What’s the Point, Facebook?

Hubert Hu
Hubert Hu
Sep 9, 2018 · 5 min read

Despite being a PhD student and having a Master’s degree from one of the finest institutions in Canada, I’m not that bright of a guy. Not really. My friends on Facebook are much smarter than me. They have seemingly abandoned the platform a long time ago. Living in Facebook right now feels like living in a sped up version of our own universe. Science has prophesied that space is expanding, and one day, it will have expanded so much that future lives will never see any other star but their owns. Apart from a few usual suspects, I can barely see any other stars in my Facebook-verse. Perhaps, they have turned into white dwarves, neutron stars, or black holes.

Come to think of it, despite being a tool to facilitate communication, Facebook has done a lot to hinder my communication. I don’t know if it has frustrate you or not, but it has frustrated me many times. Since I do not have the power to peer into Facebook’s usage data, I can merely conjecture, based on my personal experience, that you too must also be frustrated — or at least bored into give up on the platforms. Here are the list of frustrations that I personally have with Facebook. Tell me if they are the same with yours or not.

Facebook’s Like that High School Kid

You probably know a guy or two who only befriended you in high school just so they could get something out of you. They thought that you were cool and tried to shill to you as much as possible. Once, they got something out of you, they back-stabbed you with smiles on their faces. Facebook’s like that too. It keeps pop up these cutesy messages about how it cares so much about you.

However, behind your back, it might allow other nasty kids to get access to your juicy information. Facebook might even treat you like a plum, dumb lab rat — sacrificing your sanity in the name of broken and unethical science. While you might be glad to be a part of SCIENCE!, let me break your joy. Since the study is so unethical, no reputable researchers can ever use the results of the study! The only use of the study is in ethic classes where the teachers tell you how NOT to conduct a study.

Maximizing Miscommunication

Many times, I don’t feel like I’m holding the same conversation with my other friends. They say something, I try to say something, and they all sound different. Maybe, I’m being selfish and a terrible listener. However, it also seems that Facebook also tries to put more fuel into the fire.

For example, during the Thai coup d’état of 2014, almost nobody asks me on Facebook if I am doing fine or not. And when my house in Thailand was literally surrounded by flood water in 2011, nobody cared either. However, when I made a small comment on a bizarre Canadian political event, many people just jumped on me. They gave passionate arguments and I was told a thousand times how wrong I was. So many comments made me feel that I knew nothing about Canada — when in fact I know enough that I had told Canadians how to vote in the election that destroyed Stephen Harper. I know enough to know that the Premier of Alberta has a brother who was involved in making wonderful video games such as Plants vs. Zombies.

From the evidence that I saw, I could have concluded that these people were evil, heartless, and insensitive. However, there’s also another thing that could explain these interactions: Facebook algorithm. My father once told me that “there are more friends than enemies” in the world, so it must be the algorithm that is pulling these strings.

We already live in a dumb timeline, and we do not need more dumblexities!

Gimme Gimmicks!

Here’s a Facebook’s latest feature: answering some inane questions so Mark can have even more of your data. My answer to this question is “Social Network.”

Facebook has some new features. Sounds cool? Not really. Like your “best high school” buddy who promised the world to you, they would just give you a piece of turd instead. In a blatant act of data smooching, Facebook has been asking a bunch of inane questions to its users. So I gave it answers that it deserved in a hope that Facebook would quit its shallow quest for more data.

So Many Racists, Too Many Racists

A social media platform does a funny thing to people: it makes people run their mouths even more. This means that people will sprout even more dumb stuff. When combined with other things, they just become right down racist. Since I am not (a) white, (b) Canadian permanent residence/citizen, I have been more exposed to these insane shenanigans — from “friends” who gleefully taunted me about my immigration status to a white supremacist, who posted an anti-CNN content the day after Canada Day. He thought just because I liked slightly left-wing stuff, I must love the hell out of CNN. Heck, no! He thought he was clever, sneaky even. But he was just as sneaky as the burglar in a “robbery gone wrong” video.

Despite some of the highly sarcastic tone of this post, this failure of Facebook to prevent racism hurt me a lot. I was once viciously attacked online by “friends” that I had in high school who used racist slurs against me. One of them kept mocking my accent and talked to me as if I was an illiterate caveman until I unfriended him. It took him a while before he noticed it. One of them even encouraged me to commit a suicide. Everyone on campus knew that I was in a psychological mess, and apparently, they were cool with it. To this day, only few people apologized.

Dishonourable Mention: Spam Detection

This section is a dishonourable mention, because I believe that Facebook had indeed improved its spam detection.

I was once a superstar in the intro to cognitive science course at University of Toronto. My claim to fame came in a form of a long and extensive class note. The prof had a habit of not putting his lecture content online ever, so note-taking was extremely important. Of course, some people wanted to get a better insight from my note, so they contacted me on Facebook. And Facebook sent their messages into my spam box. It was willing to allow racists to contact me, but people who wanted my help — they were damned. I couldn’t find their messages until several years later when I dug up spam messages from the past.

So What’s Next?

I don’t know. While I probably won’t deactivate my Facebook account, I probably won’t do much. Just like in an expanded universe, things will just keep existing in an apocalyptic state. Unless Mark does something dramatic, I will just coast along unaware of the cosmos around me. I will continue to use terrible display pictures and background images. Although these are not the pictures that Facebook needs, they are the pictures that Facebook deserves.

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