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Anti-social media companies will be obsolete

December 1, 2011 By Anne 6 Comments

There’s anti-social behavior at the corporate level, too – especially now, in the age of increasingly social digital media. I mentioned this in my last post, but – since these (media) environmental conditions are new to all of us, including parents – maybe it would help to take a closer look….

We’ve always known that social behaviors and norms are expressed collectively by organizations as well as individuals – witness the phrase “good corporate citizen.” But in today’s social media environment, with users sharing the minutiae of their everyday lives, relationships, and activities – our lives in effect having become media companies’ product – the impact of pro- or anti-social media companies on our everyday sharing has grown exponentially (see this about today’s “living Internet”). We can afford less and less to have the companies hosting our everyday sociality and self-expression act in anti-social ways.

So what’s an anti-social media company? Basically: a company that fails to treat its users as partners in the social experiences they’re co-creating with it.

Companies like Facebook and Twitter aren’t the sole creators of their users’ experience in their services – they provide the infrastructure around content their users, not they, produce, selling advertising space against what amounts to the “content” of our lives. Of course, there are other co-creators of the social media experience – such as app developers and other third parties – but because they more obviously affect the bottom line, it’s easier for social media companies to treat them as partners. Anti-social media companies are the kind that fail to treat users as partners in creating the experiences on their site (examples of the flipside, pro-social corporate practices, in a minute).

Another way to look at it is that anti-social media companies benefit by participatory media without themselves practicing participatory principles. In other words, they provide new infrastructure for people power (think Tahrir Square) without honoring and empowering the people – their users.

So to put it positively, pro-social media companies educate and enable their users to co-create and co-maintain media experiences that benefit the users themselves as well as all the other parties to the experience – themselves, advertisers, app developers, partner sites, etc. Some examples are (please add more examples important to you in comments):

  • Providing features that enable users to be active participants in positive outcomes – for example, Facebook’s pioneering social reporting feature (see this) – and emotionally safe environments
  • Educating users about how safety and privacy are a shared responsibility (among users and between users and providers) in this media environment and how key they are to positive experiences in their online communities. [It’s helpful to all parties involved when users are disabused of any false sense of security about companies’ ability to wholly protect users’ privacy and safety in a user-driven environment.]
  • Making controls, protections, and abuse reporting tools prominent and easy to use – and being responsive to abuse reports
  • Communicating transparently about how they and third parties use users’ content
  • Informing users in advance of changes to the way their data’s used and – as the FTC has now required of Facebook and Google – getting their consent, or “opt-in”
  • Working with schools, law enforcement, and other institutions in ways that protect users and their civil liberties (for example Microsoft and Facebook’s PhotoDNA project)
  • Creating conditions – e.g., features, education, site culture, internal and partnership policies – that support and promote good citizenship
  • Sharing revenue with users when their content develops a mass following – such as YouTube’s practice of sharing ad revenue with users who’ve posted the most popular videos.

The biggest social media companies already engage in most of the practices above, but I think they have a ways to go systemically – throughout their organizations and throughout the industry – in 1) understanding and communicating to users that users are co-creators of and stakeholders in safe, positive experiences in their sites and communities, 2) baking that understanding into product/service features, conditions, and protections as well as user education, 3) treating their user base as a partner just as key as advertisers, app providers, etc., and 4) educating the public and government about the collaborative and participatory nature not just of social media but of privacy and protection in them.

Increasingly pro-social and pro-participatory corporate practices – ideally self-regulatory, because governments still struggle to understand and properly address anti-social media – are part of the media shift we’re all experiencing. As more and more of the world’s hundreds of millions of social media users become aware of the contradiction of social media companies engaging in anti-social practices and their power as producers of the media these companies host, they will exercise their powers, with increasing impact on corporate-level social norms. To me, this is not aspirational but only logical. Does it make sense to you? Let me know!

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Filed Under: Law & Policy, Literacy & Citizenship, Privacy, Risk & Safety, Social Media Tagged With: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, participatory media, Social Media, twitter

Reader Interactions

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  1. Help with mobile apps kids love | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    February 25, 2014 at 8:31 pm

    […] to do if things come up in the apps and services of what I call pro-social media companies (see this) – the services that actually offer safety and privacy features in these early days of mobile […]

    Reply
  2. Good move: Game company takes down cruel ad campaign | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    February 25, 2014 at 7:42 pm

    […] This was good to see: What looked like a truly anti-social media company, game developer Square Enix, saw irresponsibility for what it was and quickly reversed a stupid marketing decision. I’d like to take it as a sign that – in this very social media environment where users are co-producers with the providers of their media experiences – media companies and users alike will be increasingly wise to the power that users have just by the nature of social media. [My definition of an anti-social media company is one that fails to treat its users as partners in the social experiences they’re co-creating with it. But I wonder how sustainable such a company's practices are, because of the transparency and user-driven nature of social media and what those say about where control ultimately lies (something users haven't completely wakened up to yet) – more on that here.] […]

    Reply
  3. Facebook & Social Emotional Learning — Inversoft says:
    May 28, 2013 at 2:56 pm

    […] “Anti-social media companies will be obsolete” […]

    Reply
  4. Social cruelty on Ask.fm & the whack-a-mole tendency | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    April 22, 2013 at 3:56 pm

    […] is powerful, or at least over time gathers power, in a user-driven media environment (see this and this). But it’s even better to think out loud with children in our care about compassion and […]

    Reply
  5. Privacy policies made palatable (or at least digestible)! | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    November 27, 2012 at 6:04 pm

    […] around corporate responsibility) which will lead to more and more pro-social media companies (see this about those) – by making the distinction between pro- and anti-social media companies clearer so […]

    Reply
  6. The 'minimum age' & other unintended consequences of COPPA | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    August 8, 2012 at 8:26 pm

    […] what I call “anti-social media companies” create their own obsolescence and why pro-social is simply… (posted last […]

    Reply

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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