No matter how massive social media has become over time, we believed for a long time that we all could have the presence we wanted on our social media profiles. We believed for an extended period of time that what we wanted made public and private on our profiles remained this way. However, as we can see with the rise of the authenticity conflict of Facebook, there has not been privacy for quite some time – and this does not seem to be changing any time soon.
As Business Insider claims: The problem with tying Internet-wide identity to a broadcast network like Facebook is that people don’t want one normalized identity, either in real life, or virtually.
Facebook fed into the idea of the consumer’s “emotional intelligence” and social awareness in the beginning. However, when we were once each our own unique individual, we are now grouped into a large pool of curated information our news feed, being fed information by advertisers who have determined exactly what we want to see on social media.
Throughout the ongoing testimonials Zuckerberg and Facebook executives are facing, tweet including these have shown how the public feels about the lack of authenticity on their Facebook profiles:
do you think zuckerberg finally understands how we feel? pic.twitter.com/sgV2Qg9ohX
— Jenna Wortham (@jennydeluxe) April 10, 2018
Senator: “Are you a human?”
Mark #Zuckerberg: "This an important question. My team will get back to you on that." pic.twitter.com/9C6uUDpQeD
— Mark Zuckerberg Memes (@ZuckerbergMemes) April 10, 2018
People want change, but where exactly does it begin? Zuckerberg has now asked for more time on fixing the authenticity issue of Facebook, but the real question is – how exactly does he plan to give us our social authenticity back?