This morning I was reading the article (in German) “Do we need new Social Media?” by @Sirius and Jonas Kießling:
In 2013 the then leader of Germany, Angela Merkel created an internet meme by saying that internet is still new territory for every person to discover. After all, we know the internet through and through, right? Been there, done that. Silly Merkel.
What is the internet and the Social Media it offers, but some extra communication channels that allow people to easily communicate at a distance? So then it follows that social media aren’t inherently anti-social. It all depends how we communicate on them, how we use these platforms. And that is true. “Social” is still manual effort, where care and attention and knowing the characteristics of the medium, can make social media true enrichment to our lives.
Social media is as social as Las Vegas
However, Sirius argues, the rub is in the modus operandus of the social media platforms where things go awry, and induce toxic parasocial behavior. Also due to massive use the compounding externalities even serve to unravel the social fabric of society and erosion of our democracy and freedoms.
In terms of this ‘modus operandus’ I think a good analogy is asking: “Is Las Vegas and the casino where I stay anti-social?”. The fancy shows outside and the luxurous interior are definitely designed to attract people to enjoy social activities with each other. Yet on the other hand the whole set up is meant to exploit us, so we spent most money, and all kinds of deceptive practices are thrown our way to do that.
I think Angela Merkel was right. We don’t understand the nature of online social media, and we always took it for granted as “just another communication channel”. Hence we underestimate how it impacts and affects the nature of our social interactions.
While we are more connected and can reach more people, the algorithms decide whom we can reach. The public nature of the platforms made us all become authors as well as readers i.e. prosumers of information. But expressing yourself well in written form is hard. This while the platform owners, who considered us to be the product to exploit, use our content and spread it far and wide with the sole purpose to drive ad sales. With disastrous side-effects, as becomes clearer every day.
To me it is unfathomable that - knowing what we know today - we still cling to exploitative social media platforms provided by advertisement giants and let these mega corporations literally host global society.
We have allowed advertisement giants to become the pillars of our society.
We are all in the casino, and there’s no clock to show us it is time to leave.
We should have figured that out already, when we maxed out our credit card.
How to get out of this swamp?
The article now delves into the insiduous ways that the algorithms harvest our attention, optimising for engagement uncaring of the outcome, and the surveillance capitalism that drives all of this.
Sirius argues - and I agree - that realising all of the problems provides a true opportunity to for a more drastic rethinking on the nature of social neworking online. In order to safeguard our democracy we need to foster a better understanding of social media and cultivate a “citizen’s ethos” that not only recognizes the diversity of our online society but makes it furtile ground for interaction that enriches our lives.
Not by trying to create a society-wide consensus approach, a one-size-fits-all solution, and neither by throwing AI into society to solve the problem.
Using insights from his Communications studies at the University of Tuebingen, Sirius proposes that democracy is not a single truth, but a continuous practice and platforms must support people to gravitate to finding truth collectively. If platforms are designed with discourse ethics in mind they can lead people on a natural path of fact-finding, and consensus forms from there.
If you would like to know more about the approach Sirius proposes, then check out the Paranova initiative:
Alternative social networking
Beyond corporate-controlled advertisement platforms that are commonly used today, a new and much better alternative has become available to all of us. New open-standard social web protocols such as ActivityPub have given rise to the Fediverse, an online social networking environment where people are in control of the dialogue and how social interactions occur.
A much more deliberate design of services becomes possible, to greatly increase the quality of our online discourse. Make better online interfaces that enable us to be more productive and navigate our attention economy to focus on communication that matters most.
There is a path, but also a long road. The free software movement that drives the Fediverse is in a David vs. Goliath struggle, and unsustainable - losing the fight - when operating in solitude. When it comes to finding better communication mechanisms there is a Big role for Open Science, remarks Sirius.
Open science is an important focus area of Paranova and Social coding commons while we gradually elaborate Social experience design practices to cocreate the future of the social web. A peopleverse.