Geo-anonymous vs. Bespoke Pseudo-Realities
Platforms like TikTok not only reinforce biases: they create customized universes. By becoming geo-anonymous, users could regain control.
The French Senate Inquiry Commission "TikTok Influence" delivered alarming conclusions in July 2023. At the heart of the report: disinformation and the risk of parallel realities, especially among the younger population.
"TikTok is a poor performer in the fight against disinformation. According to NewsGuard, it only takes 40 minutes on the app to be presented with videos containing false content on current topics. Disinformation seems even more significant when TikTok is used as a search engine (...). Total opacity surrounds shadow banning, a technique aimed at censoring content not by removing it but by making it invisible."
Inquiry Commission on the use of the TikTok social network
Public health issues, moderation policy opacity, and the perpetual, passive consumption of hours of videos on the platform, guided by algorithms capturing attention through a personalized content flow, are highlighted in "The Manufacture of Lies (TikTok: The Chinese Shadow)."
"Each to their own truth"
I remember a conversation in 2017 with my friend Raphaël Ly, who told me that there is never actually a single website but as many websites as users. His argument was that a site changes according to the user's desires, browsing history, and sometimes even the customization elements chosen by the user. On Amazon or Vinted, opening the sites suggests products associated with your previous purchases or searches. And on your favorite media site - like the New York Times - you can choose to exclude certain sections and overweight others.
A seemingly common-sense principle: give people what interests them the most to increase the time spent or the number of pages viewed.
Customization that leads to confinement
Problems arise when personalization no longer only affects functional uses (saving the user time by offering related choices) but tends to reduce people's universe of possibilities by imprisoning them in a small corner of knowledge, paradoxically enriched with new content.
A well-known effect for marketers is that as we acquire more information on a subject, our confidence increases. This can lead to negative behaviors in many cases: just because we believe the Earth is flat and hundreds of new TikTok contents defend this point doesn't mean we offer the "best" to platform members. Generally, the opposite occurs: activists (especially those on the conspiratorial side) have a mission to provide this type of signal, spend a significant amount of time reaching new audiences, are driven by their beliefs. In short, they manage to give more weight to their convictions by manipulating platforms, mobilizing their bases around "engage-to-play" strategies as explained by
. Personalization becomes the enemy of reason, a real challenge to tackle.Tailor-made pseudo-realities
Renée DiResta (Stanford Internet Observatory) spoke as early as 2019 about tailor-made pseudo-realities. At stake: the inability to find consensus, compromise, between radically different viewpoints when people believe in "pseudo-realities" deeply embedded.
“They’re contending with a deluge of hyperpartisan content, tailored precisely to preexisting beliefs, compounded by nearly-instantaneous viral social media transmission and a news cycle that lasts less than a day. This portends a societal transformation: our information ecosystem no longer assists us in reaching consensus. In fact, it structurally discourages it, and instead facilitates a dissensus of bespoke pseudo-realities.”
Renée DiResta
Pseudo-realities that arise through repetition, through the creation of a social bond that becomes very important, especially in an era where loneliness is skyrocketing. As I mentioned this summer: with habits and being assisted in our content consumption, we lose effort, gaining what we lost in developing our critical thinking.
These pseudo-realities kill, in real life. In high schools, on the streets, here or elsewhere. Pseudo-reality no longer only means virtual, far from it.
One solution mentioned by DiResta is to force "physical" encounters between holders of opposing positions. This is one of the electoral strategies that still pays off: forcing door-to-door campaigns, meeting voters in the case of campaigns, provided that conversations actually turn into actions. Pushing conferences to school audiences to embody what is read in textbooks is not necessarily easy, yet the exercise pays off.
In France, the show "En Terres Opposées," presented by Karim Rissouli, proposes to reunite rather than caricature debates, notably through guests like Camille Etienne. And I must admit that seeing people who do not insult each other or threaten each other behind a screen is incredibly reassuring. It remains to be seen which audience will deeply watch this format.
Tomorrow all "geo-anonymous"?
In the show Tracks East United States & Russia: A New Cold War broadcast on Arte, Nadya Tolokonnikova, founder of Pussy Riot, introduces a new concept. She says she identifies as "geo-anonymous." Words have meaning, and this terminology deserves to be deciphered.
Nadya Tolokonnikova does not want to leave the internet or social networks. She does not present herself as a pirate and does not hide her face. She seems to refer to a relatively old practice that aimed to leave the fewest exploitable traces by intelligence agencies:
Frequenting libraries because these spaces did not necessarily collect data; American libraries before 9/11 were protected against requests about what their users read or consulted online.
Using public telephones that were less likely to be listened to.
Contributing to public debate and making dissonant voices heard: in short, producing silence to surveillance systems but emitting a controlled message to a target audience.
Geo-anonymous individuals could act as a counterbalance to pseudo-realities. First, by taking control of real-world word of mouth again. Yoani Sánchez had already shown the way in 2007 by having her blog articles published by dissidents outside of Cuba through a clever system of information transmission (especially using USB drives).
Then, by managing to create disruptions, disruption effects, by having their actions documented by audiences eager for more atypical communications, and thus taking platforms at their own game, that of concatenation.