3 Things I Won’t Miss About Instagram
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked damning documents this week, including an internal memo from 2018 which confirmed Facebook execs knew as far back as three years ago that “ . . . misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent. . . “ on its apps. The NPR reporter covering the story, after reciting the disclaimer that Facebook is an NPR sponsor, said this a pattern, in which “Facebook is aware that its most engaging content is often the most divisive and harmful.” Other documents confirmed Facebook knew of the affect Instagram and Facebook have on self-esteem, in particular on teen girls and young women, and we’ve been aware Facebook continually toggles their algorithms, limiting and otherwise controlling what a user sees and when they see it. If you follow any businesspeople on these apps, you’ll know — the content creators and service providers I’ve followed have constantly complained about how Facebook slows up or limits the effectiveness of their posts.
With this week’s outages of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for a period of 6 or so hours, we also got to see our global dependence on these apps, both for social interaction and for commerce, with many small business owners saying they lost an entire day’s revenues and productivity.
And then there’s this:
