Algorithms and Social Media

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Recently I have been thinking more about trolling. I have been thinking about why, I, and others, appear so negative or toxic on social media. I believe that one reason for this is that algorithms drive conversations and popularity, rather than time devoted to social media, and conversationalism.

## Return on Investment Then and Now

By this I mean that if I spent 20 hours on social media in 2006 or 2007 I would have spent 20 hours watching conversations between friends, and friends of friends. Today if I spend twenty hours on social media I may see three or four posts by friends, and hundreds from groups, and that are chosen by algorithms. The result is that the social circle that I built in 2006-2007 was a tight knit community of friends.

Back then if you trolled you would become invisible, because people would ignore you and block you. In the new era our timelines are driven by algorithms rather than friends, and friends of friends. We see the content that got the most engagement rather than the content we want to see. I believe that this has two effects.

## The Disengaged Audience

The first of these is that it promotes content, that in a healthy social network would be ignored. This encourages trolls and flame wars, rather than pleasant conversations. If you see polarising content, by someone you don't know, out of your social network, you may behave in a more hostile manner than within a network of friends.

The other issue is that friends know you, so they know how to read the nuance in what you're saying, as well as your base moral code. In a web of strangers it's easy for people to misread what we write and jump to the wrong conclusions.

The second effect is that of saturation. On Twitter, Instagram and Facebook I see binfluencer content rather than the content by friends, colleagues and family so regularly that the networks become obsolete. If you see content that you don't want to see, and you see it regularly, you may feel antipathy, and those with less of a moral censor will troll, rather than ignore.

## Conversations Aren't Rewarded

Social Media, as it is today doesn't reward conversation, and conviviality. It rewards clickbait sensationalism. I watch youtube and so many videos say "don't forget to like, subscribe and click the bell". I rarely do those things, because most of the time content is not worth a like and if you subscribe to a channel you usually stop watching content in my experience.

## AI Noise is Coming

As if the noise by binfluencers was not enough on Instagram there are [projects to make it worse, with AI characters](https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/18/24181196/butterflies-app-ai-chatbots-social-media). They want to start filling timelines with AI generated characters that will post, independently of human beings. They want to increase the amount of noise and wasted attention. I don't see that this makes any sense. For me the raison d'être of social media is to find conversations with human beings, that go so well that we want to be friends in person. With the emergence of influencers this became much harder, and with AI characters the experience will be all the worse for it.

## Ad Blockers and Trolls

Although ad blockers and trolls are two seperate problems I believe that they are both indicators that websites and social media need to rethink how they think of their users. Ad blockers have grown in popularity because some sites innundate their sites with ads, and these ads are sometimes slow to load. On a Raspberry Pi they tend to crash it, if we are not careful.

Trolls are the second symptom. I believe that on a healthy social network people feel heard, and included within conversations so they don't need to lash out, and they don't feel isolated, so they have no reason to feel hostile. By using algorithms social media push content onto us that is not within our social network as decent people call them, and social graph as utilitarian engineers call it. By pushing that content via algorithms social networks and social networks are dilluted rather than amplified.

An example of this dillution is that when you look at FB, Threads, or IG you will be encouraged to jump from A to B before jumping to C to see content. You're encouraged to be on all three versions of Facebook at once.

A few years ago I argued that if you need notifications, you have failed. My rational was that if a social network engages you, you will automatically check for new posts and interactions, without being nagged.

## A Time To Revert to Smaller Networks

I believe that now is the time to revert to smaller, niche social networks. FB, IG, TW and other networks have forgotten that community is what social media companies should be about.The more social media companies control what we see and who we are tempted to interact with, the more absurd it becomes to use them.

I like the network that I have found for Via Ferrata and other activities. I want to spend more time with that group. Social media was fun, but at this point it has become an absurd waste of time, and for me to write that, is saying somethingi.