In my previous blog, I talked about the impact of technology and I questioned if we -in a world as it is today- are still able to live without it. Now the question I am asking you, is if we using social media a benefit in our lives is did it become a threat?
Last week I was watching The Facebook dilemma, which is a two-part documentary about the rise of Facebook and how their mission of making the world more open and connected evolved. Marc Zuckerberg and his friends went from bringing Harvard students together till connecting at a global level. But, did they grow to fast?
After watching the documentary, I was thinking about the impact of Facebook on our society. I feel like Marc was so focused on moving forward, growing as a company and “the more people connected, the better” that he forgot something else.
While I was watching the documentary they came to a point where Facebook becomes not just a platform where you share your posts with your friends, it started to become a business. Because people who see something growing globally, they start thinking about how to make money with it, which is not always in the benefit of the cosumer.
Everybody is responsible for what they share, but I think that as a company you have to be clear in what you do with all the information that people share. Sharingf posts, clicking on like buttons and scrolling down you timeline looks innocent, but it is terrifying to see how much personal data Facebook has about you and I think that’s dangerous. Not because Mark itself wants to do something with it, but because of the mean people in this world. Wgere people smell money, they will manipulate people in a way they can benefit from it.
For example, especially in the second part of documentary, they talk about how Facebook is used to manipulate the U.S elections. For me this was a point where I thought that Facebook’s mission of being open and connected has a pretty dark side. Politicians started to use Facebook as an advertisement tool, and also the new term Fake news started to raise and Facebook got used as a tool to turn people against each other. It went so far that people used Facebook to gather people and to start a rebellion.
Facebook answer was that they were too slow in their reaction on the those dark develops, but I think its just selfish and naief. If you are global, you have. to know that there are always people that want to take advantage of your system.
By making the world more open and connected, Facebook made also another impact, They changed the way of sharing information. They way journalist are doing their job today and will do in the future has to change to stay alive. For newsreporters and writers, it not just about spreading the information. Nowadays you have to think about how you engage with your audience.
Journalsim is dynamic sector and the only way to survive is to evolve. if you don’t change with how the world is growing, then you will drawn. I read this artcle last week and came to a couple conclusion to stay alive if you want to share you information.
My first takeaway is that you have to make clear what your mission is, make it not to broad, but narrow it down to one or two strong one and write those out in detail.
I think one of the takeaways I have from both the Facebook documentary I watched and this article I read is that you have to creative a creative platform what is able to move due to the circumstances the world is asking for.
I believe that the real question we have to ask oursleves is; What can we believe nowadays? Separating the truth from what is fake becomes harder and harder, because the information we consuming gets more and more. Everybody has access to write want he wants, it’s more about how good can you write? Which strategy are you using to make sure people believe what you write, even though it might not be true..
Because there is so much more information thrown at us, the rule of being faster than your neighbor is popped up. you have to be quick, you as the one that spreads the news need to be faster than the other channel, which means that the credibility might come in danger. But, remember that credibility is rare those days and it might takes a little more time, but if people know that they can trust you information, you become more valuable and people always come back to you.
~ Daphne Nierop
Daphne Nierop 