Why I’m done with Facebook
My childhood was one where social media networks didn’t exist. I came of age at the turn of the century and have been an early adopter of pretty much all the greatest technological advances of the last 20 years. As kids, our biggest thrill was MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Chat and I fondly remember spending late nights talking to friends and flirting with girls from school. In fact, people my age have seen a large variety of technology spawn in our youth and young adulthood. We grew up leading the charge on the advancements in internet communications. From chat portals to MySpace and eventually to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, our generation ushered in a new age of connectivity and communication that was unimaginable in the years that we were born. We were part of this revolution, and now we are witnessing its slow degradation into something else entirely. Because like everything that comes from humble and altruistic beginnings, once corporate America sees potential in it to make money, the party is over.
As a totally initiated and globally connected millennial with a lifetime of participation in every manifestation of social media networking, the party is indeed over for me. The pages have been removed, the history erased, and the connections disabled. So what is compelling people like me to remove ourselves from the digital society and retreat to a more utilitarian use for the digital world? I think I can boil it down to a few key reasons.
First of all, I think the biggest thing that happened was the adoption of the platform by the generations that came prior to the Millennial. That’s not to say that social media is not a place for the Gen X and Boomer generations. In actuality it should be a space designed for all people to use equally, and safely. But the adoption of social media networks by the older generations did something to the discourse. It turned it from a free and open space to discuss, interact and think to a space where the dynamics of the real world we live in began to take hold.
I think that my generation has been one particularly of open mindedness and conscientiousness. But as older generational “truths” started seeping into that environment, we started seeing animosity, censorship and condescension. One couldn’t throw out an abstract idea anymore without the possibility of their overly conservative uncle calling them a child and degrading them for being a naive young “liberal”. Discussions that remained a balance of respect with your peers are suddenly infiltrated by your crazy aunt who seriously thinks that republicans are trying to sterilize gay people. I mean, our generation created the concept of trolling, but now there are more “trolls” in a generation of people who are totally freaking serious about some of this stuff. And in the pursuit of maintaining our real world relationships with these people, we decide to just shut up and stop talking rather than have to go through the unpleasant experience of explaining to an older friend or family member that just because something is published on the internet, doesn’t make it true.
And that’s the thing. WE know that. We were raised in the very beginnings of the internet. There were very few media outlets publishing on the internet when we grew up and it was real easy to spot the bullshit. Nowadays there is a whole industry devoted to duping people who don’t have the digital skills to decipher what is true and what is not. You aunt doesn’t know that abc.co isn’t really the national news channel ABC NEWS because she doesn’t see those details. The generations prior to the Millennial are used to something being published with integrity. That just doesn’t exist on the intenet because anyone can publish anything at any time and it doesn’t have to be even remotely rooted in the truth. Social media has been flooded with fake news and information designed to manipulate and deceive smart people who just don’t know how to spot the bullshit. And it is working. And it isn’t going to stop as long as the platforms that are spreading it allow it to continue.
The other thing that’s working, and a HUGE result of the adoption of social media by the greater population, is advertising. Companies that used to be in the business of creating digital experiences for their users, are now in the business of data collection, aggregation and targeted advertising. What that means is that your experience on social media may be totally innocuous to you, but underneath the surface every post you like, every opinion that you express and every person you interact with is logged and used to build a consumer profile. The totality of that information is then used by huge data giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter to offer targeted advertising solutions for corporate America. And the practice of creating those advertisements is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Companies don’t just design one ad anymore to blast out at all the people who might like their product. Now they are designing ads with other specific psycho-graphics in mind as well.
From everything to color schemes and font to music and imagery, advertising has advanced past the point of passive messaging placed in front of the right people. Now it is direct manipulation based on already understood interests. For instance, if a company wants to sell you something, they don’t just come up with a Facebook ad and send it at you because you might like their product. Now they create dozens, sometimes hundreds of different variations of an ad and target it towards the slight differences that were created based on the analytics provided by Facebook’s advertising platform. They know that you enjoy hip hop music, that your favorite color is likely blue and you have an appeal towards social justice. Next thing you know you’ve been hit by an advertisement with a message geared towards your interests that you would be highly likely to stop on and hopefully click through to the advertiser’s page.
OK, so maybe you think that’s not so bad. I don’t mind if Pepsi tries to appeal to my interests because if they are in line with me I would want to support them right? But not everyone on Facebook is trying to sell you a product. Some people are trying to sell an idea. Now think if someone who wants to change your mind about something has all the information needed to manipulate you to their point of view. Do you think you’d be able to push off this kind of direct attack on your world view? I like to think so, but the considerations are disturbing.
Mostly because the ability of someone to change your mind based on other interests and known factors of your personality is not actually confronting you with a compelling argument to your known point of view. What it is doing is utilizing covertly gathered analytical data based on your social media use in order to win you over. You’re being manipulated by idealistic advertising from groups you might not agree with who are attempting to win your support or your click, based on a facade that was designed using data that you aren’t aware that they have been able to gather on you. Regardless of if you buy into their efforts, that’s a very deceptive and unethical way to go about spreading any message.
You might argue with me and say that understanding that these things are inherent to social media use is a strong barrier to our being deceived by them. But do you really know that? Based now on what we know about Facebook dark ads and other techniques used to put a message in front of you, the manipulation of your thoughts and opinions can be extremely subtle, yet deadly effective. The efforts being put forth by these data giants to monetize what we they know about us is only just beginning. Social media is a publicly traded industry now and they have a legal obligation to their shareholders to make money. That means that investors and money come first. Users and vaguely defined ethical standards come someplace after that.
But that’s the nature of doing business in the modern age, isn’t it? We can understand that a company wants to make money and aren’t necessarily doing something so that we can have a cool place to talk to our friends. But the nail in the coffin for me was the unethical pursuit of that almighty profit at the expense and unbeknownst to the user. Facebook community standards, for instance, are complete bullshit. They might as well just say, we don’t care what your problem is, here is a link to the block button. And just try to reach anyone on Google for support if you aren’t an advertiser. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Customer service on these platforms is nearly non existent. And that is creating a serious issue because there is almost no way to identify bad behavior or voice your concerns about activity on their platforms.
Because of this, it is emboldening those who are not on the platform for fun. It is supporting and protecting those on these platforms who are in it for deceptive gains. Facebook doesn’t care if a fake account is spreading lies all over your favorite news posts. They only care that that person is getting interaction and helping them farm psycho-graphics. And they REALLY don’t care if that account is buying advertising. I don’t have to go too deeply into current events to show evidence of this. The entire 2016 general election was filled with this behavior. And Facebook is only now acknowledging that because the cash cow has stopped putting out the milk. Now Mark Zuckerberg is saying that this “isn’t who we are” and pretending like he is so disturbed that people are using his platform deceptively to steer political thought. Then he turns around and cashes in daily while organizations continue to do it without any oversight.
The digital society is one where boundaries and ethics are still being developed, but if we can’t have companies that are at the forefront of this technological area policing their platforms in a meaningful way, then we are on a path to total disaster. The future will be a wasteland of advertising and manipulative communications disguised as fun social environments that drop your guard and allow companies to pull back the veil and learn the most private aspects of your personality. As you talk about yourself with your loved ones, big business in America is listening in. Facebook is the number one purveyor of this disgusting form of subversive advertising. They have officially lost my trust and I’m opting out.
