Online Reporter
COMMUNION with BISHOP LAZARUS
If there was something that was strictly prohibited for a young person growing up in the village, it was playing with fire.
Of course, the elders knew, as our forebears did, that fire could be a good servant but a terrible master.
But often, as kids are wont to do, we always found playing with fire pleasurable and fascinating.
As was the ritual in the evening, we would sit on our haunches and poke the fire and embers using either dry twigs or grass straws.
For some strange reason, during unguarded moments, Bishop Lazi and his peers always found it exhilarating to whirl the smouldering twigs and straws in the air to create a visually circular light in the dark vastness of the village night. In fortunate instances, it almost always attracted a brutal tongue-lashing, while the unfortunate ones learnt the hard way either through a thudding clap, a devastating back-handed slap or a sjambok, which often floored the victim. Kikikiki.
The elders knew that a gust of wind could easily carry a stray smouldering ember and lodge it on a thatched roof, which would be catastrophic. Depending on the wind, the resultant fire could potentially burn down the whole village, destroying both property and grazing fields.This, folks, is the reason we were strictly not allowed to play with fire.
There were also cases where the odd meat-craving villagers would accidentally torch the village in vain attempts to smoke out those odd edible field mice. Kikikiki.
The lesson to be learnt was that fire, though immensely useful and indispensable in our day-to-day lives, could not be entrusted in the hands of the reckless and irresponsible, especially in the huge natural tinderbox that was the village.
A very bad master
And so it is with social media, which, like fire, has similarly proved that it is a good servant but a very bad master.
The evolution of technologies, which has made the internet ubiquitous and smartphones and other hand-held smart devices conduits through which to easily and readily access the immersive virtual world of the internet, has profoundly shaped the contemporary world and lifestyles, where most people spend an inordinate amount of time on social media platforms.
It has naturally devolved the imperious power to publish, which was previously the prerogative of regulated media houses, to ordinary people, who do not face any regulatory encumbrances or hindrances.
Behold the new era of the netizen!
However, unlike in the old days where mass communication was a preserve of a few institutions that ran on a clear set of rules to maintain a modicum of societal decency and civility, social media has become a platform where anyone, anywhere can broadcast anything and anyhow — all one needs is a smartphone and some data bundles. And nothing has become so dangerous as a fool with a smart device and some data bundles. Kikikiki.
It is a combination made in hell and a recipe for disaster. What is worse is the ability of these Big Tech-driven platforms to analyse user data, such as likes, shares, comments and browsing history, in order to personalise content recommendations and enhance user engagement by showing users more of the content they interact with and prefer. Here is where it gets interesting: These platforms are essentially designed to maximise engagement through amplifying controversial content that elicit strong reactions, even if it is harmful to the user.
So, social media platforms invariably prioritise posts that generate high levels of engagement, such as comments, likes and shares.
Most often than not, controversial posts are the ones that elicit strong reactions, which lead to higher visibility and engagement. And in most instances, users are exposed to content that confirms their existing beliefs and biases, creating an eco-chamber that could be potentially harmful.If you like violence, social media platforms will expose you to more violence.
If you like cars, these platforms will give you more — not less — cars. If you like sleaze and profanities, social media will give you more sleaze and profanities than you could ever ask for. This is what drives addictions and harmful compulsive behaviours.
It is a classic case of unemotive machines and algorithms enslaving impressionable human beings. In an opinion-editorial written for Fox News in December, United States former Vice President Mike Pence equated social media to a dangerous drug called fentanyl, which has caused so much devastation in the US.
“It is essentially ‘digital fentanyl’, a 21st century technological weapon,” Pence wrote, adding: “The app is so potent and addictive that TikTok is banned within China.”
We must, however, never be deluded into thinking that the internet is an otherworldly domain that is different from the real world — a version of the wild wild west, with neither a sheriff nor rules. It is not!
Behind it are human beings who are feeding it with content that has real-world consequences, such as inciting violence and promoting harmful ideologies.
So, real-world rules and real-world regulations should also apply to this domain.
A moment of epiphany
The West, which previously crusaded against censoring and filtering content on the internet, is now waking up to the realities of the dangers of such folly. On Monday last week, the United Kingdom began implementing new provisions of the Online Safety Act, which clamps down on harmful content that encourages selling drugs, suicide and extreme pornography.
Sites and applications such as Facebook, Google and X are now expected to stop such content or take it down if it goes online.
There are hefty consequences for breaching such regulations. For example, companies face fines of up to £18 million (about US$23 million) or 10 percent of worldwide revenue.
Further, last year, the UK also learnt the hard way about the real-world consequences of incendiary disinformation peddled on social media when it was plagued by violent anti-immigration demonstrations between July 30 and August 7. Apparently, the violent disturbances were sparked by the fatal stabbing of three young girls by a 17-year-old from Wales, which was wrongly and mischievously attributed to a supposedly Muslim asylum seeker.
Social media even invented a new name for the murderous teenager (Axel Muganwa Rudakubana) and called him Ali Al-Shakati, a name that was deliberately designed to whip up Islamophobia and racial hatred.
After the riots, the UK made it clear that mischief on social media was not immune to prosecution.
In one of the most instructive comments, England and Wales director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson famously remarked: “The offence of incitement to racial hatred involves publishing or distributing material which is insulting or abusive, which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred. So, if you retweet that, then you’re republishing that, and then potentially you’re committing that offence.”
He even warned that people who post such material from abroad risked being extradited.
We must not forget that one of our own, William Chinyanga, Nelson Chamisa’s famous scientist, is languishing in a jail cell somewhere in the UK after he was arrested on February 25, 2020 by the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command for livestreaming speeches on Facebook in December 2019 encouraging violent protests in Zimbabwe. Kikikiki.
He was sentenced to three years in prison on December 16, 2022.
Chinyanga will likely be released this year and possibly deported back home.
“We would strongly urge anyone who sees anything online which promotes terrorism to report it to police. Chinyanga sought to reach as wide an audience as possible when he took to social media to encourage violent action against the current government in his native Zimbabwe. Dangerous rhetoric of this nature can and does have harmful real-world consequences,” said Richard Smith, commander of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, when William was sentenced.
Comeuppance
But the day of reckoning will eventually come in good time for online mischief-makers.
Ecclesiastes 8:11 teaches us: “When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him. Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.”
Our information czar, Dr Jenfan Muswere, recently sounded a warning that the mischief on online platforms, which is driven by ghost accounts in most instances, will come to an end.
“Part of our responsibility as a ministry is to ensure that social media is governed effectively,” he said.
“We are preparing new legislation to regulate these platforms and hold users accountable.”
Let those who have ears hear.
If left unchecked, incendiary rhetoric, deep fakes, fake letters and voice cloning, among other instruments of disinformation and destabilisation, can potentially cause irreparable harm on our society. Our social fabric is already being corroded.Control of social media, including its consumption, is not a peculiar practice.
Australia, for example, recently passed a law that bans children under 16 from using social media to protect them from “harm”.
In China, certain users who command a huge following on social media are mandated to display their legal names in order to prevent the misdemeanours that come with anonymity.
We need not only huff and puff and prevaricate on dealing with the abominable practices that come with social media.
We have to reclaim our decency, civility, values, norms and assert our digital sovereignty.
Bishop out!
