Don't shoot the Social Messenger

Criticism about Social Media could be summed under these heads:

·      They use my data to recommend content and advertisements to me. My privacy is under threat.

·      They want to influence my opinion.

·      Their continues suggestions are making me an addict

·      They have only one objective and that is to make money

·      They spread fake news

Were these problems invented by social media and are they unique to it? I don’t think so. 

Before the invention of internet, media was not interactive and travelled only one way, from the publisher to the user. Cover price of traditional media (Print, Radio, TV) has been subsidized, forever, to enhance reach, to help boost the main source of a media firm’s revenue, which was advertising. 

Producers of goods that consumers buy, used these mediums to reach their messages to prospects, to boost sales of their goods. Data about usership, ownership & attitudes, from statistically significant samples of users of the medium were collected and extrapolated to decide the message and the frequency of advertising. Traditional media did not tap into data for every user of the medium, not because they didn’t want to. It was not done because they couldn’t. 

The internet offered a two-way stream, enabling networking of users and that led to the birth of Social Media. Owners of the media, hence advertisers, had access to every move of the users and did not have to depend on sample data to predict what to push and when. Analytics and AI helped make the activity faster and more frequent. 

A seller of cola, candy, cosmetics or cars, wants its customers to buy larger sized products, more frequently. So did the promoters of traditional media companies. Everyone, including the government, aims for a revenue that is higher than that in the previous year. Social media is no different.

In the case of traditional media, the publisher and the user were two different entities. Social media enables the user to be a publisher too. Hence every user can write their version of the truth. Some of it may not be true, hence fake.

Every narrative that I’ve heard so far, has talked about the problem followed by a direct or indirect attempt to shoot the messenger. I haven’t read many, maybe any, suggestions for what could be a solution. 

The solution does not lie in:

·      Change the business model and let subscription pay the promoter, instead of advertising

·      Do a KYC for every user and hold him responsible if he writes something wrong or inflammatory

·      Encourage people to delete social media apps

·      Put a limit to the number of hours a person can use the medium in a day

·      Make the promoters face the legislators, once every year

·      Break large social media platforms into many small entities

All of the above would be treating the symptoms, not the cause.

One suggestion that I can think of is self-regulation, coupled with severe action. It works as follows:

·      Agree with the platform, on a list of subjects that cannot be carried by the platform

·      Since the users are in Millions, even Billions, it won’t be practical to penalize users. Hence lay the responsibility on the platform’s door.

·      The platform has the ability to peer into every message the moment it is published. AI can help it decide whether it complies with the self-regulation agenda or not.

·      Give the platform X minutes to purge what doesn’t comply with the agreed list.

·      Any platform not removing non-compliant content, after the specified time, be made liable to a penalty ranging from an apology to a fine, all the way to shutting down the entire platform for a certain period, depending on the severity of the non-compliance.

Self-regulation has worked in traditional media. It can be made to work in Social Media too.

If you have another suggestion, other than deleting the apps or changing the platform’s business models, I’d urge you to post it in the comments.