Digital anxieties
Unplugging is tempting. But before taking that drastic step we should first acknowledge the fact that we have given US companies, which control our access to the online world, unparalleled power.
Daily TribuneUnplugging is tempting. But before taking that drastic step we should first acknowledge the fact that we have given US companies, which control our access to the online world, unparalleled power.
In these highly charged times of entrenched political polarization, it’s a common anxiety each time you scroll down your Facebook feed. An anxiety that rises after an old friend unapologetically posts what you assess to be fake news or an unhinged argument on a hot-button political issue that makes you end up wondering: “What happened to him?”
Thereafter, you smugly speculate that your friend’s enthusiastic political fanaticism is evidence of his either being gaslighted or brainwashed by his encounters on Facebook. But what if he is also thinking the exact same thing about you? It’s a dilemma not easy to resolve, it turns out.
Yet, that’s but one dilemma, since you’ve also concluded that social media has a lot to do with your and your friend’s current frame of mind. Still, social media is here to stay, begging the question: Is unplugging from social media the only way out?
Unplugging is tempting. But before taking that drastic step we should first acknowledge the fact that we have given US companies, which control our access to the online world, unparalleled power. And, such power over us requires that we urgently know what they are up to.
What they are doing, of course, is conducting pure and simple capitalism, which isn’t surprising.
“Their main concern is profit and market share, which favors both the proliferation of content and algorithms guiding us to the loudest and most polarizing (political) statements,” as one critic observes.
In recent times, however, this ruthless economic self-interest has led to some troubling moves.
Facebook, for instance, has been caught tinkering with its users’ emotions by tweaking their feeds in what a social scientist dubs as “massive-scale emotional engineering.”
Such tweaking is an instance of what a sociologist disparages as corporate powers enlisting “new tools and stealth methods to quietly model our personality, our vulnerabilities, identify our networks, and effectively nudge and shape our ideas, desires and dreams.”
We should worry even more. Now it isn’t only about influencing our daily lives but about controlling us by using what’s hidden and personal.
Meanwhile, Facebook is now outrageously following X (formerly Twitter) in rolling back content moderation and fact checking, forcing us to crank up our own bullshit detectors.
Such outrage isn’t misplaced, however. Everybody all over the world now wants social media regulated, Oxford University found out in a recent study.
Regulation because social media users want protection from fake news, offensive content, hate speech and abuse, and incitements to violence, says the Oxford study. In wanting safety, the study found that users now want governments to regulate social media.
Here, the government is similarly heeding the call. But they are taking baby steps to regulate social media, largely because of freedom of speech concerns.
Sacrosanct free speech has many complex points. But the striking point is that all speech is regulated, whether officially or unofficially.
Of course, many will call any form of regulation “censorship,” especially when they dislike it. But regulation is inescapable because of the social nature of language: free expression has never been and never will be socially harmless.
Which brings us to how we are to interpret the fact that some of those shrilly shouting for freer speech are irresponsible trolls and overtly partisan online influencers.
These mutant species of free speech advocates, however, seem to suspiciously want freedom from the legal consequences of broadcasting their bigoted facts and views.
They’re probably taking their cue from social media platforms vacuously excusing themselves from taking responsibility for fake news and online hate speech.
Anyway, whenever these people wield the pieties of the sacred social principles of free speech, they are suspiciously using it to cover for what they really are — provocateurs, shills or even criminals.