麻豆传媒

ANOTHER month, another algorithm change on a social media platform that has everybody peeved online.

This time it is Instagram, the photo-sharing service owned by Facebook. Instead of showing us the cat photos and wedding pictures we want, the app is clogging up our friend feeds with tons of 鈥渞eels鈥�: autoplaying mini-movies. The problem? Nobody asked for this. The reels aren鈥檛 from friends or people you follow. They are just random videos mucking up your feed and making it harder to find the pictures you want to see. As many Instagram fans pointed out, it is a pathetic attempt to compete with video-sharing platform TikTok.

The even bigger problem? Instagram鈥檚 algorithm no longer favours photos, and that affects a lot of small business owners. If you are a maker who relies on Instagram to alert fans to your latest goods for sale, now you have to make a movie instead of posting an image. And it isn鈥檛 just the little guys who are upset. Even Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner 鈥� two of the app鈥檚 biggest influencers 鈥� a petition asking Instagram to go back to 鈥渁n algorithm that favors photos鈥�.

The platform鈥檚 head, Adam Mosseri, responded to the uproar in a (of course) where he explained that video is getting more and more engagement on Instagram, so it won鈥檛 be going away. He Instagram might have 鈥済one too far with video鈥�, but he has made no promises to change the current algorithm. This is yet another signal that Instagram is no longer 鈥渟ocial media鈥�, a communication platform driven by its users 鈥� if it ever was. It is clear that users don鈥檛 get their voice heard freely or decide what they see. Everything we do there is constrained by a group of executives who hand down content to their audiences.

For too long, so-called social media companies have perpetuated a myth that they are levelling the playing field of communication technology. Companies like Facebook rejected the top-down media model, where Hollywood studios shovelled crummy movies into our brains and we couldn鈥檛 talk back. As social media participants, however, we were supposed to romp freely in a digital public square where everyone could speak and be heard. Now it is becoming obvious that social media companies are just as top-down as the old media ones. Nearly all of the media we consume online in the West is produced, hosted or distributed by just five firms: Google, Facebook, Amazon, TikTok and Twitter.

It is time we start calling it corporate media, dropping that 鈥渟ocial鈥� bit. Especially because it has become so resoundingly plain to many of us that none of the big five is interested in what their audiences want or in making their products genuinely social 鈥� unless it helps their bottom line by providing free content or positive ratings for their products.

Case in point: Amazon, hit by bad fan reviews of its very costly series Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, audience critiques and ratings of the show on its streaming site. Reps for the company explained the drama was getting 鈥渞eview bombed鈥� 鈥� attacked by users with an agenda and bots giving one-star ratings. Amazon said this was driven by fans angry that the show featured Black actors as elves and dwarves; they were also upset that the female elf Galadriel fights with a sword as well as magic. So Amazon simply excised the 鈥渟ocial鈥� part of its media offering to bring audiences its series without any audience reviews on its site.

Amazon didn鈥檛 seem so generous when it came to protecting its users, however. In 2019, several people on its social book review platform, Goodreads, noticed queer authors were getting review-bombed with one-star ratings that lowered their rankings on both Goodreads and Amazon. Often, these authors were getting the one-star reviews months before their books were even available as galleys.

When users sent abuse reports about this to Goodreads, support staff responded: 鈥淲e do not dictate on what basis Goodreads members form their personal opinions about a book, so we have no rules about reading the full text of a book before rating and reviewing it.鈥� (Goodreads , and news site Book Riot that review bombing has become even more popular in the US this year.) It appears review bombing is fine, as long as it isn鈥檛 directed at an Amazon product.

This is exactly how commercial media has always worked. By and large, executives and other gatekeepers choose a few offerings and use their power to push that content to everyone. Social media isn鈥檛 for sharing ideas in some idealised public square. It is for companies to find new ways of monetising their content without taking responsibility for audiences who make that content valuable. That isn鈥檛 social 鈥� just corporate.