On Social Media

I realize I'm likely preaching to the choir here, but I want to get some thoughts down.

First of all, I'd like to differentiate "timeline social media" from "suggestive social media". Timeline social media just puts all the posts from everyone you follow in temporal order and doesn't filter above and beyond what you have explicitly put in place. Suggestive social media decides what you should see next in your feed.

Mastodon and IRC are timeline. Facebook and TikTok are suggestive.

Timeline feeds tend to be federated, as well. There's not much money to be made with them, and often servers are put together by volunteers and run at a loss. People pay for them with their day jobs.

Timeline Social Media is Boring

Put down the pitchfork, gentle reader (readers plural? I can hope); I'm solidly in the timeline social media camp. I don't partake in that other stuff anymore.

But it is boring compared to suggestive social media. I commonly find that when I'm going down my Mastodon feed that's 100% chock-full of topics that I personally curated to be exactly what I wanted to see, I get tired of scrolling after a little bit.

It's just that I find, sooner than later, that I have better things to do. It was fun reading about astronomy and geology and computing for a little bit, and now it's time to work on something else. Maybe like after you read a magazine article, you feel like doing something else.

And yes, I'm trying to make that behavior sound healthy on purpose.

But it's also the Achilles Heel of timeline social media. There's no "hit" like there is with suggestive social media. In comparison to it, timeline social media is as boring as a magazine.

Follow the Money

Between timeline and suggestive social media, I think the money is a major differentiating factor. Facebook exists for a single driving purpose: to make as many bucks as possible. Fuck the world; we're making money!

That's not what their words are in public, of course. They say they're bringing people together and informing them, etc. And yes, some of that is a side effect. But... WE'RE MAKING MONEY!

And you can tell this is the case because if an idea for an improvement shows up on an exec's desk at Facebook the first question is not how it will bring people together and inform them. The first question is HOW MUCH MONEY WILL THIS MAKE US?

Facebook makes virtually all its money by showing ads to people.

• The more ads they show, the more money they make.
• The longer you stay on the site, the more ads they show.
• The longer you stay on the site, the more money they make.

So it's all about keeping you on the site. And they're not going to do that by being as boring as a magazine.

Follow the Influence?

There's the whole question (before the Supreme Court of the United States today, in fact) of whether or not TikTok should be banned in the US. The concern is that it's being controlled by a foreign, semi-adversarial government and that it can be used in large-scale population manipulation.

And frankly, TikTok probably can be used in this way. And we probably saw that

in the recent Romanian election.

When it comes to manipulation at scale like this, someone is likely still making money somewhere, but the goal for maximizing effects is the same: you need people staying on the site as long as possible. And you won't get there by being as boring as a magazine.

The Damage

From the suggestive social media's perspective, how do we keep as many people on the site as possible for as long as possible?

You show them things that trigger an emotional response. And the very best thing for doing that is to show them disturbing things.

"Doomscrolling" is what happens when you just can't stop yourself from scrolling on and on through the infinite list of awful things that are happening right now. There's a reason "doomscrolling" is a word and "happy-scrolling" is not. Doomscrolling is the far more command and effective of the two. You'll get more eyeball-minutes showing natural disasters than you will kittens.

And that's a harsh thing to expose a human to day-in and day-out. People feel depressed, terminate relationships with friends and family, and become less effective in their lives in the actual world. It causes lasting mental damage. Meanwhile, the suggestive social media sites keep raking in the cash.

You might counter-argue that you like kittens and your feed is full of kittens. And kitten-scrolling is certainly worlds better than doomscrolling, I agree. It's not even on the same planet. But I'd still argue back that being kept on a site longer than I should so the owners can make a bigger buck isn't the best thing for me. If this were a kitten magazine, I would have put it down 30 minutes ago.

Additionally, there are a lot of nasty people on the Internet who like to troll you. And suggestive social media sites are more than happy to show you the comments by these people to keep you on the site as long as they can at the expense of your mental health.

On timeline sites, blocking is easy and effective. Doomscrolling stops when you stop (or don't start) following tags or people who participate. And that makes it a very, very boring and effective boon for your well-being.

The Division

Humans love to tribe up. Something about survival of the fittest is probably back there somewhere. We find our group of like-minded individuals, and "outsiders" are immediately suspect to be point of being shunned or worse.

It's always "us" and "them". And we as humans kinda like it that way, don't we. It feels good to be on a team, right?

But this natural human desire is ripe for exploitation. Our being "for" our team and "against" the other team are both driven by it. Which means we tend to like it when someone points out the division between us. We like to know that we're on the right team and "they" are not.

Not only did suggestive social media figure out this was a great way to keep you scrolling (and them making money). It tends to keep you in an echo chamber, and causes you to believe that your side is under massive attack by the other. And certain opportunistic users of social media have used it to gain influence and power, again, at the users' expense.

And this division in the US and a lot of other countries has grown to the point that it's unclear if it can be healed without major and possibly violent upheaval.

The Addiction

We can't get enough of the things that make suggestive social media compelling. Just like I can't get enough Nutter Butters (a peanut butter sandwich cookie that's unhealthy in quantities that I can easily consume), people have a very difficult time quitting suggestive social media.

And that's 100% by design and 100% so that those companies can make more money. And it's at our expense.

My Hands are Tied

I'm a US citizen and I really do admire freedom of speech. I and do believe that people need to just put up with speech they don't like (within the bounds of the law—there are some things you're not allowed to say here).

Part of that is that the government has limited say in controlling what a private company like Facebook or TikTok can or can't post. This most definitely includes which user comments a service decides to share or cancel. (This should make sense; if you spend your money running a web server, do you want the government telling you that you can't delete content that you're paying to host?)

In terms of removing posts, the government can make suggestions ("hey this post violates your terms of service; maybe check it out"), but not requirements ("if you don't remove this post, we're going to make sure our legislation is beneficial to your competitors" or "if you don't remove this post, you're going to die in a mysterious plane crash").

So what about that TikTok ban? As of this writing, AP is reporting that the Justices seem likely to uphold the ban. I do find this more than a little alarming in terms of global free speech. Could be worse, but also could be better.

I abhor a lot of the content on social media, the Internet, and in the world. And part of me thinks it would be nice if someone just waved a wand and it all went away.

But two things come to mind:

• This nasty shit, for better or worse, exists because of the human condition, and it's never, ever going away. Welcome to the planet.
• We know that having the government control the media is, by far, the greater of the two evils. If you don't like nasty people on the Internet, you should really, really, really not like the government to control it.

So I am in an interesting position. I think suggestive social media is destroying individuals and the fabric of society, and I also don't feel it's the government's place to do anything about that.

What to Do?

I don't know.

I mean, I know what I should, personally, do. And it's this:

• Don't use suggestive social media.
• Try to convince everyone else to not use it, too.

Great. So, doing the math, the global consequences of my actions, above, amount to basically... jack. Good job, me.

What I really need is to get a couple hundred billion dollars together and buy off the greedy assholes in power. But mine isn't the kind of personality to try to get that kind of money, and if it were, I'd probably just be one of them.

If you have any better ideas, I'd love to hear them.

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