There was once a time when social media was filled with messages of positivity, enlightenment, encouragement and happiness. Today those messages are all-too-often drowned out by the steady drumbeat of “casual toxicity.” The problem is that criticism and personal and professional attacks and viral harassment campaigns are today an intrinsic part of the social media experience. This raises the question of what might social media look like if only “happy” posts were allowed?
What if every photograph, every video, every post was evaluated by computer algorithms that estimated its overall “tone” and rejected any post that it determined would not generate joy in the heart of those who see it?
Facebook is already working to move its content moderation to users' devices via an algorithm that would score each post as "allowable" or not, so adding a "happiness" algorithm would require no additional infrastructure.
Building such algorithms would be extraordinarily difficult, especially given the vast cultural differences that define global society. What makes one person delighted might deeply offend another.
Much like social platforms are built upon algorithms that behaviorally profile us to determine what we are most likely to view, click on and engage with, so too could such a system be personalized. One person might see an endless stream of puppy videos, while another might see a stream of nature videos and another an infinitely scrolling list of travel videos and so on.
Setting aside the feasibility of estimating what makes someone “happy” versus merely “more likely to click on this,” could such a “happiness” social network actually succeed?
What if your news feed was an endless list of tailored videos, friends and family touting their happy moments, strangers sharing what makes them happy and even the media reporting on what is good about the world rather than only what is bad?
Would this represent a utopian world that would lift society up?
It would certainly mirror the escapism and entertainment many turn to social media for. After a particularly trying day, perhaps being immersed in never-ending cute puppy videos might actually cheer a dog lover up and distract them from their troubles.
Indeed, Facebook's own research famously showed that emotionally manipulating users' news feeds can have a very real and measurable impact on them.
On the other hand, would a “happiness only” social network represent a filtered caricature of the world that empowers dictatorships and destroys democracy by hiding society's divisions?
After all, dictatorships tend to promote precisely these kinds of rosy pictures of life in order to distract their citizens from their troubles and maintain them in a more malleable state.
Perhaps we already know the answer to this.
In August 2014, Facebook famously focused on the feel-good ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, filling its users’ feeds with happy smiling cheerful videos of people having fun and contributing to a great cause.
Conversely, Twitter was filled with imagery of the Ferguson protests, documenting the events there moment by moment.
Facebook users may have felt happy and insulated from the reality of Ferguson, but did hiding that reality make for a better and more informed democracy? Or did it merely insulate a portion of society from the very real divisions pulling at the nation’s societal fabric?
Would a world of online happiness in fact lead to a less happy and more divided society as those who can afford to spend their days enveloped in the comfort and happiness of customized euphoria, while the rest of society is silenced so as to not disturb those happy thoughts?
Putting this all together, artificially forcing social media to become a “happy” caricature of society would likely merely reinforce society’s divides, preventing the national discussions that underpin democracy. At the same time, it is clear that online toxicity is itself tearing our digital society apart, silencing the very voices social media was intended to empower. Perhaps the answer is a middle ground, something that enables society to have the difficult conversations that define the democratic process, while addressing the rampant casual toxicity that today makes those conversations ever harder to have.
