
How social networks can create the illusion that something rare is common - nostrademons
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/538866/the-social-network-illusion-that-tricks-your-mind/
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kcorbitt
> This comes about because the distribution of friends on social networks
> follows a power law. So while most people will have a small number of
> friends, a few individuals have huge numbers of friends. And these people
> skew the average.

> Here’s an analogy. If you measure the height of all your male friends.
> you’ll find that the average is about 170 centimeters. If you are male, on
> average, your friends will be about the same height as you are. Indeed, the
> mathematical notion of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this
> data.

> But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you—say, one
> kilometer or 10 kilometers tall. This person would dramatically skew the
> average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this
> case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.

Based on the wikipedia article of the friendship paradox[1], the power law
distribution really has nothing to do with it, and the paradox would exist
even if the distribution of number of friends were completely uniform. It's
instead related to the fact that people with a high number of friends are
overrepresented in the lists of other peoples' friends. The rest of the
author's analysis describing the new "paradox" passes the smell test, however.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox)

~~~
erikb
Because of that mistake I had a hard time of understanding the actual topic.
What is it that they are trying to say?

~~~
gavazzy
Some nodes have more connections than others. If most of these nodes send out
a signal, it will seem to the other nodes that _the majority of ALL nodes_
sent the signal, even if the highly-connected nodes are actually a minority.

e.g. if the popular kids believe X, then to most people it will seem like the
majority believe X, even if there are only a few popular kids.

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atemerev
Any SMM manager worth her salt knows it, as it is one of the principles of the
profession.

Rule number 2: persuading major influencers is hard. You should target their
connections instead who are not that popular (close friends, family members
etc.) Once you persuade them, they can influence your primary targets, who
will spread the message to their numerous following.

Rule #3 (advanced): always draw a map of key connections (as counted in the
number of interactions) in the network you are working in. This will help
immensely in designing your influence strategy.

Here. With some practice, you can now beat the SMM game.

~~~
mhb
What is SMM?

~~~
_neil
Social media manager, I think.

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k__
It also works in another way.

I for example, have a rather alternative love life, but it doesn't seem
alternative to me most of the time. Because social networks are prefiltered
and I feel like I'm surrounded by people like me.

So I get the feelong to do 'normal' things, only when I meet people outside my
filterbubble I'm reminded That the majority is different.

It is much easier to do what you want, if you think it's nothing exceptional.

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rmc
Another way to state that average paradox: The majority of people have an
above average number of legs.

~~~
Kenji
I don't really understand how that's a paradox. It's a natural result of the
mathematical properties of the average, if outliers are a problem, we use
median.

~~~
duncanawoods
I wish it were not the case but "paradox" can be used to describe apparently
contradictory behaviour even when its not actually contradictory.

~~~
Flimm
What other definition of paradox is there?

~~~
Kenji
Yeah, a literal contradiction. The purest example would be Russel's paradox:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/b/e/0/be0bd5b59ed09618db93...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/b/e/0/be0bd5b59ed09618db939d03dbd6b22f.png)

~~~
darkmighty
I like this variation:

"Both of these sentences are false. The sky is not blue."

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digitalengineer
Won't the 'Echo Room' Facebook algorithm just enhance the "Majority illusion"?

(*the new one that shows all the things people like you post and will filter
out other viewpoints)

~~~
sdoering
I believe exactly this to happen. Combine this with Confirmation bias[1] and
Recency effect[2] and you have the typical echo chamber effect (be it Google
showing fitting results, be it FB with the algorithm or be it the partisane
media. So your views will get bolstered. You will think you are talking within
a big group of likeminded people, because differing strains of thoughts never
reach you.

And if you combine this with a debate like in Germany, where FB is being asked
to proactively delete/censor* more stuff, this might become a bigger problem.

* Not that I like the stuff to be censored particularly - definitively on the contrary. Just pointing out the effect.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect#Recency...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect#Recency_effect)

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galtwho
An earlier discussion citing the same paper
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9826200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9826200)

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kokey
Combining this with virtue signalling, it might be why many people are so
surprised at certain election outcomes.

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boothead
This must be related to how Pluralistic Ignorance [1] arises?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance)

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aleh
I guess that explains why celebrities make millions for only being
celebrities.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
This is also why celebrities are very careful about what appearances they make
or products they endorse -- and are downright paranoid when it comes to
preparing for and executing interviews with opinion influencers.

It also means that negative opinions are to be dealt with very carefully. Ever
wonder why with 10K celebrities on the planet, most all of them think most all
of the rest of them are awesome? It's because with one bad word, if you hit
the wrong influencer, you could start a public opinion avalanche. (I omit
those celebrities using the "burn it all down!" PR strategy)

~~~
omouse
This is something that's done in offices too; negative opinions of coworkers
can cause bad things to happen. There's a floor on opinions that excludes
negative comments.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Absolutely, but in any office bigger than 4 or 5 people, there's also a lot of
back-channel talk that goes on as well.

People in physical social groups operate in a much more nuanced way than
people online.

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byron_fast
So it functions just like news media then, where rare things are nearly all we
hear about.

~~~
cableshaft
That was my thought when I saw this headline. News is all about what's new,
novel, different from normal, otherwise it wouldn't be interesting and worth
talking about.

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MisterMashable
It's opposite is probably also true, how very common things are made to look
rare and exceptional e.g. blood moons.

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twitchard
Is this anything more than the insight that your perception of 'average' is
calculated from the distribution of what you observe, not from the true
distribution? Or am I missing something

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svram
It's all a pipe dream unless you are able to identify and _persuade_ relevant
influencers.

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EGreg
I believe this was already known. This may be a different mathematical
analysis of it, though.

