The Social Media Dilemma

The internet was like a weird whacky place, it was experimental and creative things happened there, but the current situation has changed. Are we in total control of our decisions or are they influenced by something so subtle that we don’t even notice?

We live in the age of AI, technological innovation, and a world, which is evolving fast. The emerging rate at which social media platforms are growing is alarming. Billions of people already have social media accounts, where they opt to engage with different mates and make friends. What if I told you that there is more!

Companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Reedit, Tiktok etc. have mastered the art and mechanism of driving more users into their platforms and manipulating them to spend more time there. Of course, this is their co-objective to keep you staring at your screen as much as they can!

The algorithm

The invention of the algorithm in technology was seen as a milestone, but the outcome has been the opposite. See, the algorithm has a mind of its own and it uses AI to recommend and suggest you, on what to watch on YouTube or TikTok or what to read o Twitter or Facebook. AI is yet to become better, and this is a demerit currently. The algorithm is designed to promote traction to any source of information that seems to have more engagement or any source of information that people tend to engage more with, it doesn’t matter if its propaganda or conspiracy theories. This is what makes many people in the society to become vulnerable.

The idea of imagining a utopian world where everything is ideal is far much to be achieved, especially when we perceive how much the world has become polarized. We are so divided. Nevertheless, the imagination that we may be living in a dystopian world is becoming more surreal, more evident.

There is a phrase in technology agora, “If you are not paying for the product, you are the product”. The social media users are the product and the advertising companies pay these platforms billions of dollars to sell you ads. Social media is becoming a market place, which never existed before, a market, which trades in human future for scale. This move has made internet companies the richest in human history.

We live in a world where we no longer play a huge role in deciding what we want to watch or what to read, the algorithm is playing the big role. In the current times, people all over the world are getting different sources of information regarding their personal interests and their geographical location. Look at this situation as each person having their own reality with their own facts. We are all not reading from the same page.

The amount of information and data that these internet companies have about people is much than you can imagine. This information are then fed into mechanisms, which don’t even have human related features. It includes models, which are being used to predict to people what they need to watch or what to read, the main objective is to increase the engagement rate while advertising companies continues pumping you with hundreds of ads.

How can we truly understand the impact that technology is having on our public sphere, If tech companies won’t let anyone see what’s under the bonnet?

This is the real and main challenge by researchers trying to understand the impact that the algorithm is having on the way we receive, consume and respond to general information produced by artificial intelligence models.

Facts vs Fiction

The algorithm is becoming so expert at learning how to trigger people and so good at creating fake news, that people absorb as if it were reality, confusing people to believing them as if they were real.

Imagine a world where no one believes at anything that is true. Everyone believing the government is lying to them, everything is a conspiracy theory, I shouldn’t trust anyone, and I hate the other side — that’s where the world is heading.

Hear me out; AI cannot solve the problem of fake news and propaganda. In fact, the algorithm operates in a much different manner; the algorithm tends to recommend any particular sources of information that shows more engagement rate then driving it to a larger audience. It doesn’t matter if that source of information is fake news, conspiracy theories or much of a fiction.

The social media platforms cannot even identify and filter what is conspiracy and what is factual reality. If we don’t agree, on what is true, then we are toast.

When you think about technology and how it is an existential threat — it’s a big claim. However, where really is the existential threat? Now this is where you need to understand. It is the tech ability to bring the worst in the society and the worst in the society becoming the existential threat. Because the society is what feeds the technology and these social media platforms with information. This is affecting more people than you can imagine.

Don’t get me wrong, technology is good and its advancing while connecting the global community. The idea that you can book a taxi cab with your smartphone within a minute is magic, It’s because of technological advancement. However, it is confusing because it is simultaneously utopia and dystopia.

The business model that is being used by these social media platforms needs to be recalibrated. What I see is a society, which has been trapped into a rat race of relying on fake news and conspiracy theories. The deep truth is that the law runs far behind these things. The current situation is not on the protection of users but for the benefit of these big wealthy social media platforms. It is what I term as, “profit before people”, instead of “people before profit”.

Frequently, the algorithm has led to an increase of polarization in our societies. People think that the algorithm is designed to give them what they want but its much of the opposite. The algorithm is actually trying to find different ‘rabbit holes’ and trying to find which one serves your interests. Then when you watch these videos or articles, you are served with more and more of the same kind. Today the algorithm convinced you that the earth is flat tomorrow it will convince you about other conspiracy theories. That is how bad the situation is.

Right off the bat, this is what exactly happened with the COVID-19 pandemic. At another angle, it seems that we have created a system, which is biased to fake news and propaganda. Not because we want to, but because fake news make these companies more money. It is disinformation for profits.

Just as Carl Bergstrom said in an article, “The social media companies are able to run the largest scale psychological experiments in history by many orders of magnitude, and they’re running them in real time on all of us”

The spread of misinformation about COVID-19 became viral in the social media platforms, with hundreds of conspiracy theories trying to explain different version of fictional notions. The world was bombarded with rumors, fake news and conspiracy theories.

What we are seeing with the disinformation of COVID-19, the viral spread and engagement of these conspiracy theories across the social media platforms is just an extreme version of what is happening across our information ecosystem. Social media amplifies exponential gossips and propaganda, to the point where people become victims of these theories.

It is not that highly motivated propagandists haven’t existed before; it is that the platforms make it possible to spread manipulative narrative at phenomenal ease without using a lot of money. At some point, the social media platforms have been used as a tool to erode and destabilize the fabric of the society. What then is the need of the existence of these companies if they have inevitable destructive consequences to our future?

Solution

So what is the solution to this social dilemma? How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t even know you are in the matrix? We need to take the social media platforms into accountable. It’s okay for companies to make money, but on the other side there needs to be regulations and policies that govern the information that are channeled into their platforms. Because this information is what users consume. We could introduce policies that tax data collections and data assets owned by these companies. The same way you pay your water bill while at the same time monitoring your water use is a good example to explain this idea.

I think we can change the meaning and how the social media looks like. It is the critics that drive improvement, it is the critics who are the real optimists. Just like in a country, there needs to be an opposition side, which performs checks and balances on how how the government runs.

“Whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment” — Buckminster Fuller