6min chapter

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation cover image

Chris Bail - Online Extremism, Trolls, & the Myth of the Echo Chamber

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

CHAPTER

Is There Any Parallel There?

I feel like we're on sort of a rudderless ship with social media. We never step back and ask, like, what is the purpose of social media? Rihte ike, should there be more content moderation? Should there not? I think if you ask most people, lhike, they can't even articulate it. Rit's just a thing that we do. At this point, it's like, yoo, i got to check twitter righter. Ther, there is no purpose to fat peron twitteri to look up biras when i don't remember the now,. So, i c know. But seriously, there's no point, right?

00:00
Speaker 1
I
Speaker 2
do hear so many people talking about, like, werld, we're just going to get off a social media and go live on a commune. And i think the majority of people are not going to do that, but a small subsect of people will do that. Ino, how ow te end up in communes in colts because we need, we need identity en when we're all rye yu, right? I feel like the talk, like commune talk, is coming up more and more and more. And unlike you guys, you know, it's the same thing. It's just like in perse in a couple of yearsye, why? Why must we need community like this? I don't know if this is very
Speaker 1
intervenient.
Speaker 3
It is, righti, i would like to stop needing identityhe community very badly. But im you know, it's almost like we need to combat narcissism, because they're the ones who are on lines saying, i'm not saying they're all narcissus, that everybody on twitter with the following is a narcissus, but there is this way of beodi, there's this way of behaving that we centre arund as human beings. And it's almost like we have to figure out how to stop circling around narcissus, ecause it just keeps happening. Because we're drawn to people who make really lod statements with lots of confidence. So you can be the craziest cult leader on the planet, but if you're like, i think they know what they're doing, so i'm just going to go along with it. You know, is there any parallel there? Well,
Speaker 1
i thinkli jus its against this question of where we're going. You know, i i feel like we're on sort of a rudderless ship with social media. You know, like nobody steps back and says like, hey, this isn't working too well. What could we do differently? You know? Instead, it's like, he given that we have a bunch of narcissus ruin it for the rest of us, how can we maybe convinced them to be a little less awful? Right? That's serto the tone of our conversation, right? Not right in the companies. That's the tone of th conversation in policy regulation. That's the tone of te conversation. Rihte ike, should there be more content moderation? Should there not? And the problem for me is just, like, we never step back and ask, like, what is the purpose of social media? You know, i love the question that you ask me at the beginning this interview, which is, why do people use social media? Rihte and i think if you ask most people, lhike, they can't even articulate it. Rit's just a thing that we do. It's like, you know, taking a shower. At this point, it's like, yoo, i got to check twitter righter. It's not like it very rarely is it like this wilful thing, where weor, oh, i'm going to go, you know, have a laugh on twitter. Like it's sort of like these things in our pockets ere, like, constantly there for us to check, and may bother us if we don't, right? But, you know, so we have this sort of like, rudderless experience on social metio where it's like, what are we even doing? You know? Ther, there is no purpose to fat peron
Speaker 2
twitteri to look up biras when i don't remember the
Speaker 1
now, i doubt. I talk to my, my, my college students about this lot, andim likeyou not lie. I i said, what's the purpose tof face blacknes? Like, oh, that's where we pretend that we use social media for our parents and grandparents so that they don't look us up on ti. So, i c know. But seriously, there's no point, right? And that's a big problem, because everything follows from that purpose, right? If the purpose is influence or culture and advertising and biral diffusion, which is pretty much how every platform is set up to promote those things, like, that's what we're going to get. We are going to reward narcicism. Were oing to reward extremism, or gan roard. So lake, i think it has to sort of step back for a moment. You know, even if we all, like, if we again, we're a little more introspectively, what are we hoping to get out of social media? I mean, better relationships, more useful information, more high quality information. You know, there's a market there. You like, the thing that i have, the thing that gives me hope, like, ok, so i'm pretty pessimistic at times, but like, you know, this is one thing i'm actually sort of optimistic about. Nobody's really happy with social media. You like, nobody would say, like, don't you think twitter ar just doing a great job? O or fath you know, you know that, you know, it's, it's exactly the opposite, right? There's an appetite like, can't we do better? Isn't there a way that we can make this fetter? And instead, again, of like, trying to fix a broken system, i think we just need to step back and say, ok, we are early in the story of social media. There are so many other options. And we need creativity. That's what we need right now. Not like, you know, more hard work, r more like e we just need ideas. And, you know, the one thing that gives me you know, hope is that this sector is, you know, full of creative people. And and hopefully people outside of the tex sector will come in too and say, like, beo, maybe it's social science that should guide us. Maybe we should use that hundred and 50 number. Don't pint iti. Don't want that job. How do we we know, maybe it's, maybe it's we cut down the number of connections we can have. Maybe it's something even more fundamental, like, why do we even have news feeds? Like, news feeds are weird when you think about it. I'm interacting with bits of information, not people, right? I'm not seeing a group of people like i would if i walked int like, a cocktail party or something like that. And so i'm just broad, you know, why, you know, confronted with these, like, angry messages again and again and again. And that's just a really weird way to interact with the world. You knowi we see the world as social groups, as communities, as towns, as villages, as social networks. Riht, like, couldn't we get more creative with the way that social meget even just looks, let alone why we build it, or how, you know, to make it a more natural experience like these are the types of things that get me excited and t that make me think, you knowh, we're early in the story. We got a long way to go. B te cies is that means it can only get better from here.
Speaker 3
So maybe we just need to swallow am ham and oppost something as going to get no likes
Speaker 2
because it's moderat dod, so it's not going to get any love.

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