Category: Social Media

We Get What You Pay For

Featured Photo Credit: Jan van der Wolf on Pexels

Am I the only one who sees at least a hazy comparison between banning social media and banning vices like alcohol and tobacco?

Just for instance… over the past fifty–odd years, we’ve not only managed to restrict the age for purchasing alcohol and tobacco, we’ve also reached some level of comfort that such restrictions may be growing somewhat more culturally acceptable, and even worth further pursuit.

Today, similar acceptance seems evident in myriad age-restricted bans upon the usage of social media, even as weighed against its benefits… one Google search is all anyone needs to confirm the health concerns. And let’s set aside that any threat to the health of so-called “minors” might also mean a threat to the health of so-called “adults” – we’ve apparently reached a comfort level on that, too, one that leaves the adults free to decide for themselves whether or not to damage their health.

Illicit drugs, pornography, firearms – all restricted, if not illegal. Even movie theatres, video games, and music releases can have age restrictions or purchase & supervision requirements. As for me (though not sure for you), I’ve known plenty of minors in my lifetime who were turned down when they asked adults to forgive such bans and let them purchase [ restricted Product X ]. The point just now is not enforcement, which in real consequence is hit-or-miss, but more plainly actuality, which by point of fact is cultural evidence that we’ve found actual reason and method in our past for imposing restrictions and bans.
 
As for the current hoo-haw… if it suggests anything, could it be simply that plenty of people have raised considerable concern? On its face, the mere call to ban social media seems grave enough to warrant a far more judicious – and far less rapid – pursuit of any usage, widespread or minimal, while we try to understand the longer-term consequences of social media, not to mention A.I. As much as the pace of e-culture has reduced our tolerance for waiting, it has also accelerated our lack of patience, which in turn has amplified our imprudence. Among these various cultural reductions, it’s that last one for me (though not sure for you) that really threatens our future.

Someone will argue that social media, and A.I. too, still have practical utility and that weighing this against any ban would short-change the deprived children and youth who use them. Yes, and a 12 year-old can’t just walk into the Motor Vehicles office and book a Road Test, yet driving too has great practical utility. Driving also presents a severe threat to public safety, even after motorists have earned their privilege by passing various licensing processes. Take issue as one may against protecting the duration or stringency of road safety and driver licensing, but for good reason, we do restrict its access.

So, as we halt a minor’s purchase of alcohol or tobacco, why not also a smart phone? Instead of banning social media or A.I., why not restrict the age for operating the devices and accounts we use to access them. How about restricting Rogers / Telus / Bell accounts to make it illegal for minors to be signed on as family members? As no responsible parent simply turns over their car keys to a 12 year-old, why hand them a restricted smart phone? That’s a cultural thing – a willingness to obey the law on account of respecting the belief that instituted it. Unless, of course, that’s a comfort level thing too, and people just aren’t comfortable with it – either way, wouldn’t that tell us something more about what we value most?

Funny over the past ~10-12 millenia how human civilization managed to grow without electronic anything – even longer than that, if we start redefining “human civilization.” Funnier still – and a little ironic – how all that non-digital time finally landed us here to be facing all this, just the same… did we follow some improper process along the way? Along that timeline, as social media and A.I. suddenly now present socio-economic threat, are we even capable of regulating or curtailing or halting their production and usage quickly enough? Are we even concerned enough to try? If no incentive to try outweighs the incentives to not try, at least not for the people who could try, then I’d say we definitely do and don’t know much about what we value most.

Do we value our health? As social media bears a documented health threat, why aren’t we flatly banning it all, for everyone? Or, if we won’t ban what’s addictive because its addictive, then at least we might regulate it because its addictive, and distorting, and hyper-personalized, and fatiguing, and algorithmic, and profitable. Regulate social media the way we regulate alcohol, or tax it the way we sin-tax alcohol and tobacco. Or at least license its proper usage… how ubiquitous would it be if access to social media were limited, even by dollar-cost? Wait, I forgot – it already is. So how important is any of this, as a health concern, when at least some people are evidently addicted? No problem – remember? Adults make their own decisions, plus bars and nightclubs seem to fare pretty well, and people still smoke too, if just a different shrub than before. Lucky for us, all that stuff is legal.

Bans and restrictions are no more effective in practice than their enforcement – in the world where I live, everyone who really wants to is able to smoke and drink and drive and shoot. But, as any of them might be held to account, well… that’s usually something after the fact, if even then. Lucky for us.

As for me though (not sure for you), rather than hassle everyone with bans and restrictions, rather than nag young people with “A.I. makes you lazy” or “Social media makes you ill,” I prefer to help them learn why “being lazy” or “being ill” is a worthwhile concern. I prefer to persuade people with more inclusive, longer-term responses, apart from whichever bans and restrictions might still get imposed. And I’d rather see us educating people about which choices we face, and which reasons underpin worthwhile debate, and which alternatives are available to those who want to live some better way than enduring threats to health and safety.

Create incentives that change behaviour – or hey, create disincentives that change behaviour, whichever – but create something more nuanced and imaginative than the decree of bans and restrictions, something more capable than getting peoples’ backs up. Unless, of course, we’re clearer now on what we value most.

From Doomberg – “On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity”

From Doomberg – “On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity”

One blog-type source I’ve found worthy of my time is Doomberg, the “anonymous publishing arm of a bespoke consulting firm providing advisory services to family offices and c-suite executives.” Somewhat aside, I suppose even an apparent commendation of wealth on my part sets me in somebody’s crosshairs, as much about them as about me, and hey, such is the culture we’ve evidently decided ourselves into.

From my perspective as a doctoral student, indebted and broke, I’m able to note how ably I remain aware of my privilege, even when it’s not being pointed out for me. Indeed, from any number of perspectives, our culture today seems doggedly fixed on this point, and just who am I to misstep?

Asides aside, I offer this post with no small trepidation: for Doomberg’s being hosted on Substack, which has come to face a wave of criticism all its own – make that waves of criticism – I similarly risk my head beneath the punctiliously sharpened guillotine of on-line blood-letting. Somewhat aside, I suppose any cancel cult reference has me residing in somebody’s ideological oubliette, which is a fancy word for gaol. From my perspective as an on-line blogger, I wonder how aware anybody is of my other posts, by which I mean each of them as well as all of them – then again, no one can say it all / know it all / do it all in one go in one go.

If I’m being honest, in wondering whether our cultural discipline will task itself to read anything beyond 140 characters, what I really wonder is how ably we’re able to reflect upon nuance: remember, before fear took over, this post started two paragraphs ago as something shared.

[Aside: one thing I noted about five of those articles critiquing Substack was their being published inside three days of each other, plus two others inside three weeks of that, all of which any good conspiracist would tell you smells like a campaign, and which I imagine any run-of-the-mill marketer would tell you is trendy, but which I could see Substack simply writing off as ‘good press’. But as all this only amounts to five (plus two to make seven) out of eight, here’s one more from the seemingly disconnected dog days of summer, just for good measure. As for me, I suppose I might consider all this, more clinically, as free speech, for which in all likelihood somebody’s conniving to doom my blog privilege – which reminds me…]

One thing about Doomberg that’s held my attention thus far is an intensive approach throughout their catalogue to detail with accuracy, as well as a wider cross-disciplinary scope on the path to holism – I suppose that’s really two things but I can already hear l’épouvante du Grand Sanson over the din of ravenous mindshare and thought it prudent not to gush. Naturally, what I mean by “accuracy” is open to “interpretation,” and what recourse for this but to stand amidst the entirety of context: I’ve tried my darnedest thus far to craft an intensively thorough catalogue of my own.

As for my regular audience… if such a thing exists, for one thing, thanks! For another, I must trust that they’re gradually reaching some understanding of what I value and who I am. Lately, I will say if anyone’s been detecting a tone of frustration or fatigue – you know who you are – then maybe you and I are interpreting some things the same way – the beauty of which doesn’t need to mean we agree on details.

I also like Doomberg’s irreverence, which is probably the only comparison I’d dare make to the sort of thing I try to post here on The Rhetorical WHY.

Sadly, though, the tone of this article (March 05, 2022), “On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity,” falls decidedly away from irreverence toward a more eponymous sense of… well, eponymy.

I will draw attention to two other small comparisons: the first is an early-life fascination with astronomy that led me, like Doomberg, to admiring Stephen Hawking’s accessible book; the second is a precise image of falling dominos, something I found equally à propos, if not nearly as doomish, around this time last year. Well, okay, about the same doomish.

You’ll only have a few more weeks to check out Doomberg for free before they institute their paywall, which is sort of the blogger’s impossible, as the kids would say these days. As for me, I’ll remain on this lowly free platform, at least a little while longer… still a little too chicken to spread those wings and fly.

On Free Speech: III. Craft Displacement

Remembering the Information Superhighway… next stop: Democracy!

Featured Image by Radek Kilijanek on Unsplash

Click here to read Pt II. The Speech of Free Speakers – “A Delusion of Certitude”?

III. Craft Displacement

“I think what we’re learning is that, particularly when they get a choice, a lot of people decide to believe what’s more comfortable for them, even if it’s not the truth.”

– Ellis Cose

In his interview, Ellis Cose attributes greater allotment of free speech to those with media access and financial clout, such as politicians, corporations, and individuals who may control either or both of these. Where something can’t be more free than “free,” let’s take his point to mean that more free speech is more opportunity, more prominence, a wider audience – “more” essentially being more accessibility.

We might expect more accessibility to translate into more impact, simply by sheer weight of volume if not vetted credibility. Into the larger consideration of free speech Cose offers this nuance of accessibility against an historical standard (below) by which free speech, being free, is a great equalizer:

“Speech may be fought with speech. Falsehoods and fallacies must be exposed, not suppressed, unless there is not sufficient time to avert the evil consequences of noxious doctrine by argument and education. That is the command of the First Amendment.”

– American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950)

Against this notion, Cose points particularly at the Internet and its associated media. A consideration of its global spread and interminable flow, put to use by nearly everyone – particularly by those politicians, corporations, and controlling individuals – ought to give everyone pause:

  • voices previously unheard can today access audiences previously unreachable
  • page views can be drummed up algorithmically, or simply go viral all their own; in either circumstance…
  • the potential for rapid profit now tempts an irresponsible publisher toward more revenue-generating click-bait; thus…
  • nothing less than spectacle, vitriol, or fill-in-the-blank will do
  • all this occurs, as anything must, in the zeitgeist of the times, which these days is decidedly emotional and specifically angry

Let me digress a moment and open a new window on financial incentives, algorithmic or otherwise… the flipside for publishers, media, and really any private business is that something unpopular corresponds to lost revenue. And if that’s an equal yet opposite incentive, it’s also just as mercenary. Not to be forgotten, either, is what the “free” in speech really means according to the First Amendment, specifically that government can take no action, outside a few negotiated exceptions, to deny people their public voice. This defines the boundaries of the freedom to speak in the public sphere. And what defines the boundaries of the public sphere? Questions, questions.

Meanwhile, in the private sphere, there are laws apart from the First Amendment that prohibit injurious and obscene forms of expression. Although… as in the public sphere, what’s injurious and obscene these days is up for negotiation, whether in court or, more and more commonly, pretty much anywhere and everywhere. And meanwhile, what even counts as “the private sphere”? Evidently, that’s subject to debate. Lawsuits, lawsuits.

Oh, what a tangled web we’ve woven (… and, incidentally, it’s Freund’s book that provides the subtitles for Part I and Part II of this series).

In any case, despite a somewhat different standard, we still find within this wider scope of the rule of law a context for understanding the accountability of private media and publishing companies. Maybe, being as market-driven as anything else, we could consider the incentive to proffer appropriate free speech more wryly as “profit speech” – nothing less than popular, trendy flavour-of-the-month will do. I say maybe because not every company has a stellar record of accountability, which is a topic for another day but does implicate all that access and clout. On that score, since some private corporations and individuals have been known to bear an influence on politicians, we may also question how this conflation of public and private spheres affects free speech in either one.

For that, let’s go back to the Internet, which has massively amplified and accelerated all that access and clout, on top of the slew of details already mentioned. Engineered for uncomplicated access, rapid dissemination, unprecedented reach, and ubiquitous spread, the worldwide web has since become a relatively lawless e-zone, still a little beyond government regulatory control and lying in the hands of various… privateers? who are open for business. Once upon a time, a privateer was commissioned by a ruling power; today we might argue the reverse or, if we simply eliminate the state, as the Internet has arguably done, we could say that privateers are the ruling power. I’m not so sure they ever really weren’t.

Whatever… we can argue the Internet’s historical precedents. There’s even one vestige that remains a notable rival: the influence of talk radio may not have on-line profusion but, spanning decades and geography, it was making waves as the local toxic underbelly long before on-line Comments ever floated to the surface. Talk radio is fully immersed in access and clout as well as, in recent times, free speech – and, while we’re on the topic, how about complicity? Move over, financial incentives, now there’s something meaner: legal exposure. With that said, if you think talk radio’s strictly a conservative platform, let me assure you the most dominant station in these parts has long been a news-talk format that is today unabashedly liberal.

But again, I digress, again. Where was I?

Of course, the Internet. Free speech, other people. Curiously, what Cose offers about the Internet in a free speech context is all the more ironic since, once upon a time, the Internet was the great democratic equalizer. I suppose it still is, or else it can be, though like any tool, its effective usage takes some bit of skill.

Who ever thought, driving the ol’ information superhighway, that we’d need winter tires? The worldwide web comes at great cost of responsibility as well as consequence, not only for the unprepared but for everyone alongside them.
Image by pasja1000 from Pixabay

For its accessibility and scope, on-line media amplifies and accelerates all our published speech as never we’ve known before: be it truth or falsehood, correct or misleading, accurate or mistaken, it’s all there, instagrammatically. And, apparently, we haven’t really been growing into the role of mastercrafting this tool, even while learning on the job – not building the plane while flying, to use the stale phrase.

Maybe that’s because what this tool we call ‘the Internet’ imparts, as much as anything, is disembodiment. If there can be a divide between free speakers and the audience in the same room, what on earth could we expect in a chat room? Yet this consequence, like any other, is there to be understood and reckoned as we will, or as we won’t. Hard to blame the tool when it’s the craft.

Click here to read Pt IV. Grounding Movement Control