
How Social Media Exploits Our Moral Emotions - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/how-social-media-exploits-our-moral-emotions
======
godinaa
While social networks should make improvements to facilitate healthier
communication, mean comments and pitchforking is not exclusive to social
networks in any way.

If you were on a forum and said a racist comment like the one in the article,
if people didn't like it you would probably be put on blast and have ruined
your reputation on that forum as well. Difference is that it's not your face.
If you feel like it's okay to say racist things, you probably are not going to
realize your mistake unless called out by someone.

So to me it seems like social media is just piggybacking on the proclivity of
people's desire to be seen and heard.

~~~
some_account
I'm honestly sick of people wanted to be heard. Almost nobody has anything
interesting to say. It's all noise for attention. Just like my post here I
guess.

~~~
ravenstine
That and people being enraged by just about everything. There's a lot in the
world to be troubled by, but to always have visceral reactions towards things
happening around the world must be taxing on one's health. I don't think a day
goes by where I don't see a post by someone making a banal statement about
some issue... and I'm supposed to "like" that they've managed to think the
same things millions of average Joes and Janes already believe.

------
stcredzero
Great TED talk on the original twitter kerfuffle referenced in the article:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI)

CGP Grey's take on how outrage is used to exploit us through social media:
(Yes, I link this often, because the message is valuable.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

------
abnry
A good rule for using social media responsibly: When you wish to express
yourself, consider if your self-expression is of value to the people who hear
it. If you are encouraging other people to be angry, it probably isn't.

~~~
CptFribble
I would agree with one caveat: focusing anger at causes of human suffering is
A-OK.

Although, maybe it's too hard to efectively generalize social media usage like
that.

Is it possible to design a system that can ONLY be used responsibly? At lease
in matters of expression?

------
fortythirteen
> Many social media companies now appear to agree with Brady and are making
> efforts to address some of the concerns that research like his raises.
> Twitter, for example, recently announced an open call for proposals on how
> to improve “conversational health” on its platform. And last October, Reddit
> rolled out a more robust policy for actively monitoring its discussion
> boards.

Those initiatives weren't designed to lessen the "exploitation of moral
emotions", they were designed to give preference towards the extreme moral
emotions of a particular world view.

