Judging solely by the heuristic that she has dyed her hair light blue into middle age, I assume that Dr. Cathy O'Neil and I don't share many opinions in common. However, her new work on the harm caused by social media algorithms strikes me as correct and well-considered.
What, by your own understanding, constitutes shame? Is it universal?
It’s universal. But shaming always happens with respect to a norm. And those norms aren’t necessarily universal. Shame is a social thing that happens in the context of feeling like you’re unworthy and you’ll be unlovable by your community....
Do algorithms target shame, or just anything that is popular?
I think algorithms are optimised to service that which will arouse us the most. That usually means outraging us so we perform shame. In our filter bubble, our in-group, the algorithm serves to us the most outrageous thing that some other filter bubble has managed to arrive at, so we have the opportunity to be righteous and lob shame on to that other group, and to create this shame spiral.
That's a nice insight. Social media algorithms do two things, then: first, they identify by our likes and engagement how to aggregate us into online communities of norms; then, they pit those communities against each other by identifying the most egregious violations of one community's norms by another community (which is not, by its own norms, doing anything wrong).
The result is an online society that is tearing itself apart, screaming at each other all the time. If you actually go out into physical America, it's a nice place full of nice people. If they disagree with each other, they manage to live side-by-side by simply living and letting-live. Online, though, we are driven by the social media companies into intense, daily conflict that is profitable for them because it maximizes page views and advertising revenue -- and, by driving hotter and more frequent engagement, also helps them develop deeper pictures of our individual and communal likes and dislikes.
It is, in other words, a grave threat to the stability of this and any nation with a substantial online aspect.
A useful comparison and contrast is provided by the current conflict over Libs of TikTok, which is a meta social media aggregator: it lives on Twitter, but curates videos from TikTok. As Mark Hemingway points out, those doxing the curator in order to attack her don't actually grapple with the content she has been curating. They just assume it is bigoted by nature, and go after her for it.
The comparison lies in the fact that both she and Twitter are attempting to drive conflict within society by pointing out ways in which other parts of society violate the norms of her part. The contrast is that this is being done by a human being who is actually watching and considering the videos, and pushing out those that point to potentially serious issues that need addressing -- especially in terms of how children are being exposed to intense sexualities in public school, and at young ages. Living and letting-live is a good thing, but the public school aspect especially means that this is an area of common concern where commonly-acceptable standards are needed. Confer also Tex's linked powerful and disturbing essay from yesterday on the importance of protecting especially female children but also children and women in general from sexual violence: it isn't just bigotry, but a defense against predation.
Some of this stuff is necessary in a society that has very different norms embedded in its different parts, but which has to learn to live together. Yet the algorithmic violence, artificial and encouraged so that these corporations can profit off the strife they build up, is causing unnecessary and intense harm to us all.
6 comments:
Shame is a topic that always has fascinated me, because I find few feelings more difficult to bear. Shame gets its hooks into you, not just when you feel you've done wrong, but most intensely when you're hiding something you believe to be wrong. In my experience, the thorn is pulled when you own up freely, first within your own heart, and then to everyone you fear will judge you.
What if you don't believe you've done anything wrong? Then what you're feeling isn't shame. You may be distressed that people wrongfully disapprove of you, but that's much easier to bear.
I admit this can be confusing, if our values are messed up and we're ambivalent about whether something was wrong. In my experience, if the best I can do is conclude that I'm ambivalent about whether I was wrong, then I was wrong and I'm just lying to myself to hide from the pain of shame. It doesn't work worth a hoot. If my ethics are that confused, they need work anyway.
So, usually we distinguish between shame and guilt. What you’re describing as shame is more usually called guilt: an internal feeling of having done something wrong (even shameful). Shame is usually— and I think this is how she means it— external. A man who feels no guilt for his actions can still be shamed by a hostile community that hounds him wherever he goes. He can be driven out of public life, or employment by any decent company (I.e. one that wants to avoid angry mobs).
That’s what they’re trying to gin up here: not even to convince The Other that they’re wrong, but just to drive them out.
The important distinction is the fear of exposure--not the fear of practical consequences, but the inability to bear the fact that people can see what I did that I know to have been wrong. I wouldn't feel what I call shame if I felt no subjective guilt--I'd only feel a frustration that a society was thwarting me over something whose righteousness we disagree about. If I could contrive to ignore or tolerate the practical consequences, I'd have no further discomfort. It's the feeling of "You bet I did, and I'd do it again with a clear conscience, were you hoping I secretly regretted it?"
If I do believe I was wrong, then once I've owned up, I still feel guilt if I did wrong, but the agony of shame abates. I deal with guilt by atoning if I can, by resolving not to repeat the fault, and by learning to accept that I'm not perfect. If I do all that, though, while hiding the fault, I'm still tormented by shame.
I think that Dr O'Neil is saying much that Haidt and Lukianoff did in The Coddling of the American Mind. That algorithms inject a new danger into the equation seems quite real, and I am glad she has been researching that and thinking about it. I am worried about her focus, that she is only now thinking that cancel culture is real and that punching down according to traditional liberal definitions of that has been mostly the problem. Still, she was able to see gray area there, which is something.
Speaking of Haidt, he as a new article in The Atlantic, that seems pretty good (I skimmed the first 20%, but won't be able to finish it until after work today).
Thanks for that. Turns out, it’s on the same subject.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
Post a Comment