A Revolutionary Social Media platform

A Revolutionary Social Media platform

The dangers of the modern interconnectedness become apparent every day through vast platforms of unregulated users sharing and responding to new ideas, concepts, or thoughts. This has allowed for a much less controlled source of information with influences from endless cultures, traditions, and values. Naturally, in an environment that allows and accounts for natural chaos, users will exploit these qualities to bend, twist or even break social norms as the anonymity (or potential anonymity, thereof) allows them to evade the resultant social backlash. A further consequence of this is users' accustomedness to such fallacies. Through continued exposure to false or misleading information, it becomes difficult to differentiate fact from fiction. Administration of platforms where this takes place has made drastic efforts to reduce this, although through no fault of their own, users with unrestricted voices abuse these, and so find ever-more camouflaged ways to present this information, despite being falsified.

Perhaps the explanation behind this phenomenon is the fundamental human trait, to take the option with the least resistance. Throughout history (particularly in reference to the scientific community), radical changes to accepted norms or ideologies are harshly rejected as these require immense work (or even blasphemy to some) to become accustomed to. When taken in context of informational disorder, the excessive availability of information, regardless of truthfulness, becomes overwhelming and genuine content more sparce. Consequently, to analyse and identify it requires a conscious and deliberate effort, thus is quickly rejected, in favour of a more immediate source. Although this occurs constantly, it may not be immediately (or at all) obvious to its victims, as the continued exposure has built a sense of security in trusting the first.

It may be combatable through an intricate and long-standing chain of trustworthiness rankings, where a user's access to information is regulated, in much the same way it already is today, except to be filtered and ranked by a community-driven scoring system. Creators or Sources wishing to publish information must first establish a reputation of reliability in order to expand their breadth to larger audiences. Third-party users or dedicated teams may then produce ratings depending on the validity of the information, such that negative reviews cause the source to lose members of their audience.

Naturally, a world designed around rapid, effortless access to information cannot enforce all users to engage in reviewing, however, a significant-enough portion of the audience will respond to such queries that such a system will be reliable at scale. Not only would this mitigate (or at least dramatically reduce) unreputable sources of information from polluting a person's right to knowledge but would also allow for much stricter regulation around content published on platforms conforming to the above-described filter.

The question of morality and freedom arises here as a direct result of introducing this system as users can no longer share their opinions. One of many advantages of the freedom of the present system is the ability to freely share anything. Perhaps then, it is important to note that users may choose to subscribe to non-reputable sources they may be personally or professionally connected with, allowing them to continue to voice their thoughts without needing to prove their validity.

By Jacob SchneiderLast edited on 1/8/2021