Unveiling the veil, we delve into the heart of social media's most pressing issue - not the content itself, but the distorted reality it often portrays. A journey into the depths of this digital illusion awaits.
Social media distorts our perceptions of the public sphere
It causes us to create a false mental model of society
- We should push for transparency in targeting
- Platforms need to clearly disclose the demographic characteristics of the exposed population when targeting us with any piece of narrowly distributed content
Building better mechanisms
Currently, social media platforms provide no contextual information on content that arrives through sharing algorithms or as part of a targeted news feed
- To solve this, we should push for transparency in targeting
- This means requiring platforms to clearly disclose the demographic characteristics of the exposed population when targeting us with any piece of content that is not distributed broadly
A worrying distraction
Focusing on content alone distracts from the core problem of social media
- Social media reduces belief in science and medicine, weakens trust in longstanding institutions, drives acceptance of ridiculous conspiracy theories, and damages faith in democracy
- Awful content has always existed on social media, but it did not polarize society the way it does today
- The problem is the content, not the content
A World Full of Helium
The warped public sphere we each inhabit is not random. It is custom-curated to target us with information that will most likely resonate.
- This dynamic amplifies extreme perspectives and drives polarization, but even worse, it destroys our collective wisdom as a society.
Building mental models
We humans are decision making machines.
- For intelligence to work properly, we humans need to perform three basic steps: perceiving our world, generalizing our experiences, and building mental models to help us navigate our future
- Social media platforms have distorted this process, changing what it means to perceive our world and generalize our experiences
- This distortion causes us to make significant errors
How can we fix social media?
The biggest problem with social media is not the content itself, but the machinery of targeted distribution.
- To fix this, we have two options: ban profiling and targeting practices or make the strings visible so we know when we are experiencing distorted views of our world.
Won’t fool myself again
Providing transparency in targeting allows each of us to build a more accurate mental model of our society
- As a user, you might still resonate with fringe content on certain topics, but you have an accurate perspective of how it fits into the public sphere
- You will not be fooled into thinking that the whole world is filled with helium or lizard people
Social Media and the Public Sphere
Political scientists refer to the public sphere as the arena in which individuals come together to share issues of importance, exchanging opinions through discussion and deliberation.
- It is within this public sphere that society develops an understanding of ourselves and forms our collective wisdom.
- By forming an accurate model of society, we the people can make good decisions about our future.
A Dangerous Middleman
Social media has inserted itself between each of us and our daily experiences, moderating and manipulating the information we receive about our society.
- Platforms do this by profiling us over time and using those profiles to target us with selective content – custom curated news, ads, and posts that do not represent our society as a whole
