Lucius and Petrus
P: Is the Internet Broken?
L: No, I don't think it is broken, but something is amiss. Not with all of it, but with large parts of it. I'm not talking about NSA snooping, but something else entirely. It is tied up with the decline of the large publishing houses, and the frailty of human nature. Primarily, however, it is a problem with algorithms, and until those get fixed, things don't look too healthy.
P: What exactly do you mean? That sounds pretty obscure to me.
L: Well, look at my, or your Facebook Feed, or your feed on any other site you subscribe to. Something has happened to it in the last few months - the quest for virality has skewed everything, and truth, such as it exists in our world, has increasingly become a victim. No-one publishing in the popular press bothers to fact check anymore - a story needs to be published, and to hell with the truth. If you don't publish it first, someone else will. And then, if it swims, you'll lose out, because the guy who pushed it first will get the hits.
P: You mean, someone has realised that news feeds are dominating everything, people are simply clicking on things that are thrown up on their news feeds? So, everything is now packaged for virality? What makes something go viral, isn't a story's veracity, or actual importance in the scheme of things, but its emotional resonance. The punters are being played like so many fish on a line. The content of what is being shared does not matter,what matters is the fact that is is being shared. This is all data driven. Whatever will generate a share is fair game.
L: Exactly. Shareworthiness has overtaken objective importance. Even mainstream news organisations are repackaging their stories to fit the model. They have no alternative. It is do this,or wither away and die. Packaging is key. Not actual content. Tobacco companies and soft drink companies - indeed, almost all commodity companies - have known this for a long time. Because of the advent of social sharing, information can now be unitised and treated as a commodity - packaged, so to speak. Consumption is sharing. Because of this, the headline has overtaken the importance of the actual content. If you want to, you can hear Sara Critchfield talking about this here:
P: Surely, though, this is a temporary phenomenon? Upworthy and sites like it could be destroyed overnight if Facebook decided to tweak its algoriths? The same goes for other emotive viral media?
L: Perhaps, but I doubt it. I think what might happen is that there will be a rebellion against this plague of vacuity that has been unleashed on us all. I hope so, as it is distorting our perspective and view of reality. What is more likely though is that everyone producing content on the internet will start to follow the same model, and saturation point will be reached. Maybe the model will break. Maybe people will just become really adept at interpreting these types of manipulative headline. Maybe we will all simply become desensitised, we will get overload as everyone jumps on board, and this blatant emotive manipulation will stop working.
P: Something else might happen. I believe it already is happening. I think people can detect when they are being manipulated, and dislike it. Younger people, those with less invested in Facebook, are already moving away from this manipulated environment - for example, to Whatsapp, Kik messenger, and Instagram. BBM Messenger is also seeing fast growth. Facetime using apple and Google Hangouts are also becoming very popular. These are seeing tremendous growth in the teenage sector, and other pared-down services. These offer less functionality when taken individually. On the other hand, they offer less opportunity for manipulation.
L: Are you saying that people primarily use services like Facebook to socialise and communicate with each other, and are only prepared to put up with a limited amount of distraction from the core need, which is to socialise?
P: Exactly so.
L: What also worries me is the mixing up of what is called native advertising with news stories. Once upon a time these used to be easily distinguishable. They had a bye-line "this is an advertisement". No longer. Now, you read what seems to be a regular article,planted in your regular news outlet, and find it is actually trying to sell you something. This cavalier approach is also breeding resistance, and trust in news outlets - even mainstream sites such as The Guardian do this regularly, and with increasing frequency - declines. Each time someone comes across a native advert, their trust in the news platform that serves it declines. Just as the FaceBook News Feed became a poisoned environment, so too, the 'news feeds' of the major newspapers and content providers are risking the same thing.
P: Are you saying that the newspapers online are morphing into news feeds, chasing views and shares?
L: Yes, that is exactly what they are doing. Shares are more important than views - and will remain so as long as people access individualised news feeds,such as the type served up by Facebook. But I think this model is starting to show cracks, and will break, as users abandon it. Ultimately, I am an optimist, and have faith in human nature.
P: What really concerns me, even more than this phenomenon,which,as you say, might be transient, is the Balkanisation of the internet. That seems to now be a more permanent feature. You only get to see what your friends see and share, so you live unchallenged in your comfortable little bubble. If you or your friends have extremist tendencies,these simply get amplified, as everything in your personal universe is reduced to cartoon like outlines. If you live in a religious community,you only get exposed to shares from those in your community. The same goes for people with particular political viewpoints,etc. In this fragmented, Balkanised world, your thoughts are seldom challenged, seldom contradicted. So many stories that are flying around out there are also just plain wrong, baseless, without factual grounding. Interest groups deliberately manipulate facts to advance their agendas, and this is now easier than ever to do, with viral stories attractively packaged to appeal to your particular vice or prejudice.
L: Yes, but this phenomenon also depends on the existence of news feeds. The younger generation of web users are moving away from that model, to a more fragmented experience - one that is more active, more dispersed, and less what we could call 'traditional browsing'. But what you say remains largely the case in the current web environment. It may well be that the factual support structure people rely on to formulate opinions about reality is becoming skewed. For many people, perhaps elements of their reality are as skewed as a mediaeval person's misapprehension that the world is flat. We might all just become emotional junkies, consuming a diet of piffle. The people will have its bread and circuses, virtually. People who want to know what is really happening in the world will continue to subscribe to the Financial Times, and the handful of outlets that will remain immune to this malaise that is afflicting us.
P: Are you saying that the only reliable media left will be publishing houses that produce information on which investment decisions are made?
L: Exactly. That information needs to be accurate, as investors are making decisions about millions of dollars based on it. Everything else in the media, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly suspect, as the stories are being subtly or overtly manipulated to increase their virality. If you want to have your world view evidence based, it now takes much more hard work than ever before, and you have to be more consciously selective about what you read, and where it is sourced from, than you did only six months ago. But I also think the FaceBook type news feed will continue to decrease in importance, as the new generation of web users abandon this format, and socialise online using a more dispersed ecology of applications.
P: Do you think anything else is driving this change in use, apart from resistance to manipulation?
L: Increasingly, I also think the change that is occuring is structural. Younger people increasingly access the internet through their phones, using discrete apps. WhatsApp, FaceTime, Hangouts, Instagram for picture sharing, and Snapchat are just icons on the home page screen of the user's phone. Flipping from one to another for a user is easy. Each one serves a specific purpose and answers to a particular need.
The brief ascendancy of the newsfeed that is to all intents and purposes parasitic on the social aspect of facebook - the chat interface and picture sharing - might be over. Newsfeeds are increasingly a polluted environment. Logging into Facebook these days is like visiting a beautiful Carribean Beach before the cleaners have arrived to pick up the trash. Increasingly, mainstream news sites, which have modelled themselves after the FaceBook Feed, additionally engaging in self mutilation through the use of indiscriminate native advertising, are providing a similarly degraded user experience.
P: Is the Internet Broken?
L: No, I don't think it is broken, but something is amiss. Not with all of it, but with large parts of it. I'm not talking about NSA snooping, but something else entirely. It is tied up with the decline of the large publishing houses, and the frailty of human nature. Primarily, however, it is a problem with algorithms, and until those get fixed, things don't look too healthy.
P: What exactly do you mean? That sounds pretty obscure to me.
L: Well, look at my, or your Facebook Feed, or your feed on any other site you subscribe to. Something has happened to it in the last few months - the quest for virality has skewed everything, and truth, such as it exists in our world, has increasingly become a victim. No-one publishing in the popular press bothers to fact check anymore - a story needs to be published, and to hell with the truth. If you don't publish it first, someone else will. And then, if it swims, you'll lose out, because the guy who pushed it first will get the hits.
P: You mean, someone has realised that news feeds are dominating everything, people are simply clicking on things that are thrown up on their news feeds? So, everything is now packaged for virality? What makes something go viral, isn't a story's veracity, or actual importance in the scheme of things, but its emotional resonance. The punters are being played like so many fish on a line. The content of what is being shared does not matter,what matters is the fact that is is being shared. This is all data driven. Whatever will generate a share is fair game.
L: Exactly. Shareworthiness has overtaken objective importance. Even mainstream news organisations are repackaging their stories to fit the model. They have no alternative. It is do this,or wither away and die. Packaging is key. Not actual content. Tobacco companies and soft drink companies - indeed, almost all commodity companies - have known this for a long time. Because of the advent of social sharing, information can now be unitised and treated as a commodity - packaged, so to speak. Consumption is sharing. Because of this, the headline has overtaken the importance of the actual content. If you want to, you can hear Sara Critchfield talking about this here:
P: Surely, though, this is a temporary phenomenon? Upworthy and sites like it could be destroyed overnight if Facebook decided to tweak its algoriths? The same goes for other emotive viral media?
L: Perhaps, but I doubt it. I think what might happen is that there will be a rebellion against this plague of vacuity that has been unleashed on us all. I hope so, as it is distorting our perspective and view of reality. What is more likely though is that everyone producing content on the internet will start to follow the same model, and saturation point will be reached. Maybe the model will break. Maybe people will just become really adept at interpreting these types of manipulative headline. Maybe we will all simply become desensitised, we will get overload as everyone jumps on board, and this blatant emotive manipulation will stop working.
P: Something else might happen. I believe it already is happening. I think people can detect when they are being manipulated, and dislike it. Younger people, those with less invested in Facebook, are already moving away from this manipulated environment - for example, to Whatsapp, Kik messenger, and Instagram. BBM Messenger is also seeing fast growth. Facetime using apple and Google Hangouts are also becoming very popular. These are seeing tremendous growth in the teenage sector, and other pared-down services. These offer less functionality when taken individually. On the other hand, they offer less opportunity for manipulation.
L: Are you saying that people primarily use services like Facebook to socialise and communicate with each other, and are only prepared to put up with a limited amount of distraction from the core need, which is to socialise?
P: Exactly so.
L: What also worries me is the mixing up of what is called native advertising with news stories. Once upon a time these used to be easily distinguishable. They had a bye-line "this is an advertisement". No longer. Now, you read what seems to be a regular article,planted in your regular news outlet, and find it is actually trying to sell you something. This cavalier approach is also breeding resistance, and trust in news outlets - even mainstream sites such as The Guardian do this regularly, and with increasing frequency - declines. Each time someone comes across a native advert, their trust in the news platform that serves it declines. Just as the FaceBook News Feed became a poisoned environment, so too, the 'news feeds' of the major newspapers and content providers are risking the same thing.
P: Are you saying that the newspapers online are morphing into news feeds, chasing views and shares?
L: Yes, that is exactly what they are doing. Shares are more important than views - and will remain so as long as people access individualised news feeds,such as the type served up by Facebook. But I think this model is starting to show cracks, and will break, as users abandon it. Ultimately, I am an optimist, and have faith in human nature.
P: What really concerns me, even more than this phenomenon,which,as you say, might be transient, is the Balkanisation of the internet. That seems to now be a more permanent feature. You only get to see what your friends see and share, so you live unchallenged in your comfortable little bubble. If you or your friends have extremist tendencies,these simply get amplified, as everything in your personal universe is reduced to cartoon like outlines. If you live in a religious community,you only get exposed to shares from those in your community. The same goes for people with particular political viewpoints,etc. In this fragmented, Balkanised world, your thoughts are seldom challenged, seldom contradicted. So many stories that are flying around out there are also just plain wrong, baseless, without factual grounding. Interest groups deliberately manipulate facts to advance their agendas, and this is now easier than ever to do, with viral stories attractively packaged to appeal to your particular vice or prejudice.
L: Yes, but this phenomenon also depends on the existence of news feeds. The younger generation of web users are moving away from that model, to a more fragmented experience - one that is more active, more dispersed, and less what we could call 'traditional browsing'. But what you say remains largely the case in the current web environment. It may well be that the factual support structure people rely on to formulate opinions about reality is becoming skewed. For many people, perhaps elements of their reality are as skewed as a mediaeval person's misapprehension that the world is flat. We might all just become emotional junkies, consuming a diet of piffle. The people will have its bread and circuses, virtually. People who want to know what is really happening in the world will continue to subscribe to the Financial Times, and the handful of outlets that will remain immune to this malaise that is afflicting us.
P: Are you saying that the only reliable media left will be publishing houses that produce information on which investment decisions are made?
L: Exactly. That information needs to be accurate, as investors are making decisions about millions of dollars based on it. Everything else in the media, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly suspect, as the stories are being subtly or overtly manipulated to increase their virality. If you want to have your world view evidence based, it now takes much more hard work than ever before, and you have to be more consciously selective about what you read, and where it is sourced from, than you did only six months ago. But I also think the FaceBook type news feed will continue to decrease in importance, as the new generation of web users abandon this format, and socialise online using a more dispersed ecology of applications.
P: Do you think anything else is driving this change in use, apart from resistance to manipulation?
L: Increasingly, I also think the change that is occuring is structural. Younger people increasingly access the internet through their phones, using discrete apps. WhatsApp, FaceTime, Hangouts, Instagram for picture sharing, and Snapchat are just icons on the home page screen of the user's phone. Flipping from one to another for a user is easy. Each one serves a specific purpose and answers to a particular need.
The brief ascendancy of the newsfeed that is to all intents and purposes parasitic on the social aspect of facebook - the chat interface and picture sharing - might be over. Newsfeeds are increasingly a polluted environment. Logging into Facebook these days is like visiting a beautiful Carribean Beach before the cleaners have arrived to pick up the trash. Increasingly, mainstream news sites, which have modelled themselves after the FaceBook Feed, additionally engaging in self mutilation through the use of indiscriminate native advertising, are providing a similarly degraded user experience.
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