There is a tendency for people to talk about posting to social media as participation in a community. The word “community” also is used to refer to something akin to life in a village, but the two uses have very little to do with each other.
In a village, you can find someone to babysit your child, you can borrow a saw, you can get a delivery of food when ill, you can get help building a dike. On an on-line ‘community’, you can get funny pictures and supportive comments. These are not the same.
From a billionaire’s perspective, only one is problematic. People in real communities boycott, go on strike, and pass laws protecting common interests from individual interests. On social media platforms, the worst that a billionaire might expect are calls to wave protest signs and to chant.
Bernard Lietaer, a Belgian economist and author, once said: “There is no community without economy.” The idea behind this is that only people with shared material interests have the motivation to overcome individual differences and act collectively. The problem is that humans tend to annoy each other sooner or later. When there is nothing at stake, the easiest solution is to simply avoid people with whom you are having strife. When you are dependent on trade, services, or defense, you set aside petty differences.
It is an awesome victory of billionaires that the term “community” should refer to the on-line services that they provide. Every minute that people invest in on-line services is a minute not spent on developing the kind of community that could lead to collective action — actions that could challenge the interests of billionaires, for example. Furthermore, by promoting some posts over others, billionaires influence what their users believe their ‘community’ is. For example, by suppressing posts about a certain topic, they give the impression that there is little interest in that topic.
This is a double win. It is not complete control, but it is control over the essential.
Referring to social media as ‘community’ is like calling alcoholism coping. It does indeed have the desired effect, in the short-term. The next morning, however, you awaken with the same problems — and some might even be worse because they developed unchecked while you were at the pub.
Definitions
- Interest group
People who share interests and preferences - Club
People who participate in a social order designed to promote an interest or a preference. - Community
People who are stake-holders in a social order that is critical for their well-being.
Questions
- Is there an interest group or a club that you’ve called a community?
- What would you have needed to make them real communities?
- If you could define or create your social environment any way you wanted, what key features would it have?
