The problem with Facebook is not just Facebook – it’s also us
JARON Lanier’s manipulated. As the software exerts ever more influence over what we see and how we think, we begin to lose our free will and even our sense of individuality.
Unable to think for ourselves, we drift towards tribalism. Giving in to a primal force of human nature, we establish our identity by subscribing to groupthink, pillorying those with different ideas.
Missing from social media, Lanier suggests, are the “public spaces” of the physical world, where the presence of others reveals similarities that transcend differences. That sense of shared humanity, essential to a decent society, is lost when people are reduced to streams of messages and images. Even when we go out into public spaces today, Lanier observes, we are often gazing at our screens, not our surroundings.
Lanier is an astute critic, able to see things others miss. But his analysis is distorted by a flawed assumption. He views the problems of social media as “blessedly specific”, resulting from Facebook and Google’s reliance on personalised advertising to make money. By closing our social media accounts, he contends, we’ll give Silicon Valley an opportunity “to improve itself ” – to retool its business in a socially responsible way. That’s a cheery notion, but it’s naive to think that, if we just hit the reset button, Silicon Valley will reform itself and right its wrongs.
Social media’s problems stem not just from internet companies’ business strategies but from the technologies the companies use. By turning all types of information into binary code, computer networks encourage the consolidation of once-diverse media into data empires of unprecedented scope and power.
And the very design of smartphones and apps, research shows, saps us of the patience and attentiveness we need to evaluate the meaning and worth of the information pulsing through our screens.
As Lanier acknowledges, the tendency of digital media to promote emotionalism, diminish thoughtfulness and undermine civil discourse was already in evidence when people first began conversing online in the 1970s, long before the ads showed up.
When people talk in person, eye to eye, they naturally feel a kinship, even if they disagree with each other. That fellow-feeling tempers distrust and encourages courtesy. When those same conversations take place on the computer screen, they are much more likely to deteriorate into name-calling and one-upmanship. The technology brings out what Lanier calls our “inner troll”.
We can’t separate Silicon Valley’s business interests from its tools, nor can we trust entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to remedy complex social ailments.
Even if the public were to stage a mass exodus from social media, internet companies would, if left to their own devices, construct new communication systems and media empires with similar defects.
They’d probably invent better ways to bewitch us. The problem with Facebook is not just Facebook. It is also us.
Carr is the author of