You don’t own your social media

I mean, you do not “own” your social media accounts. It belongs to some guy in Silicon Valley who owns the servers where your data lives.

Let that sink in.

Consider the implications for your project. What if your accounts get deleted?

I’m not sure how we fell into this, but we’ve been made to believe that these networks (where we’ve poured years of photos, audio, video, conversations, friends) are ours. Our space. Our community. But they’re not. In fact, the moment we upload something we lose control of it.

Those spaces that we’ve filled with our creativity are our little window to the world and a way to reach people we couldn’t reach before.

Social media seemed to be a paradise for expression, a way for small artists to connect with people all over the world who care about the same things. And for a while, it was.But now? It’s a mess filled with confusing policies enforced by automated routines, routines that silence the very people who made these platforms what they are. And above all the mysterious algorithm that decides whether your post reaches 10 people or 10 million depending on… whatever the owner of the servers (and his stakeholders) want.

So what if we ask ourselves: What happens if our accounts disappear? What happens to our community? What happens to our small window to the world?

It feels as if we were in this platforms now shouting while the algorithm decides whether we’re ever heard. We’re not enslaved by chains but we’re enslaved by likes, notifications and the promise of a supposed return that has us constantly forced to create content (not art, content) just to keep up our “presence” or whatever… 21st-century slavery at its finest.

We’re told art is free on the internet and that we have to work in our social media if we want to “exist”, but each percentage, each like is another thread tying us to a system we do not control. Art isn’t free if its value is dictated by metrics. And oh boy, it’s the metrics that determine our worth, isn’t it?

We do not “own” social media. We are content providers whose main role is harvesting users attention for the profit of the server’s owner, while feeding us with the illusion of connection. So, what does this mean for culture anymore? How to be an artist when a robot chooses what’s heard and what’s forgotten?

The algorithm doesn’t discover art, it monetizes it. Whatever doesn’t generate instant engagement is silently erased from the digital canon. Social media platforms couldn’t care less about culture. (We will talk about streaming platform`s algorithm some other time)

But hey, history shows us that art always finds its way and maybe technology could be on our side to make that happen.
It’s not about going crazy on technology, it’s about questioning it, reinventing it and creating spaces that truly belong to us. What about ethical technology?

That’s why we’re still looking for alternatives, because we feel there has to be life outside social media’s bubble. There are growing communities and ways to connect. We are searching, learning and will share what we discover.

So, what do we do meanwhile? We can start by accepting that social media is just a set of temporary windows we can use when needed. We can use our creativity to think about new ways of connecting with each other. We can think about who feeds the systems and how the benefits are distributed. We can think again about why we make music and why we create art when everything is changing. Tho sometimes it feels hopeless, we also feel that creativity is the ultimate act of rebellion in a in a world enslaved by the algorithm, because even the smallest and worst artistic contribution can spark a thought in somebodies mind.

Platforms can fade, but the stories you tell and the feelings you awaken will live on. They own social media but culture belongs to everyone.