TRUTH AND INTERNET – TO PRESERVE THE SANITY OF SOCIETY TAME THE SOCIAL MEDIA -sudhanshu

GOOD DAY TO YOU !!

 I was just wondering today -

 TRUTH AND INTERNET –

 MY DEAR INSANE PEOPLE -

 TO PRESERVE THE SANITY OF SOCIETY TAME THE SOCIAL MEDIA

 In the so called digital realm of today, our social media - distortion of the truth takes two forms: “disinformation” (the deliberate creation and propagation of false information) and “misinformation” (“the inadvertent sharing of false information,” including rumor and satire). Fabricated and misleading content readily goes viral on social media, because falsehood is often more entertaining and gripping than truth—and it is becoming easier and easier to generate in convincing digital form.

 Perverted use of social media has become the dominant means for transmitting fake news, biased opinions, and vitiated political propaganda auguring the dangers they pose to democracy have become clearer and more urgent. Indeed, it is precisely their radical democratization of information flows—removing editorial filters and standards, thus enabling anyone anywhere to act as a journalist, filmmaker, or pundit—that have helped make social media a threat to democracy. I read Mark Zuckerberg somewhere , “One of the things I’ve learned is that when you connect two billion people, you will see all the beauty and ugliness of humanity.”

 Zuckerberg – I think we are seeing more ugliness than beauty – more untruth’s than truth through social media. I am strong and deep in my conviction that if Social media was tamed and it behaved well we would have had more decent and good governance globally everywhere.

 Yet the perils posed by social media also spring from other deep-seated features. The economic incentive of social media platforms is to grab people’s attention, because more user time spent on a site means more ad revenue. That often privileges content that is provocative, emotive, or downright outrageous. Of course, that is true for all commercial media, because, as Zuckerberg notes, “left unchecked, people will engage disproportionately with more sensationalist and provocative content.” However, lacking any space limits, advance editorial filters, or scheduling constraints, social media convey information instantly, and their dense, decentralized networks enable wide diffusion of these information flows. These two features—high speed and wide spread—enable digital posts to go viral, capturing attention for cynical lies and ardent truths alike.

 Moreover, social media are by nature open to manipulation. Even if all the big platforms were to forbid fake or anonymous users (as Facebook already technically does), it would be difficult and costly to establish every user’s true identity. And automation now enables rapid distribution of malicious information on a colossal scale by fake accounts (though Facebook is regularly removing astonishing numbers of those fake accounts). This makes social media distinctively vulnerable to manipulation by malign forces, domestic and foreign.

 These problems overlap, but we can (with the aid of an excellent recent synthesis by the Omidyar Group) identify a number of interconnected dangers that social media pose to democracy. Social media intensify political polarization, in part by propagating false information, whether deliberately or inadvertently; the more outrageous the content, the further it travels. As confidence in all sources of information—and the very notion of objective truth—disintegrates, so does the legitimacy of the established media. This clears the field for governments, political parties, movements, and leaders to spread false and divisive messages and to forge direct, carefully targeted ties with their followers. Polarization then deepens, draining the public sphere of the civility and mutual respect that make for a healthy democratic society. As everything becomes digitized and tracked, individual privacy and freedom suffer along with democracy.

 Of course, polarization did not begin with the digital age. It ravaged modern democracies, from the United States to Germany, well before the era of television, let alone the internet. But social media make it quick and easy to find the like-minded, to bond with them, and to disparage those who disagree.

 Digital platforms continually feed users news, search results, friend suggestions, and updates that fit their interests, biases, and even shopping preferences. This generates a feedback loop that constantly refines people’s data profiles and promotes “self-segregation into like-minded groups,” otherwise known as “echo chambers.”12 These also act as “filter bubbles,” sheltering people “from information that might challenge the [partisan] messages sent to them.”

 That echoes one of the classic insights from early research in sociology: people with crosscutting social ties—those who frequently interact with people of different ethnicities, religions, and political opinions—tend to be more moderate in their views. Such people are “cross-pressured”; their fellow workers may lean heavily in one direction, their fellow church members in another. But if those healthy cross pressures evaporate, people become caught up in more narrow worlds of shared beliefs, fears, and resentments.

 When it gets really bad, people can come to live in different factual universes. Not only do they follow radically different news sources, such as prominent TV channels Star News, Fox or MSNBC, etc etc but their friends send them news—or propaganda—that reinforces their biases. They grow less tolerant of opposing views and less willing even to listen to them, dismissing opposing opinions as based on “fake news.” And sometimes, that may be correct.

What is correct and incorrect – is difficult to judge. It is a propaganda war - much damaging than normal wars of the ancient times – for they destroy the intellect of the user or readers or people at large. Internet is destroying the people – it is put to more bad use than good use. Social media is destroying the SOCIAL FABRIC of our society. There is need to educate the social intellect – the social intellect as power of discrimination for the correct use of social media. If you want to preserve real democracy, real society, real politics, real diplomacy, real statesmanship, real citizenry, social media needs to be policed.

I remember reading somewhere –

I think in the back deep-deep recesses of our minds, we knew something bad could happen. We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. —CHAMATH PALIHAPITIYA, FORMER FACEBOOK SENIOR EXECUTIVE, 2017

 Tame the Social Media -

 How ??

 Will be dealt in my next  post !!

 Much Love – more than hatred and untruth from internet

 God Bless You

sudhanshu