Bias, Skew, and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity

RIP social media. What comes next is messy.

As social media splinters, how can we keep the new online spaces from devolving into toxic pits of despair?

Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media

Actors of public interest today have to fear the adverse impact that stems from social media platforms. Any controversial behavior may promptly trigger temporal, but potentially devastating storms of emotional and aggressive outrage, so called online firestorms. Popular targets of online firestorms are companies, politicians, celebrities, media, academics and many more. This article introduces social norm theory to understand online aggression in a social-political online setting, challenging the popular assumption that online anonymity is one of the principle factors that promotes aggression. We underpin this social norm view by analyzing a major social media platform concerned with public affairs over a period of three years entailing 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions. Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated.

Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media

Actors of public interest today have to fear the adverse impact that stems from social media platforms. Any controversial behavior may promptly trigger temporal, but potentially devastating storms of emotional and aggressive outrage, so called online firestorms. Popular targets of online firestorms are companies, politicians, celebrities, media, academics and many more. This article introduces social norm theory to understand online aggression in a social-political online setting, challenging the popular assumption that online anonymity is one of the principle factors that promotes aggression. We underpin this social norm view by analyzing a major social media platform concerned with public affairs over a period of three years entailing 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions. Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated.

Social Media Effects: Hijacking Democracy and Civility in Civic Engagement

Perceived as an equalizing force for disenfranchised individuals without a voice, the importance of social networks as agents of change cannot be ignored. However, in some societies, social networks have evolved into a platform for fake news and propaganda, empowering disruptive voices, ideologies, and messages. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google hold the potential to alter civic engagement, thus essentially hijacking democracy, by influencing individuals toward a particular way of thinking.

The Noisy Room

Only 3% of social media users post toxic content — but Americans estimate 43%. An interactive essay.

Meta and TikTok let harmful content rise after evidence outrage drove engagement - whistleblowers

Companies allowed more harmful content on user’s feeds, knowing their algorithms ran on outrage, BBC hears.

Banning under-16s won’t fix social media

The toxic ecosystem we have today can be better addressed with competition than regulation

Social media algorithms can be redesigned to bridge divides — here’s how

"It falls to both the tech companies that built these systems and an engaged public to create technologies designed for social cohesion."

Social media, extremism, and radicalization

Fears that YouTube recommendations radicalize users are overblown, but social media still host and profit from dubious and extremist content.

Social Media Algorithms Distort Social Instincts and Fuel Misinformation - Neuroscience News

Social media algorithms, designed to boost user engagement for advertising revenue, amplify the biases inherent in human social learning processes, leading to misinformation and polarization.

Xodus

...Building a movement away from toxic social media platforms, towards alternative open social media...

Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed

The [structural] mechanism producing these problematic outcomes is really robust and hard to resolve."

Custodians of the Internet

A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media platforms police what we post online—and the large societal impact of these decisions Most use...

The Algorithmic Management of Polarization and Violence on Social Media

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