How Facebook Groups are Changing The World
Originally published on Medium in March 2019
Being ‘Admin’ of a community Facebook group is a task I take very seriously. Some might say too seriously, and that at times might be a fair assessment (sorry, family and friends, for all the time I spend buried in my iPhone and not in conversation). I do so because social media groups continue to have greater and greater influence on our every day lives, and I’ve seen first hand how powerful the group-speak can be on everything from politics to personal cries for help. I have watched and participated in social media discussion from it’s early 1999 beginnings until now.
As a 15 year old, I had two passions in life — my dog, and online forums.
I first managed an online community over 15 years ago when I was a 17 year old with one of the very first desktop PC’s. I started an online forum for practitioners of a niche hobby, with around 2000 members. Now I manage a 35,000 strong Facebook group for my city. Things have changed a lot since 2005, and one of the most dramatic changes I’ve witnessed is not in what content we are sharing on social media, but who we are sharing that content with on social media, and how that is affecting our lives and behaviour. Social media now has two distinct flavours to choose from when we pick a platform and post, mass sharing or select sharing, and it’s the former which has caused the biggest cultural shift. Mass sharing or public posting isn’t only about people who want to be famous, it’s also about average Joe wanting the whole world to validate, or at least hear their opinions.
One of the most dramatic changes I’ve witnessed is not in what content we are sharing on social media but who we are sharing that content with on social media
When we share our food photos with friends, or our political thoughts with pals, we expect that to be shared with our connections, our friends, the great unblocked. The selection we have made whatever that might be. We are now foolhardy enough to know that it might not stay only shared with the selection of people we first made, but that was the aim when sharing it. This is MySpace 2009. Add friends, share thoughts, be better friends. MySpace did it, Facebook smashed it. But now it’s 2019, and things are a little more complex.
Recently I spoke at Facebook London on the topic of groups, on a panel talk for a Fb Community Leadership Circle event – the support provided to admins by Facebook is outstanding.
We now have public sharing on Facebook and tweets on an unlocked profile, posts in public Facebook groups that go viral and discussion threads that thousands take part in every day. Everyone can share their views and everyone can choose to share those views with as many people as possible. Mass communication is now at every social media user’s fingertips, and social media is at the fingertips of everyone. Every demographic is taking part in this wide-scale communication with the unexpected demographics often growing the fastest. I’m now Facebook friends with as many people older than me as younger, that’s new. The young are not abandoning Facebook, they are just diluting their attention between other platforms and getting older. Young users are still there — meme groups are as popular as ever, gotta love a meme, Facebook is seen by teens as a way to pass time, not to communicate. But young people become older people who don’t see each other at school or uni every day, and Facebook goes from fun to essential – and fully communication driven. Facebook, continuing to be driven by real world family and friends connecting online, is a place of great representation. You can reach everyone, the whole city, the whole constituency, the whole electorate. And that can have great real world ramifications.
From the lighthearted, like putting Rage Against The Machine to Xmas №1, to political petitions that via thousands of shares gain millions of followers, toppling governments, imprisoning criminals, causing government u-turns, and embarrassing Simon Cowell. No games here, serious stuff, social media is powerful and it’s in all of our hands. Using group communication we will make changes. Now and in the future, Facebook groups (or their next evolution) are going to play a huge role in our lives — you might not notice it happen. On a local level, it’s already happening.
As I said — social media will have a huge and profound effect on our lives.
Canterbury Residents Group (affectionately known as ‘CRG’ — once mistakenly called ‘Canterbury Resistance Group’ which is oft appropriate) is a Facebook group I set up in 2014 with some core principles that I felt a local community group should always aspire to maintain. It was to consider itself a venue for discussion, not the creator of that discussion. It was to be for everyone, and never shaped with one group in mind, apart from people who are in or linked to the city. The group should welcome all, but not hold people back from displaying their true personality unless it infringes on someone else’s reasonable ability to use the group. Rules are a necessary evil, they stifle debate but are essential sometimes, and should be used with care. Admins should be fair, and not let their bias interfere with people’s discussions. A community discussion group lets people learn about the people they live with, the good the bad and the ugly. That’s an essential part of being a community, to understand the community you are a part of. Admin decisions should never shape the agenda, we are not editors or curators, we are facilitators. And right now, we spend a lot of time facilitating discussion on Brexit.
Never a dull day in an admin’s inbox
Banning the discussion of politics on CRG is something that I’m frequently asked to do, it’s something I frequently give real consideration to, and something I always come to the same conclusion on - that it would impossible to prune or shape debate on politics, without ignoring the founding principles mentioned above.
The problem lies in definitions and expectations. A group like CRG relies on a framework, a structure, rules that people understand and find easy to follow. Rules shouldn’t be open to interpretation wherever possible, to reduce the chances of a disagreement over if a rule has been broken.
Clear cut rules that make sense, don’t upset most people and are well enforced — save admin time and user stress.
For example, on the group, we ban hate speech — something which is well defined, a list of what constitutes hate speech can be found on Facebook’s community guidelines which also give us the foundation for our other group rules on standards and shapes the tone of the discussion. When we delete someone’s comments or views because they used hate speech, we can back up our decision and explain it clearly within the context of the group rules and satisfy any enquiry into our fairness and accountability.
Being accused of not being impartial is damaging for many reasons, if not only because it’s not very encouraging on a personal level. If my two moderators and I were to start trimming or curating the number of political posts we’d have to choose which ones to go, and the science says it’s almost impossible to not let your natural bias slip through. If my bins didn’t get collected, I’d be far more likely to allow the thread criticising the amount we pay for our council tax. As much as I like to think I could remain impartial, eventually decisions have to be taken — it’s not my responsibility to take those sometimes influential decisions — I’m not an elected delegate.
So why not ban all political discussion, or just keep it ‘local’ and not national? Two very simple reasons I can think of 1) It’s far too important to ban all politics, 2) It’s impossible to tell local and national politics apart. The fact is that national political decisions influence local communities and local politicians. National is local, and often local is national too.
But it’s the fact that political discussion online can be such a powerful democratic tool, that keeps me, my admin team and my group members ploughing through it. If you aren’t a fan, I have really bad news, politics will continue to be everywhere you look, and is here to stay for a long time. It’s in the mainstream, and on your main stream, your timeline and your newsfeed. Brexit will be a buzzword for decades if not longer, and Trump tales will be spoken of to our grandkids. The mass debate of politics is on everyone’s lips, online and offline. It’s not always a fun thing, but it is a good thing. The only solution? Perhaps we need an anti-Trump to MAKE POLITICS BORING AGAIN!
