The changing dynamics of social media
There is something really interesting going on in the internet these days and the more I think about it, the more it makes me feel like I’m waking up in the middle of a roller coaster ride. It’s a ride for fun, but it’s scary to look down and it’s a ride which might never stop. Last week in my interaction design class, we had a very interesting discussion on the topic of personalization of web services that touched upon the most recent happenings in the US that got me thinking about how social media and the content we consume are influencing our behavior and decisions. Two events that happened last week — The Presidential election in the US and the demonetization reform by the Prime Minister in India, have made me start to question everything I’ve believed in.
It’s not anymore a secret that social media has been using our personal information to provide us tailored content and advertisements. While not all of us feel comfortable with that idea, on some levels we have rescinded to the fact and made peace with it. But there’s more to what’s happening that we aren’t aware of. Our behavior and personal/political preferences have started shaping what we read and see on the internet. Personalization has become the next step in the evolution of the internet. Our Google search results are tailored to who we are, where we are and what we like to see. And similarly, the posts we see on Facebook are generally on things that we believe in. The algorithms analyze our behavioral patterns by the links we click, the people or pages we follow and what we post and the rest of what we see is tailored based on these behavioral patterns.
The media has never enjoyed a vantage point as good as the one they hold today. They have extremely good access to the citizen and convey news, messages and ideas. And for the most part we base our beliefs and understanding of the world based on which media we follow and generally end up taking the side our favorite media houses talk from. When I look into the news I follow, nearly every one of them come with a very one sided perspective and my beliefs tend to see the world from the same perspective.
This is where the power of social media and personalization come in. What we see on popular social networks is no more a one size fits all content (or in other words, neutral). When searching for the same query, my Google search won’t show the same results as it would for you. My Instagram feed is no more chronological and shows me the most popular photos based on an algorithm. This is true about Facebook as well. Most of us gather our knowledge of the world from Facebook — from our friends, their thoughts and opinions, the pages/people we follow and …… what we ‘Like’ (Liking isn’t as innocuous as it seems). And Facebook uses this knowledge to tailor the content we see on our feed. This is the personalization of products to provide us more relevant stuff, be it content or advertisements.
This personalization, fortunately or unfortunately started to influence our political views as well and the result is an echo bubble that starts showing us things we only want to see and believe. While showing relevant content is great, it pushes us away from the facts and makes us more biased than we should probably be about certain important things. This was evident last week when the election results flipped out everyone I knew. I did not immediately understand the outcome when most of everything I saw and everyone I interacted inclined clearly towards one side. That’s what made me realize the small bubble I live in. I am surrounded (or have surrounded myself) with people who believe in one idea. And it was the same with the demonetization news. A big majority of my timeline opined towards one side while a small set of people had the diametrically opposite views.
The unfortunate reality is, much of what we see and the sources of our information are inherently biased. Neutrality is not encouraged as much as forming a right leaning or left leaning ideology. It’s even harder to find a source that truly provides a third perspective from a different vantage point. This leaves us with no option but to deviate towards one side and form an opinion based on the opinions thrown at us. While I’m not against having an opinion or taking political sides, I am concerned that we’re not making these choices on our own. These choices are being imposed upon us by algorithms. We are no more fully in control of what we choose to believe.
So, how did this happen? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is not an easy one. As species, we are always evolving, getting continually better than what we were a day ago. At least that’s what is happening with technology. It has always been changing, evolving and getting smarter, much faster than our minds and behaviors evolve. Artificial intelligence is getting smarter everyday and we’re almost at that point where AI is much a part of our lives as the clothes we wear and the food we eat. In this purview, we can simply call this evolution.
The next question that would arise would probably sound something like “So what do we do next? Can we stop the robots from taking over the humans?”. The answer to this would also be a no (unless moving to the mountains is an option). We cannot stop technology from evolving, get smarter and make the world a better and comfortable place to live in. This has been the essence of humanity.
This leaves us with one realistic option — Evolve with the technology. We must get smarter and try to keep up pace with the changes that are happening around us. We must realize that not everything we see and read is necessarily the fact. We should take every claim, statement and judgment our favorite media ‘artists’ create with a pinch of salt, because they’re forming an opinion of their own and presenting us with the perspective they believe is right. These beliefs may have taken form due to various reasons unbeknownst and unexplained to us. And they will continue to do so because that’s how they keep their cash registers ticking.
As consumers, we should start getting smarter about making out the difference between an emotion influenced bias and factual realities. I believe that not every person who voted for Trump is a misogynist who goes around racially abusing everyone in his sight, not every person who voted for Clinton is a genius who clearly knew what the world wanted. Similarly in the other side of the world, the demonetization is not the most radical, world-changing move and nor is it a cunning plan to make people run between ATMs and bank branches. We must understand that running a country is not as simple as these superficial judgements we are exposed more to. There are far greater complications and consequences involved in these decisions and we must make a serious attempt to understand and view these developments from all possible perspectives. I wish technology provided us better access to unbiased education on these topics and helped us develop more informed opinions. Till that happens we should develop more empathy and be more analytical before forming our own opinions. When we realize our dynamics with artificial intelligence and network based communication, our relationships with social media would be healthier. If we continue fueling quick opinions and dramatic sentiments, we end up creating grand echo chambers which ultimately consumes us and when realities happen, as they always did, we become too fragile to accept them.
