The Network Effect and it's Consequences
Back when wikipedia was first released, it was called Nupedia
They had curated content and were peer-reviewed, however, something quickly changed when they tried to take advantage of 'the network effect', which essentially created more interconnections in order to strengthen the overall content base and self-propagate.
What they found over the 10 years of doing so is that their content quickly turned aggressive, biased and factually incorrect.
After much deliberation and several lawsuits, they re-instated the curation function, and the now 'Wikipedia' active editor base dropped from 7,000,000 to just over 70,000!
Why did it fall so heavily when users could no longer troll, post hateful messages and spread misinformation?
Why were people not interested in contributing once their entries were peer-reviewed?
The Virus of Hatred
It has been found that it is easier to convey hatred, anger and aggression in shorter messages than it is for the more nuanced positive emotions.
Combine this with character-limited, viral-like messaging services, you then harness the network effect to propagate whichever content it is that people find most compelling to produce while simultaneously conditioning them to produce more of that content.
The Negative Attention Economy
You look at all the videos online, all the content, conversations and events, and what are the things that most grab our attention? Negativity, conflict and aggression.
We don't have to go into why that is, the point is we are wired to seek out negativity and are even socially rewarded for seeking it out and propagating it amongst our peers.
This is just an introduction and it goes much deeper than this, but the pill that you need to take is that:
No-one 'made' us like this.
No-one made foids hypergamous.
No-one 'socially engineered' people to be hateful and enjoy conflict.
This is just the natural state of humans once you strip away everything that previously held them back from committing these atrocities and ripping society apart.
A few very smart people gave humanity the tools to hang themselves with and profited immensely in the process.
There is no conclusion to this piece that i can think of, it's just another pill in the medicine cabinet
I have my copes, and you have yours, i'll leave it at that.
Back when wikipedia was first released, it was called Nupedia
They had curated content and were peer-reviewed, however, something quickly changed when they tried to take advantage of 'the network effect', which essentially created more interconnections in order to strengthen the overall content base and self-propagate.
What they found over the 10 years of doing so is that their content quickly turned aggressive, biased and factually incorrect.
After much deliberation and several lawsuits, they re-instated the curation function, and the now 'Wikipedia' active editor base dropped from 7,000,000 to just over 70,000!
Why did it fall so heavily when users could no longer troll, post hateful messages and spread misinformation?
Why were people not interested in contributing once their entries were peer-reviewed?
The Virus of Hatred
It has been found that it is easier to convey hatred, anger and aggression in shorter messages than it is for the more nuanced positive emotions.
Combine this with character-limited, viral-like messaging services, you then harness the network effect to propagate whichever content it is that people find most compelling to produce while simultaneously conditioning them to produce more of that content.
The Negative Attention Economy
You look at all the videos online, all the content, conversations and events, and what are the things that most grab our attention? Negativity, conflict and aggression.
We don't have to go into why that is, the point is we are wired to seek out negativity and are even socially rewarded for seeking it out and propagating it amongst our peers.
This is just an introduction and it goes much deeper than this, but the pill that you need to take is that:
No-one 'made' us like this.
No-one made foids hypergamous.
No-one 'socially engineered' people to be hateful and enjoy conflict.
This is just the natural state of humans once you strip away everything that previously held them back from committing these atrocities and ripping society apart.
A few very smart people gave humanity the tools to hang themselves with and profited immensely in the process.
There is no conclusion to this piece that i can think of, it's just another pill in the medicine cabinet
I have my copes, and you have yours, i'll leave it at that.
