Social media needs to do more for its users

Do you ever wonder how, after talking about or searching for something, there seems to be an ad for it on Facebook?

It’s more than a little creepy and begs the question about privacy when it comes to smart phones and social media — especially Facebook.

If you nodded your head in agreement, you’re not alone. Horror author Stephen King is fed up with Facebook, it’s privacy policies and political advertising and he’s not going to take it anymore.

The macabre writer, who has authored more than 50 books, took to Twitter and Facebook on Friday, announcing that he’s quitting Facebook.

“I’m quitting Facebook,” he said via his Twitter account. “Not comfortable with the flood of false information that’s allowed in its political advertising, nor am I confident in its ability to protect users’ privacy. Follow me (and Molly, aka The Thing of Evil) on Twitter, if you like.”

King followed through and deleted his Facebook account. The 72-year-old has not been shy in sharing his views regarding President Trump. In addition, he also isn’t happy with the fact that Facebook allows politicians to run false ads.

“On January 9, Facebook said it would not ban political advertising or institute any sort of fail-safe measure to avoid lies presented in those ads from politicians from propagating across the Internet,” a CNN Business story said. “Facebook allows advertisers to target small groups, including specific groups of users, with ads. Some critics — including some Facebook employees — have raised concerns that such highly-targeted political ads could undermine political discourse by decreasing the change that rival campaigns and the press can see the ads and provide transparency and context for the messages.”

Twitter announced in October, that it would stop accepting political ads. King remains active on that social media platform, however, privacy is also an issue for them — and so is protection against threats and hate speech.

A quick Internet search will yield various results regarding issues with Twitter and its privacy policies, particularly those that fall under Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy. Users are given the option to report tweets that threaten another person, engage in hate speech or are considered harassment. There’s also an option to report tweets about self-harm.

However, the likelihood of Twitter actually finding those tweets to be in violation of their user policies, is not very good.

“Women who experience online harassment, including death threats, have been quick to point out how they have to rely on law enforcement to demand that the perpetrators’ accounts be closed (when law enforcement can be persuaded to take their complaints seriously),” a story from computerweekly.com stated. “Out of the 500 million messages tweeted every day, the vast majority are not reported for violent threat. Many of the accounts that are reported are not suspended and no action is taken against them. Because of rules protecting the details of active investigations, it is impossible to determine exactly how many death threats are followed up by law enforcement and pursued by the criminal justice system.”

And even if those threats do get followed up on and pursued by the criminal justice system, there’s no guarantee that the case will be prosecuted. District attorneys seem to go over these things with a fine-toothed comb, looking for holes in the case — which they are likely to find.

Facebook and Twitter, specifically, need to have a more vested interest in protecting their users not only from threats, but from targeted advertising and false information.

It’s great to connect with family and old friends via social media, but when these platforms become dangerous or start spreading misinformation, which could have a great impact on something like a presidential election, then it’s time to take a step back and re-evaluate whether it’s necessary to engage in this type of cyber socializing.

Stephen King had the right idea in abandoning Facebook, but he should also take a hard look at Twitter, too.

Horror Author Stephen King recently left Facebook because of privacy issues and political ads, but is Twitter really any better?