Introduction
Social media has come to be both an instrument of power and a danger to freedom. It was instrumental in helping Trump win election in 2016 and recently came under fire in public debate via Netflix’s The Social Dilemma for its negative effects on individual freedom.[1] Its concrete aspects, the use of data and psychology for manipulation, are quite clear.[2] Yet what these do not provide is an explanatory theory of social media and its use as a digital expression of power; something that will be intensely useful in a future where the use of data, applications and technology become increasingly perfected. To develop such a theory, I conceive of power as wholly structural, and social media as a step towards its perfection. Power is expressed through the construction of structures of limited possibility, truth, and value. The more a structure can insulate and isolate its subject within these, the more they can be controlled. What was lacking in previous attempts was this insulation. I argue that social media and digital applications, as windows into a constrained reality, can be made perfected expressions of this structural power; and new technology will only enhance these capabilities.
The Structure of Power
The most perfect forms of the structure of power (henceforth: The Structure) are the prison and the scientific rat-maze. They consist of certain physical limitations that create a definite and inflexible set of possibilities, truths and values. In the confines of their walls there are only so many actions to take, so many apparent facts, and so many good ends to aim for. Life can be reduced easily to the same choices, happenings, and results. The result of this is most apparent in the rat-maze: a single optimal path to the best end is discovered and then followed again and again. Moreover, this optimal path and best end have both been dictated by the architect of the maze. When the design of The Structure is centralized, an almost absolute power can be put over the subject in the long term as they are trained to the optimal set of actions the architect has laid out. Alongside this perfectly centralized and systematized design, The Structure also requires insulation. The intrusion of the outside world must be minimized to make sure that no competing possibilities, truths or values are introduced. Instead of the two-sided network of power relations posited by Foucault, the perfection of The Structure allows resistance to be slowly eliminated as a possibility.[3]
The Structure need not take the form of these perfect physical limitations. This is exemplified by the rudimentary Structure characterized by our social relations. By applying social norms through the knowledge of possible punishments and rewards, behavior can be effectively controlled in the same way. Just like the literal walls of the maze, punishment creates hard bounds to behavior; particularly if its possibility is always imminent (such as when the subject is surveilled).[4] Alongside this, the knowledge of punishment and reward creates a limited set of truths: what facts and concepts are most salient for making decisions within The Structure also limits the content of those decisions. In the maze, this is the knowledge of the world in terms of walls, paths, dead-ends and so forth. The social world matches this by focusing perception on its own limited set of verifiable and important truths. Finally, the inclusion of reward transforms the whole contraption into a system of value whereby certain paths become destinations to be preferred and thus followed. This can best be seen in our most imbedded values whose widespread nature ensures a degree of insulation.
The norm of nonviolence, for example, follows this pattern. A value of nonviolence is set out via reward, giving meaning to a set of possible actions by establishing goodness. Nonviolent choices will be rewarded. At the same time, swift punishment makes violent options unattractive. The focus of this system on nonviolence vs. violence and the nature of its rewards and punishments create a limited set of salient options and factors; a limited set of truths. This limited set is then solved: the subject determines the optimal path to reward based on what options are closed and which they know to be open, useless, or unfavorable through their limited knowledge. The completeness of this process is dependent on the degree to which the subject is insulated within The Structure. If no dissonant incentives or punishments are introduced, The Structure and its inevitable logic will hold. To the extent that the subject does not make any discoveries that undermine the core logic such as violence that rewards without punishment, nonviolence that is punished, or some alternative framing that negates the whole question, nonviolence will be instilled. If the subject is fully insulated, punishment and reward can even be removed. Simply the limited truth and value created by the system become internalized and continue to compel their action. Without new rewards or punishments serving as forces acting on the person’s judgement, the momentum established by The Structure continues to propel them. The more powerful this momentum and the initial establishment of truth and value, the harder it is to change their behavior again; even if they will it.
Social Media
Social media exemplifies two forms of more perfect Structures. The first of these is the structural nature of the applications themselves. Through a design offering limited actions to the user, they limit possibility. Through algorithmic organization of content, they limit available truth. Through the rewarding of engaging content with likes, views, followers, or comments, and through the rewarding experience of viewing that content, they create a value-structure. As long as the user is in the app, interacting with it, there is natural insulation from the outside world: the only un-curated content will be user-made photos, videos and text; all of which has been organized by the algorithm and the incentivization of the users to produce engaging content, making it largely of a few limited types. This maximization of engagement also creates insulation. The more time they spend within this Structure, the more perfectly they are trained to follow the will of its creators: to scroll, like, and not to leave (or if they do to come quickly back). This provides the insulation that makes the building of secondary Structures within the apps possible. As technological implementation is perfected, it is likely that greater degrees of integration will be achieved such as glasses-based augmented reality.[5] This opens up further possibilities of perfecting engagement and thus insulation.
Once insulation is achieved, the subject can be thoroughly analyzed, and given a set of personalized content that trains them at a new level: to believe certain things about the world. The designer of The Structure can, for example, put before them content that exposes them to a certain structure of norms that reinforce a set of real-world possibilities, truths and values through examples of reward, punishment and knowledge (and if they interact these will further be enforced). Through a discrimination of content, these too can form into an insulated structure where users are only connected to those that share this specific set of norms and so will not introduce contrary ideas to them. This is similar to the “onion-like” formation of relations Arendt conceived to explain Nazi ideology: each person is only exposed to those who have similar beliefs, allowing the most extreme and the least extreme to both exist in perfect assurance that everyone else thinks just the same as them.[6] This is the part of social media that is sometimes cited as a threat to democracy.[7] Yet the centralized algorithm that is sorting people into these Structures is capable of far more than separation. It can also create artificially designed Structures to train individuals to certain ends.
This can be seen in personalized advertising that is mixed into the feed. As long as these resemble posts, users will observe them and be trained towards the set of possibilities, truths, and values that are laid out for them. These are the most truly architectural Structures next to ones like the rat-maze. Unlike the social-norm-based Structures outlined above, these can be made for any purpose from buying a product to electing a dictator. These are also unlike depersonalized advertising (such as TV) in that their capacity to discriminate allows for enhanced insulation, maximizing effectiveness. They can also be coordinated with the rest of the feed, further enhancing insulation. Advances in AI will only make these more effective; taking them from an annoyance to a seamless and powerful influence.
Differentiating Control and Application
Not all applications, however, follow the form of The Structure. Despite the fundamental similarity of code, applications can be built in ways that do not strive for the perfection of The Structure, but rather as frameworks that facilitate free expression. Video games such as The Witcher 3 or Mario allow for imprecise actions, meaningful user input, and in the case of the former complex moral choices. They play specifically on the allowance of freedom through gaps in their limitation and the presentation of many viable choices. There is some insulation in the cultivation of immersion, and some general goals are laid out, but possibilities of achievement are fluid and inexact. Alongside these are tool-applications such as Word or Photoshop. These function as mediums, providing meaningful constrictions within which choice can be enacted but is not directed. Much like video games, these leave open imprecise actions that allow for a large variety of outcomes and incoherencies in control. A diaspora of methods allow a variety of end goals, all of which compete and allow the user to ask real questions about which they prefer, opening the way for free action.
Social media, by contrast, represent strict and limited structures. They are insular and coherent, presenting a limited range of options, none of which are truly competing or serving as alternatives for each other. They offer limited end goals and values, allowing for an optimal scenario to exist. They then train the individual to follow the optimal path to this optimal scenario. Their coercion is not in simplicity; with better technology we could create more sophisticated Structures such as these. Instead, it is in that they represent a coherent and limited world that drives its occupant towards clearly defined best choices and outcomes; dictated by a central authority. This makes the subject unfree, as they are not given the opportunity to make meaningful choices. As their engagement is maximized, so is their unfreedom.
Conclusion
For now, these Structures are manageable and work for the most part towards non-threatening goals such as the creation of revenue. They can also be deleted or ignored. But it is possible and even likely that this technology will be leveraged for darker ends, and likely that it will become fully integrated into our lives in future. In light of this, it is paramount that we take steps to build better technology that allows its user meaningful choices, and that we find ways to fight against the influence of these devices. More advanced technologies of power mean more advanced dangers to freedom until the technology of freedom can catch up. We have some tools already, but for now they are like using a blunt shovel to fight a surgeon while already under anesthesia.
References
[1] Orlowski, Jeff. “The Social Dilemma,” September 9, 2020. https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224.
[2] Orlowski.
[3] Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. 1st American edition. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 95-96
[4] Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 2nd Vintage Books edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. 170-172
[5] Which tech firms are already working on: Wilson, Mark. “Snap Is the World’s Most Innovative Company of 2020,” March 9, 2020. https://www.fastcompany.com/90457684/snap-most-innovative-companies-2020.
[6] Arendt, Hannah. The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Meridian Books, 1958. 413, 430
[7] Gebelhoff, Robert. “Here’s How Social Media Could Threaten Democracy – Even without the Help of Russians.” The Washington Post. WP Company, September 11, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/11/heres-how-social-media-could-threaten-democracy-even-without-help-russians/?arc404=true.
