A Failed Experiment

Why social networks as they exist today will soon be illegal

Photo by Alina Grubnyak

For-profit social networks as they exist today will be illegal in 10 years. This will come to pass because the alternative is the collapse of global, functional democracies. It is hard to believe that these apps we use so casually are this dangerous, but that is precisely why we must take action sooner than later.

Modern social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, were born from millions of dollars of speculative investment and no immediate business model. This allowed them to rapidly expand —both from a technical and business perspective— and to provide their services for free to the end users. At a certain point in their lifecycle, they acquire enough users to mine data and build cohorts so they can serve targeted ads.

Because these social networks are profit driven, they have two specific goals that are problematic when mixed with our biological evolution:

1. They want to connect as many people as possible

2. Engagement is paramount

At first glance, these business goals do not appear to be that concerning, but they are extremely dangerous for the foundations of a modern democracy. We now know we are engaged the most on social networks by controversy and outrage¹. Our curated feeds are filled with content that will tap this outrage, narrowed to our particular viewpoint. Dissent is extinguished by muting or unfriending. Echo chambers form. Now we are surrounded only with like-minded individuals and primed to be manipulated by social-proof² when misinformation or lies are spread through our feed.

Simply put, an ad-based, profit-driven model will inevitably lead to social networks destabilizing society. They will grow as large as they can. They will increase engagement regardless of what emotions and behaviors it elicits. The key metrics of a for-profit social network are diametrically opposed to a healthy democracy; they cannot safely coexist.

A shared truth, foundational to democracy, is impossible when people acquire their information from within an algorithmically controlled news feed.

The now clichéd comparison of social networks to "Big Tobacco" will ring uncomfortably true as research continues to show us how dangerous they truly are. However, unlike tobacco use —which kills individuals— we'll find our entire democracy on life-support. Inevitably, this will lead to a regulatory crackdown on how large these companies become. I believe they will be legally required to:

• implement a maximum number of users per network

• limit the number of graph edges per node (the amount of friends you can have).

• disable any form of news curation

What happens if we don't restrict these monolithic companies? Unchecked growth allows companies like Facebook to keep increasing connections, acquiring competitors along the way to prevent fragmentation. They continue to pay lip-service to concerning research while increasing user engagement by any means necessary. This leads to more polarization across a variety of political and ideological divides, an unmanageable quantity of misinformation and a complete loss of trust for most institutions.

Today's social networks are on notice: they will be regulated and forced to break into smaller companies and to limit their ability to manipulate their users. My confidence in this prediction is born from desperation: the alternative is too grim. It would spell the end of modern, stable democracies.

1. Hathaway, Bill. 2021. "‘Likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online". https://news.yale.edu/2021/08/13/likes-and-shares-teach-people-express-more-outrage-online

2. Cialdini, Robert. 2021. Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion. Expanded ed. edition. New York: Harper Business.