The angst over AI bemuses me, when we’ve had technologies for a while that are vastly more dangerous to…

The angst over AI bemuses me, when we’ve had technologies for a while that are vastly more dangerous to societies, which attract little criticism or action. Social media platforms. They target our deepest addictive desires. Here’s why they’re so lethal. /1

Social media takes the ambiguity that usually leads to social change, where the disconnect between beliefs and reality create pressure for change, and it uses this ambiguity to feed ‘identity politics’. Social status games. /2

So that rather than an obviously broken social situation leading to pressure to fix things, it leads to the creation of social groups or teams who feed off the ambiguity itself. To battle other teams circling the same ambiguity. This is social media’s core business model. /3

It means that not only do obvious problems go unfixed, but they get orders of magnitude worse because the existence of the problem feeds the imitative rivalry of a proliferation of identity/status-driven social groups. Social media weaponises social problems. /4

Because that weaponisation leads to monetisation. Fucking over societies is how social media makes money. Just look at how at war the kidult CEOs of these platforms are with existing governments. The vanity of their megalomania. /5

Sane societies would shut them down today. Or at the very least impose stringent regulation, as they always have done for traditional media. The population will resist that regulation, because the platforms target their deepest desires, for imitative rivalry. Status. /6

We’re addicted to our own destruction. By comparison AI has the potential to fundamentally short-circuit the usual detouring of human knowledge through these same status games. It’s a shame it’s often owned by the same kidult CEOs. /end