It hasn’t been very long Bangladesh shining through the blessing of Information Technology and a major part of us is actually Social Networks – specifically Facebook & YouTube.
Over 80 million people having access to Internet, Bangladesh is a very big market for Social Network Companies although companies like Facebook or YouTube always underestimated the Bangladeshi Market publicly for some strange reason. But it is very obvious they have been earning a big amount of money through their sites in Bangladesh. So far these companies never opened any office in Bangladesh and thus there is no actual support for this platforms that is dedicated to the local users.
With its blessing, Social Network mostly caused Bangladesh major troubles. I don’t really much of the good sides of Facebook or YouTube in Bangladesh. I only notice more and more abuse everyday. Facebook or YouTube is the main source of rumours and religious ridiculous rumours in Bangladesh that have been divine the people of the region in a very extreme way. These platforms hardly removed these fake news sometimes and often they remove the real ones in fact! There are thousands if not millions of instances where such thing happened.
People now a days only consume news on the social networks rather than checking out a real newspaper website or even people hardly visit any website. They only goes to any website of the links are shared on these platforms or probably google it.
But the underlying problem isn’t the fact that people not getting truthful news but it’s the fact that our dependency on Social Networks. And companies like Facebook or YouTube are controlled by these private entities and they actually can control we will consume or watch or read. It is completely under their control. They can literally push up a video they want or take it down if they don’t like. Even the Facebook or YouTube or such platforms were launched for connectivity and freedom of speech in mind but is it really freedom of speech? Or it is the freedom of some particular speech? Can anyone guarantee it with evidence ? I am sure no one can.
Everyday we are just giving out ourself very openly to these platforms a bit by a bit. Imagine, Facebook already knows almost everything about us who has an account on Facebook. Even they have our National IDs and many other details. Over the past decades they have collected so much data on us that they can easily now control our life. And we have been so dependent on them for communication, being social, business, creativity and everything that if Facebook just simple decide to block you for few days on their platform, you can’t even communicate with anyone. For example Facebook Messenger. I am sure this messenger is a main communication tools for many! Imagine you suddenly got a community violation block on your account and barred for 7 days from using Facebook which means you can’t post anything, cannot use messenger and cannot ever like or comment on a post. Even, you can block anyone on Facebook is they are harassing you. Unbelievable right? Well(, this is actually Facebook’s basic community violation policy. Sort of a punishment. But Facebook’s community violation detection system is extremely poor. You will mostly barred from thugs that you haven’t really done and Facebook owns you in such a way that they can decide whether you can talk or not or communicate with your friends or not. But when they advertise, they show it is the best tool for communication but what they don’t show is, they also control your communication when you become very dependent on it. You could have other means of communication but since Facebook created so good features for you, you just became dependent on it. Isn’t it a complete violations of Basic Human Rights if Facebook blocks you from communication? You are not a prisoner !
Facebook can also decides what you can see and what you cannot. It is based on their algorithms and what that algorithm does often time? We have seen US election last time right? Similar things are happening everywhere ok Facebook actually. Even in countries like Bangladesh! I can give 100s of proofs that Facebook have been supporting anti-Bangladesh, pro-terrorism minded people on Facebook in a very disguise way. Literally there are thousands of proofs.
Because of people’s lack of enough knowledge on such stuffs, no one is actually noticing it but it is happening as we speak.
We should start using Facebook or similar social platforms less and less as soon as possible before they start controlling your Bedrooms or Bathrooms even. I am sure there are instances, they are able to decide whether you will die or live. Don’t trust me? Well, few weeks ago, I was threatened on Facebook by some Terrorist group. So as an ordinary Facebook users I reported the post following the procedure that Facebook has now. But Facebook said “the post doesn’t violates any community policy”. So what happened next is, since I was worried, so I took a screen shots of those threat posts and posted in my Facebook page to make sure Law Enforcement agencies know Bangladesh sees it and I can get a bit of assurance as well. But guess what ! Facebook removed those post immediately because it didn’t follow their community guidelines! So it means, Facebook decided who should live and who should die by a simple thing. As a result of that removal, the security concern was never seen by others who can provide me security but also that removals directly supported those terrorists so decisively and thus made my life more insecure and risky. So, if those terrorists now gets encouragement by this and come and shoot me, Facebook will take responsibility? I don’t think so.
This is just one small example. I have been studying these stuffs on the social platforms and I have thousands of instances. So, what is the safeguard of ordinary people from these companies and their bad decisions? Anyone?
