While 2021 was the year of billions in revenue for the biggest social media companies it also presented numerous challenges they are to face. All these issues have been accumulating for years. So in 2022, all these internal processes will make it to the surface, and this may (and almost certainly will) affect the end users of social media.
Reasons for this are numerous, from rivalry between various platforms to technical issues possible due to cloud services downtime. But when it comes to trends that put social media at risk, they are the following:
• Lawyers pay more and more attention to what happens in Silicon Valley. They used to live in separate worlds decades ago; now that money has come online, so does the law. And the politicians: while the Democrats want to force the media to do more fact-checking and anti-fake, the Republicans, on the contrary, complain about censorship (like banning Trump in January 2021, no matter how reasonable it turned out). Anyway, they will try to lay more responsibilities upon tech companies.
• Europe wants to regulate IT giants, including (or even starting with) Facebook. Primarily because of their political and financial interests, and while motives seem to coincide (against fake news, child abuse), there are more anti-monopoly reasons, as most tech giants protect their own (that is, American or Chinese) interest at the expense of local commerce.
• There is more and more attention towards kids’ safety. Parents require more solutions that media have to provide, avoiding allegations of unlawful censorship.
• Misinformation is spreading through social media, and as midterm elections are coming in the US, all the parties will publicly express their concern about fake news spreading through social media. Who’s the first candidate for the scapegoat?
So even if you use social media to post pictures from your vacation or read horoscopes, prepare for changes. You may notice them months after, if at all, but it makes sense to track how your attitude and views change. Do you care at all? Do you consider these new trends reasonable or destructive? Speak your mind in the comments here!
