It may be a long time since social media lost its innocence. But, two decades after Facebook was founded, it can feel as though sharing political views, expressing solidarity or posting cathartic outpourings on personal accounts is an increasingly high-stakes game. This has been thrown into sharp relief by the Israel-Gaza war, with people shedding jobs and friends after making statements online.
Gone is any illusion that one’s followers form a neat echo chamber of like-minded humans. It may have felt like that back in 2015, when millions applied a rainbow wash over their profile pictures to support marriage equality, or in 2020, when a similar number Instagrammed a black square to show that black lives mattered. When it comes to issues surrounding the conflict in the Middle East, even within otherwise politically aligned groups, raw divisions have been exposed. They’re stirred up further by algorithms, ignorance (few of us are subject experts), disinformation and minds well primed for the polarising effects of the internet.
