The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

It was a statement about something I’d done but it triggered the platform to immediately put up a message – prior to them posting – that basically saying:

“Are you sure you want to do this? It could be read as offensive”.

On one hand I appreciate it the caution.

On the other, I find it amazing they are so focused on policing their users language but don’t hold themselves to the same standards.

Let’s be honest, most of them fall far below that behaviour on a daily basis …

From the ability to manipulate images in the most offensive and gratuitous way possible to the harassment of women – and that’s before we even get to the corporate behaviour of many of these companies – social media platforms seem to think they can divert our attention from their massive moments of self-interest, profit-motivated behaviours by executing some automated, minimum standard, ‘standards management’.

Nothing sums this up more than the ban of social media for kids up until the age of 16 in Australia.

While this was not instigated by the platforms, many jumped on it to demonstrate their support.

Was it because they mean it?

Errrrrm, almost definitely not … the driving force behind their ‘compassion’ was the fear of what may happen if they didn’t support it.

And they’d be right to think that, because the real question we should be asking is ‘why do we have to save our kids from social media when the real solution would be to hold social media companies to account to help protect our kids?

Of course parents have a responsibility in all this. A big one.

But if you think social media companies are exempt from any of the blame is insane and if you want to know why, listen to this.