Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIN, etc, etc, are grouped under the heading Social Networks. And in one sense, they are. These are companies that depend upon individuals attracting others to engage with them. This mode of interaction naturally leads to exponential growth in the number of members of that network. So they depend upon the social connections people have with others, whether that is in real life or in cyberspace.
But let me suggest that this is just one way of using the term social network. These firms do not create communities, only exploit social impulses of the members, not to contribute to some greater social good. The environment they create, the world, is nothing more than a way to yoke the members into a mechanism that supports advertising and generates ad revenue for them. All features and functions are designed with that goal in mind.
I feel really old when I talk about what I believe is the most evocative metaphore for what social networks have become. For much of the 20c Bloomingdale’s in New York was one of the premier department stores. Since perfumes must have been the highest revenue producers as well as a frequent impulse purchase, they organized the store to exploit that. When you entered the store you had to walk down the perfume aisle to get anywhere. And that aisle was filled with sales people enticing you to buy their perfume, rather aggressively as I recall. So it was a gauntlet of promotion and each sales person asked you to smell their product.
That perfume aisle, which was no more than 100 feet long was an amusing nuisance compared to the experience of Facebook. All of these “social networks” are just long perfume aisles with no escape to less intensly promotional spaces. While the use of the network may be free and have value, you pay to use them in two ways, one to create content to attract more people and increase engagement, but also by being trapped in their promotional web where your attention is sold to the highest bidder. So you, the member, become both the bait and the prey.
Many 20c philosophers made very potent observations about media. I am thinking of Albert Borgmann and Hubert Dreyfus primarily. The more recent philosophers built on their post-modernist conceptions of hyperreality and structuralism. Many have commented on how instead of connecting us to others it alienates and drives us apart. One topic that is frequently discussed is how people are striving for purpose and community, not a new way to shop or argue over politics.
Some of this has little to do with technology. The philosophy of existentialism discusses how the Enlightenment has methodically destroyed all the traditional institutions that created meaning and community, none more prominent than the religons. Civic engagement too has morphed into mere politics. I see this as due to the double whammy of communication and transportation that opened our worlds up more in the 20c than in many of the centuries that preceded it. The idealistic notion that communication would give back in the form of a community that a flight to the large suburban homes took away never panned out. And the decreasing number of children has even reduced the humanizing influence of childhood education and activity as a means to hold a community together.
This is all on my mind for the reason that my interest in “the metaverse” is to specifically look for a way that we can reimagine this idealistic notion of cyberspace being a space for community. The ether puts up occasional green shoots that promise to grow into community. But most of them die before they become self sustaining. There must be a way and I want to find it.
Starting from the concept that society is constructed over time using language cyberspace is the perfect medium for it. All the existing social networks did bits and pieces; Facebook groups, following individuals in Instagram and X-Twitter, job search boards, Discord channels, and many others are like proto-community centers. Yet none of these engender the kind of loyalty and cohesive communities that survive and thrive. These seem to be two obstacles, the difficulty of balancing openness with establishing social norms and the ability to rise above pure instrumentalism.
Facebook groups reach their best form when they have active moderators. Moderators filter who can join the group, kick out unruly members, and try to set an agenda that is broad enough to be interesting yet not so broad as to lack a purpose. Too often the groups are started by someone who is really just a narcisist looking for validation for their ideas. Or an individual who is incapable of maintaining a conversation. And it takes work so often they lose interest in the project and have no one else to take up the lack of leadership.
I saw an article which discussed how shadow communities for existing physical communities may be an answer but I am vexed at forgetting where I saw it. But our physical homes anchor us and force some sense of shared community even when we try to avoid it. And since local news has all but disappeared in the modern life, it can fill that void. Many firms have tried to monetize this (Ring, NextDoor, etc) but they all lack the authenticness of real communities. And of course they only invest in infrastructure, not moderators or influencers. Those must be organic. A deep dive into those products may show which features and functions are desired by the real community organizers. Obviously political needs are one. But people are currently so sick of politics that an emphasis on the political needs is a turn off.
So my purpose in this post is to mark a turning point away from that which contributes to the disintegration of American society toward that which can reawaken community spirit and human connection using metaverse as a tool.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-social-networking/
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