Obviously social media is bad for you
...but there are also upsides
I can’t have been the only one to read that Facebook “harms children and damages democracy” and think, “Well, yes.” To put the question every reporter fears from their editor: is this news?
Frances Haugen, a former product manager in the civic integrity unit at Facebook, had appeared before US Congress yesterday to allege that a company – an American company! – puts profits before people. More than that, she added that the firm’s own research had proven that Instagram contributed to mental illness in teenage girls.
In other allegations she said Facebook research had shown its platform amplified hate, misinformation and political unrest. More damningly, she said that safeguards put in place during the last US presidential election had been turned off right afterwards. This, she asserted, contributed to the unrest in Washington DC in January.
Facebook's response was amusingly bitchy, describing Haugen as “a former product manager [...] who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives”. Awkwardly for them Haugen’s former superior, who did meet those criteria, was rather more sympathetic.
Judging by the response from US congressmen, they agreed with her even before she started talking. Perhaps they had seen her interview on 60 Minutes, but most American politicians have been hostile to Big Tech for some time: the left for the same reasons as Haugen, the right over alleged censorship.
That’s because of lot of her allegations are well aired, or tally with common experience. Most of us have felt bad because of something we’ve read or seen on social media, fretted over the status games on such platforms, and seen people spouting more bollocks than your average Substack newsletter.
If there is a news point, it’s that Facebook’s own research confirms as much. But it would be astonishing if it hadn’t investigated these issues given the criticism of the last few years. And if it had found out these problems were nonexistent, you’d certainly have heard about it.
In response, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s argued that Instagram has comforted teens in times of hardship. This is also believable. The reason we use these platforms is because there are upsides; if there weren’t people would flee.
Some of these benefits include things that established politicians and big businesses don’t like. It is taken as axiomatic by some that “division” is a bad thing, but the ability for minor, even extreme groups to express their politics and organise is good for those groups who would otherwise be unrepresented. In that sense social media has been good for democracy.
Whether it’s good for business is less certain. Zuckerberg claims that advertisers aren’t that fond of their ads being put alongside “harmful” content. This is consistent with the experience of anyone who has written about politics even in mild form.
The caveat is that while advertisers may not want their ads against such content, they want a platform of engaged users to sell to. And every tech company knows that emotive content is highly engaging, even if it is bad for people’s wellbeing and safety.
Zuck’s claim that Facebook doesn’t prioritise profit over safety and wellbeing some of the time is therefore plainly untrue. But this isn’t because he’s a villain running an evil corporation, but because companies by definition put profit over consumer safety and wellbeing some of the time.
Take a beer or cigarette company, since comparisons to Big Tobacco have already been made. The safest thing for consumers is that these companies stop operating, as their products are bad for you. But beer is tasty, and some people enjoy smoking.
The same arguments can be levelled against firms that build rollercoasters, which occasionally kill and maim people. Or car makers, whose products have killed millions in crashes and related air pollution. Even bookmakers, those virtuous souls, have contributed to mass short-sightedness as we squint at the ink, as well as the proliferation of bad writing and even worse opinions.
One could argue that the wellbeing people get from theme parks, convenient personal transport, or the written word justifies the risks. I’d agree on theme parks and books; for cars I’m not so sure. But the point is that companies and consumers make trade-offs between wellbeing, security and profit.
Congress could regulate to decide these trade-offs for Americans. People have been angling for a breakup reminiscent of the division of the Bell telephone system in the 1980s. It would probably be good if Facebook didn’t also own WhatsApp and Instagram, and perhaps tech companies could be discouraged from investing beyond their own field.
As for more censorship – which is what is being called for – you could put in more obligations for social media to censor content relating to anorexia, suicide or whatever else. You can also impose further restrictions against extreme politics that most people don’t like. People will be less free to express themselves and access content that interests them, but perhaps society will be safer and better off for it.
My fear is that the backlash against Facebook looks as naive as the wide-eyed optimism from a decade ago, when Silicon Valley would happily tell you that privacy was dead. Yielding our data to tech firms was convenient and useful, but it came with trade-offs that we ultimately weren’t comfortable making.
Restraining Big Tech will come with trade-offs too. And we won’t like all of them.