Interesting article, and I agree 100%. Of note, I concluded way back in the infancy of social media (many years ago) that such networks were not worthy of my time and attention. Since then and to this day, I don’t use them, ever, full stop. I have no desire or itch to use them. I also tend to have far more available time in my life as compared to other walks of life I’ve come across — simply because I don’t allow myself to get sucked into the social media vortex of attention-grabbing nonsense. While I recognize what I’m describing here is nothing more than good old fashioned self-discipline, more simply, I’d argue life’s too short to squander in endless scrolling on these social networks. There’s far more to life than being glued to a screen. While I obtain my information and news from trusted sources and exercise my own critical thinking of same, I also recognize that people are generally not very inclined to scrutinize their information sources by practiced behaviour. I agree that it would be better to have social media companies charge a monthly user fee; but I also see the fight that will emerge because social media companies want eyes glued to their services for as long as possible. I also think (as we have all seen) that government interventions in the online space have proven incapable of dealing with the issues they claim to tackle, while also fostering new ones that they in-turn fail to address at all. So I’d say the best solution comes back to individual choices. If we all recognize these pervasive issues with the social media companies, what are we as individuals doing to counter the effects of those issues? Social media networks are built on the premise of algorithmic people-powered engagement. Thus, it’s the people — individual users and content creators — that impact the algorithms these networks rely on to keep people captivated. Therefore, I believe it’s the people’s online behaviours that ultimately needs to dictate the changes needed. As for me, I’ll do my part by sticking to my social media boycott and denying those bastards their revenue generating capacity over my eyes and brain.
Dude this stuff is more addictive than most actual chemical drugs, and in some ways more insidious because it’s free (in dollars, anyway). Telling people to have more self-discipline is very much not working.
We also make, like, fentanyl illegal (except for a few crazy years there from 2016-2023 or so), we don’t just rely on self discipline.
While I agree with the sentiment, it feels like your solution is to simply tell the addict they should have more self-restraint and hope they do it themselves. Doesn’t really feel like a solution to me.
I fully agree there's a problem with social media shifting attention from real news. This has possibly more to do with the deteriorating quality of the mainstream news media than the author claims but there's a real problem nonetheless. That said, it is difficult for me to imagine that the solution lies in yet another tax. Of those we already have plenty thank you.
But I think the deteriorating quality of mainstream news media has everything to do with trying to compete (for survival) in the Attention based economy. News posts sensationalist media because it drives engagement, and that’s bad for everyone because it makes engagement more important than truth; can’t tell any truths if you’re bankrupt.
News reporting long ago ceased to be reporting in the MSM and most frequently takes the form of an opinion piece. The media has become the victims of their own doing.
"Crawling up the backsides of government" it has been a very long time since the mainstream Canadian media did anything but cheerlead the government. Hence why we are reading your piece on social media. Which is paid for. We don't need the Globe and Mail in its current form, or CBC or CTV.
Wow. Serious kudos to The Line for publishing this. I agree with every word of this article: the Attention Economy is destroying us as humans, destroying our politics, destroying our social cohesion, frankly destroying most of what it means to be human. It’s going to need policy intervention that feels unthinkable, which this article hints at.
People really, really disagree with this, though… They point to free speech, they point to consumer choice, they point to government as a tyrant vs private companies (even all-powerful ones like Meta, X, and Google!) just giving us what we want, the next evolution of consumer convenience and technology.
Our human brains were not built for this kind of all-encompassing information flow. It is breaking us.
So, then, what’s the solution? There’s no reason for the social media companies to switch over to subscription based models - that would decrease their user pool, and the revenue accrued by them related to our attention (ad sells etc) continues to grow. I would bet it grows at a rate faster than inflation as well, so faster than they could increase their subscription price without generating ire form users. So from their perspective it makes more sense to keep making money the way they already do.
How do we combat this? I appreciate the identification of the problem, but does anyone have a solution to this? One that is politically-palatable to implement?
I mean, we’re a society of addicts, and sometimes the solution to help an addict isn’t always a happy one. It’s up to government to make the hard choices and do something.
I think back to the late 90s in Alberta where the government mandated a minimum price per ounce of alcohol in order to combat drunk driving a rash of alcohol related crime/health problems/deaths caused by happy hour binging. The government could do the same, actually mandate the company to institute a pay-by-month service, with some baseline cost. It’s not a common solution, but similar has been done before.
This is another illiberal response in order to save liberalism. It’s the same argument that the authoritarian left makes as to why the government (their government always) needs to censor free speech.
I agree with the ills of social media - I don’t personally use any of it. At all. But we (society writ large) are making a personal choice to give it our attention. If we want to go down this path, let’s just skip the slippery slope and jump right in. China has seemed to manage this problem in their society quite well!
Is there a concrete policy suggestion here, or just pie in the sky wishful thinking?
Is it a law mandating user fees? If so, how would that work, and what would stop social media companies from having their cake and eating it too by continuing with the addiction driven advertising model? Note that advertising once drove legacy media revenues too - it would be pretty hard to tell the entire marketing industry that THEIR business model has to go out the window too.
Or is it a tax on actual usage (by time) - to be monitored, collected and remitted by the company? That wouldn’t be easy to implement politically, but it might stand a chance of working to actually reduce usage even though the company is still going to try to increase usage for their own revenue. Which would also tend to drive usage offshore/underground via untaxable VPNs or something like that. So maybe not so easy after all.
What’s the idea then?
It seems that the Substack subscription model is the poster boy for what ought to be for social media news and intelligent commentary, but it’s not really at scale is it? Paywalls for legacy media are disparaged, but this really the same thing, except that legacy media is still finding it tough to make them pay.
It is, and it's actually kind of like what the author is proposing in that people choose to pay for content as opposed to being ad-supported/surveillance capitalist.
The relationship between our collective addiction to our phones/social media and the downfall of legacy media is fascinating. It’s difficult to understand how us being addicted to news (on our phones) translates to news outlets making less money?? They should be making more. We all have a walking newspaper in our pockets. We are just addicted to tiny 2, 5, 10 second bites rather than prolonged stories, and our brains know how to gloss over the ad bits. I don’t think subscription fees as suggested are a viable solution. We need to somehow get off our phones.
I'm late to this party, since I was on vacation. But, as someone who despises advertising in every form, I have another proposal: ad blockers. Widespread use of ad blockers.
I used to resist using them, because I accepted the reality that somebody has to pay the bills. So, I tolerated the presence of ads, even as I studiously avoided looking at them. But the addiction to ad revenue has spiralled out of control, into the mess we now find ourselves in.
If they'd been disciplined enough to use advertising responsibly, we'd be OK. But they didn't. They're addicted to it, and that forces them to addict us in turn. So now, I no longer have any hesitation about ad blockers. Cut them off from their supply. Cold turkey.
If we were to tackle this problem legislatively, I would suggest this: make ad-blockers unambiguously legal, overriding any "terms of service" that might try to prevent their use. And compel the social media companies to, if not accommodate ad-blockers, then at least refrain from interfering with them. Put the choice in the hands of the users: block ads or not, as you see fit.
Not everyone will choose to block ads, but many will. Social media companies will be forced to seriously consider a user fee or subscription model of some sort. If they want to continue with ads, they will be forced to become less intrusive/annoying, or people won't tolerate them.
I'd be happy to tolerate ads if they weren't excessively annoying. Little banner ads, interstitials, maybe a short ad at the start of a video. But _not_ annoying, repetitive, unskippable ads repeated every few minutes, or any time I click anywhere in the seek bar.
And not highly-targeted. Highly-targeted ads are very annoying, to me at least. I'm old enough to remember what privacy was, and to be annoyed when I feel invaded. When I google some doodad one day, and then for a week my ads are all for that same kind of doodad, it fills me with rage. If I travel to Banff, and suddenly all my Facebook ads are about Banff-area tourist attractions, it fills me with rage. What I search for, and where I travel is nobody's business but mine. If they want me to not use an ad-blocker, they'll have to refrain from that. That will take away one of social media's greatest advantages over print/broadcast media. It will level the playing field, and help the old media be competitive in the advertising space again.
Forcibly released from their addiction to ad-revenue, their motive to addict us in turn to their algorithmic feed will be greatly reduced. They'll have no choice but to become useful to us again, and to be responsible corporate citizens.
"Because we don’t want to live in a society where a bunch of dedicated professionals aren’t crawling up the backsides of the people with power"
That's a very powerful statement. It seems obvious but it really hit me what will happen to our society if we keep going down this path. Then it struck me that it is already happening and will only get worse. Without accountability provided by a robust independent media, governments are not held accountable for poor outcomes. Sound familiar? Elections, while providing accountability, feel very unsatisfactory when the media does not or cannot do their job. Hmmm, did we just re-elect almost all the same politicians to power despite a horrendous 10 year track record?
Im not sure about the solutions. But this piece makes the extent of the problem really clear.
Heck, I’m willing to pay 5 bucks for a bag of unhealthy potato chips, so I limit my intake. If my Instagram went black after 10 minutes, would I pay 5 bucks a month? Hell yeah. It’s that addictive! The fact is, the pay line has to be ridiculously high, more like 50 bucks, or 100. The sooner we take whatever steps we can to consume less of this swill known as social media the better.
Good raising this issue, both here and in your Ottawa Citizen op-ed. Not sure how to address it effectively given the strength and political influence of Meta etc
Interesting article, and I agree 100%. Of note, I concluded way back in the infancy of social media (many years ago) that such networks were not worthy of my time and attention. Since then and to this day, I don’t use them, ever, full stop. I have no desire or itch to use them. I also tend to have far more available time in my life as compared to other walks of life I’ve come across — simply because I don’t allow myself to get sucked into the social media vortex of attention-grabbing nonsense. While I recognize what I’m describing here is nothing more than good old fashioned self-discipline, more simply, I’d argue life’s too short to squander in endless scrolling on these social networks. There’s far more to life than being glued to a screen. While I obtain my information and news from trusted sources and exercise my own critical thinking of same, I also recognize that people are generally not very inclined to scrutinize their information sources by practiced behaviour. I agree that it would be better to have social media companies charge a monthly user fee; but I also see the fight that will emerge because social media companies want eyes glued to their services for as long as possible. I also think (as we have all seen) that government interventions in the online space have proven incapable of dealing with the issues they claim to tackle, while also fostering new ones that they in-turn fail to address at all. So I’d say the best solution comes back to individual choices. If we all recognize these pervasive issues with the social media companies, what are we as individuals doing to counter the effects of those issues? Social media networks are built on the premise of algorithmic people-powered engagement. Thus, it’s the people — individual users and content creators — that impact the algorithms these networks rely on to keep people captivated. Therefore, I believe it’s the people’s online behaviours that ultimately needs to dictate the changes needed. As for me, I’ll do my part by sticking to my social media boycott and denying those bastards their revenue generating capacity over my eyes and brain.
Dude this stuff is more addictive than most actual chemical drugs, and in some ways more insidious because it’s free (in dollars, anyway). Telling people to have more self-discipline is very much not working.
We also make, like, fentanyl illegal (except for a few crazy years there from 2016-2023 or so), we don’t just rely on self discipline.
While I agree with the sentiment, it feels like your solution is to simply tell the addict they should have more self-restraint and hope they do it themselves. Doesn’t really feel like a solution to me.
Amen brother!
I fully agree there's a problem with social media shifting attention from real news. This has possibly more to do with the deteriorating quality of the mainstream news media than the author claims but there's a real problem nonetheless. That said, it is difficult for me to imagine that the solution lies in yet another tax. Of those we already have plenty thank you.
But I think the deteriorating quality of mainstream news media has everything to do with trying to compete (for survival) in the Attention based economy. News posts sensationalist media because it drives engagement, and that’s bad for everyone because it makes engagement more important than truth; can’t tell any truths if you’re bankrupt.
News reporting long ago ceased to be reporting in the MSM and most frequently takes the form of an opinion piece. The media has become the victims of their own doing.
"Crawling up the backsides of government" it has been a very long time since the mainstream Canadian media did anything but cheerlead the government. Hence why we are reading your piece on social media. Which is paid for. We don't need the Globe and Mail in its current form, or CBC or CTV.
1. I would rather pay something than have ads.
2. I would rather pay something than have so many bots and fake troll accounts.
3. I would rather pay something than have so many underage users on social media.
Wow. Serious kudos to The Line for publishing this. I agree with every word of this article: the Attention Economy is destroying us as humans, destroying our politics, destroying our social cohesion, frankly destroying most of what it means to be human. It’s going to need policy intervention that feels unthinkable, which this article hints at.
People really, really disagree with this, though… They point to free speech, they point to consumer choice, they point to government as a tyrant vs private companies (even all-powerful ones like Meta, X, and Google!) just giving us what we want, the next evolution of consumer convenience and technology.
Our human brains were not built for this kind of all-encompassing information flow. It is breaking us.
Agreed!
So, then, what’s the solution? There’s no reason for the social media companies to switch over to subscription based models - that would decrease their user pool, and the revenue accrued by them related to our attention (ad sells etc) continues to grow. I would bet it grows at a rate faster than inflation as well, so faster than they could increase their subscription price without generating ire form users. So from their perspective it makes more sense to keep making money the way they already do.
How do we combat this? I appreciate the identification of the problem, but does anyone have a solution to this? One that is politically-palatable to implement?
I mean, we’re a society of addicts, and sometimes the solution to help an addict isn’t always a happy one. It’s up to government to make the hard choices and do something.
I think back to the late 90s in Alberta where the government mandated a minimum price per ounce of alcohol in order to combat drunk driving a rash of alcohol related crime/health problems/deaths caused by happy hour binging. The government could do the same, actually mandate the company to institute a pay-by-month service, with some baseline cost. It’s not a common solution, but similar has been done before.
Ha! Great minds think alike!
This is another illiberal response in order to save liberalism. It’s the same argument that the authoritarian left makes as to why the government (their government always) needs to censor free speech.
I agree with the ills of social media - I don’t personally use any of it. At all. But we (society writ large) are making a personal choice to give it our attention. If we want to go down this path, let’s just skip the slippery slope and jump right in. China has seemed to manage this problem in their society quite well!
Is there a concrete policy suggestion here, or just pie in the sky wishful thinking?
Is it a law mandating user fees? If so, how would that work, and what would stop social media companies from having their cake and eating it too by continuing with the addiction driven advertising model? Note that advertising once drove legacy media revenues too - it would be pretty hard to tell the entire marketing industry that THEIR business model has to go out the window too.
Or is it a tax on actual usage (by time) - to be monitored, collected and remitted by the company? That wouldn’t be easy to implement politically, but it might stand a chance of working to actually reduce usage even though the company is still going to try to increase usage for their own revenue. Which would also tend to drive usage offshore/underground via untaxable VPNs or something like that. So maybe not so easy after all.
What’s the idea then?
It seems that the Substack subscription model is the poster boy for what ought to be for social media news and intelligent commentary, but it’s not really at scale is it? Paywalls for legacy media are disparaged, but this really the same thing, except that legacy media is still finding it tough to make them pay.
So what’s really the suggestion?
Is Substack considered “social media”? Asking for a friend.
It is, and it's actually kind of like what the author is proposing in that people choose to pay for content as opposed to being ad-supported/surveillance capitalist.
The relationship between our collective addiction to our phones/social media and the downfall of legacy media is fascinating. It’s difficult to understand how us being addicted to news (on our phones) translates to news outlets making less money?? They should be making more. We all have a walking newspaper in our pockets. We are just addicted to tiny 2, 5, 10 second bites rather than prolonged stories, and our brains know how to gloss over the ad bits. I don’t think subscription fees as suggested are a viable solution. We need to somehow get off our phones.
I'm late to this party, since I was on vacation. But, as someone who despises advertising in every form, I have another proposal: ad blockers. Widespread use of ad blockers.
I used to resist using them, because I accepted the reality that somebody has to pay the bills. So, I tolerated the presence of ads, even as I studiously avoided looking at them. But the addiction to ad revenue has spiralled out of control, into the mess we now find ourselves in.
If they'd been disciplined enough to use advertising responsibly, we'd be OK. But they didn't. They're addicted to it, and that forces them to addict us in turn. So now, I no longer have any hesitation about ad blockers. Cut them off from their supply. Cold turkey.
If we were to tackle this problem legislatively, I would suggest this: make ad-blockers unambiguously legal, overriding any "terms of service" that might try to prevent their use. And compel the social media companies to, if not accommodate ad-blockers, then at least refrain from interfering with them. Put the choice in the hands of the users: block ads or not, as you see fit.
Not everyone will choose to block ads, but many will. Social media companies will be forced to seriously consider a user fee or subscription model of some sort. If they want to continue with ads, they will be forced to become less intrusive/annoying, or people won't tolerate them.
I'd be happy to tolerate ads if they weren't excessively annoying. Little banner ads, interstitials, maybe a short ad at the start of a video. But _not_ annoying, repetitive, unskippable ads repeated every few minutes, or any time I click anywhere in the seek bar.
And not highly-targeted. Highly-targeted ads are very annoying, to me at least. I'm old enough to remember what privacy was, and to be annoyed when I feel invaded. When I google some doodad one day, and then for a week my ads are all for that same kind of doodad, it fills me with rage. If I travel to Banff, and suddenly all my Facebook ads are about Banff-area tourist attractions, it fills me with rage. What I search for, and where I travel is nobody's business but mine. If they want me to not use an ad-blocker, they'll have to refrain from that. That will take away one of social media's greatest advantages over print/broadcast media. It will level the playing field, and help the old media be competitive in the advertising space again.
Forcibly released from their addiction to ad-revenue, their motive to addict us in turn to their algorithmic feed will be greatly reduced. They'll have no choice but to become useful to us again, and to be responsible corporate citizens.
"Because we don’t want to live in a society where a bunch of dedicated professionals aren’t crawling up the backsides of the people with power"
That's a very powerful statement. It seems obvious but it really hit me what will happen to our society if we keep going down this path. Then it struck me that it is already happening and will only get worse. Without accountability provided by a robust independent media, governments are not held accountable for poor outcomes. Sound familiar? Elections, while providing accountability, feel very unsatisfactory when the media does not or cannot do their job. Hmmm, did we just re-elect almost all the same politicians to power despite a horrendous 10 year track record?
Im not sure about the solutions. But this piece makes the extent of the problem really clear.
Heck, I’m willing to pay 5 bucks for a bag of unhealthy potato chips, so I limit my intake. If my Instagram went black after 10 minutes, would I pay 5 bucks a month? Hell yeah. It’s that addictive! The fact is, the pay line has to be ridiculously high, more like 50 bucks, or 100. The sooner we take whatever steps we can to consume less of this swill known as social media the better.
What an excellent article and right on point. I really hadn't considered the points you made. but I certainly am now. Thank you for a great column.
Good raising this issue, both here and in your Ottawa Citizen op-ed. Not sure how to address it effectively given the strength and political influence of Meta etc