How "the algorithm" shapes public discourse...

The Past:

1. Someone makes content.

2. Content is appealing to their followers.

3. Followers disseminate the content and if more people like it, it becomes more popular.

4. Content becomes trending and trending therefore becomes an accurate representor of popularity.

Today:

1. Someone makes content.

2. Content is appealing to their followers.

3. Followers attempt to disseminate content, but because there is now a robotic proxy the transmission never carries through.

4. Algorithm decides to promote something else because it works off of positive reinforcement cycles. Instead of promoting artistically risky opinions or content, it just goes with what sells over and over again.

5. Many people are perpetually exposed to the same content repeatedly.

6. What is trending now no longer becomes representative of what is popular, but instead what a robot thinks sells.

7. Discourse becomes monochromatic.

Censorship exists to keep people working as individuals. Even if the majority believes something is wrong, if they can't communicate, they have no way of working together. The longer the majority grows unheard, the more resentful and vindictive they become.

While modern technology is flawed and people seek to exploit those flaws to gain power and prevent their opponents from having platforms, those flaws are only temporary.

What happens when the resentful, angry majority are finally able to communicate and wield an audience again? Does all of that resentment magically subside? Or does it erupt?

Nobody is obligated to engage in rational thought and reason, and this is an important premise to understand when trying to analyze the prevailing culture of online debate.

We think that because of advancements in science and technology, people have a universal appreciation of science, but the truth is what people really value is results. They enjoy things that have the sticker label of "science" or "truth" slapped on it without really knowing what it means.

I see this all the time at my university. Credentials triumph reason and shutdown meaningful discussion.

Although many people fight viciously to end this supposed dark age of internet information, it is actually an interesting moment to learn from that may never come back again. We are a part of the apparatus of a globalized social experiment: What happens when we remove the requirement for people to think rationally?

Well, it turns out that most people will just do what is profitable or appeals to their emotions the best. The important thing to know is critical thinking is not the natural state of human psychology.

We just lived through an era where critical thinking fell out of fashion, not by volition, but by force. Popular truth-speakers would be removed off the internet, and because these opinions were no longer in the face of many people, they stopped thinking critically because they realized they could attack the platform and not the message.

What makes NOSTR unique is everyone is entitled to the right to captivate an audience, irrespective of their opinion. These people can't do that anymore. They have to silence bad ideas with better ones, and even worse it backfired.

Decentralized platforms would have never gained popularity if there weren't a necessity for them to be built. By the ideas of the free-market, it would have made sense that many social media platforms enforce free speech as it invites all sorts of audiences and businesses.

However economic incentives are a more unstable system than those engineered by cryptographic guarantees and mathematical principles.

My prediction? In a couple years, this censorship tirade will fail catastrophically. The free internet will not only be accelerated because of its attempt, but now become popularized.

People with various opinions will once again be able to establish audiences and platforms, and now that those opinions that have once been suppressed gain popularity again, everyone will have no choice but to address their message rather than silence them.

Debate and critical thinking will return to the internet, and people will once again be forced to face reality and rationality rather than hide under their unchallenged ideas.

And one of the worst things about it? You know the meritocracy is a sham, but others will always grade you by that standard, even if it is meaningless and arbitrary.

This was a privilege and pleasure I was afforded once during COVID, and not once since then.

It has been my mission to reach this position in life yet again.

When you have the ability to deplatform, censor, or shadowban someone in any way shape or form, you don't actually have to engage in the discussion. You're bigger than them: you can just shut them up and save yourself the headache.

Will you win in the short term? Of course, because the idea is still there all you did was sweep it under the rug.

When you don't have any of these tools at your disposal, all of those ideas come out of the rug and your only choice is to engage in discussion and speak rhetorically. You are forced to learn to be persuasive, forced to learn to make a logical argument, and forced to understand the other person's perspective in order to refute it.

This dichotomy is a causal link. If you're in a part of the internet and no real discussion is happening, it's because someone has power over the other.

Poorly educated population votes in poorly educated politicians that subsequently make poorly informed policy choices. Those poor policy choices reinforce for information control which only makes for a stupider population and the feedback loop continues.

We were never meant to have forms of "irrefutable evidence". Now that

I think it is actually even more to the story than this...

The way people speak and how they choose to present their ideas reveals much more information about them than what they explicitly say. I know this sounds like a regurgitated platitude, but I'll explain how this is relevant to the cultural atmosphere of social media today.

Today I was watching a podcast on a popular social topic and I noticed something: The person who was making his point decided to start with his strongest points of evidence first, then move on to more loose points of evidence in order to make his claim.

This is actually atypical in a debate/discussion. Generally, people want to make their weakest points first and then conclude with their strongest points. This is because they want their strongest point to be the last thing they say so it is fresh in the minds of their audience.

The reason he was starting with his strongest points first is because he wanted to establish a level of irrefutable authority to his claim before making it. He choose to use statistical evidence or arguments in peer-reviewed papers.

People do this all the time nowadays, and the reason why is actually because of a subconscious level of fear and this is what I'm seeing.

Most people aren't afraid of having their ideas challenged. They are afraid that they will look like a fool and thus invite attacks subsequent attacks on their character. This is a natural fear, and is why most people don't speak out against injustice or wrongdoings.

Subsequently, people talk past each other. Instead of making substantial arguments, they reiterate safe positions or attempt to frame their argument as a safe position. They don't stray from peer-reviewed opinions or forms of irrefutable evidence. Nothing of value is accomplished in those discussions.

And from my experience, arguments that are considered culturally "safe" are not determined by the people, they are determined by those with power.

People are too atomized and free willed to come to a consensus on even trivial matters, so how are we all able to collectively agree that X topic is morally right or wrong? It isn't because we agree, its because those that disagree are too afraid to speak out, because to do so would go against the monopoly on violence.

Around all social media platforms, there is this subconscious fear that we could say something and someone will be able to target us for it. Likewise, the endless anger we see on places like X are actually reflections of fear.

That fear isn't here on NOSTR. You can say whatever you want, and there isn't anything anyone can do about it because that opinion is going to stay. So if you want it to look bad your only choices are to debate it because deplatforming it isn't going to work anymore.

Once people start shedding that fear, I think the internet will be able to fulfill its original vision which is to allow people to educate each other rather than serve as a pawn in some politician's chess match.

We should bring hate and polarization here as well that way people from X feel right at home (jk).

White, since they are in check. Unless they are 0laying blitz, in which case black has won.

Yes, do you think it will change? Lots of people on NOSTR think BTC and cryptography will make the system outdated and eventually it will disappear. Do you agree? I want to know what your perspective is since you've actually seen firsthand what limitations an individual has against the entire bureaucracy.

Do you think it will change?

I think its mostly people trying to convince themselves its going to be okay

Fear of authority is learned, but legitimate nonetheless.

Not on Primal, they might be on the other clients.

True, that's why I'm on NOSTR in the first place. If the feds came at my door, I'd fold. I know myself (but I wouldn't rat out my mom).

Dislikes should be normalized on NOSTR. Hear me out. Removing dislikes from forms of content first happened at around the same time YouTube started removing them. Since then, people have been less and less able to communicate their dissatisfaction and this has led to more polarization.

The idea behind removing dislikes is because we are a polite society and we don't want toxicity. The issues with this is now you have the opposite which is toxicity but in forms of virtue signaling.

Toxicity is necessary and often times the litmus test for a free and open platform. We may not like it, but we have to recognize its place in general communication and subsequently social media.

I have to disagree. Any idea that needs protecting isn't built to last. Ideas shouldn't be protected, they should be challenged to the extreme because that is what will happen at some point.

If men stop protecting an idea, does that mean the idea was unfit for survival? Probably. Everyone has beliefs of how society should be constructed and what roles each gender should play, but all of them are Utopian fantasies because people are chaotic and try to break the rules they are given.

The first decentralized protocol wasn't built on the internet, it is human psychology. That source code has been proliferated to so many corners of the world, you have no hope of modifying it.

To get half of the world population to collectively agree a specific idea is unfunny in the name of honor is an idea too shaky to implement. It doesn't happen for a reason. You might need to change your viewpoint because this belief is manufactured on unstable soil.

Even here everyone seems to be loaded with an agenda. Maybe some of it is a vestige from the old social media platforms, or some of it is cryptocurrency tribalism.

Either way take a step back from your agenda and ask yourself what your position actually is. Critical thinking isn't meant to win an argument, its to help you reach a more meaningful truth and you may be wrong in the process which is okay. The internet is the safest playground for experimenting and exchanging ideas that has ever existed.

If you feel like the information someone is spreading could negativly impact your life, instead of responding take that time to log off and use it to build infrastructure in your own life so you are not dependent upon what other people think. Remember your position isn't your life.

I came to NOSTR mainly because I still believe in the original vision of the internet, which is technology will make people smarter and their lives easier, not the other way around.

Are those victims or paid actors? I don't follow Epstein news, but this feels utterly performative and I have to call it out because I know other people think the same thing.

I'm noticing a positive feedback cycle...

The politicians enact more tech regulation and censorship laws which cause the people to be more uneducated which cause the people go vote in uneducated politicians that vote for more short sighted regulation and censorship which only reduces the debate and information available in a society etc.

Rarely do I read a social media post and it calms me. This one did.

An exhibit of how satire gets the point across swiftly and still catches attention more than a long form note. I hope to see more of this on here as Nostr gets more and more adopted.

Victim ideology is a perspective propped up by politicians to keep people on tbr welfare system so they can get more votes.

A strategy as old as Rome itself. Give them bread a and circus.

There are people who you wil never meet because they love their entire life online. They DoorDash everything, watch TV, and claim disability benefits.

In meat space, you risk judgment and criticism which are tangible reasons to be introverted. A bad opinion can get you fired or ostracized.

However online, your persona is a disposable account and insulting or disagreeing with someone has no impact on your life.

It takes time to do, but rewore your brain that NOSTR is a fundamentally different space than what your used to. Your essentially safe to say anything.

This is why we have satire: it sends a message while still giving that dopamine hit.

The false hypothesis are equally as important as the correct ones, because there is no such thing as a correct conclusion, but some methods are better than others