5 Lessons from Seyi Akiwowo

Last week, I spoke to the absolute powerhouse that is Seyi Akiwowo.

Her understanding of the digital world and the way it intersects with our offline experiences is beyond compare and I urge you all to listen.

She’s lit a fire underneath me, and I hope she has the same effect on you.

These are my 5 key takeaways - though I could have gone on forever:

1. The online space is a continuation of our offline realities.

The issues we face online are not born exclusively out of the existence of social media. Often, they originate from the problems already plaguing the offline world.

So, when we ask that all-important question: “What is it about social media that makes people comfortable enough to participate in trolling?”, we need instead to be asking, “What is it about society, and the digital world we are building as an extension of it, that makes people feel comfortable enough to abuse others?”.

The answer, too, is far more nuanced than a simple round of the digital blame game.

Yes, social media has a part to play, but it is simply intensifying the issues already prevalent in the offline world.

The solution then needs to be multi-pronged. It needs to account for both the online and the offline world.

2. Platforms have a duty of care to their users.

Social media platforms have a duty of care to their users, and at the moment, they are falling short of providing it.

This is largely the result of the fact we don’t have a benchmark for the standards we expect social companies to live up to.

As a result, we are seeing a complete lack of consistency in the protective measures platforms put in place.

Facebook differs from Instagram, which differs from Snapchat, which differs from Twitter and so on.?

Not just in the way these platforms respond to violations, but in what actually constitutes a violation, and how we are expected to report it.

3. The Online Safety Bill is not adequate.

Part of the issue when it comes to social media platforms failing at their duty of care stems from the complete lack of incentive to want to make it safe by design.

The Online Safety Bill is a prime example of this.

Whilst it claims to be making the internet the safest place for Brits to be, 51% of the population are excluded entirely.

Women and girls are not mentioned once, yet we are 27x more likely to experience online abuse than men. And that is the chronic issue with the digital landscape as it is now: the issues plaguing it are constantly ignored, meaning that we fail to set the norms and standards necessary to avoid the free for all we are experiencing now.

Without setting these standards; without standing up and saying measures must be taken in accordance with the law to protect these specific people and communities, it will remain almost impossible to hold tech companies to account.

If we are going to combat this, we need to show MPs that it’s an issue we as their constituents care about. We need to show them that a manifesto addressing it will resonate with people on the doorstep.

4. We need formal education on how to be a good Digital Citizen.

There is currently no framework that exists to help us understand ourselves in relation to the online space.

The concept of Digital Citizenship, if taught widely and consistently, could go a long way towards providing that.

We need to be teaching people how to:

• Understand their responsibilities online
• Be conscious of the way we are using social media
• Practice digital self-care
• Participate in digital self-defence
• Tap into social media as a way to share our passions
• Act as active bystanders to the online abuse we witness?
• Establish their values and be conscious in the way they embody them online

5. We’re all recovering dickheads.

Social media has fast-tracked this narrative that we were all born perfect when in reality, we are all on a journey of learning and unlearning. If we don’t embrace this, and the mistakes that come with it, then people are going to close up. They aren’t going to be honest about where they’re at and people aren’t going to be able to have real conversations with each other.

As a result, we’re creating idols of people; expecting the actors and performers we enjoy to be everything to us and that just isn’t sustainable - or realistic.

We need to differentiate between genuine mistakes and genuine harm.

And we need to remember that we are better as part of a community that supports one another through their growth.

You can listen to the episode in full here.