The Guardian reports today that:
A former Facebook executive has said he feels “tremendous guilt” over his work on “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works”, joining a growing chorus of critics of the social media giant.
I have to say I think this overstated.
I know I am biased. This is my 14,634th blog post in 11.5 years. And yes, I do have 46,000 Twitter followers. And a fair number of Facebook 'friends'. So I confess I have used social media extensively, and I think positively. I would be as blunt as to say that without social media the whole tax justice movement would not have happened in the way it did.
And I do see the impact on young people. My sons live, like so many do, by their phones and are near constantly engaged with them. But would I have done the same if I was their age? Yes, of course I would.
So is social media ripping society apart or changing the way it works? I think the latter. And for every fake news story I say there's always been fake news, and as importantly suppression of news, which is harder now. And for every abuse (and they clearly happen) I'd say there's also been silence that's permitted that abuse in the past.
I am not saying everything about social media is good because it is not. It does permit abuse, bullying, harassment, and more. But they exist anyway and I think that social media has increased awareness of those issues. So on balance I think social media is a force for good. So much so that please don't ask me to do without it: I really don't like the idea.
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But it’s all about the advertising and profiling, even to influencing the result of elections and attempting to control opinions and choices.
So was the posycode before it
Social media is here to stay. I think that we will develop an love/hate relationship with it.
All we have to do is learn to live with it and be aware of the pluses and the minuses.
However, make no mistake, it is the next battle ground for the ideas about how a decent society should work.
I can take or leave social media. All we do really is work for nothing and provide free content for a lot of sites. Might a time come when we will be paid for contributing? Because this is one of the reasons why the Net makes such much money.
I don’t do Facebook or Twitter. A lot of the content on social media I find to be nothing but tittle tattle – that sucks people in and away from more important issues?
My daughter is addicted to Snapcrap (sic). It’s very worrying. My biggest fear is that we cannot see who is manipulating opinion forming content on it. That is unacceptable.
I pay to do this
I don’t think I will be paying you any time soon
I don’t expect to be paid in my time but in the future I can see citizens being encouraged to take part on line with incentives or rewards for good ideas / contributions to policy or product development. In a world of decreasing paid work – why not consider it? Only greedy corporations and those wanting to act as gatekeepers would be against such an idea.
But the really important point for me is that of disclosure. You are up front about who sponsors you (as are others) but sites promoting BREXIT that seem to originating in former soviet bloc countries are a cause for some concern.
The Net needs more oversight and intervention in my opinion.
I think that point on disclosure very important
Having beneficial ownership data for companies is only a first step
I will muse on this
Pilgrim Slight Return says:
“The Net needs more oversight and intervention in my opinion.”
Who might you trust to perform the oversight and intervention ?
When net neutrality ends, Pilgrim, as it may shortly, you may find yourself unable even to access Facebook and your daughter Snapchat without paying hefty premiums over and above the cost of connection. Access will be governed by the large corporations who will be seeing off any competition by throttling or denying access to them. One hopes the Open Source community will come up with remedies for this as developers are with tv and radio. If not, your Googles, Amazons, Facebooks and Twitters will rule online for the foreseeable future, all alternatives, better or worse, never able to get off the ground. I could see a good case for throttling access to this very blog, for instance, given Richard’s openly-held views on tax and who should be paying more of it.
“A former Facebook executive has said he feels “tremendous guilt” over his work on “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works”, …”
Presumably he means that he feels guilty about having undermined the elite grip on information? 🙂
It’s just a tool which grants ‘leverage’ to humans for activity they wish to perform.
In the same manner that a long-handled shovel gives leverage to digging (you can shift more, quicker and deeper), an A-frame lends leverage to lifting (you can lift more, quicker and higher), and a gun gives leverage to killing (more, quicker and further away), social media tools allow more people to write, read and interact than ever before.
So every aspect of human nature gets amplified and broadcast further, quicker and more often now. The good stuff is more accessible and more frequent but the bad stuff is as well.
I would show the Facebook executive the front pages of the Mail, Express and Sun for oh say the last 10 years.
Remind him these headlines and pictures are seen daily by almost everyone in the whole of the UK.
Then ask him who has done the most damage. Social Media or the Tabloid press.
Brenda Steele says:
December 12 2017 at 9:36 am
“…….. Mail, Express and Sun …….Remind him these headlines and pictures are seen daily by almost everyone in the whole of the UK..”
You exaggerate the reach of these titles I think, Brenda.
But I agree with the general point that these titles have a controlled content in the way the internet does not. The internet offers a platform for all agendas and to a considerable extent an opportunity to challenge that agenda in a way the press and other media can chose to simply ignore. And they do.
Their reach is primarily amongst the older generation – ones who are not interested in politics – but who vote.
Brenda Steele says:
December 13 2017 at 10:03 am
“Their reach is primarily amongst the older generation — ones who are not interested in politics — but who vote.”
Agreed.
I’m cheered every time I see that their circulation is dwindling. Increasingly I think they are not replacing their deceased readership which means their advertisers are finding it increasingly expensive, and ineffective, to support their agenda.
The upcoming generations get much of their ‘news’ for non-paper sources. It is television (particularly the BBC) which concerns me more. The BBC ethos feels disconcertingly pro ‘establishment’, but I guess it always was. (for the most part I only get BBC by radio – or ‘wireless’ as I prefer to call it!)
Social media just reflects the whole range of different opinions out there. So many people get offended, well tuff, Don’t engage in it if your offended. Freedom of speech is everything, The good the bad and the ugly. I wonder if he’s just upset because he sees how effective Social Media can be resulting in a Trump election? (no fan of Trump) The Irony!
“suppression of news, which is harder now” Suppression of news is harder until net neutrality is gone. Then I fear it will become quite simple.
I am not sure
But you may be right
Andy
I would trust a State as envisioned by a chap called Richard Murphy to mind the internet as part of its proactive role. For example, the Net is used far too much for selling stuff – a lot of it that we do not need. I think that abuse on line should not be tolerated and abusers should be identified and banned.
And yes – there is always the risk that an intentionally benign system can be harnessed for darker reasons which is why we need democracy – with all its frailties – to be involved.
Brenda
A point well made.
Bill
‘Net neutrality’. Tell me – has this ever actually existed as a practice as well as a principle? I do not think so. I see the Net really as just a huge morass of information – good and bad. True – the balance between the two extremes is vulnerable to interference by sinister interests but as you say the open access movement is still in there. Whoever wishes to try control the Net – whether a Fascist, Left, Corporate bully or Green will have their work cut to restore whatever standards are agreed. In a particularly strange way, the diversity in terms of access and reach of the Net makes it hard for anyone control! This is a known fact.
The fact that I am putting forward a means of monitoring and even controlling the Net does not mean I want it controlled for control’s sake but in order to control behaviours and incitement.
Pilgrim , I think you are being un characteristically idealistic in some of your stated desires for the future of the interweb.
“I would trust a State as envisioned by a chap called Richard Murphy to mind the internet as part of its proactive role.” You mean a much more genuinely democratically controlled state than one that has ever existed or is indeed ever likely to exist.
“For example, the Net is used far too much for selling stuff — a lot of it that we do not need. ” Nothing to see here in my opinion. I agree with your sentiment about selling stuff that nobody needs, but when did you last go into even a small supermarket? _ who needs fifty seven different brands and delivery systems for laundry detergent?
The contrary argument for the web as a market place is that it can provide great efficiencies in bringing together buyers and sellers; often selling to dispose of something which may otherwise end up in landfill or otherwise wasted. Every high street has shops offering for sale things which any one individual will never buy or even want. In this respect the Interweb is just one more market place. There will always be issues as with any market – there will be unscrupulous traders who put sand in the sugar and chalk in the flour and sell without declaring for income tax etc. We have rafts of legislation which we have developed over generations to deal with this and it will need to be applicable to the online world in a way that makes it ‘safer’ to trade there. We don’t require different rules merely ways of making existing rules applicable.
“I think that abuse online should not be tolerated and abusers should be identified and banned.” Richard does this, as do many web managers. It’s what moderators are for. I think perhaps the process should be more widely applied, but total exclusion from the internet is not something that should be considered lightly.
I absolutely do not trust government to manage the internet. At the very least it should be considered as a parliamentary (cross party) function to establish ground rules and seek to enforce them and I would wish to see entirely non-political members of any such regulating body. AND it would necessarily need to have international application. Bear in mind that this whole communication phenomenon is in its infancy still. Twenty (?) years ago it didn’t even exist.
From what you are saying I think you need to consider your instincts carefully on this issue. The proportion of abuse to utility is minuscule I think. Probably about par for the course in human interaction.
Abuse here is under 10%
But possibly beause I block after a while so people give up
Abuse here is under 10%
But possibly because I block after a while so people give up
Absolutely. Nobody keeps posting responses to a blog if it doesn’t see the light of day.
Either they give up (and perhaps abuse somebody else) or if they have something they feel the ‘need’ to say they moderate their tone and content so the moderator doesn’t need to and their opinion can be considered and argued/debated.
An exemplary policy, Richard if you will pardon my sycophancy 🙂
You are forgiven
It does take a lot of effort
What is needed is education at home and in schools about Social Media, along with tighter and enforceable regulations on its most destructive users.
These users would, in the past, have always existed. They would have acted more or less un-noticed, unreported, unchallenged, unpunished.
They are still around by the way. Not everyone uses Social Media.
Education is key, it’s the most basic step towards self-protection and the protection of the most at risk: children and vulnerable adults.
Social Media can also do so much to counter the bias of other, more controlled-when not censured- traditional media. It can spread news so fast, allowing opinions to be formed and expressed, campaigns to be organised.
It’s here to stay, it needs tweaking, like anything else.
Marie Thomas says:
December 13 2017 at 9:19 am
“…What is needed is education at home and in schools about Social Media,…..
………These users would, in the past, have always existed. They would have acted more or less un-noticed, unreported, unchallenged, unpunished.
Upto a point that’s right Marie, but one element of control that has been sadly depleted is social cohesion. In a village (and the same would have been true to a large extent in urban ‘villages’) ‘everybody’ knew who the villains and dodgy characters were and the children knew who to avoid or be wary of without necessarily even knowing why.
The irony of the era of mass communication is the extent to which we are all alone and therefore vulnerable in our own little world.
Without social media,we might have missed this “https://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/the-tories-and-dup-are-plotting-to-use.html”
” on the evening of December 12th 2017 the Tories and their DUP backers/puppet-masters joined forces to defeat Amendment 158 to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill by 315 votes to 291.
Amendment 158 sought to prevent the Westminster government from misusing the powers they were awarding themselves to amend EU derived laws in order to undermine the powers of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
This safeguard is vitally important because there are plenty in the Tory and DUP ranks who would dearly love to restrict the power of the devolved parliaments, if not scrap them altogether.
All 13 of the Tory MPs representing Scottish seats voted with the government to let them keep the power to alter or revoke devolved powers from their own national parliament without any parliamentary scrutiny of what they are actually up to!
Unless you follow SNP or Plaid Cymru politicians on Twitter you will have heard very little about this vote because the mainstream media have decided to completely ignore it.”
Media silence on this seems to be total.