It was certainly an unusual way to start a Thursday morning to discover the Facebook company effectively declaring war on its users in Australia. In a very poorly-targeted attempt to flex its muscle regarding proposed legislation requiring it to pay for news content it provides to Australians, the company’s decision to place a snap blanket ban on a large number of Facebook hosted pages and their associate content has left many people pretty angry and asking what it was Facebook were actually hoping to achieve.
While some organisations affected were large mainstream media organisation, also caught up in the net were community groups; government pages, including fire and rescue authorities and the Bureau of Meteorology; national organisation such as Judo Australia; and even universities including the University of Southern Queensland. Political satire sites such as the Beetoota Advocate were axed, while some media organisations like WIN News Toowoomba were unscathed. At the peak of pique, Facebook even banned its own page. While much of the collateral targeting has been reversed, the collateral damage still is working its way through the system.
While the sins of a former life as an academic with an interest in the politics of media and communications technology could have me writing at length about the context, wisdom and likely outcomes of this fracas, it is probably best left to another forum. However, what happened has prompted me to give some thought to the vulnerability that small Clubs like ours face when you have a privately owned commercial entity holding the majority of access to your content and media channels.
For a number of years now, the Club has had a fairly haphazard engagement with social media, trying to minimise the amount of time required to produce and push content as opposed to getting on with the core business of practising and promoting the arts we love. Primarily, we put up posts in this blog, which then get auto-syndicated to our Facebook page and bundled up into the weekly Budo Bulletin. We have Facebook groups for members, including a general one and discipline-specific ones. In theory these are for all members to lob in and share interesting martial arts related material, but in practice they are usually fairly quiet.
Over the last few years, I have often wondered about the value and targeting of the content the Club creates. It is useful to have a presence online for new people to find us and have a look at the type of things that we do/support. It is a handy way to communicate upcoming events for Club members, and the narrowcasting we do in the Facebook Messenger groups can keep people informed up to date with short-notice changes and notifications.
The key question I have often pondered is whether we need to do more, or if in case we do too much at the moment in this space. And so, I want to circle back to the consequences of what happened Thursday.
The first thing that springs up is the vulnerability of the Club should the Facebook ecosystem become inoperative. While it is convenient to have relatively seamless transitions between our personal social media consumption, subsequent information sharing, and narrowcast or direct messaging, that come at a cost if the one company can arbitrarily turn the taps off.
Second it prompts an evaluation of the actual social media that Club members use. There is a joke that only people over 40 actually use Facebook, and that all the happening things for the “young folk” are elsewhere. As a decided member of the over 40 club, I am not in the best position to evaluate that, and I’ve often been caught in the thought that many of the younger members of the Club are using Facebook only because that has been the major channel we have used.
I want to start a proper conversation with Club members regarding what information they would like to receive/have access to, and what channels they would prefer to receive it through. As an interim measure, I have set up a Club Twitter account to duplicate the distribution channel that we currently have in the Facebook ecosystem. For those with personal Twitter accounts, I’d ask that you look up and follow @ArtsBbrd so that we can have a back-up channel for our information.
The Twitter approach is ultimately a band-aid one. Twitter itself is obviously another privately owned electronic ecosystem which could take similar action to selectively shut down accounts (as they did with Periscope content), it at least provides the Club a buffer. But before we can work out the solution of best fit for us we need to better find out
Which social media platforms are actually being used by preference in the Club?
What types of information Club members want from us, and what things they want to contribute? Yammer? Signal? Mastodon anyone?
How to provide service without a massive overhead of time and worry for one or more people. Ultimately we are in the business of practising our arts, and not managing a social media marketing company?
Plenty to think about in the coming few weeks, I think. I’ll be asking folk directly what you think is our best move forwards from here. Any and all comments are most welcome.