Every move you make, every step you take, they’ll be watching you.
In my childhood, I despised trolls in the movies I watched because they usually blocked the characters from their path. Now, trolls not only remain but infest in online social media, and they block users from communicating and learning the truth by flooding sites with falsified, biased information. Usually, these stories appeal to the emotions of a regular, non-assuming person, and they seem conveniently believable that they cause massive confusion.
The included example was spread during the onset of the pandemic in 2020, when a lot of Filipinos were led to believe about an emotional encounter with a Chinese person seemingly experiencing discrimination in the country, largely due to the origin of the outbreak in China. This type of post divided Filipinos about certain urgent issues, such as the issuing of travel bans against passengers from China and other affected countries when there were little to no cases of the coronavirus here. We know how it was not implemented, and how the severe consequences played out in our country.
Social media feels very personal as its contents are tailored to you and your interests. Harvesting users’ data which has been enabled by the lack of strict laws regarding data privacy or the presence of loopholes has become the standard practice for internet companies. They release endless recommendations through advertisements on what to spend your time, energy, and money on and you consume their product, generating income for them. Social media has also become the preferred venue for information release especially for urgent news because news organizations and accounts with a large follower count can reach so many people in so little time, that often news is reported as the events play out. However, this convenience of sharing information has taken a dark turn when companies bypass existing regulations and manipulate the content released on social media. Conspiracy theories and baseless accusations masquerading as real news flood the internet and they manage to alter people’s views on certain topics and events. They embolden people with existing dangerous views to take action which often cause harm, and also when done on a widespread scale can affect important decisions and institutions such as elections. We have witnessed the numerous attempts to change people’s mindsets on certain candidates despite their flawed, often laced with criminal activity, backgrounds, and also advance biased political propaganda.
The internet and social media was promised to be a haven of accessible information and discussion, to bring people across the world together with a few clicks. However, due to the greedy, manipulative intentions of powerful entities, it is doing us more harm than good, and divides us more than it unites us. When people argue about regulating social media, some feel that infringes on freedom of speech, but that freedom stops when it oversteps healthy, factual discourse and limits others from exercising their freedom as well.
Learning and expressing the truth is not and will never be oppression.
Companies must be held accountable as this is also a severe security issue especially that almost all our information is available on the internet. If we can reach a person with a few clicks, unfortunately we also have the capability to destroy and harm that person, and there are many actions on social media that can be weaponized further to affect millions more. Social media must be regularly fact checked by their companies to avoid the wrath of lies and misinformation, and the practices of these organizations must be regulated and monitored by a transparent ethics council or the like that will provide fair, unbiased judgment.