Manipulative tactics of social media

Things that are assigned monetary value more than social, cultural, ethical or ideological value prove deleterious sooner or later for the sustained human existence. Contextually, social media may have economic or entertainment value, but its present manipulative tactics effectuate the mechanical mind formation of its users. In a way, the tech companies aim to program and control the human mind to turn it into a commodity to be traded to peddle some agenda (Trump-incited mob attack of Jan 6, 2021), or to bring about a pandemic shift in public opinion (Hillary Clinton defeat).

At its arrival, there was a halo of optimism around social media with promises of connecting the world, catalysing social movements, and spurring innovation. While it may have delivered on some of these promises, it also made us live in silos: lonelier, angrier, and detached from reality. The manipulative algorithm behind the addiction of social media atrophies the user's critical thinking and makes it impossible to dam the flow of misleading content. The socials indulge the user in a similar addiction like alcoholism or gambling, and it triggers a dopamine release that perpetuates the want for more.

Since the early 2000s, with the advent of MySpace - the very first platform - social media has morphosed our connections from physical to digital. The tech-savvy Gen-Zers prefer social media as the preferred method of communication over face-to-face interactions. DataReportal says: Pakistan was home to 71.70 million social media users in January 2024, equating to 29.5 per cent of the total population - a major chunk vulnerable to visual propaganda.

The winner of 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, Maria Ressa, in her acceptance speech, warned that technology giants had "allowed a virus of lies to infect each of us". She also accused sites such as Facebook of profiting from spreading hate and of using their "God-like power" to sow division. "Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge that's coursing through our information ecosystem," she said. Social media, now called the outrage media, has made outrage our default reaction to developments around us.

Social media is promoting extremist mentalities by making the user adhere fanatically to his subjective conclusions. The user watches content as per his own like and dislike and develops in this way a tunnel vision. In social media parlance, the user incubates in a filter bubble, which stalls the osmosis of diverse information, exposing the user only to half truth. The user deems his relative reality the absolute truth, ending up becoming a self-delusional bigot. Maria says: "I've said so many times, without facts you can't have truth, without truth you can't have trust, and without trust you can't have democracy."

The user's digital personality - the digital double stencilled on his stops and scrolls on the socials - shows the user cocooned in his narcissistic comfort zone: the antithesis of what social media aimed to achieve.

Maria says that the way social media is "inciting polarization, inciting fear and anger and hatred" changes us "at a personal level, a societal level". Social media platforms have the ability to "change the way we feel", she said, which in turn "changes the way we see the world and changes the way we act". Here starts the exploitation of the naivety of the youth by the "Tech Bros" such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, whom Maria Ressa brands as "the largest dictators" on the globe.

Instead of making man socially viable, social media has made man the epitome of apathy. The carpet coverage of social, political and individual crimes blunts the impact of viral videos - the conditioned normalisation of the stimulus of the virality of videos.

Exposure to a spectrum of diverse viewpoints is crucial for nurturing well-informed citizens who are tolerant of disagreement. By contrast, exposure to only like-minded voices in a kind of "echo chamber" may contribute towards polarisation towards the extremes.