Social media use is a responsibility

Like all powerful tools, social media has the ability to change the world. It connects like-minded people and quickly distributes new information. It has the power to electrify the communities it touches.

But like any tool or technology, when used without restraint or when adopted too quickly, it produces large-scale negative side effects as well. In the case of social media, it leads to addiction and polarization, creating separate and unaccountably different bubbles of reality for different groups.

“So just stop using it” — a false binary

One answer to the ails of social media is simply: if you don’t like it, stop using it.

The problem with this puritanical all-or-nothing answer is that the issue more nuanced and complicated than a binary “yes, I’m all in” or “absolutely none of it for me”. Yes, it may be impossible to get only the good with none of the bad, but perhaps we can find responsible half-measures. In other words, accepting a platform’s Terms and Conditions doesn’t mean we wholesale agree to making the world worse. It’s totally valid (and IMO principled) to want to use these platforms in ways that are responsible the mental health of yourself and those around you.

Shouldn’t we just litigate it?

Yes! I believe social media has been around long enough to warrant aggressive social oversight. That said, I have no idea how long litigation will take or what the process would be to fairly determine a direction. All I know is that as a user I have a strong compulsion to produce a model for responsible use in advance of any litigation efforts (and strongly support the right ones).

Why this statement?

As a creator who has benefited greatly from algorithms that I disagree with on principal, I feel an added responsibility to not produce online content without at least issuing some sort of statement (this post you’re reading right now). I do have faith that my work has more positive effects on the world than negative, but I do not deny that there are secondary negative effects that I’m likely blind to.

As such, I wanted to write this page as a personal code of conduct to declare how I am approaching this conundrum.

My commitment as a social media participant

As a social media participant, as of Nov 1, 2020, I will:

  • center my social media activity on work stemming from personal experience

  • amplify the work of original creators who make the internet weird and interesting and who also seek to add value by creating work that

  • seek ways to improve quality of communications on the networks I participate in

  • avoid relaying or amplifying enraging content designed to polarize

  • avoid framing my personal work in click-baity ways, including things like posting video thumbnails with absurd facial expressions, posting titles in the form of questions designed to entice readers, posting quizzes, etc…

  • provide reliable ways for people to find my work in an organized manner so that they do not need to worry about missing out, as well as provide, as an option, a newsletter with all my substantive work for folks who prefer to get information pushed directly by me as opposed to through an algorithmic feed.

What I’m still unsure about…

I feel the need to recognize that social media is a place where everybody is given a megaphone. This is both super inspiring (for giving the abused a way to be witnessed and to group together) and super terrifying (for amplifying terrorizing voices). I have no idea or policy on how to engage with this conundrum, other than to say I wish to amplify the aggrieved but often feel irresponsible doing it, and don’t know what the right approach is. I’m looking for ways to improve here.

So in conclusion…

I’m trying to be a better netizen. Please consider doing the same.

Also, if you see me violating what I’ve set forth for any activity after Nov 1 2020, you can roll your eyes and ignore me, or you can also call me out on it either publicly or directly via email.

Lastly, if you think this whole thing is stupid — frankly, I agree… but for the sake of my mental health as a participant and creator on these platforms, doing SOMETHING about it feels less stupid than doing nothing… at least for me and where I’m at in my process.

Cheers, and happy scrolling!