Social Media Abuse and Governance

© 2019 March Oyinki

Social media is growing like wild fire and the incursion is flamed by the increasing use of mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets and wearables on the Internet. Apparently, this propensity is responsible for the profligate of social media, coupled with the absence of a corporate governance structures and user policy guidelines, which is currently generating serious concerns in the industry, especially among content curators, digital marketing practitioners, advertisers and social media users.
        The threat of fake news, bait advertising as well as aggressive advertising have continued to ravage the social media space unabatedly, thereby causing much discomfort to users that have reached a dangerous threshold. The blatant disregard by some social media users and digital marketers of ethics or any form of decorum, have now become a weapon of destruction of the value systems of the Internet.
        The posting of graphic images, adult and sensitive video content showing various types of grotesques killing scenes and pornography is quite common on social media.

Threats from the corporate sector

        A 2018 global Internet usage report shows that 82% of those who access the Internet do so during work hours of between 8am to 5pm.¹ The report also shows that 70% of pornography downloads and views are in the workplace.² 

        Most of the video downloads that occur in offices filter out to the public through social share apps, thereby placing much responsibility on the shoulders of corporate organizations. 

        This occurrence highlights the urgent need for companies to urgently, begin to develop social media policies to protect users and as well form the basis of educating and creating awareness about the ethical use of social media in the workplace. Social media policies often form part of the overall information and data protection policies of most big corporations. This should extend to small and medium scale businesses as well. 

        The installation of firewalls can also help to provide some level of admin control, by setting filters that will restrict users from accessing sites classified as prohibited. With social media policies and software such as firewall, most companies can reduce access to pornography and fake news sites, hence significantly reduce the prevailing threat to the public.

The Role of Social Media companies

        Until 2016, social media companies, publishers and advertisers enjoyed increased advertising revenue generated through social media platforms, and they were not bothered about the degeneration and abuses perpetuated by users, particularly in some of the major social media channels such as Facebook. 

        It was in 2016 that the first major public reaction to this menace reached a climax, where large numbers of desktop and mobile phone users started installing ad blocker as a measure to filter out unwanted popups and advertisement from publishers and advertisers. The media extensively reported this action and the estimated cost of the use of ad blocker on the advertising industry was well over $3.5 billion at that time.³

        Evidently, this threat by ad blocker attracted the attention of some major publishers and advertisers, forcing them and some social media companies to come together to start finding ways to address the proliferation of fake news, bait advertising and pornography content on their platforms. They eventually reach an agreement to work together to develop a tool that will help to curtail and report any future threat to the public.

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        Apparently, all the efforts made by these publishers and Facebook appeared inadequate, as the use of ad blocker continued unabated, an action that points to the fact that the menace of fake news and other unethical use of social media platforms is real. 

        In 2016, Ad Blocking plug-ins cost advertisers over $21.8 billion,⁴ which is a clear evidence of the enormity of the threat of ad blocker on the advertising industry. By 2017, over 600 million devices had ad block walls.⁵

        The increased presence of fake news on social media shows that there is no eminent end in sight to the ad blocker war just yet. The collaboration of publishers and social media companies alone cannot provide the expected solution to this menace, because both the publishers and Facebook have a huge stake in the revenues accruing from social media adverts. As such, they do not have absolute moral obligation to go the full hug against advertisers that are violating social media ethics, because they are their main source of revenue. 

        It is apparent that before any meaningful progress can occur, an all-inclusive alliance of the major stakeholders with the inclusion of ad block companies, Internet service providers and other relevant agencies of government. It is only through the concerted efforts of all of these parties that the expected progress can be achieve.

Conclusion

        Social media does not have the same governance structure of the conventional media that have helped provide some form of control mechanism, such as the constitution of professional bodies and regulatory agencies of government to moderate the practice by way of parental control measures.

        Children have access to smart phones just the same way as adults, but unlike adults they cannot afford to purchase and installation of ad blocker, neither do they understand nor have the level of maturity to understand the need to be self-disciplined enough to refrain from excessive exposure to the vagaries of social media.

        The increase in the usage of ad blocker coupled with the enormous revenue loss by advertising companies is a clear indication of the heightened level of the threat that fake news, bait advertising, aggressive marketing, graphic images, videos of gruesome killing scenes as well as pornography, online recruitment of children as sex slave is causing the society enormous damage.