Tom Foale @askquantum@qoto.org

This is a thread to help people understand why Mastodon is a much nicer environment than Twitter. It has nothing to do with "echo chambers" and everything to do with what drives Twitter's advertising revenues.

The algorithms used by supposedly free social media whose profits come from advertising are dangerous. It's due to self-reinforcing feedback. And it means that social media bears a great responsibility for the rise of racism and the far right.
https://twitter.com/gchaslot/status/1036323806242066432?t=NmqABCf08JrZ5S4KQCKT1Q&s=19

Feedback is everywhere in our lives. It controls our bodies, our utilities, our money supply, our weather, our governments, our behaviours through social interactions. Its impact is also poorly understood - it is almost completely ignored in economics.
https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Control_Systems/Feedback_Loops

There are two types of feedback loop. Negative feedback sends correcting signals to act in the opposite direction to the input signal. Negative feedback is responsible for stability.

It's what keeps our body temperature stable, our speed constant when driving and our money stable relative to the goods and services we buy.

Positive feedback amplifies small input signals. It's what is responsible for tornadoes and hurricanes and many car crashes as well as the spread of panic responsible for stampedes in cattle and runs on banks like Northern Rock.

Positive feedback is useful, being responsible for contractions in childbirth, the exponential growth of companies and the oscillators that drive our electronics, but can be extremely destructive. Positive feedback tends to drive things to extremes.

Here's a good example of the self-reinforcing interacting feedback loops that led to the exponential growth of Apple's smartphone. It's also called 'network effects'. It leads to exponential growth in audiences and revenues as well as monopolies like Google and Amazon.

https://systemsandus.com/2014/07/18/exponential-business-growth-a-smartphone-case-study/

The social media algorithms are positive feedback loops and unfortunately mere transparency doesn't help much. If you like and react to puppies and kittens then YouTube and Twitter will show you more adorable pets.

However, if you react positively or negatively to bigoted or scientifically ignorant content or conspiracy theories then YouTube and Twitter will show you content of the same type, normalizing this behaviour, because it drives revenues.

The more extreme the videos you watch and tweets you react to then the more you will be shown even more extreme content. This also feeds into content creation - why do you think Alex Jones got rich? He doesn't actually *believe* what he says.

With no algorithms or advertising on Mastodon there's no self-reinforcing positive feedback. We only see the content promoted by people who we follow. This makes it a MUCH nicer environment.

The benefits of Mastodon are far wider. The nastier parts of the media rely on this feedback for their incomes. Distributed ad-free computing effectively robs Murdoch and other right-wingers like the Kochs, The Daily Mail, Alex Jones, Dan Wootton, Guy Pierce etc of their income stream from socially divisive content.

Without Twitter and Facebook the UK would probably have never left the EU. It was algorithmic amplification, exploited by Cambridge Analytica and Aaron Bank's £8M "donation" from some shady source that led to Brexit.

There are two types of feedback loop. Negative feedback sends correcting signals to act in the opposite direction to the input signal. Negative feedback is responsible for stability.

It's what keeps our body temperature stable, our speed constant when driving and our money stable relative to the goods and services we buy.

Positive feedback amplifies small input signals. It's what is responsible for tornadoes and hurricanes and many car crashes as well as the spread of panic responsible for stampedes in cattle and runs on banks like Northern Rock.

Positive feedback is useful, being responsible for contractions in childbirth, the exponential growth of companies and the oscillators that drive our electronics, but can be extremely destructive. Positive feedback tends to drive things to extremes.

Here's a good example of the self-reinforcing interacting feedback loops that led to the exponential growth of Apple's smartphone. It's also called 'network effects'. It leads to exponential growth in audiences and revenues as well as monopolies like Google and Amazon.

https://systemsandus.com/2014/07/18/exponential-business-growth-a-smartphone-case-study/

The social media algorithms are positive feedback loops and unfortunately mere transparency doesn't help much. If you like and react to puppies and kittens then YouTube and Twitter will show you more adorable pets.

However, if you react positively or negatively to bigoted or scientifically ignorant content or conspiracy theories then YouTube and Twitter will show you content of the same type, normalizing this behaviour, because it drives revenues.

The more extreme the videos you watch and tweets you react to then the more you will be shown even more extreme content. This also feeds into content creation - why do you think Alex Jones got rich? He doesn't actually *believe* what he says.

With no algorithms or advertising on Mastodon there's no self-reinforcing positive feedback. We only see the content promoted by people who we follow. This makes it a MUCH nicer environment.

The benefits of Mastodon are far wider. The nastier parts of the media rely on this feedback for their incomes. Distributed ad-free computing effectively robs Murdoch and other right-wingers like the Kochs, The Daily Mail, Alex Jones, Dan Wootton, Guy Pierce etc of their income stream from socially divisive content.

Without Twitter and Facebook the UK would probably have never left the EU. It was algorithmic amplification, exploited by Cambridge Analytica and Aaron Bank's £8M "donation" from some shady source that led to Brexit.