How Facebook Undermines Society and Democracy.
Facebook is a social media giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg. He founded the company with good intentions whereby people from different parts of the world could connect and share beautiful moments. Even though Facebook was created for a useful purpose, there are emerging threats and trends in democracies. Despite all the connectivity that Facebook creates, democratic, and intellectual cultures around the world have deteriorated immensely (Naughton, 2018). In our discussion, we will focus on how Facebook affects us and undermines democracy.
Two things negatively affect the way Facebook. One of them is how it works, and the second is how different people use it. Facebook works by closely monitoring its users by collecting their data and personal information to display virtual targets on which advertisers can aim at. On the other hand, different people use Facebook for all kinds of things, such as business, sharing moments, and connectivity. However, some people use it to spread hate speech, propaganda, ethnic violence, threaten and harass, spread fake news, publish pornography videos, and perform other unsocial acts.
The central problem of Facebook is the malicious symbiosis between the business model- surveillance capitalism and the behavior of its users (Probst, 2019). The more Facebook users engage in the pages, the more revenue generated by this social media application. In recent years, Facebook is an overriding commercial imperative to increase the levels of customer engagement (Sorman and Dutton, 2019). Facebook hate speech and fake news are the worst threats to democracy and, in some way, undermines all of us. It is now clear to us that social media can do more harm than good in society.
Not only is Facebook a Monopoly in the industry, but it also has no incentives to reform the way it is undermining all of us and democracy at large. So, what can be done about this? Neither campaign such as #boycottfacebook nor demonstrations will stop Facebook from running its smooth operations and make more profits. The network is too powerful, with over 2.2 billion users who cannot be deleted all at once (Naughton, 2018). The important places to start with our data protection, privacy, antitrust, and competition laws (Probst, 2019). For this to be achieved, all uses of political campaigns, advertisements, and published news should be regulated and those in charge of editorially held responsible for any mischievous actions.
All in all, what we need is the political will and support that will lead to the implementation of these essential laws that will protect every individual. The political class should be enlightened and informed by a precise analysis of the social evils caused by Facebook. Moreover, fearless critiques such as Cambridge Analytica are needed to bring out the harmful side of Facebook. It is only after we rally behind the political class to support the data protection and privacy laws that we will see a stop to Facebook undermining us and democracy.
References.
Buehler, E. (2017). “You Should not Use Facebook for That”: Navigating Norm Violations While Seeking Emotional Support on Facebook, 21(2), 127-137.
Naughton, J. (2018). Anti-social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy by Siva Vaidhyanathan – review.
Probst, S. (2019). How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, 46(7), 111-126
Sorman, N. & Dutton, W. (2019). The Role of Social Media in Societal Change, 10, 37-42.