The Battle for Memes
Memes are weapons of mass communication. Born from left-wing progressivism, they now serve all sides equally. Simple, fast, and effective messages that fly across the trenches of the world's biggest social network. So powerful are they that a genuine war is being fought behind the scenes of Mark Zuckerberg's platform—a war of ideas, where Facebook's censorship may be tipping the scales.
Facebook is dangerously close to two billion users. Yes, almost 2,000,000,000 people use Mark Zuckerberg's platform as a communication medium and all-in-one entertainment hub. Many rarely browse the web, only leaving Facebook to read a recommended article or watch a funny video, only to return almost immediately to their friends' updates. Facebook holds enormous, immense power, and loyal users who can't look away from their contacts' updates.
If Facebook were a country, it would be the most populous in the world by far. And if it were, its stance on content censorship would be more transparent and regulated by an independent body. But Facebook isn't a country; it's a private company. And as a private company, it can do as it pleases without asking anyone's permission, regardless of who gets hurt. That is, until the "Meme Alliance" arrived—a coalition of the 100 most-visited meme pages that aims to battle and humble Zuckerberg.
The Meme Alliance Fights Back
On their official site, the meme page owners protest: "We are a collective of more than 100 Facebook pages, showcasing the work of more than 175 content creators. And we all want to know: What's the deal, Mark? Facebook's Community Standards are imposed by a random and automated process. Content that 'violates Community Standards,' according to Facebook, usually has nothing to do with the written standards. And content that DOES violate the standards often slips through the cracks."
The Alliance's statement declares: "This is a problem that affects all users. For content creators, it means their livelihood is subject to the whim of an arbitrary punitive process. For many creators, maintaining a presence on Facebook means the difference between having income or not. For many casual users, it means their sources of information and entertainment can be silenced one day without any warning. This is particularly urgent because we're dealing with the largest global communications platform. Facebook's stance on censorship has remained relatively unchecked. WE ARE HERE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT."
The demands of the Meme Alliance follow that path. You can read them in full here, but in broad strokes they call for eliminating automatic moderation algorithms, ending discrimination against small pages in favor of verified artists, no longer asking users to reveal their real identities, presenting precise quotes of violated terms of service when a user is penalized, and making public a list of employees responsible for final decisions in every case where a page or user is deleted or suspended.
A The Daily Dot interview with the administrator of the page “I play KORN to my DMT plants, smoke blunts all day & do sex stuff”, who belongs to the Alliance, further clarified why it's important to watch Facebook: “The problem is that no one takes responsibility for what they are doing, there is no customer service, no one to explain it. Essentially, they are putting the power of censorship in the hands of anyone who makes a report.” And when a post goes viral, it doesn't take long for people on one side or the other to be offended, making mass reports that end up harming the creators of that content, which may not always violate community standards but are still censored without explanation. Cases abound; recently, Facebook removed “The Origin of the World,” the work of French artist Gustave Courbet, and the iconic photograph of the Vietnamese girl fleeing her devastated village with her body burned by napalm.
Anyway, the intentions are good, very good. The methods to get Mark to pay attention, well, not so much... The Alliance's first effective action was during the past month of September, called #Zuxit, and it was... a 48-hour strike. Yes, a strike of meme creators! Isn't it a beautiful world we live in? "Our numerous meme pages will not be accessible in a coordinated blackout. From September 28 to 30, Facebook will be a more boring place." The second action (not so effective and more as a joke than anything else) was called #TheZuckening. What did you have to do? Mass-report Zuckerberg's profile, to see if he could be removed from Facebook! The Alliance also advises its members to write to the "Federal Trade Commission," complaining about the matter and demanding urgent measures. Yes, it's true, the resistance is still in its infancy.
And there will be those who say that by accepting the network's terms and conditions, the user loses all rights to complain. Personally, I find that a rather biased view. Like it or not, whether you have a profile on the social network or even hate the idea, the truth is that this also matters to you, because you live surrounded by people who do use Facebook and are influenced by everything they see there. As already mentioned, Facebook almost groups together 28% of the world's population, and there seems to be no sign that the number will stop there. It has more inhabitants than any country on Earth! Too much power for a private company whose processes and algorithms lack transparency and whose decisions are always arbitrary with no right to reply. The members of the Meme Alliance may not be the heroes we need to solve this mess, but you have to start somewhere!
