The malaise of social media cannot be overstated. As this piece by Nick Magguilli recounts social media’s reaction to the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, an American political activist. He was specifically referring to the slew of comments cheering the killing:
“How anyone could cheer for such a thing is beyond me. That’s when it hit me. What I was seeing online wasn’t representative of society at large. It wasn’t representative of most people’s actual opinions and feelings. Those fringe views about Kirk were being normalized to generate more impressions (and money) for the platform.
Not only are there tons of bots and fake accounts on Twitter (which have only gotten worse), but the ability to remain anonymous further exacerbates the issue. There are non-Americans posing as Americans. There are men posing as women. There are those on the right posing as those on the left (and vice versa).
As a result, we don’t know which opinions are real nor how popular they are. When you can buy likes and retweets, you can overstate how much your message actually resonates with people. I know this is happening, but not to what extent.
To make matters worse, social media algorithms literally prioritize the most extreme views because they get the most engagement (and, therefore, make the most money).”
He shares a chart that shows this polarisation to good effect.
So, what can we do about it?
“As a result, moderate, nuanced views are greatly underrepresented on social media. And I can tell you why—because having a centrist opinion makes you an easy target for those with extreme views. For example, if you oppose illegal immigration and are also against ICE terrorizing people, you can be criticized by the far left and the far right. It’s a lose-lose proposition.
Therefore, the rational thing to do (for someone in the middle) is to stay quiet. Because of this, it can feel like people are more divided than they actually are since everyone in the middle isn’t being heard. Noah Smith summarized this dynamic perfectly: “Remember: Before social media, you would never have seen people saying things like this or seen people approving of it. It would all be official condemnations and condolences. Social media is what unleashed the hate and chaos from the lowest depths of our society.”
But, even if social media did unleash more hate and chaos, how much of that hate and chaos is legitimate and how much of it is manufactured? We don’t know.”
Nick ends by saying he is going terminally offline (as opposed to Terminally Online, a phrase referred to those who spend much of their waking hours online in the process losing touch with the real world).
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