Gad Zusk!
Gadzooks! Or should I say Gad Zusk as the unholy alliance of X’s owner Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg join forces to manipulate information to their own ends. The new media barons appear to be social media barons, and this is dangerous, because they have a far larger reach than what we perceive. “Hey-ho, if I’ve got nothing to hide,” you could think, “I have nothing to fear.” But it’s not as simple as that. It’s about our civil liberties of privacy, outlined in the UK’s Human Rights Act of 1998.
When this legislation was drafted, AI was a niche science-fiction term. We were also conditioned to believe that AI was a cute and comfortable thing, not least by the launch of the Furby. Whilst not AI proper it learnt our language and had to listen to know what to say next. AI on social media has a similar modus operandi. On January 8th, as well as supporting US President-elect Donald Trump more wholeheartedly than he had previously done, Zuckerberg also took a stance in the post-truth conundrum when he sacked his fact-checkers in favour of community notes.
Whilst the great and the good have largely made a move to Bluesky, a twitter spin off under former CEO Jack Dorsey, as a social media platform, whose CEO Jay Garber defends a democratic backbone, there is a risk of echo-chamber politics. This is largely harmless in a healthy democracy, but when we have a troll a couple of days away from becoming leader of the free world unconstrained by Congress, Houston, we have a big problem. X, the exodus having left it the preserve of the internet’s vagabonds and highwaymen, has become the echo chamber supreme, with plenty of its top commentators acting as if they were contributing to party-political media outlets.
The arenas of X and Facebook used to be democratic places for sensible people to commune and join groups with like minded individuals or those otherwise stimulating. Your nan’s homemade pie is no longer the concern of Facebook’s CEO, because what does Zuck earn from that? It’s far easier to go political and cultivate a reactionary base. If sex sells, so do emotions? There is nothing wholly disqualifying about conservatism, but the ideological eldritch horror produced by its congress with tribal nationalism invariably melts down into an immovable sludge belching out simply horrifying policies.
A testament to this is the latest clause removed from Meta’s terms and conditions. This removal means that I could refer to my mum, my female colleagues and my female friends as a household object with no consequences. This is quite literally objectification and yet we are somewhat beholden to these media mutants, as per their terms and conditions, we technically own all of the content. Let's cut to the crux: “Facebook can use the photos and videos you post in any way without paying you”. This is the problem. We as users are powerless. So what’s the alternative?
Well, they’ve been around for a lot longer than we think. Bluesky is probably the most zeitgeisty but other alternatives similar to Facebook are Mastodon and Diaspora. Mastodon was founded in 2016 and Diaspora was founded in 2010, so they are established platforms, and ones where we own the content we post fully. I’m coming very close to realising that Facebook, much like X, is not the right place for me; but my relationship with Facebook as a platform goes back much further than my relationship with Twitter/X. It was there when I first learnt to ride a bike and first engaged in fledgling political debates with randoms online. It’s a part of me, politically at the least. Socially too: it’s not easy to ditch the extensive Facebook network of people you don’t know whether you shall see on the other side. It will take time to adapt, but we need to find a way to extricate ourselves from this bile eventually. Let’s take the first steps now.
Image: Flickr/Trump White House (Joiyce N. Boghosian)
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