My exit from social media.
My exit from social media started 4 years ago with Facebook, or so I believed. A recent conversation with my friend M connected some dots that I never even knew existed. Here is how I recall the conversation:
M: I talked with my family today, we sat down and my father was finally patient enough to listen to the things I had to say. Today I realised that him and I were on the same page.
A: How on earth did you never have this conversation before?
M: Normally I start a conversation, I get so deeply emotionally involved in the conversation and realise that I am moments away from crying. So, I get up and leave the conversation.
A: That’s exactly what I used to do too. Then it gradually got easier but I have no idea why. There are still events that trigger this response from me but they are rare.
So I got to thinking about what helped me change; what has been that one defining change in my life that had such a tremendous impact on the way I interact. Last night, I laid awake thinking about it and I stumbled upon the answer when I clicked to check on my Whatsapp feed for the second time in a minute. Facebook. I logged out of Facebook 4 years ago and never logged back on. Edward Snowden was the reason then, not because of the things he claimed or seemingly concrete proof that he tried to establish. No, the reason behind my rebellious exit was the lack of response it had stirred up in the people around me. No-one did anything, So I did something. It wasn’t much but for me it meant the world.
I knew, like many, that social media made me depressed, fragile and incapable of perceiving basic human emotions. I’ve watched many documentaries telling me how social media is not good for me but what stuck me was just one line I heard in talk. “You are the product, you are being sold”and I thought to myself “What an absurd idea, this thing does not control me”, sounding eerily similar to an addict.
It’s the hard truth. In the American docudrama “The Social Dilemma”, Tristan Harris who worked as a design ethicist at Google and called “The closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience” talks about the very same thing. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest or whatever your poison of choice may be, are “free” social media platforms. I beg to differ, they are not free for the people who the social media is designed for, or to be precise, the people from whom they generate revenue. You, your time and your attention is the product. They are not made for you, they are designed and engineered to grab your interest and monetise on it. These products are categorised, labeled and tagged to be made use by the Social’s main source of revenue, advertisers. For years I’ve not been active on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and have missed out on the whole Snapchat train all-together. But, social media has been masked under so many platforms that they are barely distinguishable from a texting platform. Instant messaging platforms like Whatsapp or video-hosting platforms like YouTube are just as addicting or even more addictive because of this indistinguishability.
Simply put, to personalize advertisements there needs to be data, and a lot of it. I willingly give out my data (Whatsapp) and am being sold ads (Youtube). Ad-blocks are not the solution, the fact that my emotions, persona and real-life behaviour is being controlled by algorithms that run on some thousands of underwater servers, makes me question every decision I’ve taken in life. The t-shirt I bought last day, the compliment I received because of it and the affinity I attributed towards that brand all feel like some extravagant manipulation of emotions. Did I even like that t-shirt or did some algorithm realise that people in my close proximity would enjoy the colour and thereby increasing the likeliness of receiving a compliment?