TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022 - SOCIAL MEDIA, CAN IT BE CHANGED?

 TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022 - FIRST DAY OF SUMMER!!

SOCIAL MEDIA - can it be changed?

“Can Reforming Social Media Save American Democracy?

(From Can Reforming Social Media Save American Democracy? (voanews.com))

The changes he’d like to see include replacing traditional partisan primaries, which tend to reward politicians who cater to the extremists in their party, with single contests that are open to all candidates regardless of political affiliation. The top four finishers advance to the general election. It’s already happening in Alaska, where residents voted in November 2020 to adopt open primaries and ranked elections.

 

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Karen comments. In closed primaries, the ardent Democrats vote for the most liberal Democrats, and the fervent Republicans vote for the most radical, conservative Republicans.  So, when you get to the general election, you have a liberal Democrat against a conservative Republican. The moderates from the two parties aren’t appealing to the party faithful - although they might appeal to independents, and members of the other party, but in the primaries - they speak to the “faithful” of the political parties.

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“The second step is to make social media less toxic to democracy, he says, by requiring identity verification. People could still post anonymously or with a fake name, but they’d have to show that they are a real person in a particular country.

 

“Right now, anyone in the world, including Russia, could just create hundreds of thousands of accounts every day, and many of them will not be taken down and they can do what they want. That’s insane,” Haidt says. “It’s insane that we allow our public square to be so full of fake people with bad motives.”

 

“Twitter says it is working to combat fake accounts and misinformation. Last month, CEO Parag Agrawal posted that the social media platform suspends a half-million spam accounts daily and locks millions of suspected fake accounts each week. He said Twitter constantly updates its systems and rules to remove as much spam as possible and that fake accounts make up less than 5% of its users. Meanwhile, the company’s head of safety and integrity announced Twitter’s new crisis misinformation policy aimed at elevating credible information and slowing the spread of misleading content, during crises.

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Karen comments - that seems high - half-million spam accounts, but less than 5% bogus accounts.   BUT - getting rid of the garbage accounts - seems to be a prime move!!

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Facebook removed 1.6 billion fake accounts in the first three months of 2022, according to the quarterly transparency report the company released in May. The social media company has said its goal is to remove as many fake accounts as it can, prioritizing accounts that seek to cause harm through spam or financial motivations. In its quarterly report, Facebook said it continues to refine its oversight processes.

 

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Karen’s Comment: The number of monthly active users on Facebook by the end of 2021 was 2.9 billion.  The world population has reached 7.7 billion.  When you consider that not all people have Internet access (and some third-world countries might not even have electricity) and that about 35% of the world actively accesses Facebook monthly, that seems to be significant.  

 

Looking at social media from a financial view, it takes a lot of servers and a lot of computer storage devices to run a big social media company (like Facebook).  With thousands (millions?) of posts, every minute the infrastructure needs are big.  I sometimes bemoan all the advertising, but I do like not having to pay for Facebook (or Twitter).  Then you throw in the cost of additional personnel to verify account ownership, fraudulent accounts, and nefarious activities the costs can be extreme.  

 

For this blog (that is - Karen White’s blog) (hosted free on Facebook and on a free Google service (Blogger)), somebody has to pay for the hardware and telecommunication costs.

 

Can social media be “roped in”?  Tough question.  For all I know, even as this gets posted, some users in some country writing in their language is saying something similar or something totally opposite to my writing.  

 

Considering just the United States and the political polarization, almost every minute of every day there “must be” such opposite posts.  

 

“Free Speech” is widely debated.  

 

The First Amendment to the Constitution is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

Voltaire, a French philosopher said, “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

 

So, at any particular time, a person can say “<Politician X> is the greatest leader ever” and another person can say “<Politician X is the worst leader ever”.  And, to make it legitimate, they can back it up with a poll saying “93% of the people we surveyed said so” (the people they surveyed are subscribers to the particular viewpoint).  

 

There is a famous negative to Voltaire’s free speech comment.  “I can’t scream FIRE at the top of my lungs in a crowded theater.” (it would cause confusion and probably cause multiple deaths as people scrambled to the exits).  

 

“Censorship of social media speech may not outweigh the benefit of forbidding a particular speech, but allowing complete free speech on social media may also have negative impacts, such as fostering cyberbullying or hate speech. (https://law.stanford.edu/projects/regulating-freedom-of-speech-on-social-media-comparing-the-eu-and-the-u-s-approach/) 

 

What is offensive to me, may not be even vaguely offensive to others. 

 

If I say “Jesus is Lord”, and members of other religions view that as hate speech, am I restricted from saying that?  Is it freedom of speech to say “Jesus is Lord”?  Is it freedom of speech to say that on a Saudi Arabian version of Facebook? (Or is that hate speech to the Islamic world?)

 

Can social media be changed, or controlled?  That is difficult to fully and correctly answer.  Maybe I need to be like Voltaire and say ‘I don’t believe in what you say, but I accept your right to say it”?  (But, then add, as long as it doesn’t offend anybody)?????

 

LOVE DOES WIN

 

Karen

June 21, 2022