Social Media Is Warping Democracy: Why It Feels Like Everything Is Going Haywire

There was another key development in the early 1990s, with the development first of the 24-hour news cycle, then the partisan divisiveness of it. At the same time, political consultants began to focus on divisive language and coded name-calling, continuing a notion that dated back to the late 1960s -- a notable divisive time in American history.

So I can't tell whether this is just the natural growth of partisanship as reflected in new media, or whether there is an actual inflection point. There is a feedback causing an exponential growth, and it can be hard to tell the difference between an apparent sharp, sudden increase in an exponential curve, and a real external effect.

I think the big question is how do we move on and adapt from here. Do we add social media controls, like you might see in China? Perhaps do we try and pass constitutional amendments that fundamentally change our democracy in a way that jives better with the modern flow of information?

edit: of course, it's also possible the next generation will simply learn to live better with the barrage of information than we handled it, and our current highly volatile state of politics will reach some kind of status quo once again (for better or for worse)

In the past, one had to be published in a magazine, a paper, or show up on TV - not an easy task, just to say something.

Then we had blogs, which was a vast improvement in giving people voice, but at the same time a very good center ground. Setting up a blog, and then writing an entry is not that enjoyable. You need to really have something to say to go cross that bridge.

Now, however, you just open up your app and go "LOLZ LOLZ STUPID LIBS R SO TRIGGERED MAGA". Done.

Social media is where social conscience goes to die, so yes, I believe it.

There is a very good reason why the tornado of lies we hear from the VERY top of our government, and in fact, governments, is because social media brought down the attention span to zero. It's not that they became better liars - people just no longer critically process information, and move on to the next thing.

This is a key insight. The performance aspect is what is killing social media and getting us addicted to Like and karma points. And of course these metrics are directly related to engagement and ad-based revenue models. It will be interesting to see how far these companies dare to go undoing the damage by hiding Like counts etc.