I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook so this past February I signed off. I deleted the app from my phone, and put toothpicks under my fingernails everytime I started to type in facebook.com in my browser.
Just for the month. It is the shortest month of the year afterall. Just to see. It was part an exercise of self-discipline, and part sabbatical. I spend a significant amount of time on social networks. It’s part of how I keep up with my global network of friends. It’s how I learn about breaking news and upcoming events. It’s also how I waste time.
My Facebook Free February was a great disruption to my normal routines. It forced me to reflect on my daily habits, and to form new ones.
Here’s what I learned.
1. Eli Pariser Was Right. Facebook Is Like the Evil Queen’s Magic Mirror
When Eli Pariser released The Filter Bubble, I took immediate notice. Like him, I am completely comfortable in my liberal progressive mindset, AND I like to think that I am aware of what people with different worldviews are thinking and saying. In the book, Eli made clear that I was increasingly wrong. Facebook (and Google) are customizing what I see to reflect back sameness, not diversity. While I heeded the alarm of the consequences of this — increased insulation in my own point of view, reduced dialogue with “the other,” and a smaller chance of finding new information outside my usual hunting grounds (friends, media outlets, blogs, etc.)—I also got comfortable.
Visiting Facebook became increasingly NOT stressful. I didn’t have to deal with my friends who thought George W. was great or those who voted for Maine’s bully governor, Paul LePage. I caught myself and “reached out” to “the other” by liking conservative think tanks and groups in order to see their posts. Regardless, Facebook filtered them out over time as I interacted more with “progressive” and “innovative” posts. Fast Company began to fill my feed as did Eli’s new venture —Upworthy (a brilliant entrepreneurial use of his research for the Filter Bubble). While, I appreciated seeing more Fast Company articles, I quickly tired of Upworthy’s emotion grabbing videos and pointless “Do you like good news?” pop-ups. I hid Upworthy from my feed. No longer did I need to be uncomfortable spending time on Facebook. Eli Pariser got it right, Facebook was becoming like the Evil Queen’s magic mirror — it only told me what I wanted to hear.
Action Item #1: I will be sure to actively seek out “the other” online. Also, I will still ask people what they think about an issue offline, even if they already told me on Facebook. There’s more to a conversation than exchanging comments.
2. Facebook’s New App — Paper — Is Just What I Want
Two days after I signed off, I immediately realized that I was without my daily (okay hourly) newspaper — Facebook. This is the upside of their personalization algorithms. I now had to go through the slow process of clicking through my bookmarks or flip through my flipboard to visit the sites that would otherwise show up in my Facebook feed.
I spent more time on Twitter, which is time consuming due to the thousands of tweets shared minute by minute. Curating lists in Twitter (or culling your following list) in order to provide focused viewing takes an upfront investment of time but pays off in the long run. I haven’t put in that time yet, so my use of Twitter is still all about scrolling through my primary feed. Quite the treasure hunt. That said, I did enjoy connecting in the twitterverse again. I came across lots of good reads and some decent conversations.
While Twitter is more of a needle in the haystack experience for me, my friends and the companies I follow on Facebook, are incredibly reliable in sharing content I care about. About a week into my sabbatical I saw an article about Paper, Facebook’s new app, and I thought, “yes, perfect!”
Facebook is an incredible mix of information — from gossip to opinion to announcements to current events to industry news to the entertainment section and the funnies. It still relies on real media companies to produce content, but on Facebook, my friends are the editors and Facebook helps to make my front page as relevant as possible to what I care most about.
Paper might be the magic mirror perfected. All the more reason to carry through with Action Item #1.
Action Item #2: Download the Paper app. Check.
3. Facebook Makes Me A Better Friend — Maybe
I am terrible at keeping in touch. I don’t like phone calls. And I have friends all over the world. After I signed off from Facebook, I immediately missed knowing what my friends in Japan, Dubai, Paris, California, and everywhere else were up to. I missed being able to celebrate their accomplishments with them. Hell, I missed knowing it was their birthday so I could be a semi-decent friend and let them know I am glad they are around!
I also realized that for many people Facebook is the only way I have to get in touch with them. During my month off, I had to cheat. Because I didn’t have the Facebook Messenger app on my phone, I had to login to the website, try not to check out the most recent post on self-assembling objects, and quickly message someone.
There’s research out there about how large of a social network any given human can actually manage. I think its 35, maybe its 350. In either case I have many more friends than that. Facebook let’s me exceed my human limitations and be part of more people’s lives than I could without it.
Action Item #3: Be grateful that Facebook helps me compensate for being a shitty friend. Put a monthly reminder in my calendar to reach out to one of my friends that I hardly see in a more personal way than a “like” or a “HBD!” Write a letter, pick up the phone, something.
4. It’s Not You, It’s Me
When I decided to sign off for February I didn’t really know why I was so upset with Facebook. I found out the problem was me. I wasn’t managing my use at all. I’d log in and scroll through my feed first thing in the morning. Not two hours would go by before I scrolled through again, most likely on my phone. And this would repeat all day long. Shamefully, there would be times that I would revisit my feed just minutes after going through it, in the hopes there was something tantalizing to interact with there. The problem with Facebook was me. I was doing it wrong.
Action Item #4: Moderation, moderation, moderation. Shut off notifications. Be mindful and then honest with myself about how often I am using it. Then, if necessary, take a day off if I am losing control.
5. Wait, No Actually, It’s You. It’s Definitely You
About two weeks into my Facebook break, I had my largest revelation. I seriously resent that Facebook owns my most precious moments. It owns my words, images, clicks, relationships, and more. It owns my birthday, my wedding anniversary, my filial relationships, the birth of my son, and so much more. My life or at least the traces of my life is owned by a corporation. I resent that Facebook whores these precious traces of a life to people I don’t even know, and a lot of them.
A good friend, Rob, regularly reminds me that to bitch about Facebook is stupid. It’s a free service, and I don’t have to use it (unless I want to use Spotify). It’s not some fundamental right that I have. I get that. But here’s my problem. I like Facebook, sometimes too much as I just revealed. Like an unbalanced romantic relationship, I am getting used. And like said shitty relationship, my lover just assumed I didn’t care, that I didn’t feel the same way, that I wouldn’t go steady. So Facebook just went ahead and slept around a lot. I was ready to go exclusive.
My month off has revealed that Facebook is deeply valuable to me —as a newspaper, as a social connector and binder, a reminder system and more. It’s so valuable, I would pay for it. I pay $10 a month for Spotify and Netflix, and that’s painless. I’d easily pay the same for Facebook. I’d pay it if all my content remained mine, if Facebook couldn’t sell off the traces of my life, if it couldn’t go behind my back and tell people I don’t even know that I just had a baby, or it’s my anniversary, or I just liked a TED Talk about mushroom death suits. My problem is Facebook never gave me the chance to reciprocate, that they decided they didn’t care what I might want, and now shareholders are more important to them.
Last I knew Facebook had 1 billion users. 1,000,000,000 x $120 ($10 per month for one year)= $120,000,000,000 per year. That’s $120 billion. There should be a large enough profit margin in that number. And while there are classist implications if Facebook offered a freemium model (middle and upper class could afford to opt-out of data whoring, while the poor likely couldn’t), I think there’s something to this idea if it was thought through further.
Action Item #5: Start a Change.org petition that Facebook should change its business model to offer a privacy subscription plan, post it to a Facebook event, and pray that Upworthy covers it. I am being sarcastic, because I don’t know what to do about this one.
6. No One Can Leave aka Facebook Might Be Evil
Facebook recently paid $19billion for What’sApp, a messaging application. Facebook wants to become so ubiquitous in people’s life that you can’t avoid it, which means you can’t leave if you do anything involving communication — mobile or online. Like I learned when I had to log in to contact people I had no other means to, Facebook is very clear in its intention to become a necessary part of our life. We will need it to sign into other applications (like is already needed for Spotify), to contact people, and more.
And because it doesn’t trust us contribute to the relationship if given a chance, it will continue to sell us out. Our clicks, photos, likes, posts, and next our texts.
I am very uncomfortable with this trend. Like above, I don’t quite know what to do about this. Other attempts to create similarly robust and more benign social networks have failed — diaspora*, for example. Google + isn’t any better in terms of privacy, and newer entries like app.net just don’t have the user base or functionality.
While it’s not social yet, it seems some people are creating new ways to take control of our data exhausts. GoodData is launching a web browser plug in to take control of what personal data is sold and what happens to that money. This gives me hope that people with skills I don’t have, but share a common ethic, will one day disrupt Facebook in favor of us, the people.
