Social Media and Manipulation

Illustration generated using DALL·E 2.

How much is too much?

Have you ever felt that social media might be taking over your life and even influencing the decisions you make? After all, the largest social media companies are controlled by just a handful of multinational companies driven by a need to deliver a return on investment for their stakeholders. So perhaps they are not as impartial and altruistic as they would us to believe. Many of us realise social media platforms are owned by commercial entities that use various forms of tracking for marketing purposes, but just how much information are we giving away? Using analytics, platforms are able to harvest information about the topics, products and services that interest us, sell this information forward to third parties who then push their adverts at us accordingly.

How secure is secure?

Of course, we are complicit in the whole process as we acquiesce to giving our online data away every time we tick agree to the terms and conditions that allow us access to whatever platform we wish to join. But just how secure is the data we so readily give up in order to quench our social media thirst? Our data is stored in data warehouses across the globe. Thankfully this data in encrypted, so there shouldn’t be a need to worry about whether or not it can be exploited. However, the level of data security is reduced when we start to use third party apps, and this is where leaks can occur. For example, if you have installed an app and connected it to your Facebook account, then your personal data can leak through there. Even though it is ethically highly questionable if third party app providers should use your data in a manner not proscribed in the original terms of service, that’s the primary way your personal data is is leaked. That’s what happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal some years back. It’s not that anyone there broke into Facebook servers, but rather people installed these third party apps and their data leaked.

Losing your identity

It is hard for most of to imagine just how much data we are giving away for free, but a recent 2020 study estimates that it is somewhere in the region of 1.7 megabytes per second for every internet user on the planet; now that’s, a lot of data. So the big question is – should we be worried? The answer isn’t necessarily a simple one, but perhaps one area we should be concerned about is identity theft. Even as you read this, someone’s identity is being misused for nefarious purposes. What can be done about it is the big question in many cyber security experts’ minds. Certainly there is a need to demand more from the largest companies in the field and of course governments are starting to play their part with the introduction, for example, of the GDPR directive in the EU.

It’s a compromise

But ultimately, as in so many areas of our lives, we need to accept a compromise. After all, companies like Facebook and Google provide us with a service. Whether we choose to accept their services is a matter of personal choice, but if we do, then we understand the trade-off is access to our personal data. And of course where there is vast amounts of data there is always the possibility that data will be used for nefarious purposes such as voter manipulation the dissemination of fake news.

It’s all about convenience

We find ourselves living in a post truth society where intellectual curiosity is vastly diminished, and we are constantly bombarded with information to the point we become numb with cognitive overload. And yet reverting to snail mail instead of email, reading yesterday’s news in a newspaper as opposed to in real time on the internet, or having to physically go to a shop instead of buying online are not options many of us would relish. This is a discussion we shall no doubt return to at a later date but for now we can only remain vigilant as we head into what can only be a more regulated future.

Manipulation; not just a problem for English Users

This isn’t just a problem for English language users. Even though this website is in English, we are very aware that this is a problem across the whole spectrum of languages used for communicating via social media platforms globally. Facebook has a massive team of human moderators assisted by AI constantly hunting for unsuitable content, but not to the same level as in Spanish for example. In countries such as the United States, where Spanish is widely spoken, there are nowhere near the number of people moderating in Spanish as there are in English. This potentially means Spanish speakers are at a much higher risk of being manipulated by misinformation, or upset by offensive content while online. This problem gets even worse for speakers of smaller language groups.

Legislation

Thankfully, individual governments are taking things into their own hands and introducing legislation that will force social media companies to regulate themselves, or then leave certain markets altogether. Of course, the question now is whether these companies will take their manipulation playbooks and use them against the regulators to promote their own agenda by empowering their devoted members to take action. After all, a government is only the sum total of its politicians, and as politicians in a democracy are elected, they shy away from anything too controversial that is likely to cost them votes at the ballot box.

Keeping it real

It is becoming increasingly difficult for some people to differentiate between what is real and what isn’t. If the proposed metaverse ever becomes a reality the delineation between virtual and real will be blurred forever, making it even easier to lose a sense of who we are. We will begin to live in a blended world of the actual and the virtual, with avatars for friends and colleagues. We will play virtual sports, go to virtual social events, and possibly spend our holidays at virtual resorts. Is it possible some of us may even forget to eat because we believe we have just had a virtual meal?

Losing your mind

Of course it is not the intention of social media companies to deliberately mislead us, but removing the line between reality and virtual reality may well be a step too far for some, while opening up opportunities for less scrupulous members of the global economy to exploit. It might sound like science fiction today, but the more we walk around with our faces glued to our phones, the more we begin to lose our critical thinking skills, and the more malleable we become to the forces that wish to manipulate us for their own ends. The effect on our mental health can be quite substantial. Photo media sites that encourage young people to imagine the perfect face or body are one example of how realities and perceptions can be twisted, leading to depression or even worse. Is it possible that social media can have the opposite effect to the one originally intended, and actually make us less happy than when we started?

Step back in time

Perhaps we need to take a step back from technology for a moment. Of course, anyone under the age of thirty won’t actually remember a time before mobile phones and the internet, but for those of us who do, there was pen and paper. In fact, there are still societies like Japan that, even today, don’t trust information that is not written in ink on paper, and yet happily coexist with, and exploit the benefits of, new technology. It is a fact that technology is not going to go away. In fact quite the opposite, it will only become more pervasive, invasive, and integrated into our daily lives. However, it is up to us whether we master it, or allow it, to master us.

Written by Ian Bowie