Hi,
How are you?
The starting of the week felt very weird because for the last week's newsletter I was intending to write about metaphors but postponed it (as it's a bit complicated topic for me), and coincidentally enough Bijay had published his Things of Note - #10 with a theme for metaphors. This had me thinking about how our digital interactions shape our beliefs, and almost any idea at a particular moment could overlap with people you interact in the virtual space (echo chambers).
So, the rest of the week I kept on thinking about this digital interaction we all live by. This put me in a loop of one particular question: “Is Digital Interaction in Social Media broken?”. I think it is in more ways.
On a side note, I have also posted a new episode of my "thought"cast on this matter Coffee with Nish | Episode 15 (you can totally skip it. I just recorded my broken thoughts). Here's the TL;DR of the podcast:
[[Online disinhibition effect]] - People feel much safer in virtual space than in the real world because there isn't much risk of identity.
There is not much feedback loop for you as a poster for dissonant thoughts. More on to this on “The Silence is deafening” read.
People have much less respect for each other on social media.
It feels bizarre that 92 of the top 500 subreddits are controlled by the same 5 people.
Human + Algorithm can be used efficiently for moderation.
AI Ethics should be implemented strictly for miscalculations or mispredictions since no system can be 100% accurate. Making a system fully autonomous isn't (probably) a good idea.
Disclaimer: If you find this newsletter being truncated by your email client, do go to the full blog posted here.
Is Digital Interaction Broken?
Reading: The Silence Is Deafening
Devon Zuegel | 4 min
In digital conversations, giving feedback requires more conscious effort. We often see that most of the people trying to engage actually do so for the "disagreement". For instance, someone tweets something unpleasant (say that's opposite to your beliefs). You choose to ignore and simply mind your own "digital" life. This creates a very isolated bubble for the original poster. They (or you?) aren't in the loop to get "constructive feed-backs".
What can we do?
Be more constructive on the feedbacks.
DMs (Direct Messages) to provide a sense of authenticity and closeness.
If you had started the thread, it can be more controlled. (Imagine throwing a party at your apartment. You know you have a major control.)
Reading: De-Escalating Social Media
Nick Punt | 15 min
In this particular essay, the author presents a concept of [[Mea Culpa]] - an act of admitting mistakes. In real life, we tend to think critically about these mistakes, but it's not the same with social media. So, he proposes a few principles for Mea Culpa, with Twitter as a POC platform.
Nevertheless, social media seems to have a conflict problem, out of balance. Reasons lie somewhere along the line of lacking substantial guiding norms for communication. Even a small amount of misunderstanding gets amplified towards a larger conflict, which can range from simple misinformation to more oppressing viewpoints. Even if we know that we have made a mistake, we are hesitant to admit it.
Maybe this reluctancy stems from feeling relatively safer in virtual spaces — [[Online disinhibition effect]]
We are constantly bombarded by notifications, and perhaps non-stop interactions such as likes, retweets, shares, comments, etc. This doesn’t allow for any cool-down periods.
So, what can be done to de-escalate?
Adding an "I made a mistake" interface might be useful as it can allow an individual to self-flag his/her own post.
Using clear language while admitting the mistake. However, there should be a clear distinction between censorship by the platform itself and self-flags.
Reducing the visibility of the post from the mainstream feed by disabling likes, replies, shares, tweets, and such. Interactions are strictly trimmed down to comment-only mode.
Surfacing the corrections at a later period, when things cool down. This might be a good way to tell everyone about the apology.
This gives rise to a few important questions:
How do these mistakes wind up affecting the broader community? Does it start a forest fire of escalation, or burn out quickly, or even create a teachable moment where everyone is better off?
How does a platform know if something is escalated?
Are people being forgiven enough, specifically people who follow each other?
When Mea Culpas are used, do people continue to interact?
What level of measurement even matters?
Answering these require an in-depth perspective on human behaviour and psychology, algorithms, digital identities, and such.
To summarize everything, we could say modern tools for monitoring abnormal (and uneasy) behavior is very simplistic. That's why it is not incorrect to say "Social media has a conflict problem."
Reading: The Future of Online Identity is Decentralized
Yarmo Mackenbach | 6 min
This was an interesting read as I hadn't thought about this topic before. It has definitely opened something to ponder on digital identities.
Digital life is less restrictive than the real one because of “online disinhibition effect”. While you can't embody multiple persons in the offline world, you can have several identities online. This "I can do whatever I like" narrative in online platforms might be the main reason for the toxic internet.
The main takeaway is "Authenticity vs Anonymity" narratives. The beauty of the internet is that these two aren’t mutually exclusive.
The internet that allows us to remain anonymous is still the one we should want and fight for.
Removing the possibility of anonymity could solve the problem of online toxicity. In some ways, we kind of know about this. We use "Google login", "Facebook login" and similar Single Sign-on (SSO) to maintain our identity integrity on one side. On the other side, this very bottleneck provides a way to target users for other things (most probably that’s how these platforms generate revenue - from selling data).
How do you decentralize yourself?
One way is to discard monolithic SSO and use email/password for every account you want to sign-up/sign-in.
The side-effect is having less authenticity with more anonymity. How do you know that multiple accounts in multiple platforms represent the same user? Same username doesn't represent the same person!
Follow Up:: HN: Identity Beyond Usernames
Another way is to use technologies like Blockchain, cryptographic key-pairs, etc to decentralize the identities. Each person has a unique key-pairs to uniquely verify accounts on multiple platforms. This "identity proof" is nothing more than a link to an account A on some platform P stored inside your keypair K.
No bad actor could claim one of your accounts: the piece of data that links back is specific to your key-pair, not the bad actor's key-pair.
Reading: Identity Beyond Usernames
10 min
This write-up presents an inherent problem in Unicode, most importantly for usernames and unique identities in any digital service. The problem lies in the fact that visually indistinguishable characters can have different encodings.
Example:: epic.com and еріс.com (if you’re hesitant to open these links, please do so in incognito mode!)
These both seem the same. However, the former one is a legit health care site and the later is just a random "spammy" site reminding you to drink water.
It’s scary in a sense it can open a backdoor for phishing attacks, where a site could impersonate a legit site.
Another problem the article presents is the question of making username modifiable and allowing Unicode characters beyond alpha-numeric. Turns out this is also a conundrum.
Modifiable Usernames
This can lead to a nasty referencing issue within a platform.
Example: GitHub
You have a repository named PQR.
You change your username from ABC to XYZ.
Old Url: ABC/PQR
New URL: XYZ/PQR
Now the old username is free and available to anyone.
A person uses ABC.
The new person creates a repository with the same name PQR.
So, what happens to your old repository? It's simply inaccessible.
Allowing Unicode characters in usernames
This could lead to a similar problem presented in the URL phishing. But this time it's about identity. You “see” the same usernames for 2 different persons. It might result in incoherent interactions, confusing the users. For instance, you do “@” in Twitter and see two visually indistinguishable usernames and full names.
Sometimes using email as a username is "ergonomical" instead of actual usernames since emails are almost unchangeable.
Overall, it was a new problem for me to think about. I hadn't really thought much on Unicode except in certain situations in [[Natural Language Processing]].
Video: How one tweet can ruin your life
Jon Ronson | TED | 17 min
For the longest time, Jon Ronson reveled in the fact that Twitter gave a voice to the voiceless ... the social media platform gave us all a chance to speak up and hit back at perceived injustice. But somewhere along the way, things took a turn. In this passionate, eloquent talk, Ronson explains how too often we end up behaving like a baying mob — and that it's time to rethink how we interact with others online.
This video by Jon Ronson sums up everything about these amplifications and toxicity on social media. There isn’t much empathy in these virtual spaces.
Reading: You can handle the post-truth: a pocket guide to the surreal internet
Aaron Lewis | 19 min
This essay presents a disturbing side of social media molding people's [[Belief]]. On one side the internet has opened a whole new era of knowledge and learning. On the other side, it feels dystopian.
Say, AI-generated content strategically trying to spread misinformation.
(Side Note: This particular essay is here as a follow-up because I still can't get over with what has been presented and still researching this matter.)
~Other Reads~
Collector's Fallacy
6 min
I feel guilty after reading this. I am sure I am in this same loop where I keep on collecting things without any regard for their long-term usefulness. This is rampant especially with reading materials. I see my "things to read" grow every day.
Perhaps, it is an inherent human nature to collect things. Partly because it is quite addictive and partly because it is a tangible task. We seem to get microdoses of rewards in doing so. For instance, we bookmark web pages because we feel satisfied that we wouldn't lose any information we encounter.
One way to move out of this rut is to integrate a robust note-taking process in your workflow. Research, Read, Assimilate; rinse, and repeat. Perhaps, you can use a short knowledge cycle. This has helped me a lot.
(Follow Up: thoughts about writing by exurb1a)
~Watching~
AlphaGo - The Movie | Full Documentary
DeepMind | 1 hr 30 min
This was so good to watch. Equally inspiring.
I had never paid attention to this remarkable event. But now as I think, the moment is similar to when Garry Kasparov lost against [[Deep Blue]] (chess-playing computer developed by IBM).
There were times when I felt sorry for Lee Sedol (ranked second in international titles). He was simply playing with an inanimate object without any "humane" component. There is a specific scene:
Lee Sedol looks at his opponent face. His habit. Humane. To get the sensation of his opponent. However, there's no human in the opposite side. It's simply AlphaGo.
I highly recommend watching the documentary. (This coming from someone who hasn’t consumed any movie/series for so many months now.)
Who am I
Pursuit of Wonder | 15 min
A futuristic case of [[Ship of Theseus]]. This gave me goosebumps.
Ship of Theseus has always been my most favorite identity paradox. This video took me on a bizarre existential rollercoaster ride.
Juice | A short movie
15 min
A thought-provoking short movie on gender discrimination. I guess we all have been in this guilt one way or the other, unknowingly discriminating between genders.
What I learned from having cancer
Jake Roper | 10 min
This was emotional. I guess life sometimes needs a very huge shake to have a perspective on the world around…
"When I die, what will people think of me? What will I be remembered for?"
(Side Note: Jake is one of my favorite YouTubers, even above Michael… There you go. I said it!)
~Fragments~
Ask HN: How will NLP models affect online discussion?
Since there is an increasing improvement of NLP models (say [[GPT-3]]), will we soon find ourselves interacting with bots without knowing they are bots?
Imagine being in control of a fleet of a million social media bots, all with distinct ways of writing and wording their arguments, all with the capacity to engage content that passes through sentiment analysis and classification filter. A million social media bots, which could all push, say, pro-life, or anti-gun narratives, generating massive amounts of coherent text on the subject. They can engage with dissenters automatically, endlessly, with a demoralizing amount of content, using multiple accounts to reinforce each other.
Also, I recommend you check out /r/SubSimulatorGPT2 which entirely runs on GPT-2 bots.
Video: Why do we dream?
Aperture | 18 min
Dreams are always weird, yet fascinating.
Kindness - A Poem
Bijay Gurung | 51 sec
“Kindness sits in the corner seat and smiles…”
Beautiful.
~Fascinating~
The Up-Goer Five text editor
Can you explain a hard idea using only the ten hundred most used words? It's not very easy. Type in the box to try it out.
This was a reference to this XKCD comic.
~Music~
Tomorrow Is a Long Time - Bob Dylan
If today was not an endless highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If tomorrow wasn't such a long time,
Then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all
Hello My Old Heart - The Oh Hello's
Hello, my old heart
How have you been?
Are you still there inside my chest?
I've been so worried, you've been so still
Barely beating at all…
Beautiful. Close to my heart (no pun intended…)
~Ending Thoughts~
I have been lurking on all these echo chambers for a very long time now. It feels discomforting to see heated arguments rise between people without having any respect for each other. I recently encountered this HN thread which sums up the main concerns revolving around this topic:
Interesting that this is currently #1 on HN, but (as of right now) 100% of the comments are dismissive & derogatory.
How does this happen? Is it just easier to leave a negative comment than to say something meaningful if you enjoyed the article?
On the other side, the grass is greener. Personally, I find inspiring comments mostly in YouTube sections and less popular subreddits/HN threads.
Maybe I am just in another bubble. I don’t know. I don’t have much opinion on this. However, I do feel there isn’t much “digital empathy” in escalated interactions. Anyway, instead of having only a single perspective, we could try digging deeper on the subject matter — “why doesn’t X make sense”, “why does ABC find X interesting/true” — instead of directly heading into a one-sided monolithic opinion.
Human behaviour is mysterious I guess. I will end this iteration of newsletter with this quote by John Cleese:
We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful, and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately, spend most of their time in the closed mode.
I hope you enjoyed this iteration of Bits-and-Paradoxes. Do let me know your thoughts on the things you found interesting. You could share new “interesting” content to my email. I am always open to learning! :)
(Side Note: I recently realized that you could drag mails in your Gmail to any tabs. So, if you find this newsletter ending up as “promotion”, please do drag it to your primary inbox if you feel like. It “might” update the algorithm to not flag this newsletter as a promotion.)
Cheers,
Nish