Ya know, I never liked Facebook from the get go. I don’t lead a particularly interesting life, and, while I’m plenty fine with sharing my opinions and observations (as witnessed by my decade+ years as a blogger), I have no need to share the not particularly interesting details of my not particularly interesting life.
I didn’t like hearing from people I knew in the wayback who really didn’t want to reconnect. They just wanted to add to their roster of “friends”. I didn’t like seeing the frothing nonsense posted by some farthest of the far right relations. (Yes, even I have some of them.) I’ve always been something of a privacy buff, and FB just gave me the willies, privacy-wise. I didn’t particularly like Mark Z. even before I saw The Social Network. Sure, the Winklevoss twins almost make Mark seem like a nice guy. Almost.
Maybe if I’d had cute kids and grandkids I’d have jumped on this platform like a trampoline. But I don’t. So I didn’t.
I do like looking at the cute kids and grandkids of my friends and families. Other than that.
But I was ticked off enough about Facebook’s behavior with respect to election interference/Russian trolling to consider quitting FB, even though all I am is a watcher, not an active participant. A number of my friends (largely techie males) did exit stage left. I stayed put. I don’t look at it as often as I used to. But I stayed put. Facebook wasn’t that bad. And I really do like looking at those cute kid and grandkid pictures. So I stayed put.
And Facebook gave me cover by making at least some of the right noises about doing a better job to rid their world of fake news, trollers, Russian interference, etc. (All the while, of course, maintaining that they’re just providing the pencil and paper. They can’t possibly be held responsible for conspiracy theorizing, hate speech, racism, bullying, lies and other toxic content.)
And. Now. This.
As it turns out, while Mark Zuckerberg was on his phony-ish but at least lip service-y mea culpa tour, his right hand woman, Sheryl Sandberg:
…has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, persuading a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic. (Source: NY Times)
Nothing like playing the George Soros card – which is really a trifecta: foreign born, liberal, Jewish - but it’s sure not what you’d expect from a company that’s chock full of Silicon (nominal) liberals.
But those Silicon (nominal) liberals didn’t want to appear to be Silicon (nominal) liberals. Bad for business! Conservatives and extreme right wingers consume adds on social media, too. And they might be put off if FB, say, decided that they didn’t want their oh so neutral platform used to, say, destroy faith in democratic institutions, undermine our electoral process, and generally wreak great havoc.
So they downplayed how bad Russian efforts had been. And, worse, went after their perceived opponents in a thoroughly tawdry way. Etc. (Playing the Soros card: FFS!)
I have a lot of techie stuff on my plate that I just plain don’t want to deal with.
My phone battery is nearly played out, so I need a new phone. I’m hoping it lasts until after the holidays. And then I’ll have to deal with it.
My Surface Pro – from roughly the same vintage as my phone (somewhere between three and four years old) – is becoming a bit balky, especially with respect to holding on to an Internet connection. So I need a new Surface Pro. I’m hoping mine lasts until after the holidays. And then I’ll have to deal with it.
Getting off of Facebook would be, of course, a lot easier and a lot less costly than getting a new phone and//or laptop. But doing so will take up psychic space that I don’t feel like allocating to it just now. So I won’t be looking at all those cute kids and grandkids. And come the first of the year, I plan on leaning out and quitting Facebook in a delayed huff.
They won’t miss me. And I’ll miss all those cute kids and grandkids.
But I didn’t need another reason to despise Facebook, and now I’ve got one.
2 comments:
I never liked Facebook from the get go either. Although I am probably addicted to the internet and spend a few hours a day on it I always thought of Facebook kind of like Fakebook, people presenting an idealized and probably inaccurate image of themselves and their families. People that are "so in love," and then are onto someone else the next year. People that are so very happy and smiley and huggy and then you find out they were inpatient on a psychiatric hospital for a few weeks for depression. None of my kids use Facebook. One tried it for a year and then stopped. I do have 3 very attractive kids and three very cute grandsons; but, I try to keep my ego in check and not bore people with photos of them. I do have relatives that do Facebook and would like me to go on it to "keep up" with the kids, etc.; but, to me it was never worth the trade-off of contributing to something which I didn't trust with privacy or which could be used to mass manipulate people's thinking. That has always gone on; but, now it's on a global scale and so much easier. Franny G.
I deleted my account earlier this year and don't miss it. This latest is just appalling and probably would have been the last straw. When you delete it, make ampointnof telling people you'd still like these their updates and urge them to consider a method that doesn't enable a dumpster fire of a company that's run by sociopaths.
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