The Innovation Hubs

Almost two billion people have accounts on Facebook. More than 40 million of those rely on Facebook’s basic services to access the Internet. Facebook owns the most-heavily-used messaging service in the world (WhatsApp – with over a billion installs), as well as the most popular ‘photo-sharing’ platform in Instagram – over 800 million active users. And this past week, Facebook announced they are launching a dating service, and with 1.4 billion daily users, who knows? Maybe the platform will actually prove to be the best place to find a date. 

Lest I sound like Facebook’s marketing department, it is also worth noting that, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal that broke in March, Facebook was forced to do a couple of things it had hitherto balked at: testifying before Congress (which ended up mostly as theatre, rather than provoking substantive change), and apologizing to its users. None of this however, stopped it raking in more money than ever. In a moment of karmic irony, the company whose name most everybody had never heard of before March – Cambridge Analytica – is closing down. Many aggrieved users will get cold comfort from this turn of events.

In the days after the scandal broke, the hashtag #DeleteFacebook trended on Twitter (I know, I know – a social media reference to critique social media. How very meta!), and it was however briefly, a topic of serious consideration. In the weeks since, with three in four users still logging in (myself included), clearly it wasn’t all that serious. For many of us, Facebook is our chief source of news, jokes, free videos, movie recommendations, gossip and friendship. That’s an awful lot to give up.

What can we do?

People all over the world use social media (and internet tools more generally) to organize their communities to do things differently. While everyone everywhere is under internet surveillance, in some parts of the world, that surveillance brings with it harassment, arrest and worse. In those places, good digital security practice is not a ‘nice to have’ as we may think of it here, but it is a ‘must have’. That knowledge can be taught, and two such digital security trainers will be in Toronto in May, speaking at your local library about these very issues!

In collaboration with AccessNow and the annual RightsCon conference, we are hosting two ‘digital activists’ on Tuesday May 15th, at Lillian H. Smith and Parkdale branches. Join us and discuss what we can all do, individually and collectively, to move towards a social media landscape (and an IRL landscape!) in which we can all thrive.

Renegotiate your relationship

Even if you don’t feel under immediate threat, perhaps it is time to renegotiate the terms of those contracts that we never read when we click OK on the ‘terms and conditions of use’? Let’s start by assuming that anything posted on any social media site is akin to standing on a street corner and yelling about it as loud as you can. Doing that would get rid of the vagueblogs and most of the other annoying updates at a stroke. More importantly, it would give the poster a moment’s pause – which is often all we need to clarify:

• Do I really want/need to share this with the world?
• Would I do this on a random street corner in Toronto?
• Would I care if my employer/family member/spouse/stranger saw this?

Your answers will vary according to what you are doing, but asking those questions is key to having a healthier relationship with social media (and with the massive companies for whom you are working when you use their ‘free’ services).

Following on from that, individuals can consider their own account settings and privacy options. These are byzantine by design, so prepare yourself. Settings will vary by device, and by service. Take the time to lock yours down.

Then ask the question: why are they designed to be so difficult for the user? Organize 10,000 of your closest friends to ask the same questions, at the same time, on the streets of your town and things will change. 😉