The Cambridge Analytica scandal should’ve been enough really, to make me want to abandon Facebook. It was clear evidence that we were sharing personal information with an organisation that had no regulations around what happened to it, and didn’t seem to care. It was clear evidence that it was our personal information that Facebook traded in, not the modicum of advertising you see dotted around the website.
But I
stayed, buoyed along by the ease with which I was able to keep in touch with
people close and far away. It seemed so innocent when I logged in – pictures of
my nephews’ smiling faces, friends running marathons, my sister training her
dog, friends sharing useful information about living a greener, more
environmentally life in a world built to do the exact opposite. What could
possibly be wrong with all that?
The news
kept coming, however. We can now attribute the work of Cambridge Analytica to
the presence of Donald Trump in the White House, a racist and a liar whose
navel-gazing and inept approach to politics now has him causing a multitude of
unnecessary deaths in the Middle East. But they’re not American deaths so
that’s okay.
I digress.
Reporting on Vote Leave, the organisation given the job of campaigning for the leave
side in the UK’s 2016 EU referendum, revealed it had spent millions on targeted
Facebook posts – using often inaccurate but always emotive words and memes to
fire up those voters who were either unsure what to vote, or weren’t previously
even intending to vote.
As such,
here in Britain we now live with chaos, ineptitude and divisiveness that just
wasn’t there before 2016. Or where it was, it was contained and work was being
done to improve things. We now live with an open, gangrenous wound that splits
families and friends at the slightest mention of the word ‘Brexit’. And we are
led by another racist and liar who has only his self-interest at heart.
And aren’t
the racists loving it. Two of the leaders of the free world are openly racist
and get away with it, so now they can to. To see news footage of Bulgarian
‘football fans’ making Nazi salutes and monkey noises at the England players is
incredibly distressing. We’re going back, not forwards. Back to darker times,
not the mythical better times the Brexiteers would have you believe.
It’s not
all Facebook’s fault, of course. This ongoing upheaval is a perfect storm of
many factors. But Facebook is a large factor, and one I have some control over.
The positive aspects of using the site fade with every login. Many of my close
friends have departed it in the past year, or just stopped using it. Most of my
friends and family I keep in touch with over WhatsApp and, of course, in real
life. (I’m aware WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, but it has proven less
insidious so far, and I will happily jump ship once something better comes
along.)
But what of
those people who you only keep in touch with via Facebook, you might ask. I
think losing touch with people is okay – it happened all the time before
Facebook came along. I don’t think it’s necessary to keep in touch with
everyone you meet, whether it’s old school friends, former colleagues, or a
friend of a friend you’ve had a few good nights out with. If I see you out-and-about
I will say hello and find out what’s been going on in your life, that won’t
change. If anything, it will make it more pleasurable. A nice surprise.
I expect I
will miss those that post regular updates about their lives, especially those
that live abroad, watching their kids (or pets) grow up. But these curated
displays of lives lived at their best are no good for anyone’s mental health –
your friends and family always seem to be having a better time than you. The
truth is often far different when you speak to them privately – they are
experiencing ups and downs as much as anyone, but sitting there comparing your
life to what is presented on Facebook is a mistake that is all too easy and
tempting to make.
I’ll miss
those that are ‘good’ at Facebook as well, those that post regularly and
engagingly, with good humour and pathos, inviting informative and entertaining
conversation. Unfortunately, they are the exception that proves the rule –
Facebook is not a place for discussing, questioning, and learning something
new. It’s a place to shout your opinion, shoot people down, and get offended at
the slightest hint someone might disagree.
So, it’s
not Mark Zuckerberg’s quiet meetings with right-wing influencers that has
finally moved me to #DeleteFacebook. I’m actually quite admiring of that. He
said himself when interviewed by Congress that Big Tech companies are naturally
more left-wing environments. That he is trying to engage people “across the
spectrum on lots of different issues all the time”, is an ideal way to counter
the divisive rhetoric of many of our current leaders. “Meeting new people and
hearing from a wide range of viewpoints is part of learning,” he says. “If you
haven't tried it, I suggest you do!” He’s not wrong.
And yet his
website isn’t built to nurture that, quite the opposite. It enables you to
create a bubble in which all of your opinions are validated for you all of the
time, and if anything counters that you can silence it quickly with a tap of
your finger. There’s no need to engage with anything uncomfortable any more –
even if it’s factually correct.
Presidential
candidate Elizabeth Warren’s recent baiting of Facebook’s advertising ‘standards’,
an attempt to force them to be more diligent in fact-checking political adverts
in the run-up to the 2020 US election, showed how unwilling the company is to
take any responsibility for misuse of the immensely powerful tool they’ve
created. It’s their wholly unsatisfying response to Warren’s challenge that has
finally broken me. If they can’t find ways to regulate this monster they’ve
created, to stop it from bending reality so much that the societal system we
have become so accustomed to starts to break in deeply unsettling ways, then I
want out. I’m pushing the eject button.
We all
should really. It’s the lack of meaningful reaction from Facebook users to the
reveals of how our personal data is being used that keeps the company assured
in its lack of action. If we don’t care, why should they? Only a substantial
exodus would prod them into more accountability. But I understand why you don’t
want to leave – it’s a very hard habit to give up.
I’ve had a
good 12 years (!) on Facebook. I’ve laughed a lot, had my heart warmed, and
shared some of the best moments of my life with the people I care about who
couldn’t be there. And I’ve done all the awful, unhealthy things as well –
cyber-stalked exes, befriended school peers to see how fat they’d got,
aggressively shot down the opinions of friends of friends with whom I disagree.
I won’t miss that ‘benefit’. It never got me anywhere good. But also, Facebook
has maintained and renewed friendships I might otherwise have lost, and I am enormously
grateful for that. Now though it’s time to find new ways to do that, ways that
don’t contribute so much damage to the world around us.
