If you’re old enough, think back to life before social media. If somebody didn’t know something, what did…

If you’re old enough, think back to life before social media. If somebody didn’t know something, what did they do? Often it never came up, they didn’t know what they didn’t know. If it did they could use a library, or Google search etc. Both had levels of skilled mediation. /1

But having lived most of my life pre-social media, I can remember most of the time people didn’t bother. Knowledge was structured by the hierarchies of those who needed to know something, to do their jobs. Very few were interested in questioning outside their own domains. /2

They were happy for others to do their thing, in those areas, if they even knew about them, and just get on with their own lives. They TRUSTED that things were being done, without questioning it much. They delegated responsibility to others, as others did to them. /3

This is how social media has changed us, in dangerous ways. Objectivity in knowledge is social, not experimental. It’s about trust, you can attempt to reproduce others’ work as part of a peer review process, but over time you have to just trust they’re doing reputable work. /4

Otherwise nobody would get anything done, having to constantly repeat what everybody else was doing, to assure themselves it was legitimate. Institutions emerge as a result of this process, we black-box trust in institutions. The CSIRO - yep, they know science. Etc. /5

This is where social media became a wrecking ball. These platforms are not predominantly about social connection or the exchange of information. They gradually replace all of those institutional networks of trust. Authority and influence are separated from institutions. /6

People become more likely to believe a social media influencer, about anything, even the incredibly complex world of vaccine science for example. And this isn’t just them taking guidance from new people in established areas of knowledge. It’s much worse. /7

These influencers make them interested in a whole range of critical social infrastructure areas that they had no knowledge of or interest in at all, before social media. Vaccine science an obvious example, but you won’t find any part of our critical social operating system…/8

…that isn’t now facing a growing wave of social media ‘experts’, challenging its operation. This is stuff that if broken stops society itself from functioning. Ask anybody who works in public administration, the tsunami of bullshit and obstruction they’re now facing. /9

Societies are social, I say that a lot. And the glue that binds all social groups is trust. We imitate and emulate those we trust. Which creates hierarchies. If those hierarchies have no connection to established knowledge, we’re doomed. And that’s increasingly where we are. /10

I don’t think it’s alarmist to say social media needs to be shut down, for societies to survive. Despite all the good things many get from it, its negatives are so damaging and so exponentially fast in doing that damage, that the destruction is accelerating rapidly. /11

Imagine if it were shut down, overnight. If people had to either do the work again of finding things out, from reputable sources, or weren’t constantly fed information about things they have no interest in. How our existing structures would again be allowed to breathe. /12

How forcing people to do the WORK of knowing again would force a push back towards our pre-existing institutional trust mechanisms, the keepers of that knowledge. No populist idiots in social groups promising vast conspiratorial worldviews to short-circuit trust. /13

And no constant promotion of distrust across all of the critical areas of society that people not only trusted, but often had not even any knowledge of, they just enjoyed the benefits of work they knew nothing about. Social media is dissolving societies from the inside out. /end