Social networks turn out to be amplifiers of network aggression and radicalism

Here, recently, the Yale University Department of Psychology decided to confirm obvious observationsand rolled out a study on how social networks turn out to be amplifiers of online aggression and radicalism. 12.7 million tweets and 7331 twitter accounts were examined. Quick summary: the likes and retweets system works like a psychological reinforcement system - it "rewards" people for bombarding them with likes and retweets, causing people to post more of that content. An interesting nuance is that the reward system does not greatly affect the initially radical citizens (who will bomb anyway), but it effectively radicalizes those who previously held moderate positions.

In general, all this, of course, is just such a variant of addiction that puts users on a kind of virtual dopamine needle. And, of course, there is no getting away from this. this is the very basis of the business model of many social networks (especially twitter). There, entire departments are thinking about how to make what is happening even more addictive (using the euphemism "involvement"). But this is an argument in favor of taking a break from social networks more often (at least those built on reinforcement through likes-reposts-retweets) and generally try to get less involved in what is happening there (this is also the question of why I don’t screw likes-comments to this channel). You can still, of course, enjoy the irony: once people thought that social networks would build bridges between different groups, help to understand each other and establish productive communication, but in the end exactly the opposite happens.

Mihail Pojarsky 2021-08-30