Broken Social Media Scene
We did IT. With 4.4 billion people online, humanity has recently crossed the 50% mark, past which people who are connected to the internet now outnumber those who are not. The slide below from a comprehensive Hootsuite/We are social report shows the astounding proliferation of the internet in 2019.
The report also tells us that people connected to the internet in most developed countries spend between 5 to 9 hours per day online, indicating that a substantial portion of the world’s population spends more time online than in the real world.
The Scene
Social media constitutes about 30–40% of that time which, given the previous figures, clearly demonstrates the power of our craving to communicate. We are social, no doubt about it, and since these needs are primal in nature, their digital manifestation is subsequently also powerful. For many people, social media is the Internet.
This is the point where things start to fall off the cliff, as our very basic human need is being exploited by a handful of gigantic corporations which monopolised this market. They are currently bending over backwards to sell our personal data, interests, behavioural patterns and social graph connections to advertisers and other less noble actors.
Stark controversies are coming to light around this topic, fuelled by Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal or state-level attempts at corruption demonstrated in Facebook’s lobbying against privacy legislation around the world, with heavy financial incentives on the table. An interesting insight into Facebook’s growth tactics, such as those outlined in “Zucked” by Roger McNamee, indicate blatant manipulation and exploitation of users through data harvesting and profiling.
The list goes on, with the congressional hearings of Google’s and Facebook’sCEO’s indicating a rising tide of concern when it comes to the future of safeguarding our private data and threats to democracy. While Zuckerberg seems to be doing the PR rounds these days, talking about the privacy enabled future of FB and apologising left and right for data breaches, there is also a long trail of broken promises on Facebook’s part. Since a shift towards privacy would affect their business model in a fundamental way, effectively killing the golden goose — for now, these activities are most likely to be pure PR and damage control. Their defence narrative, at first glance reasonable — “it is impossible to prevent every incident when our users amount to billions”, isn’t exactly comforting, as no one single firm should be able to snoop on billions of people. Corruption in such scenarios is inevitable, and our initial benefit-of-the-doubt when it comes to data safety is withering away.
Because of the novelty of it all, it appears that we have unwittingly compromised our privacy in exchange for social connectivity. And now, as the proverbial shit is hitting the fan, most people feel helpless in the face of this imbalance, treating it as the necessary evil. A bit like sailing the oceans before the invention of airplanes — it was simply the best deal we could get.
But what if we could fly?
It sounded crazy back then before the first plane successfully took off and landed. Today, flying is the safest mode of transportation — statistically, it’s actually easier to win the lottery than to die in a plane crash.
In this series, we are embarking on an ambitious quest to piece together everything it takes to create a communications transformation comparable to the invention of flight, taking apart individual pieces of our digital interactions and rearranging them into normalcy, through a synergistic combination of modern IT.
In other words, we are advocating for a new way of staying connected, in which we operate on our terms. Where our privacy is held in our hands, and in which we can choose to monetise our data with ease. Where communication is naturally meaningful and conducted in a manner conducive to growth, as opposed to turning us into permanently distracted zombies. A space in which we become more focused and purposeful, while still being able to nurture online relationships that are dear to us. And most importantly, instead of getting addicted to the knee-jerk, profit-driven madness of today’s social experience, we get stuff done.
Harmful assumptions of today’s social media models
“Friendship trumps privacy”
Today’s social media relies on the concept of friends as the building block for its social graph. From a technical standpoint, friends on social media can be mere acquaintances, and that’s on a good day, as many people collect “friends” they know nothing about.
We do not expect all of our online friends to be friends in real life, however, there are problematic consequences when this is implemented in conflict with our intuitive grasp of friendship. Through the modern social media machine, “befriending” someone we might’ve met just yesterday results in the disclosure of all our social connections, interests, itineraries and history to a near-perfect stranger. We are used to this now, but taking a step back, it feels utterly insane and would never happen in real life, even with people we actually know. While there are measures to prevent such broad disclosure, to some extent, the underlying model encourages this behaviour.
What about real friends?
As tricky as it may seem, forming and fostering genuine friendships relies on a basic set of common ingredients. Sociologist Rebecca G. Adams identifies three fundamental traits that determine the likelihood of forming friendship:
- Proximity
- Trust
- Repetition
The list looks almost tribal, which is hardly surprising, as this is how humans have been wired for survival. We need others to support us when the going gets tough. We seek stability and repetition. We are also happy to reciprocate, knowing that when the tables turn we might be the ones in need. This is hardcoded into our systems, and neither convenience nor the profitability of Facebook’s business models can rewire our brains to act differently.
It is also symptomatic of how neglected these particular traits are in today’s social media scene. There are no tools to encourage trust or the functional side of our relationships — things revolve around the instant gratification of the “I”, constantly looking for ever-more powerful drugs to attain it.
“Single identity = integrity”
“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” — Mark Zuckerberg
This infamous quote struck a nerve, with the more insightful of commentators, as a profound inability to grasp the concept of online identity on Zuckerberg’s part. It’s pretty easy to see how differently we behave depending on the context we’re in — we’re a different person at work, at home or at a sports game. Our circles of friends often don’t overlap, and we consciously prefer to keep it that way.
This has nothing to do with integrity, but rather with human adaptability to varying social conditions. Depending on the situation, we might dial up certain traits of our personalities while dialling down others. Whether Zuckerberg actually believes his casual claim is anybody’s guess, but what’s easy to see is how a single identity is extremely profitable for Facebook’s business model, as a ticket to monetising our whole life’s information. This single silo phenomenon has been referred to as context-collapse in a study titled “You Can’t Block People Offline”: Examining How Facebook’s Affordances Shape the Disclosure Process — in which the authors point out that in real life, disclosure doesn’t work en masse, and affects only those who we actually address. From a user’s standpoint, this entails constant self-censorship, dilution of privacy and a general chore of having a one-size-fits-all social media container, for the benefit of a single company’s shareholders.
In a functional online world, a single one-dimensional identity is bound to fail, as humans sport multiple identities in different life contexts. No amount of catchy corporate slogans can alter this state.
“The more, the merrier”
Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggests that we can meaningfully maintain around 150 relationships in our life. This figure might vary slightly from person to person, but it is traced to the way we are preconditioned to maintain close relationships with our immediate family, extended family, and finally a tribe/village. This brings into question the social media frenzy of today, where collecting “friends” en masse has become the measure of one’s popularity and social status, especially amongst the younger generation.
Contemporary research on the effects of this mindset indicates that people with heavy social media engagement and exposure are more prone to loneliness, depression, isolation and are more likely to jeopardise fulfilling relationships in real life. The overload of stimuli, constant comparison of our lives to the photoshopped, curated lives of others, and the inability to trust what we see are all just another day in the social media grind.
“The involvement is real”
Anyone who has ever been caught up in a Twitter war or a fierce Facebook exchange knows how engaging it can feel. Our fingers burn with righteous fire as we strike our opponents down with masterfully constructed arguments, waiting for the opportunity to deliver the final blow.
In hindsight, it often feels funny, awkward or even embarrassing. Why did we even bother? It begs a more general question:
Why do we so fiercely engage with things that are remote, unverified, and often distant to our life situations?
To understand this better, let’s go back in time about 20,000 years. We live in a large cave, with another 100 people — our family and by extension our tribe. We know everyone by name and tone of voice, trust them by default, and work together to survive.
The flow of information is simple — at the entrance, there is a watchman warning us of incoming dangers or events. There’s also one up on the hill to warn us of distant, incoming threats. In such a setting, there is little room for interpretation when it comes to data — a hoard of tigers attacking our cave is simple to decipher and is fought off with passion. We have a clear agenda as a tribe — stay alive and thrive. Emotionality is also subservient to this, as it helps to synchronise all our kinfolk into one efficient organism.
Suppose a messenger from another tribe arrives at our cave. We treat him with attention, but also with reservation, and inquire about his intentions. There are no friends in the survival business, only aligned and misaligned interests. Hence, with our visitor, we try to turn them into an ally, this being the path of least resistance and maximum gain. If this fails, we assert our presence and gauge our options. We must assume a possible future confrontation with his tribe, regardless of whether he lives or dies.
In such a setting we are genuinely social, and our bonds with others directly translate into survival. Our brains have had thousands of years to evolve in these scenarios, so chances are we are still wired in this way.
Fast forward to today’s social media space…
Suddenly, our cave or tribe is not clearly defined — it is a complex mixture of different walks of life: schools, communities, towns, countries, social groups, ethnicities or belief systems. They are also vast in size and have multiple, often conflicted agendas, with different survival goals.
New warnings arrive every second, 24 hours a day. They speak of scandals, invasions, diseases, communists, capitalists, white supremacists, immigrants, predatory corporations, lobbyists, bankers, etc. Our attention is continually fragmented, so it takes more and more powerful stimuli to re-capture it. As soon as something bad happens (as it always has), it is instantly picked up by the distracted, confused, social media “community” and blown out of any sane proportions. Thanks to Facebook’s and Twitter’s algorithms, our feeds amplify it further for maximum emotional impact, trying to increase the time spent (i.e. wasted) on these websites.
This scheme has, of course, existed long before the internet — with “breaking” news, scandals, all sorts of propaganda and advertising. Today, however, it has gotten much stronger, thanks to the good couple of hours we spend staring at social media feeds every day, repeatedly being triggered into endangered, excited or alerted states. After enough sustained exposure, we are numbed into impulsive buying, herd mentality and prone to manipulation by external narratives — the overload of stimuli and confusion diminishes our ability to be discerning.
So what are we up against really?
There is nothing wrong with getting news feeds from a trusted source, which sometimes happens to post on Facebook. Yet, on a larger scale, we simply do not and cannot know the agendas or interests behind today’s news and social feeds. Often, our involvement is not merely a delusional perception of the importance of our social media interactions. It is also the main fuel for marketing algorithms, which empirically discovered our low-level triggers and are riding them hard.
Our own confused, primal circuitry falsely associates remote, unconfirmed information with things relevant to our lives. We are being played.
Undoing the damage
This pitfall of getting worked up about remote, unrelated things is often pointed out in spiritual teachings, particularly in the East, in aphorisms such as:
“Do not speak of things outside of your own experience, as they are nothing more than your hallucinations.”
If applied online, this simple advice would probably cut social media traffic in half overnight, providing everyone with a deep sense of relief. Everyone except the advertisers and the IT giants, that is. It’s a tall order, still, those who consciously try to scale down their social media exposure usually report a sharp increase in the quality of life and general wellbeing.
We believe that a best of both worlds is possible and must be built: A functional online social space acting on our behalf, devoid of the craze, the noise and the misinformation. To get there, we need new tools and a more attentive approach to human communication. In the next piece, we examine the currently missing technical components fundamental to this cause.
Stay tuned.
