Friends & Family or Facebook Fools & Twits?
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” –Voltaire
Facebook’s Founder stated “We are not a media company, we’re a tech company.”
Zuckerberg’s remark is like a porn director saying, “We’re not a porn company, we’re a film company.” Each runs a business using technology – computer and camera. One sells sex and one sells data.
Days of hidden diaries of our personal and most exciting moments are gone.
Gone are the days of armies sending short coded messages or George Kennan writing “Long Telegrams.”
Gone are the days of passing messages in class or the babble of social chain letters.
And, Gone are the days of sending hidden messages via penguins.
Not a chance! Those days are still here but on the Net and controlled by “the hand” and a “stinking bird.”
“Tweet = $ ?” Yep, one man’s tweet, is another’s trea$ure.
Ice Cream Socials and Smashes
“I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ice Cream!”
“It’s not hard to explain why we seem eager to do our bit to maintain the march of Zuckerberg’s Law. Social sites are like Skinner boxes: we press the Like button and are rewarded with attention and interaction from our friends. It doesn’t take long to get conditioned to that reward.” – Paul Boutin
According to Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and Thomas Cooley professor of ethical leadership at the NYU-Stern School of Business, authors of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, “Social media makes it extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors…”
But if one can turn a channel why not simply turn to a different webpage? Internet facilitated the transition of spectators in a T.V. audience to an online social show. There are no “safe spaces” for youth in crises. Haidt and Cooley are clear:
“We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades… The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising…“felt overwhelming anxiety” … Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile…”
A “cancel culture” and blacklisting of tenured-track teachers is also real. Likes or Dislikes are not always rewarding. “Rate my professor” was intended to judge a teacher’s competence and the difficulty of a class.
However, “social media has also fundamentally shifted the balance of power in relationships between students and faculty; the latter increasingly fear what students might do to their reputations and careers by stirring up online mobs against them” as Haidt and Cooley point out.
What I see here is a socially manufactured phenomenon. Congress appears to be stuck between a rock and a hard place – Capitalism and 1st Amendment. Even if the hard law of freedom of speech was to be softened up so as not to be extended to platforms, it is unrealistic to impose regulation let alone conduct oversight of billions of messages.
Sure, former employees of social media and tech companies have blown the whistle. But did you really not see this coming? Perhaps you should have listened to shareholders.
INSIDER INFORMATION
Facebook May 2019 Annual Shareholders Meeting offered some insight as to investors. Men and women of all backgrounds and ages. Asset management companies, public policy think tanks, retirement fund, and non-profits.
I’d like to highlight their concerns: “Chairman; Bias against conservatives; Human rights, hate speech, hate crimes; Chairman and CEO “continue to hold the keys to the castle,” Gender and racial diversity and pay; Genocide, “Break up of Facebook inc….independent directors to maximize shareholder value,” “Facebook is out of control,” “it is too large and too complex to be managed effectively,” “My neighborhood…has become unsafe.”
After the last shareholder voiced their proposal and concerns, Facebook representative concluded, “Based on the preliminary tabulations by the inspector of election each of proposals 5-12 has been rejected by the requisite majority of the votes passed.”
Zuckerberg: “This has been a busier year than most.”
Questions/concerns? Shareholder asked “Would you be willing to step down from you role as Chair and cede your super voting shares that’s really my question?”
Former employees and shareholders, the problem for some of you is that you gave the Chairman, the Board and the company the benefit of the doubt and for others your loyalty was misplaced. It’s easy to critique a money making company after you’ve liked and shared in the profits.
Break Them Down
Alternative? Online platform is “free.” Why not raise internet fees? Simple. Industry profits but users are punished.
Alternative? Government control? Sure, works effectively in communist countries. According to “The Law of Online Sharing” by Paul Boutin in the January/February 2012 issue of MIT Technology Review, “The potential for GPS-equipped cell phones to become location trackers, should the government demand access to our data, has long concerned some people.”
News Flash! Guess who invested in these “tech” companies. Pentagon & Intelligence Agencies.
Final alternative? Break them down, not up.
After being “broken up,” AT&T reemerged greater than the sum of its parts; subsequent multiple acquisitions reportedly included absorbing or “buying back” some of its decomposed “baby bells.”
Note: Small is relative and does not necessarily entail being weak. As Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg was noted in saying, “We think one of the best ways to stay small is just to stay smaller.”
It seems to me this has been the game plan all along for media socials. Grow big and fast no matter the human carnage till government finally gets around to “breaking us up.” Complexity of many would make it harder for US government to regulate as the new “baby books” can set up shop around the globe.
Or, sold. China and Russia, are you listening?
When Reality Sets In
“Today, the law of social sharing is a useful way to think about the rise of social computing, but eventually reality will make it obsolete.” – Paul Boutin
Virtually all communication has been replaced with a smartphone text. Oh, but this is neither new nor “innovative.” Heard of Western Union and the Telegraph? It and other companies like it were the means of fast communication since before the Civil War. Question: Need to be original for success? Ask “Tweedy Bird”, “Beeper”, and “Twitter.”
Today, in the 21st century, what do WE have to show for “progress?” A 3×5 inch gadget. Serious concern over something this size used to be a pack of cigarettes. How did a device replace vital physical social interaction and become addictive 24/7 for many around the world?
Social media platforms are no different than talk-shows where angry family and friends are outed on live T.V. Still, on an online global stage one is not judged by a jury of one’s peers but in the “court of public opinion.”
From a child to the President, what does it say of a society that stands powerless to mindless, unhealthy and dangerous dialogue? Addiction and being “wired” have much in common.
Fools, just cut the Facebook strings and click the “kill switch” on your device to be released from “the hand” that’s jerking you. It’s about time YOU give IT the thumbs down and the finger. 🙂