Summaries and Notes on Tufecki, Suler, and Haidt and Iyer
Tufecki – “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer”
For research she watches Trump rallies. Then she is recommended white supremacists, Holocaust denial sites, etc. So she created another YouTube account and looked at Clinton and Sanders. Gets fed left wing conspiracy stories. More and more extreme. Did same with vegetarianism – veganism; running -> ultra marathons.
Why? Algorithms, AI and Google’s business model. [CAUSES]
“Google is an advertising broker, selling our attention to companies that will pay for it. The longer people stay on YouTube, the more money Google makes. What keeps people glued to YouTube? Its algorithm seems to have concluded that people are drawn to content that is more extreme than what they started with — or to incendiary content in general.”
….Given its billion or so users, YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century.”
Can’t get data as proprietary – but former engineer Chaslot, worked on recommender algorithm. Says YouTube often fed far right stories. If search flu vaccine, get anti vaccination conspiracy sites. Bias toward inflammatory content. This is why pro Trump ones dominated. And partly why so much fake news was pro trump.
Recently YouTube criticized for promoting conspiracy sites about Parkland shooting and “crisis actors.” On researcher found that if you search “crisis actors” once, you get 9000 crazy videos recommended.
Causal factors: computational exploitation of a natural human desire: to look “behind the curtain,” to dig deeper into something that engages us. “As we click and click, we are carried along by theexciting sensation of uncovering more secrets and deeper truths. YouTube leads viewers down a rabbit hole of extremism, while Google racks up the ad sales.”
Human beings have many natural tendencies that need to be vigilantly monitored in the context of modern life. For example, our craving for fat, salt and sugar, which served us well when food was scarce, can lead us astray in an environment in which [they are] plentiful and heavily marketed to us. So too our natural curiosity about the unknown can lead us astray on a website that leads us too much in the direction of lies, hoaxes and misinformation. In effect, YouTube has created a restaurant that serves us increasingly sugary, fatty foods...Over time, our tastes adjust, and we seek even more sugary, fatty foods, which the restaurant dutifully provides. When confronted about this by the health department and concerned citizens, the restaurant managers reply that they are merely serving us what we want.
This situation is especially dangerous given how many people — especially young people — turn to
YouTube for information. Google’s Chromebook laptops, which now make up more than 50 percent of the pre-college laptop education market in the United States, typically come loaded with ready
access to YouTube. This state of affairs is unacceptable but not inevitable. There is no reason to let a company make so much money while potentially helping to radicalize billions of people, reaping the financial benefits while asking society to bear so many of the costs.
[seems to suggest regulation as solution]
Suler, “The Online Disinhibition Effect”
While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying “true self,” we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.
Introduction:This disinhibition can work in two directions. Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves - reveal secret emotions, fears, wishes. They show unusual acts of kindness and generosity, sometimes going out of their way to help others. We may call this benign disinhibition. But also toxic disinhibition.
Toxic disinhibition may simply be a blind catharsis, a fruitless repetition compulsion, and an acting out of unsavory needs without any personal growth at all.
“Whether benign, toxic, or a mixture of both, what causes this online disinhibition? What elements of cyberspace lead to this weakening of the psychological barriers that block hidden feelings and needs?”
[This is classic example of central research question. It also reveals the main argument that will be advanced]
“At least six factors are involved. For some people, one or two of them produces the lion’s share of the disinhibition effect. In most cases, however, these factors intersect and interact with each other, supplement each other, resulting in a more complex, amplified effect.”
1. DISSOCIATIVE ANONYMITY
When people have the opportunity to separate their actions online from their in-person lifestyle and identity, they feel less vulnerable about self-disclosing and acting out. Whatever they say or do can’t be directly linked to the rest of their lives. In a process of dissociation, they don’t have to own their behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of an integrated online/offline identity. The online self becomes a compartmentalized self.
INVISIBILITY
Even with everyone’s identity known, the opportunity to be physically invisible amplifies the disinhibition effect. People don’t have to worry about how they look or sound when they type a message. They don’t have to worry about how others look or sound in response to what they say. Seeing a frown, a shaking head, a sigh, a bored expression, and many other subtle and not so subtle signs of disapproval or indifference can inhibit what people are willing to express.
ASYNCHRONICITY
Not having to cope with someone’s immediate reaction disinhibits people
In a continuous feedback loop that reinforces some behaviors and extinguishes others, momentby-momentresponses from others powerfully shapes the ongoing flow of self-disclosure and behavioral expression, usually in the direction of conforming to social norms
SOLIPSISTIC INTROJECTION
Online text communication can evolve into an introjected psychological tapestry in which a person’s mind weaves these fantasy role plays…with much disinhibition. This conversation may be experienced unconsciously as talking to/with oneself, which encourages disinhibition because talking with oneself feels safer than talking with others.
DISSOCIATIVE IMAGINATION
Consciously or unconsciously, people may feel that the imaginary characters they “created” exist in a different space, that one’s online persona along with the online others live in an make-believe dimension, separate and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the real world. They split or dissociate online fiction from offline fact. Emily Finch, an author and criminal lawyer who studies identity theft in cyberspace, has suggested that some people see their online life as a kind of game with rules and norms that don’t apply to everyday living
MINIMIZATION OF STATUS AND AUTHORITY
People are reluctant to say what they really think as they stand before an authority figure. A fear of disapproval and punishment from on high dampens the spirit. But online, in what feels more like a peer relationship—with the appearances of authority minimized—people are much more willing to speak out and misbehave.
SHIFTS AMONG INTRAPSYCHIC CONSTELLATIONS
We may be tempted to conclude that the disinhibition effect releases deeper aspects of intrapsychic structure, that it unlocks the true needs, emotions, and self attributes that dwell beneath surface personality presentations. [BUT]…The self does not exist separate from the environment in which that self is expressed. If someone contains his aggression in face-to-face living, but expresses that aggression online, both behaviors reflect aspects of self: the self that acts nonaggressively under certain conditions, the self that acts aggressively under other conditions.
Different modalities of online communication (e.g., e-mail, chat, video) and different environments (e.g., social, vocational, fantasy) may facilitate diverse expressions of self. Each setting allows us to see a different perspective on identity. Neither one is necessarily more true than another. Based on a multidimensional analysis of the various psychological features of online settings, a comprehensive theory on the psychotherapeutics of cyberspace can explore how computer-mediated environments can be designed to express, develop, and if necessary, restrain different constellations of self-structure
Haidt and Iyer, “How to get Beyond Our Tribal Politics”
■CONNECTIONS TO DEMAGOGUERY
After election, half the country will be horrified. They will be disgusted their fellow citizens voted for the moral equivalent of the devil. The disgust expressed by both sides in this election is worrisome because disgust dehumanizes its targets. That is why it is usually fostered by the perpetrators of genocide—disgust makes it easier for ordinary citizens to kill their neighbors. [Connection to demagoguery – demonization and dehumanization become commonplace]
“Civility doesn’t require consensus or the suspension of criticism. It is simply the ability to disagree productively with others while respecting their sincerity and decency.” [CONNECTION TO RM – they suggest we are in zone of demagoguery.]
■THIS ELECTION SHOWS HOW BAD INCIVILITY HAS BECOME.
It will be “darker and more foreboding than the day after just about any U.S. election since 1860”
“with the exception of the few months after 9/11, cross-partisan animosity has been rising steadily since
the late 1990s.’ It is now at record levels.
■CAUSES
Human nature is tribal. It is so common we invent myths, games and sports to enjoy intergroup conflict without horror. When we have a common enemy we band together. But since 9-11, not doing it.
“Something is broken in American tribalism. Democracy requires trust and cooperation as well as competition. We must find a way to see citizens on the other side as cousins who are sometimes opponents but who share most of our values and interests and are never our mortal enemies.”
“Motivated reasoning” is found whenever self-interest is in play. It signals your loyalty to the team. This is why partisans find it so easy to dismiss scandalous revelations about their own candidate while focusing so intently on scandalous revelations about the other candidate. Motivated reasoning has interacted with tribalism and new media technologies…Social media, hackers and Google searches now help us to find hundreds of specks in our opponents’ eyes, but no technology can force us to acknowledge the logs in our own. [INTENSIFY HUMAN REASONING & TRIBALISM]
Proximity can undermine tribalism, but geographic sorting = democrats and republicans living in different places. Institutions that brought people together are splintering over issues like gay marriage. We spend much time online in homogeneous groups. Anonymity leads to incivility. [CONNECTION TO SULER AND ZHUO]
Summary of Causes
- Tribal nature of human reasoning/psychology
- Tribalism plus social media and hackers stirring pot, and google searches
- No common enemy (implied – fall USSR)
- Geographic sorting
- Online sorting and splintering of institutions that unify over new issues
- Anonymity
CLAIM & SOLUTIONWe must adapt our democracy and our habits
SOLUTIONS
Change laws and institutions.
Improve technology to reward productive disagreement while filtering trolls and hate.
Change how we behave as individuals. He draws on ancient wisdom and recent research.
- Separate feelings about politicians from supporters. Most vote against rather than for, due to fear and frustration.
- Think about your goals – want change people or hate them. Argument rarely works. Need to open heart and cultivate closeness.
- If speak to opponent, do so skillfully – admit to own log in eye; signal not in combat mode.
[CONNECT TO RM – SEE FINAL CHAPTER ON WIKI] - Praise (?!) Eg from election.