We're Thinking About Facebook Wrong
Vložit
- čas přidán 12. 06. 2024
- Pizzamas products available now until the end of next week!: www.pizzamas.com
Usually I'm up in the description being like, "here are a bunch of things I wasn't really able to fit in the video" but actually...turns out, if you let me go for 20 minutes, I get most of it out.
OK, I guess the one insight I had durning this that didn't fit is to do with righteous superiority. It (and fear) are most effective on people who struggle with self worth (which is to say...y'know...basically everyone, but also some people more than others.) In particular, people who might have been told that they would have a lot of status but then ended up not getting it might be very susceptible to both fear-based and superiority-based content. Interestingly, the fear and the superiority almost always go hand-in-hand. Like, "here are the people you are superior to, and here is why you should be afraid of them" is a wildly engaging thought.
Anyway, this is really intense and I hope we all get through it.
2:00 So... Facebook is scary
3:56 We're babies
6:58 Ok, but what is Facebook?
10:43 What should we do?
16:10 Platforms don't just host!
19:02 Facebook is regulating society
19:40 The end
----
Subscribe to our newsletter! nerdfighteria.com/nerdfighter...
And join the community at nerdfighteria.com
Help transcribe videos - nerdfighteria.info
Learn more about our project to help Partners in Health radically reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone: www.pih.org/hankandjohn
If you're able to donate $2,000 or more to this effort, please join our matching fund: pih.org/hankandjohnmatch
John's twitter - / johngreen
Hank's twitter - / hankgreen
Hank's tumblr - / edwardspoonhands
Book club: www.lifeslibrarybookclub.com/
Oh, hello! The awesome socks club is LIVE now ONLY FOR A FEW DAYS. Get awesome socks that also make the world more awesome, because 100% of the profits go to support efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality in impoverished communities. awesomesocks.club -John
I have noted whenever you name names, you haven't named Reddit. Just curious to know your stand on how Reddit is different (if it is) from facebook and is not usually involved in "major regulation issues". Love you videos though : )
You explained it very well. People want to feel superior.
I knew Hank would have thoughts on this but that's five times more thoughts than I thought he would have thoughts
+
@@repellomuggletumify Horrible album by Ed Sheeran
@@MyBeautifulDarkTwistedFantasy6 well that's just like... Your opinion man
Same. I'm not complaining though!
@@nate.2.2 That comment really brought the room together, man. 😉
I know video essays are not really the job of vlogbrothers videos, but honestly, I really enjoyed this?? I kind of want more topics in a similar format. Just thought I'd put that in because you know, feedback is important. :)
agree omg this was so good
this is basically a hankschannel video if you want more discussions like this
@@LewisFieldhouse I'm not sure if you're kidding, but in case you aren't this video is exempt from the 4 minute rule because it is an educational video
+++++++
+
hank trying to put informational video essayists out of business over here
I love your content! 😊
Lol right? Loving it still
yes
hahahaha funny joke! the vlog brothers gave video essayists the blueprint to even be in this business in the first place.
@@notacaulkhead ...it was a joke
That point about watching history videos and getting sent into an alt-right pipeline is absolutely true. If you want to watch anything related to military history, colonialism, or religion you cannot escape suggested alt-right content on CZcams especially.
Oddly, this is also true of Star Wars.
This is how postblocking worked, once you remove and replace the OG's of any solid viral meme movement it quickly gets snatched up by opportunists. The original audience was mostly leftist when polled. I don't think society will recover because the "wolves" of the system were killed off. You're left with conservative leaders who are basically rebrands from the same freakshow stockpile that leftists come from. Nobody used to actually believe in things like Q, that was all heavily mocked, but after 10 years of manually removing dissenters from your platform the mental average weakens to a point where people are helpless and begin to beg Facebook for even more manipulation/censorship etc. Truth is nobody on this earth has ever lived to explain why we're here or where we should go, and probably shouldn't.
Define alt-right and give me an example of those creators because I have only seen Conservative videos recommended, nothing outlandish.
@@SilverHawk214 It depends on which sphere of CZcams you enter. Alt right history channels exist, but I mostly disregard them and move on with my life. The vast majority suggested to me tend to be lefties, which is fine I guess. I think CZcams does a bad job sometimes of pegging a person's political affiliation and it will recommend you channels based on that affiliation.
Also worth mentioning, "left" and "right" are gross oversimplifications of the complex topic of politics. Everything is relative. Some moderate conservative views may be considered extream to someone on the left and vice versa simply because they have started out from two very different positions on the political spectrum.
ie my alt-right isn't the same as your alt-right which isn't the same as a lefties alt-right.
TBH the terms "right" and "left" are kinda BS anyway
Star wars is just space nazis
@@SilverHawk214 conservatism leads to the alt-right, especially on a place like CZcams. Conservatism btw is bad itself
As someone who hasn't been on Facebook for years, it's very weird that something that isn't a part of my day is such an influential force on the world around me
Exactly how I feel about Twitter
Yeah, as someone without social media, Its strange that people give these companies so much power over their lives
same
@@holihsredlumednil6847 people want connection with others? It’s not that mysterious lol. Sure you have to take the good with the bad but it’s not like Facebook is the only thing we engage with that has negative aspects.
@@holihsredlumednil6847 Not being on social media is practically impossible if you use the internet. The same exact things mentioned in the video happen here on CZcams, and any other mainstream site with user generated content (unfortunately).
Your clarification that outrage is actually righteous superiority, and the distinction between what is posted vs promoted on a platform, are two really helpful thoughts! thank you.
It's almost like you think about the internet a lot or something.
+
+
As soon as Hank described the righteous superiority thing, I instantly thought of the boom in "reality TV." People love watching dumpster fires to make themselves feel better about their lives.
@@M0rbidCuriositea Yes!! I did too!
+
"Social media creates two feelings very well Fear and Righteous superiority"
Right on the bulls eye right there.
"I'm just not _so_ pro regulation on these companies that I will ignore reality." This is the kind of nuance that everyone needs to add to their views.
I really miss nuance in conversations. It's refreshing.
What "reality" is he not willing to ignore?
@@larkohiya He mentions in the video that some regulations aimed at larger corporations may harm small businesses
@@ignacioaguirre9689 Well fucking said, king. 👑 Maybe we'll get back there, one day.
@@larkohiya paraphrasing-almost-quoting the video: regulations tend to benefit large incumbent businesses because regulations increase the barrier of entry
I was LITERALLY JUST A COUPLE HOURS AGO talking to my Mom about how Pizzamas is the only time of year where I really really wish you guys posted longer videos because having them every day just makes me crave more, and I come back to my computer and AN EXTRA LONG EDUCATIONAL VIDEO? WHAT A GIFT.
I am being humble when I am telling you that I am the most powerful strongest coolest smartest most famous greatest funniest Y*uTub3r of all time! That's the reason I have multiple girlfriends and I show them off all the time! Bye bye mo
This video is incredible! People really need to think about this.
Last year it was Mr Delicious
++
It's a Pizzamas miracle!
You know its real when Hank breaks out the jacket
he does look super good in it though 👀
Hopefully he isn't wearing pants though
My eyes kept fixating on when the cool texture of the jacket was in focus and when him moving around so much was too hard for his camera to keep up with. :P
This was very wise. Thank you.
Suprised CZcams hasn't verified your channel.
@@jesperhustad yo that's such a good point
No one thinks you're legit anymore bro.
Why is he not verified lmao
rolls eyes again.
anyone else love how hank says “i don’t know what outrage is” and then perfectly delineates in better than anyone else with the phrase “righteous superiority”?
outrage is a much broader phenomenon than righteous superiority - he chose to focus on the most salient, dangerous thing that people tend to call "outrage"
@@GeekProdigyGuy yes. he’s very pragmatic that way. and i think that’s why he put that disclaimer before his statement
"A hundo p baller move" is a phrase I want to incorporate into my vocabulary
Thank you for appreciating it...John is going to hate it.
@@vlogbrothers yeah I can see that 😂
@@vlogbrothers which really makes it better :D
This is possibly a stupid question, but what does the p mean in this phrase?
@@loverlyrandom percent :) not a stupid question.
my main takeaway is that wow why is Dragostea Din Tei not still on my playlist? how did I forget one of the greatest songs ever written?
That's how the internet changes lives.
Why am I not surprised to see you here? DFTBA
that TierZoo is here watching a vlogbrothers video affirms for me that my choice of entertainment and education content is correct
Hi Tierzoo, Love your content bruh.
Wait, how did I never know what that song was called. I only knew the early CZcams Numa Numa guy's version...
I usually don’t comment on content but since the “algorithm” likes it, and it goes into the “black box” of it’s AI, this is my contribution to its calculations.
I'd like to point out that people really don't need to do this anymore. Like, I'm sure it's still a calculation among the many tracked variables of what should be surfaced, but ultimately "Current" (as of this comment) CZcams is primarily surfacing videos exactly like this, heavily favoring channels they trust with high subscriber counts, high view counts, and a history of reliability. The days of new channels growing from nothing to huge popularity are - at least for now - over, and therefore user interaction outside of passively watching a video is effectively meaningless right now.
Praise be the all mighty algorithm.
@@z-beeblebrox maybe but I don't know about that last part
@@icreatedanaccountforthis1852 praise be
I would say that removing the recommendation engines, trending, etc.... and making social media feeds just purely be a chronological list of the content people have subscribed to receiving, would go a long way to fixing a major subset of the problems. Give users full control over what they sign up for and how they filter/prioritize it. It would be a far healthier user experience. It would of course also be much less profitable for the companies, and no small number of users would find being set free uncomfortable, so of course social media companies won't willingly do that.
I mean that's essentially Tumblr.
Facebook is all about control, this whistleblower is fake and wants congress to give them more rights to manipulate/censor/postblock/thought police in the name of Blackrock-Finkian "wokeness".
it’s sad because there was a time when this was pretty much the case and now we are so far gone from it I remember chronological feeds and only seeing the content I specifically chose to like and follow and boy do I miss it // of course even then the “bad” stuff was always a looming search or accidental click into one off comment away but at least for the most part it was good
@@RoboticusMusicFacebook has no need to get congress to give them more rights, they can do all of those things already because the platform is their private property. It's not bound by the constitution and first amendment because it is not the US Government.
@@gemmapeter7173 There is a lot of gray area that they would like to have congress reinforce for the benefit of their internal goals.
Me:" Ah a new Pizzamas video, I'll watch this with my morning coffee."
Hank: "...which makes it exempt from the four minute vlogbrothers rule"
[checks length] "oh"
Step 1: I click the video
Step 2: I watch for an uncertain amount of time
Step 3: it's 10 min later and I notice the more than 4:01 minutes passed
It's gonna take a bigger cup of coffee.
That'll be enough coffee to keep you up until the end of Pizzamas.
Me: "Ok, watch this chapter by chapter in the crevices of my morning routine"
@@Spiros219 ٩
The transition music choices in this were incredible. Ok Go, Queen, The Flaming Lips, Dragostea Din Tei, Smash Mouth, Rick Astley and The Gregory Brothers!!! Bloody iconic, Hank.
These were all songs from my pre-show playlists for my book tour...I found the folder they were all in and was like "Oh, my work already done for me..." :-)
It seems like someone was trying really hard to get this video demonetized O.o
@@vlogbrothers The Surprise OK Go made my day better. Thank you!
Hearing Dragosta Din Tei really brought me back to orange-tinted webcams and flash games that you played while the actual entire flash animation loaded.
All of those are the band name except Dragostea Din Tei, which is the song title (Words of Love).
The band is O-Zone.
This is wonderful. This is a type of essay that would like to see more of: It perfectly describes the problem without offering a solution. I mean, I love solutions, and I do want to see them, and if you have one when you describe a problem, by all means share it. But often people are so focused on their solution that they do not accurately describe the problem, and you cannot find a real solution until you have accurately described the problem. Even worse, people tend to develop their description of the problem to fit their proposed solution, which is completely backwards, and makes it all that much harder to get an accurate description of the problem and therefor a solution. Finally, the belief that we should not post essays about a problem without offering a solution stops, or worse warps, people who see the problem but not the solution from describing the problem to the rest of us. I want to see more of this.
“As with apparently everything, we have to figure it out” is a such a mood
Im in school for library science right now and almost all of our training around being a librarian is on information literacy. It's what the field has taken on as their domain, much of the academic literature on the subject is written by librarians. I find it strange that no one ever considers libraries a resource to help solve these issues
This suggests that librarians will be the vanguards of truth against the tide of misinformation in the modern world. And that's amazing. Thank you for sharing!
Wow I love knowing this.
Totally unrelated to anything here, but, I keep running across this bizarre genre of fiction, written by authors who love the idea of being a booklover, and their main characters are librarians with cats and coffee mugs who self righteously save the world just so they can curl up in a cozy armchair with a book at the end.. and the genre's ~existence~ irks me sometimes. And I'm gladder than ever to know the self-obsessed, romanticized depiction of librarianism couldn't be farther from the truth 😅
Didn't know this! (re: info literacy training for librarians) What are ways you think we could utilize librarians more as a society? Do you see it more as tech companies hiring librarians as information literacy specialists for example? Or state governments creating "Departments of Information Literacy"?
No shade on full-time video essayists, but I felt more informed after this 20 minute video than the hour-long ones that seem to be popular these days. My time feels respected and there’s a balance between information density and clarity.
Aren't the video essayists normally doing more nuanced topics that require more setup? This seemed to me like a summary of things Hank has been saying for years.
I completely agree! I love video essays and most of my recent watch history is 30+ minute videos, but it's really nice to get such a concise video essay. I think brevity is a difficult skill that isn't easy to master but Hank seems to be good at everything (and also he talks very quickly lol)
@@anthonynorman7545 definitely. Something like this doesn’t replace video essayists at all.
I feel like Hank’s natural talking speed also helps with my terrible attention span, on top of how helpful and insightful it is
@@KatherineMackenzieSmith try watching videos with higher playback speed , you will never go back.
"it's revolutionary, and its a baby" is my favorite no context line
I've been a worker bee in the internet industry since the time when everybody who worked on internet computers could ALL go out to the same Mcdonald's at the same time and NOT crowd the place, I've watched it grow, and I share your feeling that somehow, probably for the better, this thing is going to change the world more than agriculture did. And the I've followed you two for years, always well written and thought out, but this is your best work ever. And I agree. We pretty well understand how the internet works, and how it delivers content, but we are only now realizing that the two biggest questions out there still are "How SHOULD it work?" and "What does it mean to do this?"
When I read Hank Green's books I was often like "why are these characters making such a big deal about the power that comes with controlling social media? This isn't political power or the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones." But after watching this video I feel like I understand those books better. How humans wield power is changing because we are developing new tools to wield power with. This is something that probably deserves more attention than it is receiving right now, and I hope we get better with it.
Well and also they give it that much importance because in Hanks life it really is that important. That’s how he makes his living, so of course it seems paramount in importance to him.
Things don't receive attention until they're in the top 1% of both importance and novelty, otherwise we don't notice. Things just become normal
@@mzaite Yes that's definitely a very interesting point. My one question is whether Hank's opinion that social media wields an immense amount of power that goes overlooked more credible or less credible than the average person because he is a social media influencer for a living.
@@kiwiboy1999 Most definitely. It is especially frustrating because most big world problems wouldn't become very severe if humanity gave them consistent attention from the moment we first discovered them.
Every time I watch Hank cover this topic, or when reading his books, I'm like: "This guy gets it!". I've had to try and explain to my parents several times that while for them, the internet is a tool, for us cyberspace is a place where we exist - a place where we reside and live along side the physical world. These spaces are digital sovereign nations that we become citizens of with their own government. And the fact that these countries, which are making very real decisions about our lives, are autocratic in nature, run by undemocratically elected dictators who are in no way held accountable to their citizens, just their shareholders, is extremely concerning.
I know a platform like FB holds a lot of power and influence, but it's really not legit to compare it to a government. There's a plethora of competing platforms that one can walk away from FB at any time. They charge you nothing and are in reality desperately trying to get the eyeballs to stay glued. Over time, if people lose interest or they receive too much criticism, they have no power to make you participate (unlike governments). Yes, overall I think it's bad for people, but only in the sense that all social media has created a information barrage where many people are left not knowing who to trust, and the "establishment" institutions (governments, news outlets, etc.) are waging a war on this trust issue by asserting that the "legacy" media is the most (or only) trustworthy source.
@@danpro4519 No, I disagree. It's not exactly the same as a physical world government, but it hold many of the same powers. They have the power to enforce punishment within their borders, expel people from their borders, charge tax (personal data) to pay for shared goods (the platform infrastructure) where you would ordinarily apply the tragedy of the commons, and they have a structure that makes decisions about the province they govern (the company itself, it's employee structure, and investors).
Furthermore, the "ability to walk away" is a total non-argument. How is that any different from saying "if you don't like your country you can move to another". In reality, that's a very arduous, and stressful experience that involves severing ties with many of the people you knew, and in a way that keeps us trapped on the platform. Most people I know only use FB as a messaging platform now, even though we hate it, because we can't all agree on a new place to migrate too, and it's difficult to keep track of who lives where.
And on the note of trust, I can assure you that's not it. Old media is just as untrustworthy as new media a lot of the time. And many governments are corrupt. But I think it's only by recognising these things, as well as the near sovereignty of big social media companies over large portions of our lives, that we can begin to make positive change.
What if the people who run Facebook or CZcams or anywhere else were democratically elected not just by the shareholders, but by the employees, the content creators, and the users? What if we forced them to give up the profit motive and become a non-profit piece of internet infrastructure? A communal gathering place we can chose not to be exploited. There are lots of different options to what we currently have, but you need to know where you are on a map before you can work out how to get to where you're going.
@@danpro4519 Hard disagree. It's very comparable to a government. In fact, FB may very well be more powerful than actual governments, which is why it's banned or restricted in some countries.
Could be interesting to see a FB-clone with an algorithm intended to make people feel good and support each other.
Too bad human brains put a lot more emphasis on remembering fear and negative emotion. So much easier to make people afraid than happy
Imagine no algorithmic manipulation, except people unironic communism-posting get instabanned for cringe. That's the perfect Facebook.
@@RoboticusMusic fascists suck too
@@RoboticusMusic isn't Tumblr like that?
Hank is one of the people with enough sense left to be an optomist... and we are lucky to have him.
I wouldn’t put anyone on a pedestal they didn’t ask for, we are lucky to have anyone willing to dive into genuine conversation, ready to hear disagreements and genuinely consider them. I am glad hank made this video, I put his example of genuine conversation on a pedestal because it is really nice to see
The idea that "we're babies, of course we're bad at this", really helped me put it into context.
In the same way that the first person to invent something almost always creates the worst version of that thing, and then it gets improved over time. Yes, Facebook is terrible, but so was the first thing of any other invention! We just haven't figured out how to make it better yet, and we will make mistakes and disagree on the best way to go forward; because it's an invention that allows for billions of people to give it an almost endless amount of direct feedback on itself.
That’s an incredibly optimistic way of putting it, and makes me feel way better after finishing this video terrified…even though I’ve never had Facebook
Iteration definitely helps improve and refine ideas. It is a little complicated though because it's mass human interaction so it might take a while. Personally I like Reddit being centered around communities and having a downvote button that actually does something. It's not perfect by any means but I like it better.
Seatbelts weren't offered as an option in cars until 1949. They were not popular with customers.
It's worth noting that all of the big social media sites, Facebook included, have changed a LOT since their inception. There are meaningful ways in which they haven't changed, and maybe should change to be better/more useful/etcetera, but they are already iterating internally. They are babies... And they are growing.
Honestly, I find the 'babies' point a bit weak by now. Were not the MySpaces and LiveJournals the babies? They were certainly smaller, like babies. Just because Facebook was a tiny college project that happened to blow up, doesn't make it nearly the first of it's kind. And not to get too super generalizing, but 'tech' moves fast, fast enough that we should have moved through the 'it sucks' phase (and in at least functionality, I think most people probably think Facebook sucks less than MySpace). It's often said legistation is like 20 or more years behind for 'the internet'... but 'adults' are rather more difficult to control than 'babies', so will it even be possible to catch up?
From a technical standpoint, the reason it stayed down was equivalent to somebody locking their keys in the trunk of their car. They couldn't even get into the server rooms to reboot them because the security couldn't verify anybody to let them in, because they needed to be rebooted.
From what I heard it was the people with the right knowledge and the people having access to the right servers locally, where not together.
And explaining IT to someone without the right education over a phone is pure hell.
My understanding is that this is a bit of a disservice by making it sound like a foolish mistake, when in fact access to the relevant routers was intentionally split up as a security measure against people doing this intentionally.
Ah I've been there so many times in different ways.
@@bulbasa9r753 I didn't see the explanation as a foolish mistake I focused on the .. key is in the place but you can't get to the place without the key.. thing.
I'm so grateful for the Green brothers. Your content makes social media a healthier place to visit.
Facebook asking for internet regulation here reminds me of the recently leaked Exxon mobile video. We learned that Exxon's public stance was in favor of a carbon tax because they knew that congress would never enact it, and lip service is cheap. Basically it was a way to say "hey, we're the good guys, we care" without having to change anything. It would not shock me if Facebook thinks similarly, and I don't trust their intentions.
On another note, I hear alarm bells when I think about american politicians being asked to lay down the law of the free internet… which doesn’t sound comforting as a non-american who would have no way to affect who those people are.
Oh man I didn't even think about that. Because the internet is a global forum. Right? So even decisions made regarding American companies on the internet might have a bigger impact globally than people realize.
Yes I wanted to know how Congress could legislate the internet when the internet is worldwide
Just informational imperialism. We’ve been doing it for decades.
I could see the EU make separate rules that are enforced 8n their area and China probably already has their own rules, but smaller countries will probably have to stick to bigger countries without any say.
+
A 21 minute Vlogbrothers video?
We are eating good tonight. Hank understood the assignment and brought more than plenty of pizza so no one would go hungry
Hahahaha excellent comment
My husband is currently working towards a Ph.D. In strategic communication, and one of his recent courses was all about the history of communication technologies. The main paper he wrote for the course was on disruptive innovation within communication technologies, and based on the discussions he and I had, I agree with you that forward movement in communications technologies are almost certainly the most disruptive. It’s honestly really fascinating!
"A hundo p baller move" is definitely a sentence that John has a bunch of second hand embarrassment for seeing Hank say.
True because I’m embarrassed for him as a well
Yeah but it describes it perfectly
I’m in the process of defending my masters thesis in media studies, and from now on when people ask what I went to grad school for I’m just going to send them this video. Great distillation of some very complex industrial practices and audience reception behaviors, Hank! Maybe I should have had you on my thesis committee!
Why are you defending your masters thesis what does that mean
@@Shrekfromthehitmovieshrek After writing a masters thesis the candidate (me) has to present it to a board of faculty and explain the research, answer questions etc. They decide after that presentation if the thesis presents a substantial addition to the field and if so approve it, thus permitting me to graduate.
@@TaylorOlmstead Honest questions: Can a disapproval be appealed? Does the candidate have any resources at their disposal in that case? Or is a refusal to permit them to graduate final and permanent? What effects would this have on future employment prospects, etc.
@@dntskdnttll If they don't approve they usually want you to do revisions to get it into a version they've approved of
i can’t help but admire your communication skills. i always feel like both of you guys are able to talk about complex topics without losing sight of your points and are able to articulate it in a way that is understandable and can be followed. i appreciate everything you guys do :)
I really really enjoy these longer form videos, and also the music blurbs in the middle that got me vibing. Thank you Hank!
I wouldn't call social media companies "bad" at managing their communication tools.
Just like almost every product that's addictive, they build it to be as addictive as possible. The consequences be damned.
Cigarettes, big oil, big pharma. Everything possibly addictive and everything bad it brought.
It's about money and look at their income, they are winning.
I think they're bad at it the way a toddler is bad at walking. Except we're looking at it having never seen a toddler...so it looks very impressive. The future will look back on now and they will say "They were so bad at that."
@@vlogbrothers Toddlers are really impressive, building a machine that learns to walk is *really* hard. Your point still stands, I just wanted to lift up toddlers.
@@Ugunark toddlers appreciate you 😌
In the we're babies section, I thought about how the first two people driving cars ran into them immediately. Or how when bikes were invented, no one knew how to ride bikes in history before that point. Makes sense that the internet is as chaotic as it is. Also why there is a different etiquette on the internet for those of us who grew up with it
If the argument is that “You’re talking about regulating society if you’re talking about regulating Facebook”, then Facebook literally has no leg to stand on when it says that it’s just a private company. De facto, it has become society by that argument and society has a right to legislate and regulate itself as per the Constitution.
What's frustrating is, there ends up being consistent de-promotion of content that doesn't incite this sense of righteous superiority simply because it's controversial and outside the norm. I'm thinking about the algorithmic suppression of LGBT+ and sex-related content. It's been a huge problem for people in those groups and fields. SaltyWorld recently released an analysis of algorithmic suppression, and it predominantly targets LGBT people if color, disabled people, and low income people doing sexual advocacy.
Clearly the values of the company are playing out in this promotion vs suppression. It's a serious problem.
The Fear & Righteous Superiority feedback loop is something that is a DEEPLY fundamental part of a majority of sales and marketing, and thus is intrinsically tied into the motivations of profit focused on - advertisement.
If anything, I think that the way that you managed to outline this helps to emphasize a focus on how these companies are seeing people as a means to profit, and thereby a _resource_ rather than seeing them first and foremost as other human beings.
I think THAT is the central distinction that will help to untangle the rats nest of how, why, and when they are promoting what content they are promoting, and to disconnect the feedback loop that feeds off of human tribalism and amplifying cognitive biases that take us farther away from being the best versions of ourselves.
Agreed. I think as well, we all need to be thinking about what role these media/tech companies should play both in the world as well as in our own lives. Should they even still be classified as media companies or have they become something else entirely that will require a brand new category? Hank made a video sometime last year I think comparing social media to cigarettes and ever since then I've been mulling over which social media behaviors are actually acceptable. I feel like, especially based on what I've seen here, that a lot of us have started thinking about social media differently but I never quite know where to start with sorting this out because of course, here we are, having this conversation on social media
People seem to always forget that with social media WE are the product. And all corporations treat their products the same way. As a means to optimize profit.
Sure it feels like you’re meaningfully interacting with other people, but really you’re just writing copy the Social media can use to honey trap eyes on ads.
@@mzaite This is why I think it's important to more meaningfully explore what social media _IS._ This is something else that Hank has mentioned before, and I think that our terminology around the Internet and ourselves is still woefully out-of-date and also inadequate to address the things that we actually experience by doing what we do on it.
• It's not a "place" but it's closer to a physical location in more way than it isn't in terms of how people utilize it for meeting up and interacting with one another in a way that is agnostic of borders and distance.
• Also, Internet & communication are something that are essentially the modern equivalent of mail in that sense. That's why it should almost certainly be considered an essential service for people to have access to. This is also why it starts to be more uncomfortable to realize what people in smaller Internet communities have known for a long time - someone else ultimately has power over your ability to interact with EVERYONE you _actually personally know_ on a platform if you have no secondary means to reach them by.
For those two reasons alone, it's important look at how you can prioritize the needs of HUMANS for an environment and service like that over those of profit & corporate survival. Companies are essentially just like macro organisms that exist to sustain themselves, and by utilizing advertisement and profit-focused algorithms, it's basically creating an environment that can become an ecosystem that is psychologically predatory upon us in ways that we're designed not to recognize.
THAT'S where regulation is important, because corporations as entities shouldn't have more power over people in that respect. We should never be creating environments where people are put into a psychologically manipulative set of circumstances for basic communication.
If this was any smaller type of Internet community, you'd have scaled moderation staff exactly the way you do in physical communities. You're making sure that there is a chain of accountability. While a majority of that is done by bots, automation, and algorithms. This is where the most important factor comes into play, which is COST.
What does it cost means what is the value in doing that. From a PROFIT standpoint, it's one that's not worth the investment, but from a human and psychological health standpoint, it's one where the cost of ensuring that those things are properly managed is imperative. The harder you lean on that, the more it pushes into the "money is an imaginary model of how to distribute a measure of trust between individuals who don't know each other for mutual exchanges of value" and it starts to poke into deeper problems of why there's a weird disconnect between the virtual and physical worlds and how they operate.
@@PierceArner thank you. I feel like this comment right here is exactly the way we need to be talking about this topic. honestly I like Hanks analogies for the "central powers" and what Facebook IS and so on. but I was having a hard time figuring out how to even approach the idea of how to regulate social media so that it can do all the good things it does, without so much of the bad, and maybe even more and new good things. and how to apply this sort of thing to the internet as a whole. your Imagery of a microbial ecosystem in regards to companies, people, and regulations seems to be exactly what I needed to better wrap my head around the idea. oh, you said "macro" not "micro", either way it helped me understand things better, and I think it's a useful way to conceptualize the issue and apply new ideas to it and hopefully have a more accurate understanding of how those new ideas might interact with and effect these systems.
@@PierceArner I think it’s important to differentiate Internet Communication vectors and “Social Media”.
Social Media is the commodification of Internet Communication for the profit of the platform. It is NOT the Internet Communication itself.
Hank: "If you run this positive feedback loop for about 10 years, maybe you end up with everyone spun up like a bunch of beyblades thrown into a fishbowl full of fragile institutions."
Me: I will never look at a beyblade the same way again. The beyblade is me.
I guess that's one way to look at the notion of free will.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 or that our wills, free or not, are being energized by people who gleefully poise us to smash into one another
maybe WE were the Beyblades all along...
True blader spirit lmao
I love the care taken with these topics and would love to hear more discussions out of the confines of 'happening now'. So many nuggets of learning in this video. Thank you.
It's odd, being a young person I've kinda taken social media as combined rogue corporate entities and essential platforms for community as the normal state of the world.
This video made me step back and think "huh, this is weird and not ideal".
Not sure what the solution is, but it's the first time I've seen it from that perspective.
Social media is here to stay whether we like it or not. The real dilemma is how we regulate it. Though I'm convinced that under capitalism, the profit motive will always push social media to promote fear and reactionary content to drive interaction and hold public attention. It's why so many people use Facebook as a news source and spread so much misinformation and alt-right propaganda.
@alex Barbosa Yeah I'm perfectly fine with social media as platforms for communities. It's the 'rogue corporate entities' part that scares me.
Although as you said, it's hard to imagine how to fix the problem without entirely overhauling capitalism, which seems unlikely.
I have so much love for this person.
Hank can have a serious, honest and vulnerable conversation about dystopian communication structures and still leave me with hope and curiosity and end the video with a pizzamas merch ad and continue to decrease worldsuck like it’s just another day at the office.
I genuinely love this person.
(The sibling is pretty cool too I guess)
2:00 Part 1: So... Facebook is scary
3:56: Part 2: We're babies
6:58 Part 3: Ok, but what us Facebook?
10:43 Part 4: What should we do?
16:10 Part 5: Platforms don't just host!
(19:02 Facebook is regulating society)
19:40 Part 6: The end
Thank you, but this information is in the video description. :)
How am I just finding this youtube channel now?? It is like you go into my brain and conceptual what I have been trying to say for years, with wise and perfect English. I feel slighted. This is absolutely brilliant and the first channel I will use the bell on.
God, I loved this. I understand *video essay* isn't what Vlogbrothers exists for, but Hank doing a structured, well-considered video that's one part education and two parts discussion scratches an itch I think I've had for a while. I definitely wouldn't mind if something else like this was put out every now and again.
I didn't see how long this was but after a minute I thought "this sounds educational, I wonder of it is over four minutes" I am so happy.
The FB crash was IDEAL! I went for a hike and read your book an absolutely remarkable thing. I kinda wish it would crash for good! I spend hours just scrolling the void, and I miss out on so much goodness doing it. P.s. it's my new favorite book of all time. :-)
I recommend leech block add on for the computer browser, and there are apps for the phone that block your social media for a time period you choose
2020 Me: "Damn, we really live in a society!"
2021 Me: "Last year we didn't live in a society yet. But we're definitely on the way to living in a society at this rate."
Doesn't a society require a set of shared culture? The problem is that with "social" media is that society has been fractured. I'm a professor. 25 years ago, I'd walk into a class and students would be talking with each other, creating a shared community. Anymore, they are all on their handheld electrical devices, each in their own worlds. The class is quiet. There is no sense of community--within the classroom (or without). For all the potential of social media, I can't see it as being really "social" in the end .... We humans need to actually engage as humans with each other again ... in person ... not virtually!
2022?
@@waynehanley72 No not really. Most societies in the world are made up of a variety of cultures.
Tbh I’d be all for a pivot for vlog brothers to lengthy video essays. Both Hank and John have super interesting and unique perspectives on tech and humanity etc. I would love to hear more in this format.
I was stressing out about how bad we are at being in social media recently, and a friend comforted me by saying that these are growing pains, and that we'll keep on getting better at handling the concept of social media as we move forward.
I didn't know whether or not to believe them.
The fact that you said the same thing they did, really tells me that they were onto something. I hope you both are right, and that a lot of this really is coming from the fact that we're babies. I hope I get to see us growing up.
agreed like the automobile market. sure it kills more people than most things and stops free pedestrian movement, but it also makes money! and it took a long time to get it from an epidemic of casualty to the more modern, manageable level of top-tier harm. so i’m definitely optimistic the chaos will decrease in the future and we’ll wonder how and why the internet became so ingrained in daily life 😀
"Those are decisions made by platforms full of thoughtful people who did not think at all about the fact that was going to be a thing that happened." At 17:10 Hank, we don't know that for sure. I don't think it's possible for us to know that one way or the other.
You're right...and in many cases they keep allowing it even though they know it's happening so...
@@vlogbrothers Silicon Valley made a fundamental mistake. They believed that all you need for a well-informed public is for everyone to have equal access to publish their ideas, and a way for people to forward the ones they like to their friends, and a "marketplace of ideas" will select the best. The mistake was that in addition to a wide variety of sources of information, to be well-informed the public needs information on how reliable each source is. That's what social media doesn't provide. It is always easier to make up lies and propaganda than to fact-check them, so fake news wins out over the truth.
Hank Green long form video essays have been a long time coming and are much appreciated.
I listened to this while perfectioning my eyebrows. I now feel informed and very open about conversation on this topic in the future! You're amazing Hank, I'd love to see more videos like this!!
when hank breaks out the blazer, you know its serious.
"Facebook should be held responsible for the content that it promotes on its platform." YES a key sentence which is so important to the whole facebook conversation, I wish everyone could see this video!
Also I don't know a better phrase than "righteous superiority" to summarize this chapter of history right now...
+ 100
“I wish everyone could see this video” - ah, but they can. CZcams hosts it for everyone to see.
Who CZcams _promotes_ it to is a different story...
I think a big part of the problem comes from how do we overcome the ‘superiority’ when its not really true or at minimum ‘misplaced’?
I work in a role related to drug regulation. I have seen 1000’s of social media posts/movies/memes that are just nonsense, flat wrong, half truths etc in the last approx 18 months related to vaccines and drug regulation. The very sad outcome is after repeated exposure to so much of that, we have portions of society who are ‘anti-vaccine’ based on a pile of gibberish. While someone who really does have experience in a relating field is left shaking my head repeatedly… saying nope… not how that works at all!
I sincerely appreciate the clarity of this video essay. I'm sure it was tough. Thank you.
This is Brilliant. Your characterization starting at 13:30 is the best short-summary of the complicated game theory involved here. That must have taken a long time to reason through and to write down.
Now here, have some engagement numbers so you don't need to put in so much effort to divorce your feelings of self worth from reality.
At "hundo P baller move", I'm pretty sure I heard John's groan of disgust from hundreds of miles away. XD The next pod should be glorious
Loving that the transitional music was "Here It Goes Again"
14:35 this was something we talked about a lot in my public policy master's program. established industry (sometimes) seeks regulation to better entrench itself.
What a brilliant video, a massive thank you, Hank, for this one! It's going to be so interesting to see how social media evolves over the next few years.
Well this was hilarious, my internet experienced a hiccough at exactly the right moment to hear Hank say "it can make communities stop existi-" and for a moment I thought the hiccough was an in-video gag until I noticed the actual time counter wasn't advancing.
After all the shady stuff that they've done / contributed to, I found myself hoping that it wouldn't come back up, to be honest. But part of my job is optimizing ads that are displayed on Facebook (among other sites), and the success of these ads contributes to my income, so I was also hoping it would come back up lol. And ngl, I felt a little guilty about it. I wasn't expecting to start my Monday off with a moral dilemma, so that was...interesting.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
-Upton Sinclair
Listening to this after reading your books, my head is ready to explode. If I allow myself to think on this for more than a small, digestible bit, I’d quit all social media cold turkey.
Very good way to put into words the thoughts I have been struggling with about just what my beefs are with social media. You're right...there is no easy answer, but I hope it is fixed eventually. I rarely use the platform anymore, and certainly am aware of how algorithms manipulate things. For me, FB et al. isn't a good thing because I get sucked into interpersonal rabbit holes that I sometimes have difficulty getting out of. It is less of a problem on platforms like CZcams rather than FB or social media because, if you find yourself in an algorithmic rut, you can either go the drastic route and clear your watch history completely and start over again, or just start using the search bar and think of things you want to watch. However, YT is centered around video media. It is far more difficult to get out of rabbit holes with other human beings, even in an online environment, than it is to turn off a video or stop watching certain types of videos that you are getting tired of or are wanting to take a break from.
4:39- so the pen IS mightier than the sword. Yeah I’ve been thinking about this too lately.
I genuinely can not think of 1 video on this channel that isn't insanely deeply insightful or moving (OK maybe apart for the giraffe sex). I started watching your videos a lot just around a month ago, and I just wanted to say that you are probably the best channel on CZcams (hear my reasoning - there are better a more moving videos out there, but the sheer scale and consistency of the vlogbrothers makes them #1 in my book). Just wanted to have that out.
I keep rewatching this. It's so so so good.
I love hearing video essays from both Hank and John I'd love more
One thing I have to wonder about is if the wording in that tweet was just bad- for example, I as a someone who is somewhat knowledgeable about computers/networking, read that tweet and went “To the external internet, Facebook no longer exists. Whatever is going on in Facebook’s network is pretty bad. It will obviously be back online eventually, but someone messed up pretty bad for that to happen.” But re-reading it, a bunch of people probably thought “Facebook no longer exists, it has been wiped off the face of the internet and will never be back” which is completely different and not what the author of the tweet was trying to say, but language is like that sometimes, and it becomes more difficult with tons of people who are uneducated about something suddenly have an incentive to become educated about that thing extremely quickly but may not come from a background where they know what experts in a field mean when they say something directed at other people well educated about that field.
+
In my opinion, that's also indicative of a problem with another social media platform. Twitter encourages brevity, which discourages the kind of explanation that would have made this more understandable.
I'm definitely noticing myself 'rebel' against the recommendation feeds of sites like twitter, facebook and youtube, while at the same time also recognizing that those recommendations are exactly what make them work as they do. The impact of recommender systems is definitely of major importance in this discussion.
But even if you take away the recommendation part, the exponential exposure growth for e.g. hot takes being shared/retweeted (whether misinformed or not) is a separate issue that doesn't even rely on recommendations to work. It can still be a major contributor to the superior righteousness issue you mention and will be even harder to regulate I think. The only antidote I know of so far is to take a breath and do personal due dilligence before sharing. Obviously however, that's not how hot takes work...
I get what you’re saying, but exponential growth of memes (meme in the sociological sense) absolutely can be controlled via recommendations.
Those tweets only get shared because people see them. If those tweets never show up in someone’s feed, they can’t grow. So if Twitter decided that a given tweet should stop spreading, they could just remove its ability to show up on people’s news feed, making the only way to find the tweet visiting someone’s profile.
Obviously that would have issues too, but growth can be halted to a point, and hot takes can be cut off from the world if we so desired.
+
+
Very eloquently put!! To anyone who hasn't read them yet I would highly recc Hank's books, they're very thought-provoking
Liked for just the playlist picks between sections, let alone the amazing coverage of an issue that is somehow ubiquitous and hard to understand.
This is one of my favorite vlogs Hank's made in a long time. I dunno if it's the timing, length, or what, but if other vlogbrothers videos include a lot of throwing smaller Idea Spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, this feels like a refined Social Media Bolognese that Hank's been crafting for years. Super well written with very sticky, important ideas, and fun music.
One of the great things about the human mind vs AI is that humans are still unable to discard everything that they are exposed to, good or bad. This 21-minute demonstrates the difference between a "new idea" or invention, and what can happen as the mind' continues to grow. The outcome is a kind of wisdom that includes continuing to ask questions and wandering down "what if" paths. MochaBloke, your comparison is apt!
When thinking about Facebook being gone forever I realized I can't imagine an election without Facebook's influence. That is terribly depressing.
9:04 Feeling of righteous superiority. This resonated a lot with me. I know people in my life who feel this way and it suddenly dawned on me why they have been behaving the way that they have.
This is the best discussion of this topic I think I have ever seen. I've been saying for years at this point that we just don't know how to deal with social media yet. Not just in a regulatory fashion, but also from a social perspective. When it comes to things like false information we have social practices that regulate how far that can go. if someone is regularly giving you bad information in the pub you stop talking to that person and tell everyone to stop trusting them. Their reputation and ability to spread false information is ruined. But it's not just in the pub anymore. We can't effectively limit the effectiveness of people spreading false information without some online equivalent. And honestly I don't think that's going to come about without regulatory oversight.
I have had Facebook since 2005 when I was about to go to college and it was necessary to be able to meet people before we got there. I grew up military and Facebook is the only place where I feel like there is a community of people that I actually know. I think people started using Facebook for the wrong reasons by adding people they didn't know just to rack up friend numbers. I only have family and people I actually know or have known in real life. That's what it's for.
I disagree. My friends are all people I know, so I don't have heaps of them, but my feed is still full of content that Facebook thinks I want to see.
Facebook does have data on how it's content can change a user's emotion. That's a more difficult variable to measure, but it would be nice if they trained their AI to optimize for a normal range of human emotion instead of engagement
...although it would open the can of worms of "what are normal emotional states". Maybe you could tweak your user preferences lol
Automation benefits the owners of automation. Facebook's "algorithm" isn't for you. It's for Zuck.
It would be nice and also terrifying!
But then they would make less money.
A little late since this came out over a month ago, but I want to say, as someone who works at Facebook, I think your characterization of the problem here is pretty much spot on. It's very frustrating to see how the media covers social media. There are obvious and significant problems present, but the media often presents them without acknowledging positives, confounding challenges, or just the general complexity of the issues at hand.
This was a very insightful discussion on a topic that I’ve never dedicated any real critical thought to.
Thanks for being, Hank.
I appreciate your content.
If we're saying Facebook has a big part in regulating society, then I think the next topics to cover are "How was society regulated before Facebook?" and "How can similar or better systems be implemented by Social Media?"
+
Was it regulated? Near as I can tell all we ever did is exposed kids to new ideas and waited till their parents died. Seems like all our progress has been generational.
This is precisely one of the things I struggle with understanding. As an 18 year old who pretty much has existed on the social internet for most of my life, I find it incredibly difficult to imagine how things worked b4 it existed. And the trouble is that I don't really even know where to get that information because my primary information stream is the internet. And I've only recently started to think more critically about how I spend my time on the internet and I'm still not good at it. It's a lot to figure out and I don't.. can't. I dont know what to do about it.
@@JoeAuerbach Back when tv was relatively new and most news was disseminated via television broadcast, there once was a thing called the "fairness doctrine" that was eventually done away with. People disagree whether that's a good thing or not.
@@JoeAuerbach Well, lets take crackpots for example. In the past they'd have to spend money on printing flyers and they'd have to go out in public handing them out. That's a hell of a lot more work than Facebook, with a far smaller "reach". And people generally won't take flyers from strangers. Social Media allows bots and fake user accounts to spread that stuff, and other users can't easily discover your real identity. Then Social Media starts pulling like minds together, and we get crazy movements like QAnon. The internet broke down the physical barriers to mass communication and mass organization.
This is really powerful. I really like the point about outrage being righteous superiority. This is such an important message today. Also really love Hanks blazer.
I haven’t thought from the perspective of righteous superiority before! It explains so much, both about my own behaviour and others! Thanks!
I shall try to reduce the influence of it on myself in the future by disengaging when I realise that is my driving emotion!
Nice touch with using meme songs for the transitions between different parts of the video (All Star, Trololol, Rick Roll, Numa Numa).
The video as a whole is pretty great, too….it certainly helps to be reminded (and, in a sense reassured) that in any endeavor, individual or collective, humans tend to suck starting out and can only improve with experience and effort. So these issues with social media are to be expected, but they can get better…hopefully.
Finally! It’s almost 3 am here and i was waiting the whole day for this video.
Hank you!
It's 5:30 am here lmao but I'm awake cause of insomnia
@@sebastienvondoom8615 Yeah i’ve been there once… two days back. I’m still trying to fix my sleep schedule.
Same 😅
I really enjoy the choice of CollegeHumor sketch at the beginning! I've been seeing clips from it frequently over the last 24 hours.
Just wanted to say I've been watching vlogbrothers since day 1 and this is my favorite Hank video of all time
"Facebook can affect your moods." Well, everytime I use FB I end up feeling bad soon, and leaving.
Me: I haven't been on facebook since 2013, I am largely exempt from this conversation
Hank: So you're saying that your decision to avoid the biggest social media platforms is making you feel... Righteously Superior?
Me: ...crap
I read once that the first generation to have universal literacy is always very vulnerable to printed advertising and propaganda. We’re in that position now.
it is wildly scary to think about how much social media companies know about me. like there's the stuff that I put in more or less voluntarily, like name, general location and broad hobbies/interests, but then there's all the stuff they gather just by my behavior on the platform. it's that information that was gathered via indirect measures that makes me the most interested, like if facebook, tiktok and youtube were to all spit out a report of my interests and personality, how accurate would they all be? would they converge into a single cohesive profile, or would there be drastic differences between platforms?
It's all about constructive disagreement etiquette. Which involves both sides understanding the other position well enough to iron man the arguments, and identify the virtues within them. From there, keeping an open mind, and exploring ideas that integrate the virtues from both sides into a reasonable solution (or attempt of a solution). Creating a social media platform that does this is like you said, very hard to do. But here's hoping it can happen!