Hate and Division
Facebook claims that are not the primary cause of “hate and division” in America. And the company is absolutely right. The issues that divide us have been around for a lot longer than Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms. Hate in America is nothing new. It’s been the dirty underside of American history since well before the signing of the Declaration of Independence (and if you think that describes “Critical Race Theory”, you are misinformed).
But what Facebook has managed to do is individualize and amplify that hate and division. We get a “custom made cocktail”, delivered to our “newsfeed” on a minute by minute basis. And, like any good addictive activity, the more we click, the more we get. Psychologist B.F. Skinner would be pleased. We press the bar just like his mice did back in the 1940’s, receiving our “rewards” with our own version of his operant conditioning cage that fits in our pocket. And the more we click, the more specific the information Facebook directs to us, and the more we want to press.
Addiction
Why don’t we turn it off? Facebook’s model is based on the same principal as any addiction – we have an emotional response to the information. And that response is “pleasurable”, even if the emotion is anger. So we click on, seeking even more emotion, more “pleasure”. And Facebook provides a seemingly endless supply.
Facebook will tell you that’s why we love the puppy pictures, and the stories of our friend’s young kids. But if “pleasure” is measured by the level of emotional response, then the biggest emotion isn’t positive, it’s negative. Anger is more powerful, and anger makes you click even more.
None of this is rocket science. But the not so hidden “dirty secret” of Facebook, is that they have developed mathematical equations to “feed” emotional response. Facebook makes money by clicks, so it is in their specific economic interest to get more people to click more. And since negative emotions are the most powerful, it is best for Facebook profits to generate those emotions.
Profit from All Sides
Facebook doesn’t necessarily take a side in the controversy. The equation doesn’t care who wins or whose right or wrong. It’s the controversy itself that makes Facebook money. There are 221.6 million Facebook users in the United States, fully two-thirds of the nation. Not every user is “addicted”. But every user is influenced by targeted controversy, and those who are more vulnerable; the young, the disaffected, the lonely – they keep clicking, and keep getting angrier.
The deeper they go, the more their emotions are validated. They find companions in their anger, who then feed each other. Facebook claims they are just a platform, a “town square” where people of all ideologies can meet. But the Facebook equations do more than just lead you into the square, they direct you to those in the square who agree with you. And like that mythical square, divided into ideologies and cliques, emotions run high. And the Facebook cash register keeps ringing up profits.
Regulation
When television first came out in the 1940’s, the government took control of what was allowed. This was because there was a limited amount of bandwidth on the airways. Put simply, there were only so many TV channels, and the government licensed who could broadcast on any given channel. To keep a license, stations were required to regulate what went on the air. Break those rules, and the government could take the license and give it to someone else.
Those rules changed when cable television arrived in the 1970’s. Unlike the “public airways”, cable television used privately owned cables to reach their subscribers homes. The cable providers, Time Warner (now Spectrum) and the like, were originally simple conduits for other programming. If a program was “inappropriate”, then the cable viewer should simply choose not to watch it. Don’t want what cable TV delivered, then go back to broadcast. The government had little control over the programming, or the literal wires bringing it into homes.
In the 1990’s, media became more than just a one-way interaction. With the arrival of the “internet”, people could inter-connect across all kinds of boundaries. It was virtually uncontrolled by governments; the “wires” were still privately owned, and the “web” regulated by non-governmental entities. So when Friendster and MySpace replaced AOL chatrooms, there wasn’t much worry about government intervention. And when Mark Zuckerberg developed the key equations to empower Facebook, it’s growth and development was unrestricted.
Price to Pay
We govern automobile safety because the vehicles use public roads. We still govern television stations because they use the public airways. But social media comes to use through privately owned sources and methods. And like the cable providers, Facebook claims to only be a “platform”, not responsible for the content or actions of those using it. But we now know that Facebook (and Instagram and What’s App, also owned by Facebook) are manipulating their platform to generate emotion and gain more profit. And so does Twitter and TikTok and the other social media giants.
Government can’t use the broadcast model to regulate social media. But there is a whole different product that governments regularly control – alcohol and drugs. Facebook (and the rest) mathematically manipulate their users, similar to what drugs and alcohol do chemically. That manipulation creates societal discord – and we should regulate their actions. Ask the public schools who paid millions of dollars for damage to restrooms created by a TikTok trend, or the US government itself for damage to the Capitol during the Insurrection. There are very real costs from social media, costs our entire society is paying in dollars, and in discord.
We need to get it under control. It’s already too late.
- Essays About Facebook
- I’m Not the Customer – 4/4/18
- Listening to Mark – 4/11/18
- Zuckerberg – We Hate/Love/Pay You 6/9/19
- Buying Votes – 11/8/19
- Freedom to Post – 5/25/21
- On the Square – 10/5/21
