Help: It’s 1984 All Over Again.
It’s no secret that Facebook is in hot water. Last week, former employee and product manager Frances Haugen agreed to testify before a full Senate Commerce subcommittee panel, accusing the big tech giant of bad practices and repeatedly prioritizing profit over children’s safety. The hearings came after an explosive revelation of internal documents that The Wall Street Journal had gotten their hands on; the documents showed internal research by Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram into the increase in suicidal thoughts by young girls after spending excessive amounts of time on the photo sharing app.
This data is especially fascinating as we enter the increasingly relevant niche between an Orwellian society and government regulations. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp make up 3 of the four most used apps by number of users in the world, with upwards of 200 million users on each app. As a content creator myself, I understand the amount of time and energy that is spent on Instagram alone — from creating my own content, to watching others’, to even mindlessly scrolling — and I’d be lying if I said these recent senate hearings weren’t concerning.
“Big tech is moving so fast that it’s almost completely disregarding its obligations to a humane society as we face one of our greatest hurdles till date: mental health.”
The internet revolution of the 1990s combined with the global pandemic of the 2020s has carved out a compelling challenge for big tech companies to push entire industries to move to an entirely digital and virtual format. While Facebook is undoubtedly the greatest tech story of the 21st century, I wonder if we may be hurtling into an inevitable Big Brother situation, as big tech companies continue to capitalize on mass tragedy by affording struggling individuals an alternate option.
Big tech is moving so fast that it’s almost completely disregarding its obligations to a humane society as we face one of our greatest hurdles till date: mental health. What’s that saying? If the product is free, chances are that you’re the test subject. The latest accusations against Facebook seem to be proving exactly that, and it shouldn’t be surprising.
It seems to me that we’re reaching a point of conflict that we’ve never experienced before. Companies like Facebook have the power to make and break governments across the world (a power they have exercised abundantly according to earlier reports) and today they’re being challenged for their anti-competitive market behaviors. Calls are being made to dismantle Facebook; after all, the only reason for its existence is because the federal government of the United States sued Microsoft in the 1990s for its antitrust breaches, making way for the Facebooks and Googles to dominate the market.
I suppose the reason this is so fundamentally exciting (and not necessarily in a good way), is because we spend countless hours mindlessly using social media, allowing it to influence our basic decisions, disregarding what actually lies behind the veil of what seems like a continual feedback loop of instant gratification and a boost in self-esteem.
We’re subservient to the digital state as it stands. While tech & its social media counterparts haven’t seen a wave of decentralization (in policy and corporate structure), the resultant freedom of choice that individuals possess is slim. The stark similarity between Oceania’s ‘thought-police’ from Orwell’s 1984 a.k.a the same data grabbing entities in the 21st century and their decision-making processes will have immediate and long-lasting effects on society, but it’s not too late. Ever so often, ‘The Whistleblower’ will come by, giving us all a breath of fresh air and another chance at rectification. With tact and tenacity, they’ll dispense society with the remedy it’s been looking for.
