Social media giants on fire

dhruvtalksstech
Mar 25, 2023
6 min read

Congress and Governments have been increasingly ramping up the pressure. The pile of litigations has been rising since. A wave of protests and criticisms from around the world has taken center stage. Former employees and staff are defecting and testifying in courts and congressional hearings reveal the analytics and poisonous impact of social media around the world. Social media was initially hailed as the harbinger of the protection of rights and freedom. Now, they are being labeled as curtailing all of them. Social media has gone from being the stardom kid and being the talk of the room to being susceptible to heavy criticism from some of the most powerful organizations and people from around the world.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn to name a few. They enjoyed anonymity and praise during the initial years and the first decade of the 21st century. They connected the world and boundaries ceased to exist. People could interact with each other in ways that they could never imagine before and this revolutionized the tech industry. Social media could not have also come at a better time. Internet was spreading widely in developing countries and data plans were getting cheaper. This meant that there were hundreds of millions of potential customers who could be brought into the sphere of social media and spoiler alert, they did.

From 2015 onwards, people started to come out of the euphoria phase and started to make observations and ask questions about the functioning and algorithms of these giants who seemed to everything about them and had survived relatively untouched by government agencies till then while the whole world had experienced some sort of red tape. You may be aware of the US congressional hearings in which Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, and Sundar Pichai appeared to testify. A lot of the allegations had to do with anti-trust issues, cyber security, anti-competition sentiments, and business acquisitions selling user data, tracking users, and decreasing transparency.

But Mark Zuckerberg has been an all-time favorite among lawmakers from both the USA and Europe. He has appeared several times before the US Congress and the EU parliament. You can never tell whether they genuinely have so many grave concerns regarding Meta's policies and practices or just hate Mark for being so young yet wealthy. Jokes apart, Facebook has its hands in a lot of pies and they are actually in some very deep trouble. A Facebook whistleblower revealed that studies conducted by the company reveal that Facebook's platforms harm girls and teenagers. They have a monopoly in the social media world and started it all. They often end up making huge acquisitions to eliminate their competition by making ludicrous offers that the other party can't refuse.

Meta has access to the data of every 2nd person to currently walk the planet. They have approximately 3.6 billion cumulative users of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. A major chunk of these are from India because of its population. This is why the problem is of top concern to India. Even the Indian Parliament and Supreme Court recently requested Frances Haugen to travel to India and testify. There have been several articles by major publications hitting out at Facebook and holding them responsible for genocides, murders, election fraud, radicalization, the spread of misinformation, voter suppression, and even secretly conducting psychological tests to influence their users' behavior, decisions, and emotions.

Anybody would get pretty alarmed to find all of this true. Even WSJ published an article explaining how Facebook's left-leaning algorithms fueled riots and unrest in the country. Facebook was also responsible for genocide in Myanmar. It is an open secret that Facebook makes money off of its users' data. They sell it to advertisers through brokers and collect information through cross-app tracking, reading texts, recording calls, and spying on those around you. Mr. Zuckerberg has repeatedly appeared in front of organizations to affirm that Facebook is trying to curb all these problems but little has changed in the last 7 years. The growing unrest and thinning patience among Governments and people are visible. Facebook's image has taken a strong hit in recent years. They are bleeding money and have already lost over $ 300 billion and a million users.

A million users may not sound much in front of 3.6 billion but even one less user means that cracks are developing in their business model and it is like a crippling bridge that is going to come crashing down one-day killing thousands of people. Other social media giants are no less. These apps are purposely designed to keep you locked in and make you waste your time while incessantly scrolling. They are incredibly addictive and have also been accused of damaging the mental health of teenagers. They create a sense of competition and a never-ending race for popularity and social validation. Suicide and self-harm among teenagers have skyrocketed ever since the mid-2010s.

TikTok, for example, has been shown to have devastating impacts on the mental health and decision-making of teens. Because of the dangerous challenges such as the Blackout challenge fanned by TikTok's algorithm, more than 80 people have lost their lives. TikTok, owned by Byte Dance, a Chinese company siphons the data for hundreds of millions of Americans which is of top concern. TikTok's algorithm prioritizes viral content even if that means spreading misinformation and hate in the process. TikTok has over a billion global users and is quickly growing. This is despite the fact that TikTok was banned in India in 2020 which has the world's 2nd largest smartphone user base - 2nd only to China. The vast influence TikTok has in the US can be used to rig elections and influence the voters. This would give the Chinese immense say in American politics.

I am not letting American social media giants off the hook but American companies are a better no. 1 than Chinese companies because Americans don't wake up to Joe Biden saying "take off all the negative reviews about me." The case is completely opposite in the absolute state of China. I would recommend everyone of you to watch the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma". It is honestly one of my all-time favorite online content pieces. It is honestly so much better than incessantly scrolling through useless Instagram and wasting time when you can really be learning how EVERYTHING in your life is tracked, influenced and planned in-advance by these social tech giants. But what I find really ironic is that the documentary speaks so much against these tech giants but excludes Netflix itself. Of all tech giants, Netflix does the most user behavior tracking, profile building and data crunching. Just something to consider, Netflix. Let's not single-mindedly criticize others while committing the same crimes. This is peak hypocrisy.

They aimed to connect the world and spread the word of equality but have helped widen the wealth gap. Facebook even has a secret internal list of ultra-powerful and rich people who are silently exempt from its rules, regulations, and terms of use. The chatter around social media giants is not going to die down anytime soon and they have grown to the point where they feel invincible. They have become so sophisticated that they can predict your next moves, and habits and know every little detail about your life. Your preferences, your favorites, your strengths, your weakness, what you had for dinner if you have a partner and siblings, and everything you can and cannot possibly imagine.

Mark Zuckerberg is at the center of ALL of this and should be held accountable for everything.

Mark Zuckerberg is pretty successful for someone who built a website to rate female undergrads on their "hotness". If you don't know what I am talking about, go and watch "The Social Network" on Netflix. You will find out how big of a cheat he has been since the age of 19 and the way he treated other people and females, specifically. He is someone with no EQ and is just ruthless. The same can be said about Tik Tok and Snapchat as well. I don't mind having billionaires around but they should not be the ones to dictate the terms on which we lead our lives. I am curious to know what you guys have to say about tech billionaires, Silicon Valley, and social media websites.