We received this letter today from a reader, Lars Liden. It spoke to some issues that have been on our minds as we sort out what it means to be a source of information in the reality we woke up to this morning. We want to share it with you.
As I imagine most of you have, I’ve been thinking a lot about what just happened and how we got here. In doing so, I am of the opinion that sites like Facebook, while not intending to do so, are at least complicit in driving our country into its current political state. I’ve cut back from Facebook almost entirely this year, and I’m very close to deleting my account completely.
Here is my reasoning:
1) Facebook legitimizes radical publishers by giving them the same exposure as legitimate web sites, regardless of the veracity of their claims. A guy working in his basement can create a site with the same exposure at the New York Times. Unlike the New York Times, the guy working in the basement has little, if any, repercussions for distorting the truth or telling outright lies.
2) Eyeballs (through advertising) are king, so publishers are highly motivated to push content that promotes fear/anger/shock as it drives click-through and sharing.
3) Given that they have equal footing on the platform, legitimate publishers have no choice but to similarly adopt such practices or they lose out to the guy in the basement.
4) For end users, the cost of re-sharing content is almost non-existent. Unlike email, where there is some guarantee that your email will be read, when something is posted to social media it’s one of many posts in a stream that may never be seen. Thus, there’s little social pressure to curate the quality of posts. In the days of email, users would get chided or even banned for spamming lists.
5) The firehose of information coming from sites like Facebook is so intense, that only a small fraction of people open the articles and read the content. This leads to people having only a shallow understanding of the issues and next to no vetting on the validity of the content.
6) Also, due to the quantity of information, the quality of discussion on social media sites is not very deep or thoughtful. Back when we used email to discuss issues, my experience was that we had some pretty nuanced, thoughtful and multi-faceted discussions. With the advent of social media this rarely happens.
All of this, I believe, leads to a more antagonistic, misinformed and partisan population. It also opens the opportunity for politicians (liberal and conservative alike) to take advantage, further separating the population and distorting reality about the opposing side.
Facebook could perhaps do some things to mitigate some of these issues. They could add a “fact checking” element to individual posts, allowing users to provide feedback on the legitimacy of posts. They could rate individual sources in terms of their legitimacy, size of following, etc., giving legitimate sources greater exposure. They could perhaps also slow down the feed to encourage deeper discussion. However, as their business model depends on the time eyeballs spend on the screen and how frequently users click-through and share, this is difficult for them to do.
The leaves me in the position of feeling like the only right thing to do is to delete my Facebook account. Over the last year, I’ve spent little time on the site. Rather than trying to ingest the firehose, I’ve been reading longer articles (such as The Long Read from the Guardian or the Economist). I feel not only better informed, but substantially less twitchy.
Another thing that can make a difference is to pay for subscriptions (as people did in the good old days). When quality news organizations are forced to survive based on social media click-throughs, it’s a race toward the bottom in terms of quality. Paying for a subscription, provides them with a revenue stream that help free them from this pressure.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and I think that’s apparent in what we’re seeing in the impact of social media on our country’s politics.
-Lars Liden