The “Bible Genesis” tells a story that the descendants of Noah were going to build a high tower leading to heaven on the plain of Shina. In order to prevent them from doing so, God made them who originally spoke the same language become language barriers, and the result not only The Babel Tower project cannot continue, and human beings are caught in disputes and wars because of their inability to communicate.
From printing, telegraph, telephone, television to the Internet, thousands of years later, not only is the geographical area no longer an obstacle, even two people who speak different languages can use Google Translate to communicate normally online. But the strange thing is that people who have long been shaped by globalization and the Internet into “global villagers” are increasingly like the ancestors in the ruins of the Tower of Babel on social platforms, unable to understand each other’s words and arguing endlessly.
In the cover article of the May issue of The Atlantic, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores why social media platforms that are supposed to facilitate communication are acting like God’s “singling finger” that keeps people trapped In the end of the quarrel.
When did social media “go bad”?
a thumb and two arrows
“Why has life in America become so stupid over the past decade?”
Haight, the Atlantic Monthly article begins with a somewhat lurid headline.
He believes that the intensification of social contradictions in the United States in the past decade, the widening of the class gap, and the sharp confrontation between the Democratic and Republican parties and their supporters have made “people seem to live in the ruins of the collapsed Tower of Babel.” And the rise and growth of social media is to blame.
Sociologists believe that there are three main forces that unify democracies: social capital (highly credible social networks), strong institutions, and a common narrative . And social media has succeeded in destroying the three pillars one after another, resulting in the actual “division” of the nation.
But social media is not born or is a bad seed. Facebook, which appeared in 2004, like its “predecessor” Myspace, and even earlier email and the Internet, does promote people’s communication with advanced technology. At that time, people posted their children and pets on social media, or wrote their own songs, and strangers could also get to know each other through the transmission of bits.
The change occurred in 2009, the year Facebook launched the “Like” button that would later be copied by various competitors. This thumbs up symbolizing liking later became the company’s logo at the gate of the Silicon Valley campus until the company changed its name last year. Meta was just replaced.
In October, Facebook replaced “Like” in front of the Menlo Park campus with “Meta” | Getty Images
Competitor Twitter launched a more lethal function in the same year – Retweet, Facebook followed suit and launched the same “Share” function – like and share in the subsequent wave of mobile Internet. , become the standard configuration of every mobile app.
Just two seemingly simple new features destroyed the first pillar above, social capital. With the blessing of likes and sharing, social network users are no longer concerned about the dynamics of relatives and friends, but whether the carefully created “personal design” has received more social feedback – the purpose of users using social networks is from communication And communication, turned into a performance to build a personal brand. Obviously, people who are passionate about acting cannot communicate in depth.
The addition of the like and share functions makes the platform more aware of which content is more likely to attract users’ attention, which directly inspired the birth of the so-called “thousands of people and thousands of faces” customized information flow. Sadly, according to research, content that triggers emotions, especially anger among different groups, is the most likely to get high retweets. This also paved the way for the following mutual attacks between different political parties and groups.
The engineer who developed the “Retweet” button for Twitter later regretted it, saying the feature was like “giving a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.” It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but giving everyone a dart bag with an unlimited supply would be more appropriate.
Not everyone who gets a dart will throw it at each other like a lunatic, only the really lunatic do that, and it just so happens that social media gives these people a chance. Research shows that just like violent video games do not make teenagers violent, social media does not make all users into trolls, but it does make it easier for some users who are already keen to “troll people” Attack more people.
And what groups are the most prolific “trollers”? According to a survey by Hidden Tribes in the United States, the ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal groups on both ends of the political spectrum, accounting for less than 10% of the U.S. population respectively, are the two most active groups on social media.
Interestingly, these two groups are also the “whitest and richest” groups in the United States – in a sense, the “dart melee” of social media is actually two groups that do not represent the broad spectrum of the United States at all. struggle between elite groups of the masses.
As the highest level of “trolls”, the two groups are not only the best at attacking each other, but at the same time they are good at attacking their stable conservative and neutral partners in the same camp, taking away the latter’s right to speak, or intensifying them into their own. Radical “sprayers”.
Trump is the most successful politician in the post-Babel era | CNET
In such a state, those who are most likely to gain benefits are actually those who are best at stirring up people’s emotions and love social networks. Trump, who “rules the country on Twitter”, was elected president of the United States, using social media to divide the crowd. The increasingly intensified contradictions that followed, and Cambridge Analytica proved with practical examples that, when used properly, social media can be more useful than continuous offline speeches.
Few things are more visible on social media than the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago. On the one hand, conservatives have tried to belittle the power of the new crown virus, and even made a brain-dead post that the new crown vaccine is a Bill Gates conspiracy, so that people are mocked that the new crown may be the most effective disease to kill Republicans who are determined not to wear masks. . On the other hand, liberals who are trying to spread the seriousness of the new crown, support the strictest epidemic control policies, and do not care about the psychological impact of measures such as school closures on children.
Another consequence of the flying darts on social media is that experts from universities, research institutes, and administrative agencies begin to “silence” for fear of being targeted, even if they have enough knowledge to make decisions. Judgment, will also be afraid of being bullied by the Internet and will not take action.
What’s more, employees and students are “internally scrutinized” because they are worried that people in the organization will be outraged by netizens for expressing their opinions on social media. And the progress of the academic world is precisely because of outspoken debate, and the “new code of conduct” of social media has made this contention no longer, so that “the whole country has fallen into structural stupidity.”
In the article, Haight despairingly predicts that the “stupid decade” is not “just a phase.”
Musk’s nostalgia and hallucinations
Coincidentally, just as Hite’s article was published, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, announced on Twitter that he wanted to acquire Twitter for nearly $43 billion . Previously, he had just been exposed as the largest shareholder of Twitter, and successfully completed the proposal for the “modify tweet” function with a vote tweet.
Compared with the former president, Silicon Valley Iron Man’s rank and ability on Twitter are only not weak. Just some joke-like jokes can make the stock price of cryptocurrencies or Tesla soar, so that the SEC has repeatedly Warning to Musk.
Musk wants to buy Twitter for more than $40 billion, and continues to work on it | The Verge
However, being an influencer on social media is one thing, and running a social media platform is something else entirely. Regarding the “scandal” between Musk and Twitter, the former Reddit CEO, Yishan Wong, who is now involved in the encryption business, sent more than a dozen tweets in a row on Twitter, sincerely admonishing Musk not to get involved in social media The platform is muddy water.
For Musk not to take over Twitter, Huang Yishan gave the reason that, as the same “generation X” (born in 1965-1980), Musk and him were in contact with and started a career in the 1990s, the Internet Still something new, a new world and a new frontier. At that time, the “freedom of speech” people pursued was nothing more than grabbing the publishing rights of adult content and violent games from religious conservatives.
Now, more than 20 years later, the Internet is no longer a “new frontier” and a paradise for a few people. The whole world is already on the Internet. What people on the Internet are doing is launching various “culture wars” with each other, trying to take away each other’s right to speak. Social media as a platform is in a difficult position, because suppressing the speech of any party will be seen as prejudice and discrimination. But more often, both sides of the “belligerent” accuse the platform of discriminating.
Compared with Haite, Huang Yishan is more pessimistic. He even believes that since Facebook was founded in 2004, the network environment has deteriorated. And Musk dared to take over Twitter rashly, precisely because at that time he began to engage in “physical industries” such as electric vehicles and rockets, without realizing the changes in the social media environment.
Former Reddit CEO Huang Yishan sends a long message to discourage Musk from taking over Twitter｜Twitter
In the end, Huang believes that if Musk actually runs Twitter, it “would be very painful” (in for a world of pain).
To the exhortation of the old “PayPal gangster” old comrades in arms, Musk responded on Twitter: After reading it, there is only one thought, Twitter should really have launched the function of long tweets a long time ago.
In a sense, Huang’s tweet can be seen as a statement of Haite’s article. As the top executive who once helmed Reddit, Huang’s “painful experience” in operating the social platform is obviously more direct than Haite’s.
” You know what social platform engineers are thinking? They just want to launch new features, they absolutely don’t want to arbitrate any user’s bullshit war! ” Huang made the final “cry” at the end of the tweet.
But he may not have realized that it was actually the lines of code written by the engineers behind the social platform, and the new features one after another, that to some extent led to the deterioration of the network environment that Huang criticized. Like retweets and likes, every new A/B-tested feature on social media is an engineering marvel that can dramatically improve data, but at the same time, it can end up being a sociological disaster.
At present, what the executives of Internet giants urgently need may not be the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, but some basic sociological theories and knowledge.
“This is a time of chaos and loss, but it’s also a time to reflect, listen and build,” Hayter wrote at the end.
Reference article
WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
Author: Jonathan Haidt
https://ift.tt/tb6Nj0Q
Header image credit: Nicolás Ortega
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