Big Brother Watching
November 12, 2018
One metaphor that will never get tired is Orwell’s novel 1984. The plot grows even more real with our current level of technology and everyday brings news stories like this one from the New York Post entitled, “Social Media Companies Beware: Washington Is Watching You.” Instead of individuals needing to be weary, social media companies are the target of the current government watch list.
President Trump’s use of social media is a bane to his administration. He also blames social media networks for the dissemination of fake news. The social media companies are also on the hotbed for their monoculture business mindset. Silicon Valley is known for its support of liberal politics to the point if you do not subscribe to these political believes you become a social pariah. Silicon Valley, especially the social media companies, are being called out for this.
The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had a hearing about how foreign influence operations use social media to spread political propaganda. Social media companies are not in the hot seat due to this hearing, because their platforms are the tools used to spread the propaganda. What puts the social media companies in the hot seat is not only their platforms, but also their political monoculture
The US Senate Select Committee called Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to the hearing. Google only offered to send its vice president of global affairs. This is not a good business practice. These companies might not like the current administration, but they should appear to be above reproach. Also you never want to anger the US government! That is a solid business practice everyone in the world knows.
Also did it ever occur to these companies that their political bias is illegal and a turn off for the shareholders:
“A public social media company can’t conflate management’s political views with what it permits platform users to view on its sites and still say it is looking to serve shareholders’ interests.Intentionally excluding or turning off users isn’t good for advertising revenues.Social media companies have an obligation to their shareholders to not pollute their own brand and disenfranchise their platforms’ user bases. The revenue derived from advertising is based on the number of users. It is time for Silicon Valley to grow up and act in a way that is good for its shareholders, since they are the real owners of the companies.”
Oh snap! The New York Post just dropped the microphone, enough said.
Whitney Grace, November 12, 2018
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