Is Social Media Dangerous?

'We will ban social media on elections day if it becomes necessary' this was said by the IGP, Ghana. And since then there have been countless debates about the statement. I must say that I have been part of those advocating for the IGP to take back his words and never try to block social media during the elections.

I have been on social media since Hi5, myspace and black planet days, but it's 5 years for me as a social media professional. And since I became a social media professional, I did not only think of what will put food on the table, but I sought for the 'truth' beyond what I read as news on social media. I have dug deep into Dark Web because I believed there are people out there who are whistleblowers but because of how 'dangerous' it could be to be a whistleblower, they seek for cover using the Dark Web. And even on the Dark Web, you could be sold an ordinary powder as hard drugs because it also serves for illegal trade. But if you know what you want, you can dig deeper to exactly what you want and that is what I did, even though I explored other areas of the Dark Web. In trying to know beyond what I see and read on social media, I got my laptop infected and the laptop just 'died' on me and never came back to life.

Now, back to the surface of the web 'social media' and the information we take and help in spreading. Well, my opinion is that lies on social media travel faster than the truth. A reputation could be lost in a second and would take years to gain it back because of one lie told. It is hard to take the lies back because it travels at a 'speed of light' as far as social media is concerned. People receive information and based on their prejudice, they careless to know whether it's true or not, they just share, share and share. And these people, even if it's later revealed that it was a lie, they don't share the fact with the people they shared the lies with.

WhatsApp has become the fastest way of spreading a lie, at a tap, a person can share a lie with 100's of people and the possibility of about half of the people the person shared with also sharing to others is high. I always say that "Social media is how you use it" but the 'how you use it' is becoming too dangerous for us as citizens of this world. I have had to counter so many untrue stories and give reasons they are not true and helped in halting the spread of the information at least on the platforms that I belong to.

Politicians with their propagandist agenda have used social media to spread lies, but did it start today? No, it did not start today, it started before social media, but the danger here is that their propaganda reaches more people now a days because of social media than it used to, and their targets also help in sharing the propaganda. Unlike the traditional media, where a person can hardly use the same medium it received the propaganda to spread it to others. On Social media, it has become a race for the politician to out lie the other. It's about 'how hard can I lie than the other' and not 'how hard can tell the truth than the other'. I remember sometime early this year, a video went viral on social media purported to be Ras Mubarak being chased out of a community in the North when he went campaigning. A friend forwarded the video to me and after watching it, I thought myself that, this is dangerous for the nation, but I had to watch it and watch it again, then I realized the video is actually not from Ghana but from Nigeria. So I sent my friend a message and told him that he should halt spreading the video because it's not true and that the video is a foreign video. Back to Facebook, I had many of my friends also sharing it and I had to draw their attention to the fact that the video is not of Ras Mubarak but some of them argued that he is the one in the video. I cannot tell whether they knew he is not the one but had to share because of where they stand in the political propaganda race or they just did not know. Even the traditional media carried it in their prime time news without verifying the source of the video. But the traditional media can decide not to air it again, but it won't be same with social media because you cannot take it down. Below is the video.

I also remember a propaganda carried on social media about the leader of the opposition party Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. It was a propaganda message fused with religion to appeal to Muslims. In that message, he was said to have urinated in a mosque, it was just a text without any video or a pictorial prove to show. And I bet you this went viral on social media, again, people shared without seeking to know how true that is. Social media has helped in spreading lies and Facebook and Google plays the major part in this. With Facebook it's easy to set up a propaganda page to spread lies by paying to boost the posts and Facebook cares not whether the information being shared is fake or not, what they care about is that you pay and they will give you the reach. I can see several other propaganda pages by both the government and the opposition, and they are reaching thousands of people with their lies daily. And these lies help in shaping the opinion of their readers. Google pays sites through Adsense as far as they manage to rake in traffic to the sites, and many people are using this opportunity by spreading lies and crazy conspiracy theories and again connecting it to Facebook to drive traffic to the sites.

Am I blaming Social media for all these? Yes, why? Because the creators of their platforms can help in bringing down these lies, but would they? I cannot tell, especially where money is concerned. As individuals, we ought to be very careful with the information we receive and consume.

We need social media because it has become part and parcel of our lives.

There are so many good social media is doing, if we can't help in spreading the good, let's not help in spreading the lies.

"Do not accept everything thrown at you on social media because you are not a trash can." Zakiyu Iddris Tindannayil.