How social networks can create the illusion that something rare is common
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
> Here’s an analogy. If you measure the height of all your male friends. you’ll find that the average is about 170 centimeters. If you are male, on average, your friends will be about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical notion of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data.
> But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you—say, one kilometer or 10 kilometers tall. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.
Based on the wikipedia article of the friendship paradox[1], the power law distribution really has nothing to do with it, and the paradox would exist even if the distribution of number of friends were completely uniform. It's instead related to the fact that people with a high number of friends are overrepresented in the lists of other peoples' friends. The rest of the author's analysis describing the new "paradox" passes the smell test, however.
e.g. if the popular kids believe X, then to most people it will seem like the majority believe X, even if there are only a few popular kids.
If you pick a random person out of the social network's user list, there's an equal probability they'll be popular or unpopular. But if you start from your friend list and pick a random user from there, it's more likely that the person will be popular, because popular people appear on more friend lists.
Now say there's some belief that most of the popular people agree with, but unpopular people don't. ("Popular people are better than other people"? ;)) Everyone decides to post their opinion on this topic on the social network. Because most of your friends are popular, it will look to you as though there's majority agreement, even though the opinions are actually split 50/50.
In real life, the numbers are more extreme. The top percentage can have thousands or tens of thousands of friends. If these users hold an opinion, it can skew people's perceptions a lot more easily.
Rule number 2: persuading major influencers is hard. You should target their connections instead who are not that popular (close friends, family members etc.) Once you persuade them, they can influence your primary targets, who will spread the message to their numerous following.
Rule #3 (advanced): always draw a map of key connections (as counted in the number of interactions) in the network you are working in. This will help immensely in designing your influence strategy.
Here. With some practice, you can now beat the SMM game.
I for example, have a rather alternative love life, but it doesn't seem alternative to me most of the time. Because social networks are prefiltered and I feel like I'm surrounded by people like me.
So I get the feelong to do 'normal' things, only when I meet people outside my filterbubble I'm reminded That the majority is different.
It is much easier to do what you want, if you think it's nothing exceptional.
"Both of these sentences are false. The sky is not blue."
(*the new one that shows all the things people like you post and will filter out other viewpoints)
And if you combine this with a debate like in Germany, where FB is being asked to proactively delete/censor* more stuff, this might become a bigger problem.
* Not that I like the stuff to be censored particularly - definitively on the contrary. Just pointing out the effect.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect#Recency...
It also means that negative opinions are to be dealt with very carefully. Ever wonder why with 10K celebrities on the planet, most all of them think most all of the rest of them are awesome? It's because with one bad word, if you hit the wrong influencer, you could start a public opinion avalanche. (I omit those celebrities using the "burn it all down!" PR strategy)
People in physical social groups operate in a much more nuanced way than people online.