Social media: endorsing extremism, ending society.
Miss Doozy
Nov 21, 2021
7 min read
Updated: Nov 24, 2022
I'd like to preface this by stating that much of my information and many of my opinions formulated around this issue have been gathered from The Social Dilemma, a docu-drama considering the role of tech-giants in the essential downfall of society, perpetuated by their own selfish interests to profit from polarisation and incendiary divisions.
The purpose of the documentary, and by extension this article, is not to make you "go off-grid" and delete all of your social media accounts, although I do propose that it would be the most optimal way to end the dangerous influence that tech conglomerates have on us all, and to to truly realise what we are entrapped within. It is a simple thought: if we all stopped using social media, then these companies would cease to exist, and perhaps, these radical and rather ridiculous movements spurred on by them, would also stop spreading with the vigour that they already do. Obviously, we live in the age of information and communication; without the use of social media and search platforms such as Google, we would essentially be cut off from what some might regard to be the "better" part of our lives. However, this doesn't prevent the dire need for a distancing of collective society from the culture surrounded and created by social media.
The law is also leaps and bounds behind the developments made in the technological industry - data privacy laws need to be reformed and large corporations need to be taxed on the amount of information they collect on each individual so that this in turn limits their immense profiteering from radicalisation, which is ending the world slowly but surely as we know it.
I'd also like to dedicate this article to one of my teachers, without whom this article would not exist.
I always thought that when people spoke about AI taking over the world that we'd be in some sort of dystopian nightmare, with robots becoming stronger and more intelligent than us all and maiming everyone until we were all gone, and their singular victory would be all that was left of the evidence that humans had ever existed. What I didn't realise then, and what I have come to realise now, is that AI already has taken over - it knows more about you than your closest friend, or perhaps even your family, and uses this against you. It's like an evil clone of yours which wants to learn to be exactly like you, and so it'll track all your movements, gauge an idea as to what your likes and dislikes are, and use this information to bombard you with information which you think you may want to see, but in reality will influence you in ways that you do not realise. This is what allows dangerous and somewhat radical movements such as Q-anon, the "flat earthers", and the climate crisis deniers, to infest the internet, which I will aim to address.
What was striking about The Social Dilemma was its discussion from various people who used to work at these large conglomerate tech firms such as Facebook, or Meta, I should say, and the likes of Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Google - speaking about the problems that they had essentially helped to create. The algorithm that our lives seem to be ingrained within, knows which "information" we engage with, how long we engage with such "information", and thus this "machine" is able to understand our day-to-day routines, our emotions, and understand our human psychology. The Social Dilemma compared it to an evolutionary competition: human brains have not fundamentally evolved in the past few centuries, but what has, and is constantly evolving, is the AI behind our screens, which is becoming more efficient in predicting our patterns. It's as simple as clicking on a video that YouTube recommends you - it then knows what kind of content you are more likely to engage with, which is their true goal: engagement time. The more you engage with a video, or any kind of post, the longer you spend on a given social media app, and for them, time equals targeting advertisements towards you, which brings said social media app an insane amount of profit. Time is the new currency, and the more time we spend consuming material we don't have any use for, the richer these firms get, ergo allowing them to collect more information, and the more they are able to target you with useless information. It's essentially an endless cycle of doom.
What truly opened my eyes, so to say, was realising that social media is not a tool. A tool is something which waits, patiently to be used; static and useless until you use it for your own benefit. This is the farce that social media is; it presents itself as a tool, but a tool does not constantly urge you to use it, a tool does not manipulate your psychology, your personal interests. Take for example, the notification that you have been tagged in a photo on some various app. Why can you not see the photo if you are notified about being tagged? It's a cleverly designed marketing technique to make you travel into the app itself, get distracted by a variety of other targeted advertisements or posts tailored just for your feed, and for you to lose track of time, and launch yourself into an abyss of manic frenzy of internet surfing, which can essentially manipulate you endlessly, because it understands your emotions. There is virtually no limit to the variety of your information that it has access to. This is why it's further unfair: once you delve into a Wikipedia rabbit hole, it's largely of your own doing, because you are able to choose which links to click on. With a YouTube rabbit hole, by comparison, you are offered a select choice of videos to pick from, and this can very easily lead you to some extremist and radical movements. YouTube is essentially Wikipedia but more manipulative and in video form - it's like if Wikipedia decided to start putting pop-ups of various articles which are linked to the pages you were viewing, or if it collected your search history without your consent and continued to force-feed you more radically tailored information. What's dangerous is that this is actually most prone to happening if the algorithm manages to learn that you are easily susceptible to a manipulative conspiracy theory. It can further accelerate this through the auto-fill suggestions in the search bar, which vary depending upon geographical location, and search history - at this rate, how do we know the algorithm isn't listening to our conversations; the parts of our lives which we sometimes wish to keep most private?
Let's take the example of Q-anon to understand how the algorithm spreads and manipulates easily. Q-anon is a conspiracy theory deep-rooted in the idea, that an elite group including Hollywood celebrities, Democrat politicians and religious figures, are child-trafficking paedophiles, who in addition to molestation, also kill and eat their victims so as to extract a life-extending chemical called adrenochrome. Trumpism comes into this; Q-anon believers presume that the ex-US president elect, was recruited by top military generals to break up this criminal conspiracy and bring its members to justice. Some believers even still legally recognise him as the president of the United States of America. To facilitate its spread, Q-anon weaves a maze of conspiracy theories so that it can effectively recruit more members. The algorithm which collects your information aids in this - whilst you may initially see no harm in its supposedly meaningless collection of knowledge, it can be manipulated for more nefarious intents and purposes. For example, let's say you are a member of a Facebook yoga group chat. From there, you can become a target for essential oil advertisements, and through this, wades of fake news and misinformation will come your way; these so called articles containing ground-breaking evidence of the health benefits of replacing essential oils with pharmaceutical medications whose efficacy has been scientifically-proven. Yoga enthusiast to essential oil fanatic may seem extreme, but it is certainly plausible - and comes under the umbrella of the conspiracy of Q-anon. Moreover, the possibility of being radicalised was much more likely throughout the global pandemic, with an 174% increase in Q-anon posts throughout this time, according to research done by Georgia State University. One may correctly question from here, how does this surge in social media posting perpetuate the end of society today as we know it?
Britain seems far less populated with Q-Anon-type believers than the US. However, YouGov surveys reveal that around 1 in 11, or 9% of 18-24 year-olds believe that the warnings on climate change are over-exaggerated, as compared to the one-third, or 32% of those aged 55 and above who feel the same - thus depicting the growth in believers of climate change being a hoax, and perhaps an increase in "flat-earthers". This survey was conducted in 2019. Since then, factoring in the 174% increase in Q-anon posting on social media, one can reasonably presume that these numbers have only increased - thus indicating that these harmful conspiracy theories will only serve to further influence many in the near future. These statistics may seem insignificant, but less and less want to openly admit the far-fetched right-wing conspiracy theories that they believe in. Britain is also a very small country - smaller than some singular states of America, meaning that less people need to be manipulated by the algorithm in order for crimes against democracy and humanity begin to take place in the name of right-wing extremism. Furthermore, the emergence of notorious Neo-Nazi groups since the late 1970s and the anti-immigrant attitudes held by what seems like much of the much of the British populace due to the tipping point of Brexit, altogether reinforces that right-wing indoctrination is simple. If humans were able to do it effectively years ago, and still are, imagine how much better AI can do it - knowing the masses of information it already does, and the wide variety of material it has access to.
Our future lies in jeopardy due to the permeation of social media in all aspects of our lives. Radicalisation through social media is able to take place due to the limitless bounds that it knows - our information is but a field of pasture, waiting to be grazed upon by some kind of infested animal, which is intent on feasting upon it until there is no green grass left, and only the soil is visible. And even if the grass does eventually sprout from the ground, beginning with smaller and thinner blades, the animal shows no mercy and completely devours it yet again. Until both, our collective societal addiction, and our own individual addiction to social media does not end, these tech corporations will not be held to account. Perhaps this can happen in the foreseeable future. Perhaps we will make a change. Hopefully this change is introduced before it is too late to do anything, and all that we know has already been destroyed.
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