
Social media has become a direct threat to democracy - imartin2k
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2017/10/09/pierre-omidyar-6-ways-social-media-has-become-a-direct-threat-to-democracy/
======
DoubleGlazing
The thing I have noticed about my friends on facebook is how their opinions
have got stronger or more extreme.

My ultra catholic relatives have become more extreme in their views. The
opinions of my left and right leaning friends have become more extreme. The
outgoing party animal types seem to want to post more and more about how much
they party. The people who sometimes feel down post more and more about how
awful it is and how much help they need.

I know it is all down to how facebook has us all figured out and shows us
stuff that only reinforces previously held beliefs and opinions.

The problem is that is seems to have also created a strange desire among many
reasonable people to unwittingly troll others. For example people who used to
rarely talk about politics will post provocative things that seem designed to
elicit negative responses. I have Catholic in-law relatives that have I met
only only once at my wedding posting on my timeline demanding I promise to not
vote to repeal the 8th in the forthcoming Irish abortion referendum. My polite
refusal to give an answer only angers them, yet somehow I am at fault.

Those who only see stuff about what they already believed will only believe in
it stronger. And what do you do when you really believe in something? You try
to spread your belief, which social media makes it easy to do. But of course
in doing so you will potentially anger or annoy other who might have listened
to your message if it wasn't so in-your-face.

The problem is that this spills over in to the real world. Religious people
may avoid interacting with someone because they said something trivial on
facebook they didn't like. Come election time people will be less willing to
switch political parties because someone who supports a different party said
something rude.

Even without the political meddling, targeted advertising and profiling,
social media lacks the context and nuance of the real world. Something that in
itself only serves to negatively reinforce opinions.

~~~
autokad
it use to be that talking about politics at work was considered bad form, and
now people think its practically their duty to do so.

people are 'in-your-face' with politics these days, and while I dislike it, I
can hardly blame them. holywood stars, musicians, and now athletes use their
elevated status to get their word above all others (even if their fan base
dont want to receive it), and being silent allows what ever they wanted
passed.

~~~
QAPereo
I very politely, without judgement or a sense of superiority, say that I don’t
talk politics and religion. If you’re firm and consistent, and not haughty,
people usually respect it in my experience. If they don’t, politely listen and
then reiterated that you don’t talk about that subject.

~~~
Boothroid
What's sad is that holding different views has become such a flashpoint. I'm
quite able to have people question, attack, deride my beliefs without getting
emotional about it - who knows, they might even have a point - as if I, or
anyone else is any kind of all-seeing, perfectly informed entity that is able
to exercise perfect judgement. But as I've learnt here on HN, not everyone
else is as happy with having their beliefs challenged, indeed for many the
default response is to lash out. It seems to me like people make their mind up
about what they prefer, then seek evidence to support this, and then having
invested in that viewpoint and built their worldview around it they will go to
great lengths to defend it, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary. I'm sure I'm as prone to this as anyone else! If only people were a
bit slower to assert their beliefs as correct.

~~~
QAPereo
_I 'm sure I'm as prone to this as anyone else!_

A critical bt of insight that some people just live in denial of. We’re all
far more alike than not, but some live and die on the need to think of
themselves as a breed apart.

------
blfr
Washington Posts understandably longs for the days when large media outlets
had a virtual monopoly on information but they're gone and not likely to make
a comeback. I don't know why they cheer Facebook/Twitter/whoever to take their
place but I certainly hope this effort fails.

Having Mark Zuckerberg decide who and what can be read on the Internet or even
decide the elections is an outcome much worse than ISIS videos or Russian ads
in my news feed.

~~~
TyLoo
Everything has a cost, the cost of free speech is the possibility of hateful
and destructive propaganda. This cost is in my opinion trivial compare to the
alternatives. We saw what the cost of speech and information restriction have
done to civilizations in history.

The ability to speak freely and having access to information is not just one
virtue like justice or compassion. It is the way by which we create our value.

We should take really seriously any attempt by anyone to restrict it.

~~~
Khaine
Its funny you say that. All freedom's come at a cost. In America, there is a
large contingent who don't like the cost of the second amendment. Who is to
say the cost of the first amendment is worth it, or the second?

As an Australian, I don't have either a first amendment right to free speech,
or a second amendment right to bear arms to protect against a tyrannical
government.

I do think that we, in the Western world are slowly giving away our freedoms,
bit by bit in the name of safety. I do worry that our future is more black
mirror than Star Trek.

And I for one do not know how to right this ship, how to bring balance. For
people to recognise that with freedom comes responsibility. That you must hold
the individual to account for actions, and not let the collective suffer.

~~~
malloryerik
The Second Amendment grants the right to bear arms as part of a well regulated
militia. Not unregistered Glocks with silencers under your mattress or in your
glovebox.

------
grecy
Given that unlimited campaign contributions are a legal way to buy an
election, it's clear democracy in the US faces much bigger threats than people
talking to each other on the Internet.

I'm traveling through West Africa, I see the impact of unlimited money going
into politics daily. It's not good.

~~~
cdoxsey
Money doesn't decide elections, voters do. The campaign that spends more money
doesn't always win. In fact there's good reason to think that most money spent
on a campaign is largely wasted:

> The most exciting and visible part of politics is the political campaign.
> Politicians and their team of strategists, pollsters, and surrogates wage
> battle for the votes of the public. Slogans are trumpeted. Gaffes are made.
> Tactics are deployed. > And it probably does not matter all that much. > At
> least not as much as the political environment matters. Presidential
> elections can be forecast with incredible accuracy well before the campaign
> really begins. In fact, if all you know is the state of the economy, you
> know pretty well how the incumbent party will do.

[http://faculty.georgetown.edu/hcn4/Downloads/Noel_Forum.PDF](http://faculty.georgetown.edu/hcn4/Downloads/Noel_Forum.PDF)

~~~
Ygg2
Money buys ads and people to dig up dirt on opposing side. So in a way, it
does buy elections.

------
cjCamel
Deleting the word "social" from this article would make it more accurate. The
UK Daily Mail and many many other media companies have been guilty of the same
6 things for years.

Terribly lazy opinion piece. We need to be aware that the traditional news
media will be extremely effective at discrediting the entire tech industry to
save their own skin.

------
mycoborea
Why do I get the feeling that the proposed response by those claiming to care
about "democracy" will be further censorship and/or re-centralization?

~~~
skocznymroczny
It's not censorship, it's "fact-checking" done by "independent" NGOs

~~~
whamlastxmas
Or more accurately, only allowing certain sites to be linked on Facebook. If a
poster on voat is to be believed, Facebook already disables accounts that link
to certain topics.

------
stefanwlb
That's cute, you think you actually had democracy to begin with.

~~~
mvdwoord
Unfortunately I have to agree with your sentiment.

------
Spearchucker
The world has a way of righting itself. If Facebook commands influence equal
to lobbyists, then so be it. If that turns out to be good, then awesome. If
not, then at some point a change will be made to the environment that allowed
Facebook to become.

My hope is that it doesn't take another war for people to figure things out.

------
fuscy
The article is right that this can be thought to be new to the social media
environment but it is a well known phenomena of which the USA has plenty of
experience both in countering and administering and I believe that the effects
are now seen due to government complacency. Let's call it propaganda -
everyone did it in the past and everyone still does it today.

Both Russia and China have a pretty much inaccessible social media while both
also have a very powerful propaganda machine on Facebook or Twitter with hired
posters, paid marketing - an entire propaganda system ranging from
psychologists to artists.

Unfortunately the government will at some point have to step up their game
from TV, radio and newspapers and get with the times - either by making
western social media more inaccessible or by pumping those dollars in Facebook
pro-democracy ads. Also I noticed that Western governments play right into
some of these carefully laid traps like immigration, sexuality or religion
policies.

------
jackschultz
The first in the list is about echo chambers. How was life not an echo chamber
with not phones? I'm guessing people in a town would all agree with each other
because they couldn't get any opinions on the opposite sides. In a city, this
could be the case as well, where people would gather and trash people with the
opposite views. For the rest, I'm sure I'd be able to come up with convincing
examples of why that was an issue in the past.

It's incredibly difficult to understand what society and politics from the
past. History books aren't able to get us fully emerged in what life was like
then. I guess I'm saying that there have always been threats to democracy, but
it's shifted more towards social media these days.

~~~
mantas
Pre-social-media, you'd talk more to neighbours or random strangers in a bar.
They'd be more likely to have different opinions and you'd be exposed to
different ideas as well as people behind them. Meanwhile today people are less
exposed to different opinions and even when they're, they're even less exposed
to people behind them. Which is no less important than the ideas themselves.

~~~
jackschultz
How can you claim that people's neighbors had different opinions than the
people themselves? How can you say that about strangers at a bar? People then
could be the same as people now who don't want to talk about politics and
would rather call people with different opinions trash.

Who's to say that people these days are less exposed? That's incredibly
difficult to research. And I can just claim that people see different opinions
all the time, and are able to look up which well known people agree on each
side?

This whole thing is all claims and not proof. So many people never respecting
the opposite side's opinions, but that could easily be because of how humans
evolved and not because of culture and tech.

~~~
mantas
Are your neighbours your close friends? Most likely not. Most likely they're
strangers from different walks of life who happened to be your neighbours
purely by accident. Since people are different, your neighbours will likely
have different opinions than you. Same for people you meet in a bar. If it's
not X-political-gang bar, you'll probably meet all kinds of strangers from the
area and away.

Meanwhile your closely knit friends' circle is mostly of people who think
similarly to you. Or at least people who you're comfortable with.

People in general are lazy and rarely look up different opinions for the sake
of it. They hear whatever opinions they bump into. Be it their neighbourhood
and bar or their FB feed.

Another thing is, back in hood & bar times, people would not only hear
different ideas, but see that it's regular humans behind them. That there's no
inherent us vs them. In social media, it's easy to just write it off as
bullshit, the other person as stupid and block them.

"Well known people on each side" is a part of a problem. They're "them". It's
harder to find common ground with some celebrity you don't agree with than
with a neighbour you interact with daily and who is a great human being other
than few political points you don't agree with.

Of course humans were always prone to "us vs them" and echo chambers. But
today's technology makes that very easy to find very specific echo chambers. A
century ago language was the echo chamber limit. Thus people speaking same
language in close enough geographical proximity would usually get along pretty
well. Now that is more or less gone, but we have echo chambers in between
people living relatively close to each other. What next, reorganising into
virtual states defined by political opinions? Liberal and conservative living
next to each other, but following different laws? This is how many countries
were run up to modern times actually. Jews having different laws in some
European countries. Christians having different laws in Ottoman empire.
Neither of these ended well.

------
calvinbhai
Says the guy who is big into conventional media, which in many countries has
been caught peddling lies, misinformation and half truths, by the social
media.

Is social media a direct threat to democracy? I dont think so.

It certainly is a threat to conventional media peddling propaganda and
narrative based on the highest bidder.

------
RickJWagner
On the contrary, social media is breaking the media monopoly on crowd
influence.

Everything the author wrote has truth to it, but this is outweighed by the
democratization of public audience.

Power to the people!

~~~
pgeorgi
When the media writes about social media, what they mean is Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram. None of these serve to democratize access to the general public
given all those filters anymore than "letters to the editor".

Power to the people to express themselves? Give everybody the means to operate
a self-hosted blog (that is, they and _only_ they are responsible for what is
said and how).

------
echaozh
Why is influencing people in the democracy a bad thing? It's at least better
than only having to influence the people in the congress, right?

------
grabcocque
Social media, especially Facebook, tries very hard to ensure that we never
encounter a thought or opinion we consider surprising, or in any way contrary
to our biases and prejudices.

Essentially we're all locked in ever shrinking echo chambers, reinforcing our
sense of moral correctness by ensuring we never encounter any challenge to our
beliefs no matter how tiny and harmless.

That CANNOT be healthy.

~~~
pjc50
I see it the other way round on Twitter; it's hard to go a day without seeing
something offensive or annoying, even if it's just somebody retweeting the
latest Trump outrage to complain about it. If you step on a controversial
subject and/or present as a woman you can get aggro in your mentions up to and
including death threats.

I see contrary opinions all the time. What I rarely see is well thought out
contrary opinions presented as the conclusion of reasoning from a set of
reasonable looking premises.

~~~
belorn
Echo chambers allow two form of messages. Messages to agree with, and messages
to raise outrage (carrot and stick). Well thought out contrary opinions
belongs to neither so the echo chambers blocks that from view.

------
egeozcan
It is very easy for us humans to identify troll accounts. Why is it so hard
for Twitter to take some precautions? I know the complexity can increase
exponentially (relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1425/](https://xkcd.com/1425/)
) but at least some basic measures like monitoring ip addresses and cross
retweeting/liking could help filter out most of the basic troll accounts.

HN does it AFAIK, why can't Twitter?

Edit: From the downvotes, I think there is a misunderstanding. When I say
troll-accounts, I mean automated or semi-automated accounts that are created
for the sole purpose of creating a hostile atmosphere for people in the other
camp. I don't call the people I disagree with as "trolls".

------
ThomPete
I know it's popular to bash social media for everything that's wrong in
politics but there is an important omission from all these articles that are
completely ignored but actually renders most of the claims and especially the
claim about the threat to democracy completely false.

 _1\. Echo Chamber_ Echo Chambers are nothing new in fact we used to live in
much bigger echo chambers than we do today. Your choice of newspaper or tv-
channels, i.e. one-way channels are actually the real echo chambers.

 _2 Spread of fake or misleading information (AKA Fake News)_ This is another
one that is greatly misunderstood. Most misleading information is not done for
political reasons but for clicks. They are extraordinary headlines made to get
people to click. It's spam more than anything made to squeeze some advertising
dollars out of you not actually change your mind on something. The idea that
spreading fake or misleading information somehow is a product of social media
is simply incorrect. And compared to how things used to be with people mostly
getting their information from their one newspaper or tv-channel today every
claim is scrutinized by everyone. Nothing gets to stand unchallenged very
long.

 _3\. Conflation of popularity with legitimacy_ The argument about population
is a household stable in most marketing and advertising. There is literally
nothing new under the sun there. However, when it comes to being a threat to
democracy this makes no sense and looks to me like a completely made up claim.

 _4\. Political manipulation_ Once again nothing new here political
manipulation is an old an trusted tool for winning elections.

 _5\. Manipulation, micro-targeting and behavior change_ Yet Hillary won the
popular vote. So in other words, not a very effective tool. We are way better
off than the days when cigarette industry would put out their own manipulative
material or suppress materials. I see no evidence it's being effective neither
a threat to democracy.

 _6\. Intolerance, exclusion and hate speech_ Hillary ran large parts of the
campaign on identity politics, she won the popular vote. Hate speech and
intolerance is a problem but it has nothing to do with social media and isn't
a threat to democracy any more than political correctness is.

Now some will say. _" Well, the problem is the scale with which this can be
done."_ But here is the thing though. You will not be able to put out a lie
for very long until it actually becomes debunked. You will not be able to put
out a claim until someone has another perspective on that claim. There are
hordes of people all waiting for someone to be wrong on the internet and share
with the rest of the world.

In other words, social networks are self-correcting which makes them a tool to
be used by everyone and as a net benefit to democracy, not just those who used
to have access to the one way channels like tv, radio and newspapers.

Last but not least. This looks more like a piece of informercial than an
actual serious analysis of threats to democracy.

~~~
pjc50
> You will not be able to put out a lie for very long until it actually
> becomes debunked.

But you can lie at a higher rate than the debunkers can keep up with. Because
debunking takes more time and effort than lying. This tactic even has a name:
"Gish Gallop".

~~~
ThomPete
Debunking doesn't haven't to be some scientific exercise. I debunk many things
daily.

~~~
pjc50
How effective is it?

~~~
ThomPete
Very and a lot more than if I didn't have social media but had to write a
letter to each newspaper or get an interview on each tv station.

We are a lot better off with social media when it comes to the democratic
process than we are without.

