Editorial: From social to ‘anti-social’ media

The company which came under fire last month after a Wall Street Journal expose revealed the site and officials responsible did not take prohibitive action against members of the ruling party who had indulged in hate speech on the platform has now run afoul of privacy laws through an act of surveillance. A user from New Jersey has sued the company after accusing it of intentionally accessing the phone cameras of Instagram users, while not in active use. The user said it did this to collect data that the site would usually not be privy to.

These recent developments beg the question, does absolute power corrupt absolutely? A new docu-drama called The Social Dilemma recently released on an OTT platform, attempts to explain the nature of this beast, as it breaks down concepts such as breach of privacy, surveillance capitalism, online addiction, data mining, and the propagation of conspiracy theories, fake news, hate speech. The Big Tech whistleblowers and design ethicist featured in the film make a strong argument that some of the aforementioned concepts are not just a fallout of the proliferation of social media platforms, but an actual intended outcome of features built into these apps. Take for instance, WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook. It’s one of the apps on which the maximum amount of screentime is devoted to, in India, which is home to the platform’s largest consumer base globally.

There’s a nifty hack incorporated into the app to ensure you are stuck to it. Back in the days of Yahoo Messenger and earlier iPhone models, three little dots, known as ellipses would animate in succession to indicate the other person is typing a message. The “typing awareness indicator” which could previously be disabled on some phones is now a feature of messaging apps. And it ensures that a reply, whether you like it or not is on the way; all the more reason to not set the smartphone aside. That’s just one feature that ensures additional screentime on part of the user. The other major tool in the social media salvo is that of push notifications. For many users, who believe their lives depend on being clued in on every news break, socially and otherwise, these notifications are the reasons why attendees in every space, from official meeting rooms to concerts, to churches are asked to put their phones on silent or airplane mode. Many offices have now made it mandatory that smartphone users keep their devices on silent mode during working hours.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The engineering built into social media apps that coast along on the power of AI algorithms and big data analytics is responsible for the upkeep of a virtual economy that capitalises on the preferences of a user, pushing his or her buttons in more ways than one to keep him hooked to the app, which has also sprung up a can of worms, vis-a-vis-mental health issues. There’s also the danger of creating fake engagement via purchase of inauthentic likes, comments and shares, a problem that was highlighted by Sophie Zhang, a data scientist at Facebook who was terminated in August. Zhang’s farewell memo has gone viral and it talks about how she has witnessed, on multiple occasions, attempts by foreign governments to abuse the platform to mislead their citizens. The governments of Azerbaijan and Honduras have been described as employing thousands of fake accounts to promote their agendas and silence those critical of the government. Instances of coordinated influence campaigns were also seen in India, which witnessed lynch mob attacks following a post.

Slowly but surely, a global movement is being mobilised to make social media more accountable for its business and consumer-centric choices. Some of the biggest companies in this space are being asked to make fundamental and humane design changes to the way their products are consumed by its patrons, as well as incorporating elements of fact-checking and curbing the spread of misinformation. And the tech industry must respond to this call before ‘anti-social’ media sends democracy into a free-fall.