It was a screening of Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public that first got me thinking about the dark side of the rise of social networking. Timoner’s film tells the story of early Internet pioneer Josh Harris, and how some of Harris’s theories about “living life in public” are now playing out on a mass scale thanks to social networks like Facebook and MySpace.
The film was great—a reminder of just how rapidly the Internet has become a part of our lives—but one of the most interesting part of the evening (part of New Directors/New Films) was the post screening Q & A. With the room filled with quirky creative types and Internet old-timers, it wasn’t long before conspiracy theories edged into the discourse, from the audience member spouting 9-11 “Truth” movement rhetoric to the resounding boos of the audience, to the director herself, who looked askance at the potential for data-mining via sites like Facebook.
Seeing as how Facebook and the like are filled to the brim with so much ephemera, I’ve always felt that any one person’s predilection for the Arctic Monkeys or knitting dog sweaters is like so many drops in an endless ocean of data. So forgive me for wanting to hand out tinfoil hats to those ascribing “Big Brother” like capabilities or motives to social networking sites that comprise an immense amount of largely irrelevant data.
But after having seen the powerful positive potential of social networks to give voice to the average Internet user and connect brands and business to their base, have I been living in puppy-dogs-and-rainbows land? During the past few weeks I’ve been paying attention to some signs and signals that there’s trouble in this little paradise we’re creating. And though I don’t think social media is in danger of falling into the hands of evil multinationals or unruly populist mobs, I am more aware than ever of the conflicts that may fan the flames of a social media backlash.
Mob mentality: #amazonfail
Last week, when a number of LGBT book mysteriously lost their rank on Amazon.com, outrage spread like wildfire on social media networks, and especially on Twitter. It was amazing how fast an erroneous consensus view emerged among users of social media that Amazon was perpetrating a major anti-gay conspiracy. In fact, a small technical glitch had resulted in the temporary delisting of the books in question. Writing about the fracas and its aftermath, Clay Shirky owned up to his own role in the angry mob: “When a lifetime of intellectual labor and study came up against a moment of emotional engagement, emotion won, in a rout.”
Social networks are a particularly good place for the viral spread of provocative ideas, whether you’re talking about a gorgeous voice inside a not-so-glamorous body or the juicy tale of a corporation perpetrating some kind of evil scheme. It is a shame that some of the more pressing issues of our day—lack of available healthcare, the fact that the New York City unemployed have some of the lowest unemployment benefits in the nation—don’t have the ability to grab hold of the imagination in quite the same way. I don’t know what would have stopped #amazonfail. Like all memes it took on a life of its own after a while, but I do recognize that the power of social networks to rapidly spread false information—and the madness of crowds—is a real and troubling one.
Privacy concerns & the challenge of running a business that’s fair to the people who built it
Until April 23, Facebook is submitting its privacy policy to a vote by users. This action followed a controversial move in February in which Facebook revised its Terms of Service to encompass broad control of the content users create on the site.
Though I think people can tend to be a little overwrought about Facebook appropriating their intellectual property, as inane or ephemeral as it may be, this effort to institute a Terms of Service that pays attention to user needs and wants is obviously is an important one. Less, I think, because Facebook really wants to use all that material for some nefarious purpose but because part of building a user-generated-content empire is respecting the users that created that empire. Only problem is, Facebook is only going to pay attention if a certain number of us vote. So let’s all go over there and vote now.
In a cover story for New York magazine on April 13, Vanessa Grigorgiadas offered a highly anecdotal assesment of Facebook filtered through her own point of view, one reluctant to buy into the site’s vision of tamed Internet built around the “sharing” of information. Though the article was several thousands of words long, I’m still not completely sure of what her concerns are beyond a vaguely articulated annoyance with being asked to track so many unrelated “friends” status updates. And to the people who are sure that Google and Facebook are after mind-control via data-mining, I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s a generational thing. Notions of privacy are changing, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, or not as bad as some writers make it out to be.
Criminal activity: from Casual Encounters to “cyber bullying”
Social media’s alleged facilitation of criminal activity is one of the more thorny quandaries brought about via the rise of social media. It’s front and center in the news again, as an arrest has been made in the Craigslist killler saga. But the use of social media technology in the commission of crimes has grabbed headlines before. Remember the MySpace cyber-bullying case, in which a teen’s mother was accused of using a MySpace profile to edge her daughter’s rival to a suicidal state?
When talking about tragic crimes like this, I think it’s important not to ignore their rather complex underpinnings. Sex workers are the disproportionate victims of violent crimes, whether we’re talking about crimes facilitated by the Internet or not. The taking of any life is wrong and we should be doing all we can to protect the vulnerable, including sex workers. “Cyber-bullying” is not more disturbing iteration of what is reprehensible to begin with. The existence and pervasiveness of bullying itself is the problem, not the means of bullying. While legislators may get headlines by proposing “cyber-bullying” bills, what resources are available to combat the more deep rooted demands of how we raise children to have a sense of self-esteem? The role of the Internet can too easily become a convenient screen upon which to project our fears, when the real issues deserve our attentions and efforts.
These are the hot button issues I’ve been tracking, anyone have any other “tales from the social media darkside”?
This post is tagged #amazonfail, craigslist, cyber-bullying, Facebook, myspace, Twitter, we live in public
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