Much has been made about Facebook’s recent embrace of “Groups” and the broader balkanization of our global echo chambers into smaller and more tightly knit communities. Many have argued this shift, to the degree it is genuine, represents a radical redefinition of the online space and what it means to interact with others in the digital sphere. Perhaps a retreat from the algorithmic manipulation and gamification of the informational fire hoses that define general purpose shared spaces. Stepping back, this retreat from the global commons to local community can be seen as a return to the interest-based and geographically-defined community roots upon which societies rested prior to social media’s attempts to rip individuals from their community context and redefine them merely as faceless members of a global whole.
Social media’s early days were defined by a desire to globalize society. It was believed that by forcibly ripping people out of the comfort of their local communities with strong ties, geographic proximity and shared interests and dropping them into a raging global fire hose of conversation and discourse, society would instantly come together in shared harmony. Cultural differences, beliefs, narratives and lived experiences would no longer play any role in a world in which everyone was placed into the same virtual room to mingle about and meet others.
Unsurprisingly, this utopian vision collided existentially with the reality that across the world we are not all alike. Most importantly, those differences that define our cultures and lived experiences are not problems to be overcome but rather the societal fabric that defines who we are. Not everyone around the world wishes to dress, act, speak and believe as those in Silicon Valley. Our cultures and beliefs are sacred and defining aspects of who we are.
In place of the globalizing effect of social media, we are seeing a retrenchment back to the community structures that preceded social media. Rather than scream through a megaphone to the planet, we are increasingly turning to platforms that enable us to engage in thoughtful dialog with our friends, neighbors and peers.
Smaller like-minded communities are proliferating even as the shared broadcast spaces that once defined social media are fading.
Many emerging platforms focus specifically on the concept of restoring geographic and professional community, linking neighbors and work colleagues together. Neighborhood communities, which have long bonded us together, have enjoyed a virtual renaissance as a new generation of norms and even entire platforms have arisen to connect local communities.
This migration towards the reestablishment of community reflects the physical world’s dominant influence over the virtual. Much as physical governments have reestablished their control over the virtual world that was supposed to transcend them, so too is the rise of digital community reminding us that society shapes technology even as it is being shaped by it.
We often speak of social media platforms as all-powerful entities capable of redefining the very fabric of human behavior, turning us all into helpless puppets dancing along to the code of Silicon Valley. The reality is that technology, like any tool, evolves in a complex interrelationship with the society that uses it, repurposed and co-opted into new behaviors its designers never anticipated. While social media platforms may encourage certain behaviors, in the end society will harness them to novel ends.
In the context of community, it is not social media platforms nudging us towards community. It is those platforms embracing a trend that has already been underway. In the physical era we moved geographically to locate ourselves in communities we were comfortable in. In the digital era, the shift towards community is restoring the geographic self-identification that has long mediated group construction.
Why does this matter?
It matters because of its impact on trust and the flow of digital falsehoods.
Trust, in short supply in today’s Web, flows from community. We trust our friends, neighbors and work colleagues because we know them, we interact with them and we share ties that raise the cost for them to knowingly share false information with us. In contrast, the anonymity of the open Web’s anarchy means we see only unknown usernames at a distance, lacking any semblance of context, motivations or familiarity through which to evaluate the veracity of the information we receive.
The shift towards community will help restore this inherent trust, providing us context to our information channels and recreating the traditional incentives and disincentives that have historically governed how we filter and verify the veracity of the information before us. Community acts as a form of collective gatekeeper that may help restore the crowd-sourced verification that once acted as a bulwark against the spread of consequential falsehoods.
Of course, community can also enhance the spread of false information, creating insular groups that lack the external knowledge, experience or incredulousness to question the barrage of falsehoods arriving at its borders.
Perhaps the answer then is local community enriched by global informational access. Much as the friendly reference librarian at the public library once served as a gateway to the world of knowledge beyond the local community, so too can technology help contextualize communities in the digital age.
Rather than use technology to forcibly depreciate the role of community, the future of social media might lie in local communities that are supported by algorithms and tools that can help them better understand the context of new information arriving at their doorstep, from its provenance and the motivations of its author to a summary of global perspectives and interpretations of it.
In this way, local community is preserved, while globalization comes in the form of expanded opportunities for voluntary rather than forced connection.
Putting this all together, social media began as a great push to globalize the world but as it has matured over the past decade and a half it is returning to the local community structure that preceded it.
Once again, we see that for every technological advance seeking to forcibly remake the world in its image, it is technology that is reshaped to society’s needs.
