Big Tech’s hold over social media is becoming a big problem. Imagine one super huge company controlling Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. That’s like having one giant ruler over a lot of important places online. But why is this a problem? Well, let me tell you a story.
Last week, there was this big fuss with Meta, the company behind Facebook. They said sorry because they stopped people from sharing links to a newspaper and a journalist’s report. This report talked about how Facebook was quiet about climate change. Meta said it wasn’t stopping anyone from talking, but they blamed it on some “security problem.”
For about seven hours, nobody could share links from this newspaper on Facebook. People thought the links were dangerous. Can you imagine that? It made the newspaper look bad, even though they didn’t do anything wrong!
Later, most of the links came back, but not all. One link stayed gone. It was an article about why Facebook’s money rules were not fair.
Then, a journalist tried to post a link to that article on Threads, another app by Meta. Guess what? Meta said it was bad stuff and took it down! Not just that, but they also stopped people from sharing anything from her website on their apps for at least two hours.
Meta didn’t explain what went wrong. They just said sorry and that was it. Nobody knew what really happened. And it made people worry about trusting the news.
This mess shows how much power Big Tech has over us. We have to use their apps because everyone else is there, but it’s like giving them too much control. When they mess up, we don’t have many places to complain because they own almost everything!
Now, some folks say we should break up Big Tech or make stronger rules to keep them fair. But others think that won’t solve everything. Social media has its own problems, like spreading wrong information super fast and making people feel bad about themselves.
We don’t have all the answers, but one thing’s for sure: Big Tech’s decisions can change what we see and do online, and that affects the real world too. So, it’s something we all need to think about.