Social Distortion

Two weeks ago, President Biden declared our freedom from COVID.  Since then, the Delta variant of SARS CoV-2 took over America faster then the Taliban retaking Afghanistan (but Afghanistan's another post).  Infections are up in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, vaccinations have flatlined, states with low vaccination rates are seeing their hospitals overflow with COVID patients, and Fox News commentators sneer at the vaccine as people die.

President Biden has primarily blamed Facebook for allowing misinformation about vaccines on its platform to spread as fast as the virus.  Facebook has responded by pointing out that it highlights stories about COVID and flags any such stories deemed suspicious and that Biden's complaint is simply not true.  I would rather not knock Facebook, because its rebuttal is valid to some extent, and besides, it's allowed me to connect with and befriend virtually every top model of the eighties that I had a crush on in high school.

But Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg (above) isn't completely off the hook.  I don't see anti-vaccine manifestos or treatises on Facebook myself, but that's only because algorithms have already figured out what I want to see on Facebook the same way Google's YouTube shows me videos of rock bands and cars, because YouTube's algorithms have figured out what I like based on how I use it.  Facebook's algorithms shield me from right-wing conspiracy theories but indulges them on others, and these people are the ones who choose to shun the vaccine and make Americans look even more foolish than we are in the eyes of the rest of the world.  And, these algorithms are making America sicker.

Without necessarily intending to, Facebook has done with Google long ago vowed never to do - do evil.  (Has Google done so?  I'll save that discussion for another day.)   Facebook has gotten so big and so lax that it's become inevitable that misinformation about COVID and the vaccine sill leaks out on its platform.  That's understandable.  The problem is that Zuckerberg won't admit that it's a problem and that something needs to be done about it.

I'm with the President at this one. Because despite the blessing Facebook has given me in the form of friendships with the top fashion models who were my fantasy girlfriends for so long (and still are, in a way), Facebook has also been a curse.  If you're reading this blog entry, you likely came across it through the link to it on my Twitter page, but you definitely didn't find it through Facebook.  Facebook still, after nearly two months, considers this blog to be spam and won't allow me to post links to this blog on it.  It's also been repeatedly taking down my links to entries on this blog that I posted months and even years ago.  My protests don't get answered largely because they don't matter to anyone.  And yet COVID misinformation don't get flagged as much as my posts speaking out again it.  

Zuvkerberg could get away with dodging blame before because the previous presidential administration was so passive.  Not so much this time.