A few days ago, the journalist Carmela Ríos focused on a facebook report. In reality, there is a main report and previous ones that the company accumulates with similar conclusions. After several interviews with followers of the social network, where they were asked about the freedom they felt in that space to speak and debate on politics, the result was no. Most of the people interviewed in those studies warned the company that they felt less and less safe online.
The polarization in these spaces, where the most aggressive speeches increasingly have a voice, means that those who want to talk about politics far from the extremes cannot do so. Because when they do, they get hate, harassment, and hostility. The way to deal with that: avoid such conversations and therefore silence. In this way, ultra and extremist messages, amplified by bots, are consolidated. If we speak honestly, we know that this not only happens on Facebook, but also on Twitter and other network environments.
I believe that a vast majority identify with this behavior. Raise your hand who has not changed their way of using social networks. Companies know it. That is why they have been incorporating more and more filters along with blocking options. But that is not enough because, contradictory as it may seem, in these networks two effects coexist in the end.
One, the spiral of silence, a theory that was already known many years before social networks. The political scientist Noelle-Neumann concluded that, in politics, a good part of society adapts their behavior according to the prevailing attitude in that space. By then, it was already advanced that an isolation of those who showed a contrary thought that of the majority or in front of those who maintained a dominant discourse. This theory is from 1977. We are going through 2021 and we haven’t changed much.
The other is the efecto Dunning-Kruger. That is to say, who say without knowing what they are talking about. They overestimate themselves by being incompetent, while those who are competent underestimate themselves. They say it is a cognitive bias called illusory superiority. That happens when someone thinks they are smarter than the rest, even though they don’t really have a clue about anything. In short, have a lot of ego.
And, to all this, let’s add the growth of the hoaxes and how networks help spread them. With these profiles that I have just told, where a good part does not want to speak out of fear and those who should remain silent cannot stop believing the navel of the world, we have this result.
In the networks, a part thinks about everything. It does not occur to me, now or before, when no one knew me, to comment on each post on Facebook or Twitter, much less on private life. I assume it, in the first person. I have stopped commenting on social networks. I do not consider it to be the place. It is not anymore. When I write an opinion piece like this one or I have to upload a television video with my intervention, I go online, share it and go out. It would be very good if this Facebook analysis considered other variables, such as gender or certain profiles. As a woman and a feminist, I have received messages and insults not only from macho men, but from women and other groups, regardless of their race or sexual identity. Misogyny is permeated in society and dumps its bile in these spaces. Then there are the “witch hunts & rdquor; of those who put their foot on your neck so that you can talk about the subject that interests them, without thinking about anything else. In the end, you have to put the wall of self-care ahead and the promises to your people, because no one is going to look for your emotional wear.
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In the end we apply a self-censorship for hundreds of reasons, but because social networks themselves are tolerating that hatred. Faced with the business that is measured in figures, they use the excuse of freedom of expression so that the worst messages can be at their ease. Let these companies take note if they do not want to endanger democracies. The networks were born to give an opinion and it is no longer possible to give an opinion. The distance between hate in the real and virtual world is very short. What garment in the streets without turning back is a matter of a few hundred more tweets.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com