Facebook is a Friend in Times of Need?
There has been many a times when Facebook has been accused of being outright creepy, like when it suggested potential new friends based on your location history, or like the case when it planned your birthday party without you even knowing about it. It has been heavily criticised for playing with your emotions even as it continuously tinkers with the endless scroll of posts that you see every time you log in, otherwise called the News Feed, the social network's analogous offering to Google search results, to push posts and updates that it thinks will interest you (not the other way round).
It has also been held accountable for ruining journalism and digital media, and itself ironically accused of anti-conservative bias, forcing publications that rely on referrals from the social networking site to adapt to its whims and fancies, as it one fine day decides it would rather show posts and pictures from your family and friends over posts from news companies and other organisations. Whether or not it's a signal that Facebook no longer wants to be treated as a primary purveyor of news, it's a clear indication that it wants to stave off the decline in original content sharing that has been plaguing the social network of late, even if it comes at the inevitable cost of decline in organic reach.
Still it's hard to imagine a world without it (or social media in general). In fact in several countries, Facebook is the internet itself. Not only has it become a conduit for real-time distress calls for help following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police, but also has helped galvanise the public conversation on police brutality. (The disturbing video of Castile's shooting has been viewed over five million times.) In the times we live in, it may seem to think of anyone who carries a smartphone as also a citizen journalist (think Arab Spring), unwitting or otherwise, and while this can indeed be of great use in terms of giving noble causes the impetus they need, U.S. social media companies must also learn how to tread this prickly legal and political minefield, just as they are beginning to confront episodes of culture clash the world over.
It has also been held accountable for ruining journalism and digital media, and itself ironically accused of anti-conservative bias, forcing publications that rely on referrals from the social networking site to adapt to its whims and fancies, as it one fine day decides it would rather show posts and pictures from your family and friends over posts from news companies and other organisations. Whether or not it's a signal that Facebook no longer wants to be treated as a primary purveyor of news, it's a clear indication that it wants to stave off the decline in original content sharing that has been plaguing the social network of late, even if it comes at the inevitable cost of decline in organic reach.
Still it's hard to imagine a world without it (or social media in general). In fact in several countries, Facebook is the internet itself. Not only has it become a conduit for real-time distress calls for help following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police, but also has helped galvanise the public conversation on police brutality. (The disturbing video of Castile's shooting has been viewed over five million times.) In the times we live in, it may seem to think of anyone who carries a smartphone as also a citizen journalist (think Arab Spring), unwitting or otherwise, and while this can indeed be of great use in terms of giving noble causes the impetus they need, U.S. social media companies must also learn how to tread this prickly legal and political minefield, just as they are beginning to confront episodes of culture clash the world over.
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