Robin was spending way too much time on Facebook. She knew it, and her friends also knew it – the ones who were also on Facebook, that is. Only recently had Robin learned that Facebook friends could see one another’s presence when they were ‘active’, marked by a glowing green dot. She still wasn’t sure whether the telltale green dot remained ‘on’ if she left the browser window open while doing something else. She’d somehow managed to hide everyone else’s green dots from herself and assumed, incorrectly, that if she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see her either.
Lately she had noticed that using Facebook gave her a feeling best described as bliss. She’d decided to look at it only once a day, at 4.30 p.m. She didn’t always manage to stick to her resolution and by 3.30 found herself impatiently looking forward to it. The bliss, she thought, was cause for concern.
‘Bliss?’ said her friend Hannah. ‘What do you mean? Happiness?’
Robin shook her head. ‘No, more like – coziness.’
‘If you get a feeling of tranquility from debates on social media, I’ll have what you’re having.’
‘I wouldn’t call it tranquility, exactly,’ said Robin. But the implicit reference to mood-altering substances was apt. On Facebook she felt stimulated but secure. A little bit buzzed, but wrapped in a cuddly blanket. ‘It’s a bit like a recreational drug, with a lot of people I like.’
‘Right,’ said Hannah, staring at her. ‘That’s a bit of a worry, Robin.’
‘No kidding,’ Robin agreed.
‘You might want to take a break for a while,’ said Hannah. ‘Deactivate yourself temporarily. Maybe even permanently.’
A few of Robin’s friends had done just that. Some announced their intentions; others simply disappeared without a trace. Robin didn’t always notice their absence right away. When she did discover that someone had deleted their account, it made her a little sad, especially if social media was the only way she ever interacted with the person.
She didn’t delete her account, but she left Facebook alone for a few days. When she did cave in to temptation, she went looking for posts and comments by some of the people she knew from years ago: people with whom she’d played basketball in high school or lived in the same dorm at college, or whom she’d met through mutual friends. They were people who would not be her close friends today. They might not be her friends at all. In a world without Facebook, they would have gone their separate ways and forgotten about one another, or met up only at reunions.
Robin scrolled through one thread after another. The threads tended to be short. In the early days of social media, political posts drew more responses. Now, it seemed, people only bothered to comment if they agreed with the point of view expressed.
Her friend Kevin still persisted, and over the years (years! thought Robin) of this artificial community’s existence (it’s been around longer than some people’s kids!), he had become more shrewd about wording and tone. He checked facts. He pointed out flawed reasoning with gentle good humor. He pasted in links to articles, carefully choosing sources that weren’t notoriously partisan or ideologically suspect.
Robin asked him why he kept doing it when the people who needed to read them never did.
‘Bystanders,’ said Kevin. ‘People who are following the conversation but don’t want to participate. People who might not have made up their minds yet.’
‘Good for you.’
‘You don’t think it’s worth it,’ said Kevin without rancor.
‘I used to,’ said Robin. ‘It’s easier just to use friend lists and restrict the audience. If I’m having a party I don’t invite everybody I know.’
I should just unfriend them, she thought. They might not even notice. But she didn’t. Instead she closed Facebook and read a book.
🌿
Hannah asked Robin what she’d decided to do about her addiction to Facebook.
‘I’ve been trying to cut back a bit,’ said Robin.
‘I’m planning to delete it,’ said Hannah. ‘Deactivate my account.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ said Robin. ‘I learn things. I’d miss people.’
‘Who? You can e-mail them. Or call them. Or write letters.’
‘I learn things,’ Robin repeated. ‘Interesting discussions take place.’
‘Interesting enough to be worth the time you spend scrolling aimlessly?’
‘Yes. Come on. You can’t tell me that sending five or ten or 500 people a link to an article you read, or photos of your puppy or the view from the mountain you just climbed, or telling them about your new job, is as much fun as posting something that they can comment on. Even if you know all their e-mail addresses, which I can almost guarantee you don’t.’
‘You’re right,’ said Hannah. ‘That would be more like work than fun.’
‘And you wouldn’t see your friends’ kids’ birthday party or the big zucchini from their garden either,’ said Robin. ‘So why are you leaving?’
‘Facebook is full of lies. Fake news. If you want to call it that.’
‘Yes,’ Robin agreed. ‘People are gullible.’ She thought of Kevin’s fact-checking efforts. ‘They go looking for posts that support what they want to believe.’
‘It’s not just individuals’ posts,’ said Hannah. ‘It’s disinformation. Did you see the exposé by the former Facebook employee? There are organized groups that deliberately spread lies to influence elections. Including in our country. If you haven’t read it, you should read it. It’s on BuzzFeed. Google “Facebook whistleblower September 2020.”’
‘I read it,’ said Robin.
‘You should read it again.’
Robin said, ‘It’s still going to happen whether I’m on Facebook or not. I don’t spread it.’
‘I’ve spread it. Unintentionally. Last week I shared a post about how to make sure your ballot will be counted if you vote absentee. A couple hours later a friend pointed out that it wasn’t quite correct, and provided a better link. I said thanks and amended my post and shared the correction with the person who had posted the original info. By that time a bunch of people had seen it and shared it and then probably forgot about it. Totally innocent, but it’s false information that could affect an election. Not in some other country. Our country.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Robin.
‘Anyway, I’m not talking about that sort of mistake. I’m talking about deliberate manipulation of what people and governments think they know. Facebook knew this was happening and didn’t do anything to prevent it. It didn’t even follow its own policies on incitement and hate speech. The ex-employee said she has blood on her hands.’ Hannah turned her own hands over, palms up, and looked at them.
Robin wasn’t sure how her personal use or non-use of Facebook made any difference to the company’s conduct. ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ she said to Hannah. ‘I could definitely use a break from the trolls and troglodytes.’
Robin spent her afternoon ‘Facebook time’ reading about Facebook instead of scrolling through it.
In Myanmar: through 2018, that nation’s military carried out a systematic ethnic cleansing campaign, creating fake accounts on Facebook and using them to disseminate false claims and incite violence against the Rohingya people, who form a Muslim minority in that country. In a US federal court in June 2020, Facebook filed its opposition to assisting an international investigation into genocide.
In Ethiopia: a massive disinformation effort using Facebook accompanied widespread violence against ethnic groups of diverse religious and cultural identities. Among those demonized were the Oromo people, with the murder of singer Hachalu Hundessa in June 2020 setting off a wave of extreme violence in Addis Ababa.
In the United States: Facebook has consistently refused to prohibit false political advertising, with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg asserting that ‘in a democracy, it’s really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying, so they can make their own judgments’. It has continued to allow political misinformation to remain on its site unchallenged, for fear of political backlash.
So people are free to ‘make their own judgments’ based on information provided to them by a company that is paid to publish it, with no obligation to verify or vouch for its truth. The audience must do their own detective work – if it occurs to them that fact-checking may be a good idea, and if they’re motivated to do it.
But this stuff doesn’t really affect me, thought Robin. I don’t pay any attention to advertising. She sometimes read articles on Facebook, but only for convenience: rather than going directly to the news sites, she could see the news stories that Facebook thought would be of interest to her as they materialized in her news feed. She clicked on another Google News result.
Three and a half weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the company said it would ban all political and issue-based advertising afterthe polls close on November 3, in an effort to ‘limit confusion and misinformation’. Facebook did not say how long the ban would be in effect, but in an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post, staff were instructed to tell advertisers it would last a week.
After the election. How effective is that ban likely to be? thought Robin. But then, who takes political advertising seriously? Nobody … assuming it’s recognizable as advertising.
Robin closed the window on her Google News search and idly, almost automatically, clicked on the Facebook icon, which she had pinned to the top of her homepage. She really didn’t want to delete her account. The bird photography group today featured a stunning image of a forty-spotted pardalote. Her writer friend Fiona had a new blog post, linked from her page. And oh, look, it’s Eric’s birthday.
Out of curiosity, she checked to see whether Eric had included the year on his page, which she had heard was potentially risky if one fears identity theft. He hadn’t. But really, thought Robin, how safe is it to have provided your complete birthday to Facebook at all? Even if the year is not visible, it’s ‘in there’ and therefore ‘out there’ for the taking if someone knows how to do it.
Robin clicked on her own ‘About me’ information. The month and date of her own birthday were visible only to ‘friends’; the year was marked as visible to ‘only me’. It was useful to have Facebook keeping track of friends’ birthdays, and she appreciated the ease of sending and receiving birthday wishes. But for some reason, unrelated to finding out about the company’s role in conflicts and conspiracies, today she felt uneasy about having so many personal details accessible to rogues and hackers.
She had several friends and acquaintances who had deleted their Facebook accounts, then popped up again later with a new profile and sometimes a new name. Others she knew had provided fake details, including birthdays. What she hadn’t considered was whether they had kept those details consistent over time, or whether they’d ever attempted to change anything.
She clicked on her birthday and scrolled through the pull-down choices of years. For some reason Facebook didn’t think anyone lived to 100. Okay, suppose I put in 2014 as the year I was born.
Like a crack of thunder in a threatening sky, the message flashed up on the screen:
Since you are only six years old, you may not have a Facebook account.
Your account has been suspended.
Robin laughed out loud at her own stupidity. The Facebook terms of use prohibit the use of a false birthday. Of course if you start with the fake date and never change it, they’ll never know it’s fake.
She clicked over and had a look at the instructions for appealing banishment to ‘Facebook jail’. If you’re really concerned about privacy, she thought, you may not wish to take steps to prove your age by sending your driver’s license or passport out into the vast indifference of Facebook.
Robin closed the browser window. She picked up her phone and texted Hannah:
I’ve done it.
Photo credits
Time lapse photograph of blue lights, Pixabay on Pexels.com
Basketball team by Keith Johnston on Pixabay.com
Cape Town, South Africa by John O’Nolan on Unsplash
You’ve been Zucked by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Forty-spotted pardalote by JJ Harrison, licensed under CC Attribution 3.0 Unported
Girl with laptop by Andrea Piaquadio from Pexels.com
Citation
Please cite as: Miller, L. Elaine, ‘The anti-social network’, It Could Be Words (blog), 11 October 2020, https://it-could-be-words.com/the-anti-social-network
A very interesting story. I’ve experienced most of those feelings using FB. For me there is not currently a better way to keep connected with friends around the world. I used to do circular emails and stuff but it’s not as easy and fun. I like seeing the big zucchini! If people post too many pictures of dull things they get taken out of my Newsfeed…
I like that you used the word “whom” – I have noticed that it is often replaced by “who” of recent times. Incorrect but quite common. Maybe “whom” will cease to exist someday?
Thanks for your comments, Hugh. Yes, for me there are a lot of obstacles – social, logistical and psychological – to detaching from FB. We are in the middle of watching ‘The Social Dilemma’ and I’ll be interested in friends’ views on it.
‘Who’ used as an object in written communication? Perish the thought!