Table Of ContentANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN
ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA
How Facebook Disconnects Us and
Undermines Democracy
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© Siva Vaidhyanathan 2018
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To my parents
Some claim the world is gradually becoming united, that it will grow into a
brotherly community as distances shrink and ideas are transmitted through the
air. Alas, you must not believe that men can be united in this way. To consider
freedom as directly dependent on the number of man’s requirements and the
extent of their immediate satisfaction shows a twisted understanding of human
nature, for such an interpretation only breeds in men a multitude of senseless,
stupid desires and habits and endless preposterous inventions. People are more
and more moved by envy now, by the desire to satisfy their material greed, and
by vanity.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
CONTENTS
Introduction: The Problem with Facebook Is Facebook
1 The Pleasure Machine
2 The Surveillance Machine
3 The Attention Machine
4 The Benevolence Machine
5 The Protest Machine
6 The Politics Machine
7 The Disinformation Machine
Conclusion: The Nonsense Machine
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA
INTRODUCTION
T P F I
HE ROBLEM WITH ACEBOOK S
F
ACEBOOK
On the afternoon of June 27, 2017, Mark Zuckerberg posted a brief message
on his Facebook page. “As of this morning, the Facebook community is now
officially 2 billion people!” the company founder and chief executive officer
wrote. “We’re making progress connecting the world, and now let’s bring the
world closer together. It’s an honor to be on this journey with you.”[1]
The idea of bringing the world closer together has animated and driven
Zuckerberg from the beginning. His speeches, his letters to investors, his essays
on Facebook, his interviews with journalists, and the quiet tour he took of the
United States in early 2017 all resonate with that theme. He believes that his
company can and should unite people from across the globe. He also believes
that the consequences of that process of connecting people are predictable and
largely beneficial.[2]
“For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and
families,” Zuckerberg wrote in a wide-ranging manifesto he published on his
Facebook page in early 2017. “With that foundation, our next focus will be
developing the social infrastructure for community—for supporting us, for
keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all.”
This marked something of a shift for Zuckerberg and for Facebook. Zuckerberg
was coming to terms with the fact that through 2016 Facebook had hosted and
promoted propaganda that influenced the referendum to move the United
Kingdom out of the European Union and the election of Donald Trump in the
United States. Beyond that, Facebook had received significant criticism for its
Facebook Live video streaming service after multiple people used it to publicize
suicides and homicides they were committing. The company was being called
irresponsible. So Zuckerberg took to his own platform to promise to do better, to
explain the problems in the most general terms, and to shift blame where he
could.[3]
“Beyond voting, the greatest opportunity is helping people stay engaged with
the issues that matter to them every day, not just every few years at the ballot
box,” Zuckerberg wrote in that 2017 manifesto. “We can help establish direct
dialogue and accountability between people and our elected leaders.” Then
Zuckerberg chose to mention some of the most astounding examples of how he
believed Facebook helps democratic processes. “In India, Prime Minister Modi
has asked his ministers to share their meetings and information on Facebook so
they can hear direct feedback from citizens,” Zuckerberg wrote. “In Kenya,
whole villages are in WhatsApp (a messaging platform that Facebook owns)
groups together, including their representatives. In recent campaigns around the
world—from India and Indonesia across Europe to the United States—we’ve
seen the candidate with the largest and most engaged following on Facebook
usually wins. Just as TV became the primary medium for civic communication
in the 1960s, social media is becoming this in the 21st century.”[4]
Those who study or follow the rise of authoritarianism and the alarming
erosion of democracy around the world would by 2017 list India, Indonesia,
Kenya, Poland, Hungary, and the United States as sites of Facebook’s direct
contribution to violent ethnic and religious nationalism, the rise of authoritarian
leaders, and a sort of mediated cacophony that would hinder public deliberation
about important issues, thus undermining trust in institutions and experts.
Somehow, Zuckerberg missed all of that. By November 2017, as Facebook
officials were compelled to investigate and reveal the extent of Russian
interference with the U.S. election through advertisements purchased on
Facebook and Instagram and targeted precisely to reach at least 126 million
Americans, Zuckerberg would be silent. He no longer crowed about Facebook
becoming the most powerful political platform in the world. Still, the company
offered a proposal to improve political culture: more services from and trust in
Facebook. The company would just promise to do better.[5]
In the manifesto Zuckerberg did describe a central problem with Facebook
that led to so many unwelcome developments. “These mistakes are almost never
because we hold ideological positions at odds with the community, but instead
are operational scaling issues,” he wrote. Facebook is just too big to govern. We
are victims of its success.[6]
The story of Facebook has been told well and often. But it deserves a deep
and critical analysis at this crucial moment. Somehow Facebook devolved from
an innocent social site hacked together by Harvard students into a force that,
Description:If you wanted to build a machine that would distribute propaganda to millions of people, distract them from important issues, energize hatred and bigotry, erode social trust, undermine respectable journalism, foster doubts about science, and engage in massive surveillance all at once, you would make
