Oba Babs-Osibodu
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obababsosibodu.bsky.social
Oba Babs-Osibodu
@obababsosibodu.bsky.social
Doctor training in clinical radiology. Chair of the BMA's Welsh Resident Doctors Committee. Views are my own.
Par for the course here, sadly.
November 19, 2024 at 11:27 AM
I am yet to see a platform that consistently stimulates good faith, measured discussions and information sharing at a large scale, without resorting to extremely heavy-handed policies that hamper the user experience.

Time will tell...
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
I’m hopeful for Bluesky, but I do think it's in a honeymoon phase. I’ve been using social media pretty much since its inception. I’ve seen many social media platforms come and go...
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
This doesn't make me angry. I'm just disappointed by the wasted potential and highly concerned about the direction of travel.

X/Twitter has around 250 million daily users and its influence can't be overstated. I believe the site could be harmful to society on a scale we've never seen before.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
Essentially, X/Twitter now feels less like a town hall and more like a chaotic and sinister stock market for outrage and disinformation.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
For what it's worth, I also think we need to improve media literacy across the board.

In my opinion, a lot of the prominent fake content that misleads people should easily be discerned from real content, but we have failed to educate ourselves as a society.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
Bot accounts also flood the replies of every post with complete nonsense and irrelevant content. The prioritisation of paid-for "verified" accounts exacerbates all of these issue.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM

ChatGPT/LLM bots are starting to dominate the site. I’ve even seen some bots posing as doctors, then being amplified by prominent "medtwitter" users that can't tell them apart from real people.

This technology is only going to improve over time - what's the plan?
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
The rise of generative AI has made the spread of this misinformation even easier and more insidious. Fake content now looks more polished and can be churned out extremely quickly.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
The monetisation of posts makes all of this worse. People are incentivised to post inflammatory content to maximise engagement for financial gain.

"The truth" doesn't really matter when more likes, retweets and replies will come get people a bigger paycheque.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
Also, misinformation and disinformation are completely out of control. Community notes is a good idea in theory and works at times, but it's clearly not effective enough.

Falsehoods spread so fast and so wide. I've had multiple real life conversations with people who have fallen for these lies.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
I love hearing opposing viewpoints and different ideologies, but the site has become a breeding ground of hate. I regularly see racist/neo-Nazi accounts and posts.

These are not only left unremoved/unbanned, but they are even sometimes actively signal-boosted by Elon Musk to over 200m+ followers.
November 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM