The Chinese government was caught using Twitter trolls and posting propaganda videos on YouTube designed to demonize protesters in Hong Kong in the Summer of 2019 when pro-democracy demonstrations broke out.552
And everyone knows Russia used social media to cause disruption during the 2016 election by promoting both pro-Trump and anti-Trump content, however its effect has been greatly exaggerated by Democrats, causing a modern day moral panic. It’s rarely reported that the biggest Black Lives Matter page on Facebook, which had over 700,000 followers, was found to be run by a white guy in Australia who was using it to scam people into donating money to him.553
Another huge Black Lives Matter Facebook page called “Blactivist” (meaning black activist) which had over 360,000 followers was found to be part of Russia’s disinformation campaign against the United States and used the page to incite division and fan the flames of racism.554
Michael Moore even promoted and attended a protest outside of Trump Tower in New York City that had been organized by the Russians.555 So to say that Russian meddling in American social media circles was just to support Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton is just plain false.
Social Media Causing Mental Health Problems
While social media is a powerful tool, it is hard to control. And it seems with every benefit it brings comes the equivalent of an equal sized detriment. The younger generations are getting lost in a world of isolation and have few real-world friendships or interactions. Social media is being increasingly linked to mental disorders amongst teens since it has become a fixture in their lives.556 Feeling the need to share how “great” and “perfect” one’s life is through carefully choreographed Instagram photos or Facebook posts appears to be increasing people’s anxiety and depression.557
Many people have become literally addicted to their phones, not to mention that social media blew the door wide open for kids to be cyber-bullied 24-hours-a-day by their fellow classmates who are now able to harass them when they’re not even at school, and can reach them when they’re supposedly in the safety of their own homes. Teen suicide rates have skyrocketed due to cyber bullying because now kids can never get away from their bullies no matter where they go.558 One study even found that close to 6% of kids aged 12 through 17 have set up fake social media accounts and cyber bullied themselves so they could get attention for being a “victim.”559
Many people are also developing “mean world syndrome,” which is a term coined by professor George Gerbner who was the dean of the communication department at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a leading researcher in the effects of mass media and concluded that the more time someone spends consuming mass media, the more distorted their view of how the world actually gets, ultimately leading them to think society is a much more dangerous and “mean” place than it actually is since their perceptions are shaped through the warped representations of the world by the media, which amplifies atrocities, arguments, and divisions.
Gerbner’s “mean world syndrome” phenomenon was coined in the age of television, and now that most people are glued to their phones and are consuming an almost nonstop diet of media, one can see how the syndrome has only gotten worse. Spending too much time on social media and being bombarded by the never-ending political conflicts and fear-mongering about things like global warming, mass shootings, and racism is wreaking havoc on the mental health of millions.
Many people are getting so depraved that when they witness a tragedy like a car accident or an assault, instead of helping the victims or calling for help, their first thought is to take pictures so they can post them on social media.560
No Customer Service
Despite the Big Tech companies being an integral part of most people’s lives; unlike almost every other company that offers products or services to the public, there are no customer service phone numbers at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Google. You can’t get anyone on the phone there to talk with them about problems you’ve experienced or the grievances you have with their companies. Despite names like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey attached to them, they remain faceless corporations you can’t get in touch with.
There’s no local branch you can visit where you can ask to speak with a manager, and instead users are relegated to sending tweets or submitting a “help ticket” from within the apps’ dashboard, and those attempts to get answers often only result in automated responses thanking you for contacting them and saying they’ll try to look into it. The social media giants are actually strangely anti-social.
For those of you who read my previous book, The True Story of Fake News: How Mainstream Media Manipulates Millions, you know I dedicated different chapters to Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube, where I detailed their Orwellian manipulation and censorship, but since their underhanded activities have only continued, it is necessary to dedicate chapters to each of them again in this book to discuss their more recent activities.
I’ll keep the overlapping information to a minimum and mostly cover what they’ve been doing since the publication of my previous book because you need to know how far they’re going to regain control of the genie they let out of the bottle.
For countless millions of people Facebook became the family photo album, their contact list, and even their diary of sorts. First started in 2004 as a social network for college kids, it quickly expanded to become the most popular one in the world used by 2.2 billion monthly active users.561 Its dominance made founder Mark Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire in history at the age of twenty-three.562
For those naive enough to fill in all the entry boxes when they first signed up for Facebook, the company knows not only who you’re friends with, who you’re dating or married to (as well as when you break up or get a divorce), but also which TV shows, movies, and music you like, which restaurants and businesses you visit, what cities you travel to, where you work, your birthdate, your personal interests, hobbies, and more.
It’s free because you are the product and your personal data is what you are trading in exchange for using Facebook. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden noted, “Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as ‘surveillance companies.’ Their rebranding as ‘social media’ is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense.”563
Many millennials and Generation Z kids either quit Facebook or never signed up, and prefer Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) and SnapChat because they don’t want be on the same social network as their parents. Despite the endless scandals about abusing users’ personal information, Facebook hasn’t gone the way of MySpace (at least not yet) and remains one of the world’s top social networks.