Almost every day someone I know announces that they’re leaving Twitter or Facebook in anger or disgust. The tipping point is usually frustration over the tone or quality of the content, and/or with what the owners or managers are up to. Both the overlords and the trolls can certainly be disgusting and infuriating, Nevertheless, I am hesitant to leave.
I’m careful with whom I choose to follow on social media, and never knowingly allow an unwelcome intruder access to anyone’s attention through me. So trolls have never been much of a problem. They’re best treated as nuisances, rooted in the same kind of sad perversion that leads to petty vandalism, graffiti tagging, paraphilic exhibitionism, scrawling rude messages in toilet stalls or secretly cooking up computer viruses.
The tone of social media discussion is simply what is to be expected, given that it is humans communicating with humans in an open, free, unfiltered, but also an isolated and therefore private setting. It is not a sign of the times, nor an indication of socio-cultural decline. The creepy and pathetic will always be with us.
What does bother me, though, is that I can be considered one of the 500 million “monetizable daily active” Twitter users, or one of the 2.9 billion Facebook regulars that Meta Platforms can sell access to.
We, the 500 million Twitter associates, or the 2.9 billion of us who are connected through Facebook, use these and other such media to communicate with one another. The infrastructure counts for something, and so does whatever intellectual property may be involved, but my sense is that 98% of the monetary value of these entities is us -- our presence, our attention, along with all the content we provide, which is virtually everything these services carry that is attention-worthy.
All these services do is transmit. We are the providers and the receivers. We are what is being connected, and the ones doing the connecting. As networks, as associations, as connections, these monetizable assets are us. Should we be concerned about those overlords functioning as gatekeepers to our attention? That’s just part of the deal, I suppose. Channels of communication require infrastructure, maintenance and governance. Voluntary servitude and exploitation in exchange for goods, services or money is a normal part of life.
But there’s something that goes beyond a simple exchange here. As persons, individually and in association, we are fundamentally inalienable. We cannot sell ourselves, or give ourselves away. So in a very real sense, we own these entities -- own them because we are them. We don’t need to form a union to ensure we get a square deal from the overlords, because we already are an association, a union, a fellowship, a community. “Occupy Facebook '' would be an absurd proposition. We’ve never claimed that we own ourselves in association, or stood up as and for what we are. Consequently, we have never come up with ways to assert ourselves as producers and consumers combined. But that doesn’t mean we have no claim to owning or being, and no right to assert ourselves.
The “Twexit” movement is like a strike without any demands, and with no hope of winning. The work force just leaves. I’m hesitant to leave because I’m not content to just give it all away, and in so doing, erase all the value and utility that was created through my participation. The overlords may end up steering these marvellous creations of ours over a cliff. That would be a shameful waste, but we’d all survive, unhurt, intact. We’d only be deprived of this particular way of connecting, and the owners would lose a lot of money, which, fundamentally, has no substance, and no intrinsic value.
Something similar may be true of what they call “legacy media,” especially local/regional newspaper traditions. In this case, their value is their history, along with the loyalty of their readers and subscribers, which, over time, defines their place in the communities they serve and from which they emerged. History can be ignored, but it can never be completely erased or destroyed. We can destroy evidence, and erase records and chronicles, insert lies, tell the story selectively, twist it with a favourable spin, or simply choose to forget, but what happened, happened. The truth remains, even though it is easily lost to us, and maybe always unfathomable.
A legacy also can’t be readily replaced or duplicated; you need to take the time. Like our personhood, time-honoured heritage is fundamentally inalienable. It can’t be simply bought or sold. The only way to derive value from a legacy is to respect, honour and protect it. Similarly, loyalty can only be beneficial if it is recognized, respected and reciprocated.
Heritage assets -- even the relatively recent Facebook or Twitter stories, or, on a smaller geographic scale but over a longer timeline, the Berlin/Kitchener/Waterloo Region Record, Galt/Cambridge Reporter or the Guelph Mercury -- are potentially more precious than gold and diamonds because they can neither be freshly extracted nor counterfeited. But keeping such assets valuable takes effort. And it is woefully easy to throw all that’s useful and valuable away. All you have to do is nothing.
No one really owns these valuables, and we don’t own them collectively either. Like the baby in the Judgement of Solomon story, we can’t simply divvy up a heritage asset and give each of us a share. But heritage is also like the seven loaves and two small fishes in the story of how Jesus fed a hungry multitude: Each of us receiving our share doesn’t diminish the supply.
And if that isn’t precious beyond measure, what is?