Is social media destroying our society ?

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(Edited)

Is social media destroying our society_.png

For a couple of years, I've been noticing that people tend to loose the capacity of debating without getting emotional. The main point seems to be: are you with me or are you against me. There seems to be no in between anymore. I see the same on many different levels. You either believe that Covid is an illness or you believe it's a hoax. You are against vaccinations or you are in favor. You eat meat or you don't eat meat.

I like to debate about a subject but I don't like to fight to know who is right and who is wrong...

Whenever I speak with somebody about these things, I can't help feeling that these discussions have no meaning because the people I speak with can't accept that I may have a different opinion than them. Most of the time they want to convert me to the truth, their truth. I don't like such discussions because they become quickly loaded with emotions and the facts are often lost on the way. I don't even try to persuade people of my opinion because I like to listen to what others think and then revise my own opinion about something... I accept that I don't know everything and therefore I'm always open for discussion but I'm not open for fighting for who is right and who is wrong. Well I'm digressing...

Tensions are flaring up...

Be it with my friends, online, in the news or even in politics, I can't help to notice more and more tensions between people who think differently. There seems to be one important ingredient being lost on the way and it's the desire to find compromises... It seems easier today to want to eliminate the ones that think differently and this is very dangerous in my opinion. The other day I was watching a video of my friend @ph1102 where he talked about this polarization and how he lived such a situation in his past... and it lead to war...

Yesterday, I happened to watch a documentary on netflix called „the social dilema“. If you have a netflix subscription, I strongly suggest that you watch this documentary. It allowed me to realize that the polarization of society is strongly linked to the usage of social media.

Why is social media a danger for our society?

Probably you know that the traditional social media channels use very complex algorithms on their platforms. With your behaviour you feed their databases and with this data, they elaborate strategies to make you stay as long as possible on their platform and to make you watch ads. The algorithms in use are based on technologies like deep learning. It means that these algorithms learn from the data and the results and get better and better in reaching the goals that the companies define. The problem is that these goals are set to make the company richer and not to improve your lives....

These artificial intelligence are getting better and better at knowing us and at predicting what we will do and how to manipulate us to reach the goals. They exploit human weaknesses to do so. Just some things I remember from the documentary:

  • fake news spread 6 times faster than real news
  • people who believe in conspiracy theories will believe in other conspiracy theories much faster
  • when presenting opinions that match the opinion of the user, the retention rate is much higher. It means you will not quit the platform if you watch or read what you want to hear
  • almost nobody that works for the big social media platforms knows exactly what the algorithms are doing...
  • facebook is capable of manipulating elections
  • nobody can define what the truth really is...

We are brainwashed by technology

In order to show us more ads our feeds are manipulated. When you search stuff online, you will get the results that „fit“ you best. When you want to build your opinion on something, you will only see the things that confirm what you were think already.

The algorithms and ai's of google, facebook, instagram, youtube, twitter, reddit, tiktok... are defining how we are supposed to think.

These Ai's are using the human weaknesses and exploiting them to reach their goals.

Do your kids use social media?

The objectif of social media platforms and also of games are to make us stay as long as possible. The longer we stay, the better the alexa ranking of the platform, the more ads they can show us and the more ingame stuff they can sell. They want us to be addicted to them and then manipulate our behavior by showing us ads or selling us ingame stuff. How can kids cope with that? If like me you have kids, you know how difficult it is to get them away from the screens... It's not their fault. There are very powerful businesses whose game plan is to do everything possible to get them addicted...

Is there a better way?

I stopped using google, I use presearch. I stopped using chrome, I use brave. I stopped using facebook, I use hive. I don't use youtube, I use lbry or 3speak... These are possible business models where I am not the product and my data is not for sale. In addition to that on all this platforms I get rewarded for using them. These platforms are not perfect but I believe they are better. Even if content discovery is maybe not the best on such platforms, I don't care because I prefer to choose and search what I want to read and watch rather than it being dictated by AI's...




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Your current Rank (68) in the battle Arena of Holybread has granted you an Upvote of 58%

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(Edited)

Thanks for the mention, my friend... And the time when I had my personal experience with strong polarization, the social media networks weren't that popular as today... But television and mainstream media (newspapers, websites) were at its peak! I still can't believe what kind of BS they were serving to people... And it was enough to create polarization, but I would say that we were semi-plants at that moment...

Today, WITH social media networks + old the knowledge from classic mainstream media, we are turning into plants and robots, where all-out life is being programmed... It sounds like a conspiracy theory but just think about it...

You have been served things that you "liked" or that you SHOULD see, and you got fed by that day by day... Sooner or later, you will notice that you are spinning in circles reading the same s*it as always... There is no "exploration", there are no discoveries of your OWN, only what you SHOULD discover...

and just remembered that same s*it in commercials... "Discover the new blah-blah..." Yeah, right...

Thanks for the fantastic post!



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Today, WITH social media networks + old the knowledge from classic mainstream media, we are turning into plants and robots, where all-out life is being programmed...

I believe there is a first step that we are reaching and this is being aware of it and what is the source of this problem. I'm happy to know I'm not the only one out there seeing it that way. The next step is to push awareness in others and show other possibilities. As you once said, we can get this boat around...

Thanks a lot for the great comment!

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(Edited)

Iˋd reformulate: Irresponsible use of social media damages many people enormously, and this damages society.

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That's an interesting way to define it. I believe that social media carries a lot of dangers. The ones visible, when you see your kids getting addicted to it. And the ones are not visible, when the AI of these platforms manage to manipulate the way you think and behave.

Thanks a lot for stopping by and your comment!

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Great ty . This is good I do use YouTube but I don't use it to upload anything I just watch certain videos a certain time of day and my bedroom that's all the rest of that stuff I'm in great post

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I don't think that we should just leave youtube aside. I think however that it is important to realise what happens behind the scene.

Thanks a lot for your comment!

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Why is social media a danger for our society?

Actually I will summarize it in very old saying. "Fire is a good servant but a bad master" Noe everything depends upon your relationship with social media.

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You are right, if we don't control the tool, the tool will start to control us.

Thanks a lot for stopping by!

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It's a two sided story. Some people are making the most and best use of social media, while others choose to utilize their creativity in a negative way. It rather a subjective theme based on the character, experiences and priorities of the social media user.

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Honestly in my offline business I need youtube and instagram to reach my customers but when you see what these AI are capable of doing, how they can manipulate the way we think and behave, it's kind of worrying.

Thanks a lot for your comment!

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Thanks for the tip on the program on Netflix I am going to watch it.

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You are welcome. I believe it's a very important movie to watch. I will also want to watch it together with my kids :-)

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An excellent article, unfortunately there are people who believe that they have an obsolute truth and as you explain these people seek refuge in some social networks where they handle the same feeling.

I think that artificial intelligence that you mention after collecting that data, the strategy is based on the media and communication, since, as you say they begin to fill you with published and information, that many times you are surprised that it appears and that is due to the diagnosis that they made to us, therefore they know what we want and they turn us into people dependent on their services.

There are many aspects that can be drawn from this topic, I liked your approach very complete your article, thanks for sharing! 🤝

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Thanks a lot for stopping by and your kind feed-back. I was aware of most of the things but didn't realise the implications it has on our life. When social media pushes you to hatred and you start killing people... then it gets really scary.

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Hello @achim03
I feel very identified with your content.
I have a similar way of thinking about this reality of social networks and other media.

The ability to manipulate through the networks is an impressive thing, most people have no idea that this is so.

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most people have no idea that this is so

I think that this is the biggest problem. People are not aware that what they think has been manipulated and that they are kind of used by other interests.

Thanks a lot for your comment my friend!

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I think the more we are aware of this, the better. They are manipulating to get their best interest. I hardly use Facebook these days. But I still use YouTube. Hope we will get more content in different categories on platforms like 3Speak. When alternative platforms will be in a good position to compete with those platforms, we will see a significant change.

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It's still quite difficult to totally abandon youtube or even instagram. For my offline business, these are tools that I almost need to use to reach my customers. I think that it is important to have some alternatives available...

thanks a lot for stopping by!

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That's the truth.

We love to be on decentralized platforms. But at the same time, you have to be practical when you make business decisions. You should be there where your customers are. And they are on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

We are making content on decentralized platforms and hope this situation will be changed in the future.

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@achim03 particularly social media is more time consuming. We and our younger generation is wasting huge time on social site which is alarming.

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When I see teenagers on the street, there phone has become an extension of their body and I also believe that this is alarming.

Thanks a lot for your comment!

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