"The fundamental problem, as I see it, is not that social media misinforms individuals about what is true or untrue but that it creates publics with malformed collective understandings.”
#HenryFarrell, 2025
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis
#HatTip to @laurenshof for bringing my attention to this piece in one of his;
https://connectedplaces.online/the-digital-services-act-and-theories-of-power/
Have you read Harry Farrell's piece @hrheingold? It seems relevant to your piece on digital literacies, which you shared with me here recently.
@strypey Yes and Alison Gopnik on llms as
cultural tools
@hrheingold
> Alison Gopnik on llms as
cultural tools
Intriguing, link please? I did some web searching and found various related stuff, but couldn't find an article just by Gopnik.
@hrheingold
FYI the article you link to has 3 coauthors (first author being Henry Farrell), and the full text can be found via this permalink;
@strypey I linked to Gopnik's image of the article because of the Science paywall. That article has 3 authors; Gopnik had written about it solo prior to that more comprehensive article.
"... LLMs should be seen as tools for augmenting human intellect rather than autonomous intelligent agents (which they can emulate) ..."
@hrheingold, 2026
https://www.patreon.com/posts/147903672
Tools for making people into centaurs, to use the automation theory terminology @pluralistic references.
"If you understand how digital systems, and notably how recommendation algorithms, work then you understand that there is no limit to how unbalanced the amplification of certain voices and suppression of others can be. You could have 8 billion people on X and only 800 fascists, and yet the fascists would still crowd you out."
@robin, 2025
https://berjon.com/fascintern-media/
Exactly. Posting on a platform with a million accounts doesn't guarantee you a potential audience of a million.
"When you write for Fascintern media, you are choosing to publish with them. When you post on X you are basically pitching a story to Der Stürmer. You are not speaking to anyone that they don't want you speaking to. You're not being courageous; you're collaborating. You're associating your name with that outlet. And you're making them money."
@robin, 2025
https://berjon.com/fascintern-media/
This pieces clearly articulates thoughts I've been pulling at the edges of for years
"When you write for Fascintern media, you are choosing to publish with them."
What @robin describes in that piece matches the results of my experiment with SS. Almost all of the minimal engagement I got there was a result of posting links here to my posts on SS. They weren't promoting my work. I was promoting their platform.
So glad I've moved to using Ghost under my own domain name. Now when I post links to my blog pieces I'm promoting my own platform, not doing unpaid marketing for theirs.
"This isn’t brainwashing - people don’t have to internalize this or that aspect of what social media presents to them, radically changing their beliefs and their sense of who they are. That sometimes happens, but likely far more rarely than we think. The more important change is to our beliefs about what other people think, which we perpetually update based on social observation."
#HenryFarrell, 2025
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis
ie 'nudging'. You read this piece @pluralistic?
