The flattening of context

And algorithmic oversimplification and tribalism

[iamlost]

Note: link is http so some browsers on some settings may have a hissy fit.

Excellent (aka ‘I concur’) opinion piece by Nicholas Carr, an author, freelance writer, and speaker.
Do take the time to read the entire piece, it isn’t that long.
From context collapse to content collapse [roughtype.com], January 2020.

Before social media, you spoke to different “audiences” — family members, friends, colleagues, and so forth — in different ways. You modulated your tone of voice, your words, your behavior, and even your appearance to suit whatever social “context” you were in (workplace, home, school, nightclub, etc.) and then readjusted the presentation of yourself when you moved into another context.

On a social network, the theory went, all those different contexts collapsed into a single context. Whenever you posted a message or a photograph or a video, it could be seen by your friends, your parents, your coworkers, your bosses, and your teachers, not to mention the amorphous mass known as the general public. And, because the post was recorded, it could be seen by future audiences as well as the immediate one. When people realized they could no longer present versions of themselves geared to different audiences — it was all one audience now — they had to grapple with a new sort of identity crisis.

Many of the qualities of social media that make people uneasy stem from content collapse. First, by leveling everything, social media also trivializes everything — freed of barriers, information, like water, pools at the lowest possible level.
...
Second, as all information consolidates on social media, we respond to it using the same small set of tools the platforms provide for us. Our responses become homogenized, too.
...
Third, content collapse puts all types of information into direct competition. The various producers and providers of content, from journalists to influencers to politicians to propagandists, all need to tailor their content and its presentation to the algorithms that determine what people see. The algorithms don’t make formal or qualitative distinctions; they judge everything by the same criteria. And those criteria tend to promote oversimplification, emotionalism, tendentiousness, tribalism — the qualities that make a piece of information stand out, at least momentarily, from the screen’s blur.

Finally, content collapse consolidates power over information, and conversation, into the hands of the small number of companies that own the platforms and write the algorithms.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I like it, definitely resonates with me. They didn't mention groupthink which I also see a lot of on social networks, where many are looking for the most edgy, memtastic response to... anything.

[graeme_p]

I think its part true, but not entirely.

What I say on Twitter, Facebook, Linked, my business blog and my personal blog are all aimed at different audiences and it usually stays separate (except when I deliberately share stuff across them).

I think the problem is worst when people use a single platform (usually FB) for everything, do no separate personal and business social media accounts, etc.

Context still exists and matters. Its a problem for well known people who are likely to to have fragments of what they say circulated out of context: for example, someone writes a satirical article for a magazine and quotes are presented as representing their views. I would say that this is an example of differing contexts rather than a single context. I will avoid giving examples as the best examples I can think of are political and I do not want to start arguing about how it should be interpreted.

[lucy24]

What’s missing is the concept of “mixed company”. Once upon a time it meant that a gentleman could say things to his peers that he wouldn’t say if there were ladies present. (Etiquette writers always pretended not to consider that the reverse might also be true.) But it’s got a much broader application that all too many people fail to consider; they may never even have learned it. The way you talk to your friends is, or should be, different from the way you talk if your grandmother is present. The way you talk privately is, or should be, different from the way you talk when you can be heard by strangers--even if they are not part of the conversation, as when you’re talking with a coworker on the bus. The way you talk at a professional meeting attended solely by members of your own field is, or should be, different from the way you talk to a general audience.

</rant>

[graeme_p]

Really good comparison Lucy. It is why you need different social networks or profiles for different groups of people as the article says some people do.

it reminds me of some comments of CS Lewis's (I think in "The Four Loves") about single sex socialising. Less true than we he wrote it as roles have changed for many people (but not for all).

Also true of different groups of friends (say, people from work, people from school, people from where you live...) with different interests.

What I see a lot of on FB is that a lot of people share things other dislike. That sometimes makes me think that Zuckerberg's original opinion has some merit. If, for example, you find you notice that people you like have political or religious opinions you dislike, maybe you need to stop thinking anyone who has those opinions is a bad person or get beyond finding honest expressions of opinion irritating?