Maybe I’m just in a media/lefty-friends bubble but it feels to me like a lot of people are angry about the cuts. Even Boris won’t accept them. And he’s a tory.
So, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been following the angry-commentariat and I’ve been waiting for this good, righteous, anger to catch on Facebook. But, so far, nothing.
Well, not quite. My friend Nik has put up two links, and I’ve trailed my coat a couple of times, but other than that nothing. No one has put up videos of the piggy bastards waving their order papers. And no one directed me to any protest groups. I get ten times more messages about the Christmas number one than I do about the cuts.
Now, of course I know Facebook isn’t a political blog. It’s not even the guardian. But some campaigns do spread – Iran and Chinese human rights have both made my wall. As, in fact, did protests against the pope. Which you’d think might be more contentious than bashing the tories.
But maybe that’s the point – the vast majority of Brits are only going to post politics on Facebook when they’re absolutely confident of not causing any offense. And, given the number of friends people have, even the soundest lefty is likely to have one or two tory “friends” on facebook that pop into their mind just before they post. It’s the same problem that stops you posting pictures of a party on a school night because someone at work might see. Or stops you posting about the gay bar that you work in at the weekends if you’re a teacher.
The problem is that Facebook doesn’t encourage you to manage your posts very well – you’re either public, on a wall, or you’re private, in a message. But if you stay private, you don’t get any of the additional exposure, the viral pass on, the connections with other like-minds, which made you choose Facebook over email in the first place.
Of course, it would be different if Facebook encouraged more control – perhaps by allowing you to choose a limited type of publicness in which only “appropriate” people see the post. It would be a tricky algorithm but it could be done.
For that to happen though, Facebook would have had to have prioritised the quality of conversations over growth which would never have happened. First, because Zuckerberg is true believer in openness, particularly in human relationships. I doubt he’d see the point of hiding his views from anyone. Second, more fundamentally, if they had pursued a slower, more complex, strategy, they’d have been beaten by a faster growing competitor and we’d be having the same conversation about that company.
Plenty of people will tell me they wouldn’t want it to be different though. Facebook works just fine and, in any case, they’d rather make sure that everyone’s on it and just steer clear of controversial subjects.
I guess I’m just sad that it’s won such a large share of online discussion. There are blogs with big readerships but few have rewarding discussion spaces. Those that do, tend to be made up of people who have enough knowledge and similar enough views to avoid calling each other Nazis.
Please don’t think I’m down on the blogosphere, parts of it are wonderful places to visit. I’ve seen discussions that are the very model of political discourse. It’s good that they’re easier to join, and, perhaps, that they go on for longer. It’s certainly good that more people can read/listen to the conversations if they are so inclined. I just wish that more people took part. At the moment, I get the sense it’s just the people who would have been talking about politics anyway.
Five years ago I hoped that social media would lead to wider discussion and help ideas build momentum and grow. I thought online society would be more richer and wider than offline. But perhaps, if Facebook is social media, people are actually LESS likely to discuss politics online than face to face. Which, for so many reasons, is a shame.
So, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been following the angry-commentariat and I’ve been waiting for this good, righteous, anger to catch on Facebook. But, so far, nothing.
Well, not quite. My friend Nik has put up two links, and I’ve trailed my coat a couple of times, but other than that nothing. No one has put up videos of the piggy bastards waving their order papers. And no one directed me to any protest groups. I get ten times more messages about the Christmas number one than I do about the cuts.
Now, of course I know Facebook isn’t a political blog. It’s not even the guardian. But some campaigns do spread – Iran and Chinese human rights have both made my wall. As, in fact, did protests against the pope. Which you’d think might be more contentious than bashing the tories.
But maybe that’s the point – the vast majority of Brits are only going to post politics on Facebook when they’re absolutely confident of not causing any offense. And, given the number of friends people have, even the soundest lefty is likely to have one or two tory “friends” on facebook that pop into their mind just before they post. It’s the same problem that stops you posting pictures of a party on a school night because someone at work might see. Or stops you posting about the gay bar that you work in at the weekends if you’re a teacher.
The problem is that Facebook doesn’t encourage you to manage your posts very well – you’re either public, on a wall, or you’re private, in a message. But if you stay private, you don’t get any of the additional exposure, the viral pass on, the connections with other like-minds, which made you choose Facebook over email in the first place.
Of course, it would be different if Facebook encouraged more control – perhaps by allowing you to choose a limited type of publicness in which only “appropriate” people see the post. It would be a tricky algorithm but it could be done.
For that to happen though, Facebook would have had to have prioritised the quality of conversations over growth which would never have happened. First, because Zuckerberg is true believer in openness, particularly in human relationships. I doubt he’d see the point of hiding his views from anyone. Second, more fundamentally, if they had pursued a slower, more complex, strategy, they’d have been beaten by a faster growing competitor and we’d be having the same conversation about that company.
Plenty of people will tell me they wouldn’t want it to be different though. Facebook works just fine and, in any case, they’d rather make sure that everyone’s on it and just steer clear of controversial subjects.
I guess I’m just sad that it’s won such a large share of online discussion. There are blogs with big readerships but few have rewarding discussion spaces. Those that do, tend to be made up of people who have enough knowledge and similar enough views to avoid calling each other Nazis.
Please don’t think I’m down on the blogosphere, parts of it are wonderful places to visit. I’ve seen discussions that are the very model of political discourse. It’s good that they’re easier to join, and, perhaps, that they go on for longer. It’s certainly good that more people can read/listen to the conversations if they are so inclined. I just wish that more people took part. At the moment, I get the sense it’s just the people who would have been talking about politics anyway.
Five years ago I hoped that social media would lead to wider discussion and help ideas build momentum and grow. I thought online society would be more richer and wider than offline. But perhaps, if Facebook is social media, people are actually LESS likely to discuss politics online than face to face. Which, for so many reasons, is a shame.
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2 comments:
My guess is that people who would engage about it don't have that much time to be on facebook at all. Perhaps they even just scroll through the alerts on their phone. I for one rarely, if ever, open a link that someone has posted and mostly my interactions on facebook are with friends who don't live in the same place, or, for whatever reason, I don't talk on the phone with or e-mail/text. Our interactions do not usually extend to politics (or similar topics).
I think people spend more time on Facebook than they let on...
And a lot of these people would be perfectly happy talking about politics - or any number of interesting things - if they met face to face.
I'd sort of expected online chat to be richer than offline. I guess I'm just interested/disappointed to see that that probably isn't going to be the case.
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