Imagine a land in which Big Tech can't send you down online rabbit holes or use algorithms to overcharge you Internet echo chambers and nasty e-commerce tricks that analyze your behavior to milk you for more cash are set to be banned – in China. Beijing's internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), on Sunday launched a campaign to crack down on such practices and the recommendation algorithms that power them. …
I like the idea that Airlines and Holiday companies wouldn't be allowed to use algorithms that dynamically track usage which then determines supply/demand pricing on the fly.
The idea that "Echo chambers" are forbidden would kill some Social Media sites immediately , Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social etc... Is that really a good thing, regardless of your political swing ?
I can understand some of the financial stuff but the Social Media stuff seems a little bit too much Orwellian. Micromanaging the Internet is never going to end well.
... luesky, Mastodon, Truth Social etc... Is that really a good thing, regardless of your political swing ?
If a "social"media site lives off the business case to create echo chambers that catch users to benefit their bottom line (or political leaning) and divide/hurt society in the process, then yes, I think it would be a good thing if they die. Regardless of their political affiliation.
This coming from the Chinese government that tries to run their whole domestic Internet as one big state-controlled echo chamber, is, hoever, beyond ironic.
The actual motivation there might be more protcting their domestic echo chamber from the effects of rivaling echo chambers.
So yes, I agree with "too Orwellian"
"If a "social"media site lives off the business case to create echo chambers that catch users to benefit their bottom line (or political leaning) and divide/hurt society in the process, then yes, I think it would be a good thing if they die."
'If...'
And you get to be the one who decides, right?
Reclassify all social media as 'publishers' and make them liable for what is posted on their platforms... if they allow hate, lies and scammers to run rampant, they're financially responsible to reimbursing every victim everyone scammed, they're criminally responsible for crimes carried out using their platform.
As soon as you make them responsible for their content, they'll start being more responsible... they've had roughly 20yrs to start acting like adults, they've only become worse and worse because they've NOT been regulated.
It's not Orwellian to expect companies/people to suffer the consequences of their actions... FAFO applies.
How does that stand if the owner of TruthSocial has a complete immunity waiver for (cough) ‘Official Presidential Business’, an absolute ability to grant a Presidential Pardon or for this week an ability to completely over-ride security vetting processes for Political Appointees to High Offices of State on his whim.
It’s God’s Appointed Representative on Earth Monarchical in scope:
Many people don't desire echo chambers.
Sure, there are some who block anyone with any disagreement to them, but the majority simply want to block evil trolls and bigots who can't debate, but only abuse and insult. Unfortunately, that means blocking most of the right wing these days. That makes it a community, not an echo chamber.
Unfortunately, that means blocking most of the right wing these days
And the left. Look at the "debates" in things like trans or LGBTQ issues, where anyone mildly disagreeing with the prevailing orthodoxy from the left is screamed out of the room.
Best to avoid social media altogether, it's just toxic.
I think the difference is most* commentards are willing to listen to another person's point of view. We generally* come from a science and technology background so are willing to let evidence lead the way. And occasionally change our mind and admit we are wrong
* with the obvious exception of those accounts that reliably seem to generate only heat and noise, not light and signal. And may - or may not - have some malicious state actor behind them.
Like every other place... el reg has it's share of trolls and the wilfully ignorant. You can easily spot them though, usually spouting/trolling their support of Space Karen, defending the right wing arguments... trying to say their playing 'devils advocate' instead of just admitting that they're bigots and trolls who's lives are so pathetic, that comment sections are their last refuge... they're probably still using Xitter too.
Easy to spot by the downvotes usually... the majority of people on here seem rational, sane and free from the vile bile of most social media.
I realised 99% of social media was toxic 12yrs ago, and have avoided the majority of it since... I am still around online, but in nicer spaces like mastodon, I was on diaspora for a while too... I get more engagement on masto than I ever did anywhere else... with the exception of G+ between 2011-2014 when it was actually good.
> And the left. Look at the "debates" in things like trans or LGBTQ issues, where anyone mildly disagreeing with the prevailing orthodoxy from the left is screamed out of the room
Explain this comment.
Because the only hysterical mentions of "the transes" is coming from right wingers.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/19/nx-s1-5196116/capitol-transgender-bathroom-ban-nancy-mace-sarah-mcbride
Explain this comment.
Because the only hysterical mentions of "the transes" is coming from right wingers.
Yet when someone tries to politely put a different point of view in a debate, to have a civil discussion, the result from the left is disruption and violence intended to prevent anyone who disagrees with them from having a say. They are only interested in shutting down debate and discussion, effectively putting their fingers in their ears and hysterically shouting "Ya Ya Ya I can't hear you" to stop anyone else from contributing. See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/30/trans-activists-disrupt-kathleen-stock-speech-at-oxford-union as just one example.
Both sides can be intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them, but the left are the ones determined to block free and open discussion on the issues.
Hmm, more downvotes than upvotes.
I guess it's all too easy for people to "blame the other side" for the screaming when, in reality, both sides are as bad as each other, because (and probably in large part due to social media) everything is so polarised these days.
"Both sides can be intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them, but the left are the ones determined to block free and open discussion on the issues."
You have to laugh at this argument... because it's ALWAYS used by those who think they should be able to say whatever they want, free from consequences... they expect everyone else to be the bigger person and let them spew whatever bile they want.
The truth is, as per the paradox of tolerance. Once you start extending tolerance to the intolerant, you only encourage them to be MORE intolerant and it becomes normalised... much like the world currently is.
Many of us so called 'lefties' reject your 'tolerance' argument as the ridiculous attempt to make hate acceptable. Bigots can go fuck themselves, nazis should be punched... make them afraid to show themselves in public.
and as per Godwins 2nd law... anyone who uses 'woke' as a perjorative, always turns out to be a complete fuckhead.
The only way to win... is to not be fuckhead.
No. Most of the right, not most of the left. Too many, sure, but not most of them.
This is definitely not a "both sides" issue. trans/lgtbtq/sjw stuff is just one thing most of the left don't go on about, unless defending such people against right wing neanderthals.
Referring to the right as Neanderthals would suggest that you're not entirely unbiased in your opinions. It's also just the sort of extreme reaction that we get from the left.
Also, what we know about Neanderthals suggests that they lived in small communities, quite possibly sharing views more aligned with today's socialist/left attitudes.
right wing neanderthals.
A bit unfair on our nearest hominid relations.
There is no evidence they weren't hippy, tree hugging lefties or alternatively that they weren't cold dead hands NRA crazies. (Although outside of the US, no neanderthal remains have been uncovered with much other than soil clasped their skeletal hands. Inside the US there are probably NRA museums with these chaps' bony hands grasping assault rifles.)
On the other hand these Denisovans were a right menace. ;)
"That makes it a community, not an echo chamber."
Is it really a community when one must spend time blocking those that are offensive trolls whose hatred seems to spread far too easily? A community should be like the tea shop where there are disagreements but it doesn't turn into a lot of extremely impolite shouting, rather than a mental asylum which is what social media has become.
I'm with the guy above... just walk away, it's not worth the hassle.
...spend time blocking those that are offensive trolls...
I rather choose to ignore them, much less work and much more effective in getting rid of them (for me !). On the other hand, blocking people you disagree-with looks rather LGBTQXZ+cancel-culture-ish.
A community should be like the tea shop...
hell NO, what sort of life do you live ?
Didn't downvote, but...
"I rather choose to ignore them"
Sometimes the noise is too much. It's more peaceful without.
"blocking people you disagree-with looks"
Sorry, these people may have whateverth-amendment rights in their country that allows them to spew their bollocks. The right they don't have is the one where I am supposed to give a shit or have to listen. If I wanted to argue with halfwits all day long, I'd either become a politician or a customer service agent for a tech firm.
"LGBTQXZ+cancel-culture-ish"
I'm an equal opportunities "don't give a toss"er. The shouty left are as bad as the shouty right, just different. Ultimately it all boils down to some variation of "I WANT" (and YOU can't have).
"hell NO, what sort of life do you live ?"
Clearly, a nicer more peaceful one than you... Tea shop, good teapot, friendly people, various pot plants [*], maybe a chess board (but completely non-competitive), what's not to like about that?
* - Clarification: Plants in pots, not plants that are weed. ;)
The idea that "Echo chambers" are forbidden would kill some Social Media sites immediately , Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social etc... Is that really a good thing, regardless of your political swing ?
We don't need algorithmic-driven echo chambers, Bluesky and Mastodon both have strictly chronological timelines and people seem to like using both. In Mastodon you choose an instance which deals with your main interest. I haven't tried Bluesky, but I've read that when you create an account you can choose a number of "starter packs", each starter pack contains a number of accounts which post mainly about a certain interest and you can follow one or all of them.
Would it be a good thing if Truth Social were killed immediately? Truth Social is its own echo chamber, but I expect users will end up migrated to X anyway one way or another.
I'm not sure any of those create an echo chamber by design, they just end up making it really easy for people to build their own. You follow your friends. If someone disagrees with you and you don't like that, you block them or get so annoying that they go away. The echo chamber isn't necessarily made for you, but if you make it yourself, the results are the same. The problem is that, if the user makes their own, it's hard to blame the operator of the service for it.
Not at all the same. If you wanted to follow political posts of a certain political viewpoint you would have to consciously add them. If you were to engage with a political post that someone else shared, there wouldn't be an algorithm which picked that up and started placing similar political posts into your timeline.
On the other hand, with an algorithm-driven social network, the algorithm can propose a post and if you engage, it will find other similar posts and start filling your timeline with them and before you know it you're down a rabbit hole and in an echo chamber.
X's algorithm also pushes Musk and the content that Musk pushes (far right) in an effort to normalise it. You don't even need to engage with for right posts first for your timeline to fill up with them. With a strictly chronological timeline this couldn't happen.
And he secretly funded a right wing political non profit (Reuters).
The reason they put you into echo chambers is because that's the most profitable - they want to keep you on the site so they give you stuff that keeps you engaged and scrolling and clicking so you see more ads. That that "something" happens to be "political echo chambers" for a lot of people is a bad thing but that's perhaps more of the fault of the way the human brain works (but still their fault of course for taking advantage of it negative consequences be damned so long as they make more money)
Such a law wouldn't even necessarily have to ban social media sites that were built to be echo chambers, like Truth Social. Few would say there's anything wrong with creating a social media site that's all cat videos, and anything that isn't cat videos or is negative about cats in some way is deleted by moderators. People can choose to go to Truth Social, and know what they're getting. They know it is all pro Trump and that anti Trump voices will be silenced.
The problem is where you have sites with a fairly large diversity like Facebook (here is where some MAGA shitbag will complain about Facebook banning some nazi they like and claiming it is right wing persecution) but they serve you something from either political fringe which as has been proven over the past decade can easily drive weak minded people without a ton of political conviction who may have been nominally "liberal" or "conservative" but had a somewhat open mind on things and help push them towards the fringes. Once they hit the wall of what Facebook will allow (which is already pretty extreme by the standards of 10 or 15 years ago) they'll seek more extremist stuff from podcasters, youtube morons and so forth and go full raving loony. That's how the US has become so polarized, IMHO.
Well, within China social media consists of heavily regulated platforms like Weibo that strictly mandate that political views align at least vaguely with the CCP's. They also have pretty strict content moderating policies for things outside of what we would usually call politics. In many respects the site is already an echo chamber, and even for those items where dissent is allowed, the mob mentality is strong and dissent certainly isn't encouraged. I doubt this regulation is changing any of that, so what it is aimed at I am unsure.
Whatever you are thinking of for sites like the X-alikes, that doesn't quite apply here. Social media in China is kind of a different beat from what I have seen. They are already in a very restrictive space.
> I'd also like to get rid of Amazon's continued insistence that I have Prime!
Someone I know tried to cancel Amazon Music a few months back. There were that many dark patterns in such close proximity I'm surprised a black hole didn't form.
Throw in the likes of certain Chinese websites that carry a big headline of an item (say, a thermal printer) for €4. Great deal, huh? But no, when you follow the link they have listed numerous options, and the cheap one is a roll of paper or something and the site is showing the main item and attaching the cheapest option price to it. Extremely deceptive and it makes comparisons very difficult.
[though my one visit to Temu, I thought the layout was such a garish customer-hostile mess that I didn't last more than a few minutes; the best deal on earth isn't worth wading through that shit]
Apart from the censorship, there are a lot of things concerning the Internet that rather like in how China is trying to shape it.
Of course, there's the unfortunate fact that China is shaping it for political reasons only, but still, there are some good ideas there.
So-called "social media" sites will have to be reigned in one day. Things have already gotten out of hand with tracking and they're getting worse.
It might be good to analyze Beijing's decision under the eye of freedom of expression and freedom from tracking.
There are a lot of things in China's statements that I quite like to hear. The same way that there were a lot of things in Soviet propaganda that I liked the sound of, for example all the peace and prosperity stuff. My biggest problem is that China's implementing their ideas about the same amount the Soviets did. They frequently describe some abuse that I dislike and announce that it is now forbidden in China, and that's the last you ever hear of that, even though those abuses continue to happen there like clockwork and nobody's doing anything about it. Occasionally, they enforce one of those regulations in a drastic way against someone who just happens to have done something else they didn't like. Theoretically, China's got one of the strongest privacy protection laws in the world. In practice, it's enforced even less than GDPR is.
China has the ability to regulate as they wish, and sometimes they actually do create and enforce a rule. The problem is that, whenever they actually try that, they enforce a rule that's either repressive and authoritarian or paternalistic and useless. When they suggest and claim to implement something I'd actually like to live under, they tend not to bother really doing it. I can only conclude that those are intended as scenery.
It turns out everything that the USSR told us about communism was wrong.
Sadly, it turns out that everything they told us about capitalism was correct.
Realistically, the problem with Socialism is that people are involved, and the problem with Capitalism is that Corporations are involved.
Anyone who thinks I said that didn't get to sentence number three in my comment. My entire point, which I made repeatedly, is that China and the Soviet Union made a habit of saying things that sounded nice and never doing any of those things. Whether it's China with more specific claims that aren't true or Soviets with more general humanitarian claims that weren't true, the common part is that I'd like to actually have those things but neither of them provided them.
Is there any ideology or organisation structure that is devoid of using 'think of the children' or similar to overstep privacy boundaries and enforce control? Left or right, public or private, at some point "improving customer experience", or "protecting the public" always seem to turn into increased monetisation or power. As it ever has been, it will always continue.
Probably not. There are several that haven't, but they are mostly ones that haven't had much of an opportunity and might change their plan if they got one. However, there are differences in how often they have used those dubious arguments, how much extra power they got, and how much they abused that power when they got it. China is high on all three metrics, whereas there are some groups that used the arguments, got very little, and didn't accelerate their attempts, and some others that used the arguments, got some powers, and then seemed not to use them to oppress anyone and surely that's the point of having powers that have no legitimate uses. China is far from unique, but in addition to not putting in regulations they need or putting them in in words but never enforcing them, they have lots of other abuses of the powers they do use.
Easiest reform:
Ban recommendations. Completely. The whole "You may also be interested in..." BS has to go, forever, for all sites. If a particular channel or publisher wants to put together a string of videos to be watched as a series (say), that's their concern, they can do that - but the platform should not be in the business of doing it for them.
For Facebook and Xitter, that means users would only see posts from feeds or lists they'd purposely subscribed to. For Amazon and YouTube, it means you'd see the results of your search and nothing more. For TikTok... it probably breaks the site completely, which would be why the Chinese aren't doing it but I don't see why that should stop the rest of us.
Somewhat ironic this article is immediately adjacent to Google blocked 1,000-plus pro-China fake news websites.
Despite the business-looking page, scroll down - there is a free version.
This works on almost every level as an advantage for China. They need control over information, and they know just how devastating computers, the AI algorithm, and social media is. It's an insidious combination.
Just look at Romania, and Georgia, and the Americas. Everywhere russia touches, they get turned into nazis. We will all be speaking nazi russian soon. It's because people look to the internet for information, and are addicted to the adrenalin of the dopamine shot. The youth are especially vulnerable because they interact through social. They do not know they are being brain washed by a content created virtual world controlled by pure evil. China knows tho. They know it very well.
I am reading "The Political Thought of Xi Jinping" and have little illusions about the lofty goals expressed here. According to this book, which seems well researched, party cadres are expected to download an app about, well, Xi Thought. OK... The really dystopian bit comes when the book claims that are "scored" by how much time they spend interacting with the app, each day.
There are whole layers of 1984 shit going on, with delicious additional capabilities afforded by digital tech that Orwell could not have envisioned.
Some of this stuff may seem attractive to us - and they are - but they are ultimately in the service of aggrandizing Xi and the CCP's dictatorship.
"The Chinese government does and will go ham on you and anyone who speaks out, rebels, or goes against the regime's wishes"
An excruciating death by amateur theatrical?
Cruel and unusual punishment even by the brutal standards of PRC's CCP.
On the brighter side it's not traditional chinese opera which is probably more lethal than Vogon poetry.
Using algorithms for discriminatory pricing is also on the naughty list. China's e-commerce industry – a business segment on which Beijing has pinned its hopes as an economic driver and source of export revenue – has increasingly come to rely on the algorithms.
The regulations applicable to exclusively outward facing sites would likely be exempt from chinese domestic rules and continue to play by the same wild west rules as the rest of the internet. I cannot imagine CCP would wish any of this to limit chinese e-commerce from separating the gullible gweilo from his hard earned.
The domestic site sans algorithms and other enshittifications* would probably not need be any cleverer than a basic early noughties e-commerce site. The "export quality" site could presumably be the domestic version enshrouded by layer upon layer of algorithms, AI and other shite, rather like a Sara Lee chocolate croissant.
The irony is that until now vpn technology has mostly been used to get out of the PRC bypassing the Great Firewall but for a better deals foreigners might pay for vpn services to get inside. ;)
I suppose for good or ill, authorities everywhere will be following the PRC's progress in this undertaking with great interest.
Interesting times. Indeed.
* not the OED but not too shabby.
If the EU tried to adopt Chinese civil rights standards, an awful lot of people would object quite strenuously.
Keeping people fed is good, yes. But not all of them are "comfortable", not by a very long chalk.
Everything is relative, looking at Chinese history or the history of surrounding countries then this isn't bad. Even if (say) the equivalent of the entire population of the EU was uncomfortable that would constitute a minority of the Chinese population and there are many degrees of discomfort. I would hate to live there.
I mean that (if you are Han ethnicity Chinese) an average citizen and their parents will have experienced steadily increasing prosperity and public safety with less corruption than most countries and opportunities to learn and travel. Among single-party dictatorships only Vietnam seems to be doing better by their citizens and that's a much smaller country.
I think the Indian democratic model offers more hope long term but it's a lot more unstable and wobbles in the system have much larger impacts when you are over 1 Billion population.
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