Remember the times when people raved about social networks for giving everyone a voice and changing world for the better? One inspired activist can take Twitter by storm and gather an army of supporters, one discriminated person could call out sexism, fat-shaming or racism and be heard, igniting heated discussion of the highest levels.

Well, whatever the good things might be, today public opinion is heaving in an opposite direction from the admiration it recently held for technology and tech giants in particular. Terror attacks, hate rallies organized by the means of Facebook groups and Twitter provoked some activists to voice an opinion that founders of the platforms must do something about it. Terrorism, racism, hate speech, cyberbullying and other bad things that happen on the digital platforms allegedly must be mitigated by the rules and censorships of the platforms themselves (i.e. people behind them, management and developers).

However, by demanding this aren’t we asking too much of people whose task is to create a medium, not to bear responsibility for the actions of every single user?  

In addition, if we insist upon this, aren’t we giving these very people too much power in terms of censorship and freedom of speech? It is not developers, but lawmakers and law-enforcement professionals, who should create regulations and hand them down to the tech companies merely to implement.

Errare Humanum Est

Zuckerberg’s tone-deaf VR tour to Puerto Rico where his hovering cartoon avatar visited the hurricane-devastated city does not show him as insensitive and inconsiderate. After all, his efforts to aid the affected areas in real life are widely known.

However, it makes one wonder, how this blunder could happen. The thing is, when people are famous and successful, it inspires respect and amazement. We tent to idolize them and see them as role models.

Yet billionaire or not, Zuckerberg is only human. We would not batter someone less famous for the same thing. We still tend to look up to people who are great achievers in any particular field and we subconsciously assume that excel expectations in every other facet of life. This is clearly a fallacy. After all, an ancient archetype of an absent-minded professor has some grounds. If you are high-functioning in one area of life, you aren’t necessarily brilliant in others.

However, we see him as a Facebook founder, a face of the huge corporation, not as Mark, a guy who can make mistakes.

IMHO

The similar case is the infamous Google memo. If one reads it in full, not the just the excerpts that circulated in a press accompanied by the outraged commentary, one will not help but see several things:

- The author is biased. However, and it is important, he does not claim otherwise. In fact, he says that we all biased without even realizing it.

- He says that lack of discussion is oppression, whatever the values this taboo is trying to uphold. Fair enough, from a liberal point of view.

- He is only one of the staff and his opinion does not represent the entire company’s policy.

Why then this document caused such furious backlash? After all, the author of the unfortunate memo only suggests that there might be some biological factors adding to the problem, and a body of sound research that backs this theory up exists. He does neither deny, nor justify the gap (he admits it is unfair). He just points out that discussion and a better understanding of the causes could lead to better ways of tackling the problem.

Indeed, trying to bridge the gender gap in the working environment might be a noble endeavor, however, we should start much earlier to achieve visible results. This recent experiment is quite illustrative. People gender-stereotype children before the latter can walk and talk, without even realizing that.

Furthermore, what would a non-tech-savvy person do if they wanted to know, say, how to clean up Mac hard drive? Find some “computer guy”. In fact, they would go for help for any “guy”, rather than “gal”. The bias is persistent and widespread, but we are more willing to forgive it to an “ordinary” person, like ourselves.

The author has a point, however, as a Google employee we expect him to be more aware that average people in the street.

Who Owns Your Voice?

We tend to think of an employee as of an ambassador of company values. Even if a person expresses their opinion in a private capacity, we presume it complies with policies of their employer (if the latter is known to us). “Look what the so-and-so employee has twitted! Outrageous!”, “They should look better whom they hire!”, etc., etc. However, is it fair? I am talking not from a company’s view, but from an individual’s. I am not talking about employees posting insults to customers from company social accounts, as it was in several infamous cases (the latest).

I am talking about personal expression. As it turns out, it is virtually impossible. There is no platform where they would be free to express their opinion without danger to discredit their employer in some way. Facebook became a LinkedIn’s mirror. A bit of FB stalking before job interview is expected of both sides. Needless to say that some candidates are filtered out based on the outcome of this stage. After contract is signed, HR dept. is patrolling social pages occasionally to see if everyone are being good boys and girls. This is the reality.

The only way one can voice an opinion freely is anonymously. However, anonymity is affiliated with cyberbullying and internet trolls to the extent that strips you out of any credibility, should you choose to speak up under a nickname.

How do you reckon, should an employee be a representative of their company 24/7, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Or should public give companies a break when next time someone says something controversial online?