Antisocial Media

Facebook is in trouble.  Real trouble.

Frances Haugen, the 37-year-old ex-Facebook employee who came out and revealed herself to be the Facebook whistleblower who leaked to the Wall Street Journal that the social media platform values content that gets people enraged because it keeps them engaged on Facebook longer and thus makes more money for the platform and its advisers.  Haugen, who appeared on "60 Minutes" this past Sunday, also said that Facebook prefers profits over safety, and it  changed its algorithms to downplay and limit hate speech during the 2020 presidential election but changed them back to allow more of it once the election was over.  Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

Oh, right . . . 

And the day after Haugen came forward on "60 Minutes," Facebook and its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp went out for hours and its stock plummeted.  Suddenly, Americans are falling out of love with Facebook . . . but so many of them rely on it for their businesses and to open other apps on their smartphones (I have a flip phone) that many of them need to use it more than want to.  

I have long enjoyed using Facebook for pleasure.  I use it to communicate with Beatles fans and fans of the band Family, meet people who love "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" like I do, and make friends with various people, among other things.  I use it to promote my articles on a hyperlocal-news site for which I labor.  I have, of course, befriended several fashion models - many of them my high-school crushes - and I started a Facebook group page for Olympic swimmer Janet Evans (my sports crush). But even on a social-media platform on which I and others express a lot of love, there is a lot of hatred, too.  Facebook is used to stoke hate and spread misinformation about everything from COVID cases to court cases.  It's also good at organizing fascist rallies.

One thing it's not good for anymore, at least not for me, is to promote this blog and my Mark 8 VW Golf Facebook still won't let me go back to posting links to it on its platform.  Apparently, more people find my blogs offensive than calls to overthrow the elected government.

Bearing all of this in mind, I won't be so sad if Facebook gets broken up.  I just hope I keep all of my social connections.

Especially with my friends in the modeling profession. 😉 

I'm glad it's back on for now, anyway.  But Facebook and its sister sites were not the only ones acting funny yesterday. I tried to log ion to Flickr and I needed  verification code to continue.  It took over an hour to get it in my inbox, and I might not have gotten it at all. if I hadn't complained to Flickr.

Then I got ten more codes - the result of countless hits of the resend button. 😲