Uniform Thought Machines: Global Competition for Attention
How social media is a failed experiment of a global socialization space that became a competition battleground for attention
Uniform Thought Machines: Enter The Global Attention Arena of Social Media
Everyone despises social media in some form, and the predominant narratives for criticism have centered around algorithms and censorship - using the platforms to control information and public opinion. No doubt, these are significant issues warping society in negative ways.
However, what if we got rid of all the algorithms? Would this fix the problems of social media? Disturbingly, the answer is no. The design, or the architecture, of social media is itself a fundamental problem that is, in effect, the antithesis of normal human social interaction.
The Unnatural Environment Warps Our Perspectives and Behavior
Social media places us into an unnatural environment in which our intuitions, or the signals we use to interpret meaning, become hijacked, subverted, and unreliable for making sense of the social environment. The result is that we modify our behaviors in very unnatural ways, resulting in both conformity of perspectives and grandiose exhibitions of attention-seeking behavior.
Why Does Social Media Negatively Affect Our Communication?
It is predominantly a function of attempting to socialize in a global, non-private space, in which we have no boundaries, combined with the fact that we lose most of our social signals in an online environment. We only have the text on the screen to interpret, but human communication is vastly more complex and rich in context when done in person. Without that context, we tend to have a distorted and incomplete perspective of most online communication. Furthermore, the structure of social media tends to make all text communication extremely brief, adding to the lack-of-context problem.
Social Engineering: By Accident or Design?
Before we analyze the fundamentals of social media’s effects on socialization we should identify the unique aspects that algorithms add as a top manipulative layer. These algorithmic layers can be viewed as falling into two major categories: a) engagement hacking and b) social engineering.
Engagement Hacking: Best Intentions Became Terrible Outcomes
Social media initially had two objectives: it wanted to create an enjoyable experience and find a way to be profitable, such that the services could continue. Early features such as the “like” button, were attempts at making the experience simply enjoyable, as described in the documentary The Social Dilemma.
“It is very common for humans to develop things with the best of intentions that have unintended, negative consequences.”
Justin Rosenstein, creator of the like button
What was actually discovered was a very effective engagement hook: a trigger for dopamine that keeps individuals engaged to whatever is in their view. As the need to find revenue was a paramount issue, this effect turned out to be a great method to keep users engaged, which assisted the model with building advertising revenue from the user-generated content.
Social Engineering: Power And Opportunity Combine
The model for engagement continued to become more sophisticated, and the driver for the evolution of the model is the metrics behind total user engagement. The end goal is to simply increase the numbers: the actions users take and the screen time spent on the application.
The more screen time available, the more ads that can be shown, and more revenue can be generated. However, what keeps individuals engaged doesn’t need to be anything that has a positive context. Negative context is often even more effective at eliciting a response that captures someone’s attention. Therefore, as algorithms are tweaked to provide higher engagement metrics, they are simultaneously fueling negative interactions.
Social Media Inherited Responsibility It Was Unprepared to Handle
Social media subsequently found itself in a role for which it was never prepared to handle: responsibility beyond its knowledge and capabilities. Negative interactions, on the surface, seemed like an obvious and apparent problem that required intervention.
The following is an extremely well stated observation of precisely the position that unfortunately the builders of social media platforms found themselves in.
“Facebook is removing content because they wanted to make money with a website, and the job of statecraft fell in their laps in the process.
They didn't volunteer, they aren't qualified, nobody told them they were signing up to run a kingdom, let alone the world. So they don't produce lofty, philosophical, well-thought-out positions on free speech and human rights.
They don't carefully manage the public square with the long term good of humanity in mind. They make the same expedient, best-effort, unenlightened, sounds-good-to-me decisions that literally every poorly qualified there-for-the-wrong-reasons ruler in all of history has made.
Your majesty, people are dying because cats are vessels of Satan! By royal decree, kill the cats. That's all this is.
I think they are trying, and I wish they had a Thomas Jefferson on staff and saw themselves as needing one. But they don't.”
The Fall From Well-Meaning Intention Into Authoritarianism
So, they did what any individual does who wishes to make the world a better place and discovers they also have the means to do so: they embarked on a journey that leads to the Paradox of Tyranny.
The actions that seem obvious and intuitive often turn out to be the worst possible ones upon reflection. However, wisdom requires extraordinary time, built on experience, deep contemplation, and historical reflections. Our current principles of freedom and liberty came about over a process that started with the Charter of Liberties from 1100, nearly a millennium ago - centuries of accumulated knowledge and experience in the pursuit of moderating and limiting governing powers. Likely, none of the stewards of social media are aware of what they need to know in this regard.
Without the prerequisite wisdom to understand the consequences of their actions, social media commenced on fixing what was perceived to be wrongs and injustices on their platforms and in the greater society, unknowingly following the missteps of countless others prior.
Unmoderated Spaces: What Happens Without Mods?
What would social media look like without algorithms or moderation? Do all the problems go away, or are there other negative inherent forces at play?
Completely unmoderated spaces, open to the entire world, typically devolve into bedlam. Why? Because of the low cost of disruption that does not occur in real life. Quality content and information is expensive to produce in comparison. Disruptive content, on the other hand, is cheap and can be reproduced efficiently at scale with cheap resources or automation. In an unmoderated online space, quality content will always be drowned out by disruptive noise. Spamming and trolling will tend to dominate. In contrast, real-life activities cost more in resources and effort, as individuals must organize, travel, and pay expenses incurred, and their activities also tend to be tempered because they may have reputational consequences, as they are not anonymous online accounts.
The 3 Forms of Social Media Moderation
We can think of moderation as existing in multiple forms. One form is to simply establish order, preventing spam and troll content, so that conversation can be functional. The next form is topic moderation, with the purpose of keeping a discussion space oriented on the goals, interests, or objectives of the group. Finally, there is opinion moderation, which would generally be considered hostile moderation, as it attempts to control narratives.
Moderation Is Unnatural But Unavoidable At Scale
These issues of moderation tend to become mostly apparent at large scale. Conflicting views, opinions, and nefarious actors are inevitable in an unlimited participation public forum. Moderators are often anonymous, unelected, and uninvited agents of interference in public discourse over-selected for dispositions inclined to find great satisfaction in controlling what others are allowed to say. Yet, they are necessitated due to the unique conditions mentioned above of fully open online spaces.
Moderation Not Needed in the Real World
In the physical real world, even large gatherings rarely require the concept of moderation. This is because everyone self-selects into the conversations, topics, and interactions with other individuals with which they are interested. In a large public space, people will gather and organize into smaller groups, all through voluntary association. Conversations of others across the room are drowned out by those local to you.
Replicating the Online World in the Real World Fails Spectacularly
If we were to attempt to replicate the experiment of social media in the real world, then everyone attending a public gathering would each wield a megaphone and be required to use it for anything spoken. There is no locality of conversation, as any utterance, no matter for whom it is intended, will be heard by all. Focusing on any productive conversation becomes almost futile, as the background is filled with constant competing distractions that are often purposely nonsensical and sensational, as they become the only effective means to gather attention and be heard.
Any attempts at rationality are countered with statements of absurdity, not because they are genuinely believed, but because they are desperate attempts to garner attention from the crowd. All statements ever spoken are recorded, only to be used as a mechanism for out-of-context disruptions at some future point by opportunists vying for dominance of attention.
The Doomed-To-Fail Experiment
This imagined chaotic scene, representative of a real-life manifestation of the rules and conditions exhibited by social media, calls into question the sanity of even attempting to create such an environment at all. It seems to be completely unaligned and unnatural to our methods of communication and socialization, a doomed-to-fail experiment that was conducted on the majority of the entire world’s civilization.
Social Media: Bubble Destroyer or Creator?
Social media was perceived as the thing that would free us from our bubbles of knowledge. The implication being that this technology would expose you to the most diverse set of ideas, that you are well-informed and will be more aware of what is happening in the world. You are in the community of everyone and therefore will be exposed to the maximum possible set of perspectives, providing you with the essential knowledge for best judgment.
Whatever communication that occurs outside of the major social media platforms is therefore perceived as echo chambers or bubbles of isolation. Islands of knowledge that couldn’t possibly be aware of the important issues and perspectives of the world.
However, do the major social media platforms actually create such an environment? Do they exist outside the concept of any type of bubble of knowledge and perspectives? Or is it, in reality, one very large bubble in which the participants tend to conform to the mass consensus?
The Social Media Global Space Becomes an Arena
There are multiple dynamics that work in opposition to the intent of social media being a welcoming space for a broader set of ideas to be discussed and shared rationally. Instead, we have a space that looks more akin to a battlefield in which the survivors have been conformed to the conditions that facilitate attention
Negative Interactions Result in Self-Moderation
First, there is the hesitancy to introduce points of view that are in strong opposition to the norm. This is a self-modifying behavior where the individual is reluctant to engage in discussion that may result in criticism. How many negative interactions does it take for an individual to change their behavior? Negative interactions often carry much stronger emotional weight than positive interactions. A person may receive a hundred compliments, and a single very strongly worded attack can destroy the positivity felt by all others. This results in the self-moderation of ideas or points of view willingly discussed.
We Modify What We Say for Acceptance
Second, is the desire to be accepted. Everyone has a desire for belonging. Many will temper their views so as to feel accepted. The larger the community, the more normalized will be the views. Individuals will naturally adapt to some degree to fit the consensus norms of the group.
We Adapt For Maximum Engagement
Third, social media has introduced a new dynamic that exploits every individual’s desire for recognition and significance. It is an opportunity for fame and fame is an opportunity for fortune. This results in searching for views and behaviors that will bring about maximum attention or engagement from the mass. The effect is that emergent behaviors form via attention-seeking goals that then become normalized.
Optimizing for Maximum Engagement Descends Into Erratic Behaviors
Since the origin of these behaviors is not seeking out productive accomplishments, such as solving novel problems or providing realized value to anyone, they tend to gravitate towards harmful, decadent, risky, or other extravagant behaviors as a means to capture the gaze of the mindless zombie horde of perpetual scrolling users.
Social media is the rare space where attention can be awarded for the most trivial and inconsequential actions. Having spent years mastering a skill or knowledge isn’t necessary as would be typical in the real world. Therefore the additional fuel to the dopamine surge comes from the gambler’s addiction dynamics. Any post might become a viral post. Hooked becomes the mass, endlessly scrolling and posting for what might be delivered out of the social media slot machine.
How the Desire for Acceptance and Outrage Merge Into One
It would seem that the second and third dynamics are in complete opposition. However, they synergistically work together to transform outlying behavior into normalized behavior.
This is how we arrive at what would seem bizarrely anti-normative establishing itself as the norm, as we have attention-seeking behaviors that then gravitate towards the most common and effective of such behaviors, resulting in this narrow set of negative behaviors becoming very popular. This satisfies the condition of the individuals who are seeking both attention and belonging. They are being outrageous, but everyone is doing it.
The Collateral Damage to Normal Dialogue
There are additionally many detrimental side effects to society from the emergent attention-seeking behaviors that affect even those not participating in such activities. Each side, representing the opposing arguments, becomes amplification mirrors for the worst points of view of the other side, as that is a very effective attention hook. In other words, most are seeking to find the most provocative statements or construct out-of-context statements to maximize all of the benefits of attention rewards.
It becomes difficult to know just how many participants in these types of conversations actually hold genuine views, as the incentives push towards the more extreme for greater engagement. The tragedy is that each opposing side reacts to each escalation as if they are genuine, until it is all noise and impossible to discern or quantify any metric of reality. Observers of these activities get caught up in the anxiety induced by the constant bombardment of seemingly tragic and imminent concerns, for which some do not even exist in reality but are just the manifestations of attention-seeking.
Not Everything is Attention: The Natural Inclination to Defend Our Space
Why is it that those who are not attention-seekers themselves, often get caught up in the noise of it all? What incentivizes us all to jump into a conversation among strangers we don’t know, as if it is some dire imperative that we do so?
This is in stark contrast to how we behave in real life. We don’t just jump into the middle of a conversation with people we don’t know and start imposing our opinions.
Potentially because we feel it is within our “space”. Our brain likely doesn’t perceive the distinction, as anything online is not a natural environment that our brains developed within. In the real world, any conversation that we are processing is generally local to us and likely has an impact on our lives.
Additionally, we are unable to quantify risk in the online space. If something is ignored, we wonder, will it proliferate unchallenged in the global space of social media? This is distinctly different from forums and more private spaces, which we generally see them as isolated or contained. We are more likely to ignore them as we mostly do with other people’s activities in real life.
We generally struggle to make sense of and socially function in a global space that is totally incompatible with how we normally socially interact. It messes with where we see the boundaries for our space and our social circles. We can’t accurately gauge the significance of what we see, for numerous reasons as it may be trolling, bots, or algorithms, etc., that make what we see appear to be representative of broad acceptance, when in reality it may be nothing of the sort.
This isn’t to say we should ignore all discourse online, but that we are unable to accurately determine which discourse matters and is truly important to us; therefore, we end up entering into arguments that serve no purpose other than the loss of our valuable time.
Fundamentally the Problems Arise From the Architecture of a Global Space
All of the effects described above are inherent in the architecture of most of the social media platforms and exist as a basis prior to the addition of any type of moderation or algorithmic manipulations that might also exist on top of these effects. The algorithms simply make an already problematic situation worse, as they don’t address the core issues that cause the rise of the problems.
However, a glimpse of socialization before mass social media might give us hints as to what better structures might look like, if by some means they could still exist.
Pre Social Media: Life Before The World Changed
Communication prior to social media might be perceived as primitive, archaic, limited, and void of a new world of ideas that exist today in modern society. How could it possibly be superior to the technological advances that we now have as the future is always progress, right?
But what if we actually gave up a plethora of advantages in the trade-off of inviting the entire world into the same discussion space? What if existing in bubbles actually was an advantage for nearly everything that we perceived would be advantageous of an unlimited open community?
How We Communicated Before Social Media
Prior to the entire-world-shares-same-space social media, communication existed in vast numbers of small website forums and discussion groups across the internet. Also, and importantly, prior to smart phones there was still far more communication that occurred person-to-person in real life.
The advantages are numerous, but all lead towards individuals self-directing their lives versus being caught up in the wake of social phenomena seemingly out of their control.
Bubbles Are Not a Negative, They Are Critically Important for Independent Thought
The different outcomes arise precisely from being in bubbles, but not just one gigantic bubble. Instead, everyone is in many small but diverse bubbles. It is far more decentralized than what exists today, as there is not a single point of control for moderation or policy for every conversation spoken on Earth.
Each of these small bubbles, which we will call social circles, are semi-private. The conversations are not broadcast out to the entire world. There are still group dynamics at play that shape conversations, but the point is that there are a multitude of these social circles that exist. Individuals discover and join those with which they find common interests.
The Advantages of Numerous Bubbles or Social Circles
There is less to gain from attention-seeking behavior in small social circles, and there isn’t the inherent need to do such simply to be heard. Controversial ideas tend to be less confrontational or threatening, as every type of idea has more or less its own space where those who wish to participate in that type of discussion voluntarily do so.
Therefore, censorship is not seen as an essential means to have civil discourse, as most simply gravitate to whatever social circles welcome the types of conversations they wish to have. Additionally, there isn’t the concept of magnification of threats or outrage, meaning that what might represent some infinitesimally small proportion of views can not go viral to create the appearance of a broad acceptance of such views.
There Was No Following or Followers, This Was Better
The concept of having a home feed or following individuals mostly doesn’t exist. Therefore, you are not bombarded with topics out of the lane of your conversational interests. In the real world, we don’t follow individuals and listen in to every thought they have throughout the day. If we did, we would likely find that to also be an unpleasant experience.
Voluntary Associations Seeking Common Interests And Goals
Everyone we meet, all of our friends and acquaintances, have some ideas with which we would strongly disagree. Yet, we mostly navigate this space without conflict because, with in-person contact, we are more oriented towards associations that are built on common interests and goals, and we de-emphasize our differences. Therefore, we voluntarily engage with these other individuals around activities for which we find mutual curiosities, and for other activities, we perform them apart.
Furthermore, in-person conversation allows for far more nuance and understanding possible than in online spaces. We can easily perceive if someone is uncomfortable with a conversation topic and maneuver the conversation accordingly to avoid conflict.
This early filter or warning mechanism allows us to discover with whom we can discuss certain topics and with whom we should more delicately navigate those boundaries. Having difficult conversations online is often nearly impossible, but in-person allows the opportunity to gradually approach subjects and explain at a pace the listener is capable of following, which can only be achieved through the type of feedback available via expression, tone, and body language.
Diverse Semi-Private Social Circles Were Substantially Superior
Therefore, we find that prior to the inception of mass social media, individuals in society are members of many social circles. Each allows the expression of ideas without censorship or undue social pressure to self-moderate ideas, as we are able to join communities that are eager to participate with us in such conversations. Each such social circle allows for more in-depth and nuanced conversation that is more productive without the distractions of attention-seekers hijacking the stage.
Participating in many circles allows for greater diversification of ideas, as there is not a global conformative pressure on such individual circles. This provides opportunities for strongly conflicting ideas to be discussed and explored without actually being disruptive or necessarily divisive.
These effects are only strengthened in relation to ever smaller social circles, until we reach one-on-one in-person communication as the pinnacle of meaningful social interaction. In-person communication is far higher bandwidth and carries multiple signals in parallel, that being the primary message combined with other signals that help us interpret the message in the correct context. Is the message serious, a joke, sarcasm, etc.? We are able to intuit if our message is understood and provide more context when needed, often without even being asked to do so. Furthermore, the frame of mind is different. There are no group pressures or outside influences to interfere.
A very concise summary of the disparity that represents what was and what now is the societal condition could be stated as the following…
Pre-social media: Seek people with which I have things in common. Hang out with them and enjoy life.
Post-social media: Seek people with which I only have disagreements, harass them, ridicule them and live in misery because they exist.
Future Social Media: Can We Build Something Better?
A better social media experience would be one that allowed for more self-directed engagement for precisely the type of conversations for which an individual is interested. This is the inherent advantage of in-person, real-life conversations, as well as many small, distributed forums or groups that were popular prior to mass social media.
This could only be accomplished if social media placed more control into the hands of the individual user to choose their own type of experience and content, allowing users the ability to build more positive directed interactions on the platforms.
I would argue that the entire concept of following individuals on social media is flawed by design. As stated previously in this article, it doesn’t represent anything we would want to do in the real world. We generally are not interested in following every thought of any individual. A better concept might be one in which users post to their own topic channels, and we can subscribe to those channels instead of the user.
Some platforms that are already somewhat oriented towards smaller social circles with community building are Locals and this platform, Substack. Both have a form of optional gated memberships through paywalls. This becomes an effective self-selection mechanic that filters out only those truly interested in the content area. Also, mass social media has spawned a horde of habitual trolling armies, and currently membership-only access is one method to keep them at bay.
Mind Prison is an oasis for human thought, attempting to survive amidst the dead internet. I typically spend hours to days on articles, including creating the illustrations for each. I hope if you find them valuable and you still appreciate the creations from human beings, you will consider subscribing. Thank you!
No compass through the dark exists without hope of reaching the other side and the belief that it matters …
Impressive work
Great Read!