RemainNA's blog

Use the network effect

Note: this post includes quotes containing hate speech

Some background

Meta, the company which owns Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Threads, announced a flurry of significant changes this week. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the addition of noted Trump ally Dana White to the Meta board of directors. He also announced the end of Meta's use of third party fact checking in favor of X/Twitter style "community notes", along with the decision to move the Trust and Safety team in charge of writing policies and reviewing content from California to Texas. The newly Texan team also has a new set of content guidelines to enforce, which significantly rolls back policies surrounding gender and sexuality. Casey Newton's Platformer newsletter obtained these updated policies, including all of the following phrases which are now explicitly allowed:

To cap it all off, Meta is ending its internal DEI practices, including in hiring and vendors/suppliers. This all sounds similar to changes Elon Musk implemented at Twitter because it is similar. Musk removed Twitter policies against deadnaming and misgendering trans people (these policies have been ineffectually brought back), and declared "cis" and "cisgender" to be slurs. Sure, Meta's new policies aren't as focused on explicitly allowing hate speech targeted towards an individual, but if everything above is permitted in general, then surely it's allowed to say it to someone directly.

It's not my goal to discuss at any length the impacts of these policies, the full extent of what Meta and Twitter have changed, or the broader trends these are a part of. There are journalists that have done an excellent job on this, some of which are linked above. I will leave my contribution at this: Zuckerberg, Musk, and everyone else that supports policies like these knows they will cause harm, and want them to cause harm. Any weasel-wording about how this is good for free speech, or will encourage allies to stand up for LGBTQ people, etc., is a lie, and the people spreading it know it. The way they prioritize only their own accumulation of wealth and political power at the expense of anything else proves they do not deserve what they have.

What can we do about it?

I am more interested in discussing what we can actually do about it as common people that don't have billions of dollars to throw around. With media like TV or newspapers there's a clear course of action: express your displeasure how you can and cancel your subscription to stop funding hate. With social media, it's not always as clear. Maybe you can stick around and advocate for the populations put at risk by these policies and by staying there you are helping prevent the platform from becoming a hate-filled echo chamber. I think this is always going to be a losing battle; you don't have even a vanishingly small fraction of the CEO's influence and they have signaled the direction they will take the platform, one way or another.

The power we have as users on these platforms is the same power we have to make them useful destinations in the first place: the network effect. The network effect describes the way a service becomes more useful to its users the more users are on the service. To put it another way, people are on Facebook because people are on Facebook; you wouldn't use a social network that doesn't have anyone on it. This makes the course of action clear to me: leave. The sticking point with Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp is compelling; they are often the only platform you have to keep in touch with some friends or family members. I think, however, that this makes it more important to leave. By doing so you are demonstrating that other options exist and that they work.

Bluesky and Mastodon are options for social media and are great options if you want microblogging like Twitter for sending regular small updates. They also don't force people to log in to view content like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all do. While this is a downside if you want more privacy, it's a massive improvement if you want any given person to be able to read what you've posted. If what you are looking for is a way to keep friends and family updated on your life then there are many ways other than Facebook to do this. One option is making your own website and putting a now page on it, or maybe starting a blog. If you want your updates to be more direct you could start a friends and family newsletter, something which services like Buttondown explicitly aim to support. If you think even that won't make it to your elderly relative on Facebook then send them a letter, seriously! Printing off the newsletter or your blog posts if you're writing those and sending it to them (maybe with an extra note) is a great option, or maybe a letter written just for them. A letter they know you held in your hands is so much better than any Facebook post.

There are several alternatives to each of Meta's products beyond the ones I described above. Signal is an alternative to Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger that offers strong encryption and group chat support, Craigslist is an alternative to FB Marketplace and has been around for many years longer and has better filtering, Pixelfed puts pictures first like Instagram does, and the list goes on and on. Everyone's use case differs, so these suggestions are intended only as starting points. Every option has its trade-offs, but taking power away from Musk and Zuckerberg are big pros in my eyes. We can use the network effect and our traffic to build up these alternatives and make them stronger and more useful to everyone.

Billionaires don't have your best interests in mind. Widespread harassment and hate speech mean nothing to them if they stand to gain more money and power. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have overtaken older methods of keeping in contact with friends and family, but that doesn't mean that those older methods don't exist anymore. If anything, it only makes them so much more valuable. We have the ability to keep up with the people that matter to us on our terms, in the way that works best for us. Taking control away from those not deserving of it just makes it that much sweeter.