If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous.
Consider the use of the word “female” in these posts. It is not a neutral term here, it is a term of abuse. It’s used by teenage boys to degrade us and equate us to animals. Boys are never described as “males”, but girls are always “females” – the equivalent of sows or calves, creatures that are less than human. We’re also “thots” (whores), “community pussy” and “bops”. “Bop” stands for “been over passed” and is a derogatory term used by boys to refer to a girl they’ve decided has been “passed around” or had too much sex. Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects. “When community pussy tries to insult me, I just want to beat that bitch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok. All of my friends use those apps, and many spend multiple hours a day on them. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my mainstream social media apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny, such as comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.
Don’t use Instagram or TikTok ✅👍
Enragebait is a well known consequence of using a profit-driven Algorithm, i.e. enshittification.
15-year-olds are not being specifically targeted so much as caught up in the phenomena occuring overall.
The thing is this isn’t a phenomena that’s recent. This type of shitty misogynism has been going on for decades/centuries. The only difference between then and now is that we have social apps that make it easier to spread.
I’m coming up on 70 yrs old and misogynism has always been the bane of my existence.
The extent of apps promoting and amplifying this hate posting is a recent phenomenon, through the so-called algorithmic feeds. It all needs attacking.
Yep.
The primary problem is that ‘the algorithm’ amplifies all of our worst traits, to the extent that someone is not critical of what it is showing them.
Oh, and its also addictive.
Oh, and its also hugely profitable.
Its a giant ratking of feedback loops, and we really should just use Alexander’s solution to knots.
The underlying biases and bigotry in humanity has ways of addressing and alleviating it.
But apparently, nothing is strong enough to defeat convenient, targeted, personalized reinforcement of basically, your Jungian shadow.
And its very much relevant that all of this is done to sell advertisements and establish brands, which themselves basically just are also selling you validation, a personality, opinions, ‘facts’.
Its the fanciest Skinner Box that’s ever been designed.
I’m not quite 70 years old, but I’ve been around for long enough to laugh at this line from the article: “Sexual equality has ceased to exist online”
Only a 15 year old could think that sexual equality ever existed online. It may be hard to believe, but it’s probably better now than it ever has been. Back in the early days online spaces were so male dominated that people had trouble believing that women were even online at all.
Maybe we shouldn’t laugh at it because we still have young women having to go through this kind of revelation after thousands of years of civilization.
I’m not actually laughing at it.
If misogyny were somehow magically solved tomorrow, then Xhitter would still remain a
misogynistichellhole, featuring a cesspit of whatever traits of humanity triggered clicking or views or whatever generates the highest profits (maybe in the future, trying to gain the attention of bots will vastly outweigh what happens to us here humans, in the same manner as corporations replaced individual businesses in the economic sphere?).The specific situation described in the article is misogy, but it points to deeper roots of enshittification. The 15 year old girl will still feel put upon, even unsafe, even if it has nothing to do with her femininity anymore.
good thing these men don’t exist outside of social media! whew, we dodged a big one there…
and i sure hope this school girl doesn’t go to any place regularly where she sees these teenage boys, oh wouldn’t that be unfortunate???
School is mandatory, Xhitter is not.
If she walked home and along the way stopped off at a particular cafe, and always got side-eyed by people there… then yeah, I would say hang out somewhere else?
Be the change that you want to see in the world, and all of that.
Don’t use Instagram or TikTok
Yeah, in general, my answer to “I don’t like using Internet site X” is “well, don’t use that site.”
There are a vast number of sites out there. Use one that you like. I don’t have a very high opinion of lemmygrad.ml, but I deal with that by not going there.
“But TikTok is a big site!”
Okay. I don’t use Instagram or TikTok. I can assure you that it’s very possible to not use them.
“But my friends use Website X!”
Well, making the probably-reasonable assumption that the relationship is symmetric and they also use it because you do, that situation isn’t going to change unless someone decides to use something else.
I think this type of argument is relatively flawed. Obviously I’m very happy to leave one platform for another, but most people dont like change and want to be where thier friends are. I think it’s reasonable to expect them to get over the former, but because of the former they would probably have to leave their friends behind. Thats obviously not viable for teenagers and it’s a rare few that are willing to do that into thier 20s as well.
Seeing as getting people to make a move is so hard I think forcing these platforms not to be so vile would be a good move. We should put the onus on the platforms, not the users.
If i avoided every place I ever encountered misogyny, my life would shrink considerably. Forget work. Never a church. Goodbye school, the grocery store, movie theaters, almost all spaces online, my local park.
Woman: I keep getting catcalled on the street and it’s disturbing my sense of safety.
OpenStars: stop going outside, easy.
Knowing that these sites are bad and the algorithm is part of that doesn’t make “just don’t use those sites” a viable option when most or all of someone’s peers are also using them. That is part of the social media companies’ strategy, to make switching costs so high no one leaves.
Woman: I keep getting catcalled on the street and it’s disturbing my sense of safety.
OpenStars: stop going outside, easy.
False equivalency. Going outside is not similar to using Instagram.
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Looks like you’ve mistakenly replied to the wrong comment. Which is ironic because… try reading? With your eyes?
Yep. Apologies.
I agree with your sentiment here. Obviously, it’s possible to avoid using Instagram and TikTok, and it’s basically impossible to avoid using the street.
On the other hand, if you’re a teenage girl, it may be nearly impossible to not use these big corporate social media sites. A big part of being a teen is socializing with other teens. A big part of being an adolescent is learning to fit in with other adolescents without constant adult supervision. It’s one of the reason that home schooled kids have a rough time once they hit college, university or work. Many remain deeply strange for a long while after that.
If all the other teens in your social group are using Instagram and TikTok and you’re the one person who isn’t, you’re probably going to be ostracized. Liking and commenting on each-other’s social media posts is an important ritual of friendship at that age.
Sometimes parents ban or restrict social media usage by their kids. To a certain extent that can shield the kid, because it’s no longer their fault, and their friends might accept that. But, still, if the kid isn’t on social media, they’re probably not getting invited to in-person events, they don’t know what the important topics of conversation are, and so-on.
I mean, the nerve of saying “don’t use social media” on a social media site is pretty rich. And, don’t think a 15-year old is going to switch from TikTok to PeerTube or something. You might be able to get them to try it out, but you’re not easily going to migrate her entire friend group. The content is also not there. Plus, fediverse sites are inhabited by deeply strange people. I love you all, but I wouldn’t want you interacting with a 15 year old girl.
I love you all, but I wouldn’t want you interacting with a 15 year old girl.
Such a strange thing to say. A lot of the people here probably have daughters around that age. A lot of the people here are perfectly normal people.
Such a strange thing to say.
Wait, you include yourself?! 🤣
Well someone has to be first to switch platforms.
If you always get catcalled between Fourth Street and Sixth Street, and you never get catcalled on First through Third Street or Seventh and above, then yeah, maybe just know that going onto Fifth Street you might get catcalled?
You could try expressing your explicit disapproval to Elon Musk directly, maybe that will help?
Actually no, it’s not just “Fifth Street”, it’s Fifth Street in an entirely different country. Tiktok is based on China, Insta and Twitter are in the USA. Normally the rules governing a platform are a combination of the origination point and whatever interrelations exist - although obviously Donald Trump is rewriting those at will to suit him. And yet the UK could do the same… or make an alternative, if it wanted to?
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This isn’t realistic to tell a kid who uses social media
Sure it is, you just don’t like the answer. Which is strange coming from someone who is presumably on Lemmy because they didn’t like the way reddit was conducting business and decided to leave. You moved to a competing service, it’s also an option to just not use those types of social media at all.
This thread has real orphan-crushing-machine vibes to it. Many just take for granted that of course kids have to use social media. They don’t and neither do you. It’s not the path of least resistance but why would you expect taking care of yourself to be easy in a society designed to do everything possible to beat you into submission and extract value from the lifeless husk that remains?
“But but Lemmy is social media and you participate here. Curious.”
No, not in the same way that Instagram and the rest are. Pseudo-anonymous forums are fundamentally different both in the way people interact with one another and in the types of content they tend to generate.
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If you just say “stop using this thing you like” without an actual motivation behind it, you won’t have any more success than if you put a pack of cigarettes on the kitchen counter of a smoker and say “Don’t you smoke these! It’s bad for you!”
First of all, it doesn’t sound like these people actually like these platforms. The article in the OP is about a girl describing the pervasive abuse she experiences while using them. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say in response “you’re clearly not enjoying this so just stop doing it”. Second, that is fundamentally sound advice to both this girl and the person smoking in your analogy. The fact that both might be hard habits to break doesn’t make the solution any less simple. Simple != easy.
you’re ignoring the massive wall of incentive pushed on people by capital forces to use the largest, most commercially active platforms
No I’m not. I specifically called that out in my response. As I said, avoiding them as the solution may not be easy but it is simple in concept. Maintaining your health in all forms is hard to do but the steps to follow are not complex.
I can’t really follow what your imagined argument is about
I have seen people in this thread and others use that argument as a way to sidestep the conversation at hand and pivot to something more juvenile and uninteresting. I added it to head off that line of thinking and prevent this from trending in a pointless direction. If you weren’t about to say something like that then feel free to ignore it but I wanted to make it clear I’m not interested in going down that path with you or anyone else reading the thread and considering replying.
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You’re presenting additional nuance as if it disproves what I’m saying and it doesn’t. I understand that overcomimg any addiction is more difficult than saying “I’m going to stop this behavior”. However, any approach you decide to take is fundamentally just breaking down that ultimate goal into practical steps. I’ve repeatedly said I agree that there are usually more steps involved but you seem categorically opposed to agreeing that changing your behavior is the goal of any addiction treatment and that seems like a you problem more than a problem with anything that I’m saying.
If you just bothered reading instead of vomiting words, you’d learn the problem is persistent to real life, too. Asshole.
Of course it is. Do you think “misogyny exists in real life” is a novel idea to anyone old enough to know what that word means? You can’t opt out of being exposed to it in real life though so unless you’re proposing suicide as a solution I’m not sure how that’s related to what we’re discussing. Dumbass.
This isn’t realistic to tell a kid who uses social media, it’s like saying “Don’t play Xbox” or “Don’t watch new releases, only watch stuff that’s out on video already”
Do these kids just not have parents or adult guardians?
The vast majority probably do. For a parent or guardian to be useful in this sort of situation they need to take an active interest and forge a bond with their ward, and this day and age I don’t think that all who wish to do that have the ability to, and there’ll be a decent chunk of people who simply don’t care.
I’ve a parent who didn’t really give a fuck. I ended up hitting up lots of random dudes, making a bid for some kind of emotional connection, and no one in my personal vicinity knew, cared, or cared to know. It was a terrible idea, but my story is hardly unique, I know a handful of people with very similar stories.
This isn’t a specific platform problem, it’s a social problem and needs social solutions.
The erosion of free (or mostly free), teen-friendly physical third spaces is a big part of this problem, imo. As is the culture of clamping down on kids’ free movement irl. Young people need to have safe spots to hang out together without being pressured to spend money or have a ton of adults breathing down their necks.
Not saying that misogyny or bigotry would disappear, but bringing these back in an accessible way could allow kids to grow again without dealing with corporate surveillance apparatuses as their only social lifeline.
I quite enjoyed hanging out with my friends without having a flood of antisocial adults hurl venom at us on repeat. They deserve that chance too.
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What would make YOU excited to go out and hang out around other people? I feel that the entire premise is dying, and adults are equally crippled by this problem as kids
That’s a completely fair question and point.
My being an adult skews my answer, so idk if it’s a fair one but I recently went to a local concert and had a blast with the other people there. What makes me, as an individual, excited overall is knowing other people will be there and the place will feel alive.
Unstructured but available activity seems to be the unifying theme for the location attractions of our own pasts. I don’t have a perfect solution but identifying the issues seems to be a step, at least.
This isn’t a platform problem
It is though. You think the spreading of this content is an accident? They could change the algorithm tomorrow and it would disappear, but they won’t because this division is useful to them.
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There’s some truth to that but the lack of algorithmic manipulation will make it easier to deal with. Plus you just have more options here on Lemmy to deal with it. Most instance operators have shown a willingness to restrict or even defederate from other instances when they are consistently shit to deal with.
I’ve seen plenty of misogyny here on the threadiverse. It’s not solved just by not using Instagram or TikTok.
Edit: it’s in this very comment section, in fact.
It is everywhere, including irl.
However, I would guess it is more prevalent on Xhitter than here.
Better yet, make a UK-based Mastodon instance “for the children”, keeping it safe from such?
Read the article instead of the headline ✅👍
Teens are too stupid to not use it. Most people are too stupid to not use it. I actually see very little wrong with no one under 16 being allowed on any forms of social media. Among all the stuff like this (that I doubt was really written by a 15 year old, and was more likely made by a person or organization trying to get the law to pass) It fucks up how you regulate dopamine and gives you the attention span of a goldfish.
Not true. It actually makes your attention span WORSE than a goldfish! 😞
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The age verification debate misses the real point. These commercial algorithms are harmful for everybody.
The identity verification debate is the point and it is the only reason this article exists in the first place.
These commercial algorithms are harmful for everybody.
Also true.
It’s a business of outrage. Just say the most vile things you can think of, wait for some people to react to it, no matter how, and watch the algorithm do it’s work. Congratulation you are now an influencer.
From what I’m seeing, the messaging is “we want to protect children, thus age verification”.
To your point, it is identity verification they’re doing.
My point is, age verification isn’t even the right solution to the problem.
It’s not about age verification, it’s just an excuse for more censorship.
They’re addiction creating and brainwashing. I have believed for the last ten years that they should be illegal, and all feeds should be sorted chronologically or by popularity
holy shit these comments
lemmy users stop being individualist-brained, victim-blaming misogynists challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
you don’t stop misogyny by just ignoring it you twats, and hot take, mainstream social media being filled with nothing but privileged assholes being bigots (because all the good people were told to just go somewhere else 😇) is not good, actually!
I mean this is why I stopped using social media 10 years ago. Bunch of nonsense drivel, everyday.
I’m not victim blaming, this shit shouldn’t happen, but if you are on a platform and that platform has shit moderation and you keep seeing content you don’t like, well, maybe you should leave that platform? I mean this is why we all left reddit, right?
If I walk into a wall once, then it’s an accident. If I keep walking into it, then I’m just stupid.
Genuine question: What do you categorise this comment as, other than you using social media?
I keep falling into the same trap as well, when telling people I quit using “social media” but am very much active on social media platforms - just not the ones controlled by big tech.
Maybe we need a shorthand for “profit-driven algorithm-controlled influencer cesspools” so we can separate it from “non-profit decentralized social media platforms” like Lemmy and Mastodon?
It’s called the Social Graph. Platforms that implement a social graph are social media.
The fact that people don’t know this basic, fundamental mechanism is the problem. Even the technologically inclined haven’t been able to make this simple distinction.
People think “social media” means a place for people to be social. That’s not it. Social media is specifically platforms that implement the social graph and/or similar types of algorithms that are designed to manipulate sociological relationships.
Traditional message boards are not social media because there is no algorithm. In the past reddit wasn’t social media because it technically did not have a social graph. It was a simple aggregrator with comment sections. That alone does not make social media. reddit does have a social graph now. That’s when it became social media.
Lemmy doesn’t have social graph algorithms.
The social graph is quite possibly one of the most dangerous inventions the 21st century and nobody talks about it. Yet it rules your entire life. It’s what makes the world turn. It’s what is dictating cultures and societies. It’s what is determining what goes viral. It determines the daily headlines.
You have a very restricted definition that doesn’t seem to be common. “Social graph” is not mentioned once on the Wikipedia page of “social media”, nor the Britannica, nor the Cambridge dictionary, nor Merriam Webster. While they are not specialized sources, I think they reflect the common usage of words. By those definitions Lemmy seems to be a social media.
Hey thank you for the term drop! I haven’t heard of “social graph” and it falls into my “feelings” of what social media has been for me(or what I hate about it(algorithms)). I am definitely a “one in ten thousand” today for this.
While I completely agree with you on all arguments about the dangers of algorithm-based platforms where eyeball count and time spent in apps (ad revenue) are the primary reasons behind their very existence, I disagree on your definition for the term social media.
I tried to find some sources for your definition, but for example the Wikipedia article on social graphs define Facebook as an online social network (although it also calls it a social media platform).
Judging by the list of social networking services, the definition (at least on Wikipedia) seems to lean towards “any site where you can add people as friends” (thus building the social graph you refer to).
Personally, I think that term fits better with your description (platforms based entirely on a social graph), while online social media is a broader term describing any online medium on which we socialize with other people - graph-based or not. Old-school forums and chat rooms included, even if we didn’t call them that back then.
This definition of social media is new to me as well, thanks for sharing it. This sort of clarifies a term I really dislike, and which you’ve used: “the algorithm”. It’s always seemed a little murky to me which algorithms it refers to. It’s like saying “don’t eat food with chemicals in it”.
Lemmy does have “an algorithm”, it’s just a relatively simple one based on communities one is subscribed to plus some vote/comment data for the various sort orderings.
Lemmy also absolutely implements a social graph – the data about who has interacted with whom is all stored by the system. It’s not explicitly stored as a graph structure, but then we’re arguing database schemas.
As I understand it, however, you’re saying “social media” arises when the “social graph” data structure is used as an input to “the algorithm”. That seems like a pretty robust definition to me.
One bit of pedantry: user blocks on Lemmy are, by a general definition, a form of social graph, and they do affect what content people see. So Lemmy could technically qualify as social media by the definition I’ve written here. I’m not sure what a more precise definition could be that avoids this technicality.
A stronger distinction could be made for the use of graphs on a widespread scale. That’s what I meant when I said lemmy doesn’t have a graph. The data structure itself is benign. When it becomes dangerous is when you’re playing god mode by dictating what individuals see. When that is applied that across the entire platform then you’re controlling entire societies. This is “the algorithm” that people speak of in common parlance even though they don’t know the underpinnings of it. It’s such a simple concept but extremely dangerous to humanity.
You can block on individual if they annoy you. This is a basic feature that existed on old forums and chat software. A single edge on a graph millions or even billions is insignificant. It’s a silly retort anyways that trolls use, thinking it makes them sound smart. Ignoring one or even a few idiots isn’t going to alter your algorithm. Not relative to the system as a whole which is orders of magnitude greater.
If anything the block feature is an antidote to algorithms that decide what we see. For some reason people don’t see anything wrong with having to be forced to confront your polar social/political opposites all the time. I can’t remember where I heard or read about this but studies shown that this does not work. It’s not productive.
The thing that people have to get over is that “the algorithm” isn’t correct by default. You’re not losing anything by blocking users or breaking from it entirely. There’s been more than enough evidence over the years that they do much harm. I have yet to see much strong evidence that they are beneficial. What has society gained from it? There’s nothing but sales pitches for adtech firms telling us that they have mastered how give us the best social experiences. Where’s the proof of that.
Maybe, but I’ve definitely seen people disagree about what constitutes social media - e.g. some thing youtube is or isn’t, other people lemmy/reddit are or aren’t, it seems pretty inconsistent. Maybe it’s a generational thing?
In this sense, yes to Reddit and YouTube. YouTube may not be very social but it clearly has an algorithm that pushes toxic content/stereotypes.
And im going to say no on Lemmy. Lemmy may be social but there’s no algorithm pushing toxic content. Maybe I’m missing it but there’s seems to be very little toxic content.
You’re saying the criteria for being called “social media” include, “must be toxic” and “must be algorithmically-driven”?
Maybe this is an age thing and language has changed (I’m old in Internet years) but to me, “social” implies the opposite of those things - friendly interaction and organic connection.
I’m saying the term is somewhat nebulous, with lots of gray area but also an objective definition would not answer the question.
People do disagree on what constitutes social media, and even apply it inconsistently to themselves. So let’s not pretend there is a clear definition. Language isn’t always cleanly defined so we can understand what “social media” is based on context
I don’t consider Lemmy or other message style boards as social media.
We aren’t posting pictures of ourselves or posting updates of our lives on here. We don’t use our real names(or I hope we don’t).
Please define social media for me, because it seems like everyone’s take on it is “a website where you interact with others”, which is way too broad and I would say that applies to the entire internet then, which is a slippery slope.
*Edit, another post linked the “Social Graph” which I think encapsulates what social media is vs. what it is not.
Please define social media for me, because it seems like everyone’s take on it is “a website where you interact with others”, which is way too broad and I would say that applies to the entire internet then, which is a slippery slope.
That is effectively the definition from my understanding. Lemmy, Reddit, and similar boards are social media because the content is primarily user-generated.
It probably feels like the entire internet because it’s where many of us are spending most of our time.
Yeah and I don’t accept that definition. Is GitHub social media then? Is the LTT forums social media? Is Wikipedia? Nexus mods? All of these sites contain “user generated content”.
Because I would say none of those sites are social media sites. But all of these loose definitions are being thrown around and next thing you know you’ll need to verify your ID to look at any Wikipedia article.
Please define social media for me
I guess my take is anywhere people interact with others in a conversational way, yes. You can see a timeline of posts, you can comment and reply, etc. You can’t do that on 99% of websites or apps. You can’t do it on your banking app or your weather app or your insurance website, etc. The lines blur around things like Wikis where you can chat with people on talk pages.
Limiting “social media” to places you post pictures of yourself rules out most earlier forms of social media before that became a thing, but looking back you wouldn’t say twitter wasn’t. The Wiki link you gave also links to “list of social media websites”, which includes Reddit, as a directly opposing point.
I don’t think it’s clear-cut, and I know different people have different opinions.
Personally I didn’t consider Reddit as social media 10+ years ago, but in the last few years it has definitely become social media, and I would attribute that to the Social Graph concept.
Right now, I don’t consider Lemmy or other link aggregators(Piefed) as social media, same for PeerTube as that is more of an entertainment/video sharing platform that isn’t focused on a social aspect. And I guess Matrix wouldn’t be social media for me either because I see it as a chat platform where you can be social, but the focus isn’t on sharing personal details of yourself. But I would consider Mastodon and PixelFed as social media and their focus is on pure social interactions. Which I guess I don’t know if I consider YouTube to be social media either at that point.
Maybe I’m hyper-fixating on the “media” part of “social media”. But again, I think clear and concise definitions of these types of sites need to be created BEFORE laws are in-place, because it seems that everyone is focusing on whether or not a website or service has “social” functions, which again, is a slippery slope.
No. All walls should be padded because we assume everyone is going to walk into them…
Depends if an algorithm is going to pop that wall in front of everyone repeatedly. Ideally, pad the wall, fix the stupid algorithm, and prosecute the creators of both.
So suicide, then? That’s your suggestion?
That’s not what they said at all.
Keep walking into that wall bud.
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a large share of “incel adjacent” shut-ins, as they are the segment most likely to keep a forum or website active
“But not me, I’m different even though I’m here too!”
This user:
Lol proves my point.
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Systematic issues aren’t any one person’s responsibility, and those who thing it is, tend to be violent assholes.
All we can do as individuals is be responsible for ourselves. We are not responsible for other people.
However, the parents are responsible for this 15 year old girl. She is not responsible for herself as she is not an adult.
The 2:1 ratio of course just degrades the platform further because there’s too few to challenge the misogyny. Like public officials quitting under Trump, you can hardly blame them but it makes the problem worse not better.
You’re not going to save Instagram. The owners do not want you to save it and you do not control it. It was a lost cause before you even knew there was a problem.
Some systemic problems cannot be solved from inside the system.
I am certainly not going to save Instagram, since I never joined. But if you mean it can’t be saved, that might be true as well.
If every female person left Instagram today, what would happen to the misogyny? Would it be starved of fuel or would it escalate and spiral until it explodes in (increased) physical attacks?
And if the women and girls created their own female-positive space, how long before it was brigaded? Judging by everyTwoX post that ever hit R/All, I’m putting the over/under at 6 hours.
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My solution? Oh I’m not saying the women should have stayed in Instagram! It’s one reason I never joined in the first place. If anything I was wondering if women created a No Boys Allowed WomenSpace totally separate. And still I think it would be brigaded.
I think we agree on the basic evil of societal misogyny. Although as an old woman who has lived through changes, I have seen that having more women in a workplace or field, especially as we start to fill the upper echelons, can help fade certain parts of the misogyny or at least drive it underground.
Women simply prefer spaces where they can control the membership and replies to ensure validation of their beliefs. You’d be surprised by how censorious women spaces can be. Posting replies on their spaces is never egalitarian. And women have no problem brigading either.
or maybe dumbfucks like you just think you’re a lot more egalitarian than you actually are.
The 2:1 ratio of course just degrades the platform
Men and women have different interest. It’s mostly a fantasy to expect 50/50 participation.
I’m constantly baffled by the amont of misogyny some Lemmy users through around if the topic is even slightly about women.
I don’t have any skin in this fight but sexism is wrong from either side of the isle. I feel bad for kids who grow up with parents like this. I get that its hard for women but its also not easy for young men to navigate this madness.
but what about men???
Dude FUCK OFF!!! It’s okay to bring up men’s issues or whatever if you think they should be discussed more often, but if you’re gonna do that, you should make your own post instead of bitching about it in the replies to a post about the insane shit we have to go through. It’s genuinely fucking crazy, nine times out of ten whenever “muh wHat aBoUT mEn” comes up, it’s in the response to conversations about misogyny, and I’m lowballing here. You’re just derailing the conversation and it’s fucking rude.
If you are going to lead with being rude I won’t bother wasting energy on you more than this response.
I’ve been a social media moderator and it’s an awful, thankless, volunteer job. And I think objectively we kept our community very tightly focused on our narrow topic and civil. But we’d have never gotten to that point without a ton of help from the community itself. We outlined our vision and had clear, reasonable guidelines, so it was very easy to determine if something was against the rules to report.
But this was a special interest subreddit, and it was a constant battle. I made sure that every ruling and interaction I made had thoughtful intent. I had to step down because it was making me legitimately depressed.
I could never fault a moderator for being overwhelmed, especially for a community as chaotic as instagram. For these large, general purpose communities, it’s impossible to police directly. It truly takes the whole community to enforce and report bad behavior.
So no, you shouldn’t blame the victims, but you have to understand it’s a massive systemic problem with no easy solution. The best advice you can give really is “Take care of yourself, and avoid problematic communities.”
Way I see it there are two productive paths to take here:
- Start trying to convince women that privacy does in fact matter. Use examples like the menstruation tracking apps potentially being used to identify abortions to illustrate this point.
- Try to relate to the men here on Lemmy and find a way to cooperate. You’ve got a largely fresh population of men here who don’t actually hate women, but have spent years in education being told they are dangerous rapists waiting to happen, or were treated as defective women by their teachers. They need good male role models and women who will treat them with respect, so that they can climb out of the pit without leaving the better parts of themselves behind.
An utterly unproductive use of your time would be trying to fight misogyny on oligarch-owned platforms. You will never win because they find this content useful, as it divides workers and wastes their time and social energy. Just get out, and help others do it too.
How do you propose stopping it?
The people who propose “age gating” social media are essentially advocating the end of Internet anonymity and privacy for us all. After all, you can’t effectively determine one users age or identity without collecting them all.
Is removing digital privacy really something we want to be flirting with? Especially in the era of Palantir, Flock, and the Trump Administration?
Democracy, freedom of speech, and privacy are all related.
Without privacy, one can’t have freedom of speech because bad actors and authoritarians in power can and will silence critics. Without freedom of speech, one can’t live in a democracy, because having the ability to organize and speak out against those in power without fear of persecution is the basis of democracy.
Maybe I’m just more cynical than most, but I don’t see the elimination of all privacy on the Internet as a good solution for something that can otherwise be managed by basic parenting and personal agency.
We are fools if we willingly give the corporate oligarchs that control mainstream social media (and, by extension, Trump) our full real identities in a futile attempt to “think about the children”.
educating men and boys, and actually moderating misogyny (and other bigotries) would be a good start, how many reports of horrific posts end up with “after careful examination by our moderation team, we have found that this post does not violate our community guidelines…”
Requiring large social media platforms to regulate and moderate hateful speech would be a start. Big tech has been largely dropping the ball in this regard.
Cases-in-point, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), X Corp (the App Formerly Known As Twitter) and Alphabet (YouTube.)
X’s Grok AI has been used to generate millions of sexualised images. Sometimes women get objectified and undressed without their knowledge nor consent by people promoting Grok. Sometimes the victims are minors. The fact that X hasn’t been shut down speaks volumes about how much billionaires have been able to get away with crap that would land anybody else behind bars for a long time.
YouTube… Have you also noticed more hateful content being posted to the platform. This isn’t an example that I think I can link to here, but there is a far-right ragtime musician called Foundring who was previously banned from the platform years ago for hate speech. Either due to ban evasion or his ban being lifted, he came back two years ago and recently started posting piano covers of old vintage ragtime and folk music from the late 18th Century. One of his videos, which contained the word “N*****” in the title (yes, hard-R) got catapulted by the YouTube algorithm and is currently sitting at 1.2 million views. It’s 37 days old and still up.
Is removing digital privacy really something we want to be flirting with?
Digital privacy and anonymous posting are two different things.
I would argue that they’re closely related.
Imagine a circumstance in which you have to use your real ID to sign up for a social media site which happens to be owned by a billionaire oligarch with close ties to an out-of-control fascist authoritarian president with no reservations about pulling whatever string he can to maintain his grip on power, and I think you’ll understand why.
You may know my user name, but really not too much else about me, because of the partial anonymity of having a username which is loosely coupled to my real life identity.
If we lived in a world where we could trust our government or the corporations that control mainstream social media, then maybe it wouldn’t be an issue. We don’t.
Imagine a circumstance in which you have to use your real ID to sign up for a social media site
You’re setting up a false premise. It doesn’t have to be done that way.
I don’t think I am. How else do you verify a person’s age?
So far the options seem to be:
- AI video facial recognition (privacy nightmare)
- Government ID verification (privacy nightmare)
I suppose you could use a credit card transaction, but so far nobody seems to be going that route.
Regardless, ALL of this shit is a poor substitute for decent parenting.
Yeah. I have a feeling that stopping it is, somehow, not desirable to a portion of the commentors.
you don’t stop misogyny by just ignoring it you twats, and hot take, mainstream social media
Opinions aren’t stopped. They also don’t need to be. Trying to make individualism a put-down is pathetic.
We all have it in our power to ignore or use our voices to promote our messages with as much force as the messages we oppose. That provocative ragebait engages more effectively than constructive dialog reflects a human failing & a need to work on ourselves.
Social media doesn’t need to be good, and we don’t need to keep using it. The beauty of social media is we can be totally irredeemable “twats”, victim-blame up the wazoo, and put out the most infuriating shit conceived until we realize it’s all expression lacking substance & none it matters. It’s only when people start caring too much that we should be concerned for humanity. They need to get a life or something, stop putting so much of themselves on words, images, & sounds on a screen.
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Top three read article btw. Shilled by the same people who will soon have a track of you everywhere you do or go. You won’t even have a permission to fart without paying the fine.
15- y old girl. Most likely written by a 40 y old who can’t understand how parenting works. If you are a failure it doesn’t mean the rest of population now needs to be enforced in id links and checks and give away their right to privacy. Fucking dumbasses
Subheading:
Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see
No, they don’t.
Delete TikTok and Instagram for starters.
This is simple advice for an adult who isn’t mired in the drama of high school. For most teens, these apps are how they socialise, how they share information and learn what is cool or uncool. Deleting the apps means you have cut yourself off from the social system and have made yourself a social pariah.
An equivalent for the millennials and gen Xers would be not having Facebook as a teen. It meant not being invited to parties because Facebook was the only platform people used to plan events. No one was going to seek you out individually because it was assumed you were on Facebook and would see the updates.
I agree that social media is harming all of us, but telling teens to just not use it ignores what it was like to be a teenager.
I agree with this sentiment, but fuck do I feel old rn. Myspace was my generation’s Facebook. And it was so much cooler! Custom backgrounds/layouts, and music. Facebook just seems so sterilized in comparison, and it makes me sad.
And even MySpace had ‘Top Friends’ that dictated social hierarchy. For as long as there has been social media, teens have been socially required to interact with it.
I dont agree with it, and would prefer to see all social media burning to the ground, but I understand the situation that teenagers are in.
The situation is that whatever the cool kids are doing is cool. It might be looking at TikTok, it might be not looking at TikTok. It’s going to change depending on where you go and what the cool kids do at that school.
Who knows what’s cool these days. Best advice is to just do what you enjoy and hope for the best. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a teenager all over again. They’re ruthless for no reason. And I wasn’t any better. I’m not proud of it. But that’s why I can tell you, it matters little what you do, it’s all about who does it.
I got little cousins that are much younger than I. And from what I gathered. It’s not much different now.
Facebook didn’t exist when Gen X was in highschool, likely all of them had been through college.
Not sure why you were downvoted, but you’re correct - I’m a late Gen Xer, and Facebook launched several years after I finished grad school - and didn’t become mainstream for another few years.
MySpace was started only one year earlier than Facebook. So, basically, the social media online that I knew before then were forums (like car forums that still exist).
As someone who was never fond of the concept of social media, and who never had a MySpace or Facebook account as a result when I was in my late teens/early twenties - this hits home for me.
I did it knowingly, but I sure missed out on a lot of stuff that I usually only found out months after.
For a while my friends nicknamed me “the untagable” 🤣, but I guess not having my entire dumb early adulthood saved for eternity is a win in the end.
As a Xennial, I still don’t get it because, I guess, I embraced being the weirdo at school and hung out with the weirdos. I was bullied for wearing secondhand uniforms, not wearing doc martens, not having the backpack that everyone has, never having a bf, not talking l33t etc, etc…
I say, take that fall. Embrace destruction and delete the apps. Be the weird analogue kid.
But then again, maybe Australian kids weren’t massive arseholes.
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I was a teen with social media. Not using it is totally valid advice. But simply saying “don’t use it” is like telling a smoker “don’t smoke”
And yet some politicians say the solution is to ban 15 year olds from social media, rather than police the platforms, algorithms and users. Please contact your representative and ask them to police the platforms, not bring in creepy ID checks.
Never understood how the solution to all platforms going to shit is making users upload their ID. This does neither fix the problem nor the symptom. I mean, I understand why it’s done but not how people come to think this is a good idea.
ID laws are about control. If you can’t post anonymously the govt can track people who don’t agree with them. Or LGBTQ+ people, or whoever the govt doesn’t like.
I mean, I understand why it’s done but not how people come to think this is a good idea.
They are the same people who think “If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. Only bad people need/want anonymity.” They are also either childless or don’t care about their child’s online access and activity.
people who think “If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide."
I think these people should live in a world without bathroom doors.
A good nearly half of people use authoritarian thinking rather than have to put in effort to think for themselves even slightly.
Sheeple
To a certain degree I agree with the assessment - children (under-16 would be my definition here) shouldn’t have full access to what we consider social media today.
Things were different 10, 20 years ago when it wasn’t so centralised. You’d have independent forums, all with reliable moderation, and so on, plus with little to no ads, and the ad networks themselves were more inclined to not have inappropriate things shown, especially to children - basically all the “make your dick grow 7 foot long” and “8 cock hungry MILFs waiting for you in your area” type of ads were all relegated to porn sites to begin with.
Today? We have centralised social media with little to no moderation beyond basic keyword filtering, ad networks not giving a fuck about the content they push, and every single malicious actor having access to these platforms to further their agendas… Not to mention unfettered access to children by any and all accounts.
What IMO would be the best solution is to force social media sites to have a cordoned off “children” section where kids can socialise with their peers without predatory adults having any form of access to them. But that’s easier said than done, unfortunately.
Screenshot of this Mastodon toot, because I can’t get newlines to work in quoted-text.
How do you police someone you can’t identify?
By closing the accounts? Facebook doesn’t need to know who you are in real life to ban you.
Why would Facebook want to have less users?
It wouldn’t. That’s why have to ask politicians to make laws that forces Facebook to do it anyway.
Facebook has a certain level of moderation, as is required by a lot of countries.
But they’re never going to, for example, screen every comment before it gets posted. And politicians basically banning Facebook don’t get many votes
Also, I don’t personally use it but isn’t Facebook one where you’ll only get comments from people you’ve first connected with?
Facebook has a certain level of moderation, as is required by a lot of countries.
Where that level of moderation is negligible and ineffective. It’s a sham.
And politicians basically banning Facebook don’t get many votes
How do we know? Who’s tried it? They’re all scared that facebook will start working against them, as it allegedly has in some referendums and elections.
Also, I don’t personally use it but isn’t Facebook one where you’ll only get comments from people you’ve first connected with?
🤣🤣🤣 No. There’s loads of “promoted” posts in your feed for years now.
I very highly doubt the majority of dudes posting shit like that even use a vpn. Therefore they can be ifentified by IP.
Hell the worst shit you see on Facebook is by people posting under their actual name.
They think it’s now acceptable.
As the others have stated, you don’t need to know them to ban them, but i would also add that a majority post from their real accounts, with their face as a profile picture, with little to no shame.
Outside of this, there needs to be a targeted effort to label and/or ban bots, but those bot accounts drive up user engagement numbers, which drive ad revenue, which makes line go up, so it’s never going to happen. But doing so would limit how far these messages get and reduce foreign (or domestic) influence.
How much do you think it’d cost to ‘police the platforms’?
lemmy is only took off because reddit policed it and kicked most of the users here off.
the problem with policing speech and bullying is it’s totally subjective. i used to be told I was a bully for offering people writing suggestions.
lemmy is only took off because reddit policed it and kicked most of the users here off.
Other waves arrived here because reddit kicked all the independent apps off, and started feeding all community discussions to AI.
Less than it’s costing us in lives and damage not to police them!
police the platforms
No thanks. The beauty of social media is the unrestrained assholery. People just need to learn to cope & quit being fragile: skill issue. Education & civic campaigns to promote social good are better approaches respecting our inherent liberties to piss people off.
Let me guess the solution before reading the article - some form of weakening to digital privacy.
Yep: “A social media ban for under-16s might prevent young boys seeing endless content that treats women with contempt and hate. Boys at this age are very susceptible to the cool and funny framing of what is, in reality, relentless misogyny. A ban might not fix the problem, but it would help. If society can’t stop it, it can show it disapproves.”
Essentially, this article is an argument to introduce online ID, and I disagree with that on a fundamental level.
The soil misogyny has dug it’s roots into is the iniquity we created while seeking equity. It was done for the best of reasons, but now we see the price. That’s not a problem we can solve easily, and certainly not via creating state spying infrastructure.
The answer is to disengage yourself, and to teach your children AND OTHERS to disengage from social media.
Social media is harmful, advertising is harmful, drugs are harmful, gambling is harmful. This is a question of societal level harm and is is a problem for individual counties, nations, and states to address by the creation and enforcement of law, and for individuals to address by collectively shaming participants.
The problem is not the users who find the content harmful. The problem is with the policies of those platforms and their algorithms.
Still, yes, I also believe mainstream social media now does more harm then good.
This.
How dare you ask of parents to parent their kids?!
Let’s speed up online censorship and surveillance capitalism instead!I’m convinced it should be illegal to operate social media platforms for profit. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but it would make a dent.
Nope. Read.
“There’s a man screaming in my window and following me around when I leave my house telling me to buy his shit and that I’m his object to play with while I’m just trying to live my life. This harassment is affecting my mental health”
“Nope. Read.”
Idiotic.
collectively shaming participants
That should suffice. Laws/censorship are unnecessary. Stupid opinions on the internet or in society aren’t new.
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I was gonna say unpopular opinion, but maybe not…
disengage from social media. It is not reality. not only that, but it perpetuates itself, and the oligarchy that created it. Go out and meet people in the real world. This is comming from an autistic person with minimal patients for other people. Seriously, ditch social media; it’s poison, and when it dies (which it will if people like you leave) these toxic peope you encounter will have to face the real world.
Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects.
This isn’t new. I’m a man in my mid 40s and the disparity between how promiscuous men are viewed as compared to promiscuous women has existed for as long as I’ve been sexually aware, and well before.
Obviously that doesn’t make it okay. I also have no idea what the solution might be. There have been a few cultural efforts to normalize the idea of women enjoying and seeking out sex but none of them seem to really reach the people that need to hear it.
I do find it oddly paradoxical that men who make it very clear that they are actively seeking sexual partners would disparage women for being sexually active.
I do find it oddly paradoxical that men who make it very clear that they are actively seeking sexual partners would disparage women for being sexually active.
They don’t want experienced, knowledgable, self-confident partners. They want naive young women they can gaslight and abuse.
They don’t want experienced, knowledgable, self-confident partners. They want naive young women
You’ve obviously never lived with the aftermath of dating worn out, bitter and combative women who have been traumatized by their numerous “experiences.” Men like inexperienced women precisely because they want to mold her and give her her first experiences. Also, “experienced” women are more likely to be single moms.
Boy, this thread is just loaded with reprehensible takes and dudes telling on themselves.
🤮🤮🤮
Let’s take a moment. I want you to understand that the opinion you offered is precisely what the OP article references. More than that, the opinion you offered is factually wrong.
I would like you to hear from me - an anonymous poster - the most likely outcome (of that opinion you offered) is a lonely, sad, and bitter existence for you.
Your preferences for certain kinds of women are yours, and yours alone. I wish you luck in finding a woman that fits your preference. However if you truly believe in that opinion, i strongly recommend seeking professional help.
Your comment actually made me feel sick. Please go re-evaluate where this toxicity in your life has come from.
Hint: it’s not women
Your intolerant ad-hominem post offers no constructive rebuttal of a good-faith argument and should be deleted by the mods.
Imagine posting this and thinking it sounded okay.
Ew
Experienced men are more likely to be dead beat dads. See how this works?
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It’s not only misogyny.
Social media absolutely removes the inhibitions of just about all kinds of assholes, builds pat-each-other-on-the-back support groups for them by putting them together with like minded assholes and then algorithmically shovels all that shit on everybody else because anything that elicits strong emotions means more clicks and anger from being offended is one such emotion.
By the way, this also applies to unhealthy gender expectations on males (including misandry), though this being The Guardian I expect this is about the UK, which IMHO (having lived there and also elsewhere in Europe) is a country with serious problems when it comes to gender expectations around women and insidious “benevolent” sexism (“benevolent” not because it’s good but because it follows the whole “women are fragile creatures” and subsequent subtle disemplowering of women “to protect them” or because “they’re emotional creatures”) which far too often taints the articles in The Guardian because they’re very much from the British upper-middle class Acceptable Feminism, which tends to underestimate the strength of women and favor “protection” “solutions” over empowerment and agency.
So whilst I absolutely believe in all of this and in misogyny online being very bad, especially in certain countries, the choice of focusing on misogyny rather than as a whole in the problem of social media’s Profit Driven amplification of societal dysfunctions in general, is very much a typical privileged British Upper Middle Class “Third Wave Feminist” perspective and choice.
Social media absolutely removes the inhibitions of just about all kinds of assholes, builds pat-each-other-on-the-back support groups for them by putting them together with like minded assholes and then algorithmically shovels all that shit on everybody else because anything that elicits strong emotions means more clicks and anger from being offended is one such emotion.
Have you ever considered not spending time on social media? Especially the types where randos can send you stuff? Ive tried to limit my kids on this as much as possible. They obviously would prefer I don’t but I feel like it’s the right thing to do.
I don’t think telling women and girls to stay off social media is going to fix the issue. She also talks about this kind of language and views being parroted in real life. You can tell your kids to stay off social media but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be immune from this if other people don’t do the same. The bigger problem is boys are being radicalised online, and no one is coming down on social media platforms that profit off of this happening.
“If you can’t change the world, then change yourself”. I agree the boys/men who harrass women online are the problem. If you have a fix I’m happy to try helping. But in the absence of one there is only one other alternative
But the alternative mentioned doesn’t exactly work. Even if your intention is to save your own children they will still be exposed, whether you k Like it or not.
There are a lot of different things people can do, locally or otherwise:
- Demand accountability from platforms by way of pressure on your representatives. And no I don’t mean age verification, I mean using some of their profits to better moderate content online.
- Support politicians who push for responsible social media.
- Get involved in your school’s PTA or equivalent, and raise the issue, form a group with parents and teachers to learn about the issue and work on ways to tackle it.
- Reach out to organisations that are fighting against this problem and ask how you can support/get more involved.
- If appropriate, empower your kids, especially boys, to speak up and stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Teach your kids what behaviours are not ok and if they see those behaviours to act (whether that means speaking up or reaching out to adults to intervene).
- Stop giving money to irresponsible organisations who perpetuate the problem and instead start supporting companies that use ethical practices (though I acknowledge that’s usually not simple nor cheap).
- If you’re a man, support and/or get involved men’s groups that are working to address the problem, especially through outreach programmes to young and vulnerable boys and men. If there isn’t one, look to start one in your community.
Those are just some I could think of off the top of my head. Change doesn’t happen overnight, it takes action from multiple people. But throwing our arms up and putting the responsibility on the victims alone (which doesn’t even work) is not it.
I specifically limit my kid’s socials to get friend groups, etc. I can’t prevent everything, but I don’t need that constant drone beating them down daily.
Same where possible. But then they make new accounts, etc…
I can only redirect misbehavior at this point. We have had lots of discussion in the past on how this affects them mentally and emotionally.
feeling disheartened and unhappy about being a girl. When nearly every comments section on a video of a girl my age is filled with disgusting and objectifying comments about her body from boys, it causes me to feel deeply uncomfortable in my own body, and compare myself to her
this hits home for me. I have a near 14 year old daughter and this is the struggle I see with her constantly.
It’s not that she’s particularly non-binary/trans/androgynous, it’s that she’s ashamed/embarrassed to be a girl or be perceived as one. She still likes many traditional feminine things, (ie hair/nails/makeup, romance novels, cutesy characters, etc), and she has no real desire for any kind of masculine interests…
It’s as though being a woman is inferior. It’s “girly”. And that’s what is being internalized. And part of that, I think, is also the culture’s post-ironic loathing for authenticity. Ala, being passionate or earnestly enjoying something is seen as being “cringe”. So, being a girl, who likes girly things, is cringe.
I think both of these things ratchet the internalized misogyny. With the former being what turns the ratchet.
i suppose it shouldn’t be surprising but these comments sure are proving the articles point. i guess blaming the people being oppressed is a lot easier than blaming or even actually acknowledging the systemic oppression when you’re a brickheaded fascist, especially when you’re unaffected by/benefiting from it
I just don’t believe all of this is real anymore. It’s a fucking psyop! Men and women have different kinds of comments under posts. If a woman looks at the comments of Reel where a woman promotes the most depraved, objectifying a degrading things to do to guys with the sole purpose of making them suffer, they will only see comments of other women (rightfully) blasting OP in the comments. But when a guy opens the same comment section he will 99% see only comments of women encouraging other women to be the most evil things humanly possible.
It is not a conspiracy, it’s a really effective way to farm engagement for basically free. We are letting them take control over society with the most obvious divide-et-impera tactics ever applied in human history
