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Notes -
Tricking people into doing something that makes them miserable is social engineering. But it isn't the algorithms or platforms themselves that are to blame, their social engineering is relatively tame compared to the kind humans inflict on other humans when given this potemkin community and influence. It was humans who did the Arab spring, who did gamergate and metoo, who turn the internet into a war zone every four years during campaign season - deploying sock puppets and playing double agents, spreading malicious rumours and photoshopping evidence, these are the kinds of social engineering I am talking about. Back before social media these things happened pretty frequently, but without the outsized influence people ascribe to events on social media there was no sense of the arms race, and no reason to get so worked up (well, for most people).
Here's how the timeline goes imo -
1.) First there were forums, nobody gave a shit.
2.) Then came social media, and everyone wanted in.
3.) But then some shitty arguer got into an argument with a person who was better at arguing than them and they got upset, but couldn't admit they'd lost the argument for one reason or another, and they said "people shouldn't be allowed to argue things I don't like." Old internet still outweighed the new internet at this point though, so he was thoroughly mocked into silence.
4.) After time passes however, the shitty arguers who want to ban arguments they don't like outnumber the other people. Internet policies are changed to reflect this change in values from 'people should be responsible for themselves' to 'we have to save everybody from themselves!' But the only thing that unites the shitty arguers is their fragile egos, they don't have a coherent platform. So there's no logic to the way they censor arguments except who whom.
5.) Hell world.
So it's not about making it go away - I agree that is a futile waste of time. What I am saying is that the hell world you live in - your hell world - is one of your own design, and one you can leave by dropping social media. This will have the effect of lessening social media's influence, but that is ancillary to the point, which is making you less miserable. If you decide you would rather be more meat for the great political machine to grind into paste, that's your choice. Because that's the choice here, it's not a coordination problem, it's a duplicity problem - you won't hurt your interests by opting out, you will hurt the interests of Bidens and Trumps and Clintons of the world. You have been tricked into thinking you are fighting for your life when in reality they are just stealing your happiness to fuel their ambitions.
It gets worse though, because of course it does, that's the social media slogan: "It gets worse!" Because while they have harnessed the language of war - everything is a battle, there are two sides duking it out and if you miss a tweet you are letting your side down, how dare you put your happiness before your people, people's lives are at stake here! - the stakes are actually significantly diminished. Don't get me wrong - it is an utter travesty when someone commits suicide or loses their livelihood over social media bullshit, but it's a different category of fucked up to actually killing each other.
And the influence goes the other way too - we talk in these grandiose cataclysmic terms, and it affects the way we think about the issues too, so when you said "Tellingi ndividuals to hurt themselves to influence coordination problems generally doesn't work" I nodded in agreement, but actually when I think about it, that's not right is it? Martyrs have had huge impacts all throughout history, and rightly so - they can reset prisoner's dilemmas. It's never easy being a martyr, because nobody wants to suffer and there's no guarantee you'll even have an effect, but there is no denying they can have an effect. But we are conditioned to think there's no escaping social media so that we continue to sacrifice our happiness to it.
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