posting because I gravitate towards edgy analogies and snark. I'm not trying to be combative, but it falls out of me.
It has been a few years since I watched it, but Grant Sanderson (a.k.a. 3Blue1Brown) has a really nice series of four short videos on neural networks if you have the math background to follow it - mainly linear algebra and multivariable calculus. I seem to recall him doing, as he always does, an excellent job explaining why the different "layers" involved in such a network really can't be interpreted in a clear manner - even to those who designed the network.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi
Thanks much. I'll check it out.
As a person who has worked with algorithms (albeit for trading not socials) this answer resonates with me. A huge issue with this debate is the fact that people don’t want to admit the solution is giving up something they value…they want every other kind of fix except the one that actually makes a difference.
Second, I recently was musing on what I think is a different issue: most people prefer one social over all others as a primary. These each have very different methods of engagement, cultures, ideologies, technologies, populations, etc. at a higher level than algorithms, are the multitude of platforms driving wedges into the social fabric? I see the social war content as less important (or perhaps the glue uniting the field of social media) than the fact that everyone is simply veering away from the means of communicating universally.
This is a bit half-baked but seems appropriate in this thread. Perhaps it’s a reflection of Jonathan Haidt’s Tower of Babel metaphor.
Sea Sentry, SWJ is social justice warrior. Another old adage is the voter gets what they deserve, good and hard. You will not be able to overturn the profit motive so the algorithms will continue, and the political parties will leverage the anger to motivate their base. But politics ebbs and flows and the movement to the left has engendered the current support of the right politically and push back in areas like education. Remember that the politicians are arguing about symptoms and the answer we need is to address the root cause which is the destruction of the family. Addressing that is the discussion we need.
good comments, Larry.
What's worse, algorithms that reinforce existing biases or algorithms that say WE just can't allow you to read or see stuff because we think it will get you to consider things WE don't think you should consider?
Both. Today these platforms reinforce certain biases, while censoring views the "Keepers of the Algorithms" don't like. Kinda like universities.
Both filtering modes are obnoxious but filtering out information that some millennial desk jockey thinks shouldn’t be seen because it’s dangerous is worse. In my opinion.
In the sense that if unfavored views remain "out there" those proactive and persistent enough can still find them, I agree.
I respect the contributor's perspective. (I respect Glenn's intro more, tho'.)
"especially for people of color"
I have a problem with this. As a people, of course "we" are more likely to click on topics that touch on racial issues. But that's been true all my life. I cannot say that social media algorithms are making things worse per se. And I certainly do not think that "our" issues with this technology are particularly more serious or troubling than other groups. Frankly it depends on what groups we are talking about.
Zeroing in on *racial* groups obscures the picture.
All that said, please don't get me wrong. This topic is both critical and fundamental. But we need to delve much deeper to truly understand this data.
People can have a huge interest in something, click on relevant links all day and still not be imprisoned by any kind of echo chamber. (Trust me. It's not hard to do =))
Yeah, I think it’s important not to confuse human minds with sponges. So many people, in my experience, walk around thinking everyone except, of course them, is a totally gullible moron who believes everything they hear IF they’re even listening. There are plenty of fools in the world but if one is oriented to only see fools, they miss the bright minds that might actually illuminate.
"walk around thinking everyone except, of course them, is a totally gullible moron"
So well-put lol
Racial hatred (and the stoking and cultivation thereof) is a massive business and revenue stream in America.
As we all know, the MSM treats the latest possible white-cop-on-black-victim incident like a movie studio treats a summer blockbuster: wall-to-wall coverage, flashing lights and colors, everyone dedicated to the same task of pouring as much gasoline as possible onto a social fire. (And any inconvenient facts or context ignored or buried.)
Of course politicians exist to make their voters addled with so much hatred and fear of the Other over there, with the goal being a malleable gullible populace that gladly gives up its liberty for a spurious safety (but is really just a desire to punch the other team on the nose).
And then more recently, academia has whole enormous bureaucracies dedicated to dividing us all by skin color and attaching moral value based on our official Oppressor/Oppressed points total. (Academia being Patient Zero of our perpetually occurring Race War, the heart of the White Guilt Industrial Complex, constantly pumping out 10,000 theories that all say the same thing: Everything is Oppression, which can only be cured by unlimited Leftist social engineering.)
And lastly, there is an entire cottage industry of websites, blogs, brands, Tweeters, journalists etc that have their customers hooked on the Race War just like a dealer gets his customer hooked on crack: for the Left, they pay to be fed constant tales of the evil bigotry of their blood enemies, the Deplorables, with reminders that they are the Good ones because they know to always "center the marginalized" and never forget to capitalize Black; for the right, they pay to be fed constant tales of black dysfunction and criminality, with reminders that they are the Good ones because they raise patriotic law-abiding children.
We like to believe that Love Conquers All (Love Wins!) but the truth is that no one can really love a stranger (except as an abstraction) but you can easily and happily hate one (or millions). Hate gets the blood flowing and makes us jump out of bed in the morning ready for another day fighting the imaginary enemy—we all love to hate and our corporate hate dealers are more than happy to have us hooked, demanding larger and larger doses.
And hey, in the worst-case scenario, if some kind of race war breaks out, think of how good that will be for business!
Yes, but the hate is a mile wide and an inch deep and is self-correcting. Look at the polling of historical Dem constituencies running to the right. The more important question is what will the right do with their likely electoral victory in '22 and '24? This is also self-correcting btw!
Like it’s all really just a fad? I have that sense…Americans love fads!
We’ll said, also worth plugging Taibbi’s “Hate, Inc.” here as the manual in how this particular sausage is made.
yes, that is essential reading fer sure
I agree with almost everything you are saying, but there are people who don't love to hate - and I do hope that there are many of them, though they are much less loud and visible than the hateful ones...
Dr. Glenn writes, "...because the United States has a long history of race-based discrimination, which means that people of color are more likely to have mistrust and suspicion towards people who don't share their racial background."
Andrew Sullivan analyzed the same issue. I call attention to
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/why-is-wokeness-winning
Why Is Wokeness Winning? Andrew Sullivan Oct 16, 2020.
Sullivan observes, " advocates of what Wes Yang has called “the successor ideology” never debate any serious opponents of their position. This is because debate in a liberal society implies equal standing for both sides, and uses reason to determine who’s right or wrong. But there can be no “both sides” within CRT, no equation of “racists” and “antiracists”, and debates are inherently oppressive. Logic, evidence, and reason are...mere products of white supremacy, forms of violence against the oppressed. " [end paste from Sullivan article]
For more than four decades, I have tried a reasoned approach, but against an emotional crowd, there is no contest. Net-net, I think the situation remains hopeless. In substance, I agree with Sullivan. Emotion and tribalism are too difficult to overcome. Still listening to those who disagree with my sad conclusion, but honestly, I see little hope.
Thanks for sharing this insightful letter, Glenn. Some good ideas presented.
My personal strategy emerged from a life-long response to advertising in general. At some point in my early 20s, I decided to ignore as much advertising as possible. Not to watch commercials on TV. Ignore billboards. Ignore where the local McDonalds was because I didn’t like being told I needed a Big Mac. After spending my childhood in the 60s watching a lot of TV, I removed TV from my life for a few decades. I now only watch cable TV when I can forward through commercials. I turn off the car radio when an ad comes on. I find most advertising aesthetically unappealing and ugly, so this “diet” from advertisers was partly about what I enjoy in life. But I also realized at that time that, like all humans, I am not immune to manipulation from people wanting to sell me stuff. We can ALL be conned by a good carney. I wanted to do what I could to safeguard myself from parting with my money for junk that wouldn’t, in fact, make me happier, wealthier, or more beautiful. When the internet emerged, I gave myself the same rules, to ignore everything that was “suggested” to me…now that I had become the product myself. And now that ideas and harmful ideologies are what is being sold to me as much as stuff.
Of course, I cannot help seeing the suggestions in my peripheral vision and sometimes they make me laugh. Occasionally, they get something right about my health that I do find to be useful. But except in those rare instances, I almost NEVER click. So the Algorithm Gods are confused about me! “It seems like she would like Tucker Carlson, but she never clicks on it! It seems like she would like to read the latest tweet from AOC, but she doesn’t click on that either!! But let’s keep trying!” The Algorithm Gods even at times seem to think I’m a man in my interests and try to get me interested in porn. Which is really is flabbergasting and annoying. The Algorithm Gods have plenty of info on me about my interest in women’s rights, but they don’t make helpful suggestions about this genuine interest. Maybe because the Algorithm Gods don’t want anyone to care about women’s rights.
I am not a product. I cannot be neatly categorized, especially since my awakening to the dangers of woke ideologies in the past few years. So I just try to ignore the Algorithm Gods as much as I can.
I totally vibe with the eschewing of Advertising culture. Somewhere in the late 90’s I made the same determination and simply stopped letting that stuff in to the extent I could stop it. I think it’s kept me sane.
I and many like minded friends from high school, ascribe a huge portion of this to a specific teacher and his media studies class. When I look back over my life, I feel like that was possibly the most meaningful and important class I ever had and yet for my (now) 24 year old child it was never an option…a mistake of history or something. I can’t think of a single subject more important (2nd place was 8th grade checking account and credit management) than media criticism for these young minds pelted by materialism from birth.
Facebook is the only social media platform I (reluctantly, occasionally) use, other than YouTube. Other than I guess providing a means for an old friend or classmate to contact me, it’s strictly for volunteering and some activism (basic info about when/where/what). Often I’ll only see a post if FB prompts me via an email: “so and so posted _____!” Even though these emails are annoying, I’ll occasionally see an event in time I wouldn’t otherwise. It’s far better than randomly going on and mindlessly scrolling which, from the beginning, made me feel spiritually half-sick. But even the prompts to see what a friend posted can cause trouble. Because their online personae and obsessions are not the person I know and like. Facebook, and other platforms I’m sure, turn people with certain biases and tendencies and vulnerabilities in real life, characteristics and attitudes which if they emerge in person, are at worst balanced and grounded by all of the other funny and absurd and compelling things people who actually know and like each other focus on when they get together. Online, in these intense echo chambers the very online inhabit, they post like at turns smug or brittle clout-chasing, posturing, pandering, aggressively toxic fanatics who are imbued with such rage-fueled, ignorant shallow faux-certainty they will take your head off and hold it up before their followers if you so much as slightly, mildly disagree. It’s as if you’re interrupting a performance on stage. You can clap and cheer adoringly and praise them for the brave vehemence in pushing even further what is in their online clique already the very most-approved opinions. But even accidentally introducing a bit of cognitive dissonance is treated like standing up in the audience with a loudspeaker hijacking the star performer’s show. I I wish I had never seen some of these friends posting online. I had one turn on me so viciously for daring to suggest cooperating with tech and media oligopolies and the most historically checkered of federal law enforcement and spy agencies to quash the speech and even the ability of political opponents to participate more broadly in civil society was not only illiberal in principle but very risky empirically for actually independent and marginalized and unpopular but important voices they might support. I was algorithmically nudged into a seeing another friend post hysterically and credulously in response to the then supposed racist attack on Jussie Smollett, “no justice, no peace!”. Little of either of their building SJW identities and increasingly unhinged assumptions and conclusions which they posted and reposted and shared on and on (especially how outraged they are that they know their black friends can’t so much as walk outside without a realistic chance of being met by a hail of gunfire from racist fascist cops - and you’re as horrible a person as has ever walked the earth if you quibble or question this even slightly) were things that came out in one and one interactions, especially in person. No doubt Covid lockdowns (which of course they vehemently supported and angrily judged critics of) and even more time at home, online made this worse. In person, when I’m around a group of people whom I know share more typically uniform progressive or even identitarian views, comments are always milder, if they even come up. People seem more attuned to the possibility they might not know everything or others might disagree somewhat, while still being good people.
This is yet another "Facebook is evil and should be dismantled immediately" post :)
The flip side of this is that even if people are not reading or sharing a lot about race, they know who the people are who already agree with them and make sure to amplify those people's content to show what side they are on.
Interesting perspective. I wonder if this is a bit more complicated tho. Do algorithms need to change, probably but people also need to think through what they are clicking and perhaps through own experience sort through if what the are reading makes sense or not.
Computers are never going to be here to protect us from ourselves, not in any good way anyway!
The obvious answer, though it could be tricky to implement, is to abandon/forbid the advertising model that now funds the social media, and replace it with either sunbscriptions or pay-per-transaction, or maybe a blend of the two.
At a stroke, this would eliminate most spam and bots, and greatly reduce the temptation to go after "eyeballs" instead of offering a quality product that people will pay for, and could discourage the worst mob activity on Twitter. The incumbent firms could do just fine under such a regime, but the attraction of "free" means they will not do it voluntarily as that would concede marketing advantage to their competitors.
FB could charge $10/month for unlimited use, or $5/month and a small cost per transaction. Twitter could do the same, perhaps $5/month plus $0.50 per tweet per recipient, and $.05 per retweet, per follower who will see that retweet. Email could cost $0.50 per email sent to each recipient. Google and other search engines could charge per search (say, $0.10) and then per page of search results opened (maybe $0.02 per page). You simply set up an account with a credit card and get billed weekly or monthly, with detail available.
I may have the pricing wrong, but the principle is sound. The main thing is to outlaw or greatly restrict advertising. Some will say that is a free speech issue but I do not think so, as long as there is no content discrimination and all ads are simply banned. We did it for cigarettes on broadcast, for may years professionals such as medical providers, pharma, and lawyers could not advertise. Via the "Do Not Call" list we have tried to ban robo-calls. There should be a way.