The Story of Their Liking

Summer 2020

Introduction

Human beings are social species by nature. In this new digital world, people are using social media to stay connected with each other every day. There are over 3.725 billion active social media users and the average time spent is over 142 minutes a day (Smith “Amazing Social Statistics”). Most people enjoy the ability to chat, read the news, share images/videos of their lives, and play games on popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit. However, there is a dark side to these social media platforms where hate, misinformation, and racism spreads like wildfire which could lead to the destruction of the spare fabric of society.

I grew up with very limited access to social media, unlike an average teenager. Most of my friends in early high school were all hooked up in the inciting world of social media, while I was reluctantly in the background. Towards the end of high school, my parents gave me permission to open up my own Facebook account for academic purposes only (of course). I started by joining my 11th grade Physics group and adding all my classmates. Initially, I really enjoyed the experience and started adding non-academic people (friends and family). The more active I became on Facebook, I started noticing an unusual trend with my feed. While most of the people I know on Facebook were apolitical, some had a politically active voice and views. Facebook initially was unaware of my political views, so I received both liberal and conservative content. After my interactions (liking and commenting) with many posts; my feed drastically shaped according to my political stance and views. It kept showing me what I wanted to see and listen to. I realized that this was the constant satisfaction social media users were receiving by viewing feed that represented one side of the story; the story of their liking.

You can see it with the current COVID-19 pandemic, where some people choose not to wear a mask because some political warrior decided it would infringe their personal rights. Unfortunately, the people wearing the masks are not getting the full benefit, as COVID-19 keeps on spreading. Even if those anti-mask people refused to wear a mask after telling them the benefits (through the social media posts), at least the information was presented to them (information parity). These social media platforms do not show the other side, because they want to keep you pleased and stay longer on their platform. Ultimately, these social media platforms lead to an immense hate and low tolerance for other perspectives which results in the “boxed” mentality within social media users. Finally, after experiencing this devastating trend on Facebook, I deactivated my account in college. It is always good to reduce toxicity in one's life.

Solvable Problem?

One of the greatest physicists of all time, Albert Einstein, has a wonderful quote on solving problems: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. This principle fundamentally addresses the reason for the growing cancer of hate and misinformation spreading all across social media. We cannot exclusively depend on social media companies to address hate and misinformation because they lack consciousness of the monster that they have created. 

In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) testified in front of the United States Congress, on how Facebook deals with transparency and consumer data. Zuckerberg stated in his opening remarks, “And that goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I am sorry. I started Facebook. I run it. And at the end of the day, I am responsible for what happens here. So now we have to go through every part of our relationship with people to make sure that we are taking a broad enough view of our responsibility” (“Facebook: Transparency and Use of Consumer Data”). Zuckerberg clearly knew he screwed up dealing with hate and misinformation on his platform and promised he was going to make amends and make Facebook a platform for all. Since that committee investigation, Facebook hasn’t done much to really address the issues and actually a recent WSJ article, Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive, paints a very dark image of the ethical values of the higher ups at Facebook. In the WSJ article, Facebook found in 2016 that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and Facebook declined to respond to WSJ if any changes were made since then (Horwitz, Jeff, and Deepa Seetharaman “Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive”.)

So if we cannot trust these social media companies, what is stopping society from dealing with this social media issue? In my opinion, a major obstacle is the addiction to social media and the internet at large. As a lot of people get addicted to these platforms, they choose to ignore the immense hate and misinformation going on in order to get their “high”.  

Personal Story 

Luckily, I was fortunate enough not to be hooked up to social media at a young age, but I witnessed the consequences of this addiction from one of my former best friends. In middle school, I was very good friends with one of my classmates Justin. Justin and I would hang out a lot and we even played basketball on the same junior varsity team. After one of our basketball practice sessions, Justin told me his mom had recently signed up for Facebook. He further told me that she has been enjoying the platform a lot and was basically hooked. Justin's mom was slowly getting herself occupied into her own social media world. Justin’s mom started missing his basketball practices and soon his games. It became a routine that other moms would drop off Justin or his dad over the weekend for practices/games. Later in the semester, Justin created his own Facebook account to play a new Facebook Game which became very popular in school. Unfortunately, Justin became addicted to the whole Facebook platform like his mom. 

I remember in the middle of the school year, I texted Justin to work on some homework and play a game of basketball with me after school. Justin responded late to my text, saying that he was busy at the moment. This continued to worsen and eventually, I stopped meeting with him at lunch breaks/after school. Due to the Facebook addiction, Justin had become completely consumed by the virtual sociability of social media. Eventually, spending time with Justin in basketball games and after school meetups had condensed down to a hand-wave or nod at a distance. Instead of seeing him actively play basketball on the court, his addiction kept him active on Facebook. Like the many real-life friends in Justin’s social circle, I had grown distant from him as his addiction grew with time. After middle school, Justin had only remained as a classmate and unfortunately turned into a very different person.

A deeper story!

When looking deep at the (good or bad) influence social media companies have on a functioning society, we need to look back at history and try to find parallels to get a better insight. During the late 19th century, the United States was in rapid economic boom becoming the most powerful industrial economy in the world ($1.9B to $13B), but also the poverty rate and wealth inequality was increasing. That era was called the Gilded Age, because “beneath all the gold and glitter one found disturbing economic, social and political trends”. In my opinion, we are currently living in Gilded Age 2.0, with technology corporations holding the reigns of government and the wealth inequality still increasing at an alarming rate. During the COVID-19 pandemic, billionaires got over $637 billion dollar richer, awhile the unemployment rate increased faster in first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic than the two years of the Great Recession (“Unemployment Rose Higher”).

In 2019, Facebook achieved a personal congress lobbying record with $16.7 million dollars sent to Washington, an increase of $4 million from 2018 (“Facebook’s Lobbying Activities”). It was a smart move by Facebook, as some government officials wanted to open antitrust investigations but the dark money flowing in helped to fight against any major inquiries and keep corporate taxes lower. Just like in the first Gilded Age, large corporations such as Facebook are still more concerned about profits over people!

Another insight we can find during the Gilded Age is with wage slavery. Big business would give the illusion that their workers were free (they could live and eat where they wanted), but in reality they were held hostage because of low pay and no job security. This scare tactic of big business was used to prevent worker uprising and keep the money flow straight to their pockets. In modern day, I see parallels with the addiction towards social media/internet. People think they are free, because they are willingly signing up in using these services. Which is true, but in reality big corporations are controlling the narrative for their interest. They invade your privacy to make more money (targeted ads) and divide users in “groups” to even target you with more ads. Once you lose the control from these social media platforms, you become enslaved.

Chomsky mentions a similar concept of the democratic citizen or participant not being truly free, but tied to a screen in Requiem for the American Dream. The American people have been directed towards “superficial things of life like fashionable consumption”. The rich and powerful want naive consumers who will spend money irrationally due to heavy advertising. The ability to customize our world/reality is not good for the democratic citizen because we put our prejudice biases and opinions, and lose empathy towards real issues facing our society. The rich and powerful use social media as an instrument to control the “bewildered herd”, for the wealth and power.  

Vice

Now I want to go over a Vice documentary called Charlottesville: Race and Terror, where reporter Elle Reeve seeks out to reveal the ideology and strategy of white nationalist leaders through the broadcast of the “Unite the Right'' rally. The rally gathered hundreds of individuals who consisted of neo-Nazis and white supremacists along with the other opposing protesters (BLM). Due to the presence of both counterparties, tensions began to rise that resulted in violence, severely injured people, and even one casualty. At one of the protests in Downtown Mall Charlottesville, the unfortunate event of a neo-Nazi speeding his car into a peaceful crowd of counterprotesters illustrated the severe consequences that result from diversion and bigotry. 

One of the key members of the “Unite the Right” rally was Robert “Azzmador” Ray, an neo-Nazi feature writer for the Daily Stormer. During the rally, Elle asks Robert, “So what do you hope to get out of today? What does it mean to you?” Robert responded back, “...it means that we’re showing to this parasitic class of anti-white vermin that this is our country, this country was built by our forefathers and sustained by us. It’s going to remain our country. I believe, as you can see, we are stepping off the internet in a big way.” His words reflect the ignorance and racial hatred that still prevails to this day. Robert exemplifies his ignorance of the foundational growth of American economic-power and history. Enslaved African-American labor played a huge impact on the early agriculture culmination (cotton, tobacco, coffee, sugar..) and infrastructure that helped boost America economic growth in the 17th and 18th centuries. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics only started in 1972 to consistently gather data on African American workers, hence it took our democractic government that long to record the African Americans hard work and create “meaningful policies or labor legislations'' (“African American Workers Built America”).

Moreover, people who share the same ideology as Robert can broadcast their message on social media, which can lead to extreme events unleashing chaos and destruction. Robert states in the Vice documentary, that his main goal, “I believe, as you can see, we are stepping off the internet in a big way. For instance last night at the torch walk, there were hundreds and hundreds of us. People realized that they are not itemized individuals, they are part of a larger whole because we have been spreading our memes, we have been organizing on the internet, and so not they’re coming out. We greatly outnumbered the anti-white, anti-American filth.” As you can see this strategy of using the internet/social media to facilitate mass gathering of white supremacists is helping them to grow in number. Hence, the underlying power of these platforms is functioning as a tool to grow the presence of hate and ignorance. 

Yet, many white supremacists argue that they lack freedom of speech to express their ideas on social media. The organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally, Jason Kessler stated, “It really is a sad day in our constitutional democracy when we are not able to have civil liberties like the First Amendment. That’s what leads to rational discussion and ideas breaking down and people resorting to violence.” The issue I have with this statement is that our society cannot have a rational dialogue between two opposing ideologies because the facts are cherry-picked for people's agenda. Freedom of speech gives you the right to express your opinions, not to distort facts or history into a false narrative for others to believe. One of the promising attributes of social media is to exercise the right to express with a wide variety of individuals. However, this is leading our society to a dangerous slope of confirmation bias. Inevitably, people are going to express hate towards opposing ideologies. Algorithms in social media organize groups of individuals with common ideologies through a recommender system. Hence, these platforms are making matters worse by confining their perceptions to constantly view content that reconfirms their beliefs. Therefore, individuals assume that they have true freedom, yet “Big Brother” decides what you want to hear and see. 

Without a doubt, social media acts as an amplifying megaphone for repugnant speech and racist views. It makes people start believing this is the fundamental truth. Racist people see the web or social media platforms as an ideal place where they can openly post comments and manipulation with all forms of religious hatred and sectarianism, blinding people with these ideologies.

Solutions       

When I was thinking about possible solutions to fix issues facing social media platforms, I struggled to find one comprehensive solution with little to no flaws. The biggest dilemma was trying to deal with many different agendas and moral compasses people have. If you give complete freedom and no regulations to these social media platforms, hate and misinformation will continue to grow like now. If you put heavy regulations from the government to these social media platforms, then you are putting too much trust in future governments, plus dark money is almost inevitable going to flow in. 

So, the best solution I can think of is creating a democratic structure within these social media corporations, where the power is distributed more evenly. Right now the board of directors and large institutional shareholders control the majority of the power in these social media corporations. Due to this, they are more inclined to increase profit margins than help people, because their stock options and equity goes up. If we distribute the power towards the lower levels, we can remove some of these partialities in making important decisions. The government should create more checks and balances for these social media corporations and require annual reports to encourage good behavior. Also, the discouragement of the constant supply of dopamine feed through these social platforms that promotes hate, violence, crime, and racism is important in order to maintain tranquility in the society. 

One more step can be taken by the government is to create a neutral institutions for public protection. These institutions will keep an eye on the business models and business ethics of these corporations. Such institutions should not be allowed to take any kind of funds from the corporations, to prevent any loopholes that corporate attorneys always seem to make. Transparency and honesty should be displaced at all times to protect public interest. 

Conclusion   

Social media can be a very toxic place for netizens as it can become a source for repugnant and heinous words and ideas that spread like plague. Our constant desire to stay connected with our friends and family has somewhat turned society into an atomized breeding ground of toxicity. Events like Charlottesville that only reflect terror and prejudice are ignited by social media platforms. We need to implement principles of Direct Democracy to help regulate these social media platforms. When wrong people get their hands on powerful and uncontrollable platforms ……the world becomes a difficult place to live in!

Works Cited

Smith, Kit. “126 Amazing Social Media Statistics and Facts.” Brandwatch, 30 Dec. 2019.

“FACEBOOK: TRANSPARENCY AND USE OF CONSUMER DATA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2018 House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Washington, D.C.” Docs.house.gov, 11 Apr. 2018.

Horwitz, Jeff, and Deepa Seetharaman. “Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 26 May 2020.

O'Donnell, Edward T. “Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0 ?” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 15 June 2018, www.history.com/news/second-gilded-age-income-inequality.

Kochhar, Rakesh. “Unemployment Rose Higher in Three Months of COVID-19 than It Did in Two Years of the Great Recession.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 27 July 2020.

Gupta, Ruchi. “Facebook's Lobbying Activities Take 5% of Non-Advertising Revenue.” Market Realist, Market Realist, 6 Feb. 2020.

“African American Workers Built America.” CLASP, 5 Aug. 2020.

“Requiem for the American Dream”. Tubi, 1 Jan. 2016.

VICE. “Charlottesville: Race and Terror – VICE News Tonight on HBO”. YoutTube . 14 Aug. 2017.