I hadn’t heard of this book by Max Fisher until my book club elected to read it, at which point it seemed like I was suddenly hearing about it everywhere.
It’s so good!
If you’re not already aware, it’s a nonfiction book that takes a journalistic look at the way social media has been dismantling our society and our sense of decency.
To be fair, social media has its benefits, and it also has cons that hurt people on a more individual level (for example, the rise of teenagers with mental health struggles and sleep deprivation since social media gained prominence.)
This book is not about any of that, and that’s fine. This book focuses on one thing and does it really well.
The first one or two chapters covered a lot of information I already knew, so I wasn’t super impressed.
It wasn’t until I got to the third chapter or so that the book started covering information I did not already know, and then I was hooked.
For those of you who don’t know, social media is designed to keep us scrolling because the longer we stay on the platform, the more money they make.
That much I already knew. What I had not been aware of was how the algorithm shapes the social media mobs we’ve all heard of (or even fallen victim to.)
Fisher provided some famous examples (the woman in Central Park who called the cops on the Black guy asking her to follow the rules and put her dog on a leash,) as well as some less-well-known examples.
They all share common threads. People activating a social media mob to take vengeance on someone they claimed wronged them. Sometimes the alleged offense was true. Other times it was completely fabricated. Still other times it was based in truth, but got so blown out of proportion through extreme retellings that what people think happened bears very little resemblance to what actually happened.
The social media algorithm does this by rewarding extreme content with increased visibility. People are more likely to engage with outrageous content, which creates a cycle of outrage.
Fisher also described the human need for vengeance. Apparently even young children exhibit this behavior by supporting the idea of someone being punished after they have committed a perceived crime or moral failure.
This is what leads to the social media mobs calling for blood every time someone someone commits some perceived violation.
I think I might be defective in this regard, because I don’t have much of a desire for vengeance. I will certainly pull out the popcorn and watch those mobs go to work, but I don’t think I’ve ever participated.
Even when someone pisses me off IRL, sure I want vengeance, but when it comes to actually doing anything about it, I get lazy. I could be doing so many productive things with that time. Why would I choose to spend it focusing on the past? I’m certainly not going to take the time to hunt down a stranger’s home address or call their employer to demand they be fired.
Fisher does cover some of the benefits social media has provided developing countries. In some places it has helped bring about democracy. But it has also helped foment severe threats to those democracies, including that of the United States.
Of course we all know how social media executives like Mark Zuckerberg have denied all responsibility for the chaos their machines have created. They’re more than happy to take credit for the things that go well, but somehow the same level of credit/blame doesn’t apply to the things that go horribly, horribly wrong. Funny how that works.
That also led to another interesting point Fisher made: founders of start ups used to give up a significant portion of control in their own company in exchange for funding from venture capitalists. Those VCs were then able to rein things in when they got out of hand.
But a variety of factors have contributed to the decline of that system. Moderns VCs are afraid to contradict the geese that keep laying golden eggs for them, so start-up founders like Zuckerberg are getting the funding without the accountability. It’s a pretty sweet deal for them and a dumpster fire for the rest of us.
Because I already knew a lot about social media algorithms before I read this book, I can’t say it’s going to change anything about the way I use social media. I’m not deleting my accounts (although I did delete my Twitter accounts last year.)
What this book has done for me is change the way I think about the world around me, especially when it comes to people who believe everything they see on social media. Trump is explained. The anti-vaccination movement has been explained in this book. Climate-change deniers and even Holocaust deniers are explained.
I don’t think I’ll ever look at the world the same way after reading this book.