Philosopher’s Thumbs-Down to Social Media 'Likes' Gets Award Thumbs-Up from Royal Institute

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Philosopher's thumbs-down to social media likes' gets award thumbs-up from Royal Institute:

The Royal Institute of Philosophy has awarded (jointly) its 2021 essay prize to a University of Cambridge researcher for the first philosophical analysis of liking' on social media. The essay, which focuses on Facebook, warns that likes' encourage communicative laziness while like tallies' fuel fake news, gamify sociality' and play to our psychological weaknesses.

Please Like This Paper', published today (12 May 2021) in the Institute's journal Philosophy, argues that while like' functions help social media users feel they are being heard, they might actually be making us worse listeners/readers. It also suggests that likes' and like tallies', in particular, play a central role in fostering political polarisation.

The essay's author, Dr Lucy McDonald, a Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St John's College, Cambridge, says of liking: It is a form of pseudo-engagement which absolves us of the guilt of not responding to others' posts but creates the bare minimum of human connection."

Contrary to some recent legal judgements, McDonald argues that liking defamatory content should not necessarily count as endorsement of that content." An active social media user herself, McDonald accepts that like' tallies: give us information we previously lacked, but this information seems to have had a number of corrosive effects on internet discourse. These effects seem worrying enough to offset any particular benefits like' data may offer ... there may be some things we are better off not knowing."

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