Once upon a time, newly minted graduates dreamt of creating online social media that would bring people closer together.
That dream is now all but a distant memory. In 2024, there aren’t many ills social networks don’t stand accused of: the platforms are singled out for spreading “fake news”, for serving as Russian and Chinese vehicles to destabilise democracies, as well as for capturing our attention and selling it to shadowy merchants through micro targeting. The popular success of documentaries and essays on the allegedly huge social costs of social media illustrates this.
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Studies suggest that if individuals regularly clash over political issues online, this is partly due to psychological and socioeconomic factors independent of digital platforms.
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In economically unequal and less democratic countries, individuals are most often victims of online hostility on social media (e.g., insults, threats, harassment, etc.). A phenomenon which seems to derive from frustrations generated by more repressive social environments and political regimes.
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individuals who indulge most in online hostility are also those who are higher in status-driven risk taking. This personality trait corresponds to an orientation towards dominance, i.e., a propensity to seek to submit others to one’s will, for instance through intimidation. According to our cross-cultural data, individuals with this type of dominant personality are more numerous in unequal and non-democratic countries.
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Similarly, independent analyses show that dominance is a key element in the psychology of political conflict, as it also predicts more sharing of “fake news” mocking or insulting political opponents, and more attraction to offline political conflict, in particular.
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n summary, online political hostility appears to be largely the product of the interplay between particular personalities and social contexts repressing individual aspirations. It is the frustrations associated with social inequality that have made these people more aggressive, activating tendencies to see the world in terms of “us” vs “them”.
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On a policy level, if we are to bring about a more harmonious Internet (and civil society), we will likely have to tackle wealth inequality and make our political institutions more democratic.
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Recent analyses also remind us that social networks operate less as a mirror than as a distorting prism for the diversity of opinions in society. Outraged and potentially insulting political posts are generally written by people who are more committed to express themselves and more radical than the average person, whether it’s to signal their commitments, express anger, or mobilise others to join political causes.
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Even when they represent a relatively small proportion of the written output on the networks, moralistic and hostile posts tend to be promoted by algorithms programmed to push forward content capable of attracting attention and triggering responses, of which divisive political messages are an important part.
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On the other hand, the majority of users, who are more moderate and less dogmatic, are more reluctant to get involved in political discussions that rarely reward good faith in argumentation and often escalate into outbursts of hatred.
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Social media use seems to contribute to increasing political hostility and polarisation through at least one mechanism: exposure to caricatural versions of the political convictions of one’s rivals.
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The way in which most people express their political convictions – both on social media and at the coffee machine – is rather lacking in nuance and tactfulness. It tends to reduce opposing positions to demonised caricatures, and is less concerned with persuading the other side than with signaling devotion to particular groups or causes, galvanising people who already agree with you, and maintaining connections with like-minded friends.
Oh my. Sometimes Betteridge’s law of headlines is wrong.
yes.
Social Media. The platforms built originally to keep us connected and able to share knowledge with one another instantaneously. Has now been hijacked by corporations and governments as a method of controlling us.
We also do it to ourselves. Everyone has someone in their life they’d rather mute. But they’re forced to coexist with them. Online is so appealing because you can find communities of like minded individuals. Then forget all about those other opinions you don’t like.
You grow in this bubble as they grow in theirs. By the next time you’re forced to interact, you feel so alien and unpleasant to one another it’s confusing and frightening. Corporations are right there to sell you on a story about how the other side are demons destroying the world. We gobble it up.
We also do it to ourselves. Everyone has someone in their life they’d rather mute. But they’re forced to coexist with them. Online is so appealing because you can find communities of like minded individuals. Then forget all about those other opinions you don’t like.
Groups with just things we agree with wouldn’t explain it. What happens is we go into groups of people we agree with and then post memes about the other side that everyone agrees with. We get a caricature of the opposition that is reinforced.
As evidence, just look how much news about Trump gets posted to liberal places. If you don’t want to hear about him that’s the last place you should go.
Yes, it’s a cycle. Social media fuels polarization, and polarization drives engagement, engagement fuels social media, which reinvests into fueling polarization and around it goes
No duh
No. It’s not “social media”. It’s capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, etc. It’s always been a struggle of oppressed against oppressor. People fighting for their land and lives against violent overlords. Not much new here. Blaming apps is a counter-productive distraction.
Very well summarized, I think this hits the majority of the most relevant points.
I have been thinking if it is possible to integrate ActivityPub with static websites like personal blogs. Maybe that could replace social media for something more personal and curated.
Yes, I’m all in on that!
Ever since joining Lemmy I’ve noticed this awesome trend towards a modernized retro internet. Self/web hosted blogs, sites and apps. Not all that commercial giant bullshit but an oldschool mesh of servers. Activitypub and stuff will be awesome in creating a new subset that is more in line with the original designs for the internet.
That’s in some sense getting back to the “open protocols” idea of ~2005, with federation and common identities. You’d still have 1) bothersome process of maintaining such a site, 2) problems how to find such, 3) an identity provider which can go down with your identity, like a Lemmy instance can.
It’s insufficient. Facebook and others have used an existing demand for a recommendation system and automatic moderation and search and all this junk.
I’m enthusiastic about Locutus.
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but most small blogs support rss. That’s enough if you just want a personal feed, and one could really easily build a bot to post articles onto Mastodon or Lemmy or similar. I’d be surprised if there isn’t already one.
WordPress supports activity pub
Oh and then you could add these things called “rings” to the bottom of your website to jump to other websites with similar topics.
I have been thinking the same. Maybe ghost.org’s federation over ActivityPub can solve the problem?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
Is the sky blue?
I thought this was a well established fact.
There are no “facts” about vague ideological terms.
Thanks ChatGPT
Even if it weren’t, 10 minutes of scrolling confirms it’s true
It is, but presumably phrasing it as a question increases engagement (or was thought to) hence furthers the OP’s goal, in spite of the factual nature.
i.e. the same reason that Trump was allowed to walk all over the “moderators” at the recent Presidential
advertisement“debate”.You know, “journalism” as it seems to always be practiced these days. As in, chase the profits to the exclusion of all other considerations.
Hrm, I wonder if my time spent on social media has made me more hostile to such predatory practices overall…
Yup
Media in general has always done this, why Murdoch is usually the first person slithering through the door of most western leaders. Make it football teams and drama people are easy to control.
When I look at how much Nigel Farage has been platformed in the UK the press helped manufacture the consent for Brexit and the big far right swing that is coming with it. What were quite isolated social media views have become very mainstream and on the TV all the time. Society is now quite open about a lot of far right talking points. Social media is a part of the media landscape but it didn’t make the far right figures popular that was all the traditional presses doing.
Even now they cover and platform Nigel Farage about 100x as much as they do any Green candidate, and yet the Greens hold more MP and council seats. Same with the Lib Dems who are bigger than Reform and yet the press is constantly platforming Reform. Its hard to look at traditional media and see anything but a big swing to the right in the last decade and they have led every step of the way.
It’s a good point/observation.
Makes me wonder how different things might be if the mainstream media were more neutral and less prone to sensationalising everything and stirring outrage.
Social media just adds another layer on top of this.
The difference is that they can boil the frog gradually.
Traditional media tries to move people, absolutely. But a newspaper has to address the crazies and try to convert people into crazies in the same paper. If they’re too extreme, more moderate people can see that right away, and it’s easier to minimize engagement with it.
With social media, you personalize the content surfaced. You start by making it seen mostly sane, with an out there idea here or there. Then, as they start to engage with the slightly mild stuff, you move the “mostly sane” in that direction, and the “mild” moves a couple extra steps. Now, you’re part of a movement. Everyone around you is changing their beliefs, and the new ones aren’t that far off from your previous beliefs, so why not follow?
6 months later, you were always pretty left/right-leaning (cognitive dissonance, baybee!!!). But it looks like the consensus is finally shifting your way. It’s just a small step further right/left, and everyone around you is making it too. The world is changing for a better, so let’s be that change.
is engagement-driven content scoring harmful to everyone with a pulse? does pope shit in the woods? click here to find how
Instructions unclear, now have Pope following me around the woods trying to poop on me - help!?
