By Peter Galuszka
For all the chatter before the U.S. Supreme Court and pundits, ObamaCare has raised critical questions striking at the heart of individual rights and the Constitution. Yet there’s another, far more powerful and potentially more sinister force out there that is far more ominous along similar grounds: social media.
True, “social media” is considered “private industry” since it is dominated by fast-growing companies such as Facebook and therefore is considered “ok” by the libertarian crowd. They said the same thing back in the 1980s when Bill Gates cleverly forced more than 85 percent of the market to use his mediocre computer operating system, often by predatory tactics, or so critics say.
Now we have Facebook, created by yet another brainy Harvard geek, everywhere, dominating everything and changing, for the worse, how people communicate, how they can protect their privacy, intellectual property, how they think and how they write. (Mind you, it is “OK” because it is “private industry.”)
If you want to check into newspaper stories, you are often forced to go to a Facebook page where you must wade through a swamp of irrelevant crap such as what someone’s latest cat looks like and what they thought of last night’s Fettuccini Alfredo. Grandmothers feel a little heartbroken when their grandchildren say they can’t come over because they have to study, but then post their same-day trips to a theme park on their Facebook pages where Grandma can easily see them. Even common courtesy is being taken apart by this latest fad.
The issues created by Facebook go far beyond ObamaCare requiring everyone to get health insurance. The Virginia State Police is now under fierce attack by civil libertarians for forcing applicant state troopers to hand over passwords so investigators can vet their Facebook pages. In ancient days, it would be like giving inquisitors every personal letter you ever wrote or your diary.
True, vetting state employees especially cops is important. If Gov. Robert F. McDonnell had been a little more attentive about who his personal chef was, he wouldn’t be getting front-page publicity. One wonders why he needs a chef to handle 100 events a year, but I guess it’s better that way, since if he didn’t have a chef, there are plenty of powerful corporations and lobbying firm all too happy to handle his canapés for him. But there must be limits. Not only the State Police, but many companies, are stepping over the personal privacy lane because enormously public Facebook makes it easy.
Another Facebook issue is who controls content. The company has gotten into trouble over this one before. The company line is that what you post is yours, but Facebook pretty much gets to do whatever it wants with it until you officially remove the item. Sometimes, it is hard to change anything with these faceless, computer-driven firms who often don’t even bother to have phone trees, let along Customer Relationship Managers, to handle your problem.
Intellectual property is another big issue. If you post your creative work, how do you know it isn’t being ripped off? This question drills down to a generational divide. Some of the 20-somethings I work with part-time are so part of the Facebook culture, they judge their success by their number of hits, rather than the chances that their content is being ripped off. On the other hand, one of my daughters, a college senior studying art, told me than none of her colleagues will ever post any of their work on Facebook, not even photos of paintings, because they are too afraid of losing ownership control and there seem to be no safeguards.
Lastly, since Facebook and Tweets and Twitters (whatever) are designed around quick, instant messages, they are as forgettable as they are extremely brief. The process puts enormous pressure on users not to do any deep thinking, develop an argument or share any more than the simplest of creative ideas.
What you are seeing is the medium truly becoming the message (or, even better, the massage). Oops, that sounds so 1960s Marshall McLuhan. I am showing my age.
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