By Fatima Salisu Shehu
It is easy today to lose sight of the fact that social media actually have created some wonderful things in the world. They’ve reunited lost family members. They’ve found organ donors. I mean, there were meaningful, systemic changes happening around the world because of the platforms that were positive.
However, I think we were naive about the flip side of the coin – they are used in pretty different than how you expected. Nobody, I deeply believe, ever intended any of these aftermaths!
Is there a problem, and what’s the problem?
Tens of millions of Nigerians are hopelessly addicted to their electronic devices. It is exacerbated by the fact that you can literally isolate yourself now in a bubble, thanks to our technology !
Fake news is becoming more advanced and threatening societies around the world. It is not just fake news; it’s fake news with consequences.
The social media CEOs weren’t expecting any of this when they created their platforms over 12 years ago. Now, there’s a question of wether social media is making you depressed. Surveillance capitalism has come to shape our politics and culture in many ways people don’t perceive, as said by Prof. Yuval Noah Harari in his book: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
We have gone from the information age to the disinformation age. Democracy itself is under assault! What I am trying to say is, I think the tools that have been created today are starting to erode the social fabric of how society works. This is a call to arm!
Never before in history have 50 designers made decisions that would have an impact in two billion people. Two billion people will have thoughts that they didn’t intend to have because a designer at Google said, “ this is how notifications work on that screen that you wake up to in the morning.!”
Companies like Google and Facebook are some of the wealthiest and most successful of all time. They have relatively few employees. They just have this giant computer that rakes in money! What are they being paid for? That’s really an important question. For the last ten years, the biggest companies on Silicon Valley have been in the business of selling their “users”. It’s a little even trite to say now, but because we don’t pay for for the product that we use, advertisers pay for the products that we use. Advertisers are the customers. We are the thing being sold! The classic saying is: “If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.” That’s a little simplistic. It’s a gradual, slight, imperceptible change in our behavior and perception that is the product. That is the product. It is the only possible product!
A lot of people think, you know “Google is just a search box, and Facebook’s just a place to see what my friends are doing and see their photos.” But what they don’t realize is they are competing for your attention! So, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, companies like this, their business model is to keep people engaged on the screen! “Let’s figure out now how to get as much of this person’s attention as we possibly can!. How much time can we get you to spend? How much of your life can we get you to give to us?” That’s their business. They sell certainty!
In order to be successful in the business, you have to have great predictions. Great predictions begin with one imperative: you need a lot of data. This is a kind of marketplace now. It’s a marketplace that never existed before. And it’s a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures. Just like there are marketplace that trades in oil futures, we now have markets that trades in human futures at scale.
What I want people to know is that everything they are doing online is being watched, is being tracked and is being measured. Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded. Exactly what image you stop and look at, for how long you look at it. They know when people are lonely. They know when people are depressed. They know what you are doing at night as long as you are online. They know the entire thing! Wether you are introvert or extrovert, or what your personality type is like. They have more information about us than has ever imagined in human history. It is unprecedented.
We have created a world in which online connection has become primary, especially for younger generations. And yet, in that world, anytime two people connect, the only way it is financed is through a sneaky third person who is paying to manipulate those two people. Ha! So, we have created an entire global generation of people who are raised within a context where the very meaning of communication, the very meaning of culture is manipulation!
If something is a tool, it genuinely is just sitting there, waiting patiently. If something is not a tool, it’s demanding something from you. It’s seducing you. It’s manipulating you. It wants things from you. And we have moved away from having a tools-based technology environment to an addiction-and manipulation- based technology environment as said by Tristan Harris. Social media isn’t a tool that is just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them by using your psychology against you.
Fatima Salisu Shehu writes from Department of Mass Communication, Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic, Bauchi.
