Social Warming Av Charles Arthur

<B>An impassioned exploration of the ways in which social media has manipulated us all</B><BR><BR><B>‘Witty, rigorous, and as urgent as a fire alarm’ Dorian Lynskey</B><BR> <BR><B>‘Cooly prosecutorial’ <I>Guardian</I></B><BR> <BR><B>Nobody meant for this to happen.</B><BR> <BR>Facebook didn’t mean to facilitate a genocide.<BR> <BR>Twitter didn’t want to be used to harass women.<BR> <BR>YouTube never planned to radicalise young men.<BR> <BR>But with billions of users, these platforms need only tweak their algorithms to generate more ‘engagement’. In so doing, they bring unrest to previously settled communities and erode our relationships. <BR> <BR>Social warming has happened gradually – as a by-product of our preposterously convenient digital existence. But the gradual deterioration of our attitudes and behaviour on- and offline – this vicious cycle of anger and outrage – is real. And it can be corrected. Here’s how.