Should you stay on unsafe social media platforms?

It’s a constant source of frustration – for me at least – that we are so beholden to our digital providers, buffeted on the winds of their leaders’ whims.

Whether it’s Pichai’s Google, Musk’s X, Zuck’s Meta or Rolansky’s LinkedIn (bet you didn’t know his name), we never know if they’ll disappear one day – or worse – turn into entirely fascist enterprises that we have to decide whether to engage with at all.

While other industries might ditch such channels and manage just fine, the arts sector relies on the communication, outreach and exposure opportunities that these platforms provide.

No matter how much work you do in your community, no matter how many flyers you distribute, you’d be in trouble if you suddenly lost your social channels.

‘Lawless hellscape’

Musk tested us, didn’t he? He turned Twitter into a lawless hellscape and then changed its name to something so daft I struggle to say it out loud, lest my body cringe from embarrassment.

But Twitter’s always been strange. More useful for journalists and angry people than anyone else, its relevance was sputtering even before Musk took it on. Lots of us felt we could do without it – mostly because our audiences are all on Facebook and Instagram anyway.

Welp, now those are ruined too

You might have notice that Zuckerberg’s desperation to stay as relevant as Musk has led him to remove all fact checking to protect free speech. But the really alarming part is the changes to the policies bundled with this change.

Yep, Meta’s changes to its hate speech policy (as reported by the Independent, among others) now means you can do some fun things without consequence, such as:

• Call gay people freaks
• Tell women they’re nothing but male property
• Deny the existence of trans people and say they’re mentally-ill oddballs
• Claim Chinese people spread Covid more than everyone else
• Claim white people are smarter than everyone else

All these things are sure to make Facebook and Instagram nightmares for marginalised people just trying to go about their day-to-day lives. Dreadful.

But wait a minute…

Have you tried being trans or queer on the internet lately? Or a woman? Or all those things? It’s pretty grim. I can’t speak about what it’s like to be anything other than white on the internet, but I’m confident it’s equally unpleasant, if not more so.

No matter the platform, abuse is already tolerated, even when the policies claim otherwise. There are no consequences for spreading hate speech unless you’re someone so news-worthily toxic (like Tate) that you’re made an example of.

The average person can voice truly horrible opinions online with no repercussions whatsoever. You’re more likely to be banned if you’re a trans person reporting transphobic abuse than for being abusive.

I guess, if anything, ol’ Zuck should be applauded for being honest.

So what do we do?

This is where it gets tricky. As principled organisations working in the arts and digital, we should be making a stand about this sort of stuff. We should be saying we won’t tolerate these changes, we’re ditching the platforms and not spending any more money on advertising on them. Yeah!

But that’d be a complete disaster. We’d be losing two massive marketing channels. Our ability to reach our audiences would be smashed to pieces. Perhaps we could pivot entirely to TikTok, a platform with no ethical issues around its usage or operation whatsoever – that’d solve it, right?

Oh, wait. Oh, no.  Yep, there is no ethical consumption of social media under capitalism.

I’m so tired

I don’t speak for the entire LGBTQ+ community. I’m just one white, leftist, trans woman in Yorkshire, England, with a tendency to talk too much.

And as my colleagues would confirm, I’m usually the first person to tell you to refuse to separate the art from the artist and cancel your favourite band, or to boycott fast food chains that support the IDF.

But this time, I don’t know. I don’t have the energy to fight the largest social media platforms in the world.

If we were to boycott them – we should have done it already. These latest changes will most likely make absolutely no material difference to the quality of marginalised people’s experiences on these apps. We already face the abuse. The policies that have been removed did nothing to help us.

Maybe the shock of their removal will shake things up. Maybe it’s the beginning of a series of events that lead to the leaders being ousted in coups and replaced with decent human beings. Who knows?

So, it’s fine. Whatever.

So, what do we actually do?

These platforms mirror society so we do what we do in society at large, don’t we?

We create our own safe spaces, we protect and support our friends and colleagues, we pick our battles and make a difference where we can.

Keep using the platforms because you need them to survive. And the people that look to the arts for creativity and joy need you to survive.

More than ever, we need the light of the arts among the murky social media gloom.