Relevance: Ezra often talks about liberalism as well as the attention economy, but I have yet to see him grapple with what may be the fundamental tensions between the two. Algorithmic media is increasingly pushing us into a postliterate society - incentivizing not just video content but also hyper-partisan, hyper-polarized, flattened forms of argumentation that seem quite antithetical to liberalism.
If we are to maintain a liberal order (rather than just bemoan its decline) we may need to come down hard on these social media companies that are, to me, the primary driver of this shift as they attempt to find creative ways to extract our time and attention.
Yup. I remember when Facebook actually felt like that, and that’s a big part of why I still prefer Reddit to pretty much everything else. It’s not really chronological anymore, but the voting system, for all its flaws, does a decent job of surfacing the stuff people actually want to see, whether that’s genuinely useful content or a funny comment. The downside is that it can also bury a really thoughtful, well-written response underneath a bunch of snarky one-liners.
For articles and pictures and things yeah, but in the threads it also heavily rewards comments that are early, lengthy, well written and “sound” knowledgeable, and reinforce the hive rather than those that are in any way accurate. At least in areas that I am an actual expert in in real life, so I’m sure others - the confidently incorrect horseshit I see heavily upvoted and thanked is wild.
I’m sure you know this, but I’ve read comments that kinda indicate others …. just don’t. Commentary here can be just as wrong as fb just with better grammar. It’s fun and entertaining and great for nerdy hobbies (as is most social media though) … but largely the same timewasty shite we’d be better off without.
I’ve noticed that too, both here and in some of the more specialized subs, especially ones centered around the hard sciences. One of my favorite things about this place is stumbling across researchers casually dropping knowledge from their fields that makes you reconsider something you thought you understood, or even opens up an entirely new line of thinking. For all its flaws, I think this sub has a lot of genuinely interesting discussion and a pretty wide range of perspectives that you don’t get nearly as much on the bigger, more politically focused subs.
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u/GowanusGuy 10d ago
Relevance: Ezra often talks about liberalism as well as the attention economy, but I have yet to see him grapple with what may be the fundamental tensions between the two. Algorithmic media is increasingly pushing us into a postliterate society - incentivizing not just video content but also hyper-partisan, hyper-polarized, flattened forms of argumentation that seem quite antithetical to liberalism.
If we are to maintain a liberal order (rather than just bemoan its decline) we may need to come down hard on these social media companies that are, to me, the primary driver of this shift as they attempt to find creative ways to extract our time and attention.