OUTLAW INLAW
I’d like to discuss what happens in communities that have no newspapers to report on government, school or water board meetings.
Cochran County, a farming and ranching community in the High Plains, lost its local paper, The Morton Tribune, in 2011. The 2,900 people in the county now have to rely on word-of-mouth for information, gather at the senior center for news or call City Hall to learn about elections.
What many might say is, well, they have Facebook, or all they need to know is on Twitter. This is where those people are mistaken.
I’m not even taking into consideration that 1,000 of those 2,900 people in Cochran County who do not have access to the internet or have spotty access through an unreliable internet source.
The numbers in Milam County are similar. In Milam County 5,000 of its 24,000 plus residents have no wired internet access or have no access to broadband connections.
Don’t get me wrong– because I am lucky enough to have wireless service I enjoy scrolling through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. It helps pass the time and oftentimes makes me laugh out loud.
I do this scrolling like I eat BBQ Lays potato chips, knowing that it’s not good for me, while ignoring the hidden ingredients inside that are slowing killing me.
These high calorie, fat and salt spuds sure do satisfy my instant gratification needs, so I don’t think about how it’s wreaking havoc on my digestive and immune systems.
Like potato chips, Facebook is a great way for me to feed my need for instant gratification, but it is slowly killing democracy. It seems harmless enough.
The company’s mission is to connect people, and billions of individuals are connecting. These billions of individual accounts are known as users. These users are collections of data points connected to other data points via a vast social network that are targeted and monetized by computer programs using algorithms.
These algorithms are what Facebook users are relying on to give them news about their community.
Computer programs are not yet sophisticated enough to verify facts, keep information comprehensive and proportional, have an obligation to the truth or loyalty to its citizens, maintain independence from those they cover and lastly, computer systems can not exercise a personal conscience. All of which newspapers do each and every issue.
This is getting Facebook and all the other social media platforms into lots of trouble. They have been hit with countless lawsuits. These lawsuits stem from alleged misuse of user data.
All this is happening because algorithms do not have ethical codes and neither do social media platforms creators. They are selling our data to the highest bidder and continue to do this. Does anyone remember Cambridge Analytica?
Is Facebook really the best place for the people in Cochran County or the 20 other Texas counties that have no local newspapers to get their information? Where is the accountability?
Mark Zuckerberg, and his faceless 35,000 plus employees, isn’t going to church or shopping in the local stores or going and donating to Cochran sporting or community events, so people cannot walk up to him to complain or hold him accountable for what his company does every day like they could with the Morton Tribune employees.
Try contacting one of those 35,000 plus Facebook employees via telephone, it’s like trying to get a good wireless signal on your cellphone using AT&T in Rockdale.
Worse still, is when there are no local newspapers the community’s readers consume more national news, which exposes them to intense political messages and increases polarized voting, according to the Journal of Communication.
This polarization is what we try to fend off in rural Milam County. It’s something that Facebook is being sued over. Its computer program does not differentiate between propaganda, news, advertising or editorials.
It merely sells our information, photos and heartfelt posts to the highest bidder.
It’s high time I start thinking about what I’m putting into my brain and not just what’s going into my body. We should all read more newspapers with our salads.
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