Ignorance really is bliss when you’re drowning in information I've never seriously accepted the maxim "ignorance is bliss". Now I'm less sure. Everyone I've talked to recently seems to have developed their own highly personalized strategies for dealing with the world news that now surrounds us. It wasn't always like this. At the start of my nearly 45-year career in tech, everyone had …
I’ve been off most social media for years now. Recently I’ve come off WhatsApp too - if only because those ‘funny’ pictures that get shared around are just extremist memes that have been insufficiently considered by the sharer. Besides, Mrs 45RPM kindly shares the bad news with me, with a sigh and a “you’ll never guess…”. No. I won’t. And I probably don’t want to either.
Social media really is the cancer of the world, gnawing away at critical thinking and destroying mental health - and, ultimately, freedom and democracies.
Can't help but agree. I was never on any of the classic social media, so I can't comment about getting off it, but I'm not burdened down by excess information.
If I want to research something, I do; I don't let random people push me into doom-scrolling (indeed, I'm of an age that believes the _oldest_ post on a subject should be at the top of the page, with addenda below). I use search engines to search for specific information, not random meme-of-the-day. And I try my best to get my news from a number of sources, with human editors I trust not algorithms feeding me something they think I'll be desperate to see. I can't name any 'celebs'; I don't know what the video-series-du-jour is; and I don't suffer influenzas trying to shill products.
In a world where everybody is shouting, it's very peaceful. They don't put adverts (as a rule) in printed books...
Thumbs up for a printed world. The Register Luddites Book Club anyone? I’ve just finished In Memoriam by Alice Wynn (excellent, highly recommended) and I’m reading Juice by Tim Winton now (which is good, but also feels like the end result of an unmitigated diet of social media and extremism.)
Thumbs Up for the printed word.
Although my tastes no longer match my physical abilities and holding the hardback can be a strain (damn you, Peter F. Hamilton!). Which is frustrating, as a book is so much more pleasurable to use than an e-reader, let alone using a big glowing tablet when the colour images are important.
Hang on, got to change my specs to just check - yeah, I see you now, off my lawn!
Alan Moore's The Great When was a Christmas present. Funny in a spot-the-real-minor-historical-figure kind of way and entertaining. Medium arm strain. That particular thread lead to Moorcock's Mother London, light to medium arm strain in paperback edition. Finally there is a copy of Moore's Jerusalem now on my (sturdy) bookshelf, waiting for me to build a bit of muscle strength (1000+ pages).
Icon: what the dark grey season up here at 53 degrees North is for, reading.
I hear you.
I dropped out when I lost my job in 2011 (the Two Towers incident). The Luxembourg market shrunk like a prune and I was left on the side.
Between trying to find a new job and watching the news on TV, I chose finding a new job.
The news is nothing but sadness, catastrophes and no education whatsoever. Oh, so Dow Jones is down by 4% ? Why ? Fuck you, that's why.
Reporters never, ever, give explainations. They're just there to scare you, to tell you how things are going wrong.
Meanwhile, the rest of us soldier on. I found a new job, even if it took three years. I'm back in the saddle, and doing not too bad.
But I'll be damned if I watch the news again. There's nothing but despair there.
My wife, on the other hand, spends a good part of her day on various news channels. Well, she's retired. She filters the bad news to me and that's largely enough for me.
"My wife, on the other hand, spends a good part of her day on various news channels."
Best of luck.
I've cut all that stuff down to getting one email per day from a news provider that just tells me enough to stay current - I've found one that does go a little behind the noise and sometimes finds a bit of signal.
I waste half an hour or so posting here still though.
Icon: Off out soon instead.
This was not a problem with BBS, usenet, or forums, which are by design split into small communities. It only started to became a problem when everyone started carrying an always-connected device. Social networks realised their users had no escape and designed apps to constantly push and notify users of whatever gets the most engagement, even if it's a total lie or outrage bait. Then chat apps became a problem because of people hitting the share button and spamming contacts and groups with lies and outrage bait from social networks.
There's no solution that the market can offer to stop this - social networks actively ignore the mental health issues caused by their apps. So really we're hoping for the EU to legislate against targeting engagement and making anything more than a chronological timeline of people or subjects the user actively chooses to follow illegal. Also it'll probably have to legislate a minimum time between notifications.
If cigarettes cannot be advertised and only sold behind the counter with huge health warnings on them, I don't see why social media networks can't have restrictions too.
I have basically ALL my notifications turned off bar the one instant messaging client I use to talk to my wife and parents.
I don't do social media, I've even all but given up wanting to take a gander at Reddit, honestly I'd rather play a pc game (satisfactory is the current interest) or go out to the garage and tinker with something (or rather spend 95%.of it trying to find the thing I need to do tinkering with or worse being unable to find the thing that needs tinkered with - worse still I'm not even middle aged yet.....
> Besides, Mrs 45RPM kindly shares the bad news with me, with a sigh and a “you’ll never guess…”. No. I won’t. And I probably don’t want to either
Ah so you get that as well. glad I am not alone with this although the conversation here usually starts with "Darling its really interesting that blah blah....nope, 99.999% of the time it is not interesting at all.
I tend to hard filter the news using the brain in my head...not watching any news broadcasts for the last 20 years or so has helped my state of mind considerably, no Xitter or stuff like that. Yes I so have farcebook and whatapp but they are only used to keep in touch with social groups of my interests, farcebook being severely filtered by F.B.Purity etc
Ignorance out-numbers knowledge. This becomes everyone's problem in a democracy. Banning anything but the most extreme hate simply feeds conspiracy theorists' paranoia.
I think one piece of the solution is to teach lying, deception and fraud in schools. Hopefully when equipped with such tools people will be better able to spot it when they see it. I hope that will reduce the amplification and distribution of fake news.
By itself that is not enough but perhaps with other measures it will be possible to take away the market for fake news and reduce the incentive to mass produce it. If that ever works perhaps it will reduce the subset of real news that is only there as a response to fake news.
"I think one piece of the solution is to teach lying, deception and fraud in schools. "
Absolutely but can you imagine the howls of outrage from the usual suspects if schools tried to teach young people how to spot their bullshit and dismiss it as worthless?
Finland teaches this from primary school age. And it has to be done because we're dangerously close to having entire generations that believe any old crap and will happily destroy their own country from within.
sounds like a good idea with terrible flaws.
a) humans, despite their beliefs, are terrible about detecting liars in front of them.
b) quis custodiet ipsos custodes. or one sources fake news is someones conspiracy. eg Covid stories. Also how are the teachers to know what is unsubstantiated and that which maybe true ?
c) human resistance to changing world view or ingrained ideas. eg marxists still exist despite 20th century
As for excess of connection, never understood why this is even an issue. Dont people ever want silence in their heads ?
"I think one piece of the solution is to teach lying, deception and fraud in schools. "
You may be unfamiliar with the various schools I attended, or some of those my kids attended.
Children, as it happens are the most horrible, tribal, poorly behaved creatures on earth, and they don't need additional teaching in lying, deception, fraud, extortion, bullying, harassment etc. State school playgrounds are where this teaching occurs, as the staff retreat to the staff room and mope over a copy of TES or the Graun, whilst a single duty teacher nurses a mug of coffee on the fringes of the mob and pretends to supervise several hundred children. Other important values taught in the playground include mocking differences, excluding those who don't fit, ridiculing those who excel academically, etc etc. One of my kids had such a bad experience that we moved him to a fee paying school, and the difference was unbelievable - all misbehaviour was wacked down with a no-messing approach, pupils were encouraged/made to do constructive things during breaks rather than indulge in the mob rule of the playground, the message was "you can all be good at something" and as a result achievement was celebrated, whether that was academically, musically, on the sports field. You might assert that was down to the demographic and the parenting, but having mixed with the parents for some years I can assure you that they were not inculcating positive values in their offspring any more than you average state school parents.
> I think one piece of the solution is to teach lying, deception and fraud in schools.
I've been taking the (wildly optimistic?) view that the OP meant to say teaching how to SPOT and unravel lies, deception and fraud. And call out the perpetrators.
Rather than how to better commit those acts themselves.[1]
[1] Ok, there is the argument that teaching how to spot the holes in frauds etc makes it easier for them to spot the holes they leave and fix them. OTOH if they see just how much real, hard, work it is to make a fraud compete against reality then fingers crossed they'll take the lazy route and stick to honesty ("oh what a tangled web we weave...")
> I've been taking the (wildly optimistic?) view that the OP meant to say teaching how to SPOT and unravel lies, deception and fraud. And call out the perpetrators.
Anecdotally, I was talking to someone recently about the subject of detecting falsehoods, and they were adamant that they were far better than most people detecting falsehoods.
While I did very strongly think "Dunning Kruger in full effect", I instead politely guided them towards the Traitors, which I think should be mandatory watching for anyone who has to deal with potential falsehoods for a living.
Because (and with the caveat that I haven't seen the most recent series), I've yet to see a single person on that show accurately detect which of their fellow players is a Traitor.
In fact - albeit the article is behind a paywall, so I haven't read it - there's at least one article which indicates that the Faithful's success rate is pretty much "statistically indistinguishable from chance".
And there's been all sorts of people on that show - police, lawyers, street magicians, actors, etc - whose careers are at least partly based on their alleged abilities to detect falsehoods.
I've got a vague hope that when next this topic comes around, they'll perhaps be a bit less likely to take things at face value, based on their instincts.
Admittedly, it's perhaps more of a forlorn hope, but hey.
"I think one piece of the solution is to teach lying, deception and fraud in schools."
Rather better would be to teach writing that stands up to tests: "Can you prove that?" "Have you checked that?" "Where did you get that information?"
Spending time doing that and testing fellow pupils is likely to be more effective at putting others' work through the critical thinking mill.
Everyone has an opinion and the 'net gives them a platform to scream it from, no matter how swivel eyed, how frothingly insane, indeed it seems the more extreme, the more insane the opinion the louder they are shouted with a disproportionately large audience.
It's enabled extremism to inject itself in the veins of the mainstream and has divided us instead of uniting us.
I wish it were possible to avoid the insanity but even here there are those who deliberately post gibberish to ruin the experience for others and distract, obfuscate and further an extremist narrative.
I'm sick of it.
A friend of mine pointed out that it isn’t the boggle eyed nonsense that’s the problem - left to its own devices it would sink to the bottom of the digital morass and never be seen again.
The problem is the algorithm that promotes the nonsense for the sake of engagement and clicks. What we need (but won’t get) are algorithms which promote genuine engagement between communities, ones that promote working together, rather than ones that enhance tribalism.
Sing together now, “come on everybody…”
The problem is that social media thrives on troll-feeding.
It's the kind of engagement that keeps people coming back over and over to the same page, so instead of shadowbanning the troll, they promote their posts.
Removing the fact-checkers provides even more "engagement", as people try to correct falsehoods themselves - if they don't, other people may believe the lies.
Mainstream media has the backstop of legal consequences for lying - when the Telegraph publishes something false, they have to publicly retract it or face court action and potential fines. Hence 'spin' rather than lies.
Social media has no such consequences, and the publisher even has an explicit shield.
It's a vicious cycle.
Agreed and it irks me that friends who are firmly in the groups who are being demonised by extremist groups still use social media sites which are diametrically opposed to their existence and wellbeing.
Social media lives or dies by engagement and if people were able to take a step back, see how they're being manipulated to further that the stats would tank.
I would say that that the fact check is a call for you to engage your brain. If, on reading an article about global warming (for example), I saw a fact check telling me that it's a hoax it would prompt me to do some research and see what proportion of reputable scientists weigh in on one or other side of the argument, see what the underlying story is. It happens on El Reg all the time, albeit not with official fact checkers. There have been occasions when I've asserted something, been told I was wrong (the fact check), and I've gone, double checked - and either responded with a mea culpa (or shot down the 'fact' checker, as required).
Of course, this only matters if I care enough to share / pass on a tidbit of 'knowledge'. If I wasn't intending on sharing then it doesn't matter whether I believe the truth or a lie. What stays in my head in my own business.
I don't see value in cynically dismissing the very notion of a fact checker. If there are facts to be discovered about specific claims, it makes sense to have people documenting them. As for who they are and who "appointed" them, the answers are wide-ranging. What they are not is a priestly class claiming to have Gnostic insight into realities us mortals can't begin to comprehend. That is the role of the conspiracy theory peddler who despises facts, and who would throw cold water on any criticism of their pet theories. Those are the gullible ones.
No, a fact checker is anyone who takes the time to research claims using well-documented and generally trustworthy sources. If you begin by presupposing that any factual claims that disagree with your pet theories are wrong, then there's little that can be done to change your mind. On the other hand, if you're willing to look at a range of unrelated sources that all align on key claims about a topic, then there is a much higher chance that the claims being made are factual.
Fact checkers aren't infallible, but any fact checker worth their salt is going to present multiple evidences that can be verified and taken into consideration. Better to have imperfect fact checkers than to be blinded by confirmation bias.
The joy of missing out is an interesting concept. I like it, but I think I’d find it hard to embrace it.
There’s a real problem in how we’ve done away with gatekeepers, or rather, just added a lot more gatekeepers. None of us trust a single source to curate our news and knowledge for us. In some senses it’s empowering - each and every one can be an independent researcher - but in reality it’s both exhausting and a con: trusting to an algorithm doesn’t actually ensure greater transparency or variety than just reading a newspaper ever did.
JOMO (well done on your new coinage, sir), is a wonderful thing. Sure I missed out on a boring party where my photo got taken a plastered into a social media post, and yes I wasn’t the first to hear some tedious news. But, instead, I enriched my life with a tasty meal, I went for a bike ride, I read a book, I went to the theatre. And yes, I’m an antisocial (by millennial and younger standards) - but I’m fine with that. As an early model Gen X that’s who I’m supposed to be. Grumpy - but confident and not in need of the approbation of social media.
Starting with a new Facebook account these days, adding no friends and not even being from freedumb land it's incredible how quickly FB will start to push RFK and his magical fix everything horse paste from just looking at your local news sites. They are determined to instill fear and keep you there.
I think we're all (so far) in 100% agreement. I, too, try to avoid getting overloaded with information that is of no use to me. I dumped Facebook many years ago (I only signed up in the first place because that was where my daughters were posting family news - but I've told them that, if they want to let me have their news, they need to tell me directly); Twitter went a bit more recently, when EM took over and removed all attempts at keeping it sane. An early adopter of LinkedIn, I'm despairing of that, too, as any useful posts are being swamped by the narcissistic ones (the "look at what I've done/got" - such as a recent one where the poster is complaining that it costs him more to maintain his Aston Martin than it does for someone who owns an old Toyota), the bipartisan rants and arguments (basically between those who think Trump and Musk are a new joint messiah, and those who are able to reason for themselves), and adverts for products and services that are of absolutely no interest to me.
As for a previous poster, my wife trawls Facebook and passes on the tidbits she thinks I should know (most are not that interesting, but I feign fascination in the interest of maintaining our good marriage).
My sister is a classic example of someone who gathers it all and then obsesses about the problems - not so much glass half-full or half-empty, but can't find the glass. The last conversation I had with her late husband was about how he was struggling with her constant negative mood...
Trump and Musk are a new joint messiah,
I reckon one of them has to be the Baptist.
Bring on Salome, I am not particular which one ends up on the salver.
I have avoided pretty much all media for a decade or more after newsprint deteriorated into inaccurate, shallow and illiterate twaddle.
The sulphurous stench of so called social media was pretty evident from the outset.
Free to air broadcasting of current affairs has pretty much headed down the same gurgler as newsprint.
Public broadcaster's news sites are possibly the least worst but that's not a great recommendation coming off such a low base.
It's sad when you read France24, Deutsche Welle or even CBC and realise just how AWFUL UK and USA bloggerism aka what used to be journalism has become.
The BBC has given up any pretext of educate and inform and just posts whatever justifies it's current Boris Johnson esque social conservative while environmentally minded Zeitgeist this week, worse they only retract things when several MPs start threatening to look more closely at the BBC.
LinkedIn always has been its own unique pile of horse shit. Although it's largely free of the screaming loons who make up FB and Twatter, it associates your name with your employer, and so for the majority of white collar employees who make up the major part of the users, there's no debate no intriguing or challenging content, it's all just uncritical corporate bollocks.
We are convinced that the only model for a social media company, or any tech startup, is to be successful long enough to launch successfully on the stock market. When you need to juice your figures you need to promote engagement at any cost, even if that means platforming bigots and criminals.
There are other business models available that aren't predicated on this process. For example, if you don't aim for a floatation you can concentrate on being a business that provides value to it's users rather than it's owners. Then, providing a good service becomes valuable to the business rather than being a liability for the business.
Elon Musk promised to stamp out hate speech and bots on X. New research shows neither happened
Hate speech on the platform X spiked by 50 per cent in the months after the billionaire tech mogul bought it, according to analysis by researchers at the University of California and the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute.
And a few days ago...
Become an old git.
Looking at the TV ads that are trying to engender FOMO, all the people running through streets or piling up in front of a display window: "gawd, that just looks so exhausting".
I must buy a new shiny "device"? But I barely managed to convince this one to accept the certificates for my NextCloud. Not going through all that again!
And so on. Pah.
Now, I know this causes other issues - we have to get the young 'uns running around the playing fields to keep them fit.
So I'd like to introduce my new line of Rugger clothes: tartan slippers with cleats and a nice comfy cardigan with a reinforced seam to survive a *proper* scrum.
Truth is a loaded word, especially since the foundation of 'Truth' social. Perhaps even before that, since religions claim that their particular fantasy is the 'truth'.
Let's stick with facts, shall we? Where the definition is "That which is scientifically verifiable" or, in the case of the humanities, "That which is on record and witnessed".
@45RPM
Quote: "....Let's stick with facts......"
Really? You think "facts" are somehow better than "truth"?
Once upon a time it was a "fact" that the Earth was flat.........but the truth turned out to be a bit different.
Once upon a time it was a "fact" that the Earth was at the centre of the solar system....indeed the centre of the universe.....but the truth turned out to be a bit different.
Once upon a time it was (indeed it still is, in some places) a fact that the world is only six thousand years old.....but....etc., etc.,..............
....oh, and of course, Fox News is obviously a great source for "facts"................
See my qualifiers for definition of ‘facts’. Truth is subjective (scientifically too, since the truth is what you believe it to be - someone can genuinely believe that they are being truthful whilst not being factually accurate because of their perception of events). Facts aren’t subjective - even if the term is misused by bad actors.
thank you for proving my point. Flat Earth is only recent. About 1809 ITIRC. Washing Irvings fault. Which demonstrates exactly the issue.. Whose "facts", whose truth ?
the other statements are also not complete. Placement of the Earth and astronomy was captive to Aristotle and his obsession with geometry and with the low quality of data the model worked well enough until Tycho Brahes observations which were accurate enough (and shared) so Kepler could see that the models needed updating. Formulated laws of gravity before Newton and got no credit.
Once upon a time it would have been true that the earth was flat, as you would have no means to prove otherwise, or even conceptualise how an “oblate spheroid” “earth” would whizz around something called a “solar system”. Talk like that and they’d think you were bonkers, a witch, or both.
Are you sure you have the truth right now? How can you tell?
Welcome to philosophy of science.
@Jospanner, any culture which sailed, or traveled over flat lands would have a good clue the earth is round. Not to mention eclipse shadows. Please inform us of any literature over 2000 years old that makes statement about a flat earth. See? It is _hard_ to break out of ones own subculture myths.
That can be part of the problem, the extra time spent trying to take the information provided and figure out what truth is, but it is not the whole problem or even the largest part depending on where you're getting information from. For example, a thing that happens very often is that some incident occurs and broadcast news and websites start to post information about it. They are going for speed, which means the information may be faulty, but if you're using reputable sources, it is probably fine. The problem is that it's little pieces of disconnected information. To understand the situation, you need to either assemble the puzzle of data until you have the truth, remembering to immediately remove any pieces when they report that oops, that wasn't quite what happened. The other approach is the one I've often taken. I don't know if it's healthy, but when an event happens, I respond by ignoring any news for several hours so that, when I do read about it, they can provide me with a more cohesive report.
Is it possible (and reasonable) to not care? To replace the fear of missing out with the joy of missing out? Can we learn to discriminate between what's immediate, important and relevant - and everything else?
I find all of this a bit odd, simply because when smartphones came out I applied the same sceptical methodology to them that gets applied to every other snake oil salesman who wanders in trying to sell me things that I can't possibly live without, despite having lived without my entire life. My conclusion was then (and remains now) that I will either be at home, in which case I can access the internet via a laptop which is more efficient for any purpose that I wish to use it for, or at work (same comment), driving from one to the other (in which case I can't legally use it) or out with friends of family, in which case then I needed to be with those people and not on a tech device. The result of this was that I remained with a featurephone all the way through the entire fad, and am now bemusedly watching people who have addicted themselves to smartphones try and figure out if it's possible to live without a so called smartphone.
Yes, it is possible (and perfectly reasonable!) not to care about things. Your opinion is frankly worthless most of the time anyway because the level of information you have upon most subjects is so minimal (although skewed by the Dunning-Kruger effect aka illusive superiority in the eyes of the subject) that the opinion of most of the general population is quite frankly rarely worth reading.
To replace the fear of missing out with the joy of missing out?
Fear of missing out on what? What some drunk and drug addled fool with a smartphone thinks? What topics actually interest you? Pay attention to those, do not pay attention to the ones that are not of interest to you. It's a pretty simple concept. If you are sufficiently advanced interest in a particular subject and if your opinion is worth listening to and you can converse on a subject in person without filling people with a desire to knock your teeth down your throat then you can join membership groups which will unlock the ability to actually meet decision makers in person at events and you can talk to them and actually have some real impact on their thinking, which is liable to have rather more effect on the world than a comment on twatter.
Can we learn to discriminate between what's immediate, important and relevant - and everything else?
What's immediate and important that you can effect is relevant. Little else is.
Quite why people obsess about current events that they have no actual control or influence over I have no idea. If you pick a small subset of interests then you can interact with them in a meaningful way. Being interested in everything is being interested in nothing, because the reality is that "nothing" is your level of knowledge and understanding on basically every one of those topics; you've just read a synopsis that somebody else prepared which means that you are parroting their opinions.
Whilst I can't agree with everything said, I do for most. I DO have a smartphone (I didn't jump on the mobile phone bandwagon right at the start, but I did when the handsets became pocketable - as they were actually useful to me in my work, especially when on call at weekends, where my mobile phone gave me more freedom to get out and about). I moved over to a smartphone when they allowed me to travel with just one digital device (and charger), rather than five: a mobile phone, a GPS (essential when hiring a car in a different country), digital camera, PDA and music player (for long flights). Ironically, web browsing and social media never came into consideration (nor have they, since, to any great extent for me).
My laptop is my main internet access point (although my tablet takes on that role when away from a desk). When searching for information I follow the carpenter's rule of measure twice, cut once. Never trust a single source of information, and check that my second source is not just relaying the first. AI is a definite non-starter for that at the moment.
FOMO vs JOMO? I think the latter is far more appealing as I can't worry about missing out on something I'm not aware of.
As far as "Quite why people obsess about current events that they have no actual control or influence over I have no idea." goes, I agree 100%. The goings on in Trumpton WILL affect me, of that I am sure, but I have no influence on them and can do nothing to mitigate any future effect (there being no way to predict with any reasonable assurance), so why should I let them worry me now.
"As far as "Quite why people obsess about current events that they have no actual control or influence over I have no idea." goes, I agree 100%."
Speaking for myself, I give myself two reasons for why I care about these things, even though I can do nothing about them and I might be happier if I didn't. The first is that we've often been told that we can actually do something about them, and some people are able to do it by spending lots of time campaigning or organizing people. I am not doing either of those things because I'm often working, doing other things I've already committed to, and when I'm done with those, I'm tired, but since I know that I am technically capable of doing something, it seems like I should at least know what's going on so I can decide to start doing that if it ever comes up.
The second reason is that I've seen the kind of people who actually manage not to know about current events, and in large part I don't want to be like those people. They mostly fall into two groups:
1. People who know nothing about any event you might bring up and are apathetic about it all. It doesn't matter how local an issue, how much they could actually do about it, or how much it might affect them. You could tell them that someone is about to close their street unless just one person asks them not to and they would be blase all the way until the street was closed and they were confused why this would happen with no warning.
2. People who don't know about any of this but decide to have strong opinions nonetheless. The French are evil because something Sarcozy said about the British being inherently malicious, and when you point out that Sarcozy probably never said that and he hasn't been president of France since 2012 anyway, they don't seem to mind or they insist that your facts are equally reliable as their assumptions.
Why the existence of these people should make me read about all these things is a good question. After all, just by knowing these things, I'm not reducing their numbers at all and it just makes it all the more annoying when I meet one. Still, that is one reason why I instinctively want to read about any sufficiently large event or one that's likely to impact something I might interact with, even when I can't do anything about it, and so far, I have not gotten over that instinct.
That reads this is compelled to reply (including me). The problem is people don't know how this stuff works. That opens them up for fraud, and criminal activity. The ones that DO know how it works, are using it for fraud, and criminal activity.
The internet it's self has become a ponzi scheme. It cannot be trusted.
Take for example the Xombies. Why do you think the people there post such incredibly awful, inhumane, and deliberate lies? Because, it keeps you coming back. They make money when you click, and when you click, click, click, the algorithm goes "hey, give them more of that, they clicked on it". So you click, click, click... and suddenly you are a victim. You are caught in a feedback loop, and you wind up convincing yourselves of things that just are not true. Unfortunately, the damage is done, because you did it to yourself, and now you can't trust anything at all!
Stop being evil.
It's not like google wasn't profitable, and had a bad product? They had a very good product, and were very profitable, they simply had to do evil. The money was there for the taking. These tech people cannot help themselves because it's there for the taking, because you cannot help yourselves either. Your fellow man might learn or know something you missed, because they clicked first. We've all been played.
No, ALL of us are completely overwhelmed. Some just won't admit they are.
People have different reactions to being overwhelmed, some people just retreat from "news" entirely, others hyperfocus on niches like true crime or alien abductions, some people belly up to the swill and as with drugs need stronger and stronger stuff to fire their neurotransmitters so they get more and more extreme while not recognizing that fact or admitting it even to themselves.
What has happened was probably predictable if someone knew in advance the direction things would go, and probably a few people did predict it but were completely ignored. Now we're adding AI's ability to generate unlimited amounts of bullshit that because it was created by "AI" will be inherently trusted by some people more than human created content because that means it must be more fair or accurate (at least for the output of AI's that they agree with) Throw in the bonus that the AIs can hallucinate in ways that even its creators didn't intend and can't fix, and that bad actors can use it to create ever better photos/videos that soon will be completely indistinguishable from reality...
I'm starting to wonder if we've finally put together the last piece to our planet's solution to the Drake Equation. Maybe it doesn't matter how life evolves on a planet, once they become technological this is what snuffs them out. Perhaps a cooperative intelligence resembling bees or ants might have a way around this, if such a species is able to achieve our level of technology.
One day a week I look at some trusted news websites to see a) what the press is obsessing about this week just in case it's actually relevant to me and b) what's going on with important things like wars and pandemics.
The rest of the time I limit myself to El Reg and sports news. Sports have lots of corruption, but at least the players on the pitch are genuinely trying to win (well 99% of the time) and the outcome can't be predicted
by applying rules like "might is right" or "money talks and b******t walks."
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