The Biggest Problem with Social Media Nobody Talks About

The Transparency Society

the Society of transparency is not a

society of trust but a society of

control there are not many things that

pretty much everyone tends to agree on

we live in a world divided over so many

issues and yet there seems to be a

message you will find on almost anyone's

lips from the most Ardent conservative

to the most virulent social reformer

there is something deeply wrong with

social media it has been blamed for the

rise in mental health issues among young

people political polarization and the

loneliness and onwe that seems to stalk

the modern world wherever it turns

despite this we don't often think about

the philosophy behind social media why

at the fundamental level can it be so

harmful how is it that a series of

pictures and words presented by an

algorithm seems able to wreak such

destruction on the human psyche well in

bual Hans the transparency Society he

analyzes social media as just one of

what he calls a culture of transparency

and here we will see what it can teach

us about the problems facing our world

gets ready to learn how we have all

become exhibitionists the effects Modern

Life has had on our ability to connect

with others and how a demand for

transparency can quickly morph into

totalitarianism as always bear in mind

that there is much about Han's work and

philosophy that I cannot go into here

and I fully encourage reading him for

yourself as you'll almost certainly get

a lot from it but let's begin by

examining the value system at the heart

of social media and the terrifying

message it sends to its users one the

The Society of Exhibition

Society of exhibition in classic

philosophical analyses of value we tend

to draw a distinction between the

intrinsic and extrinsic value of

something this intuitively reflects

whether something is valuable in and of

itself or whether it requires a relation

to another thing in order to gain its

value for instance human life is often

thought to have intrinsic value even if

all that existed in the universe was one

solitary living person many people would

say their life still has some value

however extrinsic value is the value

imbued to an object by its relation to

other things so monetary value is often

considered extrinsic because it is a

matter of what people are willing to pay

for a given thing when there was a boom

in demand for tulips in 17th century

Holland people were willing to Fork over

inordinate sums of money for the flowers

but nothing about the intrinsic

properties of tulips had changed it went

up in price because people wanted them

much more while the supply of tulips

could not rise to accommodate this

however Han draws a subtly different

distinction in values he contrasts cult

value or private value with exhibition

value the private value of something

simply depends on the thing's existence

so a sacred Relic in the Catholic faith

would have private value because it is

revered or venerated simply in virtue of

its being in indeed many important

relics are only displayed a few times a

year they are often kept hidden and

simply to be in their presence is

considered valuable they are ways of

getting closer to God after all but

exhibition value is different it is a

particular kind of extrinsic value where

something is prized for the attention

that it Garners for example sometimes in

order to help advertise a film a

production company will perform a

publicity stunt they might encourage a

lead actor to do something shocking or

provocative in order to get more press

for their film here the value of what

the actor is doing is not in the

contents of their statements or in the

ACT they are performing but rather

simply the fact that it's getting more

eyeballs on their film or to put it

succinctly exhibition value is the

currency of the attention economy Han

says that we have become increasingly

focused on exhibition value to the

exclusion of other forms of value this

is part of his General observation that

we are becoming more transparent Society

speaking he uses this term in a number

of ways throughout his essay and it

communicates a simultaneous abolition of

privacy and a general flattening of

complexity a society of transparency

demands that everything can and should

be known and observed but as a result it

refuses to look at those things that it

cannot directly observe for instance

they pretend that the deths and

intricacies of human mental States just

do not exist because their qualitative

nature will forever be barred off

however this emphasis on observation and

making everything public goes hand

inhand with the prioritizing ization of

exhibition value of course there might

be times where exhibition value is only

appropriate at a theater show the

director will probably care about the

contents of the show's message but at

the same time they will need to get

people to watch it and thus they'll also

have to care about the exhibition value

of both the show itself and its

advertising however Han is worried about

how we have begun to relate to ourselves

through the medium of exhibition value

and the greatest examples of this are

probably found on social media for

instance I once knew someone who would

take down a post on Instagram if it did

not get a certain number of likes or

views within an hour or so in a small

way this was them acknowledging the

Primacy of the exhibition value of their

post above any other metric it was not

that their main concern was the content

of their text or the photo that they

posted it was rather that the content

was just a means to an end of gaining

attention the exhibition value was the

goal and everything else was

subordinated to this in itself that's

not the end of the world it's just a

post on Instagram but we are

increasingly incentivized to prioritize

exhibition value in an Ever larger

portion of Our Lives most people who are

involved with social media in one way or

another will be familiar with this the

structure of the algorithms are designed

so that you care who has liked your

posts or how much attention your profile

has generally got this has become even

more extreme in recent years with the

idea that someone should craft a

personal brand which they can then show

off to the world and of course since

beautiful things get more attention this

has increased the already crushing

pressure to be physically attractive

we've even got to the point where

exhibition value is inextricably linked

to the structure of the economy where

attention increasingly equals money hell

we are doing this right now as you watch

this video your time is being measured

by YouTube who will then calculate how

much that time was worth to them and

give me a percentage of it but har

points out the more money that can be

made from exhibition value the greater a

role it is likely to take in our culture

but so what is that so bad well some of

the wisest thinkers in history on the

subject of well-being have encouraged us

not to place our measures of personal

value on things we cannot directly

control in stoic philosophy this

manifests in epictetus's division

between the world inside the mind and

outside of it saying we only have

control over what is internal in early

terada Buddhism we are encouraged to

develop large enough internal resources

to absorb the cruelty of the world like

a great sea in boia is the consolation

of philosophy he says that anything can

be taken from us except the functioning

of our mind and our ideas and so we have

excellent reason to place value on that

as our final reserve for happiness but

other people's attention is patently not

in our control if we begin to judge

ourselves by exhibition value then we

are placing our own value in the hands

of other people and moreover not those

nearest and dearest to us the people

whose opinions we already have respect

for but a nebulized abstract form of

attention and this in turn has some

disastrous consequences on our ability

to connect with and relate to others if

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Forced Intimacy and No Intimacy

forced intimacy and no intimacy many

existentialist philosophers over the

course of the 20th century placed a high

premium on the idea of authenticity Jean

Paul satra Simone deovir and Alber kamu

all at various points warn against

becoming an inauthentic version of

ourselves by this they meant someone who

is alienated from their own values

freedom and sense of meaning for example

in many of sra's novels characters are

tortured by the fact that they are in

some sense denying their own freedom and

acting in bad faith as a result or

alternatively that they are not

following the value systems that really

matter to them here authenticity is

often conceived of as a relation we hold

to ourselves we are behaving

authentically when our deeper instincts

our conscious beliefs and our outer

behaviors are in some sense in sync

however in recent years authenticity has

taken on a slightly more sinister

meaning it is increasingly used not to

encourage us to relate to ourselves in a

more fulfilling manner but instead to

Bear more and more of our private

thoughts and private feelings in the

public sphere to give just one example

of this let's look at the Trends on Tik

Tok of of people taking deeply

vulnerable emotional moments either of

themselves alone or with their loved

ones and then immediately sharing them

with the World At Large in itself there

is nothing wrong with this individual

choice but in Han's view it is very

dangerous if it becomes a pattern or

even worse a pressure because for Han

when we bear our entire selves to the

public world we simultaneously develop a

sort of forced intimacy with a whole

range of strangers while at the same

time damaging our ability to connect

with the people closest to us this is a

sort of counterintuitive thought but

stick with me as I do think Han is on to

something here if we expose too much of

ourselves in public then the first thing

that does is entrench the Primacy of

exhibition value we were discussing in

the last section it is taking a

potentially incredibly vulnerable and

fragile part of ourselves and assessing

its value by the attention and scrutiny

of others it is delicate enough having

your appearance judged by groups of

anonymous people you'll never meet let

alone your most intimate emotional

states yet for Han the demand for

transparency entails this sort of forced

authenticity the logic of social media

simultaneously requests that we be

perfect and hide nothing thus we become

full of insincere sincerity inauthentic

authenticity and ironic earnestness we

strip ourselves naked to the public gaze

with the implicit message that there is

nothing more to us than this this is

almost the perfect breeding ground for

creating parasocial the feeling that you

are emotionally close with someone even

if you've never met and are only really

engaging with them as an object on a

screen Han suggests that the incentive

structure of a society of transparency

encourages us to turn ourselves into an

object for the parasocial enjoyment of

others at any time we must give the

appearance of having nothing private or

hidden to us whilst also subjecting

ourselves to the constant Judgment of

other people who can freely decide to

reject us with no consequence if they so

please combined with the idea that we

are judging ourselves based on our

exhibition value and you can see how

this causes so much psychological and

existential distress on the other hand

Han is seriously concerned that all of

this forc intimacy will damage our

ability to form real closeness with

others for him true interpersonal

connection is built from a balance of

hiddenness and openness he is not alone

in this thought it is echoed by authors

like Eric from when he describes the

paradoxical needs to meld with someone

while at the same time somehow

recognizing them as a definite other and

that this is an essential component for

love and intimacy Han talks about this

otherness as well he thinks that by

turning ourselves into exhibition pieces

we run the risk of keeping too little of

ourselves hidden or just for the

privileged access of those we love and

care for at its most extreme he fears

this will turn into a sort of

self-destructive narcissism where

everything we do is not in service to

others or even really to ourselves but

to this strange exhibition of us that we

have created in order to absorb the

attention and agulation of other people

without caring who those other people

are in the slightest but we don't need

to dwell on such extreme examples to see

Han's overall point Aristotle once said

that if someone is a friend to everyone

then they are also a friend to no one

here he recognizes that forging a

genuine intimate connection with another

person involves first realizing that

they are different to you with their own

thoughts feelings and desires and then

taking the extra leap to Value those

thoughts feelings and desires over those

of other people and sometimes even your

own and arguably part of this is

reserving some of our hidden aspects for

only those people who we truly wish to

connect with for Han the more we lay out

on the table for public consumption the

more we turn ourselves into a makeshift

Art Exhibit an object purely for the

enjoyment of others rather than a full

agent who can form genuine bonds with

other full agents out there in the world

Han states that this interplay between

revealing aspects of ourselves to other

people while still hiding other parts

only to possibly be disclosed later is

an important component to what he calls

the eroticism of interpersonal

connections it is what maintains our

agency as we consciously decide who we

are going to open up to to what extent

we will and why we have chosen to do so

the demand for transparency the total

naked display of our whole self to the

whole world robs us of this freedom and

this leaves us both incredibly

vulnerable and made into a sort of

obscene object with no part of us left

unobserved or only observed by by a

Chosen Few ultimately Han worries that

if we continue down this path of forced

public intimacy we are taking some of

our deepest and most fragile parts and

commodifying them so that other people

can dine on the buffet of our

deconstructed Soul all while we become

ever lonier for lack of committed

connection with real other people

whether or not you think things could go

this far Han's General message is

definitely worth listening to especially

as we're incentivized to be more and

more vulnerable in the on online public

sphere what is the cost we pay for all

this exposure and with this level of

transparency comes another Insidious

effect it's something thinkers have been

worried about for centuries but this

time it might just come into fruition

The Uninformative Deluge

three the uninformative Deluge in Jorge

Le bores the library of Babel we are

presented with a sort of Hell consisting

of an infinite Library containing every

possible combination of letters that

will fit in a 410 page book the problem

of the people living in this hell is not

a lack of raw data they have quantity of

information in droves but any Denison of

this universe lacks any way to make

sense of the information to sort through

it in a way that brings what they are

interested into the surface and leaves

the rest they just have bare

unadulterated volume and it would drive

many of them mad as a result this is a

pretty good articulation of just one of

the ways in which Han thinks a society

of transparency has altered our

relationship with information we now

have so much of it that it's becoming a

problem for much of human history

information was a pretty scarce resource

books were often quite rare and literacy

rates were so low anyway that accessing

the information within the book was its

own challenge but today we often have

the opposite issue we are constantly

bombarded with far more information than

we could ever take in or process and

this is increasingly centralized around

social media platforms with 41% of 18

to2 four-year-olds in the UK describing

social media as their main gateway to

news but Han has a series of concerns

about this situation which he thinks

will undermine our ability to engage

with much of this information in any

meaningful way for a start he observes

that within a culture of transparency

more information is considered better

often without much regard to its quality

or utility this does not necessarily

come from a place of malice but it has

unfortunate consequences later down the

line both at the social and IND idual

level first on a broader scale it

incentivizes mining as much information

as possible about other people this is

most obvious at the corporate level

where customer data is a hot commodity

precisely because if you know more about

someone you can better predict what they

are likely to buy Additionally the

attention economy means it is often

advantageous to Just Produce some

shocking information that will get a lot

of clicks rather than considering the

value of the content of the information

itself Han thinks we are incentivized to

produce and collect insane levels of

information as well as share enormous

amounts of data about ourselves and this

is not necessarily a good thing secondly

the excess of information means that it

is impossible to give each individual

piece its requisite level of care

attention and respect in his other works

Han talks about the value of dwelling on

single ideas for a long time he praises

the sort of gentle exploratory

concentration that emerges when we allow

our mind to slow down and occupy itself

with a single object

however if it is more profitable to have

our attention flitting from one shallow

piece of information to the next then we

are completely robbed of this experience

we only have time to view something make

a snap judgment about it and then move

on the flow of information deprives us

of deeper kinds of engagements with

ideas like Insight or experienc trained

intuition because we're often not given

enough time to reach these levels of

thought Han is not saying that this has

become impossible but rather that social

pressures run in entirely counter to

this and if we're going to recapture

this ability we will need to make a

concerted conscious effort to do so

flying in the face of an established

incentive structure and this is hard it

is similar to an observation made by

Danish philosopher saen kard in his

essay the present age where he predicted

that an excess of information will lead

to just as much confusion over what is

true as a lack of information would as

Han puts it today the growing mass of

information is crippling all higher

judgment

often less knowledge and information

achieve something more by this he

certainly does not mean that having a

pity of information is a good thing it

is rather that too much information with

no sense of what is reliable or

important or valuable means that we will

become overwhelmed rather than informed

kard predicted this would encourage an

attitude where people are very reluctant

to commit to any position he thinks it

will incentivize an aesthetic view on

information where the quantity of

information becomes a good in itself

rather than just one step along a search

for truth deprived of the ability to

establish what is the case we would

Instead try to just have the opinion

that is the cleverest or the most

invogue after all if we can't get a

clear view on how things actually are we

may as well take the most socially

advantageous position additionally Han

is very skeptical of the way algorithms

increasingly guide the information we

have access to suggesting that this is

likely to create increasingly isolated

and divided bubbles of people it is not

just that we are bombarded with

information but specifically information

that we want to see we are kept in

algorithmic cages which reinforce our

own views and only expose us to

opposition we have indicated we desire

this does not necessarily mean we take

pleasure in seeing this opposition but

rather that we react to it in a way that

encourages engagement either becoming

angry or frustrated or ridiculing the

oppositional Viewpoint either way we are

not exposed to other views except when

we have implicitly encouraged it with

our own prior Behavior thus Han thinks

we are encouraged to become a sort of

intellectual narcissists shaping the

world we see around our pre-existing

beliefs rather than the other way around

while we have always had cognitive

biases they are now exploited and played

to on an unprecedented scale and Han

thinks this will have disastrous

consequences as we become insular and

isolated while at the same time

exhausted from the constant stream of

information blasted into our synapses at

every waking moment but his unsettling

Proclamation

do not stop there perhaps Han's most

dire critique of the transparency

Society is not just that it is

unpleasant or ruins our ability to

connect with others or reduces us to

images but that it is fundamentally

totalitarian in nature four transparency

Transparency and Control

and control if you've got nothing to

hide then you've got nothing to fear

this is the general logic behind an

awful lot of surveillance programs Han

traces the sentiment back to rouso who

suggested that citizens should be

totally open about their activities

because ultimately they should not be

doing anything that would attract social

censure if it were discovered one reason

Plato had the ruling classes of his City

live in one big communal building was so

that they could all keep an eye on one

another a lack of privacy is meant to

guarantee loyalty and good behavior

surely anyone who was a morally

upstanding person would not mind people

knowing everything about them

considering that they would only find

good things fan surveillance used to be

the primary domain of the state and an

expression of asymmetric power think of

Stalin's nkvd or Roose Beer's Committee

for Public Safety these were systems of

surveillance and Punishment which use

the vast resources of the nation to

enforce a certain set of laws principles

and ideas the archetype of this is

Jeremy bentham's panopticon where a

single Central guard can watch any

prisoner at any time so in practice

everyone has to act like they are being

watched at all times Han says this is no

longer a complete description of the way

surveillance works in the modern day for

a start he points out that much of the

data we give on ourselves is handed over

semi voluntarily as the price for using

various online platforms we Fork over

some of our information often including

the contents of our messages and we get

to use Facebook or Instagram or the like

for free there has also been a shift in

the underlying logic behind much of the

monitoring whereas in the past reasons

for surveillance had been to do with

morality or maintaining political order

now Han thinks they are mostly economic

for the most part we are not surveilled

to be thrown in prison but to make a

profit Han is not suggesting that this

is worse just that it's different and

that that difference is worthy of note

obviously having someone sell you

something and being thrown in a goolag

are incomparable in terms of their

emotional consequences next Han points

out we've gone through a real

decentralization of surveillance in the

past it was simply not practical for the

everyday citizen to surveil another

everyday citizen we did not have the

technology the only groups with the

tools necessary to conduct surveillance

campaigns were government intelligence

organizations but it's fair to say this

has changed I am hardly the first to

point out that we now walk around with

the kind of easy access Recording

Technology that would give lenti

barrier's corpse localized riger Morse

but Han goes one step further and points

out how this fundamentally changes the

power Dynamic of surveillance while not

really making anyone happy on a huge

number of occasions in recent years we

have seen people recorded and posted

online without their consent with the

added implication that they are somehow

worthy of scorn or censure from alleged

infidelity to airing family disputes to

accusations of rude conduct we have

become very used to seeing the fruits of

homemade surveillance pinned up on

social media for all to see in effect

Han says we are not just surveilled from

a central position but instead have

become used to surveiling one another

and any objection to this comes up

against the old totalitarian Mantra if

you've got nothing to hide you've got

nothing to fear only now it's not coming

from a secret service agent but a

teenager on Tik Tok we are still denied

privacy on a massive scale but now we

are given the consolation of being one

of the prison guards as well as one of

the prisoners and it is this social

pressure to be open and transparent to

not just be surveilled but consent to

being surveilled that marks out the

situation as different to quote Han

directly the Society of control achieves

affection when subjects bear themselves

not through outer constraint but through

self-generated need the need to put

oneself on display without shame at this

point we could take an orwellian route

and talk about all of the negative

aspects of living as if you're being

constantly watched or invoke Kafka and

satra on the existential fear of being

observed but instead Han takes a unique

angle on things he discusses how extreme

transparency erodes a very precious

resource Trust for Han Mutual trust is

at the heart of the logic by which we

allow others to be free and gain freedom

ourselves someone's motivations desires

and planned actions are hidden from us

and yet we trust that they will not harm

either us or other people this means

that we can allow both privacy and

freedom confident that this will not put

ourselves or our loved ones at risk but

Han argues that a buildup of trust

relies on a certain lack of information

in a culture of surveillance and

transparency we become unable to

establish trust because most people

would behave well if they thought they

were being watched thus Han suggests

that rather than promoting trust

transparency is only necessary when we

feel unable to trust and too much

information will breed suspicion about

what someone would do if they weren't

being observed all the time thus

reinforcing the motivation for

surveillance in the first place

sometimes this is only appropriate we

might not want to trust our governments

to behave without being kept in check by

an informed populace because the stakes

are so so high but there is danger at

the interpersonal level of not only

eliminating trust but also the means to

gain trust Han argues that a culture of

recording one another and sharing it

meaning that every private moment

becomes potentially public is trading in

a very significant freedom for an

incredibly poultry one in the freedom to

live unrecorded and unjudged we gain the

ability to play with ideas craft our

characters reflect think and speak

freely and have a break from the Crush

gaze of the other that can cause us such

stress and in return all we are given is

the ability to take someone else's

Freedom away what is the freedom to

surveil compared with the freedom of not

being surveilled ourselves it's a bit

like being told that you're about to get

beaten up but not to worry in return you

will also get to beat someone else up it

is a recipe for resentment anxiety and

paranoia and the only people who have

anything to gain from it are the

spiteful and those making money of it

Han spends more time cra ing diagnoses

than Solutions but if we were to take

something away from his essays it might

be this the axiomatic Goods of a

transparency society that more

information is always better that

something should be judged by its

ability to retain attention and that

privacy is inherently suspicious these

things should be held up to careful

scrutiny we should be hesitant about

accepting them wholesale and instead

consider them as we would any other

broad sweeping statement about how

Society should function carefully

weighing up the pros and cons before or

giving our Ascent or our dissent to them

because if Han is to be believed we are

playing a dangerous game and the stakes

are as high as the very concept of a

private life but if you want to see how

han turns his philosophy on another

significant aspect of modern life then

check out this video to explore his

analysis of modern work and stick around

for more on thinking to improve your

life