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Continued from Part I
Lately, a lot of articles and podcasts have been dealing with a larger problem inherent in social media, which brings me to my second concern: Companies like Facebook and Twitter are purposefully trying to get people "hooked"--in other words, they are encouraging the compulsive use of their platforms. And little by little, they've become more invasive of our privacy. As I think back over the years on Facebook, I think about how Facebook would implement some change to their policy that would cause an uproar. Articles would state that Facebook had gone too far, only for the uproar to die down, and people would go back to using FB as usual. Of course, they give you the choice of opting out of certain "features" but they make it difficult to do so, or eventually these features become "inherent" to the Facebook experience.
It has become apparent to me that many social media platforms have become increasingly aggressive in their tactics to keep people signed on as long as possible and keep earning more money. Over the past few years, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr have slowly increased the rate of advertisements that show up on one's feed. Sometimes it almost feels like I'm watching television again! I do realize that social media platforms need to a make money in order to keep operating (servers to be maintained, programmers to be paid, office leases to pay) and that print and television media has always relied on advertising, but that is a tangent on monetizing online media that I would like to get into in another post.
Shortly before my break, I decided to turn off notifications from Instagram. Once I did, every time I logged on, I would get this intrusive window urging me to turn notifications on. And whenever I've tried to view a public Facebook page without signing on to Facebook, a large pop-up screen appears within seconds urging me to sign on. It blocks the page and I can't proceed unless I click on the "x" to make the screen disappear, but then the screen re-appears again seconds later. Also, (and this really irks me), they have amped up the appearance of "suggestions" on who else to follow or notifications that have nothing to do with me ("Look! Your friend made a comment on another friend's post!""Your friend liked another person's article!"). While sometimes, these suggestions have allowed me to discover some interesting things, overall, these ads, suggestions and notifications adulterate my experience of the platform in that I am no longer seeing things of my choosing. Not to mention that I become overwhelmed with all this extra information. Pinterest is one of the worst examples of this.
The thing is: a lot of social media platforms, ESPECIALLY Facebook, makes money from the information we put into them. All that time we spend on there, time that we could have used for our own gain, for creative pursuits, is going to Facebook. That time we're putting in is basically unpaid labor! So when I came across the Wages for Facebook page, the message really resonated with me. While I don't think anyone expects Facebook to take this "demand" seriously and most people would find the idea of literally demanding wages for using Facebook laughable, a serious point is being made: people are being pushed to spend more and more time on the social media platform and the company is profiting from it while the users are getting nothing in return but lost time.
People will say that signing on to Facebook is a choice, but how much of a choice is it when so many people say they "hate Facebook" and complain how much time they're spending on there, yet they don't stop using the service? We sign on expecting to use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and family but it ends up being a place where we become outraged. What concerns me is that Facebook is using increasingly heavy-handed tactics to make sure we don't leave.
Lately, a lot of articles and podcasts have been dealing with a larger problem inherent in social media, which brings me to my second concern: Companies like Facebook and Twitter are purposefully trying to get people "hooked"--in other words, they are encouraging the compulsive use of their platforms. And little by little, they've become more invasive of our privacy. As I think back over the years on Facebook, I think about how Facebook would implement some change to their policy that would cause an uproar. Articles would state that Facebook had gone too far, only for the uproar to die down, and people would go back to using FB as usual. Of course, they give you the choice of opting out of certain "features" but they make it difficult to do so, or eventually these features become "inherent" to the Facebook experience.
It has become apparent to me that many social media platforms have become increasingly aggressive in their tactics to keep people signed on as long as possible and keep earning more money. Over the past few years, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr have slowly increased the rate of advertisements that show up on one's feed. Sometimes it almost feels like I'm watching television again! I do realize that social media platforms need to a make money in order to keep operating (servers to be maintained, programmers to be paid, office leases to pay) and that print and television media has always relied on advertising, but that is a tangent on monetizing online media that I would like to get into in another post.
Shortly before my break, I decided to turn off notifications from Instagram. Once I did, every time I logged on, I would get this intrusive window urging me to turn notifications on. And whenever I've tried to view a public Facebook page without signing on to Facebook, a large pop-up screen appears within seconds urging me to sign on. It blocks the page and I can't proceed unless I click on the "x" to make the screen disappear, but then the screen re-appears again seconds later. Also, (and this really irks me), they have amped up the appearance of "suggestions" on who else to follow or notifications that have nothing to do with me ("Look! Your friend made a comment on another friend's post!""Your friend liked another person's article!"). While sometimes, these suggestions have allowed me to discover some interesting things, overall, these ads, suggestions and notifications adulterate my experience of the platform in that I am no longer seeing things of my choosing. Not to mention that I become overwhelmed with all this extra information. Pinterest is one of the worst examples of this.
The thing is: a lot of social media platforms, ESPECIALLY Facebook, makes money from the information we put into them. All that time we spend on there, time that we could have used for our own gain, for creative pursuits, is going to Facebook. That time we're putting in is basically unpaid labor! So when I came across the Wages for Facebook page, the message really resonated with me. While I don't think anyone expects Facebook to take this "demand" seriously and most people would find the idea of literally demanding wages for using Facebook laughable, a serious point is being made: people are being pushed to spend more and more time on the social media platform and the company is profiting from it while the users are getting nothing in return but lost time.
People will say that signing on to Facebook is a choice, but how much of a choice is it when so many people say they "hate Facebook" and complain how much time they're spending on there, yet they don't stop using the service? We sign on expecting to use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and family but it ends up being a place where we become outraged. What concerns me is that Facebook is using increasingly heavy-handed tactics to make sure we don't leave.
