Social Media Should be Accountable

The book Accountable by Dashka Slater, delved into a true story about a racist Instagram account that targeted students and faculty in Albany High School in California. In March 2017, Charles, a fellow student attending Albany High, created a racist Instagram account posting dehumanizing pictures of his classmates and teachers. This situation escalated when the victims found out about the account and started protesting outside the school demanding them to punish the perpetrator and everyone else involved. The use of social media exacerbated this incident into a catastrophe, where students no longer felt safe attending school, fearing they would be photographed and humiliated. Big platforms like Instagram and other social media networks should bear responsibility for spreading hate speech and misinformation on the internet and allowing the issue of racism to continue spreading. The use of social media exacerbated and exposed the racist incident at Albany High School by continuing to produce racist hate speech and misinformation.

An app like Instagram allows you to post pictures, either public or private, but whatever it might be, you can't stop what people do with those photos. The @yungcavage account created by Charles posted racist “jokes” on the internet and took photos of the students in the halls or even their personal Instagram accounts, and in return, posted racist comments about them on the private account. Andrea, a target of the @yungcavage account, would eventually find out about “A racist Instagram account” that “A ton of people are following”(54). The difference between Andrea’s account and the @yungcavage account was that her account was public, allowing anyone to see her pictures and videos online, and Charles’ was a private account, only allowing certain people who follow the account to see what he puts out online. When other accounts take your photo and put it on their account, it is misleading because the photo that belongs to the original person doesn’t know whose hands a video or photo can end up in. Andrea would, unfortunately, find a “familiar photo… Taken from her own Instagram account” and “It had been paired with a photo of a gorilla”(170). Social media allows you to share memorable moments with your friends, family, and strangers online, but it's out of your hands what those people do with your pictures. Unfortunately for Andrea, she was dehumanized by Charles’ accounts and ruined a happy moment she wanted to share online. Social media networks should take down racist posts that victimize a group of individuals and target the people using their app, like Instagram. They should bear the responsibility of allowing other people to take content from someone else and making it offensive and misleading.

An issue with social media that keeps us more attached to the internet is the algorithms that allow us to interact with things that we enjoy the most. When creating an account on Instagram, you are shown a set of rules that you need to follow before joining that app, and on those rules also explain how the algorithm on their app is designed to fit your best interest, allowing you to find content that is similar to you. Rule number seven states “The more you interact with an account, the more you’re likely to see it in the future”(43) meaning if you like or comment on something like a picture or a video, you are going to get more and more related content to what you like so “Everything [you] do online is noticed… [Your] interests tracked by algorithms designed to keep [you] scrolling”(43). This is another issue on its own because if you were a follower of the @yungcavage account and you would like or comment on a post or story, you would get more related content like the things posted on Charles’ account. This could mean that the algorithm is feeding more racist content that shouldn’t be influenced any further, making social media networks more responsible for the pictures or videos they keep on their network to keep people entertained.

In the end, social media networks should take full responsibility for the content they allow others to post on their platforms. The racial posts about staff and students provoked victims to protest against the students involved in the Instagram account and caused both victims and perpetrators to stop attending school. If San Rafael High ever had this issue, it would be resolved with a suspension or expulsion, most likely for the safety of the students victimized by the social media account. Something to take away from the incident in Albany is to be responsible for what you put online and what you do with your presence on social media, because everything and anything is forever stuck online. Even once it's deleted, you never know who might have taken a screenshot.