The dark side of social media
There have been comprehensive reports about the part that social media platforms, and in particular Facebook (or as it’s now called “Meta”), plays in world affairs; the algorithms that push people toward extreme content, the weight that is given to posts that get angry reactions, the fake numbers, the people trafficking, paedophile rings, genocide, religious wars, terrorism, illegal gun sales and millions of malicious social media bots that are used to artificially amplify the popularity of a person or movement, influencing elections, manipulating financial markets, amplify phishing attacks, spreading spam and disinformation and shutting down free speech by overwhelming the voices of protestors.
The metaverse
Why did Facebook change its name? There are many reasons for this but the one Facebook prefers is that they have made huge investments in Virtual Reality technology, selling virtual meeting platforms to businesses with remote workforces (you may have seen the stomach cramping adverts with Nick Clegg.) The advertising potential for a captive audience strapped into their headsets is huge.
Definitions of the metaverse vary; a series of interconnected worlds and experiences made possible by a new wave of open technologies; the utopia of true self-expression via holistic digital identities, democratised content creation and asset ownership. It’s a slick narrative, and a booming industry filled with experimentation and anticipation.
But there are red flags everywhere. Zuckerberg said that he wants to make young people his priority over the next 10 years, which feels like shorthand for saying he wants the next generation to be even more tied to social media than the current one.
According to research earlier this year from the Education Policy Institute [EPI] and The Prince’s Trust, one in three girls are now unhappy with their personal appearance by the age of 14, compared with one in seven at the end of primary school. And the number of young people with probable mental illness has risen to one in six, up from one in nine in 2017.
The really dark side
Can it get worse? Yes, unfortunately, there are some aspects of social media and how advertising revenue is used that are not widely discussed.
There’s a deep, dark, murky hole full of piranhas and leeches. Its called AdTech. It’s software that decides where adverts should be placed on line. Often the advertisers — the people paying for this service — don’t know where their ads are placed or who is benefitting from their revenue. This is a massively oversimplified explanation but it’s how some of the very worst operators like extremist groups, violent instigators, and disinformation sites get funded. When an advertiser discovers what’s going on and withdraws their adverts — and revenue, the followers and fans of these groups flood the switchboards of the companies concerned and target their staff and customers with threats of violence. If you want to know more about this I recommend this newsletter Branded
Fraud in Adtech is huge and getting bigger by the day with the introduction of more and more automated bots that enable criminal organisations to siphon off millions of pounds from the brands that think they’re getting lots of clicks on their ads when they’re often on fake sites that no humans ever see.
The Daily Wire is a hard right news channel run by Ben Shapiro whose stated goal is “to unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases”. The Daily Wire has an undisclosed relationship with Facebook pages owned by Mad World News — a notorious site that exploits Facebook’s algorithm to promote racism & violence. They take stories on incendiary topics, rewrite them, and let Facebook’s algorithm do the rest.
On a per article basis, The Daily Wire receives more distribution on Facebook than any other publisher. The undisclosed relationship between Ben Shapiro and Mad World News violates Facebook’s rules. You are required to disclose when you are posting content for money. Facebook also bans “artificially boosting the popularity of content” which Mad World blatantly does. Facebook has chosen not to act against Shapiro and others like him, including Steve Bannon, former adviser to Trump.
Is there more?
Yes I’m afraid so. Some people say it’s not the fault of the platforms that this sort of thing happens and it’s the fault of people not behaving responsibly. If a lot of the things that make it into the public domain are unacceptable, think about what doesn’t make it and who keeps it out. There are thousands of “content moderators”, earning very little, often paid by how many pieces of content they review and not on a salary or even an hourly rate, who view videos and photos of the most unspeakable acts in order keep them off our screens. Many of them suffer PTSD because of the things they see.
All of this could be avoided if the platforms required people to be identified and accountable for the content they submit. They choose not to because ti would dramatically affect their user numbers and that would affect their ad revenue. I know there are some good reasons for political dissidents to be able to post anonymously but on balance the greater good would be served by having some accountability.
By participating in the platforms we become the product. We add to the numbers that attract advertisers to spend their ad revenue there and keep the whole thing going. It’s a mess and there’s a lot of money involved at every level so it’s not going to get sorted anytime soon. That means it’s up to each of us to decide how much we engage with it.
Fortunately, as small business owners we’re able to make those decisions and there are alternative ways to get sales — most of them a lot more satisfying.
