1. Bullshit has more degrees of freedom than truth 2. therefore ceteris paribus BS is better at engagement/reach/monetization 3. therefore platforms will have the maximum amount of BS allowed by tech [AI raises this a lot] and regulation [these days "the more the better"] via @t0nyyates.bsky.social - ThreadSky

marcelorinesi.bsky.social • 8 days ago

1. Bullshit has more degrees of freedom than truth
2. therefore ceteris paribus BS is better at engagement/reach/monetization
3. therefore platforms will have the maximum amount of BS allowed by tech [AI raises this a lot] and regulation [these days "the more the better"]

via @t0nyyates.bsky.social

Reposted from Craig Silverman

New from me: Meta decided to stop working with U.S. fact-checkers at the same time as it’s revamping a program to pay bonuses to creators with high engagement numbers, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts the company once policed: www.propublica.org/article/face...

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suhails.bsky.social•8 days ago

Harry Frankfurt wrote a book entitled ‘On Bullshit’ some twenty years ago. He foresaw all that is happening to us and he pinned it on our tolerance of bullshit at the turn of the century.

marcelorinesi.bsky.social•7 days ago

Not sure about causal mechanisms or time discontinuities (plenty of BS in the past) but the phenomenon can't be disagreed with.

suhails.bsky.social•7 days ago

I have often wondered if there is any correlation between the growth of PowerPoint adoption and the suffocating rise of BS.

marcelorinesi.bsky.social•7 days ago

I tend to agree. If nothing else, has been a chokepoint for the impact of modern computing capabilities --- the fanciest algorithm is still filtered through what an executive remembers from a handful of slides.

kevinriggle.bsky.social•8 days ago

Also every time fascists complain about a so-called liberal bias to tech or the media it is specifically a complaint about these limiting the reach of their bullshit. There's lots of factual conservative stuff out there! They're mad when their propaganda keeps getting shut down

marcelorinesi.bsky.social•7 days ago

From the point of view of the integrity of the societal informational system (so to speak) I think a key factor has been the way conservatives put non-negotiable stakes on factually incorrect positions (more so than liberals, in any case). They sort of painted themselves into a corner where an... 1/

marcelorinesi.bsky.social•7 days ago

... epistemologically solid societal information system was damaging to their core positions, they opted to attack it.

Extrapolating from what I see in business contexts, I think information systems are _at most_ as solid as allowed by the underlying political equilibrium.

At least it's... 2/

marcelorinesi.bsky.social•7 days ago

... a good excuse to add game theory (or microeconomics)/sociology to the group of things one can have professional excuses to read on :)

3/3

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