Facebook Makes Us Know Too Much About Each Other

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/opinion/facebook-social-media-problems.html

by tysone • 5 years ago

127 82 5 years ago

It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact.

Take away the human aspect and look only at tweets or shares or headlines, and you don’t have that magical ability that humans have to connect with each other in spite of tribal division.

sumthinprofound• 5 years ago

you can learn a lot about a person by sitting down and having a meal with them and miraculously alot of the online vitrol dissipates when you have a chance to see them as a full person.

JumpCrisscross• 5 years ago

alot of the online vitrol dissipates when you have a chance to see them as a full person

But remove the physical proximity and the vitriol often re-animates.

hpoe• 5 years ago

Interestingly enough that is what Daryl Davis decided to do to start fighting racism, got over a dozen members, including a grand wizard, to leave the Klan. I'd recommend watching his TedTalk it really helped me understand how to better work with others, and how to bring about understanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

Or are they just hiding it because social norms require that they do?

As we have pretty strong social expectations for how people behave at meals.

andrew_5• 5 years ago

A few years back I met a woman at a bar, flirted, got a number, and went on a date. About 30 minutes into the date she brought up politics, and was on the opposite side of the spectrum from myself. That didn't change that I thought she was funny and was interested enough to flirt and set up a date. We just mutually agreed that we had no business dating, had a laugh, and finished out the night together with the understanding that we could have a good time despite the differences that wouldn't allow for dating.

Online media attempt to amplify these differences to the point of rage because there's money it in.

FriedrichN2• 5 years ago

Every time I make the mistake of looking at Twitter I am reminded of how much of an absolute cesspool it is. Only the loudest, rudest, dumbest, most extreme opinions seem to get through. Social media only highlights the extremes of the spectrum whatever the subject.

shreyshnaccount• 5 years ago

yes! this! it's a giant problem- social media becomes a collection of only the extremes, leaving out the middle ground where most ppl actually fall, in for the clicks :(

shoto_io• 5 years ago

I hate twitter. Every time I get on I feel much worse than before. So much hate and conflict...

Only the loudest, rudest, dumbest, most extreme opinions

I'd add the voice of rich people to this list.

Tenoke• 5 years ago

Are you looking at trending or specifally seeking that type of content? My twitter feed has little of this and there are a lot of accounts that just talk about their work or cool things they build or have found.

A big part of the idea of twitter is to curate who you follow rather than use it to see what the lowest common denominator is interested in.

winternett• 5 years ago

Even the "mute words" feature on Twitter does not work. That's all anyone needs to know about how much Twitter is geared towards ramming sponsored and annoying content down our throats every time we're on it.

I just really get on in short sprints to post my own words and if there is an emerging crisis, I can hopefully search for independent (non commercial and non-partisan) comments about the issue through carefully tailored keywords.

Social media betrays and manipulates us by invalidating an removing options that work in controlling what we see on it. They start out useful, but slowly degrade once they go public.

nsonha• 5 years ago

And the people on it seem to think it's the place where the intellect & highly productive hang out (some of them do, along side with everyone else).

They think twitter is the paramount of humans' open discussion, democratize/revolutionize politics & finance or something.

snarf21• 5 years ago

I think it is just a question of civility. People will post pure hate online, even in response to others. 99.9% of the time the same people would never say the same thing to that person's face, whether for fear of reprisal or social pressure. They would say all those things to the friend or spouse later but the big difference is diffusion. Their anger and vitriol has time to dissipate and they calm down. Hateful Media is an ever increasing ratchet of outrage.

LanceH• 5 years ago

My opinion of the problem is one specific type of communication. The guilty parties include both the left and right politically, as well as anyone else with an axe to grind about something.

These people communicate not like they are having a discussion with someone else. They don't just post a link and ask, "can you believe what happened here?"

Instead they post the link and tell you what you should think about it. It isn't a conversation. It isn't even just half the conversation. They are lecturing. It's a behavior that wouldn't happen in person, and if it didn't that person would just be avoided.

When I identified this style of post and blocked these people, the only thing really left that annoys is the clickbait ads.

In short, treat the people on the other side of your messages like friends you are speaking to, not as an audience you are educating on the proper way of doing thinking.

TeMPOraL• 5 years ago

I'd say it's worse than that: people aren't lecturing to their interlocutor. They're lecturing or signalling to the wider audience.

This, IMO, has been the bane of online forums of all kind. People talk like they're pundits on a discussion panel - they make points for the people watching, not for each other.

throwaway769371• 5 years ago

It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact.

My family's pretty conservative. In 2018, my brother's best friend from high school ran for political office as a democrat and won.

Every Christmas, my mom bakes cookies and takes them to family friends. She had to look past all the headlines, politics, political disagreements, and that guy is everything FOX News told her to hate, to remember she likes the guy and his family.

It's hard enough to look past disagreements normally; it's even harder when your people are telling you that should you hate this guy you've known for 20 years.

On one hand, I'm very encouraged that, when faced with this choice, people can cut through the divisions and look at the person. On the other hand, this doesn't scale, and he's still dead to my dad.

twofornone4• 5 years ago

It really doesn't help when the institutionally dominant side insists that the only way someone could possibly become conservative/republican/right leaning is by falling victim to Fox news propaganda.

There's far more nuance to the discussions regarding, say, border security, entitlement spending, immigration reform, etc beyond accusations of racism and xenophobia. It's quite possible for two people to look at the same set of data and come to different conclusions because of differing value systems, priorities, risk tolerance, etc.

Maybe part of the problem is this insistence that our platforms are justified in censoring opinions because of this false belief that if two people differ in political opinion, one side must be mislead by "misinformation".

sadfev• 5 years ago

I am not sure if it’s a good thing that humans collaborate with awful humans.

It’s a great service of Social media which exposes how awful humans are. How hateful, vengeful and violent seemingly normal people can be.

I think it’s a good thing that humans have fractured and awful people are separated from non awful people.

There is only harm towards nature and humans (mostly non awful/non aggressive humans) when there is lots of human collaboration.

Instead of de-carbonization, we need a technological and political decoupling of human beings. That’s the only hope for humanity and all the innocent flora and fauna of earth.

De-globalization is too far too late. We are on the no point of return from absolute and rapid annihilation of nature and humanity.

crocodiletears• 5 years ago

All these awful people sound dangerous What do we do with them once we've successfully identified and separated ourselves from them?

merpnderp• 5 years ago

Keep in mind that 99.9% of human history is the awful people enslaving everyone else (who would then prove unworthy when they enslaved everyone when they came to power).

Maybe our very short history of treating people equally, offering grace to those who fall short, and working towards consensus, is worth salvaging. The old days of tribalism were more horrific than we can imagine.

bellyfullofbac• 5 years ago

Well, a short opinion piece about a complicated topic.

In 2017, Deb Roy, director of the M.I.T. Center for Constructive Communication and former chief media scientist at Twitter, held informal meetings in small towns to talk to people about social media. Several times, people told him they’d given up speaking to neighbors or others in town after seeing them express their opinions online.

People have said the verbal part is just a small percentage of real life communication, I wonder if just reading someone's thoughts in text and not actually having a conversation contributes to this. But I guess verbal conversations are very lossy and when someone writes it down, you get their clear thoughts, and that can be good or bad (e.g. if they reveal themselves to be deeply racist...).

Double_a_92• 5 years ago

Social media just gives people occasions to talk about everything, and then everyone can see what they talked about.

While in real life you e.g. just never give your neighbour the occasion to talk about politics with you.

beardyw• 5 years ago

People have not learned to self moderate online. Maybe in time they will, or maybe following generations will.

Read back what you wrote, then delete it.

giorgioz• 5 years ago

Yes I think too much context, feelings and empathy is not transmitted on the web. If you meet a friend on the street and he seem sad you won't be bragging about your awesome vacation or promotion. Humans automatically tone their statements to match the receivers. We might think we speak absolutely the same way to everyone but in practice is not like that. We have the desire to fit and be liked and we adapt our language to be enjoyable for the receiver. Online you are not aware of your receiver and it's very easy to displease dozens of people at once which you would not do if you would speak with them one-by-one in person.

localhost• 5 years ago

While it is trendy to hate on Facebook, the actual title of the op-Ed is: “We Should All Know Less About Each Other“

dazc• 5 years ago

I know some bad things about my best friends but, I guess, the difference is that these things were not part of their curated image that the rest of the world gets to see.

Nicksil• 5 years ago

Well you both are right. It seems NYT slipped; the title of the document is

    <title>
        Opinion | Facebook Makes Us Know Too Much About Each Other - The New York Times
    </title>

The Facebook hate isn't a trend. People have been hating Facebook -- for good reason -- for quite some time.

_ktx2• 5 years ago

The opposite happened. “Nobody became more moderate,” said Bail. “Republicans in particular became much more conservative when they followed the Democratic bot, and Democrats became a little bit more liberal.”

This is accurate of right wingers, but it skimps on an observation I've noticed. As polarization increases, liberals become more tolerant of their own extremists. Most Democrats I've known throughout my life owned guns, valued the principle of free speech, would never get caught putting down an entire class of people, etc yet all of these are common views to, in some way, argue against as a Democrat these days.

One could argue it's the popularity of progressivism and how it's cultural values are now eroding the average Democrats, but I'm not quite sold on that idea. My pet theory has been that "own the libs" builds tolerance for extreme views because they further agitate the right, so it was interesting to see them highlight the rights agitation with the left. For now, I'll stick to calling myself an independent until all of this blows over and we can go back to having beers instead of talking about politics and our "values" for entertainment.

GhettoComputers3• 5 years ago

What is a right winger? What do libertarians, neoconservatives, and fundamental Christians agree with? The only way I’d classify them is non left, but not at all unified.

kodah• 5 years ago

Agreed, I was bucketing for simplicity and that's probably not optimal for consensus. For the sake of this conversation I'd box it as left and non-left. There probably is some distinction among non-left groups though. I came from Libertarianism and it hardly relates to the right besides depending on it for structural support. Being a Democrat with some progressive political beliefs puts you in a similar bucket. Unfortunately the nature of politics is winner takes all, which has historically made me odd bed-fellows in politics.

darthvoldemort2• 5 years ago

Libertarians are absolutely not neoconservatives or fundamental Christians.

That's like comparing a Democrat with Antifa.

kderbyma• 5 years ago

I don't social media makes us know too much, it's that it's unchanging and aggregates one's life into a feed...a torrent of information usually completely unrelated.

now they feed you the Facebook select which claim is the choice cut but in actual fact is the left overs from yesterday's main...

perhaps it's not the information but the medium is transfer and the lack of engagement with purpose.

GhettoComputers3• 5 years ago

I’m not convinced the polarization equates to real life. They don’t reveal the metric to judge how to see how moderate they got. It’s naive and uniquely stupid to assume following a bot will change your politics after a month.

The hardiness of peoples beliefs are proof they aren’t being more polarized by online, they’re just looking to agree with others.

nineplay2• 5 years ago

OK, so I'm reading a Hitler biography and it's affecting my outlook, but I think we all need to step back for a moment and acknowledge that people hated their political opponents long before Facebook came along.

I do think FB is pushing people to extremes. More precisely I think social media is pushing people to extremes, I find twitter a lot more antagonistic than FB actually, where people think they can 'destroy' their opponents in 280 characters or less. Reddit is a cesspool. We know, or we should know, that these sites are deliberately divisive . There are bad actors who want us to be really angry, all the time, because angry people are stupid.

It still is just the latest iteration. People used to gather in beer halls. People used to gather in churches. People used to have their social clubs and circles and had been able to carefully manipulate their environments so that people who disagreed with them lived and worked and went to school far, far away.

This anger doesn't go away if Facebook goes away. I'm not sure how to make it go away. I'd wish that people could take a step back and consider for a moment that maybe intelligent, decent people can disagree with them. Probably not.

germinalphrase2• 5 years ago

Counterpoint: strong social bonds and centers of community make people less susceptible to extremist beliefs/behavior by reducing atomization. In my farm town, both the democrat and the conservative farmer go to the VFW for fish fry.

Or - at least - they used to.

Loughla2• 5 years ago

Counter-counterpoint: those social bonds made sure 'new' thoughts were excluded inherently, ensuring differences were small, local, and low-friction. Take segregation for instance. How open to conversation about abolishing segregation would the folks at the VFW fish fry have been?

nineplay2• 5 years ago

My father tried to go to a VFW meeting after Vietnam and he was treated like crap by the WWII veterans. These clubs are more exclusive than one might hope. That was a long time ago, but today's Afghanistan veterans may not be getting a warm welcome either. See also how Black WWII veterans were treated at the officers clubs. Not well.

The matter I described earlier still applies too. When neighborhoods have been carefully and deliberately segregated, you don't run into much risk of seeing neighbors of a different religion and color at your fish fries.

darthvoldemort2• 5 years ago

Same thing happened with Tom Cruise a while back. He fired his publicist and started to go on interviews, and it turns out he's fucking wacky. He was jumping on couches on Oprah and laughing maniacally, and doing other really weird stuff. People were shocked, and his star dropped for a couple of years.

Lesson learned. Keep your mouth shut and let people think you're stupid, instead of opening it and confirming it.

colinmhayes• 5 years ago

Everyone has known Tom is wacky since we figured out he's a scientologist.

beefman• 5 years ago

Kirk: What have you done to my friends?

Sybok: I've done nothing. This is who they are! Didn't you know that?

Kirk: No I didn't.

Sybok: Now learn something about yourself.

Kirk: No. I refuse!

icecap122• 5 years ago

I'm guilty of effectively ending friendships after seeing things former-friends have posted or stated online. In most cases, their posts or social media content revealed fundamental hypocrisy in what they said versus how they lived, or a belief-system in direct contrast to my own. I really had a hard time with that, and decided that I didn't want to talk to the person anymore. In one case, it was somebody I'd known since like 4th grade.

It's hard to want to be friends with someone that might support the abolishment of something you like, or that supports something you should feel abolished (does it matter which?). It's still possible, but I've found that I eventually figure out where someone stands on something and gravitate away from them, even without social media. Ultimately one of the biggest problems is the total lack of civil discourse. If that was more prevalent, I think it would be easier to have friends with opposing views. Nowadays, people throw up their arms and accuse you of being X when they can't articulately argue a position. That gets tiring.

As the article mentions, in some cases, social media reveals the depths of someone's political positions, personal beliefs, or other that you might not have known. Is it worse to know those things, versus not know? Hard to say, but I personally like to have things in common with my friends. There are no easy answers here, so my personal solution was dumping most social media, like Facebook and Instagram. I hate Twitter, but find myself having to use it to keep up with news in the infosec community; even if the group on Twitter is an echo-chamber club that mostly uses their "status" in the community to influence on topics other than cyber (super annoying).

All I know is, my peace of mind seems to be much better without social media; I don't miss it at all.

[edit] spelling correction

jdavis7032• 5 years ago

This seems strange to me. I’m sure I’m friends with people who want to abolish the IRS (American tax agency) or folks who perhaps want to privatize other agencies like Social Security (American “pension” system) or folks who send their kids to charter schools. I couldn’t imagine ending a friendship over this.

Loughla2• 5 years ago

So for me, it came down to the individual view. I have dumped friends for 'other' political views. But they didn't tend to be related to agencies, like you list.

They're the personal ones. People who don't believe gays should be allowed to be married by the state. People who don't believe women or minorities should be allowed to vote. People who believe all immigrants come here to kill/steal/crime whatever.

The difference is when it's an institution (private versus public schools for example), that's pretty easy to disagree over. One side does not believe the other is inherently evil and a 'lesser' person. When it's about individual rights, and an attack on you as a person, and your inherent rights as an individual, that is almost impossible to overcome.

andrew_5• 5 years ago

I've ended friendships with people that could not be civil over our idealogical differences, despite my indifference about the differences. Many get sucked up into what's online and let it lead them offline. It's sad.

notreallyserio• 5 years ago

I’d end a friendship if they were posting Proud Boys/GOP/QAnon memes, or otherwise racist content. I may even end a friendship if they promote abolishing the IRS because that wouldn’t do anything and is thus pretty stupid (it’s not like the government would stop taxing). But the rest is pretty tame and reasonable people can disagree.

6gvONxR4sf7o• 5 years ago

I like this framing. Facebook’s problem is that it facilitates the feeling of connection at the expense of the real thing. You see some Evil Conservative post or Evil Liberal post that you’re sure to interpret uncharitably, and you’ve never talked to the poster about this topic (or at all), so you’re sure you have a good picture of that person in your head.

But it’s a good framing beyond that too. You see vacation pictures posted by a friend you haven’t talked to in five years, so you feel connected. You feel connected to tons of people you haven’t actually talked to in ages.

When I left social media, the biggest change I found was that I’d actually directly contact friends more. I had to now! Less pub-sub and more one on one interaction. You trade superficially knowing more about each other without effort for actually knowing more about each other with effort.

clarkevans• 5 years ago

I found the linked 2019 article on the Front Porch Forum to be rather interesting. In particular, this social network's posts/responses are have a 24h delay.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/24/18129437/front-porch-foru...

Besides membership, FPF seems to be sustained though local advertising.

bradgessler• 5 years ago

Privacy makes us more civil.

Next time somebody says they don’t care about privacy tell them that.

When we think we know everything about somebody, our mind is no longer curious about that person. We think we know everything about them and start making assumptions.

Facebook Makes Us Know Too Much About Each Other

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