We are being controlled by social media

To Whom It May Concern:

In World War One, the idea of brainwashing people became a new way of influence to attract an audience that is vulnerable to the social hierarchy of media. Though it did not exist back then, the idea and very common propaganda was on the rise. Since The Great War, people were yet to meet the greatest change in the history of mankind. In the 1990s, a resource was created to connect with people around the world spreading information as well as online transactions. Finally in 1997, the first social media organization was created. You may ask what is the purpose of propaganda, or you may be a person willing to prevent the innocent users of social media fall under a plutocracy that could potentially treat its people as a product. In other words, a toy to play with. You may be a person with greed; a creator of the social hierarchy most people today want to be in the top of that wants to take advantage of users as much as possible in order to strive for one thing; money. In that case, you may want to take this letter into consideration. A reform plan of social media that can protect the lives of users with your help.

We are being controlled by social media. In fact, this was known to be the massive change of humanity worldwide because currently more than a third of the world population actively uses social media whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even YouTube. As of now, two billion people are constantly on social media according to a Statista report but in 2020 this number is expected to grow up to 2.94 billion users of social media. In order to sustain a safe structure of media platforms for these users, they must not be toyed with. Though corporations have a hunger for personal information, user privacy must be respected. Our children of the future generations are expected to be toyed with corporations which strikes fear in the smart individuals that want a safer environment for their loved ones. Take entrepreneurs into perspective, they desire a venture on social media that strives to provide content to users for both their and the viewer’s benefit. Keep in mind, entrepreneurs are not individuals to be toyed with. Entrepreneurial accounts such as meme professions currently become silenced by social media due to the claimed “offensive and inappropriate” content. As a person with a meme profession, meme pages do not post any sort of content that harms its own users. Generally, we come from a depressive state and would like to ensure that the people we provide content to are more happy than we are. Meme accounts are innocent types of entrepreneurs that follow community guidelines and want to post humorous content for the sake of their followers’ happiness. The major benefit of this is entrepreneurial success as well as of course, user happiness. An example of an innocent meme account would be those who post history memes such as myself. If I posted a swastika, I do not deserve hate because it represents history and I do not support it. Unfortunately though for this purpose, social media like Instagram takes down similar accounts like mine and deletes their accounts (luckily not me however). Simply, it is unfair for these people to lose their opportunities as more users will live as a slave of social media rather than their free will.

Politicians are a part of the issue with brainwashing people, luring them into some false belief. Let us be clear, there are the selfish and talkative politicians that have no sympathy for the will of the people, but instead for his or her wealth. “Politicians are regarded as people who have learned to talk, but not to act” was a philosophy made by Sir Oswald Mosley as he accurately predicted the sheer arrogance in modern politicians we see today. In the modern world, these people have taken advantage of social media in order to gain attention as well as supporters. Unjustly, their attention and support has been gained, but a cause for positive change did not occur as they only care about their fame as well as money. Social media has allowed these corrupt politicians to silence people of their opposing ideology. People who are autocratic in politics have been attacked online by people under the control of famous politicians on social media. They silence these small political accounts and force their supporters to praise themselves. In fact, these politicians have nothing new to offer; they simply just want money, whereas small political accounts on social media have a will and courage to make a good cause. As mentioned earlier, political accounts fall under the same umbrella with meme accounts because their accounts get deleted as well. On the other hand, corrupt politicians are being praised for their acts of silencing others out for money. Money is the only reason modern politics exist. Overall, with power comes money and with money comes power. The type of power that can ruin user’s lives.

Though this function on social media is necessary to grow businesses, it is important to limit a spam of advertisements conveyed to users. A vital strategy used by businesses, it make sense as to why it is usually spammed on your main feed. However, from a consumer perspective, advertisements are despised simply because there is too much of it. For instance, if I were to watch a YouTube video, the same advertisement from the same company such as Wix, Grammarly or TikTok will always pop up. I highly discourage companies from spamming advertisements as it never appeals to their customers. This does not mean that advertisements should cease to exist but they should have a limit on how many of the same advertisements that is conveyed to their targeted customers. One question would remain regarding this issue. Why is this a problem, though it seems minor? First, the internet and social media has forced and converged teenagers of this generation to become addicted to their phones and devices looking at their social media. Corporate United States has struggled to assess the demand of teenagers prior to the creation of the internet. After this point, teenagers are hooked to their devices with their own world online, which attracts corporate America into collecting and selling their personal information. This precious information fuels the marketing segment of a business because now they know the exact desire you have. In other words, they know exactly what product you want because they have access to your information and privacy. A social media user might not even know if their identity and personal information is stolen. Again, with money comes power and with power comes money.

Within this capitalist society contains a market in which our moral code and purity is being sacrificed for money that is made from filth. What is important about this is that there are dangers of being unethical on social media to the point where money becomes more important than our moral code. In fact, this is the most disturbing type of market to exist on the internet. Pornography has destroyed the moral code of diversity on social media causing degeneracy to spread among the vulnerable users who can not control their sexual behaviors. In other words, they have a strong sexual craving that they can not control due to its access. Suppose I were to be a humble, but at the same time, an insecure person who has difficulty controlling their sexual intentions. Let us say that I constantly use social media on a basis and I saw some content related to sex. Most of the content I would be seeing comes from advertisements using sex as a trap to attract customers, censored pornographic content used as click-bait, and sex models. Confused, you might think that I have full control of myself with no one forcing me into viewing that content, but this is where things get worse. You see, corporations will do everything they can to attract their customers by any means necessary. The problem here is that they will use ‘teasing’ sexual content as well as sex models to lure majority of customers into buying their product or viewing pornographic content. The rising action at this point is when literal pornographic websites are partnered with corporations to lead you to those websites. Consequently, as more users fall into this trap, the lustful behavior of users turns themselves into animals (rapists, pedophiles, and prostitutes). While it may seem like an exaggerated topic, according to a BBC article analyzing the amount of pornographic content on the internet, it is estimated that nearly 37% of the market on the internet (including social media) comes from pornography. It absolutely disgusted me that such a degenerate market exists. You may bring the obvious excuse of “well let people do whatever they want to do” but that is incredibly childish. People have the right to create their own businesses on the internet, but this does not mean that our moral codes should be destroyed. I myself care about the internet market, but I am reluctant when the internet convinces users to sacrifice their morality for the sake of money from filth; nothing but filth. Social media is suppose to present the best of our moral code and show the internet what every user can do, but instead, we have destroyed our diversity of well manner humans to perverted animals.

I am sure that many people love to connect with strangers on the internet and of course, have to be careful. There are people who claim to know everything about something, but end up faking that act; in other words they are considered hypocrites. With social media, we have a strong connection with people from the other side of the world with ideas and friendship. However, relating to the passage about modern politicians, there are people that are simply too ignorant. Why is this? Well let us look back to the creation of the internet. With its existence holds a binary; truth versus falsehood. You see, if one person claims something to be true, but does not gather facts as well as evidence on his claim, there is a high potential of falsehood. We have worldwide users of social media who deny certain events (such as stuff you see on the news) without knowing anything about it. Remember, we have more than a third of the world population actively using social media, which means that the binary of true and falsehood widens in every corner of the internet. It is logical there will be a large number of people who spread truth, but at the same time, there will be more people deceiving others as well. So in order to be careful online, users need to understand the difference between the truth and falsehood that is being conveyed to them.

Diversity is the main reason social media was invented back in 1997. It allowed people to connect with the world online, whether just for fun or for business purposes. One of the most commonly known factors that contribute to forming diversity is religion. Our world is filled with a variety of religions and faiths and followed by many people. In the past, people had meaning because they were pious individuals who committed good deeds directly for the sake of their religion. The religion I follow is Islam, a submission to God in which gave humanity the existence of the faith. It has beliefs and verses that tell us to treat other humans with manners and respect no matter what their faith is, just like any other faith does (such as Christianity). Unfortunately today, secularism has destroyed the existence of these religious tolerances as more people have abandoned their moral code and started attacking people for being religious. Why is this relevant? Social media has fueled this because now we have religious intolerance harming others rather than doing good. To explain, there are accounts that post content related to burning the Holy Quran. We have discussed briefly about propaganda earlier and religious tolerance falls under that umbrella. Since there are content creators who post lies about one’s faith and deceives other into believing his/her falsehood, the result is not pleasant. The poor person of that faith gets hatred in return because the foreshadow will be a chain reaction in which more people will be deceived, controlled and lose their human dignity. People have their freedom of religion and deserve it, but they must not injure their beliefs onto other users, which is something that secularism has promoted. From experience, I have seen posts on Instagram where hatred is promoted towards a faith, yet when I try and report that post to the administrators, they simply respond to me claiming that the post is following community guidelines. What the hell is this all about? Social media was intended to spread religious tolerance instead of hatred, yet the administrators believe that this is following “community guidelines”?

Prior to concluding this letter, I have one basic question to ask. Why do people become famous out of nothing? Some celebrities such as Kim Kardashian are famous for no reason because of some degenerate acts. If they have nothing new to offer or have no purpose for their fame, I do not see a reason for them to become famous. Kim Kardashian uploading a sex video will show absolutely nothing but how disgusting their fame is from something made out of lust. In other words, it seems though as if the people who are disturbing become famous for stupidity while the people who are humble (e.x pure minded entrepreneurs) are less known by humanity. We are doomed as humans if our intentions have striven for something that combines seven of the most inhumane acts; lust, gluttony, arrogance, sloth, wrath, greed and lust. So, why does humanity have to accept this? It is simple. All for the sake of money. You as the creator of Facebook and Instagram have to be aware of these acts and have to ensure that your users are well protected by these sorts of corruption.

As a young-minded philosopher, I will have my say on how these problems have ascended due to the “progression” in society. This so called progression is based off the greed that has been leeching off the victimized users of social media, or possibly the entire world. Corruption, degeneracy, fame, money are all things that should not matter as we move forward in society. There are two options to consider if those problems need to be overcome which is either a reform or revolt. The choice lies on the behalf of the majority of users of social media, specifically teenagers that are constantly addicted to their devices alongside with caring entrepreneurs (meme accounts). As mentioned earlier, you as the creator/administrator have to look into the future to see what the people will want. Again, it is either a reform or a revolt to consider.

“When they speak democracy, they don’t mean government by the people… they mean financial democracy, in which money counts and nothing but money” ~ Sir Oswald Mosley.