Wednesday Morning Rant

For several years now, it hasn't been unusual to see social networking/social media sites advertising on the web and on TV. Recently, I started to notice what might be a new trend in advertising for social media platforms. I've seen numerous ads both on YouTube and on linear TV for social media platforms advertising themselves not as fun or hip or cool or whatever, but as forces for good. I haven't seen this for Meta properties (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) or for X, but I've seen many of these ads for Snapchat and TikTok.

The two platforms take significantly different approaches in their "force for good" advertising. Snapchat's new "More Snapchat" campaign starts out by highlighting how nasty, corrosive and fake social media is, along with its tendency to create echo chambers. It highlights all of this in the name of trying to establish market differentiation: by claiming that Snapchat is not a social network at all, and that Snapchat is indeed the antidote to the ills of social media. From the campaign's website:

People feel exhausted by the social media popularity contest. Fed up with having to look pretty or perfect in every post. Tired of competing for likes and comments. Misled by misinformation.

But Snapchat is not social media. It never was. In fact, it was built as an antidote to social media.

Snapchat opens to a camera, and not a feed of content, so we can share our perspective easily with those who matter most to us.

You know, the people we're friends with in real life; the ones we feel comfortable sharing our full range of emotions with -- the ups and downs, the good and bad -- without the pressure to post the perfect thing.

Snapchat is nominally 1:1 rather than 1:many/many:many content, but it still has many if not most of the downsides of social media more generally - including its own 1:many/many:many functions called "Stories" and Discover." Not to mention that the platform's main user base - teens and 20-somethings - famously use the platform for sexting and "revenge porn" fairly commonly. This "We're Snapchat. We're Different. We're Better. We're the Answer" shtick is not remotely believable.

But even worse is TikTok's campaign they launched last year. Called "TikTok Sparks Good," it's about TikTok posts that had some putative good effect like reducing drunk driving or helping out the elderly in a village somewhere. Perhaps it's true. I have no way to know, but I doubt it. Even if it is, though, it doesn't offset the enormous wreckage in the wake of TikTok. TikTok is probably the most corrosive, addicting and damaging social media platform - and that's before you even get to the problems with its ownership by Red China.

The drunk driving "TikTok Sparks Good" (not in the YouTube playlist linked above, but I saw it as a YouTube preroll ad recently) is particularly amusing given the "TikTok Challenge" involving drunk driving. It's almost as if TikTok is choosing to respond to controversies by highlighting a counter-example and wearing it as a mantle of courage and goodness. I can't wait for the "TikTok Sparks Good" ad featuring the upsides to mass surveillance and crushed attention spans.

This is all obviously a cynical expression of contempt in a way that is nakedly hypocritical and dishonest. I fully expect Meta to jump on board next with "Facebook: Not just for screaming at relatives" and "Instagram: not just for food pics and T n' A" ads.

But what I find curious about all of this is, "why?" Why these campaigns? Social media is toxic, destructive, atomizing and everyone more or less knows it at this point. It's a bad influence on kids. It's addictive. It distorts reality. None of this is new. More importantly, there are no threats to social media. There is no regulatory risk for the social media platforms. There is no legislative push to keep minors off the platforms. There is no major market pressure or customer revolt. Social media is beloved by the government and the IC and the platforms play ball with the Party. They're virtually untouchable and live in a world without a single existential threat.

So why the "we're not evil, we promise" messaging push? What is motivating it? What do these platforms fear that they are trying to get out in front of?

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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