I’ve been reading and thinking about social media recently. 🤔 Mostly, I’ve been noodling how a technology that was purported to generate a revolution in human consciousness and social relations led, in fact, to a form of tribalism that has resulted in hyper-polarization and worse. As always, the specter of unintended consequences (though obvious to any reasonably intelligent observer who thought about this for a moment) has bitten us in the ass.

This potentially is a huge topic, so I might approach it in bite-sized chunks. To start, two initial assumptions about social media innovations (e.g., Facebook, Twitter or X, YouTube, etc.) deserve mention:

1) The level of sharing enabled by such technologies was expected to create a new level of communications that can literally transform how we govern ourselves and our social relations. Some anticipated that an evolved form of democracy would emerge. And 2) such hyper-forms of connectivity will bring us together and unite previously distinct social and political tribes. Yes, a new form of interconnected society based on an unprecedented level of sharing was promised to us, at least in the early days. Old divisions would dissipate, even disappear, in this brave new world.

What, however, do we have? We have increased partisan and ideological polarization almost beyond description. We have a new generation of divisive politics and tribal hatred that beggar belief and challenges our comprehension. In the U.S., old political disputes where individuals adhered to separate belief and normative positions have always existed. Members of political tribes argued passionately but yet managed to converse, compromise, and conducted our public affairs. Remember when Ronald Reagan and ‘Tip’ Oneil got together and shared laughs. Now, members of our political tribes demonize one another as if the others were Satan’s kin. Talk of a final disintegration of America’s democratic traditions is entertained by very serious observers. Civil conflict, if not all-out war, is anticipated by many. A movie was just released envisions a dystopian conflict that erupts as America disintegrates into warring factions. We now demonize each other in ways seldom witnessed in the past. I’ve seen conservatives being interviewed expressing a desire to kill all Democrats and liberals.

It is argued that sectarian violence and divisions around the world have been attributed to the destructive effects of these major communication applications. Sectarian violence is not new of course but persuasive arguments are being put forth that flare-ups, accompanied by widespread mayhem and even killings, have erupted in Myanmar, Brazil, Sri Lanka, India, and many other places around the globe. The resurgence of far right and hate-dependent political movements has occurred in several European countries (e.g. Hungary). These events and trends increasingly are seen as emerging from these new technologies gone amok. I must admit that the supportive arguments for this hypothesis are rather persuasive.

Though they should have seen this coming, the top-level officials of these platforms continued to spew pollyannish statements right up until Trump was elected in 2016. In the aftermath of this disaster, a number of top Facebook executives ruminated on what went wrong.

The author of The Chaos Machine put the hand wringing as follows: “The results of the 2016 election show that Facebook has failed in its mission,” one executive posted on the companies internal message board. Another messaged that Newsfeed (a Facebook feature) optimizes for engagement (more users on the platform longer). “As we learned in the election, bullshit is highly engaging.” Another wrote, “Facebook (the company) is broken.”

What I find remarkable is not that the designers and executives of these companies finally saw the downsides of their creation but that it took them so long. The unintended consequences attached to their creations should have been obvious from the beginning. I mean, these are what I call ‘brittle bright’ folk. They are logic and math whizzes who can unravel the most complex of intricate puzzles. But they are also incredibly narrow in their thinking and their approach to things, often lacking elementary understandings from history while being constrained by the limits of the ‘quant‘ mindset where optimization and efficiency trump (no pun intended) all else. All challenges are technical in character and as well as all solutions. In short, I remain stunned by their naivete and provincialism.

For now, quick comments on their two most obvious blind spots. As noted, the prosletyzers of the social media revolution argued that their platforms would create a kind of universal town hall meeting where the collective wisdom of the crowd would prevail and common sense reign. Sure! This is what happened during the French Revolution where a more universal democracy would prevail, or so the revolutionaries argued. Everyone called each other citizen, and all were equal. Soon, some were more equal than others, and the guillotine was busier than ever. And remember the Communist revolution and worker’s Soviets that would soon replace the state with localized people’s governments. They very quickly evolved into a dictatorship of the proletariat where a select few ran everything.

Organic democracies emerging from either ideology or technology are fictions. There are few shortcuts to governing well and competently. It takes hard work and constant diligence. Easy solutions appeal only to the simple minded.

The second, though related, blind spot is that more and more communication would miraculously lead to shared values. The more we exchanged thoughts and norms, the closer we would come to a contemporary utopia. Social and ideological frictions could be worked out through our new hyper-communication technologies. Soon, ancient conflicts would be diminished while new agreements were forged. Right, and I have some wonderful land in Florida for sale.

Here is how all these social media platforms actually operate. They are trapped by market dynamics. They are driven to grow and thus reap ever more profits. To do otherwise would confront, even deny, the imperative that governs all large enterprises. Social media networks grow by steadily increasing engagement … more users who stay on longer. Then, you can sell more advertising and grow even faster. Thus, ‘engagement’ becomes the prime outcome measure that drives all corporate decisions. That’s just common sense.

But how to increase engagement? Psych 101 provides the answer. Provide content that appeals to core emotional feelings. The key is to arouse people (though steering people to sexual content might get you into trouble). So, the solution is to steer people toward content reflecting their emotional normative or political priors. But engagement is limited and will soon go extinct if the same material is offered. You have to keep upping the ante by exaggerating the emotional impact of subsequent offerings.

Think about demagogues like Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson. Their claims become increasingly bizarre to keep their audience hooked. Soon, Jones is claiming that the Sandy Hook kids who were gunned down by a mass murderer never existed … the event was staged to take away everyone’s guns. You link users who have identified their initial leanings to ever more egregious content of heightened emotional impact. They will keep hitting the lever to get an ever more impactful hit (increased levels of dopamine) of moral outrage and identity confirmation. Soon, you are steering them into the realm of the paranoid, worlds all but untethered from reality.

It is not long before you have large groups that believe Hillary Clinton runs pedophilia rings out of pizza parlors or that vaccines kill hundreds of thousands of people while implanting the vaccinated with brain-alternating devices designed by Bill Gates and paid for by George Soros. . And these gullible people believe they have done their own research.

The process is remarkably simple and transparent. Market imperative demand profits. Social media profits are based on engagement (number of users plus intensity of use). Engagement demands playing upon initial differences in emotional and normative values. Protocols then facilitate linkages to ever more highly emotional content feeding on those initial differences while amplifying the messages beyond reason. Soon, a moderately conservative or liberal individual succumbs to radical beliefs and positions.

The end result is a radicalization of many users and the demonization of those who don’t agree with them. The people running these platforms are quants by nature. They are outcome driven and prize optimization strategies. Thus, both the culture of the marketplace AND the culture of their technical training and orientation. Both lead them in a similar direction. What they typically don’t possess is a sense of history, context, and a broader understanding of things we usually label as wisdom. They are remarkably narrow while seeming to be whip smart..

The imperatives just described are not new. Simply think back to the days of yellow journalism from well over a century ago. You had many competing local newspapers, the social media of that day, if you will. They also were driven by engagement … how many consumers bought their product as opposed to someone else’s. Inevitably, they also evolved toward making larger and larger unsupportable statements in each edition, hyperbololic claims to grab the reader’s attention and to keep it. Often, each paper had its own political and ideological orientation. The process hasn’t changed much over time. The technology (and its potential impacts) has. Sadly, the potential damage has increased exponentially.

My bottom line is that anyone with any sense of perspective or history could have predicted what would happen. But few did. Did they merely overlook the obvious, or were they merely blinded by power and greed? All we really know is that the stakes are huge!