SOCIAL MEDIA | PSYCHOLOGY
How Facebook Became a Cesspool of Snide Rudeness
A place for friends and being rude to strangers
Facebook: a place for arguments, spreading (mis)information and being rude to strangers. A horrible place full of bad feeling. Snide, mean people being gleefully nasty to each other.
But how did this happen? Wasn’t it supposed to be a place for friends?
The worst culprits of course are the comments sections of public pages where people of all backgrounds and ways of thinking go to share their often misinformed perspectives on anything from veganism to politics to science. Of course people disagree, but unlike most of the real world, they don’t do it very politely. Even here in polite old England.
How did this happen? The answer is a mix of psychology and well-intended changes, Facebook complicity, and political interference.
Where did the snideness come from?
In 2007, Facebook introduced the Like button. So far, so positive.
Other online platforms also added a Dislike or Thumbs Down button, which gave people the chance to show they didn’t agree with the content of a post. It seems reasonable and is a quick way to show disagreement without…
