I noticed this first on X - during the FarageRiots where an Asian woman asked how many people felt safe. The volume of violently racist replies was insane. As an Asian man - it made me feel, very scared about society. I felt outnumbered. It wasn’t reflective of society - as it turned out it was a mass demonstration of racial unity, by the vast majority of Britain. But not on X
On YouTube I noticed it silent deleting my comments. Nothing violent - literally a comment saying I was concerned about NHS privatisation and takeover by the US finance. Noticed the same comment get removed. No notice. No reason. No appeal. Take down. Invisible. Quick google shows lots of people experiencing same thing.
And it got me thinking - wow - imagine shaping public sentiment at mass. Making opinions that weren’t convenient to people owning social media disappear. That creates helplessness. Shapes elections.
The rage bait we see now pulls in attention, shapes conversations and defines the Overton window.
Noticed a post from Theo T3 an hour or so ago that was critical, on X, about OpenAi and the first comment was calling him an OpenAI shill. Certainly seems plausible incentives on X to fuel anti competitor sentiment and amplify useful sentiment.
This article on meta is validating the patterns I’ve seen. It’s deeply concerning. We are in an era where society is micro shaped by social media owners and their agenda.
This issue needs to be addressed. We need regulation and transparent recommendation algorithms and clear limit in targeting users.
And then there is the toxic nature of social media engineered addiction. Side bar I know but has to be said.
We need much more regulation and we need more decentralised ownership for social media companies to protect democracy.
From a behavioural POV it seems like an obvious play. These companies and there owners have huge gains via social engineering.
There is very little transparency, accountability or regulation.
The thing that worries me is the unobvious… most people know about instagram and ++ suicide rates. What shocked me was finding out that instagram used things like waiting for people to remove photos of themselves, identify insecurity behaviour, use that to position beauty products to young girls. It seems so so unethical and predatory. Not to mention the impact on public MH when applied at scale.
Another crazy stat was something like screen time av was 4hrs/ day and av attention spans dropped from ~180s to something like ~90s.
The impact in so many areas is so bad. Blows my mind there is such a lack of regulation.
Thinking AI has the potential, at scale to social engineer without the need to bother creating content / making bots.
It never left. Anywhere in the world.
I remember warning people at the time they'd do it for domestic political videos, it was really frustrating how no one believed me. It's a little more frustrating that after experiencing people continue to use sites with artificial cybernetics.
HN discussion of part 1 leaks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864419
Ironically, after posting the part 1 leaks, I ran into several censorship efforts directed towards me (both direct and indirect).
I had my Reddit account shadow banned (still in effect) and my hackernews account on a "filtered mode" (they think my posts are too promotional and repetitive).
This story was immediately filtered after I initially posted it this morning.
Another thing to mention, is that for the first couple of hours after posting the part 1 story, I had the post locked several times, and have had several newly created HN accounts making some not so nice comments directed towards us as opposed to focusing on the story at hand.
Also my post was down ranked to the third page of HN, despite having way more engagement (comments and upvotes) then 95% of the posts on the first page of HN.
So if anyone knows a better way to make these posts without getting banned/filtered, or knows another place that would be interested let me know. I would like to continue posting on HackerNews, but if I have to message the mods every time I make the post, it would be extremely painful. Thanks to Dan, for once again coming to save the day.
Part 3 leaks will probably be either next week or the week after. We are currently collaborating with a news organization to get the story out there first.
Finally, I can answer any questions anyone has about this story.
The problem seems to be that HN has the very same incentives to manipulate social discourse as these other platforms do and by all accounts seems to be doing it or explicitly allowing it to happen "organically" via flagging.
codyb•5mo ago
sunrunner•5mo ago
christianqchung•5mo ago
tojumpship•5mo ago
I don't think simply being absent is logical. Sensing ideological currents, bias and being primarily a lurker rather than participating will have the same mental benefits without limiting your knowledge.
codyb•5mo ago
The majority of people seem barely able to form a coherent thought beyond what they've been reading in their bubble these days.
40% of the country doesn't even bother to vote most elections (here in the US)... I don't think "sensing ideological currents" is really at the forefront of most people's minds lol.
I read Hacker News once a day maybe, and use a couple discord servers. But have abandoned everything with an infinite scroll produced by rage inducing, bubble forming algorithms. I prune my discord servers down, and blocked HN on everything but my work computer (lol).
monsieurgaufre•5mo ago
msgodel•5mo ago