Social media weakened the social capital, strong institutions, and shared stories that bind democracies, especially after 2009 when virality began to intensify
I had plans for the week-end. Ambitious plans. I was going to do my taxes. Christie DeLuca / Analog : Is Social Media a Crack House? Jonathan Haidt / The Atlantic : Grand Hotel Abyss : Weekly Readings (04/11/22-04/17/22) — A weekly newsletter on what I've written, read, and otherwise enjoyed. Randall Hayes / Doctor Eclectic : A Preview of Coming Art Actions Sean McDevitt / The Weekly Click : Tweet Tweet Edition — I'm Sean McDevitt, and this is The Weekly Click. Mark Bonica / RWL Newsletter : RWL #271 — Happy Easter from the University of New Hampshire! Also belated happy Passover … Tara Henley / Lean Out with Tara Henley : Weekend reads — In a much-discussed piece in The Atlantic this week, social psychologist … Emilio Dal Bo / Caratteri di Emilio Dal Bo : Caratteri #12 📱 Minimalismo schizofrenico The Welcome Party : Ruy's Razor — Join a small group Zoom to help us get better Tweets: Ian Livingston / @islivingston : This was a bit long and winding for my liking plus it used woke more than once which is eh... BUT, overall, still pretty solid. If you're very online like me... find some time to at least skim it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... #stupidestcountry Daniel Haddad / @danielnhaddad : Excelente artigo!!! “Later research showed that posts that trigger emotions—especially anger at out-groups—are the most likely to be shared... This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... @filsdeproust : Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) writes in a pessimistic vein on the political repercussions of modern social media. Food for thought. //Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Paul Graham / @paulg : A very important essay by Jonathan Haidt about the damage social media is doing to us: “Thanks to enhanced-virality social media, dissent is punished within many of our institutions, which means that bad ideas get elevated into official policy.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Tom Gara / @tomgara : Mentions in this piece: Facebook: 19 Twitter: 18 YouTube: 2 Fox News: 1 TV / cable news: 1 Talk radio: 0 https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Akshat Rathi / @akshatrathi : An insightful dissection of the malaise that inflicts democracies. As with much top-notch writing, the focus is on the US. But there are enough echoes to other democracies that there are real lessons for a vast majority of people of the world. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Greg Fish / @gregafish : I can't believe @TheAtlantic needed 8,500 words to say “things are bad because Facebook and Fox News built an economy out of pitting people against each other with lies and outrage bait, and no one's doing anything about it.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Adam Habib / @adhabb : “When our public square is governed by mob dynamics unrestrained by due process, we don't get justice and inclusion; we get a society that ignores context, proportionality, mercy, and truth”. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Eric Blair / @protecttruth_ : The Atlantic blames FB, starting in 2010, for our current nat'l crisis. But other TV/news things happened then: 1. Rise of Fox 2. Implosion of traditional news (Craisglist, due to ad focus); rise of Atlantic neutral “trolling liberals for clicks” model. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Daniel Pink / @danielpink : Wisdom from Jon Haidt: “People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Evi Mariani / @evimsofian : Once social-media platforms had trained users to spend more time performing and less time connecting, the stage was set for the major transformation, which began in 2009: the intensification of viral dynamics. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Corey Hogan / @coreyhogan : This week's must-read. My own suggestion for fixing social media: treat it like alcohol. - Must be 18+ - Mandatory identity verification - Platforms must promote safe consumption, including an end to gamification (end to like, RT and comment counts) https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Brett Gurewitz / @brettgurewitz : thoughtful analysis on the state of the open society by one of my favorite thinkers @JonHaidt (also why does this illustration look familiar...) #ifyouknowyouknow https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Fionn Davenport / @fionndavenport : https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... this is a great article about the effects of social media on democracy and society at large. Elias Makos / @eliasmakos : “The dart guns of social media give more power and voice to the political extremes while reducing the power and voice of the moderate majority. The progressive activists were by far the most prolific group... The devoted conservatives followed...” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Vivienne Moonshadow / @karma_galore : Social media was supposed to connect us, bring us closer. Instead it is dividing us in ways we could never have imagined. We are no longer “we”, we are “us and them” where “us” is our confirmation bias and “them” are our enemies. https://twitter.com/... Dan Gardner / @dgardner : I've read far too much of the history of technology to be confident in our judgments of what technologies do to/for us in the present. But @JonHaidt presents a compelling case for deep pessimism about the effects of social media: https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Charles Adler / @charlesadler : What we call democracy, dies without the oxygen of truth. Deliberately cultivating stupidity is not just unethical. It threatens our democratic way of life. Thanks very much @JonHaidt for thinking out loud about why & how disinformation disarms democracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Ilona Kickbusch / @ilonakickbusch : Social scientists have identified at least 3 major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. #Socialmedia has weakened all 3 https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Anne Applebaum / @anneapplebaum : “Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.” Read @JonHaidt on the devastation created by social media https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Axel Merk / @axelmerk : “It's..the continual chipping-away of trust. An autocracy can deploy propaganda or use fear to motivate behaviors it desires, but democracy depends on widely internalized acceptance of the legitimacy of rules, norms, & institutions. ” important weekend read, constructive ideas 👇 https://twitter.com/... Niall Ferguson / @nfergus : I am late to this excellent essay by @JonHaidt. His diagnosis isn't so novel (social media turned us into Babel after the destruction of the tower, all very @lessin) but Haidt ends with some constructive proposals for reform: https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Matthew Yglesias / @mattyglesias : I think it's interesting to me that @JonHaidt is such a social media critic — I feel like there's some unresolved tension between this view and what I think of as Haidt-ian views on free speech. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Tom Lee / @tjl : A despairing assessment of social media. I think a lot of this is descriptively correct, and if anything I'm more disappointed by the way things have turned out, having spent much of my allotment of youthful naïveté on optimism about the internet & society https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Garrett M. Graff / @vermontgmg : Speaking as one of @tjl's “early social media” colleagues, I think it's hard to capture the extreme disappointment a certain generation of political digital strategists feel with where the world has ended up fifteen years later. Amirite @nicco @katieharbath @LizMair @adamconner? https://twitter.com/... John Battelle / @johnbattelle : The latest in the series is well worth the time spent reading. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... @hkanji : The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...