If social networks were countries, they'd be police states. To change that we may have to rebuild from the bottom up

Can social networks become real communities? (Image: Emile Loreaux/Picturetank)

IF FACEBOOK was a country, it would be the world’s most populous nation: more than 1.4 billion people use it every month. Other social media giants – such as WhatsApp, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and Chinese messaging service Tencent QQ – would also appear in the top 10.

But what kind of countries would these be? In Facebookland, the authorities choose what news you see and suppress updates they consider to be unsuitable. They encourage you to report fellow citizens whose behaviour offends you; the statute book is vague about what constitutes an offence and the sanctions meted out seem arbitrary and draconian. Summary exile is common.

It sounds like a police state. Of course, Facebook is not a country; it has no statutory duty of care to users. The “authorities” are often algorithms, not apparatchiks. And its “inhabitants” can up and leave whenever they like.


Or can they? How many telephone numbers can you dial from memory? Probably far fewer than you once could, if you grew up before mobile phones became common. And if you grew up after that, it’s probably only a handful, for use in emergencies.

A similar migration may now be under way with our families and friendships. Network effects make social media powerful: as more and more of our social life moves online, it has become increasingly hard to quit. FOMO – “fear of missing out” – is an increasingly rational concern. For those approaching adulthood, many of whom view social networks as synonymous with the internet, it is a fact of life. Yes, you can leave Facebookland. But where would you go?

Chances are you would move to another network, and millions have indeed defected. But all such networks have similar problems. Renouncing them altogether is not the answer either. Billions of people use these services because they enhance their lives. So we should think harder about how we use them, and how they shape the communities they underpin. Our behaviour is governed by a new set of norms, but none of us is really sure what they are, how they were decided – or how we could or should change them.

No one knows quite what our new social norms are, how they were decided, or how to change them

Much of the conflict that arises online is the product of confusion over these new norms, worsened by overly blunt tools for resolving it. The tools have to be rigid to help human moderators cope with millions of requests for online peacekeeping. Let people act more like people do when they meet in person, as Facebook is now trying to, and conflicts seem to blow up less often (see “Antisocial media: How Facebook is helping us to be nicer “).

Contradictory though it may sound, machines may be able to help too. Right now, only humans can hope to parse the nuances of such requests. Smart computers might be able to ease the load, but that won’t be easy. A meeting at the Royal Society in London last week heard that machine learning is being held back by chip design, which concentrates too much on arithmetic and not enough on communication. You could not hope for a more fitting metaphor.

So we may need to work from the very bottom up, but it is vital we reimagine the online world. As Thomas Paine, philosopher of the American Revolution, argued: new societies give us a chance to redefine our social norms. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace,” he added. Social networks are here to stay. We owe it to future generations to turn them into real communities.

This article appeared in print under the headline “It takes a village”