Social media is a confirmation bias machine. Facebook, for instance, is a great place to hear what we already believe. It's a terrible place to learn from the other and confront the weaknesses of our own arguments.
Is it any surprise, then, that political extremism, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience are flourishing?
BeReal is interesting. A newly-popular social network, it allows users to photograph and share one moment per day during a randomly-determined, two-minute window. The thinking is that this will discourage curation. Users will see their friends as they really are, not as they pretend to be.
I'm not convinced. BeReal might limit fakery, but I think pretension will evolve rather than perish in this new environment.
Regardless, BeReal doesn't address the vast majority of problems with social media. I predict that users will still suffer from confirmation bias, addiction, misinformation, targeted advertising, privacy degradation, and the myriad other harms caused by social media.
I know many people who maintain “read-only” social media accounts. They have no intention of posting anything, but they want to see what other people are up to.
Years ago, it occurred to me that social media platforms discourage this. Almost all social media accounts include the ability to post content, whether or not the user actually intends to do so. Even my Twitch account, which I created to comment on video game streams, allows me to create my own stream. I have no interest in becoming a streamer.
It's easy to see why platforms do this: tempting users in this way is good for business. Among the millions of people who create read-only accounts, some percentage of them end up posting content anyway simply because it's easy to do so. Something similar happened to me when I created a Facebook account many years ago. I promised myself that I wouldn't like, comment, or post. That promise didn't last very long.
I find this to be so peculiar. There's no law of nature requiring that social media platforms give megaphones to people who would otherwise be passive readers, and yet this design choice is so ubiquitous that we don't even notice it. Would it be going too far to call this a dark pattern?
Perhaps this is another topic for Congress. We know that social media incentivizes outrageous and polarizing content. Why are we making it easier for people to yell at each other?
I'm interested in how social media relates to embarrassment. How far back does one need to travel through their feed before finding content that is embarrassing in hindsight? On Facebook, it's sometimes years. Only then does one unearth photos of funny hairstyles and bizarre fashion statements. I hope they can laugh about it. We all have those photos.
I hate to say this, but on TikTok, the most recent videos are sometimes the most humiliating. What is it about TikTok that inspires users to humiliate themselves? Is it a desire for fame? Recognition? Fitting in?
I'm not being very delicate here. I wish I could find it in my heart to be kinder, but the effect is real. Unfortunately, I think some TikTok creators would really benefit from some honest feedback about this.
Perhaps this happens because social media obscures honest feedback. As Jaron Lanier has observed, people who post on social media either get upvotes from fans or angry comments from assholes. Everyone else—the silent, uncomfortable majority—stays out of it. The content might make them cringe, but they don't care enough to write a comment saying so.
As others have suggested, we may need a digital equivalent to the awkward pause.
Before leaving Facebook, I ran a little social experiment. I wanted to determine how many people were actually paying attention.
My posts began triumphantly. “I'm so proud to have finally made a dream come true.” The last sentence would likewise contain subtle gloating. Only the sentences in the middle gave it away. “There is no dream. Nothing came true. I just want to know who's reading this.” I included a photo of myself smiling, surrounded by friends, for good measure.
I received a surprising number of likes. Some people congratulated me. Another dirty little secret of social media: many people aren't actually paying attention.
We change what we write based on what garners likes. We change who we are based on what garners likes. What are those likes really worth? Not much, apparently.
I once considered adopting a rule that I would not discuss politics with anyone who uses social media.
Consider why we don't discuss politics during holiday meals. We understand that, over the course of a single dinner, we cannot possibly compete with the thousands of hours that our family members have spent watching cable news that year. In the same way, I know that my perspective, my opinions, and my questions cannot possibly make sense to most people who are subjected to hours of misinformation, half-truths, and confirmation from social media each day.
I immediately realized that my rule was unworkable. Likewise, it would have been impossible to completely avoid second-hand smoke several decades ago. Still, I think it's a good rule in theory. I hope for a future when more people recognize its appropriateness.
The other day, I was listening to an interview with John Carmack wherein he described his use of the Finger protocol early in his career. The Finger protocol, which predates modern blogging, enables the publication of status updates, simple maxims, and even longer essays. There are no likes, no comments, and no news feeds. Readers need to seek out content that interests them.
It strikes me that thoughts is very similar. I appreciate that it doesn't offer “modern” social networking features. I don't learn much from hot takes; I'm not sure anyone does. If you disagree with something I write and are genuinely interested in the subject, let's have a real conversation about it. I also welcome thoughtful written rebuttals. Comment sections don't foster these things.
Better is not always better. Ancient wisdom.
This micro-blog won't focus exclusively on social media. However, given that the service that powers it*, thoughts.page, offers a compelling alternative to the enchanting digital battlegrounds of Twitter and Facebook, it only seemed appropriate to share those thoughts first.
* This content has since been migrated to another platform. That said, I do still very much admire thoughts.page.
Incidentally, my biggest surprise in leaving social media has been just how little I miss it. Perhaps that's one of the lies it tells us, that we need it. We don't.
On social media, communication is not about learning. It's not about listening. It's certainly not about changing our minds. Instead, communication serves to score points, to show others how smart and how moral we are, to perform. It's no wonder we can't get along when we use it.