The Facebook Papers

The so-called Facebook Papers - internal documents from the social media giant's disgruntled employees focusing on the platform's deficiencies - are enough to give me a headache when I try to explain them based on someone else's reporting, especially when I have to look at so many articles about the story to get the gist of it.  (When a writer steals from one source, it's called plagiarism.  When a writer steals from multiple sources, it's called research.)  But here are the basic facts: 

• Facebook had few resources to monitor hate groups and right-wing groups posting misinformation on the 2020 election and encouraging the rally in Washington on January 6 that turned into an insurrection.
• The network is unable to stop the spread of misinformation in Third World countries, particularly regarding COVID, and it struggles with monitoring content in non-Western languages.
• Women have been trafficked in the sex trade on Facebook, and the company knew about it but did little to stop it.  Apple one threatened to ban the Facebook app from its devices because of this.
• Misinformation on Facebook has been tagged as "harmful" but is allowed to remain on for being "non-violating."
• The "Like" button has shown to be harmful to users - mostly children - who get frustrated and upset when not enough people click the button on their own posts, but the button remains in place because it's good for advertisers taking advantage of all the information they derive from our activity on Facebook.   
• Blogs that comment on multiple topics, like this one, and blogs advocating for German cars not available in the U.S. and Canada to be offered for sale in North America are singled out on Facebook for bans for no apparent reason.

All right, that last fact pertained to me and me alone, but it shows just how I am as annoyed with Facebook as with everyone else.  I joined Facebook to connect with old friends, share photos, discuss the Beatles and "M*A*S*H" on group pages for those topics, and connect with more people with likeminded, mostly non-political interests.  I've since been able to use it to connect with and befriend veteran fashion models I had crushes on in the eighties - a fringe benefit.  As for some of my posts not getting enough or any "likes," I don't care.  If someone does like a post of mine, great; if not, that's fine too.  But people with more nefarious ideas on how to use social media have hijacked the platform and spread so much misinformation on the 2020 election and on the pandemic that it's easy to see why we still have a democracy crisis and a health crisis. And other countries are far worse off in dealing with this then we are.   

I have never seen a wonderful idea devolve into something sinister more thoroughly than this one.  When Mark Zuckerberg (above) "started" Facebook at Harvard, he didn't set out to make money.  He sincerely thought he could improve global communications by getting people to connect more broadly with each other.  But now he's gone from connecting the world to controlling the world, raking in billions of dollars and resembling a megalomaniacal supervillain from a James Bond movie or a Saturday morning cartoon more and more by the day.  Lawmakers in Washington - on a bipartisan footing - are beginning to talk about breaking up Facebook into multiple social media platforms with less of a reach. I'm fine with with that, so long as I don't end up getting disconnected from friends I've made through Facebook - especially all of those models - but so if I do get disconnected as a result of Facebook's breakup, I'd best get all of their phone numbers before that day comes to pass.

Their postal addresses?  Nah, not with the mail slowing down thanks to the Postmaster General of the United States.  But that's another post.