📤 Social Media : Promises and Perils!

My introduction to the internet happened through electronic mail; I remember when my friend, created our first-ever email addresses - we celebrated that day, by sending each other a thank you note. We took turns on the same terminal - yeah, it is silly. We’re the last human generation from before the internet: from letters to landlines to faxes to internet-based email to social media / instant messengers, we have witnessed the entire spectrum - unfold in front of our own eyes. Nearly 2 decades later, in a pandemic year, - things are very different. Diametrically opposite, physical contact is considered unsafe, the internet has become the primary way for us to learn, work, exchange, engage and shop; there is a bit of internet in everything that we do, now.

It is not the same for kids who came into this world after the Internet became the television of the contemporary world. Their first introduction with it, in 9 out of 10 cases is happening with the phenomenon of the internet that we call ‘Social Media’. Toddlers holding a phone with a YouTube cartoon playing on a loop is a common sight, in the society of the 21st century. This generation is unfamiliar with the concept of lag, real-time is their jam (trying the hip lingo). Well, my first social media platform account was created on MySpace by the same friend who did our email IDs but I never got around to using it. So Orkut for all practical purposes should be considered my first experience in community connection on the internet. Let me admit that social media, did not feel any less magical to me, either: Orkut! The joy of finding a long lost friend, a teacher, a librarian who I had lost touch with on a computer screen was a satisfying encounter. Before Orkut, only way to know that someone was thinking about us was when we were made aware of it by the person himself/herself. Orkut had a feature which listed visitors of the profile, for the first time I had a credible way of knowing who was thinking about me. Pure wizardry!

Then came Facebook, and it felt like how a Ferrari would to someone who has driven a Ford Fiat all his life. Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube - it kept getting better by the day. I enjoyed these platforms for a full decade. I was among abide users with the combined network running upward of 20 K people.

A rather long honeymoon period, however, ended towards the end of 2018, when I experienced my feed becoming incredibly homogenous. I thought perhaps for this isolated instance there are a lot of people who feel the way I do, about some of the burning issues of our times. But, soon it became apparent that it was not the case, Facebook algorithms were playing with my timeline and therefore what I saw was not what my friends expressed but a curated list that engineers put together for users like me - so I was not seeing what people in my network shared but what Facebook thought was fit as per my profile.

I was in an echo chamber that Facebook had created.

I started going easy on my social media interaction, began a series of social experiments to understand the workings a little more: by sometimes playing to the gallery, and at others becoming the voice of dissent and then switching gears back and forth. I took all kinds of positions and analysed how my timeline shifted based on what stand I had choosen. It became clear beyond reasonable doubt that what I was shown on my timeline was in no way a representation of what people in my network thought. It was instead, a list curated to suit by viewpoint. Simply put what I was being shown was a match : echo chamber, personified. There were promoted posts in the mist, which played their role in the timeline construction as well.

So all in all social media turned out to be neither as spontaneous or as social as I had thought. Finding that long lost friend was unquestionably not as magical, when you know that the algorithm is trying to close triangles, with you, a user already in your network and then a third person who could be a mutual friend. I kept social media on a watch for close to about 2 years, after which I quit all platforms (barring Linkedin, have a twitter account too but I follow no one now - so no timeline).

I must point out some of the remarkable mobilisations that FB in a way facilitated: force for the good. Black Lives Matter, Nepal Floods, Ice bucket challenge, the HongKong protest - these were incredible feats. Not a day goes by without us hearing how these platforms helped small businesses and communities come together in difficult times. Not just that, in more underdeveloped countries: Facebook is the internet, so in that sense. These platforms are causing social as well as economic upliftment too.

With these goods, the world also had to deal with menace like the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Alleged meddling in the election, giving hate and violence - a stage and an audience that they do not deserve. Provoking mental illnesses in teens, driving suicides and general discontent in life, by heightened sense of dissatisfaction born out of acts of comparison from the timeline. Very quickly it becomes apparent that these social media platforms in their greed are willing to extend their audiences to the highest bidder, without any thought of the aftermath of the advertisements. They were incredibly sinister and dangerously irresponsible in doing so. Not caring about the privacy of its users is among the least offensive things done by these large multi-billion dollar corporations running the world of the internet.

Both democracies and other forms of governments could not stop themselves from using social media as a tool of surveillance, though at this stage, these are only at the level of allegation and reportage. I must qualify my statement by saying that it has not been proven in the court of law yet, though 49 states in the US are out for Facebook’s blood.

Alongside, I kept my research going, read a few books (the Hype Machine and the other), read research journals (quite a few of them), written to examine the impact of social media on the societal fabric, government functioning, policy-making and economy. I concluded that social media is not for me. I deleted my account from every single Facebook run application, but quitting Facebook powered social media avenues can’t be how this situation gets answered conclusively. It is a multilayered complicated question. That we must collectively find an answer to. Deciding between the promises and the perils of social media is not an easy chor. I have been ruminating on this for a long time, but I still can’t decide one way of the other, but I do have a few thoughts that I would like to share, for us to ponder over.

• Will attaching physical identity to social media accounts make the platform, less vile, hateful, and indecent in its exchange? Will the absence of veil of anonymity get people to behave better? Will it encourage better accountability. The flip side to this suggestion is that it will force the limitation that the unpopular and minority views face in the real world on to the virtual platforms as well. They will no longer be able to express as freely. So in balance must this be done?
• Will interoperability or portability make the platform owners play nice to the privacy concerns of the users? Will it work if we had a social media number much like our mobile number which we could move and shift from operator to operator at our own will? Perhaps the fear of losing the users with their identity to another platform will make the big social media companies behave responsibly.
• Should social media content be subjected to the standards with which media houses are governed, given how much news/information is being consumed on these platforms? Will it help curb fake news?
• Stronger parental controls, perhaps a regulated minimum verified age: like in the case of permitted age of consuming alcohol to be applied to social media platforms to save kids from the adverse effects.

There is no denying the fact that some of us leaving social media is not going to alter the overbearing impact that social media has on our society. There is also no point in throwing the baby out of the bathwater. What we need to create is a balance in which we continue to reap the benefits of the connected world at the same time safeguarding soceity from its ill effects.

I would like to leave you with these thoughts! 

Until next Sunday, Goodbye👋 

The economy of misinformation!

 

Some fascinating stories in circulation on the web today.

• Earth is flat.

• 'Moon landing' was a conspiracy, it never happened.

• Herbs cure COVID19.

• Homosexuality is a disorder and it can be cured by Yoga.

• Our ‘race’ is the best.

• 'Motivation and passion' that is all that one needs to succeed in life.

All of the above is just plain untrue, misleading and utter bullshit; but you know what? You can find ‘information’, ‘social media posts’ and ‘opinions’ masquerading as facts - supporting each of these bizarre theories on the internet. Not one, not two but millions upon millions of carefully crafted digital stories backing each of these salacious claims, not only exist but are only a recommendation away. Planted delicately in the way of your attention to make you stop, scroll, consume and click. The currency of your attention is what the spreaders of the misinformation are gunning for. These exist because vested interests are willing to pay for them from their endless pool of resources.

The economy of misinformation is HUGE, estimated at 250 billion USD, globally!

Misinformation, slander and scandals; sell like hotcakes.

Take a moment to imagine a group of people, who were born and brought up on these posts. Consider that they have lived their entire life surrounded by these details, would they ever accept contrasting information worthy of their attention? When they go on to the world wide web and search, they find millions who hold the same beliefs; what do they take away from it? That they are not alone and that there is no way, so many people can be wrong about something, which they believe to be true. So it must be true, the earth is indeed flat and to support that they have emphatic evidence right in front of their eyes, the ground below their feet is indeed flat; so how can the claim that earth is flat be untrue?

While you process that, let me present a thought exercise: look at all the things that you may have acquired in the last 2 years or so. List everything down, every item and then try to trace back, to the original instinct that got you to buy them. What was it? Did any form of advertisement, play a part?

Let me bring the third case into the mix; list down the last ten digital altercation that you may have had with others on various internet-based mediums - social media, messengers, video chat forums and others. What caused those brawls actually? What formed the basis of your opinions, the cause that you stood for? Was it in any way bolstered by what others expressed in solidarity with your views on the matter on the digital platform, that you frequent?

If yes, then you’ve been played with.

You’ve been manipulated by someone who devilishly weaponised the weaknesses of your mind, your ignorance; to further their own cause. They have benefited from the blind spots of your psychology, your behavioural glitches to make money out of your attention. How do you like the idea?

The illusion of knowledge, a false feeling of confidence and sense of community and belonging that these digital excursions (Social media) offer in exchange for time spend on the medium- draws people to them, irresistibly.

Let's take another case.

Imagine an ignorant but decent soul playing a silent spectator in an argumentative exchange going wild on a Whatsapp group that he is a part of, in which he found the group proposing 'earth is flat' presenting colourful reasons for it being the truth. In all honesty, with the sole objective of finding facts he launches youtube and types, "Earth is flat". Youtube returns the man, a ton of videos on that topic. He watches to one, and then moves on to the other and then to the next. After 2 hours of viewing different people eloquently presenting to an HD camera the fact that 'earth is flat' in a well-lit frame, he is confident. In his mind, he has the 'Knowledge' that he needs. He rages back to the group with his newly acquired 'intel and confidence' adds weight on to the side of the argument that purposed that 'earth is flat'. A few of these debates later the man now is a convert, an activist of the cause of dispelling every other version of the earth, circulating faster than earth is rotating on its axis. He considers it his responsibility to put things to record now.

A bubble of sorts is created in which he is trapped for eternity, an expansive universe in which he magically finds different people from different parts of the world who think exactly as he does? It is nothing but smart algorithms pushing on the side of conformance bias.

The principle to note in internet-based knowledge gathering and socialising exercises is that when you find people echoing your thoughts it does not always mean that what you are thinking is the right thing to think, it only means that like you the other people have also been subjected to the same stimulus and therefore they are reacting in a predictable way.

Confirmation is not the same as corroboration, more people saying the same thing does not make it right.

Consider this, let’s say your name is “Lav Kush” and a million people start calling you “Rohan” all of them addressing you by the wrong name at the same time and in a continuous and consistent manner; imagine 10 more people get added to that group of a million people who are calling you by a wrong name. What is the most likely name they are going to think you have? Lav Kush or Rohan? You know they would inadvertently add their voice to the building chorus of “Rohan”. "Rohan" is a fictitious name for you but it is a fact for those million others. Except that the million people, in this case, are simply wrong, but they are united in their misinformation and that makes the cumulative choristers appear much stronger than what is actually the right information - "Lav Kush".

This is how 'spread' of misinformation works.

The other question now is; when people have such an effective and powerful tool in their reach why do they not spread the right information? Are they inherently evil people? Why does it always have to be the wrong use of the tech? What sense does it make to use the tool wrongfully for indecent purposes? Why would someone be so taken up by the cause of spreading misinformation? These are valid questions. The answer is that - the truth is always ‘mundane’ and uninteresting because it does not dress up to impress it just puts clothes on.

Let me present to you two flavours of the same story, to further the argument.

The First Version: Iqbal is a hardworking student. He commits himself to routine and follows it through. He studies 6 hours a day, every day and then sleeps 8 hours a day, every day. He eats home-cooked meals most of the times. With sustained preparation, he cleared the prestigious UPSC entrance examination.

The second version: Iqbal was a bad student, he used to get into fights and all sorts of funny stuff back in school. His teachers and family members were equally worried about the prospects of his future. One day, while strolling back from school he met a sage who gave him a miracle filled sweet, he ate it and from that day onwards he was transformed. He started studying 16 hours a day, he would not even need to sleep for more than 4 hours a day and he constantly just kept on working. As a result, he cracked the prestigious UPSC entrance examination.

Both versions of the story offer the same outcome “Iqbal cleared the prestigious UPSC entrance examination” but which one do you think will sell more? First or second? We know the answer is going to be second.

Why?

The second story, forces leading questions on to the readers. Has a hint of mystery in it, waiting to be unravelled, some like these.

•Are miracles possible?

•Sages have transformative capabilities.

•Who was this sage, could we also seek his blessing?

•16 hours of study is possible, can be tried out. All of those who do not put in those kinds of hours are stupid nincompoops and are bound to fail.

•Sleep is not important at all; 4 hours is just about fine.

The first one, will not get anyone excited, it is as boring as a bowl of khichri. It is not exciting and that is enough to drive people away from it. But we can't say the same thing for the 2nd version, which appears straight from the movies.

That is how the business of fake news, conspiracy theories and propagandist narratives work.

It plants juicy connivance at the heart of an earthly event to get people interested, in the story. Constant and colourful reinforcement is supplied. Different people use this hunger (vulnerability of the human mind) for mystery in different forms.

Tech giants - Deploy powerful and pervasive algorithms to supply an abundance, the never-ending flow of content to satiated our senses by confirming to our beliefs, trapping us in our own bubble and yet keeping us hungry, at the same time by furnishing a variety of overproduced agenda-driven content, often for free. They grow audiences by popularising biases which they monetise for their economic gains. They sell our attention to corporations that are willing to place advertisements of their products somewhere in the content for us to consume and then get persuaded to buy.

Political parties use it to generate narratives that suit their politics. They create grand distractions to blind people of real issues/shield their failures. False enemies are erected so that people remain busy fighting them while they make the hay. Accountability is abdicated by confusing public consciences in an endless maze. News organisation and social media firms are paid to do the job. We are witnessing one right now in the country. We've become the 2nd most infected with COVID19 as a country, China is walking over our toes, the economy has plunged by 24%, and joblessness is at its peak and all we are being offered is scandalous collusion of an actor who died.

Corporations - They plug their products where the eyeballs are to boost growth prospects. You can’t buy a product that you have not seen or heard about. So wherever most people are listening becomes the essential place for organisations to advertise. They willingly pay the tech giants for creating these vast networks of disbelieves and misinformation appearing as reality and truth.

Regular people - They have a smartphone with a cheap data connection and nothing better to do with their time. So they hog on it, endlessly. Consumption becomes the easiest and effortless way to spend time.

Very few people have actually studied psychology and human behaviour well enough to avoid falling in these traps as a result they allow platforms to trade their attention for their profit. In the end, capital wins because these spaces are made available to the highest bidder; truth does not matter as much as confirmation bias does. Ordinary users unknowingly grow these monsters by feeding them with their attention. For short term pleasure, they lose long term control. Are you willing to squander your senses to the chorale around you? If not then, delete your social media accounts right now, limit your news consumption (preferably to print). Use your time productively in something useful, something constructive. You'll be better served.

I’m linking my article on digital minimalism, here for you to see the ways in which you can shield yourself from the damage the internet can do to you.

Good luck and stay safe.

Digital Minimalism, a must!

• Schools - Online.
• Work - Online.
• Socialisation - Online.
• Retail - Online.
• Entertainment - Online.

You get the drift, I hope?

Digital has suddenly expanded itself to fill physical spaces of our lives- both at work and at home. Don't you agree? Our lives have got intertwined inextricably. Physical and digital spaces overlap now like never before, so much so that, many of us have accepted our digital identity to be an extension of our physical persona and there is very little wrong in it, digital is indeed gaining compelling prominence. Let me, however, invoke Mark Twain, who said, to make my argument here :

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.

If you look carefully you'll notice that the point at which our physical world meets with the digital one, there is chaos, created by the abundance of information, not all of which is found to be either factual or useful.

Let me explain how?

Before we get to the heart of the issue let us list down major points of our digital interactions.

• Emails
• File and data
• Browser
• Smartphone
• Social media

The container of consumption may range between computer, phone and tablets (keeping IOT out of the scope, willfully, in the interest of simplicity) but for a vast majority of us, our digital lives are nested around the outlets listed above. From experience, we know that it could get overpowering really quickly. From enjoying email carrying the good news to a sea of unread emails, from having important files to mountain heap of data we do not know what to do with, from a few cool new extensions to too many of them filling the entire length of the toolbar, from occasional notifications to a phone that is a constantly buzzing menace - Digital chaos caused by excessive indulgence is real and is known to cause cognitive fatigue.

Don't you agree?

Let me ask you a few question.

• Have you not felt the load of unread emails on your chest?
• Have unattended notification from your favourite social media apps not caused anxiety in you?
• Have you not started the day with and on your phone and also ended the day with it?
• Have you not felt lost in an abundance of choices? What to watch on a given day on your favourite OTT platform?

I see you nodding, in agreement and that, my friends, is the digital clutter that I am talking about, here.

I wrote an article on essentialism on 8th March 2020, in which I spoke about the concept, ways to implement and the reasons why I find it to be a good approach to life. (I'll link the article towards the end of this one, if you haven't read it already you can give it a go).

While replying to some of your comments on that article, It dawned on me that with the 'COVID-19 house arrest' situation, digital clutter has only intensified and so has the frustration, stress and anxiety that comes with it. 'Working from home' concept for digital workers does not befall without its vices. The boundary that healthily separated 'work' and 'home' has vanished, now. We have associated work with the workplace for a long time. Granted, the nature of work has changed dramatically in the last decade which has made 'work from home' a smart option, but the pandemic has made it the 'only' safe option. And this act of force has made it less pleasant. It has become particularly difficult for those with additional responsibilities of running the chores of the house.

Suffices to say, that collectively we're not in a good place at the moment, with the spread, extent and the shape of our digital identity.

So, I propose that we introduce organisation into our digital presence with the aim to take control of its spread, to disentangle the situation into a simplified arrangement. The idea is to make technology work for us and not the other way round; to declutter it. Since I subscribed to the concept of Essentialism, I've given considerable thought towards introducing minimalism to my digital life too. Happy to share a few things that I have tried in my own routine, with you. My suggestions are by no means the only ways to achieve the goals that we listed earlier and certainly are not the best way forward too- but it has worked for me. So take it for what it is worth.

Let's take prominent digital spaces that we interact with one after the other.

Social Media

The user experience of social media is pleasurable, so much so, that it has become the strongest source of diversion for modern workers, who appear powerless before its attraction. Constant, continuous and mostly free of additional charge- supply of content entices people to remain hooked to it, sometime at the cost of being productive, being social in the traditional sense and even useful to the task at hand.

Social media is a costly affair, we pay for it in the currency of time, the most valuable asset that we have. To limit its impact on my time and digital habits, here are a few routines that I have developed.

• If deleting social media accounts sound too extremist to you, begin by unfriending and unfollowing those who do not add value to your life. I mean by the way of their content and views. Get rid of all 'motivational' speakers, trust me you do not need them. Keep only those who really inspire you to be the better version of who you are and who you wish to be.
• Limit exposure:
  • The human mind loves continues inflow of information. Social media platforms are designed to give its users a false sense of fulfilment as though they are filling some deep void with the timeline/wall/feed scrolling. We often forget that it is not real. So to be mindful, I follow, the routine of 30 minutes on social media each workday and 1 hour on weekends, all platforms put together. Full disclosure, there are days when I overstep my boundaries too, but I feel good about the fact that on 90% of the days I do follow the limit that I have set for myself.
  • Do not engage in badinage with people, who you do not find inspirational. So learn to walk past a useless post without displaying your reaction or gracing it with a comment. Know when to back off from an exchange. I am not asking you to not engage, at all. Stand for what you believe in by all means but know that your comments on social media only go that far in changing the situation on the ground. Do not overvalue its impact.
• Create friction:
  • Social media applications are easy, user-friendly to the point of being addictive, so delete them from your phone, like RIGHT NOW! Even if you wish to keep them on your phone, DO NOT turn on notification for them. It is the worst mistake to make.
  • Access it from the most useless browser that you can find. Willfully destroying the social media experience, is a great way of limiting your exposure to it.
• Know that social media is a curated world. The real world is far from it, the world of social media is not only virtual but also fake, in most cases.
• Advertisement cry for your attention and platforms steal your data to serve advertisers. How comfortable are you with your data being harvested without your consent to benefit corporations you have no interest in? Depending upon your ease, you decide how much time and attention should you blow on them.
• Just renounce instant messengers, you do not need them. Those who need to get in touch with you will call you, so chill - you are not missing out on anything important.

Email and files.

Email continues to be the most patronised and invaluable mode of communication around the world. All of us have work and personal email accounts. Email clients, unify mailboxes to give us the convenience and that comfort sometimes causes us to mix one for the other. The rush to reply swiftly can sometimes get better of our judgement. It is easy to get on with an email exchange at a time when you should be working/creating/ solving a problem, instead. The situation with data files are also similar, we end up accumulating a lot of them. We become data and information hoarders without any good reason. Information and data which we do not even index, well for future use. We mindlessly create digital junkyard.

Here are a few things that I have tried.

• Common tricks for both email and data files.
  • Colour code work and personal email IDs and file and folders. Try and use different and distinct email clients for work and personal emails.
    • Apple email for work.
    • Spark for personal email.
  • Mark calendar for work and personal account too, separately. Do not unify the two, it does not help.
  • Visual differentiation of colours will keep you from mixing, the categories.
    • In electing the colour-codes make sure that you pick a distinct and opposite colour, not just for email and calendar but and also for file and folders, related to different areas of your life. (Here are the colours that I go with)
      • Blue for work.
      • Purple for personal.
      • Green for learning.
  • Unless you work in email support in which replying to incoming emails with speed is vital to your job role, you do not need to be hooked on to your mailbox all day. Set time, one that suits your routine and work urgency. I check emails three times a day for not more than 2 hours combined each day.
    • You can create custom alerts for important clients and other important people/matters/projects, and allow them to bypass, everything and everyone else can wait, it is ok.
  • Naming your data files on the project that they belong to will help you find them quickly later when you need them. Because you will always need information in relation to a project. Also, never keep files in the email or floating around on their own. You should not have to dive into the mailbox or hard drive to find a file, always save files as they come to you in their designated folders. Create a shortcut for the folders of the current projects so that you can get to the current resources in no time.
    • Do not create duplicates.
      • Final1; Final 2.0_XYZ, Final final new - these are not the best ways to name a file.
      • Use better version control nomenclature, learn ISO; it is a good standard to follow.

Browser

Most of us spend most parts of our day in a browser, therefore organising it becomes significant, too. Here are a few things that I do.

• I port the colour scheme from the email and folders on to website bookmarks for work, play and learning life areas so that I have a visual reminder in front of me which stops me from mixing work for play and vice versa.
  • If you have the luxury to, separate browsers.
    • Let Chrome/fire-fox be the workhorse
    • Safari/Brave be the place for play-related internet excursions.
    • Explorer for learning.
      • Or whichever you like, the idea is to create visual reminders that you are in a certain zone.
• Do not let news/ social media notification be on. You do not need them. if something is big enough, the buzz it creates will find you.
• Be mindful about the extensions that you keep on your browsers, the idea is to only keep the plugins that help you do your job better. You do not need FB lurking on you. It just does not add any value to your life, get rid of them.

SmartPhone

One of the greatest inventions of our times, this single device has effectively replaced so many things, from physical calendars to notepads to the phone book and so much more. But let us not forget that this always connected tool is also the greatest source of the disturbance, that we come across. It has games, social media, endless feed of news, YouTube and the mother of all a browser in it which has the ability to keep us entertained all day long. And not to forget it is always with us. Remember, the goal is to be intentional about the use, we should not let unplanned and mindless entertainment get in the way of our being productive.

• DND (Do not disturb), use it at every opportunity that you get.
• Messages and phone calls barring from key people are best returned at a time when you find fit and not when your caller finds suitable.
• Grayscale (I use it to on my iPhone) it makes your phone unattractive black and white, you miss the colour so much that you do not wish to use it, more than you should. It is a bit extreme but it works. Try it.
• Your iPhone has a million application and each of those is a 'business' that wants you to spend on them. You do not work for them, so turn the notifications off. Review the apps that you do not use frequently - delete them. Let the applications not enjoy, rent-free space in your life through your phone. You do not need them to disrupt you with a rubbish offer notification which you do not need, while you are at work or with your family.
• Be very selective with notification permission, only allow, those that you absolutely need.
• Do not have duplicates, for instance, at a time when you are on your computer there is no need for your phone to buzz with the same notification with which your computer has gone abuzz.
• Set a limit for screen time and stay committed to it.

Remember, our limited time on earth is not to be wasted chasing digital villain on a game of PubG, or crushing candies (I'm not against gaming, but I do stress that it must be enjoyed in moderation), it is meant to be used judiciously to achieve our life goals. Technology is not the enemy here, our indisciplined nature is. The aim is to live a mindful life, to bring intentionality in whatever we do, we should employ technology, we should not let the technology contract us.

A decluttered and minimal digital space is a must for an essentialist lifestyle - when you get there, you'll feel good and in control, I speak from a place of personal experience.

Here is the link of the article on essentialism I spoke about.

link : http://www.lavkush.co.in/essentialism-care-to-try/

Till we meet again, take good care of yourself and stay safe.