Planet web
The world as we know it has changed because of an alternate universe that has emerged in our midst. That alternate universe is the world wide web. The web has upturned, reconfigured, and restructured so many aspects of our lives.
For better, the web has revolutionized the way we communicate, do business, and shop. It has opened the floodgates to a vast ocean of information and made it available at our fingertips. It has given voice to the previously voiceless members of society.
For worse, it has twisted our politics, warped our morals, and distorted our very sense of right and wrong. It has either lowered or vanished many of our social and cultural standards. It has changed the faces of our role models and the character of leaders we idealize.
Why have all these happened? To help us understand, we should imagine the web as an entirely new planet that has come to exist side by side with planet Earth. Unlike Earth, planet web has no government that acts as the overseer and law enforcer. Governments on Earth attempt to impose rules on planet web, but their presence on the web is hardly felt, and they’re ineffective as regulators of behavior on planet web.
What substitutes for a government on planet web are private companies that perform minimum public regulation not for public welfare, but as a means to enhance profitability. These include social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. These pseudo-governments, however, merely impose slap-on-the-wrist punishments that hardly deter criminal and immoral behavior.
What prevails on planet web is the Law of the Jungle. Cyberbullies abound and they regularly engage in a frenzy of misbehavior to maltreat unsuspecting netizens. Sinister personalities fake and multiply their identities to peddle disinformation and harass. Dubious characters with influence and capital manipulate public opinion on planet web as means to accumulate more power and money. Virtually all of the wayward behavior and immoral conduct that happen on planet web go unpunished as crimes. Libel charges are resorted to at times, but these instances are infinitesimally small to serve as deterrence. An environment that allows misbehavior and immoral conduct thrives on planet web.
As a result, it is a haven for manipulators, scammers, and exploiters.
Planet web has also provided platforms for extremists, crackpots, chauvinists, fanatics, and the like to publicize their views and form groups to promote their beliefs. On planet Earth, these characters can hardly have a forum to publicize their controversial beliefs because they can’t get past the gatekeepers of societal norms, like the traditional media, academic institutions, and civil society groups. But on planet web, they can easily create a public stage to broadcast scandalous and indecent views. And with algorithm schemes employed by social media platforms, these provocative opinions are assured of an audience of netizens who share the same beliefs.
The emergence of planet web has enabled people to create dual personalities. People maintain their decent selves on planet Earth and migrate their indecent personas to planet web. The result is the growing culture of rudeness and intolerance on planet web. Groups of people maintain their decent personas on planet web, but they’re increasingly being pushed to the sidelines because virtuousness feels unexciting compared to provocative beliefs in a frontier zone like planet web.
The unhealthy culture that’s evolving on planet web has started to spread on planet Earth. Norms of civility, excellence, democratic ideals, and other libertarian values are under attack on planet Earth. Politics has been compromised by wicked practices nurtured on the web in an increasing number of countries.
Unless democratic governments, professional associations, religious institutions, the academe, and civil society groups come together to push for societal norms to take hold on planet web, planet Earth stands at risk of becoming a colonized extension of the increasingly undesirable way of life that’s evolving on planet web.
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