Social media personalization has turned the public sphere into an insane asylum, where every person can have their own reality. So says Maria Ressa recently, describing the results of a report from a group of data scientists about the US information ecosystem. The authors are from a group called The Nerve that she founded.
I wrote about Ressa when she won the Nobel Peace prize back in 2021, for her work running the Philippine online news site Rappler. She continues to innovate and afflict the comfortable, as the saying goes. She spoke earlier this month at an event at Columbia University where she covered the report’s findings. The irony of the location wasn’t lost on me: this is the same place where students camped out, driven by various misinformation campaigns.
One of the more interesting elements of the report is the crafting of a new seven layer model (no, not that OSI one). This tracks how the online world manipulates us. And starts off with social media incentives which are designed around promoting more outrage and less actual news. This in turn fuels real-world violence, then amplified by efforts of authoritarian-run nations who target Americans and polarize the public sphere even further. The next layer changes info ops into info warfare, feeding more outrage and conflict. The final layer is our elections, aided by the lack of real news and no general agreement on facts.
Their report is a chilling account of the state of things today, to be sure. And thanks to fewer “trust and safety” staff watching the feeds, greater use of AI in online searches by Google and Microsoft, and Facebook truncating actual news in its social feeds and as a result referring less traffic to online news sites, we have a mess on our hands. News media now shares a shrinking piece of the attention pie with independent creators. The result is that “Americans will have fewer facts to go by, less news on their social media feeds, and more outrage, fear, and hate.” This week it has reached a fever pitch, and I wish I could just turn it all off.
The report focuses on three issues that have divided us, both generationally and politically: immigration, abortion, and the Israel/Hamas war. It takes a very data-driven approach. For example, the number of #FreePalestine hashtag views on TikTok outnumber #StandWithIsrael by 446M to 16M and on Facebook and Twitter the ratio is 18 and 32 times respectively. The measurement periods for each network varies, but you get the point.
The report has several conclusions. First, personalized social media content has formed echo chambers that are fed by hyper-partisan sources which blurs news and propaganda, Journalism and source vetting is becoming rarer, and local TV news is being remade as they compete with cable outrage channels. As more of our youth engage further in social media, they become more vulnerable to purpose-fed disinformation and manipulation, and less able to distinguish between news and propaganda too. And this generational divide continues to widen as the years pass.
Remember when the saying went, if you aren’t paying for the service, you are the product? That seems so naïve now. Social media is now a tool of geopolitics, and gone are the trust and safety teams that once tried to filter the most egregious posts. And as more websites deploy AI-based chatbots, you don’t even know if you are talking to humans. This just continues a trend about the worsening of internet platforms that Cory Doctorow wrote about almost two years ago (he used a more colorful term).
In her address to the Nobel committee back in 2021, Ressa said, “Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality and no democracy.”
Thanks for the helpful history and breakdown of the propaganda in media today. But it’s not just social media with Bezos pulling the endorsement of Harris from the Washington Post and the rich surgeon pulling the endorsement from the LA Times. What is the solution?
David, it is hard not to feel hopeless. I’ve done everything I could to prompt battleground state voters to vote Democratic. Like any sane person, I’m extremely worried about what will happen with this election next week. But the backdrop is equally worrisome because it will persist. People living in their low-information bubbles. Millions of people so dumb that they think the plural of anecdote is data. The lack of a shared reality that results. I’m guessing it’s because high schools don’t generally teach civics or critical thinking, perhaps indulgent parenting plays a role, and worst of all – the poison of algorithm-driven search engines results and social media. I know we can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but I long for the ancient days of dial-up modems. Would love to see all social media go away.
DFIR has assembled this tracking website about foreign interference with our 2024 elections, including the particular country of origin and the malware used if known.