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A
Asim

I think one think we could do to fix social media is having two seperate versions of certain apps. Back in the day when the first iphone came out you could pay 99p for an app or you could download the free lite version and have very limited features

I think the premium version of an app should be free and the charge is you need to use your real first name (no surname) and a real photo of yourself verified against some ID. I think people forget that behind random no profile usernames or even faces on a screen that there are real people with real feelings and emotions and there is no room for hate

The lite version is for people who refuse to sign up with their real info and they are limited to 1 hour of scrolling a day and lets say 5 tweets. Any abuse will result in IP bans that last 24 hours. Hopefully it will just keep the trolls on the lite version and the people who really want to engage and have a positive experience on the premium version.

I'd have more pop ups that encourage you to block people and maybe hourly pop ups that encourage you to check in with your wellbeing or maybe get you to do a 2 minute breathing exercise and you can skip adds for 30 minutes on all videos

Everyone hates waiting for things, so make the trolls wait longer for their abuse and encourage people to do good things for their mental health to help skip ads!

Limal's avatar
Limal

This might address some issues mentioned above:

Implementing a peer review and evaluation system on social media platforms can help mitigate the spread of misinformation and ensure the credibility of shared content. Similar to the scientific community, where research is reviewed by experts before publication, social media content could be subjected to a review process by knowledgeable users.

How It Works:

1) When a user wants to post content, especially claims or information that could impact public opinion, it would be submitted for review.

2) A diverse group of users with expertise or interest in the relevant topic would evaluate the content for accuracy, context, and reliability. This group could be selected based on their past contributions and credibility.

3) Reviewers would provide feedback and rate the content on a scale of credibility. Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement would be encouraged.

4)Based on the peer review, the content would either be approved for posting, revised according to feedback, or flagged for further scrutiny if found misleading.

Benefits - enhanced credibility, critical thinking encorage, reduces Misinformation, promotes Constructive Dialogue.

We seen quite similar in wikipedia too. While you can freely post pics of your dinner, any mission critical information will be verified by the experts. And this is quite close to that we have in JA!

Toretto 70's avatar
Toretto 70

This is very challenging, especially since our younger generation seems less polite to older people, I have a 3 suggestion to make it better

  1. Establishing Community Standards : create transparent rules thet define what constitutes hate speech, misinformation, and harassment.

  2. investing AI and Human Moderator : use advanced algorithms to detect harmful content while employing human moderators to review complex case, ensuring nuanced understanding.

  3. Encouranging User Reporting : simplify the process for user to report inappropriate content and ensure timely responsesfrom moderator teams.

JB
Josh B

Social media is so vast I can see how it's such a difficult medium to manage but it it can be a highly toxic and damaging means to bully or just generally inflict cruelty on others.

  1. I don't believe those under high school age should be able to access these platforms and some sort of parental agreement should be part of the registration for anyone under 16, to accept some level of responsibility for their children's actions/words until they themselves are an adult.

  2. I agree with a lot of the posts on this bounty that AI should play a part. Algorithms should be set up to flag posts with buzz words/phrases to help highlight posts for human review. This would mean that while there would still be a human burden on proper detailed checks of posts but the AI element would flag a proportion of content that could be deemed inappropriate/offensive

  3. I think school education certainly comes into play too. You'll never be able to stop bullying entirely, but school education in the impact these things have on people and the outcomes from such traumatic cases. These shock factors can only help in these instances

Sturmer's avatar
Sturmer

Remove the Share Button

One of the most destructive features of social media is the share button. It allows manipulative posts to spread rapidly, achieving specific emotional reactions without proper context. People often share content that aligns with their views without fact-checking, which leads to the widespread dissemination of misinformation. By removing the share button, the spread of false information would be significantly limited, exposing only a small number of people to potentially misleading content.

Social media has become a battleground for politics. In the 1940s, aircrafts dropped propaganda leaflets; now, the same tactics are used in the form of tweets and posts. Removing the share button would mean that misinformation and propaganda wouldn't reach millions instantaneously. Instead, any false information would be more likely to be spotted and discredited before gaining traction, preserving the trust and integrity of the platform.

FirestormGamingTeam's avatar
FirestormGamingTeam

Social media - What is it.

It is supposed to be, "social" but the human nature of those who do not know each other, and have no emotional connection to each other, becomes a hate fest, it becomes a toxic environment, can you actually fix it?

If you put four people in a room with a black cube, identical on every side, put four people in a room with this cube and within 2 minutes you will have four different opinions, and within 4 minutes you will have an argument.

This is the same as on social media, a post is made, and within minutes everyone is arguing.

But, to fix it? It cannot be done. Human nature itself forbids the ability to fix a social media platform but then moves on to freedom of speech as well.

The only way to fix social media on each platform is to, IMO, have around 100 moderators working non stop on reported content.

Shovel's avatar
Shovel

My idea of fixing social media is having apps force pause or shutdown if you’ve been on it too long.

Most smartphones now have the capability of showing us what app we spend the most screen time on. I think if it shows like more that … let’s say.. 3 consecutive hours on TikTok for example. The app should initiate a cooling down sequence where for at least 2/3 hours you can’t access the app.

Imagine spending 3 hours straight on TikTok though? Like you probably haven’t got anything done in the day.

I think the idea of freezing apps could be beneficial, it could potentially stop keyboard warriors arguing for the sake of being a troll, it can stop this rise of superficial content we’re consuming and I think for young people, it can be super cleansing of the mind.

Lanah Tyra's avatar
Lanah Tyra
Shovel

What about social media managers who's job IS to check these platforms 8hrs or more a day?

Shovel's avatar
Shovel
Lanah Tyra

I think there should be a “back end” kind of feature where you’re able to access the apps if it’s your job. Maybe a verification thing could help with this too! So your account across all devices can be marketed as creator/manager ect. My answer is purely from a consumer perspective :)

Lanah Tyra's avatar
Lanah Tyra
Shovel

Yeah it did sound like a good idea, would definitely help with general mindless scrolling, just there has to be a way for those who are using them for work, some form of verification would solve that.

avrona's avatar
avrona

Get rid of it, all of it.

On a serious note, I wouldn't even know where to begin given the mess they have become in recent years. Stuff that was supposed to help fix it like Community Notes doesn't work half the time, as it's just a popularity contest and it doesn't matter if the note is true or not. AI content has just swarmed the platform and content farms are taking over, and in the mean time sites such as Facebook which are relatively tame now on the badness of social media are falling in popularity.

An initial idea I had was complete self-moderation rights, where the user can fully moderate the comments left under their post, which, whilst it seems useful in some scenarios, mostly forums, on most social media I think it would do more harm than good in terms of creating echo-chambers that will have real life consequences in terms of radicalisation.

But here's a few more somewhat realistic and helpful things that could happen:

  • Crackdowns on unlabelled AI content. I know it's a huge task and will probably involve AI reviews over human ones, ironically.

  • Community Notes-like feature with a faster time to appear before the post is seen by too many people, and more hands-on note checking and moderation.

  • Better algorithms rewarding good long-term content over content farm content (maybe then after 10 years on the internet I'd have more than a handful of followers on every site I'm on...)

  • Strong anti-bot protections.

Lanah Tyra's avatar
Lanah Tyra

While there are things which could be done better, I think the issue is not social media itself, but our education system. Computers became a crucial part of our lives, yet many people are completely technically illiterate and unable to use computers on a basic level. Often the first time they see a computer is at work, because growing up they didn't have one, and now they have smartphones.

The generation which had computer science classes is somewhat familiar with how to use a computer, what are the risks, they still saw the world before the Internet. They've seen the original news portals you could trusts, forums and communities filled with real people and not with chatbots.

The generation who grew up with smartphones, no one taught them how to use these devices, what risks they have. They are barely taught in school how to behave in person (since you can't really punish kids anymore or say no to them), let alone being taught how to behave online and how to distinguish false information from reality.

And then there is the older generation, who never really had to use computers with internet for work, they happily carried on with their lives without it even in retirement, but now are forced to have a smartphone to deal with their banks, talk to their children and grandchildren who don't want to call them anymore just use one of the chat applications, which comes with them being introduced to Facebook at least, where they get spammed by all the fake news and adverts. And they absolutely have no concept of these things potentially not being real.

Long story short, our education system needs a drastic change, and has to prepare people for living in a digital world safely, and teach skills which are actually useful when you get to the age of "oh I need an adult... wait... I am the adult.... what do I do now... help?"

R
Remi

I think it would be pretty hard to fix social media at this point. You still have a lot of people that are just posting negative things. Trolls, scammers.

Maybe build a time machine so we can go back and show ourselves the damage it will cause. What we’ve become complainant about. Go back and show us before things started going a little crazy. Though I don’t think it stems from social media. It stems from people being okay with being all things towards each other.

Sooo, maybe a time machine will help? Probably not.

Though going back an explaining to our parents and our younger selves at the time and really making people see what happens and will happen on the path we are on.

Then a lot more things would have to get fixed out side of the social media quest. So what started off as a movie is now being branched into a tv series because there is a lot of things that sadly need to be fixed.

Makster's avatar
Makster
Remi

I think people fixate on the negative aspects of social media and there can be an argument towards knowing how to curate or remove these hateful messages from your feed to make it more pleasant to enjoy

mar1gold 's avatar
mar1gold

I think supranational organisations like the EU need to start introducing laws limiting a social medias ability to suck users into an infinite scroll for so long. It's getting really scary how addicted people are, especially very young people who have never known life without social media. This could be functions such as a 'cool down' mechanism after a certain amount of scrolling, 'want a break?' pop-ups or even just a ban on apps having infinite scrolls. I remember when instagram would just show you the posts of people you were following and it was super easy to get to the end!

Obviously social media companies would never do this themselves as they have no incentives to do so so someone else has to do it i guess haha

Makster's avatar
Makster
mar1gold

I'm not a fan of sweeping legislation in the minds of protection and would rather have better education on using social media.

I think better resources and education for young people, and parents on how to limit social media time would be ideal.

Makster's avatar
Makster

Controversially I don't think Social Media is broken therefore doesn't have to be 'fixed'.

I think companies have put in place tools that creators and users can use to combat trolls, haters, and unsolicited advances through blocking, muting, reporting etc. but users either may not be aware of these or want to follow through with using them.

Importantly there is no place for hate in any context.

And that users should be able to share their voice and opinion just like in real life.
If there needs to be a change - there needs to be change in culture of how we use social media and the internet and gradually there has been a shift. In the past, real names and location used to be kept secret and not to be shared but gradually overtime this has fallen on the way-side and you should only share what you are open to having over the internet. This didn't happen because of gate-keeping, a rule, or legislation but due to a culture shift that happens overtime and naturally

CelestialFlea's avatar
CelestialFlea

Gatekeeping social media sites with ID checks etc like others have suggested will KILL them, we have to be responsible and keep accessibility in mind. Not every country has mandatory ID and not everyone has a form of ID that is accepted by ID processors. This is something I struggle with as someone who doesn't drive or travel enough to need a passport, KYC is a HUGE struggle for me and is something I avoid wherever possible and I'm sure there's countless people like me who would be completely cut off from social media and other services if it was standardised there.

Whilst AI can be a useful tool, it's not infallible and we've seen how AI moderation negatively affects other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to an extent with many false positives and unjust bans or clearly failing to recognise offensive behaviour when reported. AI can also be influenced and weighted in one direction by whatever it learns from.

The main way to combat this and make platforms better by tenfold is to hire experienced human moderators and properly vet then to ensure impartiality, properly investigate their social media history to make sure they're not driven by DEI agendas or too heavily the other side. Because that's when most of the problems occur. When you get DEI hires moderating what is and isn't acceptable based on their beliefs and agendas. The same if someone is heavily on the opposite side.

We need to find a balance where both sides can be heard without silencing either side just because facts make someone uncomfortable, discussion based on fact and common sense should always be allowed and encouraged. TLDR bringing back true impartiality to ensure freedom of speech and adult behaviour prevails whilst encouraging healthy arguments and discussions.

I don't see any other way we can make social media better without such a crucial component.

Samuel's avatar
Samuel

I definitely think that social media needs AI recognition.

Whether it's through account posting, which can be rapidly built up to then disseminate fake information

or even commenting, or writing obscure/rude/troll comments,

AI currently has free reign right now on the big 3 (Tiktok, Instagram & Twitter) and the main thing is; what's stopping it?

Personally, I believe that social media requires a way to verify the validity of a human, whether that be frequent checks on the activity, or CAPTCHAs every so often. It just helps to make the place a lot more human that the dead internet it is now.

T
Toyah

To fix something means we have to find the cause first which are the people on social media . Itself does not need fixing we need more help for mental health and people just being generally sensible rather than ruining it for others . Or even so before joining maybe they can take a test before allowed to use and if you fail you can’t join :)

Gaypengwing 🔜 Ren Faire Uk's avatar
Gaypengwing 🔜 Ren Faire Uk

If reporting something that isn’t allowed actually allowed it to be removed and not have it somehow slip through the “checks”. If it couldn’t be used maliciously to review bomb or mass report in cases of homophobia, racism, transphobia etc because people don’t agree with it.

This would allow people a safe space to be online, without worry that they will lose their account due to who they are and the ability to stop people who hide behind their keyboards and use it for hate.

M
Maskedgambit

Sadly we’re reached a point in society where the only way to fix social media is by properly gatekeeping access to the platforms. This means ID used to sign up, and a hard age gate to prevent accesss from underage users.

This plan still has faults unless you use biometrics to validate sign ups, but it works for virtual banks so it could work for social media.

An older generation is having to navigate social media not knowing what is real and what isn’t, and who is real and who isn’t. This prepretrates already wobbly beliefs and is what ultimately led to the reform party performing no well in the recent UL election. Misinformation spreads and certain people just can’t discern reality from AI generated or simple catfishing. This same issue applies to a younger, more impressionable generation too.

Verification through ID will unfortunately scrape and purge lot of social media of it’s current user base, and while that would be an initial shock when it comes to revenue and advertising, it at least means what is left is a truer representation of who actually uses the various platforms.

Makster's avatar
Makster
Maskedgambit

Funnily enough even with IDs I don't think that would deter trolls. Look at facebook comments and you see negativity in the comments and it is linked more to the person than on X or instagram

Philip's avatar
Philip

Well we are training AI to do a lot of things. Perhaps it should be trained to recognise trolls. The AI could place a post / comment block on the suspected troll till a human reviews the recent posting history and makes a decision.

An alternative would be to hide posts it recognises as controversial, turn off notifications for that post, and slow down individuals seeking to repeatedly post in the same thread with comment delays. This could give time for a human moderator to review it and in the meantime take the oxygen away from the metaphorical dumpster fires.

Kane Carnifex's avatar
Kane Carnifex

Social Media is Entertainment only.
You like it or not.
Nothing counts here, nothing is true.
No love, no Hate... just comedia.
Everything here is a lie, only to entertain you.
If you try to find thruth here you will be entertained.
You will lose yourself for a long time.

All other valid Knowledge is located in Alexandria.
A Utopia of approved knowledge. No corruption, no Fraud.
Just the perfect place to seek wisdom.
Untouchable from any evil.
Growing like cancer to infect every dumbness in reach.

People who stopped to search for wisdom are sheeps on social media autopilot.
Lost in space, running low on fuel…

L
Lynicx

Social media isn’t broken it just needs to be monitored more strictly and TOS on most things are a joke when you look at them it just needs to be properly monitored by the people that make it.

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