As it currently stands, social media is a domineering force in society. The internet has gone through a process akin to that of capitalism in that the necessity for small businesses has dwindled. The maintenance of a social media site is reliant upon both combining a functional one-stop-shop for a multitude of services enjoyed by users, as well as preying upon human weakness. This human weakness is targeted in a multitude of ways, and primarily in the case of social media, it turns the use of the site into an addiction. Notifications that can be perceived with both sight and sound are capable of inciting a Pavlovian effect that keeps people looking in hopes of receiving something positive. Likes offer a short-form validation without needing a single bit more input from a user on the opposing end but a tap or a click on a button. This leaves people coming back for more validation consistently through the platforms.
For many, social media can function as a prime alternative to many different websites and purchasable services. With only a wi-fi connection, you can access a website that allows for you to communicate with anyone you know, anywhere in the world, instantly, at any time. Instant messaging is a social media standard, and the options it allows for range from simple text based messages to photos and videos to voice messages. There are so many options within the few tech giants controlling social media that it gives many little reason to explore anywhere else on the internet outside of these select few websites. This contrasts with the early stages of the internet during and following the Dot Com Boom, which was a world that needed search engines in order to find the specific sites you might be looking for. It was a much more varied internet that allowed for many more inventive ways to have an individual web experience. However, this is lost today in the current internet landscape. While many of the positives are very good, giving a select few companies with exclusively profit motive full range of control over the attention of nearly 2/3rds of the world population with internet access.
Algorithms have been designed to better cater to the interests of users as well, which start out niche, but due to the lack of complexity in these bits of code, they eventually push toward an extreme direction. While starting off, a person may only look at a site like YouTube for certain kinds of videos, they may slowly be grouped into a greater overlapping niche that requires less work on the end of the algorithmic functions. Videos are linked into the system and are sent out to millions who have been placed into a specific category of person that is no longer in their own, individual, niche corner, but makes up a large population who is being fed the same exact information. This becomes incredibly dangerous once the factor of fear is included. Titles that shout an extreme inspire fear or outrage in an individual, and it becomes much more likely that a person will click on those. Even a single click onto one of these articles, videos, or likes on an account can lead to a streamlined page of content feeding into a precise ideology that preaches a world that is irredeemable and plagued by a certain group of people.
With youths specifically involved in social media, it can be extremely dangerous on their impressionable minds. However, a group of people that seems to lack quite a bit of discussion as they often trust that they are free from naivety is the massive crowd of boomers and gen x’ers using Facebook and repeating information that could be outright lies as if that’s the reality they’re living in. I believe a large scale example of such an event was during the capital riots, in which we most frequently saw grown adults in their 40s as opposed to the youths that can be started at most urban protests. Working in retail and food service has given me an especially personal look, with older Americans reciting details of Communist takeovers through credit cards, vaccines containing the mark of the beast (causing all who receive it to be sent to hell), and two week long meat shortages purportedly being attempts at global starvation, to which they will respond by cannibalizing their neighbors rather than pursuing farming or any method humans have used for tens of thousands of years in the past.
Government regulation can only go so far when the government in itself is too easily avoided by a company. Amazon can avoid spending billions of dollars in a multitude of taxes based on their involvement in the government as well as playing with a few of the loopholes in tax laws regarding intellectual property. In addition, they receive billions in tax exemption every year. The days of muckraking are long gone, and a few lone companies have prevailed on top, leaving small businesses essentially as legal mercy so that they can still be justified under the law. Social media has offered quite a bit of freedom to business owners in maintaining a monopoly over internet users sheerly based on the plethora of websites that exist being able to counter the argument that their existence makes up such a massive part of market share, and only within the last two years has been brought into questioning regarding their control.
With the thought of government regulation in mind, it would be within the best interest of these companies that free capitalist laws are continuously enforced, making it incredibly convenient that these are the types of beliefs that spread like wildfire on social media, transfiguring an egomaniac child rapist born into billions of dollars of wealth like Donald Trump into the savior of the small man. The rights of monopolistic business owners are being upheld specifically on account of the algorithms of social media over the individual, and there is being little done to combat it. Social media has allowed for simple defenses that people once had against the shackles of people like Jeff Bezos to become synonymous with extremist ideologies and Communism, rather than basic common sense. It’s a machine that feeds itself, trapping people into a bubble of never-ending fear, sacrificing their rights in favor of becoming militant members of a violent business government.
The greatest responsibility of social media is to their users, as any government has. However, to turn social media into something humane rather than something disgustingly human in a way that encourages man’s greatest vices would require an incredible restructuring. At the same time, considering these, it brings to question how much of user content can be blamed on the site itself. The algorithms achieve what is ideal for the company, and it uses specifically user content. In the end, I find myself puzzled and greatly without answer. There are extreme changes required that could restructure notifications, algorithms, the placement of advertisements, and the amount of control businesses have over what you see, but then what? What could be done with user content? The same collections of lies with sprinklings of verifiable truth can still flourish. Perhaps there is a greater problem with the state of technology altogether that can be put to questioning.
