A World Without Facebook - Change My Mind, LLC
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A World Without Facebook By Change My Mind, LLC. Facebook has become a blight on our global community. With its monopolistic dominance of the social media market, its implacable algorithms that have harmed civil discourse, its susceptibility to be hijacked as a weapon of dis- and misinformation by foreign state actors, and its perennial inability to pro-actively govern itself and prevent its harmful operation, Facebook continually demonstrates its unfitness for any use by societies who wish to progress and flourish. The Zuck and Company have had more than enough time to get their house in order, and this particular house of horrors should be purchased, re-purposed, divested, and decommissioned. Change My Mind, LLC is offering to undertake this work using PayPal funding. The leg work for making this case has already been compellingly undertaken by countless journalists, authors, and filmmakers. In the latter camp, Davis Coombe, Vickie Curtis and Jeff Orlowski have crafted a riveting, if not terrifying, 2020 documentary film, The Social Dilemma, which exposes the dark underbelly of the world’s most popular social media site. The site ostensibly offers users a chance to “Connect with friends and the world around you,” but never ceases to deliver divisive discourse, a coarsening of online (and offline) behavior, allegations of antitrust violations, data privacy breaches, user-generated content exploitation, and illicit use by state actors and individuals. Change My Mind, LLC. is offering to purchase Facebook for its current market value, which as of March 2021 was approximately $360B. Once wrested from complacent company administrators, who have virtually no incentive to change (Facebook has doubled in value in the last five years), the site can be managed more prudently and in the interests of its users. The company was designed to maximize growth, attention, and engagement. It was also designed to harvest its users’ data for sale to advertisers. This advertising-supported, attention-exploiting model is at the heart of what makes Facebook pernicious, insidious, and dangerous. Less growth, attention, and engagement are antithetical to its exponential expansion over the last 15 years. Slower growth, no growth, or contraction means less revenue and shrinking shareholder value. With these facts in mind, consider this real estate advice from Elizabeth Weintraub, “Tearing down a house might be easier and cheaper than trying to fix up a home that has completely deteriorated.” She adds, “Sometimes the home is in such poor condition that it can’t be salvaged” (Weintraub, 2018). Once purchased and under a new administration, Facebook will be re-purposed into an educational primer on algorithms, recommendation engines, and the economics of selling user data and preferences to advertisers. The black-box nature of algorithms that nudge our behavior and influence our attention, opinions, and purchasing, means that none of us are privy to their design, ultimate intentions, and impacts. Such algorithms increasingly have a significant footprint in our lives. Imagine a technology ecosystem in which the world user community better understands how algorithms work. Imagine a savvy social media user base that better understood how its personal data and preferences were packaged and sold to advertisers. Change My Mind will direct the company to offer new features and functionality that will teach us about how algorithms work and shine a light on the programming logic of recommendation engines. Another new feature we are proposing will include more details
A World Without Facebook
about how our personal data is packaged and sold. What do our salable profiles look like?
What demographic buckets are we assigned? These, and other related questions, will be
answered by the re-purposing of Facebook.
At the same time, Instagram and WhatsApp will be decoupled and divested from Facebook.
By purchasing its competitors such as Instagram and WhatsApp, Facebook transformed itself
into an even more powerful monopoly. By consuming its competitors, the company
discourages new entrants to the market and consequently extinguishes fair and healthy
competition. Once independent buyers own Instagram and WhatsApp, free-market
incentives can work appropriately again. Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to see a company
with sufficient social responsibility and concern create a new photo-sharing app that work
toward lowering the suicide rates of its teen users? More on this tragedy will follow.
Once the company is purchased, under new management, re-purposed, and divested, the
final phase of this project will follow: the decommissioning and dissolution of Facebook. In
the tech world, the term sunset is used to indicate the planned obsolescence and
decommissioning of an application, site, or system. Once Facebook is decommissioned, we
will live in a world in which the path forward will be cleared for better ideas, better incentives,
and more enlightened business models for social media.
So you think Facebook isn’t that bad? I mean, it’s a great way to stay connected with family
and friends, right? And it helps your grandmother feel less isolated and lonely, right? These
are anecdotal impressions of what the site offers. Let’s go on a tour of some mostly recent
events and news coverage and unpack the reality of this social media giant.
Kevin Roose, in a 2021 New York Times (NYT) piece, offers a different characterization of what
Facebook delivers at scale:
Hoaxes, lies, and collective delusions aren’t new, but the extent to which millions of
Americans have embraced them may be. Thirty percent of Republicans have a
favorable view of QAnon, according to a recent YouGov poll. According to other polls,
more than 70 percent of Republicans believe Mr. Trump legitimately won the election,
and 40 percent of Americans — including plenty of Democrats — believe the baseless
theory that COVID-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab. (Roose, 2021, para. 5)
While discussing possible solutions, Roose (2021) reports, “Several experts I spoke with
recommended that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency taskforce to tackle
disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a ‘reality czar’”
(para. 16).
As for Facebook Groups — they are a better way to connect because it’s a more targeted and
personal communication channel, right? Nina Jankowicz and Cindy Otis, writing for Wired,
provide some insight:
And despite the company’s recent efforts to crack down on misinformation related to
COVID-19, the groups feature continues to serve as a vector for lies. As we wrote this
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story, if you were to join the Alternative Health Science Newsgroup, for example,
Facebook would then recommend, based on your interests, that you join a group
called Sheep No More, which uses Pepe the Frog, a white supremacist symbol, in its
header, as well as Q-Anon Patriots, a forum for believers in the crackpot QAnon
conspiracy theory. As protests in response to the death of George Floyd spread across
the country, members of these groups claimed that Floyd and the police involved were
‘crisis actors’ following a script. (Jankowicz & Otis, 2020, para. 6)
Jeff Horwitz (2021), reporting for the Wallstreet Journal (WSJ), offered another perspective
on groups, “...Facebook’s own research found that American Facebook Groups became a
vector for the rabid partisanship and even calls for violence that inflamed the country after
the election” (para. 2).
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, is a smart guy with his finger on the pulse of our technology
ecosystems. In a recent interview, Cook didn’t mention a specific company, but his market
analysis very clearly apply to Facebook.
As reported by Justin Barison (2021), Cook made critical, if not withering, assessments:
We should not look away from the bigger picture. In a moment of rampant
disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a
blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement; the
longer, the better, and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible.” Cook
went on, “Too many are still asking the question ‘How much can we get away with?’
when they need to be asking ‘What are the consequences? What are the
consequences of prioritizing conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply
because of the high rates of engagement? What are the consequences of not just
tolerating, but rewarding content, that undermines public trust in life-saving
vaccinations? What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users joining
extremist groups and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more?
It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t come with a cost —
a polarization of lost trust, and yes, of violence. A social dilemma cannot be allowed
to become a social catastrophe. (paras. 7-14)
Were Facebook Groups responsible for helping shape the views of an American House
member, or did she arrive at her own conclusions by simply scrolling her algorithm-populated
newsfeed? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., showed some support for a notion to hang
Barack Obama. Writing for AP NEWS, Will Weissert and Brian Slodysko (2021) reported:
The Georgia Republican has expressed support for QAnon conspiracy theories, which
focus on the debunked belief that top Democrats are involved in child sex trafficking,
Satan worship, and cannibalism. Facebook videos surfaced last year showing she’d
expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim views ... She frequently attacked
Democrats and railed against coronavirus pandemic safety measures, like mask-
wearing. Greene also called on Congress to overturn the results of Biden’s election.
(paras. 5-24)
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Now, on to more global concerns and challenges. Many of us in the US think that COVID-19 is
nothing more serious than the flu and the preventive measures are an overreaction. In fact,
some in the US think it’s a political machination of the Democrats who have overblown the
seriousness of the infection. Why are such notions gaining so much traction? Kate Kelland
(2021), writing for Reuters, offered one explanation for the propagation of the conspiracy
theories. Social media helps fuel this misinformation and magical thinking, which has left
millions on social media believing that Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates have devious plans
surrounding the pandemic and its vaccine: “...Fauci and Gates created the pandemic to try
and control people, that they want to profit from the virus’ spread, and that they want to use
vaccines to insert trackable microchips into people” (Kelland, 2021, para. 6). This, of course,
couldn’t be further from the truth. Gates is perhaps the most ardent supporter of getting the
world healthy and back on track. Bill Gates “... has through his philanthropic Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation committed at least $1.75 billion to the global response to the COVID-19
pandemic. That includes support for some makers of vaccines, diagnostics, and potential
treatments” (para. 5).
Jason Aten (2020), reporting for Inc., gave us more perspective from Mr. Gates, another tech
luminary, “If you want to get back to normal, encourage people to take common-sense
measures like wearing a mask. And the best way to get people to do that is to stop amplifying
anti-science messages on Facebook” (para. 16).
In addition to Tim Cook and Bill Gates, various other prominent figures in Big Tech have
weighed in. Jaron Lanier suggested that we move forward with his #DeleteFacebook
campaign, which implored us all to remove the app from our devices and lives. More on
Lanier’s efforts to stop the scourge of social media can be found at
http://www.jaronlanier.com/. Let’s also not forget a recent suggestion from Elon Musk on
Twitter as reported by Georgina Torbet (2021), writing for digital trends, “Musk shared a
meme referencing Facebook’s role in the spread of misinformation leading to the attack on
Congress ... and suggested people should use the Signal app” (para. 1).
Mr. Musk’s characterization is proven accurate by a further exploration of coverage on the
capital siege in January 2021. Kevin Collier (2021) at NBC News explained, “A number of pro-
Trump extremists used Facebook to plan their attack on the US Capitol, a watchdog
organization has found, contradicting claims by Facebook’s leadership that such planning was
largely done on other sites” (para. 1). So much for admitting culpability. Facebook
administrators clearly engaged in some finger-pointing and subterfuge.
Some of those critical of Facebook find that their voice is stifled. A recent post on Facebook
by Lincoln Cannon, who called for an overhaul of social technology frameworks, was removed.
Cannon (2021) posted the following, “Now is the time to build, promote, and adopt
decentralized social networks. The future of humanity depends on it” (para. 2). Merely
suggesting this approach to better platforms apparently runs afoul of terms of use. His post
was removed from the site. Facebook moderation explained, “We Cannot Review the
Decision to Disable Your Account. Your Facebook account was disabled because it did not
follow our Community Standards. This decision can’t be reversed” (para. 3).
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Let’s take a closer look at COVID-19 and Facebook’s role in idly allowing the mis- and
disinformation of millions of its users. Erika Kinetz (2021) at AP NEWS reported:
A nine-month Associated Press investigation of state-sponsored disinformation
conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab,
shows how a rumor that the US created the virus that causes COVID-19 was
weaponized by the Chinese government, spreading from the dark corners of the
Internet to millions across the globe. The analysis was based on a review of millions of
social media postings and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube,
Telegram, and other platforms. Chinese officials were reacting to a powerful narrative,
nursed by QAnon groups, Fox News, former President Donald Trump, and leading
Republicans, that the virus was instead manufactured by China. (paras. 4-5)
So, you think Facebook plays fair in the free-market economy in the US and promotes healthy
competition? The Federal Trade Commission (2020) has sued the company:
The complaint alleges that Facebook initially tried to compete with Instagram on the
merits by improving its own offerings, but Facebook ultimately chose to buy Instagram
rather than compete with it. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion in April
2012 allegedly both neutralizes the direct threat posed by Instagram and makes it
more difficult for another personal social networking competitor to gain scale. (para.
6)
Let’s further discuss Facebook’s economic footprint. James Clayton (2021) at BBC News
Services wrote that through the lens of the American Economic Liberties Project, “Facebook
is broadly seen as the most prominent villain, among all the tech monopolists” (para. 9).
Peter Manseau, reporting for The Washington Post, chronicled an individual user’s experience
using the site. Let’s take a look at a devout Christian, whose pastor recommended that he
stop using Facebook. This was probably good advice, considering how much anger and vitriol
is stoked on the site. This Christian family man, Michael Sparks, couldn’t seem to pry himself
from the site’s grip. A site whose original goal is to help us commune with others. Unable to
follow his pastor’s or his own advice, he found himself participating in the January 6th, 2021,
capital siege (Manseau, 2021).
In his booking photo from Kentucky’s Oldham County Detention Center taken 13 days
later, he is wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘Armor of God’ and cites a Bible verse,
Ephesians 6:11: ‘Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against
the devil’s schemes’. (para. 4)
In a video Michael Sparks posted on Facebook, he offered some of his musings and
observations:
‘It’s really got me, and it has had me very angry,’ he said in the video. ‘Because if you
watch, Facebook is where they’re feeding this anger and hatred. ... they’ll find out
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what you are for or against, and they’re gonna feed anger, that’s what they’re doing’
(Manseau, 2021, para. 16). Sparks added, ‘They’re just feeding this hatred. It’s just
unbelievable. They’re turning people on each other’. (para. 32)
As for teen suicide mentioned in the opening paragraphs, the strongest commitment to
prevention that’s possible is the only acceptable approach by our social media companies.
While Facebook has expressed concern, it did not prevent a product they now own from being
implicated in the death of a teen. In an open letter to social media companies, Anne Longfield,
Children’s Commissioner for England, wrote:
I do not think it is going too far to question whether even you, the owners, any longer
have any control over their content. If that is the case, then children should not be
accessing your services at all, and parents should be aware that the idea of any
authority overseeing algorithms and content is a mirage. (Adams, 2019, paras. 8-9)
Think Facebook is going to change from the inside?
Facebook’s Oversight Board very clearly only advises Facebook on its course of action
regarding posts that may violate its terms of service. As Greg Bensinger (2021) reported at
NYT, the company is under no obligation to carry out the board’s recommendations, “The
company bent over backward to accommodate Mr. Trump until it was politically expedient to
turn on him” (Bensinger, 2021, para. 19).
Now let’s move from Mr. Trump to the closely related topic of QAnon. Julia Wong, writing for
The Guardian (2020), reported:
‘The response from all social platforms to the harm and threat of QAnon has been
slow and anemic,’ said Travis View, a researcher and co-host of QAnon Anonymous, a
podcast that documents and debunks QAnon. ‘But Facebook stands alone in how
much it has enabled this conspiracy theory-driven extremist community... Not content
with merely hosting QAnon propaganda, Facebook continues to recommend QAnon
groups to users, essentially providing free marketing for a movement that has already
inspired people to commit terrorism, murder, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping,’
View added. (Wong, 2020, para. 13)
One would be hard-pressed to consider Facebook’s sense of urgency regarding potential
matters of national security very prudent. In fact, one would be hard-pressed not to evaluate
its governance’s performance as apathetic at best. Sean Keane (2021) at CNET writes,
“Facebook has accelerated its clampdown on Groups that spread misinformation and call for
violence since the US Capitol riot on Jan. 6, but its researchers warned executives these
problems were rife in major politics Groups since last August” (para. 1). By my count,
executives got a heads-up five months in advance and failed to act efficaciously.
It’s clear that this is all par for the course for Facebook. Kurt Wagner, providing coverage for
Bloomberg (2021), reported:
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This has been the Facebook story for years. Through privacy blunders, election issues,
and failures to police its own platform, Facebook’s business has simply plugged away,
seemingly unimpeded. It appears there is nothing that can stop what is arguably the
world’s most important advertising platform. (para. 4)
The following are some further considerations and further reading if you’re so inclined.
The more data we provide, and the more data Facebook can collect, then the more optimally
Facebook can sell targeted ads to advertisers.
Facebook is bad for Social Justice Warriors (SJWs). While Jarett Kobek (2016) used Tumblr in,
I Hate the Internet as an example, his observation applies to all social media — and Facebook
is no exception.
You are making money for rich White dudes! Every critique of the racist, cisgender,
homophobic, misogynistic patriarchy that you post on Tumblr just makes money for
Tumblr! All you’re doing is advertising for the very people and companies that
perpetuate the economic system of injustice which you are supposedly challenging!
The Internet, and the multinational conglomerates which rule it, have reduced
everyone to the worst possible fate. We have become nothing more than comic book
artists, churning out content for enormous monoliths that refuse to pay us the value
of our work. (“Paragraph Thirty-Two,” para. 59)
The roots of Facebook’s rapaciousness and seemingly moral relativism start with the
founder’s first foray into creating websites. Franklin Foer takes a deeper dive into Facebook
in World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech:
As a college sophomore, he hatched a site called Facemash — with the high-minded
purpose of determining the hottest kid on campus. Zuckerberg asked users to
compare images of two students and then determine the better looking of the two.
The winner of each pairing advanced to the next round of his hormonal tournament.
To cobble this site together, Zuckerberg needed photos. He purloined those from the
servers of the various Harvard houses that stockpiled them. ‘One thing is certain,’ he
wrote on a blog as he put the finishing touches on his creation, ‘and it’s that I’m a jerk
for making this site. Oh well’. (Foer, 2018, p.58)
A charitable read of the Facemash experience suggests that, as a young Ivy Leaguer, Mr.
Zuckerberg felt most comfortable exploiting the worst motivations of his classmates by
appealing their baser nature.
That problematic moral compass seems to remain a constant:
When Facebook was assailed for abetting the onslaught of false news stories during
the 2016 presidential campaign — a steady stream of fabricated right-wing
conspiracies that boosted Donald Trump’s candidacy — Mark Zuckerberg initially
disclaimed any culpability. “‘Our goal is to give every person a voice,’ he posted on
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Facebook, washing his hands of the matter. It’s galling to watch Zuckerberg walk away
from the catastrophic collapse of the news business and the degradation of American
civic culture because his site has played such a seminal role in both. Though
Zuckerberg denies it, the process of guiding the public to information is a source of
tremendous cultural and political power. In the olden days, we described that power
as gatekeeping — and it was a sacred obligation. (Foer, 2018, p. 91-92)
Foer (2018) concluded:
Facebook leads us to a destination that is the precise opposite of its proclaimed ideal.
It creates a condition that Eli Pariser has called the ‘Filter Bubble’. Facebook’s
algorithms supply us with the material that we like to read and will feel moved to
share. It’s not hard to see the intellectual and political perils of this impulse. The
algorithms unwittingly supply readers with texts and videos that merely confirm
deeply felt beliefs and biases, and the algorithms suppress contrary opinions that
might agitate a user. Liberals are deluged with liberal opinions, vegetarians are
presented with endless vegetarian agitprop, the alt-right is fed alt-right garbage, and
so on. Facebook shields us from the sort of challenging disagreement — although not
from the idiocy of trolls and the blather of comments sections — that might change
our minds or help us to better understand the views of our fellow citizens. (Foer, 2018,
p. 177-178)
This exposition provides a compelling explanation of the unfortunate events in the life of
Michael Sparks, the capital siege participant and consequent criminal discussed above.
What could easily be construed as nihilistic moral ambiguity, if not intentional malice on the
part of Mr. Zuckerberg, can be witnessed to this day. Deepa Seetharaman, Emily Glazer, and
Tim Higgins, writing for WSJ, reported, “In response to Tim Cook’s criticisms of Facebook’s
frequent inability to adequately protect user data, Zuckerberg said to his team, ‘We need to
inflict pain’” (Seetharaman et al., 2021, para. 3).
On a more macro level, many social media sites and apps exploit our own bad incentives. I
argue that no one does this as effectively, and at such a scale, as Facebook.
According to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (2018) in his book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New
Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, “Many people underreport
embarrassing behaviors and thoughts on surveys. They want to look good, even though most
surveys are anonymous. This is called the social desirability bias (“Chapter 4,” para. 4). He
goes on to provide an illustrative example:
To see how biased data pulled from social media can be, consider the relative
popularity of the Atlantic, a respected, highbrow monthly magazine, versus the
National Enquirer, a gossipy, often-sensational magazine. Both publications have
similar average circulations, selling a few hundred thousand copies (the National
Enquirer is a weekly, so it actually sells more total copies). There are also a comparable
number of Google searches for each magazine. However, on Facebook, roughly 1.5
million people either like the Atlantic or discuss articles from the Atlantic on their
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profiles. Only about 50,000 like the Enquirer or discuss its contents. (“The Truth About
Your Facebook Friends,” para. 3)
Some of the recent and more prominent conspiracy theories, like PizzaGate, QAnon, and Stop
the Steal, smack of pure hallucination. And speaking of mass hallucination addled by
technology, one is easily reminded of the 1999 film The Matrix by writers-directors, the
Wachowskis. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (2019), in their book, The Coddling of the
American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure,
wrote:
The term ‘matrix,’ ... comes from the 1984 science fiction novel Neuromancer, by
William Gibson (which was the inspiration for the later movie “The Matrix”). Gibson
imagined a futuristic, internet-like network linking everyone together. He called it ‘the
matrix’ and referred to it as ‘a consensual hallucination.’ ... it was a great way to think
about moral cultures. A group creates a consensual moral matrix as individuals
interact with one another, and then they act in ways that may be unintelligible to
outsiders. ... a new moral matrix was forming in some pockets of universities and was
destined to grow. (Social media, of course, is perfectly designed to help ‘consensual
hallucinations’ spread within connected communities at warp speed—on campus and
off, on the left and on the right). (pp. 9-10)
Regarding QAnon and its deep roots in the many groups represented in the January 6 capital
siege, the filter bubbles created and honed by Facebook’s recommendation engines helped
drive solidarity among the dissidents. Lukianoff and Haidt (2019) offer insight:
Solidarity is great for a group that needs to work in unison or march into battle.
Solidarity engenders trust, teamwork, and mutual aid. But it can also foster
groupthink, orthodoxy, and a paralyzing fear of challenging the collective. Solidarity
can interfere with a group’s efforts to find the truth, and the search for truth can
interfere with a group’s solidarity. The Greek historian Thucydides saw this principle
in action over two thousand years ago. Writing about a time of wars and revolutions
in the fifth century BCE, he noted that ‘the ability to understand a question from all
sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action’. (p. 108-109)
A voice from the past can shed some light on distorted solidarity. George Orwell (1983), in his
increasingly and terrifyingly relevant book 1984, which seems more and more like non-fiction,
wrote, “Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is
unconsciousness” (p. 41).
With Facebook leading the pack, social media is bad for honest dialog, bad for civility, exploits
our worst incentives and motivations, is bad for clear thinking, bad for good ideas, and
ultimately, bad for contact with reality. It is a chillingly effective incubator of bad ideas and
delusion.
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Christian Rudder (2015), in his book Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity — What Our
Online Lives Tell Us About Our Offline Selves, provided another example of the social
desirability bias:
This tendency is ... well documented: the world over; respondents answer questions
in ways that make them look good. The most famous case was the so-called Bradley
effect: in 1982, California voters told exit pollsters they had elected a black governor,
Tom Bradley, by a significant margin, but in the privacy of the ballot box, they had
actually given his white opponent a narrow victory. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s,
black candidates often received more support in polls than in actual elections.
(“Chapter 8,” para. 2)
This may help explain the shock and awe of Trump’s election in 2016. In the privacy of the
ballot box, people voted for Trump while being reluctant to go on record and make public
their preference for a man who clearly made fun of a disabled reporter at a campaign rally
and bragged about sexually assaulting women while speaking with Billy Bush back in 2005.
Rudder (2015) goes on to flesh out why so much negativity reigns supreme on Facebook:
So much of what makes the Internet useful for communication — asynchrony,
anonymity, escapism, a lack of central authority — also makes it frightening. People
can act however they want (and say whatever they want) without consequences, a
phenomenon first studied by John Suler, a professor of psychology at Rider University.
His name for it is the ‘online disinhibition effect’ (“Chapter 9,” para. 21).
The consensual hallucinations, online disinhibition effect, the social desirability bias, filter
bubbles, confirmation biases, recommendation engines, and content and newsfeed
algorithms all contribute to “liking” sub-optimal, if not harmful, posts. Post that, ultimately,
encourage the worst in all of us.
Sam Harris and Annaka Harris, in their 2013 book Lying weigh in on distorted encouragement,
False encouragement is a kind of theft: It steals time, energy, and motivation that a
person could put toward some other purpose.” Speaking of hallucinations and
distortions, Harris (2013) elaborates on the importance of having contact with reality,
“And, needless to say, it makes sense to want to be in touch with reality. Given that
your every move in life will be constrained by whatever the facts are, both out in the
world and in the minds of others, being guided by anything less than these facts will
leave you perpetually vulnerable to embarrassment and disappointment. When your
model of yourself in the world is at odds with how you actually are in the world, you
are going to keep bumping into things. (“The Mirror of Honesty,” para.6)
Just as important in maintaining a worldview that maps onto some semblance of reality is
focusing one’s attention on more truthful and factual information and news. As reported by
Charlie Warzel (2021) at NYT, Michael Goldhaber, a former theoretical physicist, predicted,
“the complete dominance of the internet, increased shamelessness in politics, terrorists co-
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opting social media, the rise of reality television, personal websites, oversharing, personal
essay, fandoms, and online influencer culture — along with the near destruction of our ability
to focus” (para. 1)
In the 1980s, Goldhaber was referring to the “attention economy,” a term coined by
psychologist Herbert A. Simon. When offering his impressions of the January 6th capital
insurrection, Goldhaber said:
That the attempted Capitol insurrection in January was the result of thousands of
influencers and news outlets that, in an attempt to gain fortune and fame and
attention, trotted out increasingly dangerous conspiracy theories on platforms
optimized to amplify outrage. (Warzel, 2021, para. 10)
Facebook certainly gets our attention with each insidious post and unscrupulous “news” item
we read. How does this bode for younger users or those with less sophisticated, less savvy
media consumption habits? Meghan Daum, in her 2019 book The Problem with Everything:
My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, wrote:
Social media sneaks into our brains, steals half-formed thoughts, and broadcasts those
thoughts before they’re anything close to being ready for what used to be called
‘public consumption’ (or, as we used to say, ‘ready for prime time’). I realize now that
much of what I’ve been reacting to these last few years is nothing more than
undeveloped versions of already undeveloped thoughts. I think about what this means
for young people, especially teenagers, whose thoughts are supposed to be
undeveloped, even stupid. I think about all the stupid thoughts I had as a teenager, all
the uninformed, half-baked, insensitive, self-serving, grandiose, totally-embarrassing-
in-retrospect things I said to my friends and my parents, and my teachers. What if
someone had handed me a microphone and invited me to say them to the whole
world instead? Would I have taken them up on it? Of course. Would the world have
been worse for it? Of course. (“Chapter 8,” para. 5)
By Mark Zuckerberg’s own admission, Facebook is built on inherently bad incentives. Josh
Constine (2018) writing for TechCrunch, reported:
In a 5,000-word letter by Mark Zuckerberg published today, he explained how there’s
a ‘basic incentive problem’ that ‘when left unchecked, people will engage
disproportionately with more sensationalist and provocative content. Our research
suggests that no matter where we draw the lines for what is allowed, as a piece of
content gets close to that line, people will engage with it more on average — even
when they tell us afterwards, they don’t like the content’. (para. 2)
More on how we use Facebook and to what ends. In Jordan Peterson’s 2018 book 12 Rules
for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, he shared his thoughts on the use of words:
You can use words to manipulate the world into delivering what you want. This is what
it means to ‘act politically.’ This is spin. It’s the specialty of unscrupulous marketers,
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salesmen, advertisers, pickup artists, slogan-possessed utopians, and psychopaths. It’s
the speech people engage in when they attempt to influence and manipulate others.
It’s what university students do when they write an essay to please the professor
instead of articulating and clarifying their own ideas. It’s what everyone does when
they want something and decide to falsify themselves to please and flatter. It’s
scheming and sloganeering and propaganda. To conduct life like this is to become
possessed by some ill-formed desire and then to craft speech and action in a manner
that appears likely, rationally, to bring about that end. Typical calculated ends might
include ‘to impose my ideological beliefs,’ ‘to prove that I am (or was) right,’ ‘to appear
competent,’ ‘to ratchet myself up the dominance hierarchy,’ ‘to avoid responsibility’
(or its twin, ‘to garner credit for others’ actions), ‘to be promoted,’ ‘to attract the lion’s
share of attention,’ ‘to ensure that everyone likes me,’ ‘to garner the benefits of
martyrdom,’ ‘to justify my cynicism,’ ‘to rationalize my antisocial outlook,’ ‘to
minimize immediate conflict,’ ‘to maintain my naïveté,’ ‘to capitalize on my
vulnerability,’ ‘to always appear as the sainted one,’ or (this one is particularly evil) ‘to
ensure that it is always my unloved child’s fault.’ These are all examples of what
Sigmund Freud’s compatriot, the lesser-known Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler,
called ‘life-lies’ (p. 206)
Peterson perfectly describes “humble bragging,” “thirst traps,” attention whoring, and the
well-curated highlights reel and sales brochure quality of many Facebook profiles.
Some final food for thought concerning our biggest challenges such as climate change, wealth
inequality, sustainable energy, and sustainable drinking water, to name a few. Jonathan Haidt,
in his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, shared
his primary worry:
If I could nominate one candidate for ‘biggest obstacle to world peace and social
harmony,’ it would be naive realism because it is so easily ratcheted up from the
individual to the group level: My group is right because we see things as they are.
Those who disagree are obviously biased by their religion, their ideology, or their self-
interest. Naive realism gives us a world full of good and evil, and this brings us to the
most disturbing implication of the sages’ advice about hypocrisy: Good and evil do not
exist outside of our beliefs about them. (p. 71)
I can’t think of a better example of a platform that fosters naive realism more perniciously
and at scale than Facebook. Facebook has not expressed, or demonstrated, any appetite for
fundamental change. Change My Mind is volunteering to do what should be done: user in a
world without Facebook.
###
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