There’s a line in my pre­vi­ous col­umn that men­tioned so­cial me­dia, how what users share on­line doesn’t re­veal the full sto­ry of their lives. I want to elab­o­rate on it in light of a re­cent ar­ti­cle by The Wall Street Jour­nal (Sep­tem­ber 14) that dis­cussed the neg­a­tive ef­fects of In­sta­gram on the men­tal health of teenaged girls. The ar­ti­cle al­so ex­posed that Face­book, which owns In­sta­gram, was aware of this cor­re­la­tion, hav­ing con­duct­ed its own re­search but pur­pose­ly buried the re­sults. Lit­tle did they know that their full sto­ry was about to be told.

On Oc­to­ber 3, a Face­book whistle­blow­er ap­peared on 60 Min­utes and re­it­er­at­ed those ac­cu­sa­tions… along with oth­ers. They had worked with the plat­form’s civic in­tegri­ty team in the lead up to the 2020 US elec­tion and saw first-hand how lit­tle ef­fort was made to stop the dis­sem­i­na­tion of po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da. Worse yet, they as­sert­ed that the plat­form’s pro­gram­ming en­cour­aged it. Fur­ther­more, since the team was dis­band­ed fol­low­ing the elec­tion, there was no over­sight in­to how the plat­form was used to or­gan­ise the Jan­u­ary 6th siege of the Capi­tol, a role that Face­book has since tried to min­imise.

This was what caused the whistle­blow­er to part ways with the com­pa­ny and to go pub­lic, with a trove of com­pa­ny files with which to back up her claims. In an ap­pear­ance be­fore a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee on Oc­to­ber 5, the for­mer em­ploy­ee stat­ed that Face­book’s prod­ucts, “…harm chil­dren, stoke di­vi­sion, and weak­en our democ­ra­cy.” How­ev­er, while ad­mit­ting that the com­pa­ny doesn’t act with ma­li­cious in­tent, they did pro­pose that it does pri­ori­tise “prof­its be­fore peo­ple”.

This isn’t the first time such ac­cu­sa­tions have been lev­elled against Face­book. One of the main crit­i­cisms is its lack of “reg­u­la­tion” on what users can post. While con­cret­ed ef­forts are made to cen­sor hate and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry speech, its cri­te­ria for dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween news, opin­ions, the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of facts, and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, is rather vague, if not ar­bi­trary. The com­pa­ny’s CEO, Mark Zucker­berg, in an ap­pear­ance be­fore Con­gress in 2018, re­fut­ed these crit­i­cisms. He de­scribed Face­book as a fo­rum that pro­motes the free ex­change of in­for­ma­tion and ideas; its pur­pose is not to re­strict “free speech”.

These rev­e­la­tions come at a low point for the com­pa­ny giv­en the back­drop of cur­rent events. There were al­ready long-stand­ing con­cerns re­gard­ing pri­va­cy is­sues – how users’ per­son­al in­for­ma­tion could be ac­cessed and abused for com­mer­cial and ne­far­i­ous pur­pos­es (we’ll come back to this). But the hos­tile so­cial dis­course be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Face­book’s pro­lif­er­a­tion of the 2020 elec­tion lie and the para­noia about the COVID-19 vac­cine, has de­faced the com­pa­ny’s self-styled im­age of be­ing a be­nign en­ti­ty.

It rais­es two ques­tions. Do so­cial me­dia plat­forms like Face­book and In­sta­gram do more harm than good – both to the user and to the wider so­ci­ety? And is it their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take steps to im­prove and safe­guard the ex­pe­ri­ence?

The de­bates sur­round­ing these ques­tions aren’t re­strict­ed to the halls of Face­book’s of­fices or the floor of the US Con­gress. At the risk of stat­ing the ob­vi­ous – the plat­form’s glob­al mem­ber­ship makes it a glob­al is­sue. So in­di­vid­ual coun­tries, as well as in­di­vid­ual users, have a stake in it.

Even T&T man­aged to find it­self cen­tre stage in this on­go­ing de­bate with the 2018 Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca scan­dal. In case you need re­mind­ing, this was a British po­lit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm whose app grant­ed them unau­tho­rised ac­cess to the per­son­al da­ta of mil­lions of Face­book users. This in­for­ma­tion was used to ap­peal/in­flu­ence tar­get­ed vot­ers dur­ing the Brex­it ref­er­en­dum and the 2016 US elec­tion. Ac­cord­ing to a whistle­blow­er from that com­pa­ny, the da­ta-min­ing tech­niques were first used in Trinidad in the lead up to our 2015 elec­tions.

Be­yond that, we’ve seen how Face­book is the pre­ferred medi­um for po­lit­i­cal hacks af­fil­i­at­ed with the PNM and UNC to in­cite their sup­port­ers. Such di­vi­sion has al­so un­der­pinned the COVID-19 vac­cine, with the vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed brow­beat­ing each oth­er in long­wind­ed mes­sage threads. And, of course, In­sta­gram hosts a siz­able com­mu­ni­ty of lo­cal in­flu­encers. Some post trav­el ex­pe­ri­ences, oth­ers ad­ver­tise their wares. But many young ladies al­so share per­son­al pho­tos; wear­ing styl­ish at­tire or in provoca­tive bum-ac­cen­tu­at­ing pos­es. And it’s all for the adu­la­tion of their fans whose ap­provals come in the form of flat­ter­ing com­ments and “likes”.

Do Face­book and its as­so­ci­at­ed plat­forms turn a blind eye to what goes on? And do they do this be­cause, as the whistle­blow­er sug­gests, it pri­ori­tis­es prof­its be­fore peo­ple? Both an­swers are prob­a­bly yes. But we shouldn’t be sur­prised. These plat­forms pro­vide a free ser­vice to the user(s). At the same time, the users, specif­i­cal­ly their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, is the prod­uct that Face­book sells to oth­er busi­ness­es in­ter­ests.

The users know this; and Face­book knows the users know this. And while most com­plain, few ever stop us­ing it. As odi­ous as their prac­tices may be, Face­book doesn’t force any­one to sign up, log on, post, share, ar­gue, or pose in back­side-bear­ing pho­tos. Users do that of their own free will; we give those plat­forms pow­er over our dig­i­tal lives. Sh­eryl Sand­berg, the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of Face­book, once said the com­pa­ny’s goal was to keep its users logged on in­def­i­nite­ly. And there­in lies the so­lu­tion, we can do the ex­act op­po­site – log off.