The Bible Genesis tells the story that Noah's descendants prepared to build a tower to heaven in the plains of Seine, and in order to prevent them from doing so, God made them who had spoken the same language become language-deaf, and as a result, not only could not continue the Babel project, but human beings were also caught in strife and war because they could not communicate.
From printing, telegraph, telephone, television to the Internet, thousands of years later, not only is the region no longer an obstacle, but even two people who speak different languages can also use Google Translate to communicate normally on the Internet. But strangely enough, people who have long been shaped by globalization and the Internet as "global villagers" are becoming more and more like the ancestors in the ruins of the Tower of Babel on social platforms, unable to understand each other's words and arguing endlessly.
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, in a cover article for the May issue of The Atlantic, explores why social media platforms that are supposed to facilitate communication are like God's "sharp fingers", plunging people into endless quarrels.
When did social media start to "go bad"?
One thumb and two arrows
"Why has Life in The Last Decade Become Surprisingly Stupid?"
Hayth, an article in Atlantic Monthly begins with a somewhat sensational headline.
He argues that the intensification of social tensions in the United States over the past decade, the widening of the class divide, and the sharp antagonism between the Democratic and Republican parties and their adherents have made "people feel as if they are living in the ruins of the collapsed Tower of Babel," and the rise and growth of social media is to blame.
Sociologists argue that there are three main forces that unify democratic states: social capital (highly credible social networks), powerful institutions, and shared narratives. Social media succeeded in destroying the three pillars one after another, eventually creating a de facto "divided state" of the people.
But social media is not born or bad, Facebook appeared in 2004, and its "predecessor" Myspace, and even earlier email and the Internet, did rely on advanced technology to promote people's communication. At that time, people posted their children and pets on social media, or songs they created, and strangers could also get to know each other through the transmission of bits.
The shift came in 2009, the year Facebook introduced the "Like" thumbs-up button, a sign of liking, that was later copied by various competitors, and later became the company's logo at the entrance to its Silicon Valley campus until it was replaced last year when the company changed its name to Meta.
Last October, Facebook replaced the "likes" in front of the Menlo Park campus with "Meta" | Getty Images
Rival Twitter launched a more lethal feature in the same year , Retweet — and Facebook followed suit with the same "Share" feature — likes and shares that followed in the roaring wave of mobile Internet, becoming standard in every mobile app.
Just two seemingly simple new features destroy the first pillar of the above article, social capital. With the blessing of likes and sharing, social network users are no longer concerned with the dynamics of relatives and friends, but whether the carefully crafted "personality" has received more social feedback - the purpose of users using social networks has changed from communication and exchange to the performance of building personal brands. Obviously, people who are passionate about performing cannot communicate in depth.
The addition of likes and sharing functions made the platform more aware of which content was easier to gain users' attention, and directly inspired the birth of the so-called "thousand faces" customized information flow. Unfortunately, according to research, content that triggers emotions, especially those aimed at anger between different groups, is the most likely to get high retweets. This also set the stage for the next mutual attack between different political parties and groups.
The engineer who developed the "retweet" button for Twitter regretted it afterwards, saying the feature was comparable to "giving a 4-year-old a loaded weapon." It's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's more appropriate to give everyone a dart bag with an unlimited supply.
Not everyone gets a dart and throws it at each other like crazy people, only those who are really crazy do it, and coincidentally, social media gives these people a chance. Research shows that just as violent video games don't make teens violent, social media doesn't turn all users into trolls, but it does make it easier for some users who are already keen to "spray people" to attack more people.
And what groups are the most prolific "trolls"? According to the Hidden Tribes, two groups at opposite ends of the political spectrum, ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal, who make up less than 10 percent of the U.S. population, are the two most active on social media.
Interestingly, these two groups are also the "whitest and richest" of Americans — in a sense, the "dart scuffle" of social media is actually a struggle between two elite groups that simply cannot represent the broad masses of the American masses.
As the highest level of "trolls", the two groups are not only the best at attacking each other, but also good at attacking stable conservative and neutral partners in their own camp, taking away the latter's voice or intensifying them into radical "trolls" like themselves.
Trump is the most successful politician in the "post-Babel era| CNET
In such a state, the most likely to get benefits are actually those who are best at stirring people's emotions and love social networks, "Twitter rule" Trump's election as using the US president, taking advantage of the increasingly intense contradictions generated by social media to divide the crowd, and "Cambridge Analytica" uses practical examples to prove that if used properly, social media may be more useful than continuous offline speeches.
Probably nothing is more discerning than the covid-19 epidemic two years ago. On the one hand, conservatives have tried their best to belittle the power of the new crown virus, and even made such a brain-dead post that the new crown vaccine is Bill Gates's conspiracy, so that people ridiculed the new crown may be the most effective to kill the disease of Republicans who insist on not wearing masks. On the other hand, liberals who are pushing to spread the severity of COVID-19 support the strictest policies to control the epidemic and are not concerned about the psychological impact of measures such as school closures on children.
Another consequence of the darts fired around on social media is that experts from universities, research institutes and administrative institutions begin to take "silence" for fear of becoming targets, and even if they have enough knowledge to make judgments, they will not take action for fear of being attacked by the Internet.
What's more, fearing that people within the organization would be angered by netizens for expressing their opinions on social media, the entire organization was subjected to "internal censorship" of employees and students. Academics have progressed precisely through outspoken debates, and the "new code of conduct" of social media has made this controversy no longer, so that "the whole country has fallen into structural stupidity".
In the article, Haight predicts desperately that the "decade of stupidity" is not "just a phase".
Musk's nostalgia and hallucinations
Coincidentally, just as Haidt's article was being published, Tesla, SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he wanted to buy Twitter for nearly $43 billion. Previously, he had just been exposed as Twitter's largest shareholder, and successfully proposed the "modify tweet" function with a single voting tweet.
Compared with the former president, Silicon Valley Iron Man's position and ability on Twitter are only strong, just by some joke-like paragraphs, can make cryptocurrencies or Tesla's stock price soar, so that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has repeatedly warned Musk.
Musk wants to buy Twitter for more than $40 billion and | The Verge in an ongoing effort
However, being an influencer on social media is one thing, running a social media platform is a completely different thing. For the "scandal" between Musk and Twitter, Yishan Wong, former CEO of Reddit and now engaged in the crypto business, sent more than a dozen tweets in a row, sincerely exhorting Musk not to stir up the muddy waters of social platforms.
For Musk not to take over Twitter, Huang Yishan gave the reason that as the same "Generation X" (born in 1965-1980) born, Musk and him in the 90s of the last century when he contacted and started a business, the Internet was still a new thing, a new world and a new frontier. At that time, the "freedom of speech" that people were pursuing was nothing more than snatching the right to publish adult content and violent games from religious conservatives.
Now, more than 20 years later, the Internet is no longer a "new frontier" and a paradise for a few people, and the whole world is already online. And what people on the Internet are doing is to launch all kinds of "culture wars" against each other, trying to take away the other's right to speak. Social media as a platform is in the middle, because suppressing the speech of either party will be seen as prejudice and discrimination. But more often, both sides of the "belligerent" accuse the platform of discrimination.
Compared with Haidt, Huang Yishan is more pessimistic, and he even believes that the network environment has deteriorated since Facebook was founded in 2004. Musk dared to take over Twitter, precisely because at that time he began to engage in electric vehicles, rockets and other "physical industries", without realizing the changes in the social media environment.
Former Reddit CEO Yishan Huang sent a long article to dissuade Musk from taking over Twitter| Twitter
In the end, Huang thinks musk would be "in for a world of pain" if he actually runs Twitter.
For the exhortation of the old "PayPal gangster" old comrades, Musk responded on Twitter: After reading it, there is only one idea, Twitter really should have launched the function of long tweets.
In a sense, Huang's tweet can be seen as a personal statement of Haiter's article, as the top manager who once ran Reddit, Huang's "painful experience" in operating social platforms is obviously more direct than Haider's.
"Do you know what social platform engineers are thinking?" They just want to roll out new features, and they definitely don't want to quorum any user's bullshit war!" Huang made a final "scream" at the end of the tweet.
But he may not realize that it is actually the lines of code written by the engineers behind the social platforms, and the new features, which to some extent led to the deterioration of the online environment that Huang criticized. Like retweets and likes, every new A/B-tested feature of social media is an engineering marvel that dramatically improves data, but it can also end up being a sociological disaster.
At present, what Internet giant executives urgently need is not the "seven habits of highly effective people", but some basic sociological theories and knowledge.
"It's a time of chaos and loss, but it's also a time to reflect, listen and build." Haight writes at the end.
Reference articles
WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
Author：Jonathan Haidt
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Head image source: Nicolás Ortega