The concept of invisible technologies are the tools which we use in the background of existing technology. For example, grading an assignment would be an invisible technology in education. It's an idea posed by Neil Postman when he discussed the influence of technology on culture. This concept is extremely broad and implies that all existing technologies utilize some invisible part to function, which sheds a certain level of truth. The overall complexity of a system isn't always apparent at first glance, and invisible technology allows the mechanism to function in a simplified fashion to increase ease of use.
Current social media utilizes many invisible technologies, a stunning example would be the use of statistics. Throughout social media the use of statistics can be used to spread certain views with the illusion of evidence. Due to the nature of social media, the content does not necessarily require fact checking, therefore when a social media user present facts it more often than not goes unchecked. This allows for a wide variety of points of view being presented to not have to rely on truth, but rather the manipulation of facts in order to progress an opinion.
Donald Trump's twitter account comes to mind in the discussion of the misuse of facts, a more specific and recent event would be his misleading tweet claiming the border wall has started construction.
In reality the pictures are of an existing border fence which is undergoing renovations. However trump doesn't clarify this, effectively using social media and manipulation of facts to further push his political agenda. One would like to believe that people are fact checking the information before they accept it; however when it comes to twitter accounts as large as President Trump's, the influence that simply one of these tweets can have is immense. A social media intelligence company called Linkfluence states, "Numbers are good liars because we trust them” implying that the 'facts' presented on social media are powerful because people place their trust in statistics.
In continuation, another prevailing invisible technology within social media is the advertisements. For many browsers of the internet who do not utilize adblock, it's become an increased trend within our social media platforms. Advertisement on social media has grown to a point where companies are dedicated to social media analytics, as a service for advertisement companies. These analytic businesses will provide information to advertisers such as which tags to pair with their advertisements. It's shifted the paradigm of social media into a highly competitive advertising market.
This has been possible through the means of invisible technology within these platforms. These analytics companies use the means of user statistic to provide the advertisement companies with leverage over the other advertisers. It's a process occurring separately from the social media which will affect the platform immensely. Furthermore the analytics companies are generating databases of the users in the platform, going as far as having the ability to "drill into a specific user, understand how they're talking about a specific product, understand their affinities, that they're probably male, and what their other interests are," as stated by Mr. Kim at Innovation Xchange. It could be effectively argued that this is a violation on user privacy, specially as the level of data mining occurring online prevails; however when the user makes a choice to utilize a public media platform, every action carried out has to be made with the assumption that it is no longer private.
This shift has affected the nature of online social media greatly as the age of anonymous image boards dies brutally at the hands of personalized profiles. While anonymous media platforms do still exist (such as the different variations of chan), the profile system certainly casts a shadow on it; while at the same time allowing media organizations to effectively profile you in their database and market to you more effectively. It gives off the impression that we'll willingly give away our privacy in order to have our own spot on the social media platform, and while these invasions of user privacy are not major; its potentially a pandora's box which we don't want to meddle with.
In conclusion, invisible technologies drive the backbone of social media. They are what give it the current structure that they have, and will continue developing with the platform. The growth of social media throughout the years has also allowed the use of these technologies to impact more and more people, however it is apparent that there's no stopping the current road which it's travelling.
