this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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Last fall, we featured an extensive interview with Petter Törnberg of the University of Amsterdam, who studies the underlying mechanisms of social media that give rise to its worst aspects: the partisan echo chambers, the concentration of influence among a small group of elite users (attention inequality), and the amplification of the most extreme divisive voices. He wasn’t optimistic about social media’s future.

Törnberg’s research showed that, while numerous platform-level intervention strategies have been proposed to combat these issues, none are likely to be effective. And it’s not the fault of much-hated algorithms, non-chronological feeds, or our human proclivity for seeking out negativity. Rather, the dynamics that give rise to all those negative outcomes are structurally embedded in the very architecture of social media. So we’re probably doomed to endless toxic feedback loops unless someone hits upon a brilliant fundamental redesign that manages to change those dynamics.

Törnberg has been very busy since then, producing two new papers and one new preprint building on this realization that social media is structured quite differently than the physical world, with unexpected downstream consequences. The first new paper, published in PLoS ONE, specifically focused on the echo chamber effect, using the same combined standard agent-based modeling with large language models (LLMs)—essentially creating little AI personas to simulate online social media behavior.

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 points 10 hours ago

Conversely, if just 10 percent of users in a given social media community largely agree with your stances, you will be more tolerant toward diverse opinions that contradict your own. “There’s a certain chance that some users will end up in communities where it’s very homogenous and 99 percent of users are disagreeing with them,” said Törnberg. “That will cause them to leave, and you get this feedback effect just because of the structure of interaction. But if you have a filter bubble effect, where everyone is shown 10 percent of their own type, that creates a possibility for you to find the people who you agree with within the community. And that stabilizes the entire dynamics so it doesn’t tip over to one side or the other and become extreme or overly homogenous.”

Ooh, this is interesting. It suggests the possibility of automating this; since most social media allows for upvoting and downvoting it should be possible to automatically determine which users are "agreeable" and which are "disagreeable" and filter thread contents to push it toward this 10 percent threshold.

Probably wouldn't work on the Threadiverse yet, though, there's not a large enough population here yet.

[–] reluctant_squidd@lemmy.ca 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It should be renamed to “ad media”. At least everything that isn’t in the fediverse. It’s getting harder and harder to find anything you are looking for in any web based service nowadays.

I’m not even that opposed to ad revenue as a supplement for costs. But these companies are so far into the ad revenue game that they seem to have forgotten why people used their service in the first place.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 days ago

but these companies are so far into the ad revenue game that they seem to have forgotten why people used their service in the first place

That already rang true 20 years ago

[–] ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

As social media splinters...

That's some optimism there, all right.

[–] darkkite@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think lemmy is a good example. I see beehaw, dbzer0, lemmy and tchncs all in the same thread.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, but the federation as a whole will defederate from instances outside of a minimal acceptable set of politics.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 6 points 6 days ago

Yes, but federation isn't really about enabling one singular discussion space. Network splits are ultimately healthy for the communities, because it allows for self-governance and actual community building, rather than unmanageably large masses screaming into themaatically named voids, controlled by a handful of super-mods and super-admins.

Distributed networks are meant to be, well, distributed, not quasi-centralized with some fun URLs used as dumb terminals.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

minimal acceptable set of politics.

I like how you said "minimal", like it's a floor and not a flavour.

No-no, it's perfect like that. Don't dare change it.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 6 days ago

I wouldn't dare.

Why RIP? It's still alive.

[–] SigHunter@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago

RIP, you won't be missed