Back to the Roots of Facebook

Throughout 2017 I like many others got fed up with Facebook — I was tired of the constant stream of bad news, of hate, conspiracy theories and divisive political statements. I got tired of it all and wanted to quit.

When I first joined Facebook I joined because my headmaster at my high school wanted me to. I was head of the student council, and so facebook became a platform for communicating with my peers.

As I moved on to new schools and new countries facebook became a way to stay in touch with old friends, seeing what each other was up to. It also increasingly became a way of organising political and community activities through events and groups. That was the beginning of a slow change.

Slowly Facebook transitioned. As I started working more and more of the people on my friend list also became colleagues. I started sharing less of my personal life and started sharing more of my professional life — the two are very tightly mixed, but in terms of content I started sharing more news-articles and work-related stories rather than updates on how my day is going. I even found myself guilty of sharing articles purely based on headlines rather than reading them first — sort of as a way of bookmarking them without too much thought. Facebook became a broadcasting platform rather than a platform for my community, a platform for sharing more than caring — for me, and for others.

I think this is what Mark Zuckerberg tried to address in his statement around new-year.

And so, for the last few weeks I’ve tried a different approach when I come back to Facebook — I’ve tried to share less articles without commenting on them or inviting to dialogue about them (it’s an addiction by now, so it’ll take some time to completely pass I guess — I also needed to consciously formulate these thoughts to be aware of my behaviour).

I, like Mark and everyone who works at Facebook want Facebook to be a better place to be — a healthy place to be.

Last fall I gave a number of talks on echo-chambers and how Facebook and other platforms invite for the silofication of dialogue, and they have been. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The way Facebook and other platforms has turned is in part a result of the technology behind the platform, but it’s also largely a result of our behaviour.

As I started growing tired of Facebook I migrated to other platforms, I spent more time on YouTube and shared more of the things I create as well as more personal pictures on Instagram (@bjornihl), I started writing a bit on Medium, and I came to the realisation that these platforms had the thing in common that they were about more than broadcasting, they were about creating and having conversations about the things created. As a creator I liked it, I found new homes — but still Facebook remained one of my key platforms, especially for my academic and political work. So how could I bring what I loved about other platforms to facebook?

We as humans are generally selective about who we want to speak to, who’s opinion we value — that’s in our human nature, and sometimes that has negative effects — especially when it comes to how we utilize platforms for conversation, platforms like Facebook. We as the users therefore have a responsibility for the platforms and what shape the conversations on them take.

Facebook is about community, it is about conversation and therefore it is about the sharing and development of ideas.

I’ve therefore started using it as a platform for inviting to conversations, asking my community to help develop ideas — rather than a platform purely for sharing articles.

My friends on Facebook are from a vast diversity of backgrounds, from people I grew up with and went to elimentary school with to people I’ve met while traveling and speaking and working, it ranges from baristas, to students, to scholars, to policy makers, mechanics and world leaders. This variety, this diversity has formed the foundation for some great conversations.

I hope, as I change my style of using Facebook, and as Facebook changes those conversations will continue.

So thank you all for participating in debates and discourse surrounding my strange questions both here on Medium, on Facebook and across social media. For me it rebuilds a sense of community, of conversation — a conversation I’ve been missing and that I’m happy to rebuild.

And so as the conversations continue, as we become a community developing ideas through great conversations, as we rebuild faith in this platform, and if anyone has read as far as this, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the direction social media is taking, how you are using it, how you think the companies behind the platforms, and the users can work together to make these platforms healthier and happier places to be.