
Could Removing Social Media Metrics Reduce Polarization? - respinal
https://onezero.medium.com/could-removing-social-media-metrics-reduce-polarization-4d604352c705
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wefarrell
I don't trust Twitter and Facebook when they justify these proposals by
claiming they improve social welfare.

Hiding the number of likes makes their algorithm less transparent. Removing
transparency makes it harder to distinguish between paid content. At the end
of the day it's all about dollars.

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anigbrowl
No, the polarization (and attendant culture war) has been going on longer than
social media as we know it have existed. It doesn't help, but it's just not
the big factor it's assumed to be either - an assumption driven by social
media companies' desire to trade engagement for ad $. The people who are doing
most to drive social polarization are the least likely to be motivated by
social proof. Consider that 8ch and its ilk have no social scoring mechanism
but produce some of the most radical extremists.

~~~
kleer001
My current hypothesis is that our current culture war is being driven by a
lack of accountability. From graft in politics to anonymous bullying online,
more and more people are able to get away with worse and worse bad faith
behavior for longer and longer.

~~~
antupis
The USA's problem is the voting system. Currently, it favors extremism eg try
to get the nomination in primaries saying another side is actually ok. Change
system something like ranked-choice voting and you get nominees literally
singing kumbaya together
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyJKh_CwPI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyJKh_CwPI4)
.

~~~
remarkEon
>Currently, it favors extremism eg try to get the nomination in primaries
saying another side is actually ok.

This is just flat out wrong, and I think you might be conflating what could be
interpreted as a "purity spiral" on the left right now as "normal". It is most
certainly _not_ normal. The 2016 Dems nominated the most centrist candidate in
a generation (at least), and Trump managed to win the general by essentially
playing the game better in the Electoral College. Even if I accepted your
premise for a moment (I don't, in reality) that ranked-choice voting actually
pushes candidates into aligning with each other ideologically, to the extent
it makes them less detested by their ostensible political opponents, it is not
at all clear that this is an optimum outcome. Especially in times of political
turmoil - and I don't think it's controversial to suggest that we are in one
right now a la the 1970s - a "regression to the mean" of choice in political
candidates seems to be the exact opposite of a good idea. That just spells
"status quo" for electoral outcomes, and would cause many (or most) to lose
faith in the political system all together.

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wvenable
I've always thought that Reddit would be better without displaying karma. What
value does it provide except to create a perverse goal for some people?

~~~
jedberg
They very first version of Reddit used spark lines instead of points. People
hated it. We experimented multiple times with removing karma from the
equation. It always reduced engagement.

People just really need that dopamine hit of seeing their points go up.

Honestly I prefer the way HN does it, where only the submitter can see their
own points.

~~~
Simon_says
In hindsight, maybe optimizing for engagement also optimized for polarization?

~~~
kaonashi
You're probably correct, but what product owner is going to take the chance on
purposefully chasing lower engagement?

~~~
jedberg
Hacker News. :)

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crazygringo
What?! Polarization has been around since long before social media.

The two systemic factors driving it have been 1) open democratic primaries
which push party nominees away from the center and towards greater
polarization, and 2) increasingly polarized media originally driven cable TV
news that could profitably deliver to a specific niche, e.g. Fox News, and
websites generally.

Social media is just the icing on the cake.

~~~
ahartman00
The first paragraph in the introduction of this study lists more factors:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25897956](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25897956)

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facethrowaway
It’s a giant political dodge that has nothing to do with the underlying
issues. You want to know what’s the real cancer, the real drug these dealers
don’t want you regulating? The NOTIFICATIONS. That’s something everyone on the
inside knows. The average person treats validating push notifications like a
mouse getting cheese and will act out and continue to generate content to get
it.

Look at the emails and push notifications these companies send out to regular
people on a constant, daily basis, and you will find the cancer you’re looking
for. Eliminating like counts and follower numbers is a nice idea that excites
teenage activists but is pointless now that these companies have already built
accounts with zillions of followers.

~~~
needle0
I did notice that notifications were habit-inducing early on, and disabled
them entirely for Facebook/Twitter/Email years ago. Still, finding myself
regularly going back to all of them, I'm not sure that it's the only problem

~~~
Cd00d
This XKCD makes a similar argument highlighting opening habits rather than
notifications: [https://xkcd.com/2183/](https://xkcd.com/2183/)

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mlb_hn
Right before social media started to take off the academics were arguing if we
were already seeing polarization [e.g. 0]. It might be worth considering
whether the polarization trend changed with social media before attributing
causes and potential solutions.

[0] Abramowitz, A. I., & Saunders, K. L. (2008). Is polarization a myth?. The
Journal of Politics, 70(2), 542-555.
[http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcampbel/documents/AbramowitzJO...](http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcampbel/documents/AbramowitzJOP_001.pdf)

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not_a_cop75
Making twitter a little less like Jerry Springer could definitely help. Don't
promote tweets from opposing groups to opposing groups. How hard can this
really be?

~~~
gkoberger
I've never really seen tweets from opposing groups promoted to me. As a non-
public-figure (AKA, nobody is directly @-ing me or attacking me), Twitter
makes it really easy to stay in your own bubble. You follow who you want, and
that's it. You might get some suggested tweets, but they're tweets fav'd or
followed by people you're following.

~~~
SyneRyder
There's also the promoted/sponsored tweets, and I think that's what they were
hinting at (eg a Chinese news agency promoting their pro-China news stories to
Hong Kong Twitter users [1]).

But that's very easy to avoid. Get one of the original Twitter clients like
Tweetbot (iOS / MacOS) [2] or Fenix (Android) [3] and you'll get a
chronological timeline, no promoted ads, mute/keyword filters, and you'll
never see other people's likes & replies suggested to you as notifications. It
puts you in control and removes the worst parts of Twitter.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734808)

[2] [https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/](https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/)

[3]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.mvilla.andr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.mvilla.android.fenix2)

~~~
not_a_cop75
Nothing really puts you in control of twitter, when half the Twittersphere is
calling you a moron because you said one thing which is counter to half the
population. It doesn't matter how much you ignore them once they put you on
the news. You don't even have to be as stupid as the people below to have a
negative outcome from Twitter. Just consistently use it to cite your honest
moral opinion and I guarantee someone will hunt you down as if you were the
worst serial killer.

[https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/7-people-whose-lives-were-
ruin...](https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/7-people-whose-lives-were-ruined-by-
social-media/) [https://www.theclever.com/15-tweets-that-have-ruined-
peoples...](https://www.theclever.com/15-tweets-that-have-ruined-peoples-
lives/)

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sidthekid
The physical world is hugely polarized. I don't see how tweaking the UI of
websites is going to reduce real-world tendencies, it's a losing battle.

~~~
beat
It seems to me the online world is more polarized (and abusive) than the real
world.

~~~
thundergolfer
Online culture may have driven this, but in a survey of people in the USA
people were asked which type of person they would least like their children to
marry. The “types” were things like same-gender, transgender, Christian,
Muslim, no-college, Republican.

Those who identified as Democrats had Republican as “least liked”.

Those who identified as Republican had the first two I listed.

However more polarised online is, that above is real world polarisation, and
it’s pretty serious.

Source:
[https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ymwgbNCHG9f34dmxPNNuj?si=R...](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ymwgbNCHG9f34dmxPNNuj?si=RivNDo1FS_CCG5mXiaud6w)

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jihadjihad
> _“The problem, of course, that Dorsey and Zuckerberg and everybody else are
> running into is they’ve built an entire business model in which metrics are
> a central component or central mechanism by which engagement with the
> platforms is driven.”_

This is the heart of the matter. These platforms exist not only to enable
polarization, but their very business model _thrives_ on polarization. There
are a lot of other second-order effects, too, such as "The Perception Gap,"
which I saw posted to HN recently:
[https://perceptiongap.us/](https://perceptiongap.us/)

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ginko
I always wondered if social media instead of polarizing could actively
counteract bubble metrics to lead people to a more centrist view. Essentially
by "inverting" the interest function partially.

~~~
vangelis
Who gets to decide what is extreme?

~~~
anigbrowl
The targets of extremism.

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the_watcher
I think making reshares and retweets much harder than the 1-2 clicks it takes
now would have far more impact.

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CptFribble
Politics is driven by the most extreme, passionately held views because those
people are the most motivated to do something about it. Responding to extremes
is a game of chasing goalposts.

Removing social media points isn't going to change any of that. People care
more about belonging than being factually correct. As long as there is a place
for two people who happen to share the same beliefs to find each other,
polarization will continue to be a thing.

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abtinf
Question for the HN admins: What was the impact of removing vote counts from
comments? What lessons did you draw from it?

~~~
dang
I don't know. It was a long time ago. I could make an answer up, but you could
do that too.

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someexgamedev
I've experimented with this theory by opting myself out of these vanity
metrics using a browser plugin I wrote to hide them.

I can say that hiding them has reduced my engagement, which was my goal (the
plugin is called Disengaged), but hasn't done anything for polarization.

To establish a link between engagement with these sites and polarization, you
would basically be taking the stance that these sites are inherently
polarizing, so using them less (by removing the engagement generators)
decreases polarization.

Not a bad theory, but not one we can expect the businesses and investors
behind these sites to implement on society's behalf.

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6gvONxR4sf7o
I don't know about polarization, but I'd bet it would make everything a little
less addicting in a very healthy way. When I left facebook, part of the reason
was that whenever I posted, it came from a weird emotional place. Instead of
casual "i'm gonna share the thing" it was "think really hard about how to make
it super cool." Here too, but to a lesser degree since it's more anonymous and
I don't know you all.

~~~
nradov
I don't see anything great about being casual. If I post some underwater
photos on Facebook then I absolutely think hard about making them super cool!
I don't waste my friends' time by posting sloppy garbage.

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chiefalchemist
The problem isn't the like button, that's a symptom. The problem is human
nature; specifically confirmation bias. The internet has enabled people to
find what they want to find and see what they want to see.

We are a species that survived because we are social. That said, perhaps we
are getting too close, too connected? Maybe we're wired for less "engagement"?
Perhsps occasionally being quite and/or lonely has benefits?

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aantix
No.

Remove the text.

Make it a long form conversation. Yes, voice. So that you can hear inflection,
empathy, sarcasm, hmmmms and uncertainty.

Every tweet reads like a proclamation. No nuance.

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jlian
I like how WeChat does it for their "Moments" posts, where you can see only
the number of Likes from your friends.

[https://www.quora.com/Who-can-see-what-you-publish-and-
comme...](https://www.quora.com/Who-can-see-what-you-publish-and-comment-in-
the-Wechat-Moments-section)

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iikoolpp
What is wrong with "polarization" beyond it being different to the centre? All
this talk of it seems nothing more than mere reactionary.

Surely, views from the extreme shouldn't just be dismissed, and we should
understand _why_ people hold those views instead of doubling down and trying
to eliminate them.

~~~
anigbrowl
We already understand that pretty well. Trying to hug it out with people who
are already committed to killing you is a fool's errand. There are several
groups devoted to deradicalization if you want to research that in greater
depth.

~~~
dvtrn
Wow.

That’s a huge chasm you’ve shoveled to define polarization, “people committed
to killing you”, there are definitely extreme whackos out there but do you
really think they’re that representative of the whole or is there maybe a more
nuanced way of defining the polarization effects of social media?

~~~
pjc50
If we step it back a bit to "committed to policies which cause avoidable
death", or "protection of those who have caused death by negligence", or
"mistreatment of others in a context which is known to trigger suicide", then
... yes, that's all mainstream policy.

One example of this was [https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/katie-hopkins-
when-is-e...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/katie-hopkins-when-is-
enough-enough-10186490.html) ; now, is Katie Hopkins "an extreme whacko" for
overtly demanding the murder of refugees, or is she "just saying what everyone
is thinking" among Sun and LBC audiences?

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victorvation
Instagram is already testing hiding Like counts in several countries:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/world/instagram-hidden-
li...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/world/instagram-hidden-likes.html)

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SomeOldThrow
Polarizing opinions drive views.

It might help to tamper the anxiety from watching your own posts, but let's be
real—social media is a polarizing place because there's money to be made from
drama, even (especially?) if it's fictional.

Looking to reduce polarization? Blame our ad model.

~~~
MrRadar
CGP Grey's "This Video Will Make You Angry"[1] makes this point well. Opposing
ideas will generate a lot of discussion/activity but mostly within the opposed
groups instead of between them. That further drives polarization as the
opposed groups mostly believe their own caricatures of the other group (which
further disincentives cross-group discussion).

[1] [https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc](https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc)

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leshokunin
Absolutely. Anything you measure and show the measure as a sign of progression
will skew things towards behaviors that lean towards an increased occurrence
of that metric.

To quote Worf: "If victory doesn't matter, why keep score?".

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cwkoss
Someone should make a social network where bots autonomously interact with and
like your posts in a positive way, as part of the core design.

Call it Turing Club

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3xblah
Could reducing polarization reduce profits?

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buboard
Paywall. But how does the author deal with replies, which are a very strong
metric?

