Lost in a Plastic Slab
People will do some very strange things if they think they are getting something of value for free. It’s often been said that with regards to the internet, the thing social media sites sell is the users of the sites themselves.
I found it interesting when Musk bought Twitter and began to raise havoc. A good number of alternatives arose to attract users who everyone expected to flee Twitter in droves. People do continue to desert Twitter on a daily basis but, at least outwardly, nothing has diminished its influence. It’s still cited nightly on cable news, newspapers still gauge reactions with it and online news sources retweet it constantly. The alternatives that expected to replace Twitter have languished. After some initial excitement none of them have risen to the level of must view status even as Elon Musk seemingly does everything in his power to turn a once hallmark site into a toxic wasteland.
The attraction for the fresh and new is not unlimited. When users are confronted, either ethically or morally, by the antics of Facebook and Twitter there is a strong impulse to simply ignore the conflicts and continue doing what they have been doing all along. Some users will move to another service only to find their experience feels diluted, a comparison of place. A fair number of users quit social media altogether. They have determined that concern for their own privacy is more important than the relationships they have developed online. That also comes at a cost.
What was once a place where people shared vacation videos, pithy observations, cat gifs and pictures of their lunch, now seems vulgar and out of date. What promised to be an open space that encouraged the free flow of ideas has now become a noxious stew of misinformation, hate speech, and abuse.
This is bad because, as mentioned above, these users are the fuel needed to run these sites. A corporation must continue to make profits, appease their shareholders or fail. This unease lately has shifted to making these places safer for advertisers. The safety of the users isn’t a concern until some tragedy strikes and even then it only lasts for a few news cycles. The needs of advertisers outweighs the needs and lives of the very people they are trying to reach.
