Social Media
What could possibly go wrong?
Second Life is a social medium for me. It's the only one I like and I come to Second Life for social interaction. An important aspect is that Second Life doesn't push things at people.
I tried Facebook when it first came out and fled in horror because of the way it was pushing "friends" at me. I only lasted a week or so before I stopped using it though I still have an account.
I watched Twitter rise in the world with some amazement. Who could be interested in a stream of little tweets? I never imagined that it would become such a huge political phenomenon. I never had an account and so I don't really know how it works - but I've sure seen its influence.
I've seen groups of teenage girls doing video dances for TikTok - they seem to be having a good time and I have no idea what TikTok is like.
When I first signed on to the internet the WWW didn't exist. There were tools that gave access to remote computers that would present text files on various topics. There were search tools. They had cute names like Gopher and Archie and Veronica.
There was email and people set up mailing lists. That is, one would send an email to the mailing list and the software would broadcast the email to all the subscribers of the list. That was a surprisingly effective system. There were mailing lists with thousands of subscribers having very lively conversations about all sorts of topics.
Mailing lists were completely unmoderated and some people used that as a chance to indulge in very hurtful speech towards others that they disagreed with - a practice known as "flaming". There were flame wars where flamers would send flames back and forth to each other. There was even an evolutionary process at work that caused the flames to become more and more hurtful.
It gave me a tough skin that served well when I joined Second Life years later :-)
I don't remember mailing lists spreading disinformation. This was probably because a mailing list was a group of like minded people after all. You had to go and find one that interested you and join it. So perhaps I was seeing an early version of what we call siloing - there may have been mailing lists dealing with disinformation but I never got to see it.
I watch social media like Facebook and Twitter from a distance so my knowledge of how they work is third hand (full disclosure) but they have been widely reported about. They profit from controversy and have no intrinsic interest in accurate information. And that profit has made some of the richest people on Earth
Truth be told - I don't think they have the capacity to evaluate whether information is accurate or not and besides, who would actually trust a commercial enterprise with the job?
Then Twitter morphed into X and got an owner who figured he had the solution - he'd only allow information to be posted that he liked - accuracy didn't come into it.
Social media presents us with a vivid example of the Collingridge Dilemma: We need to implement a new technology before we understand what the problems are, and by then it's too late to back out.
I think we will adapt rather than back out. X is already going down the tubes in a weird burst of self-destruction. People will learn the critical skills needed to work in a space where psychological manipulation is normal.
After all - I grew up with TV commercials and it did me little harm :-)
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.