I recently watched a documentary called “The Cleaners” about how private companies like Facebook outsource services of content moderation to third parties, where one’s job is to filter social media feeds to keep them clean and friendly by taking off the most disturbing content. Some of these jobs are based in the Philippines where they have to sign nondisclosure agreements, are not paid sufficiently, and are not informed nor equipped with the proper training to do this work—unlike someone in law enforcement who would be. (Despite psychological effects of PTSD, they convince themselves to do it in order to support their families of 8-10 people and because of their devotion to Catholicism, by purging “the sins of the internet”.) These violations of worker rights by Facebook show similarities with strikes from overworked and underpaid Amazon employees.
Modern day boycotting now entails refusing to buy products or support a company that violated human rights. And it’s hard to makes choices to become an ethical consumer these days. Which company caused another environmental disaster again? Which movie am I not supposed to watch because another actor is responsible for sexual misconduct? I can’t keep track...Lately it feels like we’ve been headed in a dystopian direction (maybe the world did end in 2012...or at least it goes downhill from here) where power abuses from authority and ongoing mistrust in our institutions, understandably, continues to grow. But this mistrust is also stemming from another place: the Trump market of media, or shock value which manifests itself in fear and anxiety. It has literally shifted media economics, who mint money through provocative, viral, and “entertaining” material. It’s profitable, but contributes to the tension of political polarization. I mean the more extreme and divisive the content is, the more likely it is to trigger a reaction and blow up in facebook, twitter, instagram news streams. So trolls become rewarded by gaining followers and interaction, further incentivizing them to continue their behavior and producing a positive feedback loop. Companies also become incentivized: more engagement = more $$$.
Frontline’s documentary “The Persuaders” discussed political marketing like merchandising a political party with Frank Luntz. The result of this “artful assembling of facts into lies”—where words are selected to obfuscate the truth and persuade voters—is narrowcasting in place of broadcasting. It reminded me of Astroturfing, which is defined as “the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants”. An example would be hiring a crowd and paying the audience to clap for political candidates like Trump did. Both narrowcasting and astroturfing serve as threats to our democracy, where there’s a lack of transparency or corporate accountability.
The full picture is purposefully being hidden from our view. Secretive industries like the dark market for personal data or content moderation are not exposed to the public obviously for a reason: consumers like us would boycott and stop engaging on these platforms. Private companies like Facebook don’t prioritize security against cyber terrorism or the mental health of content moderators because the cost outweighs the benefits. Censoring the truth is much more marketable because companies are not forced to deal with the consequences of their actions. Meanwhile ethical consumers are forced to grapple with the booby traps of narrowcasting in influencing who they will vote, the shock value media that incentivizes trolls, and being fooled by companies involved in astroturfing—which are all hurting our democracy.
It is interesting to see the lengths these companies will go to to purposefully hide content from viewers. This is just another example of how companies are trying to manipulate the image put in front of us in order to get us to buy a certain product or to elicit a certain reaction from us. This is done often in marketing, for example through an emotional ad or a catchy phrase that makes us remember the ad or the product because of the reaction it brings out of us even though we do not realize we are doing this.
ReplyDeleteI thought your analysis about industries motives was really interesting. Especially when corroborating it with the narrative of modern media grab under the Trump administration. Specifically when you wrote about how in order to grab attention the news, you have to have the largest most dramatic issue, incentivizing a cycle of excessive media. The introduction and conclusion also do a nice job of introducing the reader to the issue on a broad sense and then tying down that issue into explaining why it should matter to the average media consumer.
ReplyDeleteWhat you said in your blog post about how there are so many companies who have violated human rights brought to my mind two companies - Nestle and Shell. In 2001, it became public that much of Nestle's cocoa came from farms in the Ivory Coast without governmental oversight that enslaved thousands of children. (Nestle stopped buying from there in 2012.) In 2009, a lawsuit was brought against Shell for the systematic slaughter of the Ogoni people who lived on the land Shell wanted to mine for oil. Shell actually paid the Nigerian military to organize raids on Ogoni villages, which often resulted in massacres. But because these companies are so large and ubiquitous, it's extremely difficult to boycott them.
ReplyDeleteI this is a really interesting topic to blog about especially now. It addresses world and country problems today ad what is happening now. I liked how you started with more historical evidences of the topic and slowly moved to present day examples. This helped me visualize the change at which these companies have violated human rights over time.
ReplyDeleteI think this topic is very relevant to today's society regarding social media and how many people and companies only show the idealistic parts of their lives/products. People or companies only post what would gain themselves more profit. For companies, that would be money and for people, that would be attention. This very much reminds me of the situation regarding many Youtubers who act happy and flaunt their wealth only to later reveal that they in fact are not as happy as they appear to be in their videos and do not accurately portray their lives to the public. They do this because posting videos where they appear to be happy is believed to get them more views and attention, giving them more profit.
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