Facebook is in the process of updating its Newsfeed algo again so that we see more posts from friends and family, and less from ‘Pages’. Great news, except that when every person is media, and there is a limit to the pruning one can do, the feed will still consist of biases, prejudices, hoaxes, paid endorsements without disclosure, and yes, cat videos, Lincoln’s quotes on self driving cars, click bait and baby pics. My point above is less about filter failure and more about the continuing explosion of content and its distribution to set the context.
But now let’s talk about filters. The sheer volume of content means that (in general) the reader will want quickly digestible information before he/she moves on to the highly entertaining video waiting in line. Absolutely connected to ‘the demise of the middle ground in the attention economy‘. The article talks about nuance in political debate getting lost, but I think its reach extends beyond that. As this fantastic Guardian article “How technology disrupted the truth” states, “..everyone has their own facts“. But why do this happen?
In the first article, the author quotes Clay Shirky, “Behaviour is motivation filtered through opportunity”. As establishments go, neither the producers (media houses) nor the distributors (e.g. Facebook) are particularly bothered about the reader’s self interest unless it affects their own business economics. As readers, it’s just easier to skim and share – convenience is a clear culprit, and converting everything into clear binaries is less taxing on the mind. Also, unless there is some self interest (and these days, a reputation fail because of unvetted sharing doesn’t really exist!) we are well ensconced in our bubbles. To make it easier for ourselves, we also resort to labels.
Thanks to this, and social distribution, our intersubjective (agreed upon by a lot of people) realities are now increasingly being stripped of nuance and becoming extreme. Binary – this or that. And this is shaping our notions of truth and morality. What prompted me to write this post now is this nuanced piece on what we label as terrorism. I realised that pretty soon, a class war fought by people who just want to live in dignity, would amount to terrorism. Oh wait!
But then again, why be informed, when we can be entertained? And why isn’t anyone asking the tough questions on climate change, and how GoT Season 7 has been delayed because of it?!