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A common complaint levied against social media landscape is there are lots of “bad actors” spreading disinformation. While some social media platforms lay blame at these individuals or groups, much of the problem is driven by the platforms’ own business models and algorithms.
The Advertising Model is Broken
The biggest problem with the current social media industry is the internal architecture and design of platforms. While algorithms are meant to support optimized user engagement, they are instead collecting user data, and turning them into highly profitable advertising models. As outlined in “The Social Dilemma” Netflix documentary, the business model for social media platforms tracks people’s activities and then provides them with more of the same content. This creates a feedback loop where the most emotionally provocative content wins out, even if it’s factually misleading and potentially dangerous. This is the most socially damaging dimension, where interest in a fringe idea exponentially spreads, making it “valid” as it enters mainstream thought.
The users are manipulated by these algorithms because they’re designed to increase time spent on the platform. It’s an addiction-based model that doesn’t account for any negative impacts of the user’s participation, only the calculus of the time spent on the site and the monetary conversion into advertisements. Interviews throughout “The Social Dilemma” discuss the negatives of the social ad model, especially the ways these platforms harvest personal user data to offer targeted ads and to keep users addicted to scrolling and clicking.
For an example of the content algorithm problem in action, consider Facebook. To shape the Facebook algorithm and receive their own desired content, a user can “game the system” by liking a lot of related content. Or, if a company annually hosts a big event, there is a high likelihood that interested users who want to attend will see a paid advertisement for the event produced by the Facebook algorithm, before they receive an invitation from the host.
Re-establishing A Basis for Reality Online
The feedback loops created by social media’s algorithms keeps people away from the content they want to see. This problem presents the opportunity for a new type of social platform that’s based on quality vetted content and sharing. For example, new platforms will better enable sharing of social activism messages about environmental issues or causes such as BLM. The current social media landscape prevents people from engaging in constructive discourse about a given issue, because they aren’t leveraging verified fact-based content as a sounding board. There’s a pressing need for a new type of social media platform that services networks of professional people, such as journalists, policy makers, and concerned citizens.
Ideally, relevant information might flow through social networks in ways that…
