Re: <nettime> social media critique: next steps?

Hello,

I’m coming at this discussion from another direction, sorry about that…

The problem with Facebook (for me anyway) is not its social media functions in so far as IT ONLY works as a virtual bulletin board, town crier or even as vehicle for sending messages. These aspects were part of the original game plan (more or less). And, from its earliest days, even in its most militaristic iterations, www fostered various social media qualities; especially if you consider (or accept) that humans are inherently social animals; and, if one can imagine that any quasi-public social space (and Facebook is a social space) facilitates or breeds various forms of social interactions.

The problem lies squarely within the Facebook business model which is not simply monopolistic but ravenously so… variations of this rabid form of monopoly capitalism are quite the norm these days and likely to be more so (if that’s possible). Successful businesses, on the hegemonic scale of Facebook, don’t simply compete; they devour the competition. Its the same for any commercial entity that manages to achieve the operational scale of such enterprises as Facebook, or Google or Amazon, etc…

Facebook is free it exploits the illusion that is benign; because Facebook seems to be free, people cannot imagine it as a monopoly; they cannot conceive of its insidious nature. Its most cannabalistic insidious qualities are opaque.

Small scale alternatives to Facebook are well-intentioned but are basically not sustainable without constantly replenishing the financial lifelines (via public or private sources). The only solution to the Facebook problem is breaking it up the way any monopoly has been broken into smaller components. Curated (not censored) social media fulfils an important and necessary social function. It’s not going to disappear; it’s integral to the digital world we live in.

Additionaly, beside breaking up the Facebook monopoly, what is also imperative is the introduction of a digital literacy curriculum in secondary schools. Because one can navigate YouTube or Facebook or a word processing programme does not mean one is digitally literate. It only suggests that one has managed basic skills but usually and very sadly minus the critical skills to evaluate the information that flows endlessly over the internet.

And in the land of Trump and beyond politicians rely on a vast digitally illiterate population and the likes of Fox News…

But all is not lost...

best

allan