Indeed! I'm actually writing about that in another community right now.

I am reluctant to put it here, but maybe just a taste?

[flame suit on :D ]

I disagree. Honestly, one can make tons of money, and incorporate the humans too. That can all scale, though the margins are not as good. So what? There is still tons of money to be made, just not the absolute maximum tons of money to be made.

The difference between those two is profound when it comes to the potential impact of social media on society today.

A while back, some friends and I did an experiment. What we did was set the expectation that people need to treat other people well, assume good intent, and in general, don't be a dick.

Anything else is a risk.

Being a dick comes with risk. It may be small, it may be significant. It's hard to know, by design.

See, when we define how shitty people can be to one another, they end up being exactly that shitty, plus a little.

Give people targets and they will meet them. Give them rules, and they will game them.

So then, make the only clear target real, human, discussion, mutual respect and consideration, and as time passes, the community will see more and more of that.

What does this have to do with the discussion we just started? Hang with me for a minute. I have to lay some foundation first.

Here is the money part:

Agency. When someone says something shitty to us, we are in control over how we respond. The number one response in most communities, is righteous indignation. The number two is to return that with equally shitty discussion.

And from there, it's a meta mess. They said, you said, he said...

Everyone wants "the platform" to handle this for them, to protect them, to enforce "the rules", etc... Ask people this, and they will go on at length about it all.

You can also give them scenarios, and they will also tell you indirectly, "the rules are great, but I need an exception, because other people are shitty to me."

This behavior dynamic is chronic. Rule based systems won't fix it. Machine learning won't either.

Now, what happens when people understand this is on them?

Someone calls us an asshole. They are strangers, we don't know them, they have established little to no credence. Or, they are trolls and are seen as such. Maybe they are clowns.

With agency in play, we have many options!

Righteous indignation
Laughter
Ignore them
Score their insult (C+ Weak sauce, try harder)

On Quora, I will often apply this. Someone goes off, and I will say, "You should edit that away before someone reports it. Then we can try again."

Doing that is sometimes amazing. I've had some awesome exchanges with others that started out on a very bad basis.

We are in control of our end of the conversation. We manage whether it goes bad or not.

So much of the angst we see related to all this social media boils down to the fact that many people do not recognize their agency in dialog, and they expect the system to take care of them, relieve them of the burden of actually interacting with other people.

Now, where it comes to the real / unreal, there is a dynamic in play I find extremely disturbing, and this is the part I am reluctant to put here, so again, just a taste:

Our body politic is ill. Our mainstream media is not delivering a robust, real, inclusive dialog on policy. Tons of Americans have come to realize this, and it's a growing problem for the big money, establishment media.

A couple examples:

Where is the anti-war movement in the US, and what coverage does it get on mainstream media?

What percentage of news and opinion produced by mainstream media in the US do so from the labor, poverty point of view?

When is the last time any of us saw a reasonable debate on mainstream media about Net Neutrality, Copyright, and the basic problems and dynamics we are seeing where society, the law, and technology intersect?

There are many more. I just picked a few to make a point here.

All of those topics suffer from conflict of interest. The owners of mainstream, big media see those topics as threats to income, and coverage, editorial influence, all reflect that reality.

Now, ordinary people actually have an interest in those topics, and do discuss them. Where?

Social media.

In addition, there are tons of great discussions going on, here, mailing lists, forums, Reddit, you name it. They are happening, and bubble up to platforms like Twitter and FB, which actually hosts a ton of "secret groups" all focused on specific topics, causes, and ways to action, activism.

(one does wonder how secret those are, but that is a discussion for another time)

Right along with that we have less informed dialog, conspiracy theories, crazy people, angry people, etc... And we've got some level of nefarious activity too. Many think "the russians" are producing content that is actually impacting elections, for example. I am not going to state truth or false on that, just recognize that sentiment is out there.

Every single day our mainstream media delivers "Fake News" The easiest to see are war related propaganda going out as news. It's constant.

Every single day, our mainstream media talks about all "those other people" on social media producing "Fake News" and what are we going to do about it?

See the trouble?

We can't resolve this "Fake News" on social media problem without also recognizing the mainstream media problem we have today as well. Without that real conversation, the solutions will be incomplete, untrustworthy, draconian, and the people overall will not see the outcome as just and the process legitimate.

That's rough, but real.

In addition, we've got many Americans looking for strong left economic policy reform. Often, that gets lumped in with "Fake News" which makes a mess of things in that draconian solutions are seen as chilling to otherwise reasonable, permissible dialog.

That's it, I will stop there, save for one last observation:

In a given community, one setup with the expectations I detailed above, or even some reasonable set of expectations that are clear and do not get in the way of most reasonable, real conversations, if pointed ones:

All it takes is a small percentage of regular contributors modeling the norms and the options to spread them throughout the membership, basically innoculating them against most basic meta and trolling bullshit.

The resulting conversation is healthy enough to filter truth from bullshit very reasonably.

Why?

Because people learn how to be wrong, how to handle attacks without exacerbating things, how to be secure in their conversation and seek enlightenment not always just validation and ego stroking. Spread that, and bullshit is displaced and or quickly marginalized.

(and often, bullshitters get sucked in, will own it, and begin to contribute too. Happens more than you think. And that happens, because the door for it to happen is held open, and appeals made. Come on, join us. We are all better for it...)

No machine learning needed. And scaling happens by natural community distribution. The very big platforms, Twitter for example, will be a mess because size. But, what nobody realizes is Twitter feeds tons of other communities. If those discussions are robust, the laughingstocks on Twitter will be known as such, and that bubbles right back to Twitter!

But there is a catch! It will do that for established big money interests same as it will nefarious politicians and bad actors trying to manipulate things.

So, what is worth what?

Do we really want robust, real, honest dialog, or is this really just about a cleaner, managed one like the status quo interests would prefer?

No joke.

How do the people make the big money? That costs money to convey. Also no joke. Hard won information.

But, I have put enough here for others to go and do the work. If they do it, they can get the positive outcomes.