Imagine living in a world where social media essentially dictates what the news media focuses on.“Trending topics” can drive narratives regardless
of the validity of their claims. This behavior perpetuates biases, misinformation, fear, anger, resentment, and often leads individuals further down the spiral of identity politics. 

The irony, of course, is that social media was meant to drive interaction and the spread of information. Sadly the spread of information today seems to be less effective in disseminating facts than in validating one’s feelings. Rather than “bringing us closer together,” social media is driving ourselves farther apart.

Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have been weaponized in this information war. 

Often offenders will rely on shell accounts to drive “discussions” and shape the narrative to suit their agenda. They use the “pay to promote” feature to target the demographics that will be the most impressionable, and bolster their “conversation.” 

There is just no way to govern free thought, speech, or how it will be interpreted.

Careers have been “canceled”. People have been doxed, bullied, or faced threats. Foreign governments have even taken to this practice as a means to manipulate our discourse. 

Regulation would seem to be the only viable solution to this problem…but how do you regulate free speech? Who sets these regulations? Who enforces them? Can there be an impartial and objective governing body that can stop the spread of misinformation?

Social media isn’t going anywhere.

So where do we go from here? 

Members of Congress have made every effort to speak to their constituents’ concerns, promising a closer eye on the social media companies and how they conduct themselves…and yet they claim the landscape is too vast to effectively govern. This double talk would suggest that they either have no idea how to properly oversee the platform, or they’re pandering to their base with no actual interest in changing the landscape. 

The social media giants have tried to establish governing policies and implement algorithms to eliminate misinformation and hate speech, but these policies and algorithms are created by people with subjective viewpoints. Essentially they control the message, which is a sophisticated,
if inadvertent,  form of brainwashing.  

We are the ones who drive the machine that is social media, so it is logical to suggest that we’re the ones responsible for fixing the issues, but the sad reality is that we’ve become a culture of convenience, and laziness. We have essentially become desensitized to the problems and accept them as our new reality.

While the world of technology and information has evolved at a rapid pace over the last 30 years, we as a society have struggled to keep pace. Our moral compass seems to be stuck in place. It won’t require laws, policies, or complex algorithms to resolve the issue –that’s just another method of control which often leads to an abuse of power. 

What will really drive the change is good old-fashioned integrity, honesty, and respect. It will require us as a society to remove the lines in the sand, to view things objectively and intelligently, to disentangle ourselves from the outrage and cancel culture we’ve come to embrace when information we don’t agree with comes across our screens.

We have become extremists masquerading as humanitarians. We just need to become people again. 

A return to basic decency will not eliminate the problem. There will always be those who seek to do harm, but a united front in spite of our differences will give us a better opportunity to weed out those who seek to control and manipulate, thus leading us to a truly connected society.

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