People are not seeking those groups out of nowhere.
Most of them are getting pushed there from automated platforms bombarding them with things they can't stand. The automated outrage machines are what radicalize people, not the private message groups.
By the time you have private message groups propagating the same messaging the damage has already been done. To get people out, you need to cut off the source of the outrage and soothe whatever fear is being ramped up.
Censoring the outrage and dismissing/patronizing people from a position of authority doesn't work, it just acts as an accelerant.
I think the crazy groups will sputter out if there's enough space for venting, free association, and ability for the average person to turn off things they don't want to see. I think that last point is the key. Millions of people are bombarded with things they really don't like in systems they have no way to really manage themselves. The legitimate complaints will filter up and out of the crazy circles if people are allowed to form their own groups and don't feel forced to pack themselves together around the loudest people who can given them a voice on the big automated feeds they don't really understand.
People have a much better chance at effectively communicating with their neighbor or family member or old friend with a different perspective than a stranger online with a different perspective, and they are much more likely to engage when in a frame of mind that will actually accept differences of opinion if they are managing their own connections and exposure themselves.
Automated platforms such as twitter certainly play a role in the social media landscape. But in Brazil they are not dominant. Whatsapp rules supreme and is the primary source for news for over 75% of Brazilians. Viral content here starts on Whatsapp and flows out to twitter, instead of the other way around. Some viral content does get bombarded, but it's actively done so by humans instead of by recommendation algorithms.
Interesting, that violates some of my assumptions. I think the basic model I'm suggesting might still be at play, though. I'm guessing most of those whatsapp groups are really big, so they effectively prevent people from insulating themselves from outrage if they just want to know whats happening. They can't just form a group with their friends and find other channels just to stay informed with minimal outrage and can't find news that's just straight news, the main source of news is the big viral firehose where outrage dominates. Does that seem accurate?
This conversation also speaks to the social complexity that gets obfuscated by some of these big platforms and the fact that things are different in all kinds of ways in different parts of the world. I don't know really anything about Brazil besides some fairly superficial basic history/culture and have pretty much zero contextual understanding of what it's like to live/communicate there. The fact that the same thing seems to be happening all over the world is really weird.
That's why I think it has a tight relationship to scale of communication channels, as that seems to be the main thing that's changed recently and is consistent regardless of specific platform/means of communication.
People flock to other people that make them feel the way they want to feel, and tell them what they want to do is okay.
People find these groups organically too, or form them themselves, through friend associations, not just by having them pushed.
A lot of people like to feel angry against someone (the other), as it gives them a sense of control and power. Joining others who are similarly aligned, also gives them the sense of belonging.
People who are in these states aren’t going to filter out their friends, or filter out the people telling them things they want to hear.
They’re going to filter out things that make them feel uncomfortable, or that they don’t agree with - like anyone who would stop them from going further down the rabbit hole!
If the assumption is that as a consequence of allowing people to filter things themselves more, everyone will just get along, understand each other, and all political problems will disappear/people will become enlightened and cease to be ignorant, then yes, it's incredibly naive. This was the case made by people setting up these platforms without filters.
That's not my assumption. I think echo chambers are impossible to prevent and ignorance is something most people gravitate towards. I think many people are likely to find reasons to vilify and misunderstand each other until the end of time.
What I think is possible to curtail and is being ramped up now is viral conflict escalation. If active conflict is curtailed, that expands the amount of peace time available for actually effective communication if and when the opportunity arises over long stretches of time with a lot of effort. If you have an irrational hatred towards people with X quality/opinion because of bad information, are you more likely to become agitated and attack people if you a) people with X quality/opinion aren't visible b) people with X quality/opinion are unavoidable?
The ideal is obviously to get people to understand each other better, but I think we're seeing you can't just do that by superficially exposing everyone to everyone else. It requires a more sophisticated approach that respects people enough to have their own autonomy and seek out understanding and better information voluntarily through more personal interaction and influence.
There are natural forms of competency and organizational filters that allowed us to progress to where we are today and nudge people towards greater understanding of each other and cooperation which punish bigotry and unintelligent assumptions through natural rather than artificial consequences. Increased social cohesion and progress was not a top down process in the past and does not need to be a top process down now, and I think an attempt to manage global conversation is just as naive as the naive open global village kumbaya assumptions that got us into this mess. People's autonomy needs to be respected if you want them to consider a more enlightened perspective.
Near as I can tell, these ‘natural forms of competency and organizational filters’ are not natural, and never have been.
If they were, Nazi Germany would not have been what it was.
Also, baked into what you’re saying seems to be an assumption that if no one was prompted to start a fight, no one would fight. And that is true sometimes, with many people. But that is definitely not true of everyone, let alone everyone all the time!
The forms of social organization which are natural to us are easily directed towards hate of ‘outside’ groups, which can be easily constructed from any easily identifiable group of people with the right set of conditions. Even without prompting, it naturally arises based on visual identifiers and in many common environmental triggers.
In fact, near as I can tell, the only thing stopping larger scale movements of exactly that type is cultural memory of the death, destruction, and terribleness that results from it, resulting in active pressure against anyone trying to form a similar group. The ‘my grandfather fought a war against Nazi’s, you’re not going to be a Nazi’ type of memory.
Which fades with time, and isn’t natural to anyone?
Most of them are getting pushed there from automated platforms bombarding them with things they can't stand. The automated outrage machines are what radicalize people, not the private message groups.
By the time you have private message groups propagating the same messaging the damage has already been done. To get people out, you need to cut off the source of the outrage and soothe whatever fear is being ramped up.
Censoring the outrage and dismissing/patronizing people from a position of authority doesn't work, it just acts as an accelerant.
I think the crazy groups will sputter out if there's enough space for venting, free association, and ability for the average person to turn off things they don't want to see. I think that last point is the key. Millions of people are bombarded with things they really don't like in systems they have no way to really manage themselves. The legitimate complaints will filter up and out of the crazy circles if people are allowed to form their own groups and don't feel forced to pack themselves together around the loudest people who can given them a voice on the big automated feeds they don't really understand.
People have a much better chance at effectively communicating with their neighbor or family member or old friend with a different perspective than a stranger online with a different perspective, and they are much more likely to engage when in a frame of mind that will actually accept differences of opinion if they are managing their own connections and exposure themselves.