queenofzan

[queenofzan]

"Is social media designed to reward people for acting badly?

The answer is clearly yes, given that the reward structure on social media platforms relies on popularity, as indicated by the number of responses – likes and comments – a post receives from other users. Black-box algorithms then further amplify the spread of posts that have attracted attention.

Sharing widely read content, by itself, isn’t a problem. But it becomes a problem when attention-getting, controversial content is prioritized by design. Given the design of social media sites, users form habits to automatically share the most engaging information regardless of its accuracy and potential harm. Offensive statements, attacks on out groups and false news are amplified, and misinformation often spreads further and faster than the truth.

We are two social psychologists and a marketing scholar. Our research, presented at the 2023 Nobel Prize Summit, shows that social media actually has the ability to create user habits to share high-quality content. After a few tweaks to the reward structure of social media platforms, users begin to share information that is accurate and fact-based...

Re-targeting rewards

To investigate the effect of a new reward structure, we gave financial rewards to some users for sharing accurate content and not sharing misinformation. These financial rewards simulated the positive social feedback, such as likes, that users typically receive when they share content on platforms. In essence, we created a new reward structure based on accuracy instead of attention.

As on popular social media platforms, participants in our research learned what got rewarded by sharing information and observing the outcome, without being explicitly informed of the rewards beforehand. This means that the intervention did not change the users’ goals, just their online experiences. After the change in reward structure, participants shared significantly more content that was accurate. More remarkably, users continued to share accurate content even after we removed rewards for accuracy in a subsequent round of testing. These results show that users can be given incentives to share accurate information as a matter of habit.

A different group of users received rewards for sharing misinformation and for not sharing accurate content. Surprisingly, their sharing most resembled that of users who shared news as they normally would, without any financial reward. The striking similarity between these groups reveals that social media platforms encourage users to share attention-getting content that engages others at the expense of accuracy and safety...

Doing right and doing well

Our approach, using the existing rewards on social media to create incentives for accuracy, tackles misinformation spread without significantly disrupting the sites’ business model. This has the additional advantage of altering rewards instead of introducing content restrictions, which are often controversial and costly in financial and human terms.

Implementing our proposed reward system for news sharing carries minimal costs and can be easily integrated into existing platforms. The key idea is to provide users with rewards in the form of social recognition when they share accurate news content. This can be achieved by introducing response buttons to indicate trust and accuracy. By incorporating social recognition for accurate content, algorithms that amplify popular content can leverage crowdsourcing to identify and amplify truthful information.

Both sides of the political aisle now agree that social media has challenges, and our data pinpoints the root of the problem: the design of social media platforms."

And here's the video of one of the scientsts presenting this research at the Nobel Prize Summit!

-Article via The Conversation, August 1, 2023. Video via the Nobel Prize's official Youtube channel, Nobel Prize, posted May 31, 2023.

[queenofzan]

Do not punish the behaviour you want to see

I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?

But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize,  snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?

Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)

Or any sentence containing the word “finally”. 

If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.

Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.

[queenofzan]

it is so weird to me that people are so bad at identifying when animals are or are not in distress. maybe take some of the points you put into "human body language interpretation" and put them into other animals lmao

[queenofzan]

"A cishet person must have made this, no queer person would ever portray queerness in this way."

"This artist must be white."

"No SA victim would ever handle the subject in this way."

"No woman would ever write women like this."

"This creator is obviously neurotypical. Everyone with autism/ADHD/depression understands-"

Nope.

People who make these blanket statements are very frequently proven wrong when the creator comes out as a member of that group. And even when they aren't proven wrong, even in cases where the creator isn't from the group in question, actual members of the group who don't fit whatever arbitrary criteria are being expressed will see these statements and feel excluded and erased.

Not everyone in your group is going to share your experiences. No single individual gets to personally decide what does or doesn't count as a "valid" expression of trauma or being part of a particular group, and creators are also not obligated to out themselves in order to "prove" their validity.

If something doesn't resonate with you, all that means is that it doesn't resonate with you. You don't have to like it. But you don't get to decide what it means to someone else.

[queenofzan]

 millennial stuck in a terrible fantasy romance novel send help and snacks

[queenofzan]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[queenofzan]

A lot of sentiments I see online about "just standing up for yourself" fall apart when considering that a common consequence of "standing up for yourself" is losing a key part of your current support network. It's hard to tell someone to stop being transphobic to you when you carpool with them to work, and it'll get a lot more expensive without them. Can your budget tolerate that cost, or is it the expense that stretches you too far? It's hard to tell someone that they need to be more polite to you when they're the one who helps walk you through legalese. Can you find someone else to do it for you, or are you left floundering? It's hard to tell someone to stop being sexist to you when they're the one writing your reference letter. Do you have someone else who can be your reference, or are they the only one whose letter would be accepted?

In order to be able to stand up for yourself, you need to be able to bear the potential consequence of that person leaving. You need to either have redundancy in your network, or be able to pay for what they did for you. Safety is about more than if someone will hit you.

[queenofzan]

Y'know, if a formerly well-behaved straight A student suddenly starts almost not passing their classes and crying all the time and getting into trouble, maybe the default conclusion from every authority figure should not be that they are lazy and simply need to pull themselves together. Maybe instead you should give them stimulants or HRT or let them kill their parents and see if one of those three things resolves the issue.

#me in all my graduate level classes OUTSIDE my department: As. the teachers love me #my graduate work inside my department: apparently bad enough to warrant putting me on probation without ever talking to me ahead of time #hmm

[queenofzan]

i just found out about a romance-only bookstore now open in the Cities! It's called Tropes and Trifles and looks lovely.

yooooo, they have dedicated mask-on shopping times for immunocompromised people! That's so cool! I'm going to have to check them out :D

[queenofzan]

Typography Tuesday: Passover Edition

This Haggadah is color coded to indicate the age of various parts of the text, creating a visually striking historical commentary.

Haggadah.   Polychrome historical Haggadah for Passover. [Hagadah Meʹir ʹenayim] With a commentary, interpretative translation, introd., notes, references, and bibliography, by Jacob Freedman. Illus. in color from rare medieval Haggadah mss.  Springfield, Mass., Jacob Freedman Liturgy Research Foundation, 1974.

[queenofzan]

experiencing the many wonders of autism such as "every noise is personally attacking me" and "seemingly incapable of reacting to things with any level of emotion" & i must say i am not currently pulling any bad bitches like this

#autism

[queenofzan]

[queenofzan]

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Faculty expressing solidarity with students during this movement cannot go unnoticed.

Free Palestine

[queenofzan]

i know this is partially a function of me getting astoundingly lucky with most of my medical professionals (although i made my own luck in some of these cases; followed my GP from one clinic to another when i realized i didn't like any of the doctors left at the clinic) but like

damn it's wild to like. talk to a medical professional about a problem. and get a solution. and that solution works???

[queenofzan]

pros of corded headphones:

Cant lose phone

dont need to charge headphones

they look cool and are amazing

cons of corded headphones:

Every doorknob in existence is now out to get you

[queenofzan]

GOT IT?

#diversity win! #men bffs ALSO in toxic codependent homoerotic friendship

[queenofzan]