Exacerbating Polarization

I don’t know what to say about New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights’s report on the role of social media in stoking already substantial political polarization in the U. S. Here’s a snippet:

Some critics of the social media industry contend that widespread use of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube has contributed to increased political polarization in the United States. But Facebook, the largest social media platform, has disputed this contention, saying that it is unsupported by social science research. Determining whether social media plays a role in worsening partisan animosity is important because political polarization has pernicious consequences. We conclude that social media platforms are not the main cause of rising partisan hatred, but use of these platforms intensifies divisiveness and thus contributes to its corrosive effects.

The complete report is here (PDF).

I think their recommendations suffer from wishful thinking seasoned with a generous dollop of unlikely assumptions. I agree with them that social media are exacerbating polarization. They do it in any number of ways, e.g. providing “safe spaces” for extreme views in which the views aren’t that extreme giving those who hold them the illusion of widespread popularity, they actually reward extreme positione—that is, indeed, what “influencers” do, and so on. I just don’t think the companies can be restrained by the means they suggest. I think the better strategy is to render their business model untenable.