Real or Imaginary Negativism: AI and Social Media

March 19, 2026

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I heard that another couple of CEOs have pulled the cord on their golden parachutes. BlueSky and DarkTrace watched their CEOs drift gently to earth. Other seemingly unrelated news choked my newsfeed in the last 24 hours. I won’t talk about the US economy or the attitude of some semi-allies of the United States.

Nope. No my lane of the Information Highway.

One of my feeds pointed me to “The State of Social Media Engagement in 2026: 52M+ Posts Analyzed.” This “state of” document explains that interaction rates on Instagram (Meta), LinkedIn (Microslop), and Threads (Meta) went down. What the heck is an interaction rate? The document does not define “interaction rate” is not explained either. What do I make of this? I suppose if I put my Statistics 101 hat on, this is an unacceptable method. What the heck are these “experts” studying? In my opinion, not much. After working through the document, I came up with several items of interest to me.

Overall it looks to me that whoever uses these platforms are doing less of the engagement and interaction thing. Some outfits like LinkedIn, despite a poor employment environment, are declining. Is that Microslop’s influence? Who knows, but that’s something I will look into at some point.

The “experts” undertaking this exercise in Statistics 101 type analysis have no clue what’s happening on YouTube, one of the largest social media services available in 2025. How can this be? Aren’t those who design research into “State of” documents supposed to tackle exactly this type of difficult problem? Well, not in 2026 in this specific report. Shrugging ones shoulders is not exactly a confidence builder when key concepts are impossible to differentiate.

The new iteration of Twitter is bopping along. It remains in the study and the “data” show that it is not in collapse. I think I would suggest Twitter is stagnant, despite its blue checks and its willingness to annoy those who don’t want free services to generate images that thrill those with the brain power of a 14 year old male. Therefore, I have concluded that if the study knows little about the big dog YouTube, I should not be surprised that the experts cannot shed much research light on the Twitter thing. Why is it on the list if it is bumbling along with no big change in engagement and interaction?

Now let’s look at another example of 2026 statistical analysis. I refer to Hart Research Associates’ “Study 260072.” (Very informative title, don’t you agree?) The data suggest that about half of those in the sample are not too thrilled with smart software. About one fourth of those in the sample were “positive” in their views of AI. And another quarter of the sample did not care one way or another.

I noted that negative feels may be higher than the figure of “46 percent.” My take is that negative feels push past 55 percent, but I am a dinobaby, not a whiz kid survey expert. The survey seems to have a political bias, and the lack of granularity is not disguised by the numerous tables.

Several observations:

Both research groups need to spend less time chatting in conference rooms and more time with the basics presented in introductory statistics classes.
The “decline” in major online services could suggest that the buzz from the first couple of decades of social media is changing frequency. That hypothesis needs more serious investigation.
The negativism toward AI is an issue that the hard chargers in Silicon Valley have to consider. The bull-in-the-china shop may work at first, but some people just back away. With the next big thing on the blackjack table, the big bets may be more risky than the MBAs think.

Net net: Even though people build it, some may move away from “it” or just not bother to play the game when given a choice.

Stephen E Arnold, March 19, 2026

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Financial, News, Social Media

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.