The Rage Industrial Complex Of Social Media & Its Solution: Empathy

The single most important ingredient of a healthy democracy is empathy. If you don’t have the ability to see someone as a fellow human being similar to you, you are going to have a difficult time going beyond disagreements with them.

The AI algorithms that collect user data on you on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube and SnapChat are near perfectly calibrated to bring you content designed to outrage, divide and inflame.

And, as events of January 6th at the US Capitol Building showed clearly, these algorithms’ capacity to stir real-world action from their content is increasingly growing.

Why?

The business model of social media is ad revenue. Ever wonder how you can use Instagram for free but they make 30 billion dollars a year?

If you’re not paying to use a product it is you who are the product being sold. Specifically your data.

The social media rage-industrial complex sells ads on an auction basis.

The only way to sell more ads is to create more user data.

The only way to create more user data is to keep you on their platforms longer.

The only way to keep you on the platform longer is to continually show you content perfectly calibrated to tickle the lowest bottom parts of your brain stem: outrage, anger, division, sex, violence and so on do quite well here.

Can you think of more intriguing pieces of content than conspiracy theories, flat earthers, fake moon landings, satan worshiping pedophiles who secretly run the world or stolen elections?

Empathy is perhaps the most important trait a democracy needs to function and yet it is one of the most cognitively taxing traits a human being can muster to use. You might only have 3–5 times a day when you can really be empathic, slow down, set aside your agenda and just listen to where someone is coming from.

This is a vastly less number of times than the 1,000s of pieces of enraging or addictive basal content chucked at you on your TikTok or Twitter feed. In other words we don’t stand a chance at reclaiming empathy unless we take some concrete steps to protect it.

Get social media off of your phone and out of your pocket.

You don’t need to get rid of all social media and roll back the clock to 1999, but you can create some cognitive breathing room by getting it off of your smartphone.

You’re perfectly able to access any social media app you want to use via laptop or desk top. And, if there isn’t any functionality you can download a Chrome extension to make it happen.

We tap, swipe, and check our phone over 2,100 times a day. And, you still will probably use your phone a lot even without social media on it, but at least you will create some barrier between yourself and empathy sucking algorithms.

Vox helps a bit here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUMa0QkPzns

Turn your phone black and white.

We like shiny objects and there aren’t much shinier objects than a highly advance trillion pixel iPhone screen. When you turn your colors to black and white you will still be able to access the phone’s functionality without ogling at your screen. Check out this quick video on how to do it:

While these tactics can create more space for empathy to occur, it still doesn’t guarantee that it will happen.

We’ve had extremists without social media (hello — Nazi Germany anyone?) and humans always seem to find a way to hate one another but that only if they choose to do so.

Ultimately empathy is a choice: do you choose to see yourself in the eyes of another or not?

Being empathic is scary. It means you might have been wrong about someone. Or even more frighteningly, you might start to see aspects of yourself in the shoes of your enemies.