I’m preparing to teach a course this fall about social media. And I’m beginning to think it’s going to resemble something akin to a science fiction movie in which the creators of a vast new technology lose control over what they’ve made.
Bear in mind that social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube only came into being in the mid-2000s. By 2007, Facebook was growing by an astounding 200 million users per year. When my students were born, a form of communication that now dominates their lives - often determining where they get news and how they interact with friends - didn’t exist.
But increasingly, the content they take in is false and inflammatory. In the wake of the 2016 election, there’s been an outcry against hate speech on social media – and specifically against Alex Jones.
Host of Infowars, Jones is considered the best known right wing conspiracy theorist on the web. He gets big audiences: 2.5 million subscribers on his Youtube Channel, 1.7 million followers on one of his Facebook pages.
And he says wild things – like the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 was a hoax – or that Democrats run a global child-sex ring. He’s also known for disparaging immigrants, Muslims and transgender people.
Just recently, Facebook, Apple, Google and Spotify severely cut Jones’ social media presence, including terminating his Youtube Channel and some of his Facebook pages. The tech giants said he’d repeatedly violated their policies on hate speech.
Critics on the left say previously the tech companies had done nothing and now were only responding to public pressure. Critics on the right, especially Jones himself, say this is censorship.
But what’s certain is that the InfoWars app is now even more popular – and the number one trending app on Google play. Clearly, his fans are still finding ways to download his content.
No doubt, it’s troubling so many Americans like and listen to this stuff. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy describes Infowars as the tip of an iceberg of hate and lies that uses social media to tear our nation apart.
And while it’s true that this isn’t a science fiction movie, the enormity of these platforms makes policing content a monster of a problem - with potentially a very scary ending.
