#readwise # The Dark Psychology of Social Networks  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jonathan Haidt]] - Full Title: The Dark Psychology of Social Networks - URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/ ## Highlights what would happen to American democracy if, one day in the early 21st century, a technology appeared that—over the course of a decade—changed several fundamental parameters of social and political life? What if this technology greatly increased the amount of “mutual animosity” and the speed at which outrage spread? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj5y19x4vhjh0s3vwj77fc49)) --- Facebook’s early mission was “to make the world more open and connected”—and in the first days of social media, many people assumed that a huge global increase in connectivity would be good for democracy. As social media has aged, however, optimism has faded and the list of known or suspected harms has grown: Online political discussions (often among anonymous strangers) are experienced as angrier and less civil than those in real life; networks of partisans co-create worldviews that can become more and more extreme; disinformation campaigns flourish; violent ideologies lure recruits. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj5y39nwem1bqnt89kr5t85d)) --- Human beings evolved to gossip, preen, manipulate, and ostracize. We are easily lured into this new gladiatorial circus, even when we know that it can make us cruel and shallow. As the [Yale psychologist Molly Crockett has argued](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/538ca3ade4b090f9ef331978/t/5a53c0d49140b7212c35b20e/1515438295247/Crockett_2017_NHB_Outrage.pdf), **the normal forces that might stop us from joining an outrage mob**—such as time to reflect and cool off, or feelings of empathy for a person being humiliated—**are attenuated when we can’t see the person’s face, and when we are asked, many times a day, to take a side by publicly “liking” the condemnation.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj5yamj7ymx1z5bwg7typ4b7)) ^qu62t2 ---