Fall of Social Media (Thank You Censorship)

The fall of social media. The title of this video doesn’t necessarily mean that I think that social media is going to go extinct or become obsolete, but it certainly is going through somewhat of a reckoning of late. Later in this video, I’ll discuss three major flaws of modern social media, with one being the main reason, I think, that social media is on the decline.

Recently, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $US44 billion and we now know it’s losing millions of dollars per day. But to be fair, the company was having problems well before Elon Musk bought it. If you look at the company data over the last 10 years, it’s been losing millions of dollars every year apart from 2018 and 2019. But in 2020, it lost $1.1 billion! 2021 was a little bit better, but it still lost $221 million. So, it’s not like it was a thriving company when Musk bought it.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) has been having some issues of late as well. Its stock price has dropped almost 75% over the last year. Consequently, Zuckerberg had to lay off 11,000 employees via email, which is about 13% of their workforce. But to be fair to him, he did say “Sorry”. In a blog post on Meta’s website, not only was he sorry, he was “especially sorry”.

So as I said earlier, in this video I’d like to discuss three major flaws of modern social media that could potentially explain its downfall. But just before that, let’s answer one important question, “Why do people use social media?”. Well, I think in its simplest form, the answer is pretty obvious: Humans are inherently social. I don’t think that’s particularly surprising or unique to humans. Most animals I can think of exhibit some form of social behaviour. But throughout human history, it was cooperative behaviour and social interaction that allowed the human species to survive and thrive. Those that strayed too far from the tribe often didn’t make it home. So of course it makes sense that we naturally flock towards so-called social media. But as I said, there are a number of flaws with this relatively new online form of interaction.

Number 1. Lack of Physical Contact. Obviously, no matter which social media network you use, there is a complete lack of face-to-face interaction. People are not physically present with one another when they use these networks. Of course, despite this, modern social media has still thrived, but for completeness, it’s certainly worth mentioning. With regards to how humans naturally interact with one another, it certainly is a flaw.

The second flaw – Anonymity. Now I’m all for remaining anonymous on the Internet. There’s lots of problems associated with sharing your real-life details online. For example, there could be a real danger for minors, or victims of crime, or victims of domestic violence being forced to reveal their identities online. Not to mention that sensitive information can be, and has been, stolen or leaked. However, there are also some real problems with people remaining anonymous. Although most of us probably try to remain fairly respectful online, some use their anonymity to become absolute horrible people. They abuse people. They troll people. They do everything that they wouldn’t do in real life. In my opinion, the online social world has become a very toxic environment. Anonymity, at least somewhat, has contributed to people leaving the big social media platforms.

And the biggest flaw of modern social media, at least in my reckoning – Censorship. I think this is a major reason why many people are leaving the big social media platforms, especially over the last couple of years. Don’t get me wrong. I completely understand the need for these companies to censor illegal material. I get that. If they allowed their users to freely distribute illegal content, they would surely be shut down. However, over the last couple of years, a lot of the stuff that they are censoring is not illegal. The big social media networks have simply taken it upon themselves to decide what people can and can’t talk about. They ban people for talking about what they deem “inappropriate”. They’re silencing one side of the debate for no other reason than they said so. In my opinion, this is completely immoral. It’s amazing that we’ve allowed it to go on for so long.

So yes, it doesn’t surprise me that social media is falling. When you stop a social animal, such as a human, from communicating honestly and openly, then you’re stopping natural, social behaviour. And if you do it long enough, people will just end up leaving. Perhaps we need a couple of these social media giants to have a great fall.

MUSIC
Melancholia by Godmode