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Social media

“Terms of Service” by Chris Martin

February 16, 2022 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

Chris Martin works at Moody Publishers as a content marketing editor and a consultant in social media, marketing, and communications. He has a deep background in social media and digital content strategy. He perhaps best known for his blog, Terms of Service, where he writes thoughtfully and with great insight about topics as diverse as the metaverse, TikTok, Wordle, and the impact of social media on society and culture.

His new book is entitled, appropriately enough, Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media. The book is a primer on social media and the internet but is also more than that – a look at how the internet shapes us and what can we do about it. And his solutions are not “let’s pass a law” type of prescriptions, but instead what individuals can do themselves.

This is not a book that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok will like. But it’s an important book, one that is both deeply thought through and easy to read.

Martin starts at the beginning with how the internet evolved, how it works now, and how it affects our lives. He examines fives ways the social internet shapes us – the belief that attention assigns value, how we trade away our privacy, how affirmation becomes more important than truth, and how we demonize – and then destroy – people we dislike.

Chris Martin

His recommendations for dealing with this are particularly helpful, because they are relatively simple things individuals can do. (They may not be easy, particularly if you’re a social media addict, but they are simple and straightforward.) This emphasis on individual actions is far more empowering than waiting for “Congress to pass a law.” As Martin points point, it’s inevitable that governments will start regulating the social internet, but that doesn’t mean we must or should wait. And what we can do as individuals starts with something many readers may find surprising – studying history.

Terms of Service is a highly readable and intelligent look at the social internet, how it shapes our lives, and what we can do to regain control.

Top photograph by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Convergence of Social Media and Big Media

January 26, 2022 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

A work colleague in a Latin American country sent an email, asking for help. A manufacturing plant had been proposed, and while most people wanted it, a small number of radical environmentalists did not. There had been protests, road blockades, and rallies. And then, when it appeared that both the company and the authorities were going ahead, the ante was raised.

Using anonymous Twitter accounts, the protestors targeted the company’s spokesman. Scores of people were tweeting. A bounty was placed on the spokesman head — $5000 US was being offered for the spokesman dead or alive. And the tweets included his home address. Stripes were published in the local media.

I was asked to contact Twitter, which I did immediately. Then, as now, Twitter and the other social media giants were difficult to reach. They were, and are, all about communication, except when you needed to communicate with them. The company spokesman and his family went into hiding. Twitter responded two days after being contacted. The tweets, Twitter said, did not violate their community standards and would remain. 

Think about that for a moment. A US-based company was allowing its platform to be used to threaten and possibly accomplish violence against an individual.

I should mention this happened in 2014. This continued to be Twitter’s policy until about a year later, when its founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, received a death threat. On Twitter. Overnight, death threats were deemed violations of community standards. It’s amazing how that works.

In a very short period of time, roughly five or six years, social media had gone from the “great democratic experiment to give power to everyone” to something darker, more threatening, and more dangerous. The first few years had been something almost euphoric; very few people today would say anything about social media is euphoric. We’ve seen its ugly side, and we’ve seen it over and over again. Today it’s called cancel culture. 

But it’s more insidious that people ganging up on someone online. What is worrisome is that it’s becoming embedded as policy with the social media giants. The concern, usually expressed by conservatives, is that a progressive / leftist mentality guides the social media platforms when they determine what’s true, what’s false, what is “missing context,” and what’s “fake news.” The Wall Street Journal took a look and determined that left-wing factcheckers were controlling the discussion on the COVID-19 pandemic. A lawsuit by conservative journalist against Facebook brought forth a really curious statement in Facebook’s court filings – that its factchecking was nothing more than opinion. I wouldn’t call that the best defense. 

In general, Big Media is comfortable with the factchecking done by the social media platforms. That’s no surprise if Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others are aligned with your own narrative and view of the world. 

Consider what happened with the Covington Kids in January 2019. The power of big media and social media converged to destroy a bunch of teenaged boys whom they believed epitomized the prevailing media narrative. As The Atlantic pointed out, the media botched the story, and the damage to their credibility has been lasting. Not to mention costly. On that Friday and Saturday, I sat horrified while I watched online friends on Facebook and Twitter hysterically embrace the role of lynch mob.

Social media are powerful and influential. According to Pew Research, more than half of the people on Twitter get their news from that platform. For Facebook, the number has been declining to slightly less than a third. My own experience has been to stop considering Twitter as a source for hard or political news and discount most of what I see labeled as news on Facebook. I follow virtually no news accounts on Instagram or MeWe. 

We have to learn how to assert, or reassert, some control over what is called news.

Related:

When Journalism Began to Change

When the Worldwide Web Was a Marvel – and a Mystery

How Email Started a Revolution

The Media and Kyle Rittenhouse

The U.S. Media and Russian Collusion

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Meet the Man

An award-winning speechwriter and communications professional, Glynn Young is the author of three novels and the non-fiction book Poetry at Work.

 

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