It's an extremely accurate definition of what we genuinely believe. There is no ulterior motive. There is no hidden agenda. It's very simple, and we're all confused why it even needs to be a 'thing.'
I am just a user experience designer. There is a wide, wide rift between what users desire and what will actually solve their problems. I'm paid to reconcile that difference.
I do not intend to design society. But then, people are, as we speak. I don't know what's better--letting them design for what people want regardless of what it does to society, or designing for a society that's better regardless of what individuals desire.
We're primitive creatures. All of us, myself included. We're mostly run by our lizard brains, going after what spurts the happy chemicals into our brains.
I don't think society should be shaped to battle against human nature; but I certainly don't think uncontrolled human nature should shape society. As in all things, a balance.
That's a good place to start with these kinds of questions.
I figure this is true simply because of the remarkably low population of Hacker News compared to society at large; there's simply not enough people here for changes to this specific site to make an impact on the larger social media ecosystem.
To be more realistic, I'll estimate that getting the social media platform Hacker News exactly perfect from a systemic standpoint might have an impact on around 0.001% of the societal social media problem. We've then got 99.999% more to impact.
And if you believe that people reading Hacker News are somehow more influential to society than the average social media user or something... well, we would not then have that belief in common.
First, in no world am I arguing that I personally get to decide what is good or bad. Lord no.
Second, your argument devolves to everyone should be able to decide what to do for themselves or their company without discussion about what is good or bad for society or the environment at large.
So no, I can’t agree with that.
At some point we need to be able to discuss how to make society better. If that’s not allowed, then that’s not a society I want to live in.
We need to start understanding that there is no such thing as a natural state of freedom; there is only freedom from and freedom to, within specific environmental constraints and power structures. We are always influenced--the question is just what influences we want to prevent, design, or control and which we want to leave undesigned or "free."
The key difference here is that the speech is already highly managed and influenced to a degree never before seen in history. To think otherwise would be foolish.
Twitter isn't some natural state of the world that is pristine and unassailable; Facebook isn't the square in the park where people can speak their voice, and other choose to listen, participate, or walk along. Neither are anything like a book or newspaper.
If you're saying we shouldn't optimize or manage or turn the dials of these systems, then that's accepting that the current management and optimization and dials are somehow, inexplicably, acceptable or natural.
Someone has designed these systems and is influencing speech with their decisions. I don't have any power over them, but someone does, and the dials and designs of the system and the type of speech and communication they reinforce or encourage will change over time.
What gives them, the designers of the systems, any more right to manage their own system and the speech on it by their design choices? Are we to simply accept the corporations' design of their systems without critique or argument?
Not taking any action is to accept the current action, which still influences society. Not managing systems is to accept the current state of those systems, which still manages speech.
I do not see any difference whatsoever in those paths, so I will argue for trying to improve the systems.
The worst argument for designing an experience is that users want it.
We can do far better.
But I get your point. Realistically this has to be a societal change that demands better social media platforms, not something just thrown into the market with no demand.
Very funny; not arguing for censorship here, but for the design of social media technology that reinforces humanity and not primitive dopamine hit engagement driven advertising. What people say is not the problem.
Anyway, we are already in a balanced system that keeps people in line with society's values while still giving them an impression of freedom. The question is just which direction you go from there.
It makes more sense when you think about the fact that society is already engineered to be in some state, and the power of social media companies appears to be influencing that in the wrong direction.
If you're okay with putting society to the whims of its current incentives and the corporations' addictive advertising-optimized technology, you're free to your opinion, but that seems even more dystopian to me than attempting to do better.
At the very least I think arguing for sustaining the current complex designed incentivized structured state of society is morally equal to arguing for some different state.
If we can think about 5% of the population who simply have different life situations and backgrounds having a better appreciation for why they think what they do, and those 5% become less extreme and more understanding of compromising for the benefit of others, then you've just changed society completely.
I do not think we need to manage speech or control discourse whatsoever. If you think that's the idea here, you're not thinking deep enough about the nature of the systems that are problematic right now.
We've designed communication systems that are optimized for instant gratification, engagement, getting the dopamine hit of seeing things you agree with or angry at, and rapidly moving to the next. That's not speech, that's a designed system of attention seeking, all with the primary objective of getting eyeballs on advertisements and content primarily.
We've designed communication platforms that cause us to cease seeing each other as human beings, and instead condensed thoughts and memes that are simply repeated to conform and get reinforced for a quick natural drug.
I do not think we should control the discourse or have structural control over what's right or wrong to say or think; that would be absurdly dystopian.
I do think we need to change our systems to incentivize human context around that speech, and reinforce our own humanity in how we read and respond to it.
I think it's possible to design better platforms that don't bring out the worst in society, and that we should do so.
You're right. The way we design our social platforms has a gigantic impact on how people see each other, and talk to each other, and the impact that has on us.
Perhaps the problem isn't the self-reinforcement, but rather the platforms being designed more on instantaneous engagement and addiction rather than talking and human-level discussion.
We've devolved internet discourse into very simplistic, unintelligent, instant gratification that's friendly to advertising and monetization.
That makes a lot more sense, and why I think it's so important to think of this problem as a much bigger systemic ecosystem. The design of a platform or a system impacts how people behave; the ones we have now have just the right mix of characteristics to cause this sort of insular tribalism.
By saying I have no horse in the race, I'm saying that I'm trying to take an objective viewpoint on what is happening and what impact that has, not that I have no opinions or moral positions on the matter. Keep those separate.
Keep in mind also that censorship is a government matter: the government should not censor people; that's enshrined in the 1st amendment. But private platforms and companies have every right to design their communications systems the way they see fit, and I expect them to do so ethically with societal impact in mind.
I expect soon the government will need to enter into this race and take some wider action, but I don't know what that will be, nor how it will play with our constitution. It's going to be a wild ride as the psychological nuclear weapons we've created duke it out with the individual rights principles we've laid in stone hundreds of years ago. I can only hope we design some systemic solution that does not require that fight to take place.
And just to give an idea of the solution type I have in mind: right now the social network systems we have are optimized for addiction and engagement of content, and quick viral spread of content with minimal thought. Could we instead design systems that are more about human communication and understanding? Could we alter our existing platforms to tune down the addictive tribal dopamine hit in their nature? I bet that would have a large impact.
In other words, simply censoring speech without considering the design of the technology would be foolish. The platforms, not the speech, are the problem.
I would say you're not looking wide enough here. Absolute free speech isn't a problem in isolation by any means; but there are impacts to the ability of that to grow into self-reinforcing belief that doesn't match reality. One appears harmless, like a single alpha particle; but the other is an impact akin to an alpha particle chain reaction, or nuclear explosion. Similar impact on society, I would argue.
Could we conceive of a way not to control speech, but to inform or educate or provide information in context--or do something, anything so that it doesn't have the power to self-reinforce and create psychological weapons of mass destruction? What if it's the design of our current social networks around instant engagement and addictive content that's the root of the problem? Could we change the nature and design of that platform without restricting the speech on it whatsoever?
I have to believe it's possible. I'm under no illusion that I know the answer, or that the answer is even something that we have a name for yet. This is not contradictory or incoherent, it's just yet unknown.