Status Traps of Social Media

Many of the year-end reviews for 2022 described Twitter as a platform that needed help to navigate through cancel culture and unfiltered opinions/language that derailed the intent of the original message. But, some sections encouraged individuals to be more on Twitter and consider it the easiest way of building a loyal audience. The same can be said about other social platforms.

Two games are being played here: a status one and a leverage one.

Humans' obsession with the status game is universal, as articulated by Will Storr in his book Status Game:

“Men are much more likely for evolutionary reasons to restore what they perceive as their lost status with violence. They were all humiliated. All of those men were serially humiliated throughout their childhoods and suffered from the perception that they were extremely low-status. It wasn’t just one event. They were dragged through it in quite barbaric ways. If you take a narcissistic man and chronically humiliate them, there’s a likelihood that they’re going to become violent”

“There’s no shortage of women using that form of aggression, that kind of way of achieving status through dominance.”

But he suggests, Social media, by instinct, works on these status games and contributes to them but does not necessarily invent the game ground up.

However, Social Media is the cheapest form of playing status games. There is no barrier to entry.

Laura Chau published a Medium post titled ‘Social Media: A Game of Status’ comparing different social media platforms based on core pillars for ‘Social’: Community and Conversation, Utility, Entertainment, Privacy and Control, and Status.

An illustration of different platforms stacked up in 2019 is shown below.

With the introduction of Twitter Blue, status inequality is pushed even further. Especially when it is beyond verification and enters a subscription zone. It might not necessarily be driving new users away, but there is no denying the fact blue tick mark means something. More authenticity and accountability, and at least that is what most common Twitter users consider.

This becomes a status game and now less of a leverage one.

Following are the ways of encouraging status mobility, in the words of Sriram Krishnan:

1**. “Universal Basic Status”**: A common mechanism is to give temporary status boosts to newcomers. This is typically done through algorithmic levers that control distribution and rewards.

• Temporary boosts to status: Distribute a temporary boost to status at key moments

• “Fair” allocation of status: Through some “fair” algorithm, distribute status signals to users of your network.

2. Make status obscure: By making status obscure, you give yourself more options to have people focus on the actual game/app mechanic and less on the status mechanic. Just like YouTube did with Dislikes. It is not a full blown status obscuring, but a step towards it.

3. Set up cohorts of people with similar status levels: For a network, one way to make for a good newcomer experience is to have a “ranked” (ELO) experience where they are exposed to or interact with a subset of the entire graph.

4. Reset or decay status indicators: One aggressive measure to battle status concentrations is to have every status indicator decay over time – a deflationary measure for your status indicators.

5. Reset the ‘meta’: One reason the Instagram and Youtube moves to short form video cause controversy is that they “reset the meta” – a concept familiar to gamers anywhere. Doing so in combination with one of the mechanisms above shakes up mobility and changes who can gain status in your network.

Understanding how that capital is created, traded, and consumed is going to make or break your network. Doing so might mean thinking of your role more as a policymaker/economist than a traditional product builder/engineer.

Even though the status game might make individuals feel overwhelmed and misrepresented on the social network, Emil Skandul indicates that reducing the barrier to entry had significant implications for addressing inequalities IRL.

Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash