“Social media” resurrects the village of Antiquity, especially its crude, lascivious underside, unsubstantiated stories that echo social prejudices, sectarianism and tribalism, malicious gossip, myths, rumors, slanders, even deliberately planted tales. Uncensored, and uncensorable. So, no, social media can’t be “saved”, especially from itself, because it merely holds a mirror up to us.
It reflects us. We are the malcontents, miscreants, unwashed cretins, betrayed by our own thoughts and words. And if we are misled it’s because we mislead ourselves.
Marshall Mcluhan, author of “Understanding Media” among other pioneering works, would have seen his most controversial theses (“the global village”, “the medium is the message”) largely substantiated if not completely vindicated.
3
In the course of my travels, I sometimes wonder why other governments promote the extensive usage of Facebook, to them a foreign for-profit monopoly. To the layman, it appears that these governments just want to increase engagement with their citizenry.
In light of recent revelations, it now makes sense that these political parties in power are likely also buying behavioral data to influence their voters. The questionable use of our personal data, it seems, is not restricted to the UK or US to influence Brexit and Trump election respectively.
Will the recent events become a clarion call to voters everywhere to start exercising discretion when using social media?
3
Facebook is just the messenger. Any solution has to include the opportunity to delete all personal data at Data Aggregators: Acxiom, Epsilon and Experian. These have ALREADY aggregated too much information on us. Facebook says they will now shut them out. They will just move to other platforms.
4
Facebook, like other businesses is sensitive to the businesses that place ads on its platform. It serves them as an eyeball magnet. That Zuckerberg and company have manipulated the "products" - that is we who use the platform to communicate with friends - only goes as far as his imagination will take him and so far his imagination has been focused on money. He is not an altruist. He is an amoral person who seeks to maximize this platform's attractiveness. But tastes change. Cultural trends change. People find other things to do with their time, once they have grown out of adolescence.
Zuckerberg and his Silicon Valley buddies seem to have remained transfixed in their juvenile focus on life. They are still playing PacMan in their minds.
2
Social media has been with us long before the internet versions.
My first personal recollection is probably the graffiti on bathroom walls. It was indecent and likely highly inaccurate, but I don’t blame the wall.
2
Why bother? It's done more harm than good. Remember when people used to talk to one another, on the phone (not texting) or face to face? Sigh...how quaint that seems now.
3
Media, social or otherwise, is neither inherently good nor bad. The vitriolic views and narcissism from left and right exhibited on social, and every other media, is a reflection of its users. Nothing more. Nothing less.
4
the reality is that the business of social media started as a way to put adds to people, from moment zero that was the idea. When first presented to investors, facebook mention that it was a tool for University students with high purchasing power.
Some how people thought that it was something created to connect people and so on, now they just find out the truth that has always been.
1
The best solution is ultimately a market solution. If FB is not serving your needs, then cancel your account. If enough people reach the same conclusion, FB will have to change or go out of business.
I tried FB briefly just to check it out. Nothing that exciting. Then some weird stuff - my account was sending "friend" requests automatically without my say-so. So I cancelled. Problem solved.
3
I opened a Facebook account some years and then realized that it was the last thing I wanted anything to do with and closed it. My Social Media experience lasted about one-half hour. Social Media, what a misnomer, is unnecessary and destructive.
5
I don’t care-never used it, have no need for it. If it went out of existence tomorrow the world will survive. People may actually enjoy a real life.
4
Eventually the public and the press will view social media like smoking. It will be something people quit for their own well-being and the second-hand effects to our communities will be seriously reported and understood.
“Twitter” and “Facebook” are constant in news stories as if life only happens there. This idea of a social utility is a hoax. We’d be better off to view social media as a trend, an overactive application of technology that will level down once the ridiculousness is revealed and the addiction is treated. Smoking in offices, on airplanes, at home, on TV was normal and not seriously questioned for decades. Normalcy is not fixed.
It starts with a trickle, it becomes a torrent. Delete your account. You will eventually.
4
There's this concept, if something doesn't make you money or doesn't make you happy then don't do it. I think so many people are caught up in creating and building their personal "brand" that they inevitably say increasingly outrageous things...there was that woman from ESPN who went after Trump and lately there's a woman attacking one of the Parkland shooting survivors.
And for those, the only thing better than the rush they get from all the "likes" is the perverse and inverted sort of validation from people who attack them. "Haters gonna hate," they'll say, and grow firmer in their beliefs.
My recommendation is to quit all social media.
On your dying day, you won't look back and say "I wish I'd sent a few thousand more tweets."
9
I was warned about FB several years ago.
I chose to ignore the warning, and I'm so sorry I did.
FaceBook is not worth saving.
9
Take these companies out of private hands and treat them like the utilities they are. Zuckerberg and his investors won't like it, but who cares?
4
Right now, the world is seeing social media through a “we” and “them” perspective, yet “we” associate ourselves with the “them”. Of course social media is going to have its flaws and setbacks, after all, its technology. I side with Roose’s statement that “it would be a mistake to throw up our hands” we have to maintain positivity in the fact that good things will come from this. Look at the potential solutions: problems such as the one now with facebook could be completely avoided in the future.
Think of the Parkland students and the MarchForOurLives; without social media and organizing tools, it would be difficult to pursue these initiatives.
I don't use Facebook, and agree that fresh air is better, but I have many friends who use it well and wisely. One of them remarked that if anyone spied on him they would learn something.
Like it or not, it's an organizing tool we'd miss. In many ways, TV is every bit as bad. We isolate ourselves in whatever media we use.
Unfortunately, there is money to be made (Fox News) by catering to the new model of fake news being treated as an alternative to the truth (which it is not).
Corruption is as old as history. Think of Martin Luther and the Catholic Church. Think of the time before Gutenberg and the printing press, when people were dependent on authority and didn't know any better - not so different from now, is it?
I recommend fresh air and turning the machines off at least part of the time.
We'll have to muddle through this one somehow. Best to try to overwhelm falsehood with the truth, like the kids are doing about life and high-powered killing machines and commercial exploitation thereof. They're doing a good job: it's a heavy burden, but we all need to take responsibility and stop being so goddam lazy.
Ain't nobody gonna fix it for us ... we'll have to work hard to overcome the corruption. We have no choice; we can because we must.
Otherwise, the earth itself will straighten us out, sooner rather than later.
4
Personally I miss the real bulletin boards made of cork on which we pinned 3 x 5 cards. And the coffee shops where we talked and drank coffee instead of staring at computer screens. Oh, and the letters. I miss the postage stamps, the stationary, the crossed out words. I miss the trips to Granny's house where we carried a cigar box full of new pictures to share. And the telephone. When it rang 7 or 8 times that meant no one was home.
Deep, deep antiquity.
13
Why does it need saving at all? None of it is necessary to sustain life. None.
5
The social networks are as good as the users who build the network. The companies operating it will do whatever they can to maximize revenue by exploiting human fallibility. This is no different from what other companies do. The only difference, and a big one, is that when information is the commodity, the stakes are very high. Mostly, because information is the fuel that runs everything. So it is for users to demand integrity from social media companies. If the companies do not listen to the users of their platform we can always log off.
Although I have several social media accounts, I have absolutely no need to narrate my life, or have a slew of quasi-friends. I use these accounts for research purposes. I choose to live my life and have interactions with real people, in the real world.
As to the question of whether or not social media can be saved: I think it has been forever tainted by the Russian meddling scandal and the ease with which our personal information is being harvested and sold to anyone with some coinage.
There is an obscene amount of greed involved with the simplest and quite often erroneous information gathered on all of us. We must demand clearer verbiage in all of the opt-in/opt-out clauses and we all have a perfect right to see what personal data is being gathered about ourselves.
Should Facebook, etc. fail, I am pretty sure all of us would survive. In fact, we might make many new friends in the real world. What a treat that would be.
2
"Can Social Media Be Saved?"
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
“The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably [garbage], and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it." – Ian Betteridge
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
5
I don't know that the problem is with the concept of Facebook and Twitter. The real problem is that most people are stupid and gullible. The question then becomes is it Facebook and Twitter's business to see that their product is better informed? "If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the product".
Once upon a time, a long time ago, in an America that doesn't seem to want to exist anymore, many large corporations considered themselves, not people, but citizens. They understood that the general welfare of the country had a great deal to do with their profit. Like I said, a long time ago in an America far in the past.
2
Is social media even worth saving?
4
Time to buy Facebook stock.
1
Here is an L.A. Times account of Facebook being very slow or refusing to take down anti-Muslim posts and calls-to-violence against Muslims in Asia. Facebook has been one of the chief mediums used to stir up violence against Muslims in South and Southeast Asia.
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-srilanka-facebook-20180329-story...
2
When a new communication technology emerges, many societies experience a period of disruption. The more revolutionary the change, the greater its capacity to sow cultural chaos. Social media revolutionized communication very rapidly and profoundly. Nefarious operators used it to exploit the fear and ignorance of millions. But I have to believe the marketplace will eventually relegate the bad guys to the fringes where they belong. Humans have evolved to rely on facts as the best way to survive. Eventually, enough people will reject the conspiracy theorists, liars, crackpots, trolls, etc., simply as a matter of self-preservation. It just takes longer for some to get it.
1
it has astounded from day one that, unless you are a well known person and have had both intelligence and entertainment from manipulating social media for personal gain, why on earth anybody should be stupid or vain enough to place any personal details of import into the public domain? let's face it, when your wallet with cards, social security number, drivers licence et al is stolen, you get warned about identity theft and go berserk, even damning yourself for your own stupidity in allowing such a thing to happen. but quite happily give the same away online in multiple formats. id rather have tricky dicky read me a bedtime story
2
Are Chinese trolls behind these attacks on American social media? Knock down Facebook, Tencent will fill the gap. Don't like Google? You will get Baidu. Afraid of Amazon? Alibaba will be glad to step up. Google, Amazon, Facebook; yeah these are big, rich, bad guys. But they are our bad guys.
3
It shouldn't. Go outside.
5
Enough with the fix-its. Why even try? Nobody, absolutely nobody, needs social media.
1
It's going to be funny when both social media and reading die. People are going to have to start having sex again.
1
I do not wish for social media to be saved. Let that ship burn and sink.
1
Good riddance
Don't forget to #deletefacebook
4
Maybe someone could explain the attraction of social media to me. I don't get it. Why do you want to live in a fish-tank putting out all of your mistakes and half-baked thoughts on the web for all to see and do whatever they want with it. After putting all this private stuff on the web, why are you surprised when it is used against you? Duh?
2
"Social Media' is simply the new TV, run by advertising and eyeballs, drawing us into a greater family of ideas. It's uncomfortable and makes your eyes glazed over.
People can fight on computers with keyboards rather than guns and fists anyday, in my book.
What surprised me the most in the rise of social media was the rise of extraordinary meanness.
Before computers, anyone who swore, belittled, insulted or bullied others (in written print or speech) was seen as immature and out of control. Diplomatic language and politeness was the public norm.
Careers ended if someone behaved badly. It was possible to go days, even weeks, without hearing or reading any crude or insulting speech from anyone.
But now, it is like I live in another country altogether. The mask has been ripped off, and people jump online with their claws out and their fangs bared. Every day I hear or read language that is cruel and uncaring.
It really should be called anti-social media.
5
Think about what you wrote: "Careers ended if someone behaved badly." Really? Maybe some did, but certainly not all, and people in power remained largely protected. Thanks to social media, the #MeToo movement has helped end the careers of men who behaved beyond badly but who were allowed to thrive professionally anyway because women were silenced into "politeness". The public norm masked a lot of sordid stuff. I don't believe social media is perfect. Even though it has brought out the worst in some people, it has helped facilitate much needed change.
2
Why should we try to save Social Media? To make more another corporate groups to enslave us?
1
Of course social media can be saved. All it needs is technology providers that aren't mendacious.
People argue that you can't have a platform without the income of targeted advertising, but that's nonsense. You just can't have multi-billion dollar valuations without targeted advertising.
I work for a free, public messaging service [which I won't pitch for here] that collects no customer data at all. Zero. Nada. Zilch. What's the economic model? The underlying technology innovation contributes to commercial encryption services. One pays for the other. There are plenty of models that can fund social media. They may not be remunerative enough to create Silicon Valley gazillionairres, but neither will they rip off your information.
Tech companies aren't by their nature evil. They just happen to mainly be the result of a model that incentivizes excessively greedy people.
1
The bloom is off the rose. Not growing back.
1
"Can Social Media Be Saved?" What a ridiculous question. Social media are not going to go away. Even if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all other major players in the social media game were to disappear, something else will fill the void. And the something else might be something even worse. There will always be idiots who will jump right on to whatever is fashionable at the moment. A flock of lemmings probably has more common sense than the typical users of these Internet services. You mahy be able to reform this or that social media company, but you can't reform the human stupidity, greed, vanity, or sexual drives that motivate the customers of these companies. Good luck...
so social media needs to saved due to the ignorance, stupidity and sloth of internet users?
I don’t use any “social media”. Never have, never will. Then again this is a form of social media.
1
I have never used social media like my friends and family. I was always uncomfortable with the endless self-promotion, narcissism, voyeurism, schadenfreude, invasion of privacy, misinformation, intentional deception, and tracking. It is damaging our society in a myriad of ways -- that is fact.
Get your information from a credible source and have a real conversation with someone that is genuinely interested in you.
2
FB is a great way to keep up with friends, family, kids and grand kids. Think of it a a live photo album with videos NOT as a news source, social action, etc. In general facebook juus.nkies are the most uniformed and ignorant among
1
I don't, for the life of me, understand the appeal of social media.
99.99999999% of everything that happens on social media is stupid, banal, worthless, hateful or a complete waste of time. Social media users need to get a life.
Social media is a platform for bullying, promotion of extremism, and whole host of negative human behaviors. The world would be a far, far better place if social media died a quick death.
1
Social media are not the problem. The problem is imperfect humanity. Solve that problem and you'll solve boom-and-bust business cycles, loveless marriages, obesity and lousy sitcoms.
1
Who cares?
These things waste people's time anyways.
I got rid of Facebook several years ago, I can guarantee you that life as I knew it did not stop.
3
I'm willing to bet that the twins who sued Zuckerberg for stealing their idea are now laughing their butts off.
Was an early adopter.
A few thoughts:
Facebook became political b/c the people who use it became political. The people who say we can't go back to the days before social media are wrong, and I think we already are. When I would tell people that I'm only friends with my ACTUAL friends, people used to think I was nuts. "It's for meeting people!" they say. No. "Don't have crazy friends/or friends you don't agree with I say!" "Crazy people are interesting!" They say.
Be careful with who you allow into your life. If you have friends on your Facebook that would endanger your job, get off Facebook. If you don't want something searched about you, don't put it out there. I have a feeling we will age out of this. We've all seen too many people who have been fired from a job because someone's "cranky uncle" or the "pothead friend from high school" has sucked them into some drama. Social media can't be saved. It's a fact that it was conceived of by over-privileged asocial kids, but we can save ourselves from it.
One final thought. Obama did this as well. Be outraged when the other party gets in.
Why should we save it? To what end? I swore off of it a few months ago, and I don't miss it. It was hardest to let Facebook go, as it was my only real connection with dozens of people I know (or knew) but never have reason to interact with otherwise. Then I realized - if I don't have any reason to see them in person, why should I care about what they're doing? It's freeing to rid yourself of these things, this daily time-suck social media has become. What will you be missing, really? Cat videos, endless Minions memes and dozens of links to easily disproved "news" stories. Social media in our society has become little more than a bullhorn for the bored, crazy and narcissistic among us and a platform for annoying political zealotry (from both sides). Cast it off - you'll be happier and have more free time to do something that's actually useful and productive.
2
The fundamental problem is in profit-maximizing, algorithm-driven intermediation of basic human social activities. I'm not sure this can be fixed.
Also, the article fails to mention the role of intellectual property (IP) in this quandary. Our system has allowed tech firms to own a broad swath of techniques - some basic and simple, others more complex - related to using common technology to interact with one another. IP law applies to individuals and non-profits, so attempting to simply foster a non-profit way of socializing without giving up privacy is to invite expensive lawsuits.
1
Simple semi-fix. Don't make it free. Like Wiki.
No incentive for them to collect sell your info. Users opt in if they feel it's really important to be on it. The free part messes it up.
If it's becoming a bad habit or not working out for you, and cash is tight , I bet it might be the first thing to get dropped in your life (like my O.K. Cupid subscription!).
Facebook will never agree to any "solution" that significantly reduces their profit, such as "cleaner" buttons that regularly reduce the data-pool from which they make $$.
A social network like Facebook could have been designed on the Craigslist model, in which the goal is providing a service, as opposed to milking your users for ever penny possible. Craigslist, you listening?
Why would anyone sign up for a service under whose business model you are both the consumer of mined data based on the history of your actions as tracked by algorithms, and the product on which the business is based, the source of the data itself?
1
I am willing to wager high that participation in personal information sharing is greater among Trump supporters than among their more educated (yes, in the aggregate that is quite the case), liberal counterparts. I find it ironic that conservatives are those who get most up in arms against the idea of the government having their personal information.
1
There’s actually someone that wants to save it? It’s like having to stop the whole bus just for that one person unable to kick the habit.
This article doesn't explore a central issue -- how do you make money with these services? It hints that Facebook et al are trapped in "market-based" systems, but doesn't suggest any alternative financial routes beyond a "decentralized network." Even if these services weren't treated as commercial enterprises, they'd still have to pay for servers, engineers, moderators, etc. Requiring a user fee for access seems like a non-starter, and it's debatable if a tip jar (as some commenters on this article suggested) would truly work on a mass scale. It seems naive to imagine a new utopia without figuring out how to pay for it.
1
A user fee is not a non-starter. People pay for entry onto social platforms all the time. Think bars and cafes - they're not just selling beers or coffees, they're selling access to a social space (some bars even require an entry fee).
I do not understand all this uproar. How do people think these social media companies make money? They are nothing more than data mining companies operating under the guise of trying to "bring the world together"
Zuckerberg went to Harvard for a reason.
4
I am totally mystified that "social media" became something larger than email and texting--- above and beyond the second best social medium, a phone. Call me old-fashioned, but do people even talk to their friends anymore? Why not?
Laugh all you want--I grew up in the day when phones didn't even have letters and numbers on them. They looked like stately daffodils, and had an attached piece that was pressed to the ear. When you heard, "operator," you named the person you were calling. In a few seconds, the party would answer. Because the other method of socializing involved a real visit, the phone conversation may be short: "Is this a good time for you to come over to visit? I've just made some baklava and fresh coffee. Noonie's on her way. Come join us!" "Thanks; I'll be there in ten minutes."
Now in-person visits with real conversations are still the best and most effective means of communication.
"What hath God wrought?" Alexander Graham Bell
6
I closed my Facebook and Twitter accounts a couple of years ago. There were a few reasons: I was wasting a lot of time, I had a few uncomfortable interactions with a quasi-online-stalker, and I got tired of feeling like I had to ‘project’ my life to the world.
I don’t miss either platform, not one bit. If I want to keep in touch with people, I write and email or pick up the phone. I’ve given myself the gift of social privacy and it’s simply wonderful.
12
I, too, had felt obligated to 'project' my life, never feeling the projection to be accurate / honest / fulfilling enough, for me. So, a few years back, I disconnected from Facebook. I do, however, feel Facebook has tremendous value. What hurts Facebook, I believe, are those very few people and organizations - a fraction of a percentage of the rest of us - who exploit its value; having negative intended and unintended consequences to us all. I, though, worry less about Cambridge than I do about those having the power to set broad, governing, policies who have left us with anever-diminishing privacy. International, national, state and local governing bodies should not be setting social networking policy.
To enact policy and take power from us and powerful, now still nascent, raw expressions of humanity, like Facebook, these bodies have declared us victims of Facebook's alleged inept ability to keep us from the evil forces of the world. Nonsense. Today's policy-makers view themselves as being less and less relevant. They want to keep their relevance and will do anything to take it back, including shredding us of our privacy / keeping us compliant; forcing us to believe we're weak / too ignorant / too gullible to fend for ourselves.
They're the problem. Not Facebook, not Cambridge, not Twitter, not us. Policy-makers should serve our common needs and leave us to work through the consequences of our and other's actions. Facebook belongs to us and should be governed by us, only.
Social media will survive, whether by current social media of by another means. Neither the President, nor Congress, nor the Republican Party, nor the Supreme Court will stop social media. These folks, especially the young folks, like David Hogg, will find a way, without arms to make their feelings known and communicated. My hats off to them.
For many decades, the USA has been a beacon to all who love freedom and to all in the world who crave liberty. Some could argue that this President and this Administration really want a totalitarian dictatorship for the United States of America. So far it appears that the Republican Majority leaders in Congress are perfectly happy to let the President do what he wants without regard to the Constitution. Hopefully that perception is not true.
I feel that predictions of a demise of social media are premature. It also appears that right wing conservatives want social media to die, so they can do what they want with our liberties.
3
A lot of human dignity has been lost over the past few decades, as citizens became subjects of constant surveillance, working people were pushed into contingency, customers became consumers--and privacy or respect for our unique selves was lost in large part. We are aggregated, we are known as if dissected yet we are anonymous. We are manipulated, know it, allow it. And the few oligarchs riding atop the behemoths of wealth, power, and technologies drain the world. Cultures are homogenized, people tweet and twitter--how diminutive, how small our voices amid the unending roar of it all. Will we tire of it, can we remember our dignity or is it lost for good? I don't know. But I have withdrawn from social media and learn new skills in my free time and converse face to face with people now. I'm happier this way.
13
Yes, social media can be saved but the problem can only get worse as long as social media continues to act like a law unto itself. For example, Facebook's popularity doesn't give it the right to disregard its 2011 consent decree requiring it to stop selling its users' private information without their consent.
Under the Fair Trade Commission Act of 1914, the FTC is empowered, among other things, to prevent unfair or deceptive acts or practices as well as to seek monetary redress and other relief for such practices.
But Mark Zuckerberg, who holds voting control of Facebook, apparently doesn't think that Facebook should be subject to FTC regulation. So this will undoubtedly play out in the courts or, perhaps, in congress. But until that is decided I don't hold out much hope for needed reform.
1
He stated in his interview: "I'm not sure it shouldn't be regulated." Nice try.
3
You don’t expect the FTC to go after Facebook so long as trump is in office. After all trump used them to his advantage
1
maybe the less social media we have, the better people will be. maybe these people will decide they can work or help others rather than view social media. maybe if Facebook goes broke we all would be better off.
4
And the fools who glue their faces and thumbs to their devices might have some idea that there are others walking along the same sidewalk, and that cars are faster than humans crossing intersections--or jaywalking with face glued to social media screen...bam!
Thank you, Mr. Roose. Having an actual conversation about the desirable design features of a social media system is an excellent thing to do. A conversation that is way too late. Instead what we have with FB is an incredibly thin 'social media' veneer covering up what is at its core little more than a data collection agency. Social media is and was never FB's business. Understanding that is central to moving forward intelligently.
4
A few weeks ago I was at the Metropolitan Opera and made an interesting discovery. Downstairs, on the same level as the coat check-room, there is actually a pay-phone. Maybe I should be more specific -- there is a coin-operated public telephone, the kind in which you can insert quarters, dimes and nickels and make a phone call. I had not seen one of those in at least ten years, probably longer. The last ones I had seen anywhere were in gas stations, and they were usually vandalized and unusable. But imagine being able to make a phone call from a simple coin-operated device without having your name and all of your personal information recorded on some server located who-knows-where. Some people today would probably feel uneasy about that, as if they were doing something improper.
8
You really don’t think you’re being recorded. Face it, every thing you you do is probably recorded.
One of the biggest challenges imo is that social media, readily accessed through smartphones, for has all the characteristics of a compulsion or addiction. Even if it is acknowledged that it is harmful, it will be no easier to "stop" or "quit" for people who have succumbed to it than compulsive eating, a gambling addiction, etc.
5
Who needs "social media"?
They may as well be allowed to disappear into oblivion.
2
No one...but https://www.statista.com/markets/424/topic/540/social-media-user-generat...
Why save social media anyway? They came into existence only through huge government subsidies, not because of any unmet human need. They exploit us and make us unhappy. Let them die!
3
Social media in a way is the ultimate democracy. However some one forgot to instill the rule about yelling FIRE in a crowded room when there is no fire.
2
No Best to get rid of it. My real name is not scientella. I dont do facebook. My life is mainly online but I only use pseudonyms. My true friends know how to reach me. I dont want the rest to. My life is messy and uncurated. I can reinvent myself if I want to.
4
First problem, they allowed posters with fake names with multiple pseudo identities.
They overlooked the fact that so many away from home are able to connect with their relatives an friends from other parts of the World.
What a shame that greedy Zakerberg in his lazy ways allowed Cambridge Analytica among others allowed to destroy the world wide members of their ability to connect near and far.
The result is Doland J. trump .
5
I was listening to NPR this morning and someone was talking about the difficulty of obtaining your own data from Facebook—I wasn’t following 100%—but she began talking about various kinds of data “they” have and included square footage of your house. That caught my attention. How would they have the square footage of my house?—I don’t even know that!! I don’t have my street address in Facebook, only my name, maiden name and city of residence and a photo of my husband and me. Just enough for old friends to track me down if they wanted to (they never do!). Do they actually go to the trouble of tracking down my address and my real estate records? I mean, they know I ordered shoes from Zappos, so there’s my address, but I guess I didn’t realize the extent of the data collection. And to what end? I can honestly say I never look at ads—on TV either—they don’t even register with me. I get my news from the Times and WAPO, so they are wasting their time.
1
facebook; bad, twitter; not much better. if you agree, contact me on facebook. -or so says the author. hysterical.
fb and all those cow waste apps are successful b/c of three things; 1) people are basically lazy and just want something easy (and free) and 2) they want attention. dont care what you call me, just call me. like the livings car wrecks the kardashians and 3) they all love to rubberneck at a good car wreck. who died (was it like, bloody) and what does their mom think of it?
to weak people, fb is like these highly addictive oxy-type drugs. one hit and they're koo koo for cocoa puffs. glad I never started. and never will.
now if I can just get the kids noses out of instagram etc and limit them to 1-2 hrs/day like the excellent nyt article yesterday. my youngest esp acts in a depressive way when she's stared at the dummy box too long. its gotta stop.
2
"Can 'social media' be saved? is not an urgent question! To call it social is a misnomer; the critical question is can we be saved from 'antisocial media'?
Regardless of its phenomenal capitalistic value, it will be seen by future anthropologists as a pandemic disease that did nothing to advance human experience — what Teilhard de Chardin called the 'leading vector of evolution.'
2
Love that expression, "antisocial media!" The saddest activity I ever saw was at a coffee shop: Two people, obviously friends, were having lunch "together," with there electronic gadgets in their laps, slowly eating, but not conversing.
What was on their respective phones was obviously more entertaining than each other's company might have been. Sad---they could have been at separate tables, and neither would have noticed or cared....
2
Yes, I saw the same thing once. A husband and wife at dinner in a nice restaurant and they looked at their phones for the whole meal. It was very sad.
1
It's ironic that Sheryl Sandberg the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, hides behind the scenes just as the FB fiasco flourishes. Lean in, Sheryl.
5
Socia media was never about building communities, it was about selling micro targeted ads. It's slowly creating a generation that doesn't communicate the way people have used to, it's making us dumber, meaner, more depressed or envious while most of the biggest accounts probably bought their followers a long time ago. It's time for people to realize that it's slowly destroying societies.
5
Where do you spend your time? Online 24 hours a day? Is your only access to the internet a computer or both your computer and your phone?
Do you have friends outside the internet ones? are you spending only part of your day connected?
Social Media is social but do disconnect from time to time.
Now you have to learn to disconnect from the computer, or phone.
To quote Meryl Streep's character in "Death Becomes Her," immediately after she made a pact with the dark side: "And NOW a warning!?"
Seriously, we've all been taken for suckers.
BTW, don't think de-activating your account matters; you're still on their grid.
2
I have never understood why any adult would have a Facebook account.
8
I suppose that if People want to splatter their secrets, identities and other trash across the world for any "friend" to see, they have every right to do just that. They should not be surprised or offended by the consequences, -The garbage collectors and their "friends" are waiting for any garbage you care to give them. Even Trump can put it to use. How to stop this? Send Zuckersberg and all his friends back to Harvard and and get rid of his facebook .Who needs such intrusive nonsense anyway?
Like any security/intell/military/govermental agency/dept. doesn't or hasn't gotten any and all information on anyone they want. There is NO PRIVACY anyway anymore. Blaming FB is just another distraction citizens!
1
If you are in a limited group, like a college campus, it's fine. If you have more contacts then 10 or 20 people, like the millions some people have, then you might be ok. But they will still sell you for a fw pennies more.
Privacy protection is technical and can be monitored via regulatory agencies. The difficulty will be writing legislation which allow more privacy control but does not create insurmontable barriers to entry. Corporate America loves cumbersome, expensive regulations competitors cannot comply with.
2
If you are not buying the product (or service), you are the product.
I don't have a Facebook or other "free" social media account, and I never will.
4
Ha! I thought I was the only one.
3
High school administrations and teachers do not generally encourage students to find cool new ways to use hard drugs. They should not be doing this for engineered-for-addiction social media, but they are, and parents and regulators need to stop sitting on their hands in denial and take action. We are raising a generation of internet gadget and social media addicts. "Just say no" and "cold turkey" works, however, because teens actually have little positive need for social media other than to be liberated from its clutch. Most kids even realize this deep down, but they lack the necessary adult push back against their own peer pressure and against corporate pushers such as WhatsApp, Zuckerberg's "gateway drug" for Facebook.
6
Why not form a union?
An internet users union - to organize, engage, and empower people.
Took me a few minutes to set up, takes you a few seconds to join.
Suggested in the article, but not yet started.
The tools were created for us, so let's use them for us.
Find it on Facebook (of course; where else?)
https://www.facebook.com/Internet-User-Union-1283196705113225/
3
Social media isn't going anywhere, sorry folks. This is how people communicate in 2018. There is an entire generation coming up to whom this question would seem nonsensical. If you talk to teenagers today, (and I do since I have one), they have no idea what its like to live in a private world. The concept of privacy, as it has been understood in this county for 200 plus years, is something kids today would find unfamiliar. So the question isn't whether social media can survive, its survival is a given. The real question is whether the model on which social media platforms is based, free interaction with your pals in exchange for your demographic information is sustainable. I'd say we have a way to go before someone turns off the money spigot.
As for false and misleading information, unless you're thinking about radically reinterpreting the first amendment, I think that's an uphill battle. I also think that people who are on social media long enough, develop an instinct for what is real news and what is nonsense. Most intelligent people can tell when they're being manipulated. The idea that we should get the government involved in determining what information passes the credibility test, has terrible long-term implications.
Facebook is a convenient scapegoat for all sorts of social ills, but the problem of systemic misinformation and the degradation of privacy rights can't be cured by government regulation, not when there's so much money and power at stake.
1
Social media is what you make of it. That's all that's it.
3
Let's have a real honest discussion about all forms of media, and critical thinking required for all.
Print and cable news is quick to pounce on social media bias. Make no mistake, all media impart editorial bias. It is difficult to just get the news from any medium. Cable news from CNN,Fox, and MSNBC will repeat stories over the day from various shows. Typically, "experts" or "poiticsl pundits with clear bias" will then jump on a topic and attempt to persuade viewers to agree with their opinion.
Online newspspers may offer the purest news delivery, but right beside or underneath headlines space is crammed with related op ed or other editorial content.
All media can relate facts... The fight is for shaping opinion, mostly a daily political effort to win hearts and minds. Communist countries like China have state run messaging. American messaging is a free enterprise endeavor, with political access & unlimited advertisment spending the currency.
1
Let it sink. I'd like to have a real conversation with my two retired parents sometime this decade.
1
"Turn on. Tune in. Drop out." So hard to do in the Trump years. I've developed a little NYT addiction -- not that I don't have it under control. I can quit anytime. It's not that I am paranoid for his next egregious move, but rather, I keep waiting for him to get his comeuppance.
1
How about a probationary period for new users, and some kind of progress assessment for becoming trusted over the course of a year? First badge for using your own name and face; second, for not following others just to pitch products and services; third, for posting fewer than five times per day; fourth, for not employing bots to retweet (or re-post); fifth, for interacting using polite language; sixth, for not GIF-cluttering at every possible opportunity...etc.
1
Besides Cambridge Analytica, I wonder who else Facebook has sold my personal information to?
4
Probably to Putin operatives, so they can manipulate our elections.
1
I'd suggest they get rid of "like buttons." One major problem is social media has everyone scrambling for approval and people pressuring others to conform in a very unhealthy way. Back in the Majordomo days, you could actually have an intelligent discussion, which is very hard to do on Facebook.
1
Traditional media (NYT included) is also guilty of spreading mis-information (here in the form of giant progressive bias). Democracy would be far better served by good old fashioned reporting of "just the news", without the serving of "here's what I think and so should you."
Maybe the problem is capitalism?
Just sayin'.
2
I wish I had thought of it.
No idea if social media can be saved. But I can save myself from social media.
I just deleted my facebook account.
2
To survive, social media really only needs those who insist on comparing themselves to others. Oh, wait, that's 75% of Americans who have low self-esteem. Never mind. Facebook, America needs you because they have totally forgotten how to call those whom they call friends.
1
Those who would give up liberty in order to exercise narcissism deserve neither a democratically elected government nor free shipping from Amazon.
4
Thank God there's no misinformation in tweets coming from POTUS. Then again, there's no information either.
Wrong question.
The correct question is: Should social media be saved?
2
I left Facebook because they requested my official ID. Now I know why. I have joined Reddit. I enjoy it so much. You get to join different groups and most of all remain anonymous. I have not looked back.
Good article. Thanks. It’s important for users to understand that the rules of the social media world aren’t monolithic and can be changed. Here’s a thought—how about making it possible to modify the news feed algorithm. That would help users avoid the built in bias for “engagement” which seems to push extreme views and “shocking” but phoned stories. You could choose to modify the algorithm or even use third party alternatives.
Isn't this all rather overlooking the fact that the problems on social media are being caused deliberately, and even a couple of years ago, were nowhere near as bad? It's a repulsive minority which has turned Facebook and Twitter in to a sort of festering ulcer of bot-based garbage.
Nobody was talking at anywhere near this level of seriousness until the 2016 campaign, and although there were smaller versions of it before, all the way back to 2008, it didn't diminish the social media experience. Now it does.
The nutcases aren't just nutcases; they're boring, mindlessly repetitive, and utterly irrational. They have no conversation, so they destroy conversation. They do nothing but what they do. That's not "social"; it's about as antisocial as you can get and continue to breathe.
FB and Twitter aren't the only shows in town, either. For example - LinkedIn doesn't have those problems. Different rules, different policies, no issues. There has to be a lesson in that for FB and Twitter. Maybe best to simply shut the gate on any offenders, and reduce their numbers to the point the problems are much less aggressive.
1
Don't like facebook? Don't use facebook. You don't HAVE to. You really don't! you'll be surprised how good you get at ignoring the gasps people make when you say you deactivated. People who really care about you and want to get in touch with you will do so even if you don't exist in cyberspace. It's true. I give you my personal witness.
I know this is really radical. At one time liquor sales were banned on election day. How about shutting down social media sites during the entire election season?
2
Sure. How about newspapers too. And TV. And making it illegal for people to discuss politics? It's not such a fine line between ideas that are radical, and ideas that are just plain dumb.
Social media is just that - a form of media. A conduit for information, disinformation, and entertainment. Just like the tv, books, newspapers, scrolls, and tablets that preceded it.
The idea that a form of media should be judged as a single entity... well, I suppose that's happened to every form of media as well, though it never amounts to anything more than uninformed, uneducated noise.
2
Can social media in the U.S. be saved from negatives such as invasion of privacy, misinformation, fake news, intervention by foreign actors in political/economic life of nation?
It's clear to me the American political/economic establishment for all promise of freedom, communications promised by the internet is now going to use the system to regulate information, knowledge, communications, like the Federal Reserve treats currency, has effect on the economy. It's obvious the internet while simultaneously making possible communications like never before is also a system of control of knowledge by powers that be like never before.
Now all knowledge is gradually being funneled into internet and the internet and knowledge on it is to be treated like the Federal Reserve treats money: With great oversight, control of the truth in society, to prevent truth debasing, becoming inflated, like currency can experience. But this of course is vast and profound censorship, decision by powers that be what truth is in society.
This is identical to process in Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, except of course we can expect the powers that be in the U.S. to state our truth is not so nearly debased as in those countries. Our currency of truth is more valuable and the dollar as well. But of course we have here a miserable equation of truth with currency. And it's evident the powers that be are as uncomfortable with profound progress of truth as they are of all the negatives of which they speak.
1
Well as long as they’re watching us so closely I see absolutely no reason why big brother should not be watching them! And if they are going to be censoring us and policing our speech there’s no reason why big brother should not be censoring them in policing them.
4
To me the more interesting question is, can Facebook and YouTube maintain their dominant positions this way?
The infrastructure required to support Facebook is pretty small. The site can be profitable with a fraction of the revenue it gets now.
However, once a company like FB achieves a stranglehold on the market, they focus on revenue maximization and the product is very profitable but significantly worse than it used to be. They aren't competing for users anymore, they're taking users as a given and squeezing out revenue.
While that works in the short term, I wonder if at some point FB becomes so uncool that kids start adopting a new platform that works more like the old Facebook (and I have similar questions about youtube). If that happens, FB is dead, and honestly, that's fine.
4
Uneasy is a mile word to state the "social" impact of social media.
I see people down by our beach starting at their phones rather than watching the beautiful Pacific Ocean. People engaged with their phones instead of with their children. It goes on and on. The damage done to the fabric of our personal, interactive life seems incalculable.
2
Facebook's revenue is $40B, or if the two billion users statistic is accurate, $20/user. How many users would be willing to pay $20 a year to protect their data and privacy while still being a part of the social network?
3
Looking at the story from the usage of block chain in the smaller baltic nation to protect privacy at the same time digitize data more securely.. we cannot but get there.
We may have forgotten the clauses we agreed when we signed up Facebook account. Just stop using facebook and twitter is always an option!
Monetizing your personal information is not as bad as it sounds. For instance, in targeted advertising, no human ever knows your preferences, everything is handled by computers. When you are in a database of millions of people, you are effectively invisible. (Schooling fish thrive for this reason.) The issue here is our conception of privacy, our fear of technology. We didn't have these fears a few decades ago, when our names, numbers and addresses were in the White Pages.
1
unless you paid to be unlisted as my parents did.
but you miss the entire point.
sure names/addresses were in the book; but not a link to all your friends and all their data which got vacuumed w/o their permission, your religion, fave food, tv shows, porn sites, financial info, where you shop, who you voted for, where you went on vacation and whatever closeted strange ideas you dont want everybody and jesus knowing. THAT was anonymity. it aint like that on faceplant etc.
I do wonder what might happen if there were simply an effective grassroots campaign that actually got most FB users to actively and thoughtfully manage their own accounts, opting out of most or all of the "services" that provide access to personal data. Wouldn't that force FB to find other/better ways to monetize its service--or even (gasp!) scale down to the point of making a bit less of a profit and focusing just a bit more on the good it can do for society. I promise Mark Zuckerberg already has more money than he could ever spend. Is a little social responsibility really too much to ask?
2
Social Media can be saved or more importantly, it needs to evolve and transform. FACEBOOK & Twitter are NOT the tools to successfully accomplish this. The challenge is their business goals and models. The made their billions by mining people's data. Mined their data with no sense of boundaries or respect for individual privacy. And we're NOT just talking about advertisements selling pizza, cosmetics or college choices. The 2016 Presidential Election was maliciously interfered with. FACEBOOK was involved and cashed in. They had been warned several times and they blew it off. I could envision a company/organization like Squarespace developing a web tool/app that could provide the communication/connection power of Facebook. Squarespace has a viable, ethical business plan. It wouldn't be FREE but nothing in life is FREE. As it turns out, FACEBOOK wasn't never free, it was a facade With FREEDOM comes RESPONSIBILITY. The days of the Wild, Wild West on the Internet are over. The price of destroying the our democracy is just too high a price to pay.
4
No concern for privacy? Nobody was forced to click the box on their user agreement.
There will not be a people's social media if the people don't control the internet. The biggest battle in the U.S. right now somewhat behind the scenes, where those who want to preserve net neutrality are fighting for it.
Visit the freepress.net web site and support this cause, or this entire discussion will be moot within a year.
1
It's easy to make America a Democracy again! Everyone just needs to remember to ALWAYS vote ONLY for those candidates with the LEAST financial backing.
1
The question should be, why should Social Media be saved? Is there anything worth saving? In the high flying world of tech, can't we just write off the latest experiment as a failure on many fronts (except in the making a few people very rich)?
6
For everyone (myself included) who comment on newspaper websites:
The newspapers are probably another source for mining data. I know that when I visit the NYTimes, their advertisements are specifically directed at me (e.g. Montreal, or Canadian advertisements).
Now how do you suppose the NYTimes can direct specific ads to me?
Hmmmm!
7
Not to defend social media platforms, but if you're just getting ads that are targeted by geography it's very possible to do that just using your IP address, which is far less nefarious and privacy invading than the other kinds of data being discussed in this article.
1
Hello Kasiana,
You're right in 1 sense. However, Google is also a part in mining data, and then probably cooperating with the NYTimes to add specially-targeted advertisements towards me.
As an example, I went to the Adobe Website to check on the cost of "renting" their Photoshop. A short while later, I was presented with Adobe Ads on the NYTimes website.
There were hardly any complaints until that company mined data for trump.
This story will go away in 3-4 months. Facebook is too popular a concept to just disappear!
2
The one thing that would save social media, is the one thing Facebook will not do, "stop collecting our data" and "stop third party applications from doing the same".
Social media will survive, but we truly need serious regulations and
truth to be told if all fake and duplicate accounts were to be deleted over night,
all social networks would loose more then half of their subscribers.
2
Simple question - would the world be a better place with a) social media in current form or b) no social media?
The article seems like an attempt to create option c), namely a reformed social media. I am not an expert but each idea seemed never-never land far-fetched to me.
So back in the real world, I think the answer is b. We’d all be better off if it had never been invented. Too late now. But once we realize that reform is not feasible and that social media is on balance a bad thing, the right course of action is to stop using it.
7
"people doesn't care how it works as long as it works"
since when is social media a sinking ship? cause a few celebrity and old people deleted their accounts?
2
I have always thought that social media was invented by people with poor social skills - people who are comfortable with computers but not comfortable with real people. When lots of real people with real social skills adopted social media, they began to lose their actual social skills - they turned themselves into people who were more socially awkward than they had been before. This can be seen by the number of people who can't get through a dinner party without whipping out some device or another to either check what you are saying to them, or to check their social media. It's incredibly rude. If you are a non-social-media person and you call them on this behavior, they suddenly realize how absurd it is.
18
Is it possible that what you posit would be no better than what we see now? Is it possible that bottom-up social media would ultimately display all the bad habits we already see in existence? I am curious how one would measure success.
Who would be moderators and censors? Even the NYTs discussion board understands the need for these functions. Who gets editorial control?
We have 300,000+ homeowners associations in this country. Attorneys warn of just how much management chaos can be caused by reliance on social media. They have reasons.
How will these "independent nodes" function under any kind of common framework? Will there be red and blue nodes--would you or could you stop those from forming? Would you end up with even more isolated silos (thinking about Mastodon) than what we have now. How do you foster tolerance and civility by predicating the process on even more division? What is the difference between what is being described and some subject-specific discussion boards that are already in existence?
Do we really believe bottom up management would help? how would our modern, 24 hour news cycles handle this? How would we track subversive elements on social networks that were even more splintered?
No doubt some of you--perhaps even most--would disagree with my skepticism. But looking at existing behaviors, seeing what we have done to ourselves (even considering those few at the top who have made so much money), there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious.
2
Facebook is already run by its users. I was an early adopter of it. I was also an early one to download my data, delete my data manually and close my account. I got tired of it for the usual reasons, but became incensed for another reason: Facebook ignoring my complaints about being a platform for advertising adult and child pornography.
I saw my friend suggestions turn from my upper middle class peer group to scantily clad women and young girls from Third World countries. I figured these were friends of my friends who were not mutual. Curious, I clicked on these profiles. I saw adults and children in provocative poses, but covering up the body parts which would throw them off Facebook. It does not take a rocket science to figure out what was happening.
Facebook knows it is used to promote child and adult pornography. They don't care just as long as they continue to make money and don't get caught.
1
It would be a loss to me at this point to no longer have a way to keep in touch with friends who have moved all over the world. To see my friends' children grow up, to have casual repartee with some really smart people is so fun and to teach my elders to take advantage of it for the same reasons- it is primarily a pleasure. You have to be a smart consumer and avoid the things that are known problems. Don't do the quizzes of you are concerned about sharing your data, use privacy controls and don't engage with trolls.
2
does anyone remember the days of aol and logging on after what
sounded like the clunking of a bad digital transmission
to chat and how open and free that was. and fun.
something happen. monetary interests or not.
And it's just not as imaginative as it was back then..
true, at some point it was creative when visualization came
with conversation, but, it went to click this like dislike that
almost like digital cronyism for which, anyone with a good
heart would not want to be associated with!
~peace
thomas :)
3
Social media would be fine providing that each could have a clone to carry an otherwise normal life - for appearances.
3
There used to be a social media which was paid by end users - or more accurately, by the university departments which were maintaining their share of the distributed server farm. It was world wide, and called Usenet Newsgroups .
My university dropped the Usenet feed some 5-10 years ago, but the system still exists although it is used by only a few nowadays.
2
In Zuckerberg's dictionary, "privacy" is auto-corrected to "piracy".
BTW, you can export your entire Facebook history from a feature in their settings. Right before you delete the app, of course.
11
I enjoy my Facebook feed, keeps me in touch with what friends and relatives are doing. It doesn’t depress me. I also enjoy Instagram. I don’t see any reason right now to use Twitter or Snapchat. I dont check email as often as that is so overrun with junk even with filters in use.
Data privacy is something worth fighting for but don’t just blame Facebook for lapses in that....People give up data privacy when they use Google, email, YouTube, credit cards, phone for anything or so many other things already.
5
For the time being, I would be happy if Twitter would just add a "dislike" button to its tweet stats line.
Often more than 100k people have clicked the "heart" button to trump's most egregiously outrageous tweets, but there is no way for anyone who dislikes the tweet to register a response.
Since trump has made the twitter platform his chief medium for communicating with the American people, twitter has a civic obligation to provide a means for users to register negative reactions to tweets.
14
Life was better before social media. Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk have not improved the human condition one bit and probably made things much worse.
40
I said from the beginning social media was more evil than good...don't have Twitter or Instagram accounts and have a Facebook account but never use it and never will!
8
To get an idea about the breadth of data collected, check
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-faceb...
2
First, for the benefit and even the remotely possible enlightenment of a statistically predictable reader cohort, this esteemed venue in which I am presently pecking at my keyboard is NOT part of the generic set of Internet sites known as "social media." These reader comments threads offered by NYT, which provide opportunity for intelligent and informed commentary, are a significant cut above the sites considered under the rubric of "social media," so much that this venue could not possibly be mistaken for one of them.
Trolls and flame-wars have been common on some website forums since the days of Windows 98. Apparently, they are the norm for sites such as Twitter, which I would put in the same category as 4chan. Facebook seems to be essentially a phishing site, originally drawing folks whose fifteen minutes of fame consisted in posting their dog and cat pictures. The obsession with garnering hundreds of virtual "Friends" whom one has never met -- and, on the Internet, one can never know if in fact they even exist -- is curious, to say the least. I suppose it goes with not even being able to jaywalk across a busy intersection without a cell-phone plastered to one ear.
We have recently learned that sites such as Facebook can pose a serious danger in terms of national security. Can we really pretend that they have any redeeming value?
8
So isn't the block chain supposed to solve this problem? Oh, I forgot, bitcoins are what everyone's after. Never mind.
Anyone else miss the days when Usenet was the only social media??
2
(the doors fly open, Cletus comes running in, arms waving)
Fellas! Is this the forum where we're finally gonna throw Facebook and Twitter onto the bonfire?
(sober and cautious murmurs of assent waft through the mob)
Then it's true..(catches breath. eyes watery with emotion) migawd... migawd...(steadies himself on a railing). Finally! (turns to address the rabble) My friends... let's not lose this golden opportunity. Kill the cell phones too! Listen to me! How complicated was your life when you didn't have to expend time fidgeting with obnoxiously over-complicated little gadgets just to make a call?! I want my telephone back on my desk next to the answering machine! I paid only $47 bucks at Radio Shack for both and they lasted fifteen years! They were still going strong when I tucked 'em in the closet with a prayer that someday.... someday... people will come to their senses and you two will be logical expenses again.
(falls to his knees) I pray you good gentle persons.. I pray you.. into the fire with the smartphones too...
6
Cletus, first I want to say that I admire your creativity -- even if it is a bit overdone. Oh, I am such a cynic that I cannot even offer a compliment without a caveat.
I will stick my neck out by saying that your post is intended to be taken as satire. That said, there is one problem -- the complaints ring so true!
As with most issues, I am divided. On the one hand, this Brave New Century, which hit us like a tsunami a few years prior to the actual calendar date, has enabled us and provided all sorts of conveniences and doo-dads that we never had before. The downside, however, is that the accelerating rate of change is out of control -- we literally cannot keep up with it.
Deleted Twitter. Was never on Facebook. I stick with Instagram cos I like looking at pictures.
1
Gosh, I hope not. Social media is the most insidious, false, awful thing ever created. It has wasted the brains of our children. I blame Steve Jobs, who could have cared less. Sink!
7
Social Media, isn't going nowhere and neither are those that hold those device in their hands.
3
Facebook and other tech monopolies need to be broken up into smaller, competitive entities so that consumers of information can control what they consume. Just like Ma Bell. Neo-Nazis and other hate groups could access one platform while more responsible and informed people could use a more responsible platform. Just like newspapers and other media. This may lead to more and more echo chambers, but it would go a long way toward delegitimization of the concept that media is an unbiased source of information. Media companies should be based on free speech principles, especially the principle that you can’t falsely shout fire in a crowded theatre. Those who do should be subject to prosecution. When misinformation is rendered less profitable, it will die a natural death. For the time being, though, the only response to Facebook is to delete your account. It is the only statement you can make that will have any impact.
2
You're in control of which personal data you're providing to them.
8
Well, I downloaded their data. I never told them I am a liberal, and in fact never discuss or read politics on Facebook. I also never told them I am Hispanic, which they had in their profile for me but actually, I'm not.
2
No, as it turns out, we're not. A relatively small number of fools gave their data to an app, and suddenly the app had all their Facebook friends' data as well. Then Cambridge Analytics had them, and now God knows who has them.
Social media is doing to the west what it did for Arabs during the Arab spring. Nothing going on with social media right now is a bug. It is a feature.
The west is going through a Crsis of Democracy b/c social media is curtailing and avoiding the old propaganda channels of the last millenia. And the international consortium of intelligence agencies designed to structure and organize information for western audiences is too slow and cumbersome to keep up with new competition by way of social media.
This is just like big box stores being out paced by my diffuse and spread out and more adroit internet companies.
This is a feature of democracy not a bug, and the money they make on our information is just how they are paid.
Frustration with this is just the internalized fear given to you by your intelligence agencies through their propaganda channels like this news paper and other old school systems of news and information dissemination.
2
Yeah... except for the Russian thing in the USA... and Brexit.... and possibly Italy and maybe Ukraine and Sri Lanka ...... Other then that... you may very well be right. Not.
1
A tool that would randomize the information FB collected from users would be a good start - rendering the data useless to the manipulators.
Take the profit and anti-social out of our social-media. Model it after Wikipedia where users build it and moderate it like Wikipedia does. Finance through donations like it does and PBS does.
6
To those who argue that Facebook's not the problem, its users are, I would simply suggest that ... well, then, maybe users ought to be regulated.
4
Social media fails the basic test of its premise - to connect people, and I mean in meaningful way. It has driven a wedge into the public discourse. It has been manipulated in a far more insidious way than radio or television in their infancies. It has interred the human voice in a tomb of on-screen text and digital pictographs, numbing the brain, reducing the human vocabulary to kindergarten levels -to wit, our President.
Here I am typing my response to the issue - and that's marvelous - to a point. Yet I still read deeply in print, in bound texts and I use my ears before my tongue in public. What's most remarkable is that after years on the internet, I just realized the ads are targeted at me! How did I miss that? Because years of filtering the noise extends to filtering the flash. But I feel badly for the folks who have wrapped themselves so tightly in a security blanket of ether that the physical world is what they see through an iphone camera.
11
Facebook puts me in touch with friends and family. I like that. It's free (sort of)! The cost of course is that we are bombarded with ads and our email addresses and other information is sold to other marketers. I'm good with that. An alternative of a paid service with no ads or information sharing might work, but I doubt if more than one percent of Facebook users would opt for the pay platform.
Facebook like any other human activity can be abused. This should not come as a surprise. And Facebook, like any other institution, needs reasonable regulations.
3
Facebook was fun in 2007 when it seemed like a great way to connect with friends, especially those with whom we lost touch long ago. But over time the reality of social media was apparent. Facebook wasn’t an effective means of staying in touch with people or invigorating relationships, and rarely did Facebook facilitate the rejuvenation of lost connections. After five or six years, it was apparent that social media was an empty activity. How it has not permanently turned off more people is the big surprise.
30
All they did was supply us with a tool; it can be used in a positive way, which is what these internet utopians had in mind when thy designed it - or it can be used in the way everything seems to sink to - which it ultimately has. An ax can build a house, or it can split a skull. It all depends on who is holding it. Please don't shoot the messenger, a lot of good has come from the internet before the trolls and the very wealthy, cynical manipulators took it over.
4
I still get news through printed local newspaper and online through NYT, use Facebook for family and friends and a few breweries. No Twitter, Instagram, etc. So this whole discussion kinda passes me by.
4
When privacy goes down, profits go up; when privacy goes up, profits go down.
That is all you need to know about ad-supported social media. The author and everyone else keeps thinking they can "fix" Facebook and other social media. The answer to the title of this piece is "No, not if it is ad-supported".
But current social media model is fundamentally flawed and cannot be made safe as long as they are marketing our personal data to sell ads. Its as simple as that.
9
The core of the problem is that users unreasonably expect a "free" service. Until users are ready to pay for the service, providers will continue to find less transparent ways to monetize user. Users need to accept a fee for service business model. At that point, we can reasonably demand transparency and privacy rights.
9
I would gladly pay $10.00 per month to be able to use a Facebook like platform that didn’t sell my private information and that regulated trolling.
Should "social media" be saved at all? It seems to have more painful, negative impacts than positive.
Social media has more than likely been used to misinform millions of people, to the detriment of the entire planet, for the gains of a select few. I can think of more cases where Facebook or Twitter were used for nefarious purposes than positive purposes. Other services are just as dangerous, lest we forget the young man killed in Kansas by the police after they were given a false report of a hostage situation after he was "swatted" while playing a video game.
The sole point of these companies is to market you, and monetize you. Except they don't want to pay you. An old farmer once told me "If the barn is free, you're the cow."
The virtual world has reached out and clawed open huge cracks in the real world. How we choose to deal with them is the next step.
9
social media is fun. How to save it? Turn it into a product that people pay for.
All the servers running the application and programmers building the platform are not free. They have to be paid for somehow, and right now they are paid for by mining personal info and selling it. What we are seeing now is not an accident, it is the exact design!
5
My own sense as an economist when these companies first came on the scene was that 1) they'd only be profitable if they could sell a product (us, to advertisers) without paying for it and 2) that they'd only be profitable if they could achieve a monopoly in their category, or get pretty close to it. Both have been borne, sorry to report. That racist and sexist employment practices would be standard was obvious in Silicon Valley almost from the beginning, although it's impressive the companies made it this far with the media still making excuses for them. What I didn't really foresee was the other negative consequences they'd bring, like threatening American democracy in the normal course of their business operations. At this point they need to be reined in sharply and told to please rejoin the United States of America.
6
As an economist, Milton Friedman would be horrified with your state controlled suggestions. More regulation is not the answer, it's the problem (paraphrasing RR). We need to educate the consumer that when they check a box, it means something. Government regulation, dummies down the public so they feel no level of accountability or responsibility. Aside, in the long run, there is no such thing as a monopoly, the consumer will always find an alternative.
Milton Friedman is the prophet, the Free Market is the religion.... like all religions full of dogma and unarguable premises. Hate to break this to you, but even Adam Smith favored regulation. I guess you think state- sponsored health care is bad because it overwhelmingly produces lower costs and better outcome. We should always pay a free market premium, to the gods of the invisible hand, right?$ (Which is blind and amoral.) Funny how other countries are better off with a social market system that moderates profit taking with consideration of societal needs. Bet you believe cutting taxes more in Kansas will eventually increase revenues....
I permanently deleted my FB account yesterday (I think). I've been unhappy with FB since a while before the CA expose. Originally, my FB page was great - I posted stuff, my friends and relatives posted stuff, we read each others stuff... pretty straight forward. THEN the ads started arriving, THEN FB changed their algorithms and interfered with news feeds. I began to realize that I was only seeing posts FB deemed "most popular." In order to see posts of ALL my friends I had to click on "most recent" newsfeed, and then people's individual pages. I complained - FB did nothing and THEN FB began truncating my news feeds with "make more friends to see more messages." I asked FB - why make more friends, you're already not showing me all the posts of the friends I have? Then I realized that FB WAS the troll reading the posts on my page and deciding what I should and should not see. FB "privacy" always was an illusion it just took me a while to "get it."
22
Social media undermine democracy when they spread disinformation, but they also radically support it when protests and movements are organized on it. I am a little afraid that all the anti-FB articles are being promoted by people and media who want to see the status quo stay in place. Otherwise, both media and government can do a lot to make social media safer, more honest, and more private, without disrupting its power to forge connections around the globe and use those connections to build movements.
1
I got off social media several years ago and never looked back. Prior to the decision, I was getting fed up with all the mundane information I was spending hours scrolling through. I wanted those hours of my life back, and my life has been the better for it. Now I worry about how my kids are experiencing their world. You can't experience anything directly if you're too busy documenting it with your device. I wonder if they'll remember things from their childhood -- like my generation would -- if they're too busy posting it to their social media platforms rather than being in the moment. Some would argue they would because they've got so much data to recall those experiences. Those of us who grew up going to concerts without a sea of lit-up phones blocking their view; or enjoying a dinner with friends without someone being distracted by their device; or discovering something beautiful in nature with a loved one without having to interrupt the experience for a photo op ... we know better. Sometimes you just have to BE there.
9
Why doesn't the article mention Wikipedia? While it's a non-profit, it utilizes many of the ideas the author cites, including largely being run by its users.
5
Those blaming social media for our society's ills are akin to those who blamed newspapers and radio in the previous century.
2
One key problem no one is looking at is how the crimes of "blackmailing" and "extortion" are not enforces. As an example, I had a recent Airbnb guest threaten to badmouth my house in her review if I didn't refund her for her entire stay (about $2400). I did, Airbnb did not care, and she badmouthed my house anyway -- kissing goodbye possibly hundreds of thousands in future rentals. If something like this cannot be stopped, you are dreaming big time about controlling things like Facebook or Twitter. We're facing a future of blackmail and extortion, by huge organized networks, in an environment of huge population growth and job shrinkage. In this environment, other than a very conservative use of these media, one would have to be a fool to exchange any person information this way. But that's just what we are (not me). And the article's suggestions will barely take a bite out of this potential for abuse.
3
Lets be honest and not fool ourself.The millennial generation is completely hoodwinked to social sites, shall I take liberty to say they are addicted to social media.The real question is wether American people can salvage themselves and not viceversa and able to even minimize their use of social sites.This hiccup is just like tea storm for facebook and I can guarantee after a fortnight stockprice will again be soaring.And to add insult congress is looking at penalizing facebook with few million dollars.It was better if congress had not penzalized tor if they want to punish facebook it should make impact on their pocket not few million dollars which is a chum change for company profiting more than 4 billion dollars las year.
5
"Instead of one big Facebook, a federated social network would look like clusters of independent nodes — Mombook and Athletebook and Gamerbook — all of which could be plugged into the umbrella network when it made sense."
Soooo... Like Reddit?
2
Facebook conned everyone into believing they needed it. Guess what-you don't. Take back your freedom, your privacy, your time, and get off of all social media pronto. And tell all of your "friends" to delete all references to you.
6
"...which reminded you that you’ve entrusted the most intimate parts of your digital life to a profit-maximizing surveillance machine..."
Well, yeah. except it's one's own fault if they ever believed it was ever anything BUT this...
2
In February 2017, facebook was condemned in France to pay damages to a french baker victime of calomny on a facebook page falsely opened in his name. Details, in french, are given at:
www.ouest-france.fr/high-tech/facebook/facebook-condamne-aider-un-boulan...
This is worse than spreading fake news because the reputation and livehood of an individual were targeted.
3
I don't know what the answer is for the industry/companies, but on a personal level I'd say it's not necessary (for me, anyhow) to have constant access to FB, Twitter, Snapchat, et al. on a smartphone. That means flip phones, baby! No apps on the phone because it's not possible with a flip phone (at least not with mine). Time-consuming texting and yes making actual phone calls without video. Basically setting up boundaries to prevent being plugged in 24/7. Then having to sit down at a computer to log into whatever platform you want to use.
2
These kinds of apps are not all a smart phone does. Do you ever need GPS? Checking radar when you’re on a long bike ride is helpful. Taking photos from time to time is nice too (though I agree some people overdo it). The only social media I have on my iPhone is Instagram, but I only follow a few family members and yes, it bugs me that the ads have recently started appearing. I love listening to podcasts while I’m on the treadmill. I hate FaceTime, but I know it’s nice for people who have small children and travel. Venmo is can be convenient but it’s scaring me a little with all these other data issues. You don’t have to choose between being a Luddite and being a social media addict.
1
It's remarkable to me that in this day and age, people still don't understand that if the service is free, YOU are the product. We knew this 10 years ago.
10
The business model can not be "fixed" and remain economically viable. The reality is that Facebook et al. is nothing more than very polished and addictive spyware, plain and simple. What throws people off is that most FB users think they are the buyer. They are not. The users are the product, they are what’s for sale. In essence, FB stares fixedly up the user’s skirt and then sells what it sees to one and all. It’s the same with all so-called “social media.” Free? Ha! And remember, FB makes the rules, calls the shots, and as far as FB is concerned, owes you nothing. “Every move you make, Every step you take, Zuck is watching you…”
7
Too funny. The nytimes page that this article appears on has over 10 links that exploit readers' privacy.
8
I think bliplife.com is the natural solution.
1
Why is it that the New York Times has intelligent, civil discussions on their forums yet Yahoo and Facebook forums are full of nasty, insulting, incivilty? I rarely even click the comments on Yahoo anymore and deleted Facebook because they are so depressing. What ever happened to civlity?
6
Social media is a medium where misinformation can spread very quickly. It is the catalyst, not the source of the disease. The problem is that like the native Americans, our society has no immunity to false and misleading information. Degenerate organizations like Cambridge Analytica are not in the business of making people more immune to brainwashing, they are in the business of capitalizing on it. Social media has been put on notice that people who want to avoid an info plague will abandon their infected website.
43
"Social media is a medium where misinformation can spread very quickly."
Pal, not as fast as "you can keep your doctor" and "it was the video, y'know."
Truth will out. Always.
1
BDO, the paucity of examples on the right is clear indeed, scouring back years for a misstatement or two. Trump lies with nearly every breath. There's no keeping up with it. When will you face the truth of these wealthy con men who have deceived you for so long?
3
2500 years ago, Solomon son of David gave us a good description of social media today: In Ecclesiastes 1: Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
1
Of course social media can't be saved, Kevin! You can't put toothpaste back
in the tube or the genie back in the bottle. Very cute headache-making GIF illustration of your "tech" piece (h/t Glenn Harvey). It's too late now, as Carole King sang in 1971!
3
To be frank, I have never really 'gotten' this constant need to tweet, facebook, and/or instagram (such that nouns are now verbs); I don't and I don't read posts on FB or tweets and I really wish that the news media (that is, serious news media) would stop reporting tweets. I don't give a flying hoot what someone has to say in 150 characters or less, so why make it newsworthy (even if it comes from a 'tweet-hog' such as the most recent incumbent in the WH). The vast majority - I estimate close to 99% - of tweets are rubbish and who but the most self-absorbed posts the minutiae of their existence or have the need to constantly facebook . . . get a life.
124
To be frank, thoughtful, brief responses to articles such as this are also a kind of social media, although with a different purpose (we are not shown ads here). Before taking the moral high ground perhaps you might consider that reading and writing these posts is precisely one of the things people get out of social media.
The long history of human intellectual sweat, east, west and middle-east/west, has produced a number of memorable aphorisms, proverbs, bon mots and succinct "words to live by" (well, under certain typically undefined conditions). FB, Tweet, et al. allows the hoi polloi -- current POTUS not excluded -- the illusion that what they happen to think, off the cuff, may actually be worthy of record, indeed encryption, beyond the longevity of sound waves in the atmosphere. Could anything be further from the truth? What social media do in fact display, far more often than not, is a pandering to the undereducated to get them to reveal their prejudices, their inclinations, so that these can then be exploited by savvy salesmen. When has any "techno-revolution" not been driven by the expectation of greater profits for those on the cutting edge of exploitation?
1
This article is ignoring two glaring things about social media: who uses it and why. Very few people under the age of 35 is going to purge their account of people they don't interact with, especially on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Why? Because follower count matters to people of that age. Many of the comments I am seeing here are from people who were well into adulthood when they opened up a Facebook account. They probably don't care as much about about how many friends and followers they have and will be more apt to protest the current way things are run. Social media for young people has become essential to ego and identity and the selling of personal data, while troubling, is not enough for us to band together and demand change.
4
If the latest data scandals fail to bring Facebook down, it will fail eventually due to its design. It's locked into the mid-2000s. The reason they bought Instagram is because the design is much cleaner.
Social media will probably look a lot different in 20 years but it isn't going anywhere.
1
Social media promotes sharing of controversial and sometimes false and sensational content because it increases the time spent on the sites and number of views, all of which monetize the context. Even if a site does not actively promote such content, most will not prohibit it unless it violates their rules. So, social media has an incentive to allow and perhaps promote divisive content.
I looked at the profit made by FB last year, which was $4 billion. The number of users worldwide is 1.6 billion. So that works out to $2.50 per person per year worldwide. $2.50 per year.
I realize that there are many poor countries for which even such a small fee might be a burden, but FB could easily develop a fee structure scaled to a country's relative economic size. So in the US, the fee would be higher, but even if it was $25 per year, that is extremely low. And people pay now in other more damaging ways.
Maybe I am missing something, but if FB could make the same profit by charging users a very small fee, then would that not create much less of an incentive/need to practice sharing/viewing/data mining strategies that target users for advertisers? Provocative content would still get posted, but the platform would not have to promote sharing or conduct data mining and could apply stricter content standards as well without it decreasing their profit.
4
You are confusing profit and revenue. The latter is a lot higher so suddenly that annual subscription would no longer be so cheap. Plus, there is the signup and payment hurdle. Calculate that for a family of 4, working class, and you soon end up with several hundred $ per month and a rapidly disappearing user base.
If it were so simple, the NYT should have 1 billion paying subscribers, shouldn't it?
2
You are right of course. So I looked up FB's 2017 gross revenue, which was about $41 billion, and the net revenue was about $16 billion. I'm not sure how much a change from an advertising model to a subscription model would change those numbers, but if the gross revenue value above is used, then the per person fee worldwide would be about $25 per year. That would not result in several hundred $ per month for a family of four, but rather about $8.33 per month for four people.
Still, that would be an impediment in poorer countries and to some in the US unless the costs of not having to perform data mining and having an advertising department could lower the fees.
But thanks for catching the error.
1
Yes, and thank you for catching my error as well. I meant to write several hundred $ per year, not per month.
1
I think there is a life-cycle at work here and it's pretty short and it's near the end. I quit FB and am very glad I did - for many reasons. I never quite understood Instagram and never will. My grandchildren abandoned FB a while back and that does not bode well for its future. I am left with Twitter which I use for news feeds and that's all. Now if I could just stop checking my emails all the time.
2
:) If I could ever get over the HuffPost, I would be happy. I used to secretly laugh at my mother for her love of the National Enquirer but I see we have more in common than I thought:))
1
Its so easy to fix this, its what the internet was designed for - to give income to the masses from a mass audience. People who read these comments regularly probably already know I am an academic working in this area.
The platform should simply charge people 1 cent or penny to "like" or "comment" on a post, such as a meme or photograph, video etc., and pay this directly to the person who created the post or content. This would remunerate the creators of the content. 20,000 likes would receive $200, 3 or 4 good posts a month and you get minimum wage.
It would moderate the content, result in artists and content creators actually being paid and it would result in higher quality content.
But, it wont happen with people like Zuckerberg because he believes it requires him to shift his philosophical approach from a zero sum game, where he is the winner, and everyone else is the loser, to an everyone wins approach.
Income inequality is caused by very few people who have dangerous mindsets, those 1 percent predators.
Eventually, after robotics and artificial intelligence removes the need for manual labor, governments will have to regulate the system. Why? Because a new economy will need to emerge, a soft economy based on creativity and knowledge - it will be the only thing most people will want to do and need to do - creating content for others. The hard economy will provide free labor and universal incomes etc.
The hard part is now though.
11
Time to put it out of its misery. I bet the Devil shut hell down and outsourced to facebook and twitter.
3
I just read "How to Break Up With Your Phone" by Catherine Price and it has changed my relationship to all these platforms. I'm an artist so I do use them for work, but I've realized that I can participate in weekly chunks instead of every day or every hour, which isn't easy since they are designed to suck you in like a slot machine. Having a sharp attentive mind is key to making decent art, so it's imperative that I don't regularly give away my focus to social media. Dulling my brain isn't worth the ticket price.
5
I do not use Facebook, Twitter, et al but I am not currently trying to promote a business, club, or art like you are doing. I have a personal website for any amateur art that I do but that is mostly because I am as a neighbor describes - nit-picky - and I do not want my art next to an annoying commercial for car insurance:)
Compare your use of social media vs. what I am doing right now which is perusing the NYT comments section rather than addressing the to-do-list that is right next to my mouse:)
"The original dream of social media — producing healthy discussions, unlocking new forms of creativity, connecting people to others with similar interests..." Who is Mr Roose kidding? From the beginning, the Sand Hill Road VCs have only funded start-ups with business plans to Make Lots of Money. And selling personal data fits the bill. Always has. But that's never stopped every important Democrat candidate from cruising into the Valley for suck up campaign funding. This hub-bub is all because (gasp) someone other than a Democrat got into their private stash. Please.
2
"The original dream of social media"
The original dream of Facebook was that Mark Zuckerberg would know which of his classmates were attractive and available. This was shortly followed by the dream of getting really rich.
The way we fix the problems of social media is to take it out of the hands of a private company and put it back in control of individuals. One possible technical solution to that problem is the Diaspora* project ( https://diasporafoundation.org/ ).
1
It's a parasite.
5
...I bet they said the same thing about television, back in the 1960's
I understand the privacy concerns, but at the same time... There’s a lot of predictable social media bashing here, with all of the usual accusations of how ‘boring’ and ‘banal’ the posts are, how it’s all silly, useless fluff, and that it’s a waste of time, etc. But that’s what makes it cool and interesting to me – it’s like this panoply of ordinary human experience that plays out in real time. I see it as a form of ‘found performance art,’ and I love to look it at as if I’m an anthropologist or detective – what do all of these assorted posts mean, how do they add up, what kind of interesting narratives can I extrapolate from them? I think it’s fascinating that people curate their lives and display them in these little performance art galleries. Yes, we all need to be aware of how our data is mined and shared, but I don't think we have to shut down (or abandon) the space entirely or to adopt such judgmental attitudes towards those who choose to participate in it.
3
It’s the lunacy of a species bereft of originality and the ability to communicate, to say nothing of the dread of actual others before you. Google’s founder admitted at the onslaught of it that he had loosed anarchy into the world and wondered if humans could handle it. We have the answer. No in thunder!
2
No.
3
California has an Assembly Bill in the works, the "Social Media Disclosure Act" that requires paid political ads that appear on Facebook, Twitter, etc. disclose funders. It requires these sites to put an obvious "Who Funded This Ad?" link on the ads that goes to a profile page that clearly shows the ad's top three funders. Specific, carefully crafted regulations and laws like this can reduce the harm done by social media. What are we waiting for?
The bill is AB 2188 (Mullin).
5
You really should stop using the term "social network", it is really a "gossip network", and it has all the negative attributes this term implies.
4
When Mark Zuckerberg said something to the effect that "if we can't do a better job of protecting your data, we don't deserve to serve you" I think he was using "serve" in the sense that the waiter at the barbecue joint "serves" you a slice of brisket. Everybody who has a facebook account has got to know how true it is that they are not the customer, they are the product, to be sold and sold and sold again.
Sure, the puppy videos are cute, but the truth is: Facebook is evil.
Delete.
7
Remember "To Serve Man" on the original Twilight Zone (or seen it in reruns)?
It’s very simple: de-anonymize. Like IRL
2
Torpedo the whole lot of them. FB, Twitter and the others are a gigantic bore.
Turn off your computers. Go outside. Get some exercise.
15
The short answer is "No, Social Media Cannot Be Saved". Businesses make money by selling you a product. When the product appears to be free, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. Google, Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Linked, all have a business model that sells you to advertisers, information warehouses, and the like. And, this information IS NOT innocuous. It WILL come back and haunt the average person.
Healthcare and other businesses run sideline "businesses" selling your health information to information warehouses. I was a DBA for the Oregon Health Plan. State "Contractors", the people who actually handle medical claims, laboratory reports, information on prescription drugs, SOLD your information. Employers bought it because an employee having a positive HIV test, with a wife with breast cancer or a child with leukemia, would run up medical bills that would blow through the insurance cost caps, with the costs hitting the employer. Likewise, they would know if you had an alcohol or drug problem, even if you had a prescription for "medical marijuana". That all operated in 32 states that I know of, first hand. People lost jobs, had credit scores destroyed and were unable to buy homes or even get a consumer loan, were denied life insurance, all because of this. And, remember, I HAD the records for this and gave them to the government...who has done NOTHING. Maybe its time the NYT stepped in.
2
Stop blaming social media. Don't blame me or my friends for sharing pics, clips and stories. Blame bad people like Alexander Nix who exploit it for power and control. Or Zuckerberg/Sandberg who exploit and sell user generated content for financial gain.
If Nix, Zuckerberg, Sandberg, etc., were outstanding moral and uncommonly intelligent businessmen who respected and viciously protected the privacy of strangers, then we would not be in this mess.
1
Used to be that scammers, thieves and rapists had to knock on your door to sell you snake oil, magical potato peelers, life insurance or stake out your house for robbery. To breach your privacy, someone had to enter your house physically. Now all they have to do is to get a Facebook account, ask to be your "friend" (Friend!!!!), and they have free access to the most personal, private details of your life or that of your children, plus have the ear of everyone who is linked to your account.
I wonder what could go wrong.
2
I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts last Friday. I have to say, I feel pretty good about it. They try to make you feel terrible about it (all your friends on the society-sinking ship...they'll miss you as it goes down) and your friends will plead with you to "not leave" the platform that is essentially an echo chamber, but I think it's one of the better decisions I've made in the last month. My next step will be to find a replacement for Google apps, and maybe to stop reading these comment sections on news articles (print subscription maybe?).
13
Good for you, AW. I got off social media several years ago and dealt with the same corporate guilt lines. I even had friends who told me they wouldn't communicate with me anymore because they only use Facebook. (my response was then they aren't true friends) I don't miss it, and you won't either.
9
I hope not!
1
Once these companies became publicly traded it became too late to change them except if it can be proven that the change will result in higher profits. They're all about increasing "shareholder value" now, not being socially responsible.
So-called social media are a pox on society. Facebook offers some utility to consumers for maintaining contact with others and for sharing data in various formats, but such contact may be realized without having to give away one's personal data in order to enrich a few people. Twitter is a negative service. Society would be better off, should Twitter be closed as a service.
The so-called capitalistic economic system has many deficiencies. Advertising-supported services of any kind are one major deficiency. Advertising is falsity for all intents and purposes as currently conducted. No benefit to anyone to whom the advertising is directed. Social media are venues to make advertising even more irritating and insidious.
Right about twitter wrong about advertising. Everything you watch on tv or listen to on the radio is provided free by an advertiser. The unsolicited ads on social media are are driving me away.
"And lots of important things still happen on even the most flawed networks. The West Virginia teachers’ strike and last weekend’s March for Our Lives, for example..." The bias here is remarkable. The profit-making endeavors of the providers of social media are denigrated, while social causes promoted through social media are celebrated. The parallels with the goofy "net neutrality" argument are uncanny. Don't you understand that these networks would not EXIST without the profit motive? The very fact that they ARE PROFITABLE indicates they are providing value to people. Othewise people would not freely use them, and they would have to be coerced to use them, as with government and taxation.
1
The notion that profitability establishes "value to people" is a delusion. The heroin trade is obscenely profitable. Monopolists like Amazon rake in profits by destroying all retail competition. I have lived the majority of my life before electronic social media was a "thing." We were far better off without it. It is, like heroin, a drug. It is also a major contributor to the concentration of wealth within a shrinking class of uber-wealthy investors.
Both the teacher strike and the march were abominations and facilitated by social media. Fire up the ignorant and uninformed and get them into the streets.
There is such a thing a social media illiteracy, and I’m sad to say a number of us suffer from it. Granted, certain sites have a monopoly over their services (YouTube & free video streaming) and that makes it nearly impossible to avoid their ‘promoted’ content.
However, to suggest that social media is somehow going out of style is absurd to me. The picture for this editorial is literally a sinking ship of the different platforms. And yet, these avenues gave birth to everything from the Arab Spring to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
The problem isn’t social media. It’s people blindly agreeing to rules that allow their information to be sold - it’s those of us who form an opinion without researching the topic. It’s our predispositions, our stubbornness, our cowardice.
THAT is what is taken advantage of. Our trust in our own opinionated ways. It’s easy to target advertising if you know the recipient isn’t going to think for themselves or second guess it. Everyone is afraid of what they don’t understand. Misinformation is spread through our most “trusted sources”. We all loved Facebook before the news broke that they’re playing mind games with us. Now we’re stepping away, but it’s too late.
You want to find information you can trust? Maybe seek out articles and opinions you aren’t going to “like”
21
This is too simplistic. The advertising revenue, on which the whole business plan is based, is the fundamental problem. Facebook makes money by being a surveillance machine -- Stasi on steroids selling everything it overhears, everything it vacuums up about its, as you put it, "blind" users.
Trouble is there's no way it users cannot be blind -- unless, that is, Facebook changes fundamentally, and either quits surveilling us or gives each of us total and individual control over whatever it gathers up about us, possibly allowing each of us to sell that information if we so choose.
2
"Can Social Media Be Saved"? I hope the answer is "No". Social media has done more harm than good in my estimation. I never jumped on the bandwagon for many reasons, most of which are being played out in dramatic fashion now. People only NEED social media because they've been told that they do. If FB, et al disappeared tomorrow, I can assure you that the world would not come to a screeching halt.
5
I was a late adopter to social media, but once I started to really use it, particularly Facebook, it really consumed most of my free time while leaving me world-weary, depressed, disgusted, angry and yet inexplicably wanting more. Now that I've left ALL of the platforms (Cambridge Analytica was just the catalyst I needed), I feel so much better, lighter, and more myself. I'm starting to do all of the things I used to enjoy that social media supplanted--reading, visiting book and comics stores (I also canceled my Amazon Prime account), listening to and searching for new music, practicing my own music and art, looking into adult ed classes, working on my garden, and more. I no longer wake up and reach for my phone first thing in order to scroll through FB, Instagram, etc...--usually resulting in a sour mood--I just get on with my day. The last several years spent on social media has been a bad dream and I'm finally waking up.
9
Went to LA Fitness the other day and everyone except me and another older guy (over 40) were on their cell phones; we had a conversation but the others were in their bubbles. Then the Jacuzzi, these two girls (20's) came in together, propped their cellphones against the towel rack, took a shower, retrieved their phones and brought them into the jacuzzi with them. If this is what social media does to people then the world is in trouble.
A more relevant question is if print media can be saved. Social media is certainly here to stay.
1
Nothing is here to stay, Asher. We are one hostile hack away from our power going off. Social media won't work (and neither will ATMs). Further, although the media isn't really engaging on the question, our entire social/economic paradigm is balanced on a thin edge. The four horsemen are out there. It has happened before and will happen again.
1
I'm sorry I am more upset about the preventable Equifax breach and how they have yet to receive a meaningful consequence for their inaction.
5
It's absurd to believe social media is going away. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. Social media may evolve, but it's not going anywhere. It's a multi-billion dollar industry, and while flawed, is a revolutionary concept and has changed the world as we know it on practically every level of industry and personal communication.
4
Frankly I am less worried about the security of my data on Facebook than I am about the tremendously addictive time-sink it has become for me. I keep promising myself I am going to just look at it once a week, or just 30 minutes a day ... but I always find myself scrolling through for hours every night. I look up at the clock and am always astounded at how far down the rabbit hole I have fallen, and for how long. Like Rip Van Winkle, I "wake up" to find that major chunks of my life are gone forever. It's like that brand of potato chip that used to advertise that "you can't just have one." I guess the only way to eliminate this burden from my life is to do what some of the other commenters here suggest: Delete it and walk away. I really don't care about saving any of the data that they already have... since I obviously have never gone back to look at it before now, anyhow.
9
Other than being an avid consumer of cat videos on YouTube, I do not use social media platforms. So from my view from the cheap seats, it's interesting and a little hubristic to think that these media would be vectors for "new forms of creativity, connecting others with similar interests, and producing healthy discussions" as the author suggests. Maybe social media can do all of these things but when you consider the great healthy discussions, like the correspondence between Adams and Jefferson; connecting others with similar interests, which our universities do better than anything else, bar none; or fostering creativity, like the Internet itself, you realize that these achievements were made without social media and I suspect that our next great milestones will be made outside of social media as well. Social media can work for keeping in touch and selling stuff but, in my opinion, that's about it. Greatness and truly important things happen elsewhere.
2
Having worked in Tech for 30 years I can say these folks have the ability to 1) Manage their data with integrity and 2) Provide a framework that would be trustworthy to social media users. They are CHOOSING not to.
To me, this is simply a question of the integrity of these founders and executive teams. Class action lawsuits, specifically naming founders and those decision makers personally gaining and responsible for these unethical decisions, could go a long way to fix this problem.
12
Interesting thought... class action suit. Any lawyers out entertaining the thought? Inquiring minds want to hear.
When the telephone first appeared crank calls and abusive solicitors soon appeared and the federal government finally wrote laws that stopped much of the abuse. When radio appeared it took about 20 years to figure out what worked and didn't just as Television evolved from vaudeville entertainment to a serious medium. The internet is growing up and the next phase is developing a set of rules for using personal data and various advertising methods. Facebook will develop better tools and in time protect its customer base. By the 2030's the novelty of the internet will be over and it will probably be treated as a utility. Creeps and crazies have always been around. What is important is not to allow the internet to be damaged or destroyed by hysteria.
4
It's bad enough that they make their profits vacuuming up every last detail of their 'customers' lives and selling to the highest bidder. What makes it truly disgusting is watching Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg present themselves as paragons of social altruism whose mission in life is bringing everyone together and saving the planet.
33
This article is too hopeful. Social media is not the root problem, rather a reflection of the root problem -- which is that many people are destructive and filled with anger and frustration. Short of censorship, give people a channel to communicate, any channel, and they will express those feelings. Some do it in a mature way, but many don't. And it affects others.
7
The argument around social media and its problems too often misses the more distressing bigger picture. Social media in its pure form was a bold experiment that allowed people to connect easily will little or no control or intermediation. And sadly when humans are allowed to interact without the layers of social norms that act to constrain our behavior in the real world we turn out to be vicious, excitable, gullible and cruel. Putting "the people in charge" will only exacerbate this...look at Reddit or 4Chan. There is a reason we have government and institutions of collective social authority...we're incapable of regulating ourselves.
3
Yes, the social networks are evil, but so are the people who use them. Social media merely reveals the extent of depravity of the human condition:it doesn't create it. Yes, human beings really are that awful to one another. That's the part we have trouble coming to grips with.
5
My respect for someone is inversely related to how much time they spend on social media.
Whenever I meet someone who does not have a Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or WhateverChat account I always like them
9
I wonder what you call what we’re doing here right now?
Get real. I don't have a facebook account as I am a high school teacher...you see, when a former student wanted to set up an account for me and did I suddenly had 483 "friend" requests in a two week period. Holy cow! Most were former and current students and as I have approximately 150 new kids a year in class, you can imagine the numbers. I was instantly spooked and got off it quickly, before I even knew whether I liked it or not.
However, my students ALL have social media accounts. Every one. They are hooked. And if I didn't hate their phones even more, I might have more antipathy toward facebook. It's actually the phones that worry me even more. Pavlovian responses have turned me into the phone police in class. Every tiny ping, every little vibration and they have to check. Some of them cried when told they could not take phones into the ACT. (And yes, they usually listen when I tell them to put them away but my district foolishly allows them and thus I am not permitted to ban them, so this is my fate: English teacher-phone police.)
Social media, whatever its faults may be, is here to stay people. Talk to some teenagers.
7
Some rules need to be implemented: 1) You can't share your contacts without the explicit permission of the contact. 2) You need to be able to find out who has received your information. 3) If you quit your non atomized information is destroyed. 4) You need to be able to create a "do not share" list of entities who may not have your data. 5) You need to create an ad blocker for sites you do not want to receive ads from.
If social media can survive with these kind of restraints, more power to them.
1
I would add : removing the "friends" or "followers" counts, and the "likes".
My guess is that the traffic would go down by half.
A lot of content is now posted, not because of a genuine desire to share with an "altruistic" intent, but with the objective of gathering "likes", a purely transactional operation and even a mercantile one since, in some cases, "popularity" can be parlayed into financial gains.
1
We need an amendment to publicly fund elections so elected legislators can address corruption and corporate America. The only way to formally propose such would be through the Article V Convention.
3
I am part of a very large, world wide artists' community that includes professional painters, sculptors, illustrators, animators, cg artists, storyboard artists, concept artists, visual development artists, and so many in between.
To say that social media has changed the way artists work would be an understatement. It has transformed it in every way. Over the past ten years, artists of all types from all over the world have been able to share and connect, allowing us to follow each other's work, share tips, business insight, and inspiration. For that, social media has been incredible. However, It's also been a massive burden, as well. Artists are now more or less beholden to social media to promote their work, lest you get swept under the rug, professionally. Many artists, including myself, post on Instagram (daily), Facebook, Twitter, my blog, You Tube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Art Station. Artists instruct one another on how to keep up with trending hashtags, what time to post, what kind of material, what kind of art is popular, what kind of art is unpopular, what styles seem to get the most "likes", and on and on. As an older artist I worry a great deal about how social media influences and homogenizes artists' work. It's not healthy. If social media goes away, I will breathe a sigh of relief.
5
I am an artist too and the pressure to post my work, my process, etc. is effecting my studio practice in a negative way. My brain isn't wired for the mouse wheel pace of instagram. When I make work in a calculated way to look good on social media I have step back and wonder if it's worth it. I'm a fairly successful artist and I'm pulling way back from social media. I post maybe once a month and only go on the platforms once a week. Why? Because I'm also an introvert and I feel like I'm at a chatty party on social media.
7
I feel so much the same as you! Good to know it's not "just me".
2
I can only hope so.
and yet, people love "social media"
This is ridiculous. The first suggestion seeks to turn over control to the users when it is the users themselves who are responsible for creating toxic atmospheres online. It is not solely the actions of market forces and capitalists that create online hostility, it is the anonymity of the platforms combined with the fact that we live in a world filled with jerks.
The second suggestion would only exacerbate the echo-chamber problems that currently cripple constructive dialogue online.
And finally, the third suggestion would undermine the very purpose of social media for millions of people. Users use these platforms to keep tabs on friends and colleagues who they met years ago or only interact with on an irregular basis. "Starting Over" would essentially undermine the uses of social media as an electronic rolodex or networking outlet.
These are not solutions as much as attacks on a series of straw men.
7
Social media is a complete waste of time and now we know its purveyors have sold your data for nothing good. But, the irony is all users knew their data was being passed around. It is not 100 per cent clear but it looks like the data just might have helped Trump. That to the typical social media user is anathema. Had their data helped HC, that would have been just fine. And, if the truth be known, her campaign was most probably using the same data to target voters. Her mistake is not showing up in the rust belt, not once. And, so she lost 70 electoral votes there and that is why she lost. Social media did not prevent her from going to the rust belt. As to facebook being used to suppress black voting, dream on. Blacks turned out for BO in record numbers. HC had no such appeal. BO beat her in 2008 and she had the same negatives 8 years later. The Democrats ran the one person who could lose do a man with orange hair. Really. As much as we want to blame facebook, the blame belongs with HC.
7
Facebook is the outrage du jour among the national news media. It'll go away in a few months. I've been on it for several years; I downloaded my data and didn't find anything surprising. The only thing I find that's ridiculous is the cut and paste falsehoods from Facebook friends, such as the photo of the pyramids at Giza covered in snow, or statements attributed to Obama that he never made.
1
You DID NOT download all of the data FaceBook or Twitter or Google has on you. You might have gotten a portion of what you and friends posted, but you did not get to see the analysis of websites you visit, your contacts list, emails from political organizations, nor your healthcare records. All of those are collected by various information warehouses and all of that is for sale. You to understand that for Social Media and information warehouses, you are the product.
1
You haven't read enough. The world, believe it or not, is not contained within the confines of your personal Facebook experience.
1
What is social media?
Should social media be saved?
Who can save social media?
1
Answer to the question: No.
Get a life.
Get some real friends.
Personal devices are designed to make people stupider and lazier.
And social media is converting us into a tribal society...like Iraq or Afghanistan.
Just what Mark Zuckerberg's and Trump's Russian allies want.
Terrorists always love social media and personal devices.
14
Why?
2
The title of this article "Can Social Media Be Saved?" struck me as backwards to the point of being absurd.
The question should be, as obvious from the way too many people were so easily manipulated in 2016, is "Can We Be Saved From Social Media?".
American Democracy survived for over 200 years without electronic social media and we can survive without it.
4
About seven years ago, a few friends told me I should sign up with FB. I visited their homepage and — perhaps with my 40 years of marketing communication experience — I quickly came to the conclusion that this was about making money from the information they requested of me. So I told those friends to be on their guard and to restrict the information they provided. I also told them to delete all info jump ship ASAP.
As I watched others fall for the FB trap, I read about how FB turned "friend" into a verb. Convincing their members to "friend" as many people as possible, it became a game of numbers in FB's favor. Making a game of exponentially expanding one's 'friending' list did all of FB's work for them. Data and more data in the millions and then, billions, made FB very rich simply by selling member data to marketers.
And then, the Russians, WikiLeaks and Cambridge Analytica used FB, among other social media platforms to subvert our democracy.
Making social media seem as indispensable as breathing has been — from the beginning — a scam. "Connecting the world" as become the tool for those attempting to reduce democracy by flipping democracy on its head.
If social media dies, I am all for it. What a cruel hoax it has been.
9
In full agreement with you. Everyone needs to go back to the old fashion way of living stars to value real friendships, take out your library cards and get acquainted with knowledge once again. Buy a thinking about you card and mail it ,be involved in daily activities without taking your picture of doing something and sending it to your so called followers .
This technology is toxic an it wasn't created to open up communities but to steal your privacy and have your life an open book to everyone. The sooner you stop allowing Facebook,google.twitter all of this capitalism rubish rule your life the better off everyone will be. By the way it will solve part of the issue of having to deal with bullies if your not on these systems. Won't solve it completely but it will help. We need to take our lives back asap.
1
I don't notice LinkedIn on that boat. That's one I really want out of my life because not only do I have to work, I have to maintain it as well.
3
There used to be an agreement called the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE which supported facts and honest reporting for media, no false equivalencies, no giving voice to flat earth conspiracies under the guise of hearing both sides. Like global warming, there isn't opposing side, only more research exploring cause and impact. Anyone who cannot remember the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE in practice in the media can easily search it out online.
In 1986 Ronald Reagan removed the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE, giving rise to Fox and other propaganda outlets which have convinced many viewers of falsehoods and other emotional manipulations to act against their own best interests, particularly at the ballot box.
What we need is not only for the internet to be regulated like the utility it is, but also a modern FAIRNESS DOCTRINE for mainstream media and social media. No lying, inaccurate information or false equivalency is tolerated.
Yes, the genie is out of the bottle, but we must start somewhere: regulate the internet as the utility it is; gather all media and social media heads to hammer out a MODERN FAIRNESS DOCTRINE.
14
I truly don't understand all the gassy and comical agonizing going on about Facebook. There are many websites or apps that you or I may find objectionable for whatever reasons. Social media sites are no different - if you don't trust them or find them disturbing for whatever reason, then don't use them. It's that simple. Nobody cares if you deleted your Facebook account. Really.
7
Way too simplistic opinion for something as crucial and far reaching as social media.
1
Facebook is really in a class by itself. No one, no matter how addicted, runs their whole life through Youtube, but many run their life through Facebook. The whole business model is to provide free services and pay for it by selling access to exquisitely targeted audiences of subscribers. That's all political advertisers need, they don't need to know your name. It is a creepy system and there is no way to fix it, either you accept it or you quit.
5
Reddit is pretty good example of "new power" and look at the trolls and racists that thrive on there. Without some kind of admin, the slime in the cesspools of humanity will fester.
3
More than half the nation grew up WITHOUT social media so I'm certain that life could continue nicely without it. After all the generation that DIDN'T have it sent a man to the moon, talked to their neighbors, sent their kids to school where they weren't shot at every day, bought houses and cars and INNOVATED very well. TECH is just another gimmick sold to the sheep to make them think their lives would be improved like finding FATAL dates on Craig's List, or getting ripped off with BITCOIN or having your personal information sold to the highest bidders on a continuous basis. GIVE ME A BREAK.
4
Absolutely Correct !!! It has caused the "sheep of the cliff" syndrome !!! Well said !!!
Decentralized, user-controlled networks are technically possible.
But such a network has been, in essence, modeled on sites like Reddit and 4Chan. The entities running these sites have found that active moderation is still necessary - or at least that's what they have concluded.
Now suppose there was a true public, decentralized, open-source network that could not be controlled by anyone. The data is not stored on centralized servers - in fact, no one knows where any of the data is. Anyone can join, and any programmer can hook up his application to it.
What would happen? It is not hard to imagine that many highly undesirable users would flock to such a network. Everyone who's been kicked off of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit will be among the first to sign up.
Such a network might try to use karma or points like Slashdot, to mod up useful or intelligent posts through the wisdom of the crowd, but there is no guarantee this would work.
1
Social media is a complete waste of time. I dumped my accounts 5 years ago and never looked back.
As for the internet in general, there are some positives, but mostly just in the way of convenience. Mostly, to this point at least, the internet is a net negative: national security problems, ransom ware, identity theft, theft of intellectual property including killing the music industry, cyber bullying, privacy concerns, etc.
8
Did people stop using phones when telemarketers came on the scene? No. Did email go away when spam started? Considering email is used a user ID, such as on NYTimes.com, no. Is social media doomed? I doubt it. Since Facebook has allowed me to connect with people who I otherwise don't have contact with, I am in no hurry to give it up. They will get through this.
31
Telemarketers can get hefty fines if they call people who put their names on a no-call list. Email servers have placed all sorts of filters to reject spam. Facebook so far is making a killing and letting shadowy characters subvert elections. Much more serious, much more oversight needed.
5
Your financially stressed cousins in the country can't wait to see pics of your new house. Ditto this summer's vacation.
By the time they're 18, your kids will be grateful that you've put hundreds of images of them online, without their consent.
You haven't actually telephoned your 8th-grade classmate for years, but she's thrilled to have come within your online circle.
I can see why so many people love Facebook.
5
Social media worked so long as people felt comfortable with sharing their intimate secrets. It died when people were compelled by identity thieves and social predators to stop using it altogether, or else display a fabricated Persona instead of their true inner Self.
1
There's nothing wrong with the social networks. The problem is that human beings lack the mental and emotional intelligence to be able to handle them without harming themselves in the process. Maybe after we're destroyed ourselves a superior specials will come along to replace us. Face it folks, we're just not all that bright.
I give you Donald Trump.
4
"... nothing wrong with the social networks..." Really??? And you blame innocent users for harming themselves. Could it be that it is the stalkers, bullies, pedophiles, election riggers, revenge porn psychos and assorted scammers that are doing the harm?
Do you work for Facebook perhaps? LOL
Facebook's motto is/was: Move Fast, Break Things.
Twitter's is/was: What Are You Doing?
And Google's is/was: Don't Be Evil.
Why would anyone trust these opportunistic tech companies? Hasn't it always been obvious that they're nothing more than ruthless and soulless capitalists seeking to completely control your mind? What I find most pernicious is that people worldwide have eagerly ingested their poisonous propaganda. Is there an effective antidote short of quitting all social media? I think not.
3
The antidote is for people to use, be burned, learn, and move past it. This is all so new, we have no previous experience with it.
The role of the "consumer" can't be understated in this. People flocked to all these social media platforms, revealing, voluntarily, and in too many ways obnoxiously, their most private information and daily actions.
That anyone expected Facebook, or any of the other social media platforms to be around just because of the goodness of their heart, and not to make money, was living in La-La Land. If it wasn't for the profit motive; NONE of them would be around.
If people hadn't given all their information away, there would be no information to profit from. Posted a pic of you eating a Big Mac? It doesn't take a genius to figure out you like fast food; in this case hamburgers.
I have used Facebook for more than 4 years, and it has served to connect me with many of my childhood friends and family members, many of whom live overseas. It has also helped me to increase the circle of friends whom I share two passions with: playing live music, and photography.
Don't want the platforms to know what you eat, drink, drive, clothes you wear, movies you see, pets you have, who you vote for?
DON'T POST IT! If you do, you ARE giving your privacy (which doesn't exist anymore) away. Don't complain later about the platforms social responsibility to protect your information. That, my friend, falls SQUARELY on your shoulders. So...grow up!
1
There's a derogatory term used in Silicon Valley and it's called 'Eating your own dog food'. This refers to consuming a garbage product that you or your company designed. We, in this case, are the dogs.
Who thinks those developers and entrepreneurs put their products in their own or their children's hands? Not a chance. They instead send their kids to electronic free schools. They know how toxic, (and intoxicating) their stuff is.
92
Perhaps it’s fitting that the greatest sham in history is in charge of the nation while the other is flourishing as well dividing it. Too eerie to be coincidence as far as I’m concerned.
yet, some of us had the wisdom to not jump on the social media bandwagon, and prefer nutritive sources of relationship and information to "dog food", or more accurately, dog "pooh"
1
The closer you are to tech, the more realise it is a vehicle to control others, not to be controlled by it. There is a very well attended Steiner school here in the valley where kids learn self control and open their curiousity to the world, before inheriting control of the puppet strings.
2
I mean seriously, does anyone really care?
I know I don't. Businesses will work out a way to glean our every desire. They can get by.
Let it burn. It's a huge waste of time for the narcissists among us.
1
I think Mr. Roose puts his finger on the problem by pointing out that these platforms are market-driven, or as others have described it, "WE are the product, and what is sold is our information." Exactly. I would say, "Amen," to the suggestion that the service charge a small monthly fee, say $2 or $3, to all users. It might weed out some of the most egregious offenders, and we wouldn't be subject to constant ads.
I use Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, quite often. They only make a fund-raising drive once or twice a year, which seems to keep them going. I give, because I know that it's probably only 1 in a few hundred users that do, and I think they're a great service. Seems to me that these social media business moguls could be a little less greedy. Zuckerberg is a multi-billionaire—how much money do you NEED, for Pete's sake?
66
As Bernie says, they don't just want more money; they want ALL the money.
1
Yes! This article really thinks "outside the box" and I am excited at the possibilities! Full disclosure I am an advocate of public power. And taxing the rich.
Social media is more likely to self-correct if more of its users are taught critical reasoning skills from their education in school or at home. My concern is that people are too easily fooled because they cannot distinguish facts from fabrications and do not appreciate the corrosiveness to society's ability to advance when the two become indistinguishable.
Social media follows the pattern of many revolutionary innovations: utopian euphoria and innovation is followed by the hangover of the 'anything goes' + abuse in worst-case scenarios.
Time for the pendulum to swing back. Our laws were mostly written when we had national and top-down media. It will be hard to devise new laws + regulations that can be enforced in a global environment.
Starting with redefining tech companies as media companies (with some responsibility for content) along with subscription models + control over deleting one's own content may be a good start.
2
The issue for me is that these platforms are often used to promote false information.
In many countries, traditional media have a legal obligation to not publish material that may be false.
That's what is missing from Fox, Facebook etc.
It's time for some accountability legislation.
2
I deleted Twitter at the start of the new year, and there has been absolutely no downside to that decision. It is time for us to wake up and look at what these platforms are doing to our minds. Take control of your time back from these nefarious amoral companies. Rejoin the real world--it's better than you think.
1
I blame the daft public who fell for this.
The minute a site tries to you register in order to view, & ANY site that defaults to invading your address book, is completely corrupt.
No site should ever attempt to access your contacts in your computer!
How many requests from linkedin have we all gotten from someone we once may have emailed 10 years ago?
You register, you're being tracked. Cookies are already loaded on your computer to target you with ads, you have to keep deleting them. It's insidious.
If we learned one thing from the web, it's that people are miserable, hostile, nasty & divisive, jealous, hateful, unkind, vindictive & downright dangerous.
The internet has proven to humanity that people are bad, marketers are bad, businesses & browsers that track data are bad, nothing is respectful, nothing is private, everything is hackable, whatever you do or dream online, you will be busted for it if someone wants you for any reason at all (unless it's Trump's tax returns).
So be prepared, brush up on bitterness, cynicism, general distrust of everyone's motives.
If there ever was a value to the world side web, it's Wikipedia, the vastest agglomeration of immense knowledge ever imagined. They're not in it for the money, they're not mining your data (one doesn't think...), they are the genuine, generous & good.
The rest of the whole thing is just the bad. Either have nothing to hide or don't go on the web.
But Don't register on these social networking sites!
2
I jumped off FB the day Trump was elected and am pretty self-righteous about it, but the de-valuation of thoughts and relationships that comes from use of social media (including, yes, the mini-engagement represented by commenting here as a cheap substitute for true engagement) was becoming obvious ten years ago. We have used the word "friend" so loosely that we have forgotten what a true friend can mean in our lives, or what duty we owe to each other. We have posted our views, viscerally, as a substitute for really getting involved in maters of community and public interest. And the devaluation of our democracy is the subject of manipulation and laughter by the Russians and others who want democracy to fail. And failing it is-look who we have inaugurated.
5
First, stop calling marketing forums "social media", and advertising "tech". Second, to answer the headline: No. LET THAT FAD DIE. (And the obnoxious hashtag and lichen-followry with it.)
The media should do to marketing forums what they did to b-boying and breakdances: follow all the fawning coverage with one big "Move over..."
It shouldn't be saved, unless your morals are convenience and isolation.
Convenience leads to shortcuts and regulation skipping businesses (see Uber, FB, newFi) that will have catastrophic results. Social media divides under the illusion of uniting and has already created a generation that doesn't know how to socialize face-to-face, without a screen or fingers.
Finally, we'd never allow oil or health care companies to be so singularly powerful (again re oil), so monopolistic and openly exploitative, so why do we allow Google, FB and Amazon to do it now? Because we got sucked into their dual message of convenience - why call or write a real communique when we can simply like - and missed completely the guarantee of isolation.
Fool me once, fool me twice...
1
First, if we save it can we rename it as "anti-social" media. That way more people are approach these platforms with a critical eye instead of blind security.
2
" And lots of important things still happen on even the most flawed networks. The West Virginia teachers’ strike and last weekend’s March for Our Lives, for example, were largely organized on Facebook and Twitter."
Things that are important to people will happen with or without social media. Workers rights, women's rights, protecting the environment and protests against the Vietnam war, all of them important, happened without social media.
I view social media in the same light as organized religion. The good it does is heavily outweighed by the problems it creates.
2
Facebook and other 'social' media use an "opt out" model - you have to excavate the internet to really find out how to turn off the apps and "apps others use" settings that allow your data to be mined. "Opt out" is clever, it means that people who aren't internally motivated to find out how to deal with it won't change their settings. Facebook knows this, as do the rest of them. They are without ethics, without respect for the people using the platform and motivated only by money. Stop using them to log in to web sites. Reset the Apps settings in your accounts on FB, check the "Apps Other People Use" setting (you'll throw up when you see what FB's default allowances are) and uncheck all the damn boxes. Then go into Apps and opt out of the platform entirely. To share you must copy and past URLs, but it's far better than leaving a trail all over the web. Or better yet, stop using social media. The world existed before 2009. It can again. But we must act to reclaim our data - no one in their right mind allows a known perpetrator to reviolate them when they have the ability to stop it.
Yes, there are problems with social media, many of which are simply consequences of their business model. But these alternative models are not solutions — they just offer different sets of inherent problems.
The “co-op model” would be totally unmanageable, and with less regulation and strategic direction it would be even more subject to predation. The “tribal model” would simply exacerbate social, political and cultural divisions. The “amnesia model” is, well, just silly.
None of these addresses the essential problem: every social media platform needs to be supported by revenue to exist — whether as a for-profit enterprise or a not-for-profit organization. There are only two ways to do this. Either the service is the product, paid for by users (subscription model), or the user is the product, paid for by commercial, polical and other interests (advertising model). Pick one, and then make rules.
Let’s remember that social media is an immature industry. Its arose from teenage thinking — great ideas with little consideration of future consequences. How to monetize it was figured out later. Now the consequences of that monetization — privacy, security, exploitation, corruption, fake news — need to be addressed. If the advertising model is retained, that means good internal management plus thoughtful external regulations in the public interest. The alternative is a well-thought-through subscription model.
I wasted more time on Facebook than I care to admit, and I left the platform in disgust in November of 2016. Sure, there was some "social" dimension to the interactions, but, for the most part, I felt bombarded with noxious clickbait, querulous trolls, and pointless arguments over politics and science. I was also aware that Facebook's business model revolved around data mining. I had my security and privacy setting tightly locked down, but I still got a ton of spam that could only be attributed to Facebook clients. Now I spend my time here where the credibility is at least positive and my profile isn't being sold to the highest bidder - I hope.
IMO, Facebook, the only social media platform I ever used, contributes more to discord and to the proliferation of fake news than to increasing worthwhile social interaction. These negatives outweigh the positives, especially now, in light of the news about data hacking. The propensity to surround oneself in an echo chamber of ideas that suit one's biases is also dangerous, given the near-impossibility of separating truth from fiction in most posts. I hope social media is a passing fad, and that we get back to meaningful dialog with our real friends.
Poetic response: "Screened Out"--Quite a few/Of us stare,/Repeatedly/Into the light/Of blackness of screens./To tell us of/Knowledge processed or waiting;/On desks, in vehicles, offices, classrooms,/Libraries, purses, back pockets./Once retrieved,/There we are/Staring,/Or clicking or thumb-typing;/Flicking up, or down/Those daily screens where we keep/Our enjoyment, conversations, mail and news;/Pictures and music, art;/Screening out the detritus/Heads bowed in holy communion/With the immediate or the saved,/As we check to see/If there's/More/On our screens.
4
It is interesting that as the NYT continues to explore this they use the "facebook button" to allow sharing of their articles and allow the fb login option. Support for social media is more than individual users. It is every buisness that uses the automated facebook login and the share buttons - all of which contribute to how it's tracking everyone when they are online, regardless of if they are logged in or not. FB is a malignancy. Consumers should boycott it, but so should corporations.
9
Many people have refused the Facebook log-in. As web-sites like public radio and the Gannett series of newspapers switched from allowing donors, readers and subscribers to make comments via guest log-in to only make comments via third-party data harvesting sites like Facebook, many people dropped these media altogether.
2
A discussion about the negative consequences of social media needs to be balanced with the positive consequences of social media; such as sharing, engagement, & connectedness. Let’s be honest too, we all know coke can make you fat, however in moderation it is pleasant and harmless. Balance people, balance.
3
Seems the question was incorrect. Should social media be saved is more to the point.
4
Facebook, Twitter, and Google too, have one big failing: money first. They have a second failing: automation by algorithm, which allows rapid decision making without human (expensive and slow and wise) intervention.
Scruples suffer under this regimen.
3
Ive deleted my facebook yesterday and the most troubling thing is how free i feel... we are in the dystopian future we were so worried about.
2
Social media makes you unhappy if you’re already unhappy. Like anything else it’s how you use it. I have moved many times and have friends scattered across the globe. I use it to keep in touch with them and it enriches my life.
4
I disagree with the idea that social media makes you unhappy (only) if you are already unhappy.
I happen to be an overall very happy, social person. And yet, I am self-aware enough to recognize that social media has negatively impacted my life. It's a 'time suck'. When I'm using social media, I am not connected to or a part of the world around me...the REAL world. Complete strangers are capable of getting me all riled up about certain social or political issues.
Then there's the aspect of those 'friendships' which are primarily maintained online, particularly with those friends who do not live within relative distance of my own home. Sure, I relish the friendships I've developed with people from all over the world...friendships the usually developed in the real world and were then maintained electronically. Staying in touch with these people by social media has allowed me to visit with people from all over the world, and they with me. However, I am not so naive as to not understand that while I consider all these people to be 'friends', that it's not quite the same as back in the day, when all our friends were in our immediate vicinity. I can't exactly ask my friends in Hungary if they want to meet up for dinner, or if my friend in Tokyo wants to go for a walk. ;-) Understanding this, I've been focusing more and more on increasing my circle of friends right within my own neighborhood. It does take effort, but it's worth it.
2
The biggest problem with social media is that like so much of the rest of the world today, the incentives are so perverse and apps designed for maximum "engagement" or addiction. This seems to induce weirdly antisocial behavior in a lot of people.
Sometimes, there are really important connections to be made on Facebook. But Facebook is vastly more concerned with exploiting their users than protecting them.
5
Social media needs a good strong regimen of chemo-therapy.
The problem is the ad supported model. As long as you want free entertainment and technology you will have to pay by selling your information, friends, and mind share. If you are willing to pay the people that create the content you enjoy (i.e. other users) you can escape the ad clicking machine that core problem of modern social networks. For a proposal on how to do that check out oalrus.com and lets change things!
5
The alternative is out there. Duckduckgo has a better search engine because they don’t use the Google model of selling data to the highest bidder. Using the Duck cut out my spam slam in a major way. The Duck also has a web app that lets you go to a site like the NYT. Using the app cut out the obnoxious ads that disrupt reading. No more shaver ads. And......there is a rating system on the Duck app that shows who is dipping your info. With a letter grade.
The market will produce anti Twitters that are better for the user. We are in the Wild West of social media. Better products will come along.
1
The idea of a "Federated Facebook" is an appealing one. FB as a platform for sharing between circles of friends was it's original purpose. Expanding it to be a global news source is an example of were it went rogue. News is news and "social media" is something else entirely.
To compound the error FB did not even make changes in their platfom to support FB as a "news source". They used the same platform designed to allow Karly tell Britany what happened the the pool yesterday, and applied it to global "news". Unfilltered, unvetted, uncurated.
In a Federated architecture, new gets it's own platform. It does not have to scale or operate the way the "friends pkatform" does, Additional checks and balnces can be imposed on it's messaging.
In software design Federation is used to localize control of data and reduce the need to handle data which is "noise" for what each Federation Agent is doing. There is mechanism for sharing information between "federation agents" (FA) As an example in Facebook's domain you split the user base geographicly: US, Europe, SA, AUS,...
Each ahs it's own FA. The US FA can send messages about "what's trending" to Euro FA, but it's done by intelligence in the Federation control layer. This "disaggregates" the data and stops the spread of missinformation "under software control".
I work on a massive federated ssytem that monitors global netwoks. There are hundred of millions of devices sending alerts and 50,000 FAs that examine the alert stream.
I credit Facebook with moving me from FOMO (fear of missing out) to KIMO (know I'm missing out) - first with everyone else's beautiful vacation photos, second with the "vaguebook" posts that brand you as a clueless dotard if you dare ask what they refer to.
7
For the life of me, I don’t know how the social Genie is put back in the bottle.
We can throttle the Big Socials all we like, but the level of discourse they have produced in society will remain what it now is: debased, coarse, rife with innuendo, rumor and outright lies echoing in the narrow canyons of the like-minded.
Much of the Web is like this, beyond social media. Think of all the times you read a perfectly reputable news website where there’s salacious Outbrain (or other) ads disguised as legitimate content on the page. Or go to nearly any perfectly innocent YouTube video, only to see the dark abyss of the human psyche displayed in a black hole otherwise known as the comments section.
Thinking that this Genie can be reckoned with is probably a fool’s errand. Our whole commerical culture has subsisted on half-truths and hoodwinkery since it took off with print media many decades ago.
Now people themselves are “brands” who deploy their own kind of sophistry to get clicks and likes. The whole enterprise known as digital media has taken its lessons from its predecessors in print and on television, and cranked the spin knob to 11.
Coming soon is the invasion of the AI bots, posing as human provocateurs, in the millions and millions.
I think in the end, the non AI’s (people) will just give up trying to make sense of the world from inside a snow globe.
9
“Our growing discomfort with our largest social platforms is reflected in polls. One recently conducted by Axios and SurveyMonkey found that all three of the major social media companies — Facebook, Twitter and Google, which shares a parent company with YouTube — are significantly less popular with Americans than they were five months ago. “
Interesting...It seems like only yesterday that we knew not to trust “Survey Monkey” poll results because “Survey Monkey” is yet another part of the very social media world that is so untrustworthy. And now we are asked to believe the results of “Survey Monkey” poll results about the trustworthiness of social media. Talk about falling down the rabbit hole.
2
Yeah, yeah... "We" could do this, or "we" could do that.
But what are THEY going to do? Likely nothing. Users have no control over these "platforms" - which ALL have trap doors for you to stand on.
Just say "no." Delete, get off, unsubscribe. I predict you'll be surprised by how little you miss being in the middle of a constant food fight.
18
The problem isn't social media platforms. It's the people who use them. We're a nation of mostly poorly educated idiots who have no ability to think critically and are therefore subject to all kinds of propaganda. Want to solve this problem? Fix our educational institutions!
12
I'm not a huge fan of social media - I've never been on Facebook and deleted my Twitter account at the end of 2016. Having said that, I'd like to point out to the anti-social media people who are commenting here about how smart they are because they "always refrained from any kind of social media" that they are engaging in a social media platform by posting here.
1
Surprise! Scrubbing humanity, spontaneity, and responsibility from social interaction tends to make it less human, spontaneous, and responsible.
“Can social media be saved” is not the question, but whether it should be.
5
The question is not “can social media be saved”? More to the point, should it be saved. Unequivocally, no.
9
Can it be saved? I fervently hope not. There are better, more helpful, less dangerous, ways for us to communicate with each other. Delete Facebook.
20
How about 2 simple rules -- I control the use and retention of my information (otherwise known as privacy) and U don't put things like tracking cookies or malware on my devices without my permission. If that kills the current business model/manipulation, am pretty sure Facebook, Twitter, et al will have no difficulty getting their mass of devotees to scale the pay wall.
3
Just delete it and don't look back. Write emails, send group texts, attach photos, but just get rid of it. I did and I am amazed at how much time I've gotten back. I am working with more focus, feeling gracious for the time with my kids, and not at all missing what the person Iast saw in high school is doing today.
151
Thank you. Delete your accounts. The visual silence hopefully will reconnect one with family, real friends, the environment and world in general. No doubt the planet and humanity would be much better off with the reduction in screen addicts.
Just think of all the social media addiction recovery centers that could be developed, now there is a business model that someone could run with.
1
I think it would be wonderful for humanity if we abandoned social media.
31
"They" don't spread misinformation, we (humans) do. They don't make us miserable- we choose to be miserable by indulging envy, sloth, greed, anger..... They don't steal our information, we give it to them. Social media is a tool, no more no less. It's a lazy persons argument to pin all this on "them". Then "we" don't have to do anything.
In the yin/yang of social media one could equally claim it educates and informs, it gives us joy as we connect with people and it makes it easy to find the products we need by matching our information that we choose to give. That would be ego ally true.....and equally up to us.
One caveat: like any tool it can be misused by some against others. The recent news was not Facebook randomly giving info out (although they deserve blame and oversight for not immediately addressing when known ) but of a company lying about their purpose, gaining info (that people gave although under false pretenses) and misusing. This tale would be the same back in the day if a company surveyed people on the phone or obtained a government list by lying about their purpose claiming research, then sold or misused. Address the crime.
3
This is fallacy.
Things are created with purpose, they don't fall from the sky. Guns are made to kill people, armies are drafted to wage war, and Facebook was built to sell its users to the highest bidder.
All of these things fulfill their purposes not by coincidence, or because of "bad apples". That's a total abdication of responsibility. Wikipedia doesn't have a "fake news" problem. Ask yourself why. Is it because people just happily choose not to vandalize it? Hahaha. No.
3
Social media is a lot like running a nuclear reactor. It's great fun when everything is going fine. Then a meltdown reminds you why you don't want to "buy property" anywhere near the thing.
It took my a relatively long time to get into computers. I always refrained from social media when it came along. Seemed like a wise move at the time and even smarter in retrospect.
Good luck to the rest of you.
121
You "always refrained from social media?" What are you doing commenting here? Participating in social media, that's what. ;^)
5
I suspect my definition of social media is narrower than yours, but I spent a lot of the last two decades being a grad student.
Yes, I've participated in old school things like internet forums. Remember Yahoo? OK, I'm being ironic but also making the point that my interactions on the internet are mostly pre-browser in their general approach to things. I'm not going to turn my life over to a hard drive somewhere else.
I don't consider commenting on an article in the NY Times alone, unlinked to Facebook or other means of tracking it in some sort of centralized form, to be participation in social media. Sure, the Times has niches inside it like that, but I'm not a participant.
Everyone can define how they interact with othera, but just outsourcing it to Facebook or some other means seems, at this juncture, to be unwise, even if you're not so old as I am, enough to have seen the whole thing as more than slightly 1984ish.
I'll send you an email or call if you really need to know something about me.
2
Yesterday’s paper had a call for repealing the Second Amendment. Today’s paper argues for eliminating the First Amendment. I sense a trend and expect further calls for the elimination of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The Electoral College is on thin ice and trial by jury is already a rarity. Guess we fought the revolutionary war for nothing.
2
Rick--I hope the Electoral College is on thin ice. It needs to sink (along with social media.) This is the 21st century, not the 18th. That goes for guns, too. The founding fathers provided us an avenue to AMEND the Constitution, whenever necessary.
7
Well said, ChesBay.
Knowledge is power. The more they know about you the more powerful they believe they've become. Bring back books and magazines and real social interaction.
20
Is the problem that these social media platforms are "trapped inside a market-based system" and that they monetize our personal data? Or could it be that the market-based system that is being fed by the monetization of our data is itself the problem? What if, instead of profiting off of terrible things, our economic system fed healthy, holistic, environmentally regenerative things? Wouldn't we then be all-in on social networks? If we knew they were "trapped in" a wholesome market-based system and monetizing our personal data to feed an economic system that made the world a better place?
1
This is a great idea. I'm in. I left Facebook years ago. When I deleted my account, Facebook told me I could delete it (thanks!) but that all of my data would be retained by Facebook. I did not want that. I wanted my data gone and I told them either they delete it permanently or they would face a lawsuit. They told me they deleted my data permanently, but who knows for sure? Now I'm told that even if you're not on Facebook but you are on someone's contact list, Facebook is still tracking you. This octopus needs to be tamed. I'm a really private person and Facebook was far too gossipy and invasive for my taste. I use email to communicate with the people I want to stay in touch with. It works for me.
40
Joanna--Go to today.com/rossmanreports, while signing into your Facebook account, and follow the instructions for deleting whatever you want, from your archive, piece by piece.
2
Thank you for this! I'm with Joanna, but have retained Facebook since 2010 while deactivating it intermittently. Have lost or terminated with offline friendships due to this monster because they would no longer contact me one-on-one and they fell into bragging and not even responding to my few FB posts! Facebook is a toxic vehicle which rewards all of humanity's lower behaviors and is creating a society of mini-narcissists as well as a hub for predators, civil and criminal.
1
Facebook, Google, Twitter and so on, are about money. The corporate structure makes lots of money on data supplied by we foolish users. In the world we live in, anything that makes money is deemed to be just fine. Essentially, every democratic and social institution created in the history of humanity is now available for the fun and profit of the Zuckerburgs, Trumps and Putins of the world. Is this a great system, or what?
7
One conspiracy theory I heard is that an alien race has implanted the technology for wireless communication into our brains in order to turn us into a race of addicts who will be looking down, dazed, not noticing that ten thousand space ships have appeared in the sky, ready to take over this planet. Sitting on buses and trains, watching most of the people around me bent over a device as our ancestors might once have been bent over in prayer, I am beginning to wonder if that theory might not be so crazy.
Some time ago I read an article that said that we will look back at wireless technology in twenty years as we look at second-hand smoke now. Reading this article, wanting to find some sense of balance within myself, all that I can say is - let's put down our phones and our devices. Let's read real books and write real letters again, before those space ships arrive.
6
This misses the point. None of these fixes gets the poison out of the brew. And then who decides when a node gets too toxic. I see a payday for the lawyers here. Anonymity is the real elephant in the room. This is the source of power of the predators. Honest discourse and exchange of view cannot occur anonymously. Speak your mind, say anything, but sign your name to it. Speak your mind, say anything, but sign your name to it. That is the missing fundament of democracy nobody’s talking about.
3
This is my social platform. I enjoy Eisenberg’s rhymes, Socrates’ mordant comments, Luettgen’s polemicizing from the right, and miss Rima Regas.
7
Ditto, @CD.
1
If you value your time, and can step back and assess the signal-to-noise ratio, you will most likely conclude FB is not worth it. How much is having 673 friends you don’t really like or know worth to you? How many seconds of your time is one “like” worth to you?
Follow me on FB - oops, no, left 3 years ago.
2
Why should Facebook and Twitter in their current iterations be saved? Our democracy is worth much more for the betterment of humankind than these two rapacious organisms which profit by plumbing the depths of the human mind and soul for hate and other emotions which will cause people to act and all for the profit their creators. If Mary Shelley were alive she would recognize her monster in Facebook and Twitter. Save democracy, save our society, delete, banish, destroy Facebook and Twitter. Replace them earlier versions of online community where hate and manipulation did not reign, where treason flourished. Families should still be able to post photos and connect without being manipulated to benefit interests who would destroy our country.
3
You know which "-book" is best to interact with?
A real one. Listen to the shuffling of paper, feel the expansion of existence.
14
Apple girl: "What's a book?"
Does it have to be saved? Can’t it just die a natural death?
8
Look this is only a crisis if you live your life on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Snap Chat, et al, could die today and it would not effect me and most others at all. There is this thing called real life, it is populated by mostly nice people and you get to have actual experiences. Try it, you might like it. In the mean time do your self a favor, delete your accounts.
7
Should Social media be saved?
Just another time waster.
Like TV
6
“[Zuckerberg] could show that he takes democracy seriously enough to start with his own baby,”
Someone naive might attempt this (I doubt Zuckerberg is THAT naive) but the notion of bottom-up control of corporations is completely contrary to the corporate model. Corporations are opaque, autocratic institutions with only one mission, profit maximization. The corporation's effects on human rights, the environment, the economy, democracy etc., to which the term "externalities" is applied as if to emphasize their irrelevance to corporate governance.
That, combined with the inordinate amount of political powe corporations have acquired, in a nutshell is the pathology of capitalism. Until that changes, corporate America will continue to run the country to their own benefit - and, for the most part, our detriment.
Expecting our politicians to enact a sweeping pro-consumer measure such as Europe's GDPR is quite unrealistic. We'll get something with an inspiring name, announced with much fanfare, but will be essentially meaningless.
3
You can't ungong the bell. With billions of users worldwide, I am afraid it's too late to close the barn door. The horses are long gone.
I deleted my FB account three days ago. Ever since Donald Trump got elected I became increasingly anxious and angry over the posts I was seeing by my "friends" who were supportive of this man, and I was becoming consumed to "like" and read the posts that were critical.
It took over a large portion of my morning and finally, after the Cambridge Analytica episode came to light, I said enough was enough.
But since I have been friended by several hundred individuals on FB my data lives on in the internet ether.
FB will never truly surrender all privacy buttons to its users. There's simply too much money to be had, too much profit to be made. Capitalism at its worst.
5
The suggestions here are suffused with the luxurious perspective of the armchair quarterback. There is mention of an alternative social network with 160,000 registered users, which is ludicrous in the face of billions of users of the famous three or four giant social networks. The idea of user-run networks is as ludicrous as the idea, suggested around the late 90’s that movie fans would write their own movies, that movies would become collaborations among thousands and millions, where they’d be telling stories to themselves, rather than the top down approach. That maybe happened with youtube but I don’t think people are going to see home videos at the multiplex. The bottom line is that if these ideas are viable, profitable enough to make starting them worthwhile, manageable enough to keep them from collapsing, get off the arm chair and make it happen. It’s a lot harder to build a business than to spitball utopian ideas. Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. Stop patronizing social networks may be the answer, but these ideas for some altruistic, grass roots online community sounds like a pipe dream by someone who has never built something themselves.
3
I'm not sure why people continue to use Facebook. I deactivated my account in 2015-- not as some grand gesture, just because it was turning into a major time-suck and I was in a very busy period at work. I was surprised at how much more time was in my day and how much happier I felt. I really felt a viewpoint and personality change similar to what people describe when they begin to take antidepressants or anxiolytics. I was very surprised-- I honestly didn't realize the effect FB had been having on me.
I deleted my account permanently in 2016. Today, when I tell people I'm not on FB, the expression of undisguised envy that crosses their face is like I told them I just lost 20 pounds without trying or got an enormous raise while at the same time reducing my hours at work. But it's nothing impossible like that. I mean, it's really not that hard to live without FB-- in fact, it's a whole lot easier.
35
A lot is being made of the privacy issues on Facebook and other social media platforms, but only a few months ago the discussion was mainly about how attention grabbing and time consuming these apps are.
Frankly that’s not only social media, but everything that is in your smartphone. In fact, the problem is the design of the smartphone.
While social media is free, we pay good money for the smartphones. The smartphone producers should market a phone which gives the user greater control over how to limit the usage.
On my Mac computer I’ve installed Focus me, which allows me to ban sites and apps over an extended time period. The only way to override the ban is to reboot the whole computer.
Similar options should be available on the smartphones. At this point I can only ban apps for a few hours and I’m not able to keep apps that I might need, like subway timetable or google maps.
If it was up to me I would have taken away the browser all together.
2
I really enjoyed facebook until they added the trending feature along the side rail. Their attempt to overlay a layer of external news took all the personality out of it, and the site soon became just another black hole of irrelevant chatter.
But I also can't fault them for what it has become. They're not running it as a charity, and at some point one has to pay the bills. If we're not willing to pay for a service, we really don't get a say in how that service operates.
2
At one end of the privacy spectrum we have Apple, which refuses to unlock the phones of dead terrorists, seeking to protect their privacy interests, even though they are dead. Under American law, once you are deed, you can no longer be slandered, and you have nothing to keep private.
g
Of course, the difference between Apple and Facebook/Google is, Apple gets its revenue from those who buy its devices and services, while your participation in Facebook and Google are largely free. But nothing in the world of private enterprise is truly "free". Somebody is paying to buy something, and someone is selling it. Pigs on the way to the slaughter house are not getting a "free ride". They are the product, not the customer.
The Trojan House was a "free gift". The Roach Hotel offers those creatures something they cannot resist. The moral of the story is, beware of anything free, because you will pay in some other way.
11
Let them all burn to the ground.
I systematically removed all my content, which took over a week from my various SM accounts.
I don’t look at my phone now when I am with my children. I feel better about my creative process. I don’t view life through the lens of what will make a good moment for “brand” promotion.
I get more sleep at night now that I don’t have a feed to traverse.
I speak to my friend’s with different opinions with care now, rather than tossing bombs on their opinion posts on FB.
Quitting Social Media has made my life inherently better.
57
I have been looking at the efforts to create federated networks for a long time, where you have the ability to own/house/control your data if you so wish. One of the most promising systems so far is https://matrix.org that you can use with a chat-room style app https://riot.im
We are in the Dark Ages of Internet freedom right now. Android phones are almost inoperable unless reporting data to Google on a continuous basis (hello there 1e100.net). Virtually every world-wide-web interaction is riddled with trackers. The price of public education is now access to your childrens' life story via Google Classroom and the myriad 'free apps' for which teachers keep signing up students without a second thought.
I just hope the next generation will finally realize the true cost of the insidious influence commercial social media has over their lives. But, I admit, that's wildly optimistic.
3
Maybe we just don't need to communicate this much. Maybe social media is inherently flawed in it's very nature; superficial connections to 100s or 1000s of people daily. Maybe after the social media experiment we'll realize it's better to just focus on people that are actually in our physical lives and less in our virtual lives, because then we can temper our words & ideas as well as own them.
9
I don't understand why Facebook is now assumed to be a life necessity. Indeed, I care far less about the probably ineffectual data harvesting (though the mendacity it reveals is critical) than having random information about distant acquaintances' dinners (etc.) inserted into the deepest pockets of my brain. Life can happen, and activism can happen, off Facebook.
20
The Web was developing as a healthy ecosystem - a pond with a diverse flora and fauna. It is being subjected to massive algal blooms from dominants that are taking all the oxygen. As with the environment, righting the imbalance will be tough but is likely to involve: 1. 'Artificial destratification to reduce the sediment phosphorus load available and starve the algae of nutrients' - i.e. effective national and transnational taxation of providers to recoup social shares of the direct and indirect monetary benefits earned 2. 'Mixing algae deeper into the water column and starving them of light' - i.e. regulation to break up monopolies, to limit data-mining and to mandate disclosures etc., and the fostering of competition by encouraging new starts and providing public broadcast alternative platforms ... etc.
2
I seems pretty simple - just reverse the economics - instead of making us the product, make us the customer. FB has revenue of $40B on its 2B users - charge $20 ANNUALLY (that's less than $2 a month folks) and eliminate the need to sell our digital personnas to the highest bidder. It would also greatly, if not eliminate bots and other automated problems. They also might actually start to care about the needs of the people using the system, since you pretty much get what you pay for.
1
Big social media sites should be turned into digital commons, similar to Wikipedia. Instead of profiting by selling user data, they should be run as nonprofits buoyed by user donations. There's no good reason for Facebook/IG, Snapchat, and Twitter to be run for profit. Users should be able to chat, post, look at dog pictures, etc without worrying where their data ends up. Bots and propaganda, which boosts social media sites' bottom lines, would not be allowed to proliferate there. The useful parts of social media can be highly valuable, but the platforms belong in more responsible hands
5
Fair arguments for alternatives are proposed here, but the author seems to neglect the intellectual copyright issue, which is Facebook's #1 commodity. If users were able to independently "reset" their profiles then Facebook loses intellectual copyright, user data that FB profits from financially. If a Panacea social media platform is introduced, then the individual parent companies would lose their identity/brand and become less appealing to users, it also hard to see all of these platforms negotiating in an equal playing field, it's antithetical to "too big to fail" capitalism.
1
Amazing that you can write all of these words and fail to mention one of the world's most-trafficked sites, a self-policing, crowdfunded, vibrant community based on the sharing of valuable -- and I'm not talking about profits -- information.
Wikipedia is quite old, yet the inmates haven't taken over the asylum. Why? It's simple: because to establish yourself in its community requires an investment of work and/or expertise in which users can take pride. They are creating something which each and every contributor KNOWS has intrinsic value, and their influence is based on how valuable their contributions are.
Contrast this to the rest of "social media", which explicitly tells people that they are sellable products. How many times have you heard talk of "building your brand"? It's a get-rich-quick scheme disguised as a social platform.
So it works fine when users are trying to add value, but breaks down when value is pegged to the dollar. Imagine that! It's like capitalism is the problem.
Don't believe me? Look at YouTube circa 2006, before Google and its ads and algorithms slithered in to devour it. Or even Skype, ruined by Microsoft because it wasn't profitable. What happened? Their creators cashed in and sold out their users.
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And just to drive the point home: look at every platform that has been devoured in an acquisition: Youtube and Skype, but also Vine, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. Now ask yourself, how many of those acquisitions would have happened had they required passage by vote of their user base?
There's a troubling tendency, driven by the media's business-centric narrative, to assume that connection of people is itself the problem. But it's not. Democracy is a great thing - real democracy, where civic leaders are the ones who work the hardest and care the most.
Fundamentally, Wikipedia is democracy and Facebook et al are tyranny. There's no need for new terms like "old power" and "new power -- academic gobbledygook from, surprise, someone who's selling something. We have the vocabulary, we just don't use it.
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I’m struck by what a reliable pleasure it is to use Wikipedia, & how surprised I am that it continues to be more & more thorough & terrific. I know it’s a different animal from Facebook, but is there a way to learn from the surprising success of Wikipedia to make Facebook etc less pernicious?
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Sure, there's a way: make it into a not-for-profit!
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Interesting article, I think the traditional social media giants have reached their peak.
There are a bunch of new exciting anti-social media apps such as Minutiae and Relevant created by artist collectives as opposed to tech bros.
My bet is that we will see more of these type of digital counter culture projects as the exodus from the giants continue
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The world was already doing a good job of ruining itself before social media, it doesn’t need social media to aid or accentuate the process...
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Like most things in life there are Pros and Cons. I have found that social media apps like Facebook and twitter mostly promote or induce arguments and bickering, plus the whole Russian bot thing. I do like the apps Nextdoor and Reddit. Nextdoor can keep you in contact with neighbors for recommendations of a good plumber or a lost dog post. Reddit allows you to choose which channels you want to see and can promote learning and expose you to new and interesting ideas. Of course, this is all in the eye of the beholder.
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You haven't been on Next Door long if you think it's free of arguments, misuse etc.....'cause:humans.
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Reddit is also being constantly astroturfed with comments and posts by bot networks. I've been using it for almost 10 years and have certainly noticed that certain agendas are being promoted more and more by the endless droves of anonymous users.
The EU does not put up with social media exploiting users' private data. Only in the US do our laws put us at the mercy of whatever rich creep wants to exploit us.
Time for a brand new type of legislator, not beholden to corporate interests. Vote this November to upend the current system and boot the corrupted out of Washington. There are thousands of new, young candidates running grassroots campaigns and refusing to take donations from PACs or the Richie Riches of the world. Ironically, you'll generally find them on social media, because how else do you reach thousands or millions of voters without big bucks for TV ads?
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Not happening until something is done about Citizens United, and with this SC there's roughly zero chance. Successful national campaigns have become much too expensive to run on $25 donations from regular people, and frankly, most regular people wouldn't contribute that much. They won't even check the box for the lousy $3 that won't come out of their pockets on a tax return.
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This was proven wrong in 2016, by Bernie Sanders. That was the most important legacy of the entire campaign season - that's something that has NEVER happened: a crowdfunded political campaign outraising a well-oiled political machine. And it's being proven wrong in Texas, by Beto O'Rourke.
Can people outraise the billionaires? Perhaps not. Can they be competitive? You bet.
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Social networks are exploitative by design — therein lies the challenge of reshaping them. In order to want to use them, one must be a little lonely, a little sad, a little bored...for when people are present in their lives, they do not need Facebook or Twitter. One is more likely to log in when alone at night, than out having fun with friends.
This brings us to two fundamental questions. First, can we redesign these systems so that they drive us towards real connection, rather than disconnection and divisiveness? Mr. Roose seems to imply we cannot, and I agree with him. Monetization and exploitation are too central to these companies’ business models. Second, can we change our behavior as humans; how, when, and why we use these platforms? This, I think is where we can achieve real change. It is easy to get angry at Facebook for exploiting our data. It is far harder, but necessary, to examine our own behavior — we do not have to keep providing them with our data — and reconnect with ourselves and others (within or without these social networks).
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I created a MySpace and Facebook page when they first came out but I soon realized what was the point of this social media thing? People were posting mundane things like what they had for dinner. I could care less. But there are some people who would love that information: namely, companies. And so social media sites popped up everywhere. They collected troves of our personal information, often without our explicit knowledge. They sold that information for all kinds of purposes. The result is that today, most people have no privacy whatsoever whether they realize it or not. And the really sad thing is we sold our privacy for very little, that is, the promise of personal ads that are targeted to our expressed interests. Not a very good bargain at all for the consumer. But it was a watershed for capitalist companies.
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Just remember that when it comes to social media...
You're the product, not the consumer.
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Cliché, and as such not entirely true, just most of the time. it's possible for a social network to act as a trusted intermediary, selling ad views without identifying customers. Look at how Google sells ad views while preserving customer privacy.
I don't want to be a product OR a Pac-Man "consumer". How about help us be people?
That's what real tech programmers in academia and free software do. "Social media" marketers don't, and thus defame the former.
Just remember that when it comes to social media, without people social media would not exist. They need us more than we need them.
Or perhaps you could only focus on a small circle of family and close friends in your life who truly matter to you; the ones who know and love you for who you are, and don't judge you by where you vacation, or the clothes you buy, or the car you drive. Just a thought.
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This approach isn't easy for many of us. I would have loved to pare down to the people who really mattered, but how to explain to one's Fox News father or the family or racist cousins why you unfriended them but not someone else? In the end, dropping out entirely was the only option that would allow the obligatory relationships remain somewhat in tact.
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It’s time to dump social media and get our humanity back. Reintroduce people to the emotional satisfaction of face to face contact.
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I've never used any of it, and considering the abuses and data mining, why would I? It's all just self promotional drivel, or far, far worse.
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Judging by the vast number of vacuous people constantly starring at their cell phones all day (often while driving) searching for the next bit of meaningless social contact from folks they don't even know, I'd say we'd all be much better off it social media were not saved.
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Great point, but in fairness, plenty of people are probably banking, answering a work email, etc. You can't assume people are just doing mindless things. Yet another issue brought up by the smart phone "revolution."
When Mark Zuckerberg tells Facebook users he now wants to preserve their privacy, how authentic can users expect him to be? Paucity of privacy is literally his business model. Facebook was set up to monetize your data, so it will be interesting to see how far Facebook will go to protect that data. My guess is it will be on the back end - trying to root out bad actors - while still monetizing user data without paying them for it.
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Social media was suppose to open interesting conversations and topics on the internet, share information & experiences, but like everything that humans touch it has become the opposite.
A place for vanity, food pictures, narcissist & stupidity, very few good things come out of facebook.
I recommend this other social network that I use, http://www.tablenew.com/
Users simple find data about many topics and share it together.
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I joined Facebook soon after it started, but ended my membership after only week or so, when it became clear I lacked control of my personal data. Social media companies, I think, will never be able to resist taking control and monetizing users' data. It's too valuable. America needs European type privacy laws to guarantee that users of social media in this country are protected from the exploitation of personal information.
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Exactly.
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Yes. We are hapless sitting ducks online and offline in the USA--thanks to citizen political indifference and the REPUBLICANS.
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I don't social media (can I use that phrase as a verb?), but the benefits will out way this recent blowback. Remember how Facebook supposedly started all the revolutions around the world that helped overthrow all these repressive regimes? Pretty sure they all failed and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, but Facebook will be able to morph into some sort of digital historical photo album media company. "Remember when.....?" will be their new catch phrase.
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Yes, you can use 'social media' as a verb, one of the wonders of English is that you can make words into any Part of Speech (and there are nine, check it out).
But you cannot say 'out way' for 'outweigh'.
More generally, the author does point to the basic problem, that Facebook is a data company and users are acting on a social network.
And there, their data is being crunched and sold.
And -- THIS IS THE PART WE HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO -- the tools of social media make it possible for politicians to influence the way you think by FAKING your social media feed in order to sway your thinking and get you to act in one or another way, i.e. controlling your behavior. How many people they control is called the 'conversion rate'.
And the most sophisticated and excellent Psychology Department in the world, the one at Cambridge University in England, to the enduring shame of that venerable institution, is the world leader in this new art of controlling people's minds based on what they have revealed about themselves on social media.
So beware!
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Facebook was involved in a revolution in America: Donald Trump.
Finally, the modern notion of Social Media is coming to an end. A tool, that for too long that was abused by those who can only see profit and manipulation, are seeing their world crumble.
As a postmodern philosopher, this day could not come soon enough.
I guess now would be a good time to learn about some new postmodern words and terms that are in the future for all of us.
It is no longer the modern Internet, it is now the postmodern Digital Estate.
Good bye Social Media, and hello Digital Association.
For the first time in a long time, the future looks interesting again.
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"postmodern" -for the hat trick!
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How about an annual subscription to Facebook and the others but no adverts? Much more socially responsible and little incentive for the nefarious things that have been going on.
Probably wouldn't work. Facebook wouldn't make so much money and Zuck couldn't take that. Users like Facebook because it is "free" (but, boy, do you pay for that "free" membership).
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Even if they went for the subscription model, can we still trust them. I doubt if we can anymore.
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It is Zuck's obligation and responsibility to make as much money for his shareholders as possible; that's the job of corporate "persons". They exist for that purpose, which is why we need regulation as a counter, and only government has the power to do that. This is what happens when "regulation" and "government" become dirty words, and we've been fed a steady diet of that since Saint Ronald in 1980.
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I agree. My take is that the most efficient way to do things is mostly by private enterprise but its excesses should be reined in by legislation from a government that wishes to protect its citizens.
We have the private enterprise but the other bit is missing.
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This essay at least takes most of the fundamental problems seriously. But my question is: what exactly is the value of social networks? Are they a way to communicate and interact? Or are they a way to avoid communication and interaction?
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Very interesting question.
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What was the value of cell phones? After all we had landlines. What was the value of email? After all we had post service. And so on. I’m glad we have social media.
You've got to be kidding! You're comparing apples and oranges. Cell phones, computers and email all advance technology. FB and other social media only advance mediocrity and corporate greed (countless, pointless posts, false information, and data production to be sold to the highest bidder.) The above mentioned devices make life easier, FB and the rest of SM are a pure waste of time. Go read a book, you'll actually educate yourself instead of filling your brain with fluff.
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Too late. The genie is out of the bottle. Privacy is a thing of the past.
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Way to go, M! That's the old American Spirit (not): "Just give up!"
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Privacy is not dead, it just requires a lot more effort than abiding by the status quo, which hopefully will transform where privacy is the default setting, not an option.
Here's my setup for any of you contemplating more privacy.
Email: Protonmail Plus
VPN: ProtonVPN
Search Engine: DuckDuckGo
Browser: Firefox
Operating System: Linux Mint
I have no social media but for those of you who do, play around with any privacy settings at your disposal.
Identify any services that you do not use and do the following in this order: delete all photos and videos, falsify and delete any information possible, then delete the service entirely.
There's a service that can scan your email and identify all the services you signed up for with that email address (I forget what its called, sorry).
Privacy is not dead, its just Missing in Action.
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Amen to that!
Does anyone think that if Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and other "social media" sites disappeared, that your private information would just disappear?
Banks, credit cards, car manufacturers, and a whole myriad of companies that you deal with have your information at hand!
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