Brutal truth about social media: Why far more needs to be done to stem tide of harm

Three recent cases on the Gold Coast have laid bare how the misuse of social media can have devastating consequences – yet little is being done. This is what happened.

There is a wonderful old word that doesn’t get used often enough, but could be applied to multiple situations in modern life.

It’s misnomer, described in the dictionary as “a wrong or inaccurate name or designation”.

Has there ever been a greater misnomer than the term ‘social media’?

Quite frankly, there is often very little social about it. ‘Anti-social media’ might be a better designation.

Take, as cases in point, three recent stories here on the Gold Coast.

The first was the tale, well told by now, of the surrender to authorities of a magpie called Molly.

Keeping a native animal without a permit is not allowed in Queensland, and through one thing and another, its carers were forced to give it up.

Cue online pandemonium when the story was broken by this newspaper.

Molly the magpie was popular worldwide, very popular, because of his friendship with an English staffordshire bull terrier called Peggy, lovingly documented online by the couple that found him.

The account is filled with proclamations to “be kind”, to “surround yourself with positive people” and that “all you need is love”.

This did not stop some of its followers from bombarding a number of individuals who they had deemed to be somehow responsible for the magpie’s surrender with the vilest of threats.

They included death threats, and threats of violence too vile to be repeated.

Even family members with absolutely nothing to do with the saga were targeted.

Magpie Molly and his canine friend Peggy. Picture: Facebook / Peggy and Molly.

Similar behaviour was seen at the weekend after an episode of the reality TV program Married At First Sight.

Staff at the Coastal Clinic Plastic Surgery at Southport and Aesthetics clinic at Varsity Lakes found themselves in the crosshairs of online trolls after a cosmetic nurse, who subcontracts at the Varsity-based clinic, featured on the program.

“We have 10 staff, two surgeons and three subcontractor injectors who currently work out of our business,” practice owner and specialist plastic surgeon Dr Drew Cronin said.

“Unfortunately, because of how some people have reacted to what one of those subcontractors has done six months ago, all 15 of those people are being unfairly targeted.

“ … We’ve got receptionists getting abusive phone calls today – constant phone calls of a harassing and bullying nature and threatening behaviour from unidentified people all day.”

All driven by trolls on so-called ‘social media’.

And on Saturday night, a 16-year-old girl was brutally bashed by a group of teenagers in Surfers Paradise.

The attack was, with depressing predictability, filmed on mobile phones, with the footage shared among young people on social media, adding to the trauma of the victim.

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is profiting mightily from its business in Australia, on which it pays little to no tax.

In 2022, for example, it raked in $1.25 billion from Australian businesses who advertise on the platform but managed to whittle its tax bill down to just $31 million.

That’s an effective tax rate of 2.48 per cent.

It could use some of its windfall profits to properly crack down on the vile abuse that emanates from its platforms, but rarely chooses to do so.

Its sites also carry videos shot by teenage offenders depicting them driving stolen vehicles down the M1 at high speeds.

A senior police officer told your columnist recently that it was believed much of the recent upsurge in youth crime, and in particular the theft of vehicles, was being driven by the desire of deeply troubled young people to make social media videos.

Those videos are then shared with their mates in a kind of boasting, which further encourages such behaviour.

Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, arrive to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis," in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2024. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP.

There are many, many victims of these crimes on the Gold Coast, yet Meta and its American boss Mark Zuckerberg never have to worry about the consequences.

It was this problem that Premier Steven Miles was referring to when he last week accused Meta of putting profits before community safety.

“I’m very confident if these videos were costing Facebook money rather than making them money, that they would find a way to stop them,” Mr Miles said.

“There are really three problems, the first is they are incentivising young people to commit crimes (and) secondly leaving those videos there … they’re leaving them as an educational resource teaching other young people to commit crime.

“And the third is they are profiting from it.”

It’s good that politicians are finally waking up to this problem. At the federal level especially, they have the power to do something.

Facebook and its ilk can continue on their merry way, profiting from other peoples’ misery, primarily because they face nothing like the same sort of regulation with which other media must comply.

It’s about time that this was put to a stop.

In the USA, authorities are threatening, for their own reasons, to ban TikTok. The same extreme measure should be available to be used against all of the social media giants, here in Australia, if they continue to be platforms for great harm.

Maybe then, they might finally get their house in order.

It needs to happen. Because as it stands, there is nothing social about so-called social media.

Follow @keithjwoods