Cyberpsychology
The two-part Frontline documentary titled “The Facebook Dilemma” documents the eminent growth of Facebook from its armature stages when the company had barely 500 subscribers to a giant social networking site that we know today with over 2.6 billion monthly active users. The documentary followers previous Facebook employees, journalists, experts and former CIA agents, all of home have seen the exponential growth of the company from mere social networking site into a global marketing platform. The need to increase revenue saw the company forge a model that aimed at targeting user data which was being traded by third party companies that were interested in such data for marketing purposes. However, this move was not accompanied by restrictive measures that would limit to what extent this data could be manipulated which experts such as James Jacoby argue left users vulnerable to manipulation.
Among the interviewees is Naomi Gleit, a current Facebook employee who agrees that “the company had not put into consideration the extent to which malicious people could use the platform for their selfish gains.” Through it all, Mark Zuckerberg is repeatedly involved in various interviews where he seems more focused on his vision connecting the world through a popular slogan “move faster and break things” which he repeatedly used in his conversation. The “Facebook Dilemma” goes ahead and document the Egyptian uprising against the government which was being run through Facebook. Eventually, the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was ousted. Though Facebook never publicly took credit for allegedly contributing to restoring democracy in torn nations, the company was counting it as an achievement towards contributing positively in the world. However, the uprising went beyond restoring democracy in Egypt to the propagation of violence against the government, the army and certain individuals that were being targeted through fake news spread through Facebook platform. This trend repeats itself years later when Russia uses fake news to meddle in Ukraine politics which ended up in bloodshed. The ongoing investigation relating Russia meddling in U.S elections somehow connects Facebook as a platform that these manipulations are propagated through. Although the documentary does not offer a simple solution to this dilemma, it expounds greatly on the eminent influence that Facebook holds and the significant responsibility that comes with this influence.
The influence waded by social networking sites has been clearly portrayed by the amount of engagement and traffic that Facebook and Twitter have both experienced since Coronavirus Pandemic came sweeping across the globe. Tacked in their homes, people relied largely on these platforms for news feeds. The article titled “The Coronavirus Revives Facebook as a News Powerhouse” reports that the pandemic has more than doubled the amount of traffic that the platform is experiencing. People are interested in knowing what is going on around the world and are relying on the platform for the news feed. However, an article published on ProPublica documents how these platforms are being used by the China government to propagate disinformation aimed at painting a good picture of government efforts in combatting the pandemic. The article titled “How China Built a Twitter Propaganda Machine Then Let It Loose on Coronavirus” goes ahead to document how these propaganda targets foreign governments and their officials in a bid to tarnish their names. However, an article published on the MIT Technology Review website titled “We’re Fighting fake news AI bots by using more AI. That’s a mistake” indicates that twitter is bracing itself to get rid of disinformation by flagging fake accounts by use of AI technology. Although this will not be an easy task given the imminence of fake news being peddled on both Facebook and Twitter, developing strategies to fight disinformation will be a step forward towards making these social cites safe for use by anyone without fear of manipulation or being fed with disinformation.