Social Media is a Loading Spring

A system is spring-loaded if it is coiled in a certain direction, positive or negative.

Many have said that social media is an echo chamber. It comes to my mind that a more appropriate metaphor is a spring being loaded.

Consider the fictional case of Alice.

Alice posts an opinion on Ditto, a social media platform. Many of Alice’s followers agree with her and start to “ditto” Alice’s post, pushing it to their follower’s timeline. Their followers do the same. Logically, this process will repeat and propagate itself until it reaches an equilibrium, which is the point that every new person exposed is neutral or negative about Alice’s opinion. And inevitably it will reach an end, unless Alice’s opinion happens to be a novel neuro-lingustic virus that is capable of taking over the world.

The end result is a highly unpleasant experience for Alice. During the “spring-loading” phase, her content spreads far and fast among supporters. But the end result is that her opinion will eventually get exposed to an as-large-as-possible surface area of dislike and ambivalence, often with size many times of her supporter. And because an attacker can always trace back to Alice, she might suddenly found that the wind has changed and she is facing a backlash for her previously popular opinion.

While it is not a novel observation that people face criticisms and backlash online, I think the thing worth noting is the spring-like nature of this phenomenon, that the public opinion will inevitably violently recoil, and the more popular an online opinion was, the worse the backlash in the end. Perhaps this is why people are polarized nowadays. Perhaps Alice’s opinion should never have reached so many disapproving eyeballs.

Can something be done about this? It probably requires tweaking the algorithm of these social media platforms such that the speed a piece of information travels is dampen and the recoil eased. Should it be done? I don’t know. If overdone, I am afraid that it risks creating real echo chamber where information circulates only internally.