…and there’s The Social Dilemma

*insert Netflix chime here* Didya see The Social Dilemma?
If you haven't, here'e the gist: you can't trust these platforms. Since the creation of most of the social media sites we rely on started, they have been governed by companies that surrendered the normal control over content to automation. Algorithms controlled how consumers see on the main feeds and guidance is irresponsible at best and sinister at worst. Examples like Cambridge Analytica and how misinformation affected responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic beginning in 2019 point to how the myth of the flat, unregulated Internet space is a myth. What we see on social networks has several invisible hands behind it - and not all of them are beneficial to all. To paraphrase one of the experts in the documentary, the social media platforms are not the products. We, the social media users, are the product. Didya delete your Facebook profile? No, neither did I. I have an important, personal reason for not abandoning the first big-bad network. Like many children of immigrants, I have family connected through Facebook. Many who I would have no connection to without the platform. Deleting my profile means reducing my interaction to them to the family reunion we keep planning to arrange but haven't managed to nail down or the errant WhatsApp message from closer relatives. That doesn't mean I ignore the irrevocable harm platforms like Facebook do. But I can't unplug yet. As we consider how to use social media and Web 2.0 in general to create learning, we instructional designers must face this headwind. Privacy, as in people seeing what our learners and consumers say what we put out, is the little fox. The fact that consumption itself is tracked and guided is the big beast. The newest force in this sphere, TikTok, is the fastest-growing and the most manipulative. What does it mean that if we put out well-intentioned learning via such a platform and the target learner doesn't even consciously choose to interact with our content or know how it got to them? If there's one topic I'd like to continue exploring it's how this ethical question affects the way we use the blessing and curse that is the social media network.

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