You can tell that memes around this will begin to appear soon. Just this Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on Facebook’s ongoing research into the impact of Instagram on young girls. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal questioned Facebook’s Global Head of Safety, Antigone Davis, if they would “commit to ending Finsta.”
After what seemed to be a brief, awkward, and slightly humorous moment, Davis responded by pointing out that the Senator must have mistaken the term for a similar-sounding product.
Davis remarks:
“We don’t actually do ‘Finsta’. What ‘Finsta’ refers to is young people setting up accounts where they may want to have more privacy.”
The hearing was made a publicly available webcast which you can view here.
Clearing The Air
For context, this hearing followed one investigation from the Wall Street Journal after its monumental Facebook Files Expose. The investigation revealed Facebook’s awareness of Instagram’s damaging impacts that has, particularly on young teenage girls. In response, Facebook released a blog post, refuting these claims.
The term ‘Finsta’ is slang for “Fake Instagram”, which are smaller secondary accounts created by (mostly teenage) users to facilitate more private content-sharing with close friends. The cultural trend that is now ‘Finsta’ was birthed by the younger generation’s desire to receive acknowledgment and validation outside the hindrance of sharing potentially “personal” information with family and relatives. It’s just an angsty and edgy thing to do.
This explanation seemed to not suffice for the Senator, as he retorted, “‘Finsta’ is one of your products or services. We’re not talking about Google or Apple, it’s Facebook, correct?” There was a terse exchange as Davis, at this point, was not sure what Blumenthal was referring to.
As Chair of the Subcommittee On Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, Senator Blumenthal wanted a clear action plan by Facebook by opening a line of questioning regarding ‘Finstas’ during the hearing. Blumenthal believed that ‘Finstas’ was created with the intent of “avoiding parental oversight” and that Facebook was subconsciously “monetizing kids to deceive their parents.”
The Wrap
Evidently, development will always bring repercussions. Whether in real life or digitally, as technology and ideology evolve, progress will always have tradeoffs. To gain something, other things must give way. As in the preceding example, the spread of a completely “Free-Internet” may be impossible, given the risks and underlying implications on the political, social, and economic fronts.
The information age values information, but it’s also information that can cause brain drain and mass paranoia. Fake news and conspiracy theories hinder the spread of otherwise helpful information and, in their place, propagate negative and often harmful elements that amplify feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and fear.
Are ‘Finstas” a by-product of cleverly disguised corporate greed? Are they just a passing trend born out of self-imposed feelings of alienation? What’s the likelihood that fake TikTok accounts would blow up even more than fake Instagram ones? Who knows? Anything is believable these days. Only time will tell. Until such time, the best we can do is fish for the facts.
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