People are behaving exactly as the platforms reward, writes Om Malik:
Authority used to be the organizing principle of information, and thus the media. You earned attention by being right, by being first in discovery, or by being big enough to be the default. That world is gone. The new and current organizing principle of information is velocity.
What matters now is how fast something moves through the network: how quickly it is clicked, shared, quoted, replied to, remixed, and replaced. In a system tuned for speed, authority is ornamental. The network rewards motion first and judgment later, if ever. Perhaps that’s why you feel you can’t discern between truths, half-truths, and lies.
The network rewards reactions. Reacting precludes thinking: few people have the wit or knowledge to share something valuable on the spot, the rest sound like an indistinct, self-pleasing noise that contributes nothing.
This goes beyond media. People are getting sloppier at work, with Slack encouraging fast replies at any moment. They’re getting sloppier in their personal lives, where the expectation is to be reachable and ready at all times.
The network behaves like a gobbling No-Face because the network is designed to behave as such. All of the new popular social media platforms offer more of the same. What’s the point?