Social media removed the corrective elements of previous mechanisms. There's no longer a "trusted party" who helps you when you're in the wrong, there are "enemies" who "dunk on you."
The purpose of broadcasting isn't the same as conversation. People want the result of a positive interaction, but they do that by chasing hundreds of negative ones.
The negative interactions are actually better for the platform as they are (in some studies) almost 10x as effective at driving engagement. So the companies looking for "the most engaging" communities, drive more negative interactions.
The people looking for the most clicks, chase the "dunking" and "counter dunking" interactions, and it becomes at best 90% of the platform, at in reality like 99% of what you see while you're doom scrolling.
Social media is awful, and draws out our worst impulses as a business model.
Agreed. Take something as simple as a "quote tweet".
The physical analogy is that you're listening to somebody, then turn around to speak to a group of "friends" about it whilst the other person can hear you do it. And you'd likely misrepresent what was said and receive an applause for it.
It's a deeply anti-social behavior that in the real world would make you wake up in a hospital pretty soon.
Or how about a retweet of a hot take? Imagine going all over town and plastering walls with a low effort opinion.
Or how about digging into somebody's past to find something offensive from a decade ago? What would the physical analogy look like? Following somebody for 10 years, taking notes, making pictures, interviewing your friends and family? Which would amount to what normally would be a deep criminal investigation, yet here we do it just for kicks?
Social media has normalized deeply anti-social behavior and the consequences are severe.
The purpose of broadcasting isn't the same as conversation. People want the result of a positive interaction, but they do that by chasing hundreds of negative ones.
The negative interactions are actually better for the platform as they are (in some studies) almost 10x as effective at driving engagement. So the companies looking for "the most engaging" communities, drive more negative interactions.
The people looking for the most clicks, chase the "dunking" and "counter dunking" interactions, and it becomes at best 90% of the platform, at in reality like 99% of what you see while you're doom scrolling.
Social media is awful, and draws out our worst impulses as a business model.