Facebook is Evil

Here are the first 15 things I see in my FB feed as I start to write this:

1. An article that says "Anxiety Makes People Clean Obsessively."
2. A political advertisement
3. An article from Bill Moyers that says, "John Roberts is Following Corporate America's Long Time Plan."
4. A post from "Empaths, Old Souls & Introverts" that is a quote about solitude.
5. Another quote that says, "Quarantine ain't over, get back inside."
6. A post from NBC news about the US Supreme Court about a ruling on voting.
7. A political advertisement
8. A picture of somebody's kid drinking a milkshake
9. A post with an article about a church
10. A post from WDBJ7 about a vandalized cemetery in Georgia
11. A post with a cartoon of #45 hugging the Confederate flag
12. An advertisement for masks
13. A post with a quote about parenting.
14. A post from Slate.com about "White Fragility"
15. A post from PBS about how Independence Day should be July 2.

Was any of that relevant to me at that particular moment? No. And the thing is, I will never see that same stuff again. Facebook changes every time you open it, offering something new. 

It's part of it's allure.

I have 582 friends, and of the 15 posts above, two are things shared from friends. The rest comes from media pages or is advertising. None of my friends are unfollowed or anything. Maybe they don't post. But mostly I don't see it. I'm allowed 30 people to list as "see first" and none of those are posts I should see first. My "see first" list is mostly family members and close friends.

Not a single one of those first 15 things is from a family member or close friend.

Facebook is evil. I have been searching for something different, but there isn't anything else out there that keeps me connected to people, that allows me to ask for recommendations, or allows me to see things I might otherwise not see. (I have a twitter account but I don't like twitter. It's just a bunch of noise.)

As a (former) news reporter, being able to connect is important. But connection is not the end-all of life, and I'm starting to wonder if I wouldn't be better off without some of those connections.

For one thing, why do I see an ad every 5th post? That's a lot of ads.

The anonymity of Facebook is a problem, too. Even if people are posting under their own names, they are pontificating out into a space without regard for the people behind the names who might see it. 

People are mean on Facebook. I have blocked a lot of people I don't know. They are people whose comments under articles are horrific. They call names, they are evil, they offer nothing of value. I block them so I never see them again.

Yesterday, I nicely asked someone who was sending me stuff on FB messenger quite frequently to stop. Here's my request and her response. 

Then she unfriended me.

Bye bye. No skin off my teeth, although she might have a hard time explaining to my brother why she unfriended me at some point, since that was our connection. Or not. Who knows.

And yes, it stung a little even though this person did this for no reason but spite, I guess. (This goes back to a conversation I had last week, wherein it was determined that I am a people pleaser and part of the reason I haven't finished a book is because I'm afraid someone won't like it. Or me. And maybe that's true. But this morning the sting of the "unfriend" is gone and replaced mostly with amusement and a bit of a wry, "Fuck you" attitude. I'm working on the latter as a default. Topic for another day.)

Back to my point. Facebook is bad for us. By us, I mean all of humanity. Actually it isn't only Facebook, it's the whole of social connectedness on the Internet. If all we had on the Internet were resources, as if it were one gigantic encyclopedia where we looked things up, then the Internet would be great. But this push for "connectedness" is the problem.

Because the connection has become the value, not the people making up the connection. When humanity is not valued, when we stop recognizing there are people behind the names, folks with real feelings and pain, then we're lost.

Facebook manipulates. It does this solely for the sake of revenue. Facebook's algorithms don't care if a person is good or bad. It sends that person what it thinks the person wants to see. I get weird ads because I am curious about many things and I think Facebook can't decide whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I receive ads for both, because I try to read stories from both sides of the fence.

But Facebook and other companies like LinkedIn, for example, are driven by profit. They need us to engage, to like, to click. Every click helps the software understand what we like and want to see more of. This helps them target advertising, and Facebook in particular doesn't care what that advertising is. If someone wants to target "witch haters" there's a category for that, I suspect. If someone wants to target "witch lovers," same thing.

It goes like this: 
I react to a post with a thumbs up.
Facebook decides I like that kind of stuff (kitties, Lord of the Rings topics, guitars, whatever)
Facebook sends me more stuff like that.
The company uses its knowledge of me to send me ads that it thinks I will like, hoping I will click on them.

Because of all of these ads, Facebook is the world's largest marketing company. It can pinpoint, with some accuracy, what a person wants to see and what companies want me to see their product. Facebook makes money from the ad clicks.

Facebook is collecting tons of data every time I open up my FB page, or leave it sit open on my computer. (I refuse to put FB on my phone.)

The only choice I have in the use of this data, really, is whether or not I use Facebook. If I use it, I lose control of the data the minute the account is created.

That leaves tons of personal data, most of which I am not even aware I've imparted, in the hands of a massive corporation that sees me not as human being, but as a data set. I'm just a bunch of 010101s in their eyes, and the way that data is manipulated equals how much money I make them.

Because we live in a capitalistic society that worships money and does not give one damn about humanity, either in aggregate or as a sole entity, Facebook can and will use this data any way it wants to make as much money off of my data set as it can. Never mind if the ads hurt my feelings, or manipulates me into something I otherwise would not have been manipulated into.

If Facebook uses my data for nefarious reasons, it might show me content to try to change my mind on something. Theoretically, it could try to make me fall in line with whatever agenda is most beneficial to it - and maybe that's a political stance, or maybe it's just a lot of ads that Facebook is good so I'll keep using it.

Unfortunately, Facebook has actually experimented on its users to see how people react to things. In 2014, an article published by Forbes described a “massive psychological experiment” Facebook created to test reactions to emotional content. The result? Users created similar content that reflected the emotions Facebook was throwing at them. This is called "emotional contagion." I feel sure they do such tests regularly, and we don't know it.

This means Facebook has the power to manipulate me, no matter how intelligent I may think I am. 

I think this is evil.

The more I am on Facebook, the more exhausting and useless I find it to be. I don't post much, and I try not to post too many political items on it because of my work as a writer.

My last 15 posts?
1. How to watch the "Buck Moon" lunar eclipse
2. A personal post about my heat pump dying and the good service I received.
3. A quote from The Lord of the Rings
4. Sharing of an article about #45's decisions on the coronavirus and how poorly the federal response has been to this pandemic.
5. A quote from the mayor of Edisto Beach, SC, about wearing masks.
6. Shared a post from Carilion Clinic about its "Art as Healing" program
7. Shared a video of a priest dancing to "Oh Happy Day."
8. Posted a photo of my mother on her birthday and suggested folks donate to pancreatic cancer research foundations.
9. Shared a post about Ian Holms' death (he was an actor in The Lord of the Rings movies)
10. Posted a photo about maintaining social distance that I thought was novel.

11. Shared Roanoke Fire-EMS's announcement of my husband's retirement.
12. Shared a survey about responses to the pandemic and mental health
13. Posted a request that people who live around me report to APCO if they were having power outages.
14. Shared a story about how Germany responded to the pandemic.
15. Thanked people for wishing me happy birthday.

I have no idea what any of that says about me, other than I think the US response to the pandemic has been poor (which is obvious to anyone who can read), I like Lord of the Rings, astronomy, and had a birthday.

But all of that can be used against me, somehow or another. I guess a Lord of the Rings hater could come after me with gusto if he/she wanted.

Let's face it. Facebook is bad. It's only grown worse. It's irritating. It is no longer just a place to share stories about pets. I've been on Facebook for 11 years. When I look at my friends list, I honestly don't know who a lot of these people are. Many asked to be my friend when I was writing for the newspaper. Some I went to high school with and have no desire to ever see again.

If I haven't talked to someone in three years, do I really need to see photos of his or her dinner in my Facebook feed? Do I need to know that they are Republican or Democrat? 

It's really better if I don't know, to be honest.

My news feed doesn't do me much good anymore, aside from updates on the weather and occasionally local news. The algorithm has gotten out of hand. Facebook now knows so much about me that it belches out everything it can at me, regardless of my stance on various issues. Since I'm a curious person who does a lot of online research, I see some bizarre things sometimes.

How do I fix this, if I want to stay on Facebook? Sometimes I unfollow someone for 30 days - put them on "snooze" - if they're posting things constantly that I find ridiculous. Or if I realize I don't know who someone is and don't care if I ever see anything from them again, I could unfollow them. I could even unfriend the people I recognize only as names.

Then I'd end up with a feed full of news, I suspect, because I also follow various newspapers and other news media. I used to be a reporter. Of course I wanted to see the press releases of obscure crap when I was writing for the paper. But I'm not so sure I want to see it now. Why did I see a story about the Buck Moon first thing this morning? Because Facebook knows I follow NASA and am interested in eclipses.

So then a valid story becomes propaganda, doesn't it? Doesn't that reinforce my "like" for things not of this earth?

Is Facebook still relevant to me in my life? I don't know. 

I do know I don't want to know that neighbor-so-and-so thinks #45 was anointed by God. That just gives me the creeps and it isn't information I can do anything with. 

I do want to know if my friend fell down and hurt herself, so I can offer to help, or if my local county government has done something that would affect me. Some information is important to me.

But I think most of it is not. Not anymore. Facebook has now tied me to people I'd just as soon not be tied to, really, and I know more about them than I want to know. I try not share too much personal information on Facebook (see above). But of course I do. It's what it's there for. I want my friends (my real friends) to know my husband retired. I want them to know there's a lunar eclipse at midnight on July 4 because I think that's interesting. But politics? Religion? The things we were told not to talk about when we were younger?

Maybe most of that stuff needs to stay where it used to be, between close friends who meet for tea on the back patio on a warm summer's evening.

Facebook is about connections. Sometimes connections aren't good. I see posts all the time with pictures saying "This person did thus and so . . . let's make this go viral." This is to punish the person for whatever they did and I never, ever post those. This kind of thing is how the governor of Michigan ended up with a bunch of white rednecks with AR-15 style rifles in the state house, bitching about wearing masks.

It is how wearing masks became political.

Not all connections are good. When a company creates connections and sees those connections only as data, it can and will do whatever it likes with the information. You can do anything you want to data. You can do things to data that you'd never do to an actual human being.

Maybe it's time to let Facebook go, or let it just be a news feed and not a social connection.