This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is BAD. This is a bad outcome! This is exactly what I'm afraid of. Nobody was allowed to question the Covid vaccine or masking or any sort of government approved narrative on social media because it might possibly be construed as disinformation. The chilling effect caused by ambiguous rules that might or might not be arbitrarily enforced on a whim is bad. The ability for the government to selectively target anyone they dislike for rules that normal people occasionally violate because they're not quite sure where the boundary gives the government an extra cudgel to manipulate people with.
And again, once the boundaries become a little better known this is solved by a little Goodharting to integrate things to be within the boundaries. Ie, Facebook Marketplace is a logical offshoot of Facebook. Stopping them from having, or forcing it to be separate from Facebook would be bad because the networking ability on it is useful for customers. But allowing them to have it would probably also allow them to start selling their own stuff on it. Maybe Amazon makes "Amazon Marketplace", or "Twitchmazon" where Twitch streamers have their own merchandise branded to them just enough that it counts as "their own product" and skirts within your guidelines. Is Pokimane not allowed to have her own cookie company that sells Pokimane cookies? What if Pokimane just happens to be hanging out with some friends (which happen to be filmed because they're all Twitch Streamers) and mentions her own Cookie company? If she is allowed, then you're once again allowing large people to advertise while blocking the little people who don't have a whole team to create advertising and entire companies internally. If that's not allowed then you're restricting the ability for people with cookie companies to even talk about their own product out loud.
95% of the time this is true, but 5% it's not, and that 5% might be disproportionately impactful. Take Uber. Lots of people like Uber. As soon as people found out about Uber they were usually like "that sounds like a good idea". People didn't know they wanted it, because it didn't exist and nothing like it existed, but they did know that they wanted something like that because nobody was happy with Taxi prices or availability.
Uber could not have worked without advertising. The networking effects between drivers and customers do not scale linearly. If you have 1% as many drivers and 1% as many users it's awful because users spend forever waiting to get picked up and drivers spend forever not working and not being paid. It needed to be quickly noticed and adopted or it would have died instantly. A world without advertising is a world where Uber (and all similar rideshare and foodshare apps) that scale nonlinearly would have never been brought to market because they obviously wouldn't have worked. Word of mouth only works on things that people already know about, and if you literally can't advertise anywhere then you can't kickstart that process in the first place.
Or take Ozempic/GLP-1. People didn't know they wanted Ozempic, but people have wanted a weight loss pill that actually works for decades. Advertisements actually did help people here because it's a thing they wanted and looked for and tried and gave up because it didn't exist, and then one day it did exist. The knowledge that the thing they've always wanted but didn't exist suddenly now does exist (in a form they can legally and practically access) is useful knowledge.
Again, I think you're right 95% of the time. And I'm generally in favor of fixing advertising... somehow. But the exceptions exist, and I think a blanket ban is doomed to failure in a way that disproportionately harms smaller and newer people, pushing us even further into the hands of monopolistic megacorps that already exist and everyone already knows about. We need more small businesses and competitors, not fewer.
More options
Context Copy link