Social media should be great, right? In theory it just makes sense and it should be an easy decision on whether you participate in it or not. Let’s face it, college can be a stressful time and it helps to connect with your friends, share content you enjoy, chat, and keep up-to-date with each other’s life. Awesome, who doesn’t want that?! However, we now know that social media, as it currently stands, comes with significant downsides and risks. The impact it can have on mental health (on study finding a 70% increase in self-reported depressive symptoms among groups using social media), the harassment and bullying, the real-world implications of companies harvesting and selling our immensely valuable data, these are all factors the social media giants forced upon us in order to use their platforms. But we at Ethical Social want to turn the industry on its head and make social media an easy decision again. We actually want to make social media a place that puts the community and the user first.
We’re aiming to take on the giants of the social media industry and we need your help. Our tagline is “social media that doesn’t suck”, and we like to break that down into three categories: We don’t suck your data; we don’t suck joy from your life; and we don’t suck as part of the global community. Let us show you how we do this and maybe we can convince you to join us in our social media revolution. Let’s start with how we don’t suck as part of the global community, because we’re really excited about this! Ethical Social donates 50% of all profits made to member selected charities every year. Once you become a member you will be able to vote for the charities you’d like us to donate to each year. We, as a community, will decide which charities are supported. This will enable us to become a tool for real positive change in the world as we support worthy charities. It will bring people together to form a stronger community, as we will all have our say and be invested in improving the world together. Instead of social media dividing us, Ethical Social will bring us closer together in the name of something truly positive.
We don’t suck joy from your life. One of the reasons we started Ethical Social was because we noticed social media had created division in society. The algorithms and bots push content at you to keep you online longer and show you more ads. Studies have shown two reasons why this is creating division. The first is that bots push content at you based on subjects you’ve liked in the past, creating an echo chamber and disconnecting you from other viewpoints. The second is that these algorithms push content that angers you, as anger is a powerful motivator to keep you online, posting and scrolling. It riles us up, polarizes us into an us vs them mentality and breaks down social glue. We don’t want that at all! We want you to be able to reach the end of your feed, did you know that was even possible? You choose how much you use us, not the bots.
We don’t suck your data. At Ethical Social we will never show you ads or compile data profiles on you. Did you know, a study showed just how well a certain social media company’s algorithm can predict your personality based on how many things you have ‘liked’ – at 70 it can guess as well as a friend or roommate; At 150 as well as a family member; and at 300, it can beat your spouse. But Ethical is different to all of that. We charge a small monthly fee, but we are offering 12 months totally free for College News readers, just FYI… And that’s it. No secret data mining, not bots pushing content at you to keep you online longer to see more ads. What you see is what you get.
But all of this can’t happen without you! Our battle to change social media into a force for good won’t happen without a strong community. We need you to join us and help us spread the word. Together we can reshape the social media landscape to one of respect to the user, and to one that will help improve our world. Will you join us in our social media revolution?
