Time to reconsider the online world and its rules and fix it
I wrote about the topic few times, now, because I’m so disappointed of the situation we are now in both from a professional as well a personal point of view.
First of all, too many times people takes online for Social Media. Online is not Social Media, this is only a part and not necessarily the biggest part of the playground. Thousands of individuals write, comment, share everyday in forums, newsfeed, blogs. For some markets, forums are still the place where clients are making their mind about a purchase. It’s not Facebook or others. I suppose almost none of you has chosen to buy a car because of a post on Facebook, nor a cruise or a pair of running shoes.
Secondly, Social Media have gone under fire lately because of their inability, or their unwillingness, to moderate their own environment and to keep it a safe place. Fake news are spreading like wildfire with thousands of commenters that do not check anything before to rage against a supposed guilty entity. When I was a newcomer to the media agency business, I used to work on the account of the best razors and shaving brand. We planned a campaign with a military airplane flying smoothly to replicate how smooth was to shave with those products. Unfortunately, the first Iraqi war exploded just in those days. The campaign was stopped immediately. Not because of the association between the brand and the Airforce. It was the environment created by the news that was judged as unfavorable to place the brand. I’ve never forgot that lesson and I strongly believe that this applies today to some Social Media. Would you put your brand at risk to be mixed up with post of rage, hate, racism, violence, war?
Thirdly, it’s with some discomfort that we may happen to read news artfully created to mischief thousands if not millions of individuals. Worst is the number of people who get caught in the trap and make their own mind starting from these fakes. Apparently there is a poor ability to interpret and decipher the message and to get away when it is a false. On the contrary, a pavlovian reaction is pushing to like, to comment, to share supporting the author text without any prior check. No matter if the source is clearly abad one, no matter of unrealistic is the news, without reading other than the title and the first three/four lines of text. Yesterday we had an unbelievable incident for the Italian National Railway Company (Ferrovie dello Stato) because of a fake, racist post on Facebook. A guy pretended that he saw an individual, a black guy to make it worse from the author point of view, getting on a High speed train with the ticket for a local train. He sat down in first class, unable to speak Italian, without money nor papers. The Train manager was forced to leave him sitting where he was as there was no mean understand each other and without any ticket.
The post collected tens of thousands of interaction with an estimated reach of around 10.000.000 individuals (source Buzzdetector). Racist comments, angry posts, everything created from a fake.
Yes, it was a fake. The Train company confirmed that the guy was just sitting in the wrong place but he had a regular ticket for that train. some media took over the story with what really happened (https://www.giornalettismo.com/archives/2649267/frecciarossa-roma-milano-9608-bufala). Now, it’s cleat that most commenters blamed the Train Company for allowing a guy without ticket to travel on a high speed train, a black guy coming from nowhere, probably a illegal immigrant, you name it. Of course, yesterday evening the post was closed to friends only but the damage was already done, a huge one. What if you adv was around a post like this?
Everyday, more digital experts, scholars, managers are coming to the conclusion that some Social Media, Facebook noteworthy, as they are, may not be worth the investment in time and money.
More, I would add, it is the inner structure of some platforms that is the real issue. We do not have to forget that Facebook was born as a mean of communication between a small group of students and then it was turned into a money making machine selling advertising to brands willing to interrupt the conversation between individuals.
Several issues were undervalued or not foreseen:
- a conversation between individuals can quickly escalate into a fight or trash talk
- behind a screen the level of personal inhibition is very low
- chances are that fraud to steal money or to sell fake news very likely to happen
Of course, as being on the platform was or seems to be at no cost, brands were eager to be part of it and established structured presence in it. Pages, groups, profiles are all places which turn to be very expensive in establishing and managing even if less expensive than a TV campaign.
Today we see that the Facebook environment is degraded. The continuous changes in algorithms to sustain the revenues and to keep the platform as much as possible free of charges for not being able to be a safe, clean place, de facto are a insurmountable hurdle for a medium/long term strategic development.
We came to believe that it’s time to develop proprietary places where to shift the audiences rent by Facebook in all these years and try to make our own safe place where to talk with customers, actual or prospect. Some trials are taking places and the intriguing result is that if you worked properly you may not have a decline in traffic on your website.
This morning then, the last news about Unilever being the first big player sending a warning to the online moguls: clean your playground or we cut our investments (see article below). What will happen next? Other brand will follow?
Some articles about:
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/posting-facebook-paying-a-waste-time/312277/?ito=792
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/28/how-publishers-will-survive-facebooks-newsfeed-change/
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/22/16920512/facebook-democracy-effects-social-media
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell/
