
The “Majority Illusion” in Social Networks (2016) - Reedx
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147617
======
ve55
I view this as the primary reason that protests and rioting have been
significantly more widespread recently.

In order for someone to feel good about protesting and rioting, it helps if
people around them are doing it, so that it seems socially acceptable, and so
that negative consequences are less likely to occur. Normally you would need
to see this physically near you, but now with viral algorithms, all it takes
is one protest in one location, broadcast to a billion people, and many of
them will start to believe "there's all theses protests going on everywhere,
so I might do it too".

In some forms this is useful, but in others it is extremely dangerous and can
allow for mass unrest based only upon what uncontrollable algorithms end up
promoting due to what is the most viral content.

Humans evolved in significantly smaller societies than they live in today, and
it's _very_ difficult to have proper intuition about how many people are doing
various things after seeing hundreds of examples of them on the Internet. As a
result I notice many people making estimates about the frequency of activities
that are not only off by one order of magnitude, but sometimes more like three
to six.

~~~
keenmaster
People don't usually protest in person unless they really believe in the
underlying cause. There are developers on HN who worry about a 500 millisecond
delay in their app because users are so fickle that half a second puts them
off.

If people don't have half a second of patience, how much does it take to
motivate them to go to a protest, shout, march, and sometimes even risk their
lives? Sure, if we're not careful, if we don't implement the right controls,
social media can be used for ill. However, I'd be very careful not to
generalize from results like in the OP.

There are groups of people that you wouldn't even pay attention to if it
weren't for social media. There is suffering that would be invisible to the
world if it weren't for social media. It is our duty to expend the small
amount of energy required before assuming the worst about a freedom struggle,
because sometimes solidarity is the only thing that powerless people can have.

~~~
luckylion
> People don't usually protest in person unless they really believe in the
> underlying cause.

Citation needed. For riots, it's obviously wrong: football hooligans have been
doing it for ages, and they have no underlying cause but "let's fuck shit up".

For demonstrations: it's mostly a social thing. If your friends go, you go,
because otherwise you're signalling to your friends that you are not like
them, and you don't want to do that, because being isolated hurts.

~~~
vkou
> For demonstrations: it's mostly a social thing.

Only if you aren't invested in the cause. Not everyone takes a nihilistic
nothing-matters approach to this sort of thing.

~~~
luckylion
Sure, there are _some_ people who are invested in the cause, they're not
social events only. But a large number of those showing up are not, they're
there because their friends are, because it's an event and something to do,
and because they want to belong to a tribe, and tribal outings are the thing
to do when you want to be a part of the tribe.

Most of them don't want that more than they want to stay dry though, so bad
weather usually translates into smaller events.

~~~
reroute1
That's a ridiculous assumption to make. You have no idea what percent of any
crowd is there to appease someone else and any claim otherwise is silly.

What if someone is there for more than one reason(Hint everyone)? Do they not
count anymore?

Bad weather lowers attendance for all events you dullard that doesn't support
anything you've said. You're just ascribing intention to thousands of people
and it's really lazy thiking. You haven't even scratched the surface of why
some people are there but go ahead and keep making your wild assumptions

------
nostromo
This is a timely article. If I only viewed the world through my Facebook feed
right now, I'd believe that everyone in the US wants to defund every police
department.

In reality it's an incredibly unpopular view among everyone, left, right, and
center.

[https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-
reports/20...](https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-
reports/2020/06/01/police-reform-america-poll)

I think making this worse is that even a mild concern about this policy would
be received very poorly on social media -- so nobody objects and you see a
silent majority phenomenon.

It's frightening that social media is a primary news source for so many
people.

~~~
snowwrestler
A poll from a week ago might be pretty out of date now. Americans' perceptions
of the police fell about 10% during that time:

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/06/amer...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/06/americans-
views-police-drop-significantly-amid-protests-survey/3159072001/)

An important factor to watch is how that phrase "defund the police" gets
defined--see peer replies here for examples of how people can interpret it
positively.

I predict some of the ideas behind it will indeed become mainstream and we
will see police budgets fall in the next few years. LA's mayor has already
committed to cuts, for example.

I would not underestimate the impact of social media to rapidly move ideas
from the radical fringe to close enough to the mainstream to have political
impact. See for example InfoWars, avoiding vaccines, "Q"-type conspiracies,
heck even Donald Trump himself.

~~~
mellow2020
> An important factor to watch is how that phrase "defund the police" gets
> defined--see peer replies here for examples of how people can interpret it
> positively.

Also see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23447259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23447259)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23420016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23420016)

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12149338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12149338)

------
artsyca
Y'all are going to crucify me for this comment but I believe we also suffer
this as a technology community.

We assume certain unhelpful behaviours are the norm and perpetuate toxic
defaults through the majority illusion and what amounts to impostor syndrome.

------
082349872349872
Not new to technological social networks. Edward Bernays wrote a couple of
books on exploiting pre-computer social networks in the early 20th century.

------
ThomPete
I call this anecdotal growth mutation.

You see something, you share it, a lot of other people share it.

Suddenly the anecdote becomes statistically significant in the heads of
everyone.

~~~
unishark
I see a lot of posts on reddit which basically consist of the formula "My
<other political gorup> relative keeps doing <behavior our side despises>.
They make me so angry." Perhaps with some extra details of being an obvious
two-dimensional jerk for good measure.

Always has lots of upvotes. Could be someone trying to affect opinion with
fake upvotes, someone trying to fish for easy upvotes, or just organically
motivated by the network's desire for anecdotes to rage about.

~~~
darepublic
If someone held a gun to my head and told me to increase my reddit karma by
10k in a week I would quickly hop on to r/politics

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themovieinwins
I think majority illusion has existed even before the social networks. If you
surround yourself with people who share the same view on most things, aka
living in the bubble, you might end up getting caught in the majority illusion
since everyone you know has the same views. One of the few cases where I have
listened and changed my(far right) views was when a close friend of mine
talked me through the nuances of various(left leaning) views from his side. I
was willing to listen to him because we were close friend by that time
already. If he had tried to discuss various issues before we became friends,
there is a good chance that I would have discarded all his views as wrong. The
only place where people of opposing views can end up becoming friends is
college afaik. It is difficult to form close bond later in adult life.

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weitzj
About 2 years ago there was an online game/simulator where one could add
“information blocks” onto network nodes and see if they become true.

It nicely demonstrated how things became a “fact”.

Does anybody have the link to it?

~~~
NortySpock
Nicky Case "The Wisdom or Madness of the Crowds"

[https://ncase.me/crowds/](https://ncase.me/crowds/)

~~~
weitzj
Great! This was it!

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agustif
And the sackers might inspire more international sackers too

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gridspy
Sounds like a great explanation for the spread of very polarized political
opinions in social media.

Everyone thinks their niche opinion has obtained majority support.

~~~
danharaj
Do you think this is the first time in history that there are very polarized
political opinions?

How do you explain it in the past? Maybe polarization comes from... polarizing
circumstances?

~~~
banads
What do you think about the research in question as it relates to social
media?

