The Great Grappling
On Friday morning, an old college friend of mine messaged me on Instagram in response to two Stories I posted back to back Thursday night. The first was a screenshot of an Elon Musk tweet in which he wrote a bunch of lazy, flippant, half-sensical puns on the names of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle in an effort to troll those who called him a Nazi after he twice made a sieg heils gesture in an Inauguration Day speech. I added some color commentary underneath the screenshot that included, but was not limited to, one F-bomb. (Two. There were two F-bombs.) The second post was a screenshot of a prompt that appeared on my phone when I attempted to post that first Story:
Know this about me: I have never been shy about using salty language on the internet or in real life, maybe to a fault. You don’t grow up in a loud Jewish family on Long Island without a deep appreciation for four-letter words and their efficacy when deployed with judicious precision. So this was far from the first time I’d used the F-word on Instagram, and likely not the first time I’d directed it towards one individual in particular. But it was the first time I’d gotten a message from Meta telling me to pump the breaks because, Hey buddy, that kinda stuff might get you sent to the principal’s office.
It did not pass the smell test. Why was my post calling out a guy for doing and saying things a Nazi would do or say at risk for being reported? I wasn’t taking aim at any of the many groups vulnerable to and powerless against rampant online abuse. I literally could not have been punching further up — my target was the richest and most powerful individual in the world. So why was Meta only now, three days after Donald Trump took office, warning me against posting something critical of Elon Musk? I thought my Instagram friends could figure that one out, so I posted the screenshot with only essential commentary: “Very cool. Very chill.”
My old friend messaged me sharing my concern and said she was closer and closer to getting off this platform, but wondered where to go next. The dilemma was illuminated so clearly in our relationship. I haven’t seen this friend in person in years, but we both expressed how nice Instagram was for being able to see and celebrate the joys in old friends’ lives and allow us to pick up where we left off (at least in the digital space) when one posted something that resonated with another. We sounded like someone’s Boomer parents signing up for Facebook in 2010, and in its corny way it reminded me why I gravitated towards these spaces personally and professionally in the first place. I love expressing my thoughts, I love connecting with other humans, and I love having platforms that allow us to do both when life gets in the way of doing it in three dimensions.
But this week has been a struggle. It began with TikTok’s chillingly subservient push notifications lauding the incoming president for keeping its lights on in the United States. It continued with the owner of The App Formerly Known as Twitter blowing his Nazi dog whistle behind the presidential pulpit. There was news of Meta hiding posts from abortion pill providers (this after the news that Meta was loosening restrictions around hate speech and limiting censorship, so, good job I guess?).
It’s not hard to see what’s happening. There is no more pretense from Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, if there ever had been. We know plainly who’s pulling the levers of these platforms whose algorithms and addictive qualities have sunk their teeth deep into our brains. We know what their political interests are. It’s not good.
The speed at which this is all happening is disorienting. The facades fell so quickly and the platforms went belly up to the new administration so fast that it’s been healthier for me to keep my head buried in the sand rather than gaze at the gathering storm, wondering what the next four years will bring — to say nothing of the next four months, the next four weeks, the next four days. Our most widely used and popular social media platforms are already trying to spike content critical of Elon Musk. They’re throttling users with obsequious paeans to our 47th president. They’re censoring content from abortion pill providers.
It is a really nice professional existence getting to create and distribute content that brings people closer to their favorite sports team. I’m so lucky to get to do what I do. But my crisis of faith in whether these platforms can still be a force for good is at a boil. Do their benefits outweigh the negatives, from the relatively benign to the sinister? Does it even matter if their algorithms are bent to the will of an autocratic, oligarchic few? Am I complicit in their owners’ aims? Is this apparatus worth saving? Open-source platforms like BlueSky are a salve, but not a solve. The Goliaths will plod on, unbothered by the Davids.
In three dimensions, millions of us have been going through it in some fashion this week. Most of those millions have much more tangible at stake than someone who looks like me. I live eight miles from the Newark fish market where three employees, a U.S. military veteran among them, were unlawfully detained after an ICE raid with no warrant. The dangers of this administration are clear and present in my neighboring communities. It’s enough to make one feel like nothing else matters. But we need to stay vigilant and consume social media responsibly. Digital literacy has never been more important. Keep your radar attuned to odd frequencies. And for the love of god, know a sieg heils when you see one and call it what it is. Don’t let the platforms talk you out of it.
