Systemic Failures In Current Social Media Giants

I hesitated for a long time to write this article. Still, it looks like I have to, given recent experience on one of the giant social media platforms support mechanism and the repeated incidents I noticed. I find it odd that we keep talking about the problems social media platforms have and how they affect our personal space or business space. Still, no one comes up with real solutions, especially the businesses behind these platforms themselves. They continuously claim they have our interests at heart. They want to give us the best user experience and benefits. They fail at both.

Here’s the story

I joined various social media platforms not because I needed the products and services they provide. It was instead to protect my brands and online persona from abusers and hackers. It was the least I could do until I decided to use social media marketing or use some of the platforms. Back then, I discovered that even if you don’t use one or the other major social media platforms, it is NOT enough. Why? Simply because the account creation process on most media outlets makes it all too easy to impersonate someone, allowing fake accounts for malicious purposes.

This is because most platforms focus ONLY on GROWTH BY ANY MEANS, not on our safety and protection. It is a well-thought business model and behaviour driven by corporate greed and developers’ culture. Performance and efficiencies become disconnected from the value proposition they are supposed to deliver.

Their business models don’t rely on a genuine and generous value proposition for their target segments. Instead, they aim to create the appearance of a value proposition, followed by a race to generate income and justify the amount of funding they have received. This is reckless and ruthless to the point of stupidity because it does erode our trust in said platforms (and many new or future similar platforms). Consequently, our advance as a society is hindered, slowed and probably sent in a different direction than it could have had.

They know it, yet…

At the same time, the businesses behind these platforms are well aware of the dangers. They also keep on advising us how to stay safe online whilst allowing big holes in their systems in the name of profitability. This is all happening just because the companies behind them decide to do very little for security and privacy unless threatened with class actions or financial penalties by governments. The security and privacy game is left to the lawyers and reactive mechanisms, rather than becoming targets for the business teams and forcing developers to be creative. These aspects should be part of the value proposition if you ask me.

Here’s a quick scenario — so you can understand better what I am all about:

More than once, on an unnamed business-oriented social media platform, I discovered fake accounts made to look like they were employees of one of our businesses. That is kind of unthreatening, although it says a lot about the honesty of the poor sobs doing it — pretending they are employed to boost their profiles. It is, however, annoying to have to waste time and wait for about a month to get it fixed!

Recently, I stumbled across something more ominous: someone from Europe pretending to be the owner of one of our businesses, with a profile set to link to the website domain. Not just on one platform, but on several — where a standard free email account and a mobile number is all it takes to be allowed to have an account.

To stop it from happening and get the fake entries removed, I tried both the available automated options and also tried to contact the support teams on all the platforms. The result? There is no correct option in the automatic “reporting” workflow for such a scenario. The support mechanism is a nightmare to work with. Hard to find a way to raise a ticket (or support case) and extremely slow to respond or take action.

I don’t think the person(s) intends to harm my business but rather use it as a means to deceive others. However, this is NOT a given in every circumstance, as we know from various stories of stolen identity or corporate attacks carried out through infiltration through social media accounts.

This brings me to the point I want to make…

Imagine the following scenario:

The fake account is set up to look like a business owner and can post on the platform. It could quickly get someone desperate looking for a job to engage with them, pretending to want to hire. They may even have a fake hiring process — do some work so I can evaluate you… They may even pretend to hire the people who apply — all with the new “normality” of working from home and hiring freelancers… Then, the whole thing goes south, and the employed people are not paid. As everything is done on a fake account linked to a fake free email, there is almost no way to catch the perpetrator. Don’t tell me it cannot happen; it IS happening! The respective freelancer or person will try to reach out to the company — using the website URL posted on the fake account. The company could even end up being accused of bad practice or fraud. This would easily leak into social media by the frustrated person who got tricked.

What would that mean for the brand? How would that affect their relationship with customers, providers or future people they want to hire? This could happen even if they did NOT have an account set up on that platform and a company profile/page. They would be none the wiser what is going on.

I don’t have to answer the above; you can imagine it for yourself.

Why not implement proper verification?

On most social media platforms and on some services platforms, you are requested to add details about your business. Without the appropriate mechanisms to prove it, except if there is money involved (and sometimes, not even then), the whole process is moot. That is not ideal, to say the least. These platforms should use some form of entity verification to make it difficult to pretend you are someone you are not. After all, we do have identification means for corporate entities and persons — from government IDs to company IDs, domain registrations, etc.

In the Internet era, a company website domains are registered and linked to some form of government ID (e.g. ABN in Australia). How difficult is it for a large and profitable company to implement a simple yet effective verification process? Especially when you are allowed to not only introduce yourself as a person but as a business as well!

And, please don’t tell me the privacy crap that usually comes up when discussing governments and IDs and stuff! At least for the moment, proper identification of the individual or organisations has a purpose, and I don’t believe in conspiracies! I think the level of incompetence in today’s governments is incredible, and I believe most politicians are corrupt. Not necessarily evil in terms of monetary exchanges. The very fact they make a living being a politician and forgetting they are merely public servants is corrupting the way they think. At least that’s what I think.

Stop pretending you care, tech giants!

When it comes to supporting and assistance, implementing so-called “AI assistants” is not good enough. They are nothing but simple (and rather stupid) algorithms matching keywords and presenting silly solutions. Having an elaborate workflow for contacting a minuscule support team overwhelmed by the requests is also not good helping. It just shows the corporate entity is very interested in the bottom line, not serving the customers, irrespective of the amount they pay for the services.

Especially when — given the immense social impact such platforms can have — our lives can be significantly affected by slip-ups in algorithms and security features. Perhaps it is time to find a way to force these entities to take corporate responsibility to another level. Their focus should be on improving our society through technology, not give birth to more nightmares to haunt us.

The big question is, why do they do this? Is it just because of sheer incompetence, or is it corporate greed that cuts off any attempt to do the right thing? Or maybe it is simply a case of not realising what the impact of their own inaction may be on the very people they hope to serve.

It seems like a combination of all of the above, plus much more…

It is most likely a result of the culture we have created, where profit is much more important than service quality. Success is measured by the amount of wealth or power one accumulates, and that is completely bonkers!

But I also think it is a direct result of the mechanism used to fund these businesses. The venture capitalist is usually a greedy individual who can clearly see the potential for making money. Because they are disconnected from the soul of the development team, they only push for efficiencies, not actual value propositions. Which is sort of fine; that’s the (current) way of the business world, but we end up with substandard products that we rely upon to run our lives and businesses — and that’s a bad combination. And, in the process, we all forget what’s important: to evolve as a society and culture.

We have to find a way to change all this and avoid letting businesses build large social platforms (and other technological structures), mismanage and pretend they care. There should be a way to reinforce corporate responsibility. Not through legal action, but user feedback and common sense.

What’s next?…

It looks like it is left to us, the users, to take action. We should let these providers know that with outstanding achievements comes greater responsibility towards their customers — irrespective if they are in the free or paid tier. We all know by now the hidden monsters that lay inside social media networks.

Question is… CAN WE RALLY TOGETHER TO DO IT? Are we too cynical, egotistical and stupid, and we’ll simply move ahead as a herd of mindless sheep into the next industrial revolution? Only to be eaten alive by the few and greedy? Mark my words: if the next technology revolution settles in, the onset of robots and AI will further increase the gap between the greedy and the needy. It will push humanity into a spiral of violence and hatred that will spawn social monsters for eons ahead. Fundamentally because we are on the brink of space colonisation.

We must do something about it, NOW!

Personally, I don’t believe cutting ourselves from social media giant platforms is the answer. They DO improve something in our lives (otherwise, they would not be so popular).

I would prefer using the same platforms for discussing and setting trends in society against greed and social irresponsibility. Let people know that aiming to become like one of the current billionaires is NOT healthy for society. Let them know businesses can bring positive change to society. We should all have some decency in accumulating wealth and being more responsible about the impact our business models have on society.

Let me know in the comments below what you think about this if you care.