Weaponized Social Media

Social Media
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            Cartagena       If social media ever presumed to bring friends and families together, that pretence now seems quaint and ridiculous on so many levels.  To pretend otherwise shows our age, nostalgia, and naïveté.  The business model is based on exploitation, and those that understand this basic, seemingly foundational, fact weaponize it for their own ends and means.  I’m not saying abandon Facebook or WhatsApp, ACORN and its members use these tools to communicate with each other and around the world.   We post on Twitter-X, Instagram and the others, but I personally don’t have the bandwidth really.  Like all weapons, they have to be used carefully, and we need to make sure the safety is on.

If there was ever any lingering doubt that social media is free, because we are the product, the whole mini-industry of influence and the wild aspirations of so many of the young to be influencers settles the question.  The point of influencing is to persuade someone else to do something, buy something, or be something for profit to the influencer.

We’ve known all of this in spades for years, certainly since the claims of social media’s role in Obama’s election in 2008; the role of the Russians and Trump in 2016; and Trump on Truth Social and Elon Musk on Twitter-X, his personal platform, in 2024.  Something like 20% claim they get their news from social media now, while both Facebook and Twitter relax their guardrails on content.

Our best hope is finding limits to the harm, exposing its abuses, and preaching constant skepticism of its claims and information.  The current humiliation of Trump, after having been bamboozled by Musk ripping a page out of his own disruption playbook over the governmental shutdown, is an interesting case study of lessons learned or chaos to come.  Musk joined with some others to subvert the deal on his platform and, acting as the influencer, triggered Trump to oppose the deal negotiated by his Republican Speaker, and both end up with egg all over their faces. First, the House rejects their advice, then passes what they want, and now the Senate put back some items like the DC stadium, that they resisted.  Talk about a cold reality shower, the terrible twins were drenched in it, even before they got to strut in the inauguration parade.

Then there’s this Blake Lively thing.  She’s an actress with a pretty big following, married to an actor who is also a big thing.  She was in a movie about domestic violence and called out the director and her co-star, a producer, and others for sexual harassment to their employer.  They settled it internally by promising to provide more protection for her and women on the set, but according to the complaint she has now filed with the California civil rights unit based on discovery by her lawyers, they breached the deal by hiring crisis managers and social media attack dogs to pre-emptively ruin her reputation and discredit her.  In Lively’s case, this is likely to backfire, especially now that this is big news in the New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere.  The private emails, memos, and general snark don’t leave much of a fig leaf for them to hide behind.  Add to that the fact that she’s a running buddy of Taylor Swift, whose social media following and cultural presence dwarfs all others this minute, and a casual reader has to believe she’ll be all right.  Nonetheless, it clearly exposes how easy it is to manipulate the news and social media to change opinions and damage people.

Maybe they will continue to believe you can throw the stone and hide the hand to use social media as a weapon.  On the other hand, look at the way public confidence has fallen in some of many institutions and businesses.  Some more episodes like this and the social media business model could be committing suicide, and find that no one believes anything they see on these platforms.  That might be a good thing

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