The Digital Panopticon - Self Censorship on Social Media

In 1787 an Englishman named Jeremy Bentham, while traveling in Belarus, put together the initial series of ideas that would become the concept of a revolutionary prison known as the Panopticon. The idea was to create a prison that could allow a very small number of guards and overseers to manage a large number of inmates. In essence the Panopticon is a circular structure with prison cells built into the circular walls of the prison. The center is a completely open space dominated by a central tower with windows facing in every direction. The cells all face inwards towards the tower and are all open fronted with bars. This allows the overseers to observe the actions of all the prisoners at all times from a central location while the prisoners cannot see the overseers due to mirrored windows. This means that the prisoners may be under observation at any or all times, or not at all, they do not know. Without knowing when the prison guards may be watching prisoners essentially have to assume they are under observation at all times and thus will be forced to self-censor their own behavior lest they be caught and punished.

While the Panopticon was never built in Jeremy Bentham's lifetime, and has only been tried a few times since, the idea of a prison that controls the population through the threat of ever-present observation has become a hot-topic of philosophical debate for nearly two and a half centuries. The Panopticon plays on a variety of concepts from the psychological to the sociological and even calls into question concepts of privacy and ethics.

Which brings me to the modern reality of a world dominated by social media. Not only do we connect with friends and family but we also network with classmates, co-workers, neighbors, industry peers, customers and more. Facebook alone has around 2.27 billion users, about a third of the people on the planet. That's not considering twitter, instagram, snapchat, linkedin, tumblr, youtube and whatever other websites and platforms will pop up tomorrow or the next day. But while social media gives us enormous power to connect with each other it also presents enormous risks. We cannot seem to go a week without some tweet, video or facebook post going viral and sparking a firestorm of controversy. Some, if not many, of these incidents are closely followed by internet hate mobs, hashtags, boycotts and harassment. It is not at all uncommon to read about employees getting fired or careers being ended as a result of some online controversy. Count Dankula in the UK faces possible prison time for making a joke that would not have been out of character for British comedians like Mitchel and Webb or Monty Python. Whether you like the joke or not is irrelevant, the simple fact that a youtube video has caused such drama is rather insane.

Faced with such potential for personal risk or damage to reputation it is only sensible for social media users to self-censor their own content. Have strong opinions about abortion? It's probably best not to voice them on your facebook or risk upsetting potential employers. Work in customer service but enjoy going to kinky parties? Probably best not to share that information. Perhaps some users have the confidence or courage to make their opinions known whatever the consequences. Yet I think it more likely that the vast majority of us would rather just try to avoid revealing too much about ourselves or our opinions lest we inadvertently cause problems within our peer groups, with family members, in our professional lives and so on. This is certainly the case for youtube creators who risk losing advertising revenue if they step over an ever-shifting line of social acceptability.

With the eye of public scrutiny always on our online activity and relationships facebook, youtube and twitter are essentially a form of digital panopticon, where the users are the inmates and we always run the risk of drawing the eye of the overseer onto us if our activities fall foul of political correctness.
I wish I had an easy answer to this, but there are no real alternatives to facebook or youtube. If we want to connect and stay connected we have to tow the line or risk punishment. The situation is particularly difficult because really, facebook, youtube, twitter and other platforms need not even take action themselves, internet hate-mobs can harass and punish anyone who draws the ire of the mob and pressure employers, platforms, even governments to take action. The only way to survive is to keep one's head down and try to avoid drawing attention to oneself, no matter how soul-crushing that may feel. I cannot recount the number of times I have wanted to leave a comment, share a post, or make a video and decided, after some thought, that I probably shouldn't rock the boat. Maybe there is a way out of this, but I certainly can't see it. The panopticon might not have worked that well in physical practice but it seems, that by accident, we have built a better prison for ourselves online.