Social Media has Ruined the Truth

The irony that you probably came to this post via social media is not lost on me. This is one of those instances where we are going to use an institution and criticize it at the same time, it’s a thing. The social media giants have come under fire from corporate advertisers and from the public. Now that the social media companies are banning QAnon content and have all but removed Donald Trump from their platform, I thought now would be a good moment to pull out to 30,000 feet and talk a little bit about how social media has ruined objective truth and shared reality.

We Have No Arbiters of Truth

One of the difficulties with modern discourse is that experts are feckless in the eyes of the public. It seems like there is always something wrong with any who claims to have expertise on any given subject. Because people don’t really believe in experts or science anymore, it is easy to simply disregard them. Covid-19 has an excellent example of this sort of thing. Everyone has their own “truth” about the pandemic. Mask wearing has become a political statement rather than a safety concern and there are people who maintain the whole thing is a hoax. In pre-social media times, this wouldn’t be an issue but with large platforms to spread misinformation these private thoughts are blasted out into the public for all to see and consume.

People have a platform to express themselves and that has become a “truth” and common ignorance is now considered a greater truth than those who devote their lives studying certain subjects. Even journalism isn’t good enough anymore. People in comment sections on social media will ask for sources but if the source isn’t one that they accept as “truth” then it is no good. Post a link to good journalism is no way to show what is really going on. The link has to come from a site that caters to their political world view. Someone on the right will want a link to Fox News or Breitbart while someone on the Left will prefer the Washington Post or the New York Times. To borrow a phrase from my youth: we aren’t singing out of the same hymnal anymore.

Lies are Always Faster Than Truth

This is doubly true when the lie feels better than the truth and tells a simple story that most people understand. The difficulty with getting the information correct in the modern social media environment is that most matters cannot be boiled down to 240 characters or a simple picture with a few words of text. The world is a complicated place and there is nuance. Social media tends to suck out all the nuance in favor of simple, easy to consume bites of information. Back in 1990s, TV was criticized for reducing major issues down to a 30 second sound bite that could be played over and over again. These days, 30 seconds is an eternity. Getting people to read and think about something for 30 seconds today would be longer than most people look at a passing social media post.

Because of this casual nature towards information and truth, lies are spread easily. Someone makes a meme or puts a slogan on a picture and within minutes it can be shared over and over again. It doesn’t matter if the issue is more complicated than that or if the information is flat out wrong. In this way, lies can spread faster than the truth could ever hope to get around.

Dangerous Consequences

There is no central reality that everyone is working from anymore. Reality is now based on personal beliefs, feelings, closely held opinions and lived experiences. Data, sources, studies, and everything else that once framed reality has no place in the public square. Facebook, Twitter, and the rest have allowed lies to propagate on their platform for so long that it can be hard to tell where lies end and the truth begins. Social media companies allowed Russians to buy ads on their platforms that told blatant lies to the right people to swing an election. Twitter allowed President Trump to speak unfettered lies for 5 years until last week when, after people had died and the government nearly fell, they finally banned from their platforms. What if Facebook and Twitter had moved more quickly? What if they had moved on anti-vaccination content or other conspiracies that have no basis in reality? If social media is going to be the public square and that is where society is going to discuss how to move forward then shouldn’t there be some accountability for the information in that public square? Should the unfiltered thoughts of the masses control our policy, debate and discussion?

In many ways, this period reminds of the yellow journalism of the 19th century. Back then newspapers were the main way of disseminating information and they would print anything. How truthful it was didn’t matter. They would make up any old thing. It was a total free-for-all. While this did not cause a toppling of any government it certainly had an effect on people and how they saw the world. In time, newspapers chased readership with truth. Hence the New York Times moniker, “All the news that’s fit to print.” The same moment of reckoning has to come to the social media companies. They have to chase the truth as fast as they chase advertising dollars.