Social media stinks
Is there anything as powerful as social media for bringing out both the best and the worst of humanity simultaneously? On the social media platform X, which prides itself on being “the internet’s town hall”, you will find a mixture of opinions spanning across all political dimensions. Users of X are very forthcoming when it comes to expressing their thoughts and feelings about a variety of subjects. On the face of it this is a good thing, but when you look beneath the surface, you find that that is all these users are doing. There is little to no dialogue going on, and if there is it’s hidden behind The Almighty Algorithm. This algorithm decides what you get to see on the platform, and from my experience it promotes controversy, derision, and sanctimony above all else. The reason for this is that such content generates the most amount of engagement from the userbase. Critical thinking, logic, and civil discourse are out, and hot takes are in.
We look into a mirror to see ourselves. It may be the case that social media platforms serve simply as mirrors on society, reflecting back at us the best and the worst we have to offer. That sounds nice and simple, and exonerates the platforms of any wrong-doing. It is however too good to be true. The question we have to ask is this: do posts get promoted because they elicit strong opinions, or do they get promoted due to higher engagement from users? When thinking about this, we have to remember that X is first and foremost a business, and will look after its own interests before the interests of its userbase. The natural conclusion then is that they will choose to promote the content that increases engagement and therefore their profits.
This is not a modern problem by any means. Divide and conquer is a strategy that has been employed throughout history to subjugate populations and build empires. X is no exception. They can only benefit from having people at opposite ends of the political spectrum warring with each-other on a daily basis. It allows them to keep the users engaged and in doing so generate more advertising revenue. Meaningful discussion is a danger to the platform, because if people are coming to some sort of agreement, that means there is less fighting, less traffic, fewer ads, and this hurts their bottom line.
So if X is not a place for meaningful discourse, what purpose does it serve, beyond lining the pockets of Elon Musk et al.? As a user myself, I struggle to answer that question. The best answer I can come up with is “entertainment”. The platform itself is a chaotic maelstrom of bite-sized arguments, drama, and hate. As human beings with flaws, sometimes we just get that itch, perhaps the very same itch that bore gladiator fights in the colosseum in Rome during the Roman era.
To conclude the article, let’s come back to the definition of a social network:
a dedicated website or other application which enables users to communicate with each other by posting information, comments, messages, images, etc.
I believe that X satisfies the definition of a social network. I protest however the idea that any meaningful communication at all is occurring on it. Real communication requires two or more people engaging in a dialogue, and that is sadly absent from the platform. Instead, I would argue that X is a business and their core product is entertainment-as-a-service. Like we discover in The Matrix, a world that is too perfect doesn’t last. If we didn’t have petty distractions like X, then people would really start communicating. When people communicate, they share ideas, and when they share ideas, they inspire collective action, and that’s what people with power don’t want to happen. After all, they wouldn’t want the status quo to be disturbed, now would they?