Mike Hosking: Time to get social media havoc under control

How can Mark Zuckerberg live with himself, asks Mike Hosking. Photo / AP

COMMENT:

So to social media, and the madness and havoc it causes.

Over my break, a couple of themes floated about the internet, and it exercised our kids. And given our kids, like virtually all kids, get their news from social media and seemingly believe it, we are in serious trouble.

This all makes Facebook's decision over the break to do basically nothing about political advertising during elections even more reprehensible. How Mark Zuckerberg and his other reprobates at head office can live with themselves is beyond me.

We could, of course, do something about it, but we don't, and won't because we are lazy, and ultimately more interested in making noise and whinging as opposed to actually seeking genuine change.

Making it slightly tricky for libertarians is the concept that, and what they're arguing, is it's up to us to do the work. Is the ad real, or a lie? We can check it out, we can do the research, and ask the questions. They're just a platform, but what sort of platform is up to us. And that's an argument in its purest form, that does, of course, make sense.

But in the real world given the bulk of the population is asleep at the wheel and their vote is as valuable as ours, it's dangerous.

Anyway, when Iran happened, one of the kids asked whether World War Three was about to start, based on the explosion of hysteria filling their streams and news feeds.

I said no, obviously because Iran is never taking on America on any sort of large scale.

And think about it, what an old world, antiquated question anyway. World wars, what's a world war? And where does the question come from? It comes from the early 20th century, when there were world wars.

The world will never be at war again, not in that sense. Millions of troops shipped to fields to fire bullets, war doesn't work that way now, and it hasn't for decades, certainly not on a global scale.

War is high tech, it's missiles and computers, and people are required less and less. And the results are potentially more and more catastrophic, hence we can go to the brink, but no one is crossing the line, because everyone understands where it ends.

Which made the other social media question just as nutty, are they going to have a draft for World War Three? And will they recruit women? Ah, women and their role. What a question for the woke and the ages.

Anyway, some of the kids were caught up in this and thought it was potentially real. These are bright young adults, I'd like to think going places and heading towards a bright and successful future and yet, they are ensnared in the madness and stupidity of social media.

Countries, of course, quite rightly, are increasingly seeing it's out of control, and the bad is starting to cause damage, if not outweigh the good.

And they want to regulate. As much as I hate regulation, I hate seeing young people duped, bewildered, and lied to by platforms that are only as good as their weakest links.

And, my god, do we have a world of weak links.