Designing Social Contracts By Algorithm

Several years ago, I rebelled against Facebook. At the time, it was too difficult to target a post to a subset of Friends, which I considered an affront to my privacy. I made one last status update. “Goodbye,” I declared. “Join me on Google Circles!”

You can infer the rest of the story. Today, back on Facebook, I posted a picture of my lunch: oatmeal, a poached egg and an avocado.

I, like some 2 billion other Facebook users worldwide, have slipped into the social media trap so easily because all humans want to be seen, heard and understood. We constantly signal who we are, or we think we are, whether that means wearing a tailored suit or a safety pin in our nose. If the self is an ever-evolving art project, we have welcomed social media applications as our personal digital gallery spaces. The screen real estate in these galleries are entirely free, but they come with a new breed of social contract that increasingly underpins modern communications.

All contracts are legal and sociopolitical, but social media contracts are technological, too. We give a social media platform our information; it give us information in return. The algorithms running these information exchange systems function as clauses within the contract. The only difference is that only one signatory tends to read it. Few stop to read “Terms of Use” policies. As long as we’re entertained, we tend not to ask how or why.

“Designers working in social media are forging the civilization of tomorrow. Their medium is not solely interactions and layouts, but the social contract itself.”

Yet the dangers associated with social media are no longer a secret. Today, they are headline news, from the spread of misinformation affecting the US 2016 elections to the rise of cyberbullying. Every day, we are remaking social norms by socializing online. Few mediums hold greater promise — and greater peril — for the future. What happens next will depend on how quickly social media can grow up.

A DIGITAL CIVILIZATION AT A TURNING POINT

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat and countless others are not just places to pass the time, but powerhouse companies. Today, these platforms affect how we learn, connect and navigate our world.

The power to connect anyone to anyone else through deliberately constructed groups online is now fundamental and perhaps irrevocable. It is already part of the weave of life. For instance, you probably know a couple that met through an online dating site. Social media accelerated the revolutions of the Arab Spring, goaded China’s government into a massive anti-corruption campaign, helped family and friends organize relief during the hurricanes of 2017, and lets world leaders instantaneously compare the size of their big, red buttons.

Designers working in social media are forging the civilization of tomorrow. Their medium is not solely interactions and layouts, but the social contract itself. Behind the scenes, developers create algorithms that serve the needs of these systems and, ultimately, define the user’s experience. As a result, users engage with what they see often without really understanding how or why it is being shown. For instance, literally billions of people have agreed to let the mathematical technique of matrix factorization decide what posts they see without thinking twice about the math involved.

Though social media users may not always care about math, they do care about being used and manipulated. Trust comes from having a clear contract everyone understands and accepts. Achieving this in the realm of databases, AI inference and now chat bots will be no easy task.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU ‘LIKE’

Though these platforms serve the need for self-expression, we don’t necessarily know how we appear to advertisers, the company hosting the service and perhaps even to our friends. This is because when we follow, hide or like something online, when we edit our profiles, we provide much-needed input to backend systems — even if we don’t know how this data will be used. As social media users, we essentially become clothed in digital outfits made of datapoints we cannot see.

“True transparency would let expert users open the hood and adjust the machinery on their own.”

Corporations have many reasons for concealing this information from users. The data models are proprietary, keyed to advertising streams and prone to revisions that are technology- or business-driven. Affordances for managing these models would add friction to interfaces meant to streamline access to content. Still, the discomfort many feel with large social media services “deciding” what posts they see is like the discomfort of having our clothes picked out for us. The commercial imperative to translate a user’s personal data into a company’s proprietary data to maximize screen-time and create revenue undermines the original urge of self-expression that social media is supposed to satisfy.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR GOOD

Social media can work. The modern workplace has already been infused with social media, via communication platforms like Slack, continuous peer feedback and the integration of collaboration features from applications like GitHub, Jira or InVision. Highly specialized communities, like the physician groups Sermo and Figure 1, provide relevant information and connections to their members through social media environments. The platform Nextdoor has gained traction because it embodies the idea of a neighborhood, not just in a manifesto on a page, but through tangible mechanisms. Nextdoor personnel moderate the definition of neighborhood names and boundaries, verify the addresses of residents, moderate content and negotiate affiliations with local governments.

The key to any social grouping, large or small, is the social contract made between parties. Designers need to decide whether this contract can be defined tangibly, as with the workings of a professional society, or whether the system itself is a prime mover in the relationship. The design goal in both cases is to communicate an accurate mental model. If users can see themselves as they are represented in the system, they will be less likely to suspect voodoo. Better still, true transparency would let expert users open the hood and adjust the machinery on their own.

Good contracts make good communities. Designers and engineers have the power to advance this effort, which is why we at frog listed “social media grows up” in our list of annual Tech Trends. As social media grows up during 2018 and beyond, we will find that platforms that work honestly and openly with their members will generate true value. With a push toward the transparency of backend systems, social media will be increasingly ubiquitous — and increasingly welcome.

Sheldon Pacotti is Senior Solution Architect at frog in Austin. Having studied math and English at MIT and Harvard, Sheldon enjoys cross-disciplinary creative projects. He builds award-winning software, writes screenplays for video games, creates software architectures for businesses and writes about technology. @NewLifeInteract