Theoretically Facebook gets us out of our bubble.
In reality, Facebook reaffirms our bubble.
Facebook is like alcohol. Addictive. Subject to abuse. Dangerous for some people and a threat to public safety.
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| Facebook "Cover" image |
I enjoy seeing bits and pieces of the lives of people I went to Roosevelt Elementary school with. I see photographs of my nieces and nephews that I probably wouldn't see, were it were not for Facebook. I like this part of Facebook.
American politics would be more healthy if people got outside their bubble more often. I see people blinded by their silos. (I realize some people will think the same of me.) I get this feeling most acutely when I get another email sent in broad distribution by someone from the conspiratorial right wing. The emails tell me that vaccines are a plot to poison Americans, that Democrats plan to go door to door confiscating Bibles, and that Trump won in a huge landslide. That last one particularly frustrates me and makes me want to hit reply-all to the chain letter. I want to write: Hey, idiots, Trump got a lot of votes, but Biden got more of them. Trump is a provocateur. Can't you see he has opponents?
Very possibly not, if one is in a bubble. As this blog noted a week ago, in some neighborhoods the vote was over 75% for Trump, and amid some subsets of people, say White, male, non-college Evangelicals, the number might be 95% or more.
There are Democratic bubbles, too. During the 2020 primary election season Facebook groups of Bernie Sanders' supporters were so confident Sanders would win, notwithstanding polls showing him tied with Buttigieg, that group members thought fraud can be the only explanation for Sanders failing to win in a landslide. Moreover, Buttigieg must have conspired with Hillary Clinton to arrange that the software tabulating the Iowa caucus vote be designed to fail. That conspiracy faded away. Leadership mattered. Sanders did not join in support of the conspiracy.
Sometimes a comment in one of the political blogs I read has a useful observation. Here is an anonymous one in Matthew Yglasias' SlowBoring:
Because of the way we're all segregated, a lot of left people I known genuinely don't believe anyone could be disagreeing with them in good faith – there must be some nefarious underlying reason. So they think 'well if everyone agrees with me, how can we be losing elections?' Mobilization – 'we're just not enthusiastic enough' – is a way less threatening answer than 'actually people don't agree with me.' It's similar to how my grandmother didn't believe in atheists. People might SAY they don't believe in God to be rebellious, or contrarian, or evil, but the idea that the belief was sincerely held seemed literally incomprehensible to her.
As we are learning, Facebook is designed to drive engagement. It seeks cheering or outrage, and in both cases it confirms and hardens a Facebook visitor's opinions. If I saw something I liked on Facebook, I clicked thumbs up or down. Sometimes I commented. I become the advertiser's dream customer: Facebook knows where I am and what I am reading, and what I like. Facebook knows a lot about me. I told them.
I don't mind having one of my silos be of people born about 1949 who grew up in Medford, Oregon. I do recognize the danger of a feed that hardens the walls of a political silo.
Why did I get Bernie Sanders Facebook chatter if I disagree with some of it? Because I intentionally sought it out, becoming a member of various Sanders' groups. But my frustration with some of what I read was a valuable to Facebook as if I had loved it. I was engaged, and clicking thumbs up and down hardened my opinions.
I put all this in the past tense. I have largely abandoned political Facebook. I decided it was dangerous to my mental health. I will try scrubbing my Facebook page of everything except family, friends, and old classmates. I won't be clicking thumbs.
I put all this in the past tense. I have largely abandoned political Facebook. I decided it was dangerous to my mental health. I will try scrubbing my Facebook page of everything except family, friends, and old classmates. I won't be clicking thumbs.
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| Shutkin |
A college classmate, John Shutkin, wrote me saying he was deleting Facebook altogether, and I have heard that more and more people are doing it. Possibly this will become widespread. John dashed off this:
My reasons are pretty succinct and maybe more visceral than logical. I have always been ambivalent about FB: it is insidious and avaricious, Zuck is an asshole, it is a great time sucker and, oh yeah, if it doesn't actively encourage and spread misinformation, then, at the least, it does little to quash it, lest it somehow cut into its massive profits. So the whistleblower on Sunday was simply the straw that broke this particular camel's back. And, even there, once I finally found and navigated FB's deletion procedure, it had me confirm that decision twice and then told me via an email that I had 30 days to change my mind and only then would it begin to delete my info. It is relentless!"
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9 comments:
If it wasn't for Facebook, I might never have known that Democrats are Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles or that COVID vaccines make us magnetic.
I love facebook! I am a senior in a rehab facility and am somewhat handicapped in getting around. I would not be able to travel or drive at night now to events where I would meet up with people. I have over 1000 friends on FB which include my friends and family, choir members, church friends, old work friends, old friends from the conservation groups I have been active in, and others. I can be on several conversations at once on different threads. I especially love it is a format to share my photography in an album format. And I especially like my facebook groups like Oregon Wildflowers (listed as an expert there), Birding Oregon, and various groups relating to Ashland.
I admit to some addiction, but it is my lifeline to the world. People have helped me with my life issues thru this format.
Facebook is what you make of it. As you choose things, they appear more often on your feed. People need to take responsibility for that.
I missed it when it was gone for 6 hours the other day.
Yes, unfortunately "someone should do something" about Facebook because, like a lot of technology; video games, home shopping, online gambling come to mind, the ease of engagement can capture the weak willed and subsequently cause social dysfunction.
The question is "who"? This is the same question we need to ask ourselves about many things in our society. Hmm...could it be...let me see...GOVERNMENT?
Horrors...more government regulation taking away our freedoms. First it was smoking, then motorcycle helmets, seatbelts and driving drunk and now Facebook?
When will it end?
Yes, kids, when society can't (or won't) self-regulate, putting the larger population at risk, the role of government is to regulate or prohibit the activity. While Regressives prattle about less government for self-interested reasons, the fact is that the more complex society becomes the more government it demands.
Facebook is a prime example. Why, when they know exactly what their technology does, didn't Facebook design the app to be more benign? Answer: A. Under the protection of Section 230 they didn't have to and B. Money. The same law (regulation) authored by our own Sen. Wyden, that governs, some would say poorly, online first amendment issues allowed Facebook to pursue its algorithmic wet dreams unfettered for the sake of profit and maybe a touch of sociopathic voyeurism. Who knows? It's Facebook.
One other point: Facebook has a Board of Directors. While we point fingers at the CEO let's not forget that. Plenty of blame to go around.
To Rick's "sociopathic voyeurism":
I have a meme I can't share here that says,
BIG BROTHER IS NOT WATCHING YOU.
You are boring.
One of the unfortunate outcomes of social media is that people prone to crazy conspiracy theories and alternate facts can share them so easily, they get the impression they're normal. It seems particularly prevalent among white supremacists, creating a surge in racism, hate crimes and an attack on our nation's Capitol.
Facebook may be a grasping and problematic messenger, but for purposes of assigning blame for silos and polarization in and of themselves, in my opinion it's still a messenger.
Social media like television (and radio before that?) has thoroughly emphasized the soundbite, the slogan and the quick-hitting image. Maybe that works best with negativity.
Saul Alinsky is a controversial figure from elections past. Still, his crucial insight has been cross-partisan, applying in operation to e.g. Lee Atwater too as much as anyone.
Alinsky reasoned that attentive adults will rarely if ever change the key facets of their worldview. Election money and time is wasted on wishful marketplace-of-ideas efforts.
That means the key to winning is independents plus the comparatively apathetic and/or uninformed. Alinsky believed the winning approach to those folks is to go negative, hard.
He believed the key voters as described will vote against those with whom they don't want to be associated in public much more often than they are likely to be affirmatively inspired.
Hence the best use of money and time in politics is to marginalize ideological opponents as one or more of stupid, crazy, greedy, or otherwise in bad faith. The rest is history.
My wife and I took one look at our grandchildren posting the pictures of their little children and decided to dump Facebook. One of my grandkids uses his children as a marketing tool, to show a happy stable family man. To us this is dangerous stuff. Where do the pictures go? On whose “cloud” , in what country? Read the missing fine print. Who owns the data? How can you remove the data? How do you know it has been scrubbed? Every click and non click is data to be sold to whom and for what? Yes, I know we are product. I have videos uploaded to You Tube, nothing personal but people are taking chunks from my documentaries for their own use in their environmental films. Ed Snowden warned us. Google grabs, Amazon delivers, all the aps suckup your finger movements, credit scores easily obtained. When they come for you unlike Ann Frank you won’t have years to hide. Your cell phone just pinged your location. Go back to snail mail and send your kids their old pictures that were stored in your garage in beautiful frames with a hand written note and a ten dollar bill enclosed for their birthday next month. Out of date, you bet.
How can Democrats be cannibals if they are also vegans?
Just don't give Facebook or any social media company accurate information.
Garbage in, garbage out.
I dumped FB about 11 years ago.
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