r/rs_x • u/[deleted] • 1d ago
C U L T U R E 🗣️
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u/rh1n3570n3_3y35 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wasn't this something at least both Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan sort of brought up decades ago, insofar as the isolating effects of electric media could be if wielded with deliberate ill intent be a societal control tool and weapon from the darkest corners of hell?
I'm also quite certain some of the cybernetics theorists brought up thoughts along these lines this during the 1960s and 70s.
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u/unofficialbds 1d ago
are the people in power really that intelligent? idk if theres a real strategy beyond sell more shit
i feel like reality is a lot more dull than conspiracy theorists like to imagine
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u/Beneficial_Delay_365 1d ago
idk if citronella agrees but i dont think the intent really matters. he's basically saying it's the same as privatization in any other sphere, it's not relevant if the individuals doing the privatizing knew what they were doing if the effect was the same
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u/ondawired 1d ago
no, and there's plenty of leaked emails and messages from Zuck that clarify what his motivations are/were. They are.. you're gonna want to sit down for this... Money and success.
The point of Youtube was to let you "broadcast yourself", that is, upload videos you want to share to the internet.
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u/Hot_Load5085 1d ago
YouTube, since its very start even before Google bought it, was a VC-backed startup. Its goal was _always_ to make money. I'm not sure what Google's marketing slogan matters to their goals.
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u/45s 1d ago
I mean you're right, but consider that leftist/governmental institutions have been on the decline for decades now, literally the most likely thing to happen was that those spaces were going to be co-opted by private interests.
Remember, there is no democratic internet - which in a way, has sped up private acquisition of the totality of online social life.
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u/VexiraLustelle 1d ago
everyone wants to believe there's some grand theater behind the curtain because it's scarier to accept that the people running things are just as lazy and incompetent as the rest of us
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u/Y_is_F_of_X 1d ago
I don’t want to doxx myself, but I was there, near the start, and worked in a fairly senior role at what was then a fairly popular social network in the mid ‘00s.
I’ve only gotten a couple of minutes into the video, but I can already say that this theorist doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to social media origins. This stuff was not designed to eliminate existing social institutions; no one was thinking that grandiosely at the outset, particularly in the days before AJAX and fast, huge databases.
We were instead just trying to piggyback on, replicate, and extend existing social networks, enable users to interact in the digital space in new ways and monetize all of that via display advertising.
The real shift imo toward genuinely dark motivations started happening around 2007, when Facebook in particular began hiring in large numbers of social scientists and hard science researchers and tasking them with understanding and hacking dopamine loops, compromising both the user’s self-conception and conception of others, and generating, analyzing, and exploiting vast quantities of user data—and even data about non-users.
I think YouTube is today the most corrosive social platform, but Facebook was the OG of deliberately ruining your life.
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u/LivingAnomie 1d ago
I’m not arguing more just curious, if I just use YouTube for old documentaries is it still as corrosive as you say?
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u/eldubya3121 1d ago
This attributes way too much ethical strategy to these tech leaders. They are not philosophical, they are amoral.
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u/Cinci_Socialist 1d ago
You're can really just say whatever and people will eat it up if you couch it in the language of marcuse and deleuze
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u/Putrid_Variation7157 1d ago
I don't think there is any deluzian type of word there nor marcussian.
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u/Cinci_Socialist 1d ago
Explicitly no, you're correct, I meant more the vibe bc what they're putting down is nonsense dressed up as psychopolitics
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u/murphmurphy 1d ago
I don't think it was that explicit, but certainly the people who made it have come to see all non monitizable interactions as social friction to be minded
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u/No_Incident_8925 1d ago
Leftist mass politics were dead or dying long before social media. Indeed, in my understanding of Jäger's chronology, internet "hyperpolitics" replaced the "anti-politics" of the 90s-2000s.
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u/chakrakhan 1d ago
What institutions is he referring to?
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u/45s 1d ago
everything that neoliberalism has defunded since the 80s? The most obvious ones in recent memory being the complete deregulation of tv and radio which has been quite obviously awful
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u/chakrakhan 1d ago
So like you're talking about public institutions but another person replied with social institutions. He's speaking in such general terms you can just kind of project whatever you want onto it.
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u/SugarFupa 1d ago
Probably, families and churches.
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u/QuixoticMick 1d ago edited 1d ago
two institutions famously venerated by left-wing political organizations
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u/IDKwhy1madeaccount 1d ago
Yo it’s Josh Citarella. I think I half agree here I don’t think it was the original intention but it has kinda turned into that. Just look at the seemingly endless number of right wing grifters.
It’s kinda hard to tell though where the borders are between intentional active maliciousness and uncaring indifference are. However, I can’t help but feel over this past half decade or so it has gone much more in the direction of the former.
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u/MultiplexedMyrmidon 1d ago
emphasis on the types of the logic and history/material changes you mention - a lot of comments echo a common assumption/projection that someone who is obviously talking about political-economy/critical theory is exposing the ‘reason’ social media was built as just a natural outgrowth of certain individuals and their intent (perhaps influenced by the social/cultural narratives around tech CEO’s and founders being concentrations of genius and innovation) and not something that has a host of factors and people involved (historically, ideologically, materially, etc.).
Did we ever really feel like we had the reins on Techno-Capital? Or have we been just re-assuring ourselves with the stories and hero’s journeys that appealed to an individualism and sense of control that helped smooth over the rupturing face of the poly-crisis. Are we every really going to build the kind of infrastructure (politically and social technology) to democratically control technology to serve human needs? Or are we going let this self-reinforcing system designed and shaped by a selfish death cult drag society into barbarism of one sort or another that simply happens to us.
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u/Wide-Internal-3579 1d ago
Wait social media could be bad? This is the first I’m hearing about this.
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u/HonestDishonestWork 1d ago
That's a whole lot of pseudo-intellectualism coming from a Harris basher. But yeah bro, we were thiiiiiiiis close to a communist revolution in 2006 before youtube mucked it all up.
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u/Tonto1010 1d ago
How embarrassing for him to go through all this with a forehead comb over the whole time. Just comb your hair my man.
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u/Glarnorx 1d ago
The point of social media is actually to sell ads.