Thread by @gravislizard

this is all so terrifying because it's unprecedented. we have no track record, no proof that the human race can survive this.

https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1134929067940241409

sort of like the principle in dogma - that existence depends on God being infallible - the sustainability of our society depends on most people being generally right about things, and being able to trust each other. this has mostly been the case.

the possible outcomes of this living nightmare are:
1) half the nation begins to believe absolutely ludicrous delusions and act on them
2) half the nation realizes they've been lied to by reputable sources and become conspiracy theorists who trust nobody

i swear to god people didn't used to go to work and be almost guaranteed to work with someone who believes in an absolutely outlandish conspiracy theory. now it seems like at least three quarters of my friends work with people who believe in hot, shrieking nonsense

i swear to god it's getting worse, and it's because of the internet. even the TV news keeps their bullshit down to a simmer, there's no fucking "rice is full of plastic" or "CP ring in a pizza shop" and if there is now it's only because the internet legitimized it first

i'm long past 'beginning' to think the internet does more harm than good

all of the promises that it would spread information, and it turns out that costs money and time that nobody is willing or able to put in. who is willing to put in the money and time? people with a fucking agenda

so all the promised education is almost totally nonexistent, but all that high speed information transfer that was supposed to be used for it has been picked up by the worst people alive and they will never, ever stop now that they've started

who should police this? youtube? facebook? how? algorithms? the ones we say are bullshit (because they are)? humans? how many people should we have watching The Entire Fucking Planet? 50,000? 500,000? who watches the watchers?

nobody has any idea how Facebook could possibly filter literally billions of posts. you know what idea is completely valid and very practical? no facebook at all.

and it doesn't matter that i don't use it, or that you don't. we have bullshit detectors. we were never the target for this shit. you can run as big a campaign as you want but the most vulnerable will still happily log on and think they're at the peak of living

we have a fucking duty to destroy social media. not log off, not find better things to do with our lives. we have to figure out how to destroy facebook, twitter, youtube, all of it. it can't be fixed because the entire idea is stupid and wrong.

the reason they've been coopted for this shit is because that's what they're designed for. if you didn't know what they were you'd take one look and say "this is for spreading misinformation." they're optimized for it by their nature.

we've had conspiracy theorists forever, but never like this. never in such unbelievable quantity. there are fucking millions of them. they are attacking from all angles. there are new ones every single day. you will never stamp them all out.

you could replace everyone at youtube with "good people" and you know in your heart of hearts they'd burn out from actually filtering the dreck within days if not hours. it is impossible.

i don't understand the ubiquitous assumption that it's possible. it's unprecedented, why would it be possible? tens of thousands of videos a day, 10+ minutes long - there's no time to watch them all and you'd lose your mind doing an eight hour shift of this.

literally what proof is there, what rational cause is there to think that it's possible for any of these websites to do what we demand of them? i assert that nobody can prove that it can be done, and with that being true the only solution is to eliminate the sites completely.

if you can't stem the tide of exploitative trash that *did not previously exist* in this quantity, with this level of verisimilitude to legitimate information and with this level of sinister intent behind it, the only solution is to eliminate the medium

this is a type of horror humans can perpetrate on each other that did not exist prior to the internet, in the same way that you couldn't SWAT someone in 1930 because there were no SWAT teams. we created this. it is recent, and unique.

facebook is a tool with a few legitimate uses and thousands of horrifying, reprehensible ones. youtube likewise. these are very poor at doing things that are good and useful and healthy, and absolutely fucking phenomenal at hurting society

we have no precedent for how to remove something like this from our society but i swear to fucking god we will perish as a species unless we figure out how to get the supreme court to say "this service is a public health issue and must be shuttered immediately and irrevocably"

facebook scares the hell out of me. it is the most terrifying thing. it is the feeling of watching a relative succumb to alzheimers, except the disease is physically manifest and the relative is deliberately taking it in and ignoring your pleas to stop