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Can We Cut off the Lifeblood of Social Media When We Refuse the Cure?
-- By ReeceWalter - 12 Oct 2023
Introduction
Is there any way of actually symbiotically living with social media? The relationship between humanity and social media is parasitic, it needs us more than we need it. It feeds off of us to survive and does not exist without us. But the body has around 100 trillion beneficial bacteria supporting its function which humanity is better off for having. How do we turn social media from a bad germ into a good one, making it work for us?
Nothing is free, and that ages-old adage holds true when it comes to social media. Social media accounts are “free.” You pay nothing when you sign up and you get everything, including: targeted ads. Advertisements already consume our every day. In print, on the radio, on cable, even in life! Buses, benches, billboards, open spaces and functional objects are just places you can slap an ad on. Many of these advertisements hope the right person will see it and either buy it themself or tell a friend. Maybe once, when the average person only saw a handful of advertisements a day, they could pipe up when their friend needs a window-cleaning service: “I saw a billboard today!” It's a coincidence. Now it’s not a coincidence, when between Instagram posts, you see an advertisement for window-cleaning. How did they do it?
Social media isn’t free, it’s funded. Targeted ads aren’t good for us the way they are good for advertisers, and they pay for the servers we use to keep in contact with friends and family. Yet we’ve found ourselves echoing the advertiser: “but targeted ads are good!” There’s two big problems with targeted ads: privacy violations and the resulting overconsumption.
Privacy
Privacy wise, It’s fine if my social media accounts spy on me because I’m not doing anything wrong or illegal. The same argument is given by pro-police individuals who mistakenly believe: as long as you are not doing anything illegal, your privacy being violated is fine. However, it is not good. Presumably, those who fell for the Cambridge Analytica scheme did not do anything illegal, but they actually completely fell for mass propaganda. The mass data allowed a foreign company to, effectively, rig the election. While arguably this isn’t super different from traditional campaigning and propaganda, it’s more bad now because of the scale. It’s kinda like the way advertisements were and are now: it used to be guesswork and now it’s exact. People question if you can have an online shopping addiction and others rack up credit card debt as the ads get even more exact because the better the ad placement, the more people spend, the more money social media makes. It creates a downward spiral when the capitalist monster chews up people and spits them out: broke, sad, and with a polluted planet.
Over consumption
Social media also has a big role in consumerism because of those ads. Did you know fast fashion is the second biggest consumer of water? Or that many clothes are made of plastic and dyed with toxic materials? Better known: that fast fashion underpays and puts workers in inhumane conditions? But we can’t get enough. Fast fashion is rapidly rising in the ranks as one of the most harmful industries on the planet and it is propped up by social media in more than one way. For example: the targeted ads encouraging consumerism. The algorithm is designed to figure out what you like and sell it to you all day long. It encourages impulse purchases that can be done in a single click. Social media and presentation of the self encourages brand cultivation of the individual. And that includes a new outfit for every single occasion. Because god forbid you post the same outfit twice and let the world know you own or have access to a washing machine.
Conclusion
People love what we get and ignore the cost, but the cost is too high. To us and our planet. We refuse the cure because we love social media. Or at the very least, are addicted to it and keep going back. So targeted ads allow social media to stay free. And we bear the cost in other ways: we give up privacy and our planet (and more money than we may think). Could we get the value of virtual connection? Is there a way to pull the plug? Can the parasite turn into good bacteria that keeps our gut healthy? Maybe so. In some ways people are fighting back. After the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandals, there was a big lawsuit against Facebook which ended in a $27 million dollar settlement and massive public relations concerns. Some people deleted their Facebook and never looked back. Some logged back in not long after like nothing happened. But Facebook's user base inexplicably continues to grow. So that is a dead end, making people aware of the problems seems to not work enough. This is proof we refuse the cure.
The can of worms has opened and there’s no going back. Meta, Google, X, all may be beyond redemption, but maybe it’s not without hope. Some users fight back. Twitter/X users have launched block lists that contain all accounts of advertising partners. The lists block everyone at once quickly, so suddenly users have an ad-free X with the click of a button. There are also new social media apps, but they are less popular. Apps like BeReal? try to join the media space, and as of writing, do not incorporate advertisements. It’s a once-a-day post, therefore encouraging less time plugged into the parasite, but also still maintaining community. Maybe going back to topic-specific forms is the future of the online community without the sacrifice of privacy and inundation of ads. Or maybe we should all log off, touch some grass, and actually talk to people. Re-investing in the outside world may be best, frolicking under the billboards, on the advertisement bench, watching the driving advertisements (buses) go by.
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