It seems plain as day to me that many people are far more hateful online than in real life, mostly under the disguise of anonymity and/or the physical divide. You can say some truly nasty things online that in the physical world would make you wake up in a hospital. There's no real correction mechanism online.
I can't believe the research doesn't address the point that some others here are making as well: the most harmful content is promoted, to the point that you exclusively see harmful content, which is then normalized. Social media promotes the crazy and silences the reasonables.
Not a word on the massively increased speed of information. There is no time to refute any point because the damage is done in minutes and garbage spreads, and then the next one comes.
Not a word on the complete lack of trust in information itself. In media, science, even simple verifiable facts. It doesn't seem to matter any more, people just make up their own facts.
And then the solutions:
"Invest in remedying the offline frustrations that drives online hate"
Ah, ok then. The solution is to just improve the world.
Most research shows that anonymous accounts actually facilitate more conciliatory and nuanced discussions.
The big issue in social media is that the moderates are attacked by both sides. They are often attacked more viciously by those of their own political persuasion that are even more to the left/right than they are. This especially occurs if they are agreeing at all on any point with “the other”. Obviously this has a substantial chilling and muzzling effect.
Anonymous accounts have less face to lose in the real world if they take a more moderate stance. However, over time even anonymous accounts build social credit with the in-group of whatever ideology they support.
This has many negative effects. One is that politicians get the most visible engagement on their posts from the most extreme followers and so the politicians themselves moved to more extreme positions because they think they don’t have any moderate support. Twitter is not real life.
Indeed. And not just politicians, also traditional media, which are now hard to tell apart from "normal" Twitter accounts. They're all in on fast juicy action for maximum engagement.
So you can't trust your peers, politicians or traditional media. They're all Twitter-like now.
It seems plain as day to me that many people are far more hateful online than in real life, mostly under the disguise of anonymity and/or the physical divide. You can say some truly nasty things online that in the physical world would make you wake up in a hospital. There's no real correction mechanism online.
I can't believe the research doesn't address the point that some others here are making as well: the most harmful content is promoted, to the point that you exclusively see harmful content, which is then normalized. Social media promotes the crazy and silences the reasonables.
Not a word on the massively increased speed of information. There is no time to refute any point because the damage is done in minutes and garbage spreads, and then the next one comes.
Not a word on the complete lack of trust in information itself. In media, science, even simple verifiable facts. It doesn't seem to matter any more, people just make up their own facts.
And then the solutions:
"Invest in remedying the offline frustrations that drives online hate"
Ah, ok then. The solution is to just improve the world.