Lets begin by saying that 'Social Media is not really social'. Attorney General of New York, Letitia James describes in a statement -"Facebook is an anti-democratic conglomerate, which owns instagram, whatsapp ... includes policies which reduce choice. reduce competition... has stifled innovation, compromised democracy... exploiting privacy and data..". Twitter, the world's biggest boxing ring for politicians, has suspended more than 85,000 accounts, after the right-wingers stormed the Capitol (Washington DC) earlier this year. The two Silicon Valley giants host hostile environments, deeply disturbing groups and individuals, and they are reacting in ways which signals incoming decline. A recent internal survey of Facebook reads “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to
divisiveness ... If left
unchecked, the system will feed users more and more divisive
content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the
platform." In essence the redacted message means - 'feed them hate and create profit via mass anxiety'. It's high time we step back and contemplate, about what is social media. Is it actually 'social' in terms of doing any good?
In 2016, futurists at Wired Magazine declared that social media is "privatized Global Commons". A techno-utopia where public participated globally. The bogus bravado aside, social media has devolved into misrepresentation of society. The tech giants own spaces, which host conflict and hate, in order maximize profits. The conflict which is now visible inside many social media platforms. That most social media is not transparent nor democratic. Thousands of pages of internal documents, leaked by whistle-blower, former product manager Francis Haugen shows how Facebook's value is based on harvesting minds. Billions! Facebook is out to mess with public opinion and democracy, on a daily basis. In a recent hearing, Francis said "The company prioritized profit over safety.. has also tried to hide it's own research from investors and public. The social harm caused when Facebook is used to platform hateful content, without adequate moderation, especially for foreign languages". Based on her experience, while working as product manager, she began to notice, how Facebook's strategy for the global south (nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia) was causing immense harm, at a societal level as well as individual cases. "It is a great danger to democracy, but one has to admit to societal harm.. I looked at the choices made by Facebook in terms of the global south.. take the case of Ethiopia and Sudan.. the opening chapters of a novel, a very horrific read ... Facebook's AI is actually closing the doors on free-speech and action... Facebook is also ignoring the sharp rise of demagogues within it's sphere of influence.. we have that window of time to not let AI and Facebook's business rule public opinion and information".
"The algorithms within Facebook play a decisive role and the outcome is largely negative... it prioritizes divisive polarizing hateful content, because the computations prioritize content to capture our attention via images, messages, videos, propaganda, advertising - things that will lock into our sympathetic nervous system" says Ramesh Srinivasan, writer, researcher MIT. Facebook as an entity is playing with psychology, anxiety, privacy, compounding the polarization at a global scale. By now we can't be surprised, that the world's biggest demagogues, dictators, hate-groups and zealots also depend on Facebook. Zuckerberg's trailblazing digital capitalism has spiraled, far from any positive socialism, with no moral anchors. The world's biggest social media platform is falling, that too jeopardized from within. Desperate to maintain empire, beyond Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook, is now renamed META! "A new paradigm of global manipulation.. especially outside the U.S. and EU, where a vast majority of Facebook users exist. That global access and control of engagement is what Mark Zuckerberg wishes to achieve, but while doing so he has totally sacrificed public safety, reality and compassion. Facebook is algorithmic extremism.." reads a new report by FTC - imposing a $5 billion penalty, aiming to place "sweeping new privacy restrictions on Facebook".
Social media, now barely 15 years old, in it's current form, has been steadily infiltrated by "anti-peoples". Many "closed societies" which have transitioned themselves online. The gender wars, trans-activism, the far-right, Antifa, QAnon, political and religious bigots and extreme hate-groups, all have gathered on the digital turf, feeding the algorithms, which begin to shape our daily intake and discourses. Meghan Murphy, Canadian writer and feminist, explains her experience with Twitter, after being expelled for life. "There's huge amounts of pornography on Twitter.. every porn-star and live-porn service mirrors on Twitter.. Also a number of misogynists, plus men who identify as female, who are also visible with certain trans-activism groups. Initially it was not clear, what these people identify themselves as.. Twitter would in effect protect certain men, who are dangerous to women and girls, online and in reality. Around these figures, were many men who openly promoted pornography and graphic violence. Speaking out against them proved incredibly difficult, contrary to what I initially imagined.. it's complete hypocrisy."
A decade ago, Twitter was valued as a platform where people had conversations and fought the public good. Was the "global public square". The blue bird's promise of free speech was but a short lived party. Twitter's algorithms and a handful editors, 'decide and punish' thousands of users 'en masse' everyday, for voicing unfavorable opinions, for speaking out against powerful men, for sharing content or links considered dangerous. Ah but pornography, teenagers going nude, gambling, sale of weapons, sex-dolls and guns is totally permissible on Twitter. The social media giant basically violates it's own palsy guidelines and rules more than any of it's users combined.
A vast number of journalists will swear by Twitter, and some cannot even function without it. Servitude or plain ease of reproduction? Mainstream media shows thousands of Tweets everyday, yet with zero consequences or recall value. Channels like CNN, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now etc etc. make a routine reading of tweets by Donald Trump or which-raving-lunatic-have-you-now! Yet some people are actually exiting Twitter, Whatsapp and Facebook. "A restaurant or bar is not allowed kick out a person because of their political beliefs and ideas... that is what Twitter did by suspending and then cancelling my account.. because I was speaking against certain harmful aspects of Queer Theory and exposing Twitter's punishment system.. They cancelled my account.. Some might say Twitter is not life and it's not important.. but that is just apathy! Twitter is more important than the New York Times and is shaping discourse.. applying censorship - subverting public outrage. The gender identity business is just one example..." says Meghan Murphy speaking to Deep Green Resistance, about how radical feminism has been hijacked and corrupted on Twitter, Wikipedia and Facebook.
The rationale offered by both Twitter and Facebook to justify censorship makes it more alarming, clearly hypocritical and a sign of things to come. Twitter does not like "hacked material" or whistle-blowers! A recent response by Twitter's management claimed : “Hacked Materials Policy”
which it says “commentary on or discussion about hacked
materials, such as articles that cover them but do not include or link
to the materials themselves” A recent study by Data Cube based in Switzerland, shows more than 135 million active tweets (links) directed to file sharing P2P sites such as Utorrent, BitTorrent, Folx, Seedr, Transmission etc - the nature of the content is everything we can imagine and share online - be it movies, music, pornography, private information, hate based propaganda, antisemitic and racist content, video footage of police violence, acts of terrorism, domestic violence and war footage. Twitter has no moral hitches hosting hate - which invites more traffic, clicks, comments, shares... Essentially profit over safety - a repeating specter of late capitalism. "Do we really want Twitter and Facebook serving as some sort of uber-editor for U.S.
media and journalism, deciding what information is suitable for the public to read and which should be hidden..." asks award winning journalist Gren Greenwald, in an INTERCEPT article.
What Greenwald is pointing to is not just the reality of American social media, but has proliferated it's ugly specter deep within nations like India, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Israel, Hungary, Germany and nations of Africa and Latin America. China being an exception to the list, because it's "exclusive leadership" maintains a complete (vicious) grip on all Chinese social media, way more efficiently than what Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter can achieve as of now. The censorship and AI based manipulation has spilled beyond social media. Rapidly emerging as future technology, we expect to see soon, even more wicked and hyper-competitive arenas which boldly brag that "Everyone else will find themselves in a perpetual game of catchup...."
Why does Wikipedia ban radical feminist and Marxist editors? War crimes committed by American presidents are always redacted on Wikipedia? Facebook bans people for speaking aloud conspiracy theories? Google pimps social and political content when it's paid, without any real verification. WordPress has censored several blogs about gender identity, radical environmentalism, BTC and NFT. YouTube has de-platformed straight women who are critical of mainstream queer theory. Ban videos not in favor of Vaccines? Vimeo censors video artists with virus related fiction? Are these the new churches of digital castigation? Careful! "May hurt someones feelings" we are told again and again. But Who is that "someone", and who controls a given disagreement will never be clear. Social media is mired in stiffing levels of bureaucracy. At the onset, AI and algorithm based social media seems gutted. AI does not have the capacity to sense (less control) what is actually good, useful or harmful. Perhaps the coders themselves were deeply flawed to begin with. Hence, what is social media again? "In 2019, a Facebook team report had a blunt message for senior executives. The
company’s algorithms weren’t bringing people together. They were driving
people apart." states Francis Haugen.
Facebook and Twitter are two platforms which aggravate polarization and tribal behavior. The following real life experiment goes to show how. In February 2019, a Facebook researcher created a new user account to experience the social media site as a person living in Kerala, India. For weeks, the account operated by a simple rule: Follow every recommendation generated by Facebook - join groups, watch videos, click away and explore every new suggestion. The result was an inundation of hate speech, typical fake-news and "celebrations of violence". The track record of which was eventually sent to Facebook as a report. The user was following AI based suggestions, which included pictures of dead bodies of Muslim people killed in India, rally videos of Narendra Modi, Catnip products and skin creams directed at dark-skinned women. Nearly 390 million people use Facebook everyday in India (currently the highest national demographic for Facebook) People use it as a source of news, entertainment and business. The fascist nature of the state and of Facebook collude perfectly! Yet just temporarily?
"It moves into a country without fully understanding its potential impact
on local culture and politics, and fails to deploy the resources to act
on issues once they occur" states a new article on the nature of Facebook's tech-colonialism. It's messianic leader, Mark Zuckerberg is surely aware that eventually it's about the "colonization of minds" - investing billions into VR and AI, stoked with visions of a life where every second is mapped for pleasure, yet even as the empire comes under fire from all sides, sliding down in value, battling it's own faulty vision, bureaucracy and algorithmic emancipation. As an article in the New Yorker naively chides "Why Can't Facebook Fix Itself" - while ignoring the decisive point - Why can't the writer (and his society) stop using Facebook itself?
A recent report by Statista shows that 40% of Facebook users in America consider quitting the platform altogether. 33% for Twitter and 21% for Instagram, 18% for Snapchat and TikTok. To imagine new ecosystems, or new institutions of social media, one has to divest from the current structures, which are clearly undermining freedom, safety and autonomy. Not just for a few thousands but billions of people. Dare we say that public opinion and habits can change, for the better and rapidly, if new possibilities are imagined and constructed bit by bit, resiliently... Simply put, the real owners of social media should be the public, and not a handful messianic capitalists. Log out, relax and call a friend!
