Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times recently published long exposés on the damage social media — specifically Facebook and its associated platforms — is inflicting on its users. Without sounding like an old man yelling at clouds, I think it’s past time we start paying attention.
When the center-right (Journal) and center-left (Times) media are both receiving tips and leaked documents from within a major American corporation, it’s normally time to sound the alarm. Instead, the last time Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress our elected officials jumped at the chance to grandstand, air their perceived grievances and scream about biases and censorship.
There is, in fact, bias and censorship on the Facebook platform, according to the Journal report, just not in the way you may think. Instead of different rules for liberals and conservatives, there are different rules for powerful elites and the rest of us peasants.
The investigation found that the company’s “XCheck,” or cross check system, exempts Facebook’s more high-profile users from many of its rules. The Journal reported that some of these VIPs abuse the privilege, “posting material including harassment and incitement to violence that would typically lead to sanctions.”
Facebook is apparently working to fix the problem. That’s nice of them.
There’s plenty more in the Journal’s “Facebook Files” investigation, including documents that purportedly show employees flagging content and warning that the platform was being abused in developing countries by drug cartels and human traffickers. The common thread running through the series is that the social media giant is bad for your health and it knows it.
The company reportedly found that Instagram, a photo-sharing app it owns, is harmful to many of its young users, especially girls. And back on the Facebook platform, when engineers changed its algorithm in 2018 to try to make its users friendlier, it did the opposite. Users became angrier.
For its part, Facebook has disputed many of the Journal’s findings. But beyond the leaked documents, go look at your own respective social media feeds and read what your Montana neighbors are talking about. What do you see? I think it largely backs up what has been reported. What once were websites used to foster connections are now highlighting only the best and worst of us — a place that often makes us jealous or furious.
A layer of negativity and self-doubt seems to hover over these platforms, except in regard to the platforms themselves. Here’s one explanation why: The Times report found that Zuckerberg recently signed off on a new initiative, called Project Amplify, whose purpose is to promote positive stories about Facebook. That’s right, so-called VIPs are allowed to shovel toxic garbage onto your news feed unabated, while the owner of the social network uses the feed to brandish its image despite knowing the damage it is doing to us.
So, here we are … plugging in more often, voluntarily feeding our most valuable asset, data about ourselves, to a company whose sole goal is to keep our eyeballs on its websites for a longer period of time. If I sound like I’m turning into my father, who used to order me outside if he thought I had watched too much television that day, perhaps I am. What if he was right? And what if this is worse?