Member-only story
It’s Time To Start Holding Social Media Networks Accountable
My father’s side of the family is enormous, as is to be expected from an Arab family. My father had 11 siblings growing up, and each of these siblings had an average of 4 children. This meant that while I lived in the Middle East I came into contact with all my aunts and uncles, and countless cousins as well. What I learned from this large family dynamic was that as my family members got older there were elevated responsibilities that came on their shoulders. When parents aged, the oldest children took on the responsibility of taking that parental mantle for the younger siblings. This was all a function of time and stature.
It is with this sort of structure in mind that I have started to think about social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. In their infancy, they were the young upstarts of the internet. The new money of the internet economy to borrow a term from The Great Gatsby. But as time has gone on, the user bases of these platforms have ballooned and their utility has changed. Consider it this way, in the early days of Facebook and Twitter they were used as connecting places to find friends and family to keep updated on your life. But with time, they have also become discussion forums, news outlets, and online marketplaces. This all begs the question, with all of this responsibility what sort of accountability do these platforms…
