The underlying design goal of modern social media is to make money, regardless of the real value they generate. Their customers are advertisers and data brokers, and their product is their users. By design and in practice, social media maximize the amount of time that users are on the application....
Conspiracy theories can be thought of as revisionist history that is still political. Speculation is a normal part of analyzing politics. So, while these theories are commonplace historically speaking, the use of the term "conspiracy theory" for stigmatization and idea repression is relatively new[1]. Yet as a result of this,...
The underlying design goal of modern social media is to make money, regardless of the real value they generate. Their customers are advertisers and data brokers, and their product is their users. By design and in practice, social media maximize the amount of time that users are on the application. The real-world effects of social media time-maximizing algorithms on the information space are sensationalism[1], and atomization via pockets of radicalizing media that are not in contact with dissenting views.
This media design is something like the default state that one would expect, when imagining all the possibilities that the internet could facilitate: forums that have algorithms to keep people entertained with a 'feed'.... (read 752 more words →)
Great points. There's nobody more postmodernist than the religious person who fights this proxy war.
Taking a term from the academic/youtuber Justin Sledge: post-theism is the removal of the existence question from the practice of a religion. While religious practice can be meaningful in a number of dimensions, including spiritual, cultural, ethnic and sociological, the practice should not require that a religious person sacrifice their philosophical integrity.
Right on. I'm sure there's a sense in which you're right; I'm not a historian, but history is full of counterexamples so we both have a partial picture probably. All I can say for sure is that as a person living in 2025, our media is problematic in a unique way. The amount of social media news consumed is at an all-time high, and social media is on average less accurate about facts than professional news. What's ironic is that the internet and related communication tech means there really is a huge potential for democratic, productive media; more than any other time in history. I feel like the increase in information people... (read more)
Conspiracy theories can be thought of as revisionist history that is still political. Speculation is a normal part of analyzing politics. So, while these theories are commonplace historically speaking, the use of the term "conspiracy theory" for stigmatization and idea repression is relatively new[1]. Yet as a result of this, conspiracy theories today only surface in fringe media that are counterproductive for accurate discussion. To upgrade the discourse, I'm arguing for the integration of conspiracy theory discourse into an open peer reviewed system.
Obviously, conspiracy theory is a loaded term; stigma makes it difficult to use in serious discussion. Confusing things even more, it has changed with time. Miriam-Webster defines conspiracy theory as, "a theory... (read 1183 more words →)
Hello :)
I'm here fundamentally to get some constructive criticism on how to improve internet discourse. This came about when I was writing a journalistic piece on the recent congressional subcommittee, and trying to get to the bottom of the lab-leak evidence as part of the research.
In short, I'm floating the idea of a crowd-sourced and written, peer-reviewed medium on subjects like conspiracy theories (AKA: revisionist history that's still political). With a solid framework, gatekeeping could be avoided and real people (not just professional intellectuals) could participate. Thus helping remove the biases (real and imaginary) that exist in typical journalistic and corporate information, and give people a better chance to engage logically and... (read more)
It was announced just yesterday that meta is planning to incorporate community notes as well using open source X algorithms. Ostensibly it could become the state-of-the-art bandaid solution.
In my opinion, community notes systems are a good step, but they don't give much space for real deliberation around news.