Social Media Does Not Accurately Reflect Society

Depending on how much time you spend on social media. This statement may shock you. If you have a life and go outside this has been obvious for a long time.

Why such a big disconnect?

Because when you use social media for a majority of your time. You start to think that is actually how the world works.  Because most of the data points you are getting about the world is from the internet. This starts to create problems because of a term you heard 10 million times: Echo Chambers and outrage.

The echo chamber is an issue because of a promotion of a certain worldview above everything else. Leading to a less accurate assessment of the world. So stories that conflict with the group's worldview are filtered out. Leading to a skewed sense of how the world works.

Another is outrage. While social media adds some fire to this issue. Outrage has been a powerful emotion since the beginning of time. So ginning up that emotion has been useful for various people for centuries. The main traders of the outrage right now is the media.

As they are creating clickbait articles knowing this will upset part of the population. (They are some economic pressures pushing media companies to do this though.)  Social media comes into the mix because it simply serves what the people want. The most shared and clicked content is outrage. So it will make sense that the algorithms will get used to showing outrage content.

If you are watching a lot of angry content online. You think the world is falling apart. (Granted, 2020 was an exceptional year). Hence you will think this or that group is going to take over the country.

You start to think your country is on the brink. All of this alarmism does not match reality if you simply step outside your house. The stats bear this out. In Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker did a great job explaining how the world is getting better. But fewer people dying of cholera does not make the headlines. But a random idiot on Twitter will.

A Minority People Run The Show On Social Media

To be fair it’s not just the journalists that are in on this. There is a whole cottage industry of outrage marketers. Simply reading a few news articles and ranting about how they don’t like what they're reading. There some people on Twitter where their whole existence is to take a left-wing or right-wing stand for the news of the day. Regardless of the story. Leading to some very stupid statements. If these outrage hustlers all were pop up on your feed. Then no wonder why you think your country is going through some issues and is going crazy.

For me, a landmark find by Pew Research centre was a demographic breakdown of social media networks.

I will talk about Twitter because it has lots of cultural clout and has important people as it’s their main communication medium.

Only a minority of Twitter users tweet on a regular basis. As we can see only a small minority of people even tweet about politics.  The top 10% of Twitter accounts are likely to produce 138 tweets per month!

Honestly, I don’t know how anybody can do that. But if that’s you fill your boots.

Mark Marson calls this the 90/9/1 rule:

The 90/9/1 rule finds that in any social network or online community, 1% of the users generate 90% of the content, 9% of the users create 10% of the content, and the other 90% of people are mostly silent observers.

Meanwhile, the lurkers—the 90%—are people who are more or less reasonable. And because they are more or less reasonable, they don’t see the point in spending their afternoon arguing on Facebook. They aren’t sure of their beliefs and remain open to alternatives. And because they are open to alternatives, they are hesitant to publicly post something they may not fully believe.

As a result, the majority of the population’s beliefs go unnoticed and have little influence on the overarching cultural narrative. 

If you are getting your news from social media. The content you are viewing has been passed so many filters. You have the echo chamber filter, the demographics filter, the outrage filter and the algorithm filter.

It’s nigh impossible to get content online that is not skewed one way. Unless you have a social network that representative user base that matches the general population. With everybody participating in making content. This will be impossible to do.

I hope people will eventually understand the social media is not real life. Your WhatsApp message may not be true. A cherry-picked quote does not represent all the opposition.

Social Media To Improves One’s Life, Not Live In It

This is not to say social media is bad and you should avoid it at all costs. But to be aware that there is a demarcation line between the online world and real life. Sometimes the line will get fuzzy. Where times the online world crosses the real world and vice versa. This trend will only continue as time goes on. But you will know not to get upset at outrage hustlers. And have fair judgements of the world based on representative sample size. Not a people bored people on Twitter or Facebook.  

This is also not to say that we should just accept the social media will be crazy. Social media companies have taken steps to deal with disinformation. (Which can backfire a few times).  

Social media is a great tool to meet new people to connect with loved ones around the world. The world is a better place with social media. You follow various people interested in your hobbies and passion. And learn new stuff from them.

To take Cal Newport’s work we need to be more intentional about using social media. Watching outrage videos about the news of the day is low use of our time. But connecting to our favourite communities. Whether that’s your local wildlife, your favourite music instructors or your niche hobby of collecting train sets. We can get a lot more return on our investment if we think of social media as a tool. Not a place to live.

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Is It Possible to Create A Social Media Platform Without Ads?

I was reading an interesting article by Lillian Li about the Chinese video platform called Bilibili. I recommend checking out her newsletter if you’re interested in the Chinese tech scene.

Bilibili has been dubbed as Gen Z’s version of YouTube in China. Because of its younger cohort. But from reading the article. Bilibili is not just a place you watch videos. But a strong community, a place to get premium content, A website to pick videogames, A livestreaming content hub and more.

So how can one company do so much stuff? And still be in good health.

Why don’t they spam ads?

When you get to YouTube the first thing you notice is the number of ads bombarded at you. Once you escape the home screen. And decide to watch a YouTube video. You need to watch more ads before you start. After that, you can start enjoying your YouTube video.

But wait.

You need to watch more ads that interrupt your watching time.

If this sequence of events happens to you, then you know how annoying this is. If you’re on desktop you may have resorted to using an ad blocker.

From reading the article from earlier. Bilibili does not do this. Yes, they have some ads. But they won’t be spamming you as the western tech companies do.

The reason why is because they know this will frustrate the community. Which is something they value dearly. The author makes it clear that community is a massive differentiator for the platform. A feature that they have is bullet commentary which comments scroll along with the video while watching. (This is also available on other Chinese video platforms.) But there is extra value in bullet commentary on this platform. As the community is of high quality. Meaning the comments are more likely to be meaningful.

How to make money outside of adverts?

So if you don’t spam adverts on your website. How do you make money?

This is where the vast options come along. First, we start using the closest equivalents to western companies. In many video and livestreams, you donate to the streamer. Twitch were the one the popularised this model. Were the company takes a cut of the donation. The more popular the streamer the more money the company makes. Donations do help companies produce revenue. But most of the time it tends to be icing on the cake. And not enough to cover most of the company operations.

This is where premium content comes along. With a large userbase, you can make a lot of money selling content. Just ask Netflix. Many users pay a monthly subscription to the company to view exclusive content. With their inventory increasing more and more as they invest more money.

Value-added services is the fastest growing revenue segment for Bilibili, at a whopping 171.9% increase yoy, the bulk of which is coming from membership fees that allow users to access premium content. This revenue stream has led to increased investments into proprietary content (such as purchasing rights to LoL livestreams as well as commissioning exclusive anime for their platform), and it will be interesting to see whether this moves Bilibili more towards an Netflix model in the future.  https://lillianli.substack.com/p/an-introduction-to-bilibili-

Video game distribution is another way that the company prints out money. This is not something you think about when it comes to a video platform. But videogames are a popular genre on the website. They can make use of user’s data to help promote or develop games that their audience will want.

Can A Western Company Do the Same?

After a mini rundown of this company. I started to wonder can a western company do something similar. Do they have a chance of creating a social media service that does not bombard you with ads?

Honestly, I don’t know.

But I will brainstorm on how other companies can do something similar to Bilibili.

First, I will go to Twitch. It is always known for its videogame community. Even after the Let’s Chat section was introduced videogames still dominate the platform. Twitch Prime allows you to get in-game loot and free games. A bit like the Bilibili example from earlier. But most of the money still comes from advertising. A lot of the benefit of getting Twitch prime is getting cosmetic benefits. Like better emojis and colour options. This can be improved even more.

For example, E-sports content is highly popular on the platform. Imagine if prime users get exclusive content on their favourite events. Like behind the scenes videos or bonus interviews. This is a simple paywall that raises a bit more revenue for the company.

As we can see they allow you to get extra in-game loot and some free games. What happens if they double down on it? Using data that twitch already has. They can design exclusive games that will be well received by the users.

YouTube could do this as well. As Google has the play store. They can design mobile games that can be popular within lots of niches on YouTube. And advertise their mobile games on people’s streams or YouTube videos. But due to the failure of Google Stadia. Google may not have the ability to execute this.

This idea is mainly for the Videogame/Gen Z base. So if you want to expand outside that cohort. Then more ideas will need to be implemented.

The best one I can think of is the integration of e-commerce with video. So you can watch a YouTube video and you can buy what’s in the video without leaving the page. And the company can get a cut of that. While that can generate a lot of money. There is lots of work getting the backend ready to allow for payments and delivery.

Imagine watching a YouTube video on your phone of a person reviewing some type of widget. Where you can simply click a link in the video. Then asks you for payment information and address. All in the app. This allows creators on the platform to monetise their audience in a whole different way.

If this gets more successful, then YouTube can slowly move away from just making money from ads. And increasing the product experience in the process.

Hopefully, your wheels in your head are turning about how you could create a social media product without relying on ads. I think it will be better for all of us if tech companies find other ways to monetise their product.

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Can Social Media Stop Misinformation with Media Literacy?

Stopping fire when it starts spreading

I was reading a great interactive article. From growth.design. Which talked about misinformation for the 2020 election. And how Facebook tends to feed the problem.  From a design perspective.

We all know that Facebook likes engagement. As it means more people interact with their service. And get to stay on it for longer.

But that’s one of the main reasons why misinformation spreads.

Because misinformation tends to be more engaging than real information. Because of that, the algorithm is more likely to show you something false. Due to the high likelihood of being shared.

When something is highly shared. People are more likely to share it as well. In something called the bandwagon effect.

This reminds me of the content moderation problems. That the tech companies are facing. A lot of work is stopping misinformation before it gets viral.

Lots of people who are experts in this area. Said that most of the damage done is when it starts to pick up steam. Tons of people already viewed the misinformation. And it's hard to delete it. Because people will say the tech companies are overreaching. And may become a story itself. With the Streisand effect.

Tech companies need to work as a circuit breaker. They started to do this in overdrive. As the covid misinformation started to ramp up. So Facebook and YouTube tried their best from stopping covid misinformation from getting out. This was done on the algorithm side.

In the article. On the design side. The article recommended a nice solution. To stop people from blind sharing. Which you get a simple pop up box. Telling you to read the article before sharing. This should let people stop and think. And may stop them from sharing misinformation. Twitter did this for a test. And was able to reduce misinformation on the platform.

Sometimes removing misinformation will require one to make hard decisions. The controversial banning of the former president. Led to a stark decrease in misinformation. By more than 50%.

Misinformation tends to be shared by nodes in a network. So a popular person in the group shared misinformation. Then his fans run with that information. And some of those people will be popular in their own smaller groups. And share the same information. Those fans may share with some friends and family. And that’s how you get your uncle talking about Qanon.

So shutting down a popular node. Is very useful. But can be controversial. So most social media companies opt for shadow banning.

Shadowbanning and it’s disadvantages

YouTube is a great example. With the treatment of borderline content. Which counts Conspiracy Theories, covid denial. Racist videos etc. Youtube simply suppressed those videos. So those videos would not get recommended outside of the audience. This has led to the slow death of these YouTube channels. But has entrenched news incumbents even further. This does not stop misinformation from coming from traditional news channels.

And people who just talk about current affairs in general. Have been hit. Like Philip DeFranco. And other independent YouTubers. And algorithm defaults to showing traditional news channels. Like BBC, CNN, Fox news etc. Because of this YouTube has forced news to have a more establishment bias. Which while more level-headed. Has its biases.

I understand why they did this. As they to get rid of the ranters talking about microchipped aliens. While still providing news on their service. Traditional news networks are known entities. You don’t want to get a PR disaster for recommending a random youtuber providing anti-vax content. The tech companies can’t know all their creators in and out. So, the blanket ban is what they can only do.

But a lot of media literacy can’t just be done by social media companies alone.

It is likely a failure in education.

Social media is only part of the problem

As schools don’t teach kids how to think critically. (NOTE: some problems with critical thinking classes)

But teaching people from a young age about differentiating between different types of media.

Asking questions like:

Knowing if the website is sketchy.

And how to know if an article has any sources backing it up?

But it will be very difficult. In a place like America. Local boards control the curriculum. That’s not bad. But makes it difficult to implement changes like these.

Also lack of incentives for political leaders to back these changes. Do you want a population that can think for itself? And start asking hard questions about your policies. And you’re hiding behind simple slogans. Will become less effective.

I can’t imagine a politician signing up for that.

So while the problem is which deeper and systemic. I think some changes to social media. Can make it act as a firebreak. So it does not fall into violence. Which we saw with the capitol insurrection. If social media can do the job of not making the problem worse. And simply keeping the effects neutral that should be a win.

To recap a lot of changes that social media can do:

Adjust their algorithms.

To avoid recommending extremist content.

And simple design changes that allow people to stop and think before sharing content.