Don't Be Antisocial: The Politics of the "Anti-Social" in "Social" Media

This chapter asks one main question - what exactly is 'social' in social media? By focusing on the deviant side of social media - The Antisocial - the chapter amplifies the things we take for granted in these platforms, and how they are constructed rather than 'naturally' existing. The chapter focuses on two avenues: antisocial behaviors and antisocial design. With antisocial behaviors the chapter examines two types of behaviors, one, people or bots who act in what is considered to be malicious to others such as trolling, spamming, and spreading misinformation. The second group of antisocial behaviors is about people who go against the connectivity ideal of social media and practice various types of disconnectivity such as unfriending, unliking or disconnecting, temporarily or permanently. In the second avenue, the chapter focuses on antisocial designs that can broadly be called dark patterns because these are intentional interventions in social media's interface to create a specific social behavior. These dark patterns come in the shape of showing specific metrics, algorithmic ordering that is presented as 'organic', and terms of use. What these two avenues show is that nothing is inherently 'social' in social media and highlights the importance in examining how different mechanisms make it seem naturally produced. This chapter asks one main question - what exactly is 'social' in social media? It focuses on two avenues: antisocial behaviors and antisocial design. The chapter examines two types of behaviors, one, people or bots who act in what is considered to be malicious to others such as trolling, spamming, and spreading misinformation. The second group of antisocial behaviors is about people who go against the connectivity ideal of social media and practice various types of disconnectivity such as unfriending, unliking or disconnecting, temporarily or permanently. The chapter focuses on antisocial designs that can broadly be called dark patterns because these are intentional interventions in social media's interface to create a specific social behavior.