Social Media or the System?

Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater

Being on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze crystallised thoughts on media hypocrisy and the danger of demonising social media and data. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The premise: one radio presenter and four *experts* (baby boomers and beyond) grill four *witnesses* with different points of view on one topic. The episode I as invited to witness on was spurred by the Facebook Cambridge Analytica (CA) furore, "The Morality of Big Data.". An air of intimidating, arrogance greeted me as I was ushered in to the glass box. There was a lot of talking and not very much listening. Not debate as such but great entertainment. A fun, thought provoking experience.

Before entering the fray, I asked my Facebook connections which points I should prioritise. Thus commenced an engaged stream of thoughts, opinion and conversation. I agreed with some comments, others not so much, but all were worth consideration*.

Balanced opinions are formed by listening to, and analysing, a range of perspectives.

Before I continue, I do not approve of companies like Cambridge Analytica (they are legion) harnessing data to influence public opinion without express permission. If the inquest finds Facebook guilty of acting irresponsibly, it should be reprimanded accordingly. In fact, I think Facebook’s modus operandi could be fundamentally flawed, and I’ll come back to that later, but first let’s contextualise this media-fuelled furore.

I can choose what to post on my Facebook page, who I connect with, who sees my posts, which apps to download and whether or not I login with Facebook.

In contrast, I have no editorial control over the content aired on mainstream media. Messages, designed specifically to influence opinion, targeted at specific demographics, are pushed in front of billions of eyeballs everyday. Media bias has been accepted as par for the course for a very long time.

This has become normal, but it's not ok!

Social media challenges that. Relatively new tools and platforms allow ordinary people to share with peers, to influence editorial decisions, and brand actions, in unprecedented ways. Those who once had absolute and unquestioned editorial right (media owners, brands, marketers, governments) are under the constant scrutiny of the social lens.

Many old school, command & control public and private sector leaders, and media moguls, would no doubt prefer these pesky social platforms be silenced forever. Herein lies the risk. I’ve spent my career designing ways of harnessing digital, social and data to connect people so they can be more together than the sum of the parts. Without twitter and Facebook we would not have been able to afford to connect 6,500 world leaders with 60 startups and 10,000 school kids. I and many of my peers have proved that well orchestrated, amplified, self-selecting social media conversations can be transformational, but we’re at a crossroads.

To walk forward blindly would be stupid, but to slip backwards would be a tragedy. We should take a hard look at mistakes made and harness learnings to inform the design of new, improved platforms and peer-moderated models with trust and transparency at their core.

Facebook Analytica is symptomatic of a systemic malaise.

Back to Facebook and CA. What’s happened is symptomatic of a systemic challenge we continue to ignore at our peril. Facebook may have started with good intentions, but Zuck’s key responsibility as CEO is to create short-term value for shareholders, at whatever cost. Its business model is to push as many ads in front of as many of the right people as often as possible to attract marketing dollar from anyone who will spend it .. to drive short term shareholder value. Its algorithms are designed to drive addiction, and reinforce polarisation, to support that model.  

Many Facebook users have finally realised that their data *is* the product. Not surprisingly, they feel their trust has been betrayed, they feel used. The “at whatever cost” nature of Facebook’s business and the opacity of the contract between Facebook and its users, could cause its demise.

But, this situation should not trigger demonisation and lock down, but rather catalyse a long overdue conversation about contracts between business, government, people and their data… and our responsibility to the world.

Corporate, political and educational models were designed in and for the industrial age. Based on unquestioned hierarchies, opaque truths and supposedly immutable facts, they have become irrelevant in the 21st Century. According to Edelman’s trust barometer, trust in Government is at an all time low and Media has for the first time become the least trusted institution in the world. Over 50% of people in most countries have opted out of mainstream media. They think it’s biased, depressing, they are sick of attempted manipulated by increasingly machiavellian PR campaigns - especially by the government. Companies like Cambridge Analytica, lack of transparency and the way *facts* are reported in traditional media is responsible for a monumental drop in trust in social media and search.

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift, an existential crisis. A networked global community, predominantly run by people whose normal is command and control, hide and divide, is becoming increasingly polarised. The shift towards democratised media will be resisted for as long as, and by whatever means, possible. We should not stand by silently and watch as walls are reconstructed. We do not need more top-down centralised regulation. We need open contracts between the social giants and their users, so people fully understand how their data is used and can choose to opt in or out.

The web and social media are little more than prototypes, the connected world a living lab. We haven’t even begun to understand the potential of decentralised, self-organised systems. The over-bloated FANGS make sure of that. If we get this right, we have taken baby steps into what will be a long and sometimes painful journey towards a new paradigm based on the empowerment of people. If we can agree a shared direction of travel, and are clear and transparent about data usage, we can design truly transformational models and tools that harness the collective wisdom of people, that have trust and transparency at their core. We need investors, businesses, shareholders that value positive impact as much as profit and brave leaders that listen and learn, lead not mislead.

We need a normal where leaders are incentivised to share failures as opportunities to learn, not forced to hide them by baying Media, hungry for audience numbers.

We are, in my view, at the most exciting time in human history; we understand more about how the brain works every day. Affordable data and pervasive technology help us to understand behaviours, social actions and reactions, the way things connect in ways never possible before. We are more connected than ever before.

We’ve got all the pieces of the puzzle to head towards a sustainable, people-centred future.

I stopped moaning and stepped off the corporate treadmill to do something about it. beep, learns from the mistakes of 1st generation social media giants. It enables continuous improvement by building real connection between people around things they care about. Personal data is owned by users, clear “what’s in it for me” is built in to every transaction, data is shared so users can spot problems and work together to fix them. Trust, transparency and empowerment are at the core of our mission and business.

Moral Maze was a fantastic experience and great entertainment. But the BBC, and the media industry as a whole, has a moral responsibility to support rational, productive discourse, not drive further polarisation. We have stop cycling between the media-fuelled worship and demonisation of the demigods of technology; data, AI, blockchain. Lets focus instead on how to harness its power to rebuild trust, to move towards the sustainable, happier, healthier, connected future we want our kids to grow up in.

*NB If we are not connected on Facebook, my privacy filters make it impossible to read the stream so you’ll have to take my word for it. Sorry about that.