What's the reason for optimism? Far more inert technologies like Facebook and Instagram are pulling people into sufficiently terrible mental states to convince them to kill themselves, harm themselves, kill other people, etc. etc.
Because it's transformative tech, phenomenally useful, a totally novel human computer interface??
I know we like to focus on how bad Facebook is but there is so much good there. You would need to be willfully blind not to see it. Enabling people to do business, talk to loved ones, express themselves in new ways, make art... so much good in social media, so much. My childhood best friend had a long distance relationship for 3 years over Facebook, they're married now.
I understand that the optimism of the early oughts was naive, but let's not pretend that social media is a net negative.
Idk, this feels like a tough argument to defend. People still had all those things before Facebook found ways to monetize them. You would have to argue that the interface and its convenience itself of Facebook is more positive than its countless externalities. Not to mention the fact we can imagine, ceteris paribus, another kind of Facebook with a less predatory model that would have let people make the same amount of art, express themselves the same, etc.
I’ve considered myself a techno-optimist since I first started teaching myself to code in the 90s. I credit who I am as an adult today (the good things that I like about myself) to some of the early Internet communities I became involved in. But I’m having a hard time with this:
> let's not pretend that social media is a net negative
I recognize that Facebook (and others) have enabled tremendously good outcomes for some of its users, but I think the jury is out on the net effect of social media as it exists today. I think it’s tempting to over index on the positive outcomes in a way that becomes fallacious - the reality is more complex: the platforms have created tremendous good. The platforms have created tremendous harm. These are not quantifiable, and any estimate of net effect is suspect as a result.
The kinds of harms are the democracy threatening kind, and the mental health of a generation kind. The genocide of nations kind.
I don’t think it’s possible to actually say social media has been a net good, without first addressing the ongoing harms it’s creating and charting a path to a healthier and safer implementation of the technology.
The same communities and platforms I once relied on no longer resemble what they once were. The places that were tremendously positive in my life are now in many cases the exact opposite. This isn’t to say that there aren’t good places left, but to point out that even when something was arguably excellent for a time, that excellence has gradually been replaced by something else. When combined with the downright awful aspects of social media, it really calls into question the net effect.
What Facebook and others provided is that tech can be extremely beneficial. But this should not mistaken for ongoing benefit. I don’t think shitty social media is inevitable. But I think it’s inevitable with the current incentive structures. Until those change, it’s difficult (and probably dangerous) to remain the techno-optimist that I once was.
Violent crime rates are lower than ever before. Just because you saw a news article about something, likely published by a company that's competing with social media for revenue, doesn't mean that something is actually common. Don't base your opinions about something on what its competitors say about it.
